Category Archives: Libraries

The Friday Review No. 4: Remembering Stillness and Forgetting Perfectionism

‘Drawing is a great medium for experimentation because nothing is set in stone – you can always do another drawing if you don’t like the first one.’

Cliff Wright, The Magic of Drawing: Bring your Vision to Life on the Page, David & Charles Ltd 2008

This has been a revelation to me, a victim of perfectionism all my life. Even as a kid, I struggled with the idea that I could make a mess and get it wrong and practice till I was happy with the end result. Somewhere along the line, the idea of playing, and of practicing something to get the hang of it, got lost. It had to be perfect first time. Which is, I suppose, why I eventually stopped making art altogether.

Martin’s sketchbooks, the sketchbooks of a man I think of as a ‘proper’ artist, show that making rough sketches, making a mess, scrabbling about to find the right line, are what sketchbooks are all about. Which makes it alright for me to do the same, somehow.

I’m grateful to Martin for his support and generosity in sharing his work with me, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of the precious images from his sketchbooks with you soon. In the meantime I’m taking this crucial revelation about perfectionism into the coming days, hoping it will sink in permanently this time, and allow me to try stuff out, experiment, get it wrong. Because that is how you learn.

Happy Creating,

Reading Reboot Part 2: The ‘How To’ Bit

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Some books here are waiting to be read.

In my last post about reading, I left you at the point of the story where I had resolved to start reading fiction again, but was at something of a loss as to how to re-establish the habit.

This is the good part. The bit where I tell you what I did, so that you can do it too:

Choose a regular time of day

One of the tips I came across in starting my reading reboot was the idea that in establishing any habit, it helps to have a trigger, a specific time of day, perhaps, which you come to associate with that particular activity. I thought about my mother, who always sat down at 10.30am for a cup of coffee and the Telegraph crossword, and after her lunch at 12noon, she always had half an hour or so special ‘me time’ for reading. It’s a routine she didn’t deviate from for more than 40 years, and in that time she must have read hundreds of books.

Most people read at night. I find that helpful as, like many ME patients, I have a tendency to insomnia, so reading at bedtime helps me to wind down. (NEVER read on your phone, tablet or laptop, however, since the LED display has been proven disrupt the melatonin levels in your brain, making you more awake, rather than less.

You can find the scientific proof, if you are sceptical, here.

Choose a time of day that you can set aside 15-30 minutes of pure reading time, in your lunch hour, on the bus, whenever that most suits your lifestyle, and do it every day.

Block out a chunk of time

I find I really enjoy getting totally immersed in a book, and often, if its one I’m completely absorbed in, I like a big chunk of time to really get to grips. Sunday afternoons are great for this, but I don’t have kids, so this may not work for you. Evenings are great, especially when your partner goes for a night out with their mates. I make an occasion of it, indulgently laying in good chocolate, lighting candles, and maybe even playing soft music in the background.

Grab a moment

I always carry a book with me. I hate to be bored, and any time of the day when I am on my own, perhaps waiting in a queue, on public transport, or grabbing lunch at a coffee shop, is perfect for packing in the next chapter.

Make a list

When I was at college, and, we were given reading lists. A series of texts to wade through. Doing my diploma, I wrote my reading list on a slip of card which I used as a book mark. I drew a line through every book I finished on the list, and went on to the next one. Every time I opened my book, I was presented with tangible evidence of what I had achieved, which spurred me on to read more.

This time around I generated my own list. I happened to have a shelf full of books that I had bought but that remained unread. You know, the ones you get when there is a ‘buy one- get one free’ on summer holiday books in Waterstones, and you read one when you are away, and the rest get forgotten. I made a list of all the unread books I had lying around, and started on them.

Another way you could do it is to visit a bookshop with a notebook and wander round, noting down the books you fancy reading, the ones that attract and intrigue you.

Perhaps you’d like to read on a theme. There are books which will help you with this, like ‘The Novel Cure’.

Many books on writing contain lists of recommended novels that you could work your way through – there is a fantastic one in Francine Prose’s wonderful ‘Reading Like a Writer’. (This is a book you really need to read, by the way.)

Or you could just wander around your local library, pick out a few novels from their displays, or ask a librarian or bookseller for their recommendations. And charity shops are great for plucking out a few juicy reads at affordable prices to add to your stash.

Once you have your list, don’t forget to tick off each book as you finish it. I like to score a line right through each title. It gives me huge satisfaction, and gets me revved up for more.

Stay Faithful – Read to the end

I’m such a butterfly. I have a very short attention span and I’m well-known for getting bored with a book a couple of chapters in, putting it down ‘for the moment’ and never finishing it. I’ll end up with about 17 books on the go, and often have to restart books because I’ve forgotten the story so far.

I have found recently that I do have to resist this temptation. If another title attracts me when I’m half way through my current novel, I now make myself plough on, with the reward of the new one in my sights. My intention is to use my voracious butterfly instinct to flit onwards as a means to spur me on to completion. I won’t let myself open the next title until I’ve finished the first. Sometimes I hate it, but it always feels so great when I get to the end of a book that I don’t care.

Don’t be afraid to dump it

On the other hand … yes, I am about to contradict myself. Sometimes there is a book that you start, and no matter how much you try, you just can’t get on with it. Something, or everything, about it grates.

For years, people had been telling me to read ‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen. It has been sitting on my shelf, staring at me balefully in reproach. I’ve tried. God knows, I’ve tried. So many times. But I just can’t like this book, and I just can’t read it. So I have given myself permission to let it go. I’m never going to finish it, so what is the point in keeping it. It made its path to the charity shop, along with Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’, another book that made me want to spit bullets, and that I have tried to read half a dozen times without success.

Sometimes, it is best to know when you are beaten, and retreat gracefully. Life is too short to waste precious reading time on books you downright hate.

Give up the Telly (At least some of the time)

Where am I going to get all this time, you may be asking? I discovered, when I began to really get back into reading, that I had been watching a whole lot of television. Reruns of old detective shows, documentaries I had seen before, pap that was not feeding my soul or my Muse. It was just filling my time. I discovered it was far more fun to switch off the gogglebox and dive into a book. The pictures were better in my imagination, for starters!

Yes, I know it sounds impossible, but think about it. How long do you spend staring at the TV or getting lost on the internet, looking that things that really are not exciting or entertaining you, but just occupying your eyeballs. Just think how much more fun a good book could be.

Commitment not Discipline

Your reading list is NOT another stick to beat yourself with, another SHOULD to add to your already bulging list. If you don’t get chance to read today, don’t tell yourself you lack discipline. Frankly I think discipline is an evil word, used to oppress, manipulate and shame people everywhere. Its not down to having enough discipline. Its actually down to whether you want to do something enough or not. And if you really want to do it, you will. So what if you didn’t have chance to read today because the baby was running a temperature, or the boiler broke down? Commit to reading tomorrow. Reading is for your pleasure, after all.

Congratulate Yourself

I have a list of ‘Books Read in 2017’ in my bullet journal. When I finish a book, I write it down on my list there, as well as scoring it out on my bookmark. It is a way of congratulating myself. When I get to the end of the year, and look back at my list, I know I will be so proud of how much I’ve achieved, because I’ll have a concrete record of it.

There’s another thing I do. Maybe its not so sensible, but when I finish a book, I like to treat myself. I’ll take myself to the local café for a nice cake. Buy myself a new lipstick or nail varnish. A new notebook or a nice pen. Nothing too big. Just a little treat to say ‘well done.’ Because, let’s face it, you put a lot of hours and concentration into finishing a 300-page novel. You deserve a pat on the back!

Of course, volume is not everything. At the moment I am re-establishing the habit of reading, and the issue of what I read, and how it impacts on my writing is something for the future. I may go back to keeping a reading notebook, as I have in previous years. No doubt there will be future posts on the subject. But in the meantime, I hope that something here will help you to get back into the habit of reading, if you have dropped out of it, and if not, that you can discover something new to enhance your enjoyment.

Happy Reading – and Creating,

Love EF

Reading Reboot Part 1

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Shelfie!

As part of my creative recovery journey, I’ve been trying to get back into reading. Stephen King says firmly that:

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

(Stephen King, On Writing)

What the Great Man says has to be right, yeah? So, if I want to write again, I need to resume reading.

I have to confess that in recent years, while I’ve been in dementia-survival mode, I’ve been reading for the purposes of distraction or survival. Which means I’ve either been reading comforting, funny novels, most of which I’ve read before i.e. Terry Pratchett, or self-help. Or an awful lot (and I mean an awful lot) of fanfiction! Now, as I emerge from the dark shadow, I need to remember what the hell a novel actually looks and feels like.

In working this out, I thought it might be useful to consider my history as a reader. I have to admit that since I learnt to read as a child, I have been a complete addict. I was the kid that had read the back of the cornflakes packet so often, I knew it by heart. I devoured books. I spent so much time lying on my bed reading that the neighbours believed my mother locked me in my room rather than allowed me out to play! But I didn’t want to go out to play. I wanted to read Monica Dickens, and Enid Blyton’s ‘Mallory Towers’ and ‘St Clares’ books. I adored Tove Jansson.

My parents encouraged me. My mother was a voracious reader who introduced me to Jane Austen and the Brontes. My father read to me most nights when he got home from work, and if he was travelling for his job, which he did often, he recorded episodes on an old cassette tape player for me to listen to every night – oh, how I wish I still had those episodes of him reading ‘The Wind in the Willows’ and doing all the voices!

So it was not surprising that I wanted to do an English degree for the sheer pleasure of spending three years reading. There I discovered Virginia Woolf and Hemingway.

In my twenties, as I recovered from the rigours of academic analysis of texts, I was introduced to Terry Pratchett, whose common sense wisdom and humour left me in a kind of ecstatic daze. I read Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel, Garrison Keillor and Laurence Durrell. And then I discovered Alice Hoffman’s early works, and was dazzled. This was what writing should be, I thought.

In my thirties, powered by the reading list I received as part of my Diploma in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, I ventured into new territories. Margaret Atwood, Helen Dunmore, Pat Barker, Iain Banks, Tracy Chevalier, and Michael Cunningham all delighted me.

But eventually, my illness caught up with me. ME/CFS has created neurological symptoms for me that have caused me trouble with my language skills. For a long time, I struggled to read at all. Words jumped all over the pages. I couldn’t remember what the start of a sentence was when I got to the end of it. I would stare at the words for hours, recognising the shapes, knowing I ought to know what they meant, but unable to grope for the meanings. The occupation that had once been a joy to me became misery. No longer able to concentrate, my fiction reading fell away. I fought on, but tended to concentrate on history, and more self-help books, because I could read them in short bursts. Later, I began a slow recovery, and I read fanfiction because it was easy.

Clearing my late mother-in-law’s home since her death in September has reminded me of how much joy we shared in our reading. She too was fascinated by books, and we often swapped volumes. I remember going with her to see P.D. James, Colin Dexter and Alan Bennett speak. Alzheimers sadly robbed her of the ability to read early on, but she was still passionate about buying books right up until her death, even though she didn’t know what to do with them anymore. In sorting through her belongings, we have been faced with a gargantuan mountain of much loved volumes she treasured, a monument to a life spent reading for the sheer joy of it.

It was one of her final gifts to me that boxes of dusty Agatha Christie, Ngiao Marsh and Margery Allingham volumes reminded me that reading was something I also loved. I will forever be grateful that she has given me back the delight in novels that I had forgotten. I plucked a couple of C.J Sansom books out of her stash and waded in.

And it was wonderful.

So I set the intention to resume reading fiction.

Voraciously.

Does any of this feel familiar to you? Could you tell your own story of a reading life somewhat derailed by life? Do you remember a time when you consumed books like other people get through teabags, when nothing made you happier than to get to the end of a doorstop-sized novel, having lived it every step of the way? Are those days long gone for you now?

In the next post, I will tell you how I managed to reinstate good reading habits, so that you can do it too if, like me.

Happy Creating – and Reading!

Love EF

Books about Writing

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My shelves of books about writing.

I’ve made a big decision.

No, not that one.

I’ve decided not to buy any more books about how to write for two months.

Now you may not think that’s such a hard task, but I am the sort of person who likes to buy a book about a subject in lieu of actually doing it. I’m a big one for research. If I’m going to take up some activity, say, crochet for instance, then I am the one who will chug down to the library and take out all known books on crochet, in order to find out everything I need to know about the subject. For two days I read avidly and become an armchair expert, without even touching a ball of wool. And then I lose interest and the books gather dust on the coffee table until they have to be taken back to the library before I get fined, no crochet having ever been done.

I’m the same with books about writing.

Once every three or four months, or so, I resolve ‘to take my work more seriously’. This usually involves going in to work with my husband, who is a University lecturer, and settling down in the campus library to tap away on laptop undisturbed. (Never mind the fact that I really struggle to visualise and write in that library, but there you are!)

To get to the library, I have to walk past a bookshop.

(If you love books, you just know where this is going to end, don’t you?)

Add to this the fact that this University runs one of the first, and still best, courses in Creative Writing in the world, whose alumni include the likes of Dame Hilary Mantel, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan. You can imagine how good the bookshop’s section of writing is.

Let me tell you, it is hell to walk past.

This is the reason why the bookshelf beside my desk is so crammed with ‘How to Write’ books. I buy a book every time I decide to ‘get serious’, because of course, buying a book is a prerequisite of ‘getting serious’. I’ll read a few chapters. And then I get bored/move on/get ill/realise its shortcomings/decide I want to take up crochet instead etc. So now I have a bookshelf full of books about writing and how to write, many of which are very, very good, dozens of which come highly recommended by friends and in other books about writing, and almost none of which I have ever read cover to cover.

Just call me a butterfly.

Today is another of those ‘I’m going to get serious’ days. Today I am not going to buy a book.

This is partly because I am completely broke, and saving up for a new pair of spectacles because the ones I have got are close to useless and I’m fed up of having to take my glasses off in order to read.

But mostly because its because I need not to read about writing and how to write, but to actually DO it.

You can’t be a writer unless you actually write. And when you write, you learn far more about writing than you ever could from a book.

Books about writing are great. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got a lot out of them. But there comes a time when you have to leave them alone and learn by doing.

I’ll let you know whether I stick to my guns or not, though I have to say I don’t think my groaning bookcase can survive even one more purchase!

Happy Creating,

The Only Two Books A Writer Needs (Part 1)

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The bookshelf by my desk

It’s that ‘Back to School’ time of year, when I can’t walk past a stationery shop without nearly having a heart attack. Every time I go to Staples, I feel like I want to rip all the notebooks off the shelves and writhe about in them like an ecstatic horse. The Martha Stewart Home Office line gives me palpitations.

But there isn’t enough money to buy everything I want, and besides, I have cupboards full of notebooks and pens already – how many does a writer really need?

Need is not something we really think about much these days. It is not a First World problem, because most of have enough to meet our primary needs, and at that point, the word morphs into that seductive, purple velvet lined entity that is ‘Want’.

Want becomes most acute for me when I am in a book shop. It is very hard to avoid the conviction that that my life will not be complete until I have the latest edition of wotsit, or that Benedict Cumberbatch will fall in love with me, if only I buy that particular tome. I’m too much the magpie. I like the latest sparkling things. It’s a terrible affliction.

My new office space, and all the decluttering that went with it, has focussed my mind on this issue. How many books does a writer really need? And more to the point, how many books on writing does a writer really need?

The truth is, horrible though it may be, I don’t really need every copy of every book about writing that comes out. I can get them from the library if I want them. I only really need two books:

The Dictionary

In my opinion, no house or building, or even tent, is complete without a dictionary. A reasonable one. I’m not saying you have to go out and buy the full length Oxford English Dictionary, which runs to an insane number of volumes, and which only public institutions and Russian oligarchs are probably capable of affording. You don’t even have to buy the two-volume Shorter version, which is still prohibitively expensive. Lets face it, you could probably look up the more obscure words that these monsters contain online.

But you need a dictionary.

A dictionary is your friend. A dictionary provides meaning in the world. It provides knowledge. It makes sense. Even if English is your mother tongue, and you think you know everything it has to offer, believe me, there will always be a seven letter word beginning with L that turns out to be a seventeenth Hungarian stomach pump that you never knew existed. That’s why I love the English language. In all its glory, it is like an endless adventure through the Amazon jungle, where thrilling new words are always lurking under unexpected leaves. And you never know when they might pop up.

Best to have a dictionary close at hand when you are reading. You never know. (You wouldn’t believe the number of times my husband has lost his temper with me in bed at night, when I have been reading my bedtime novel and found a word I don’t know – and asked him what it meant. He’s got a PhD, and wields words like ‘hermeneutics’ on a daily basis, so I assume he knows everything. He gets a bit short-tempered when asked about seventeenth century Hungarian stomach pumps when he’s sleepy!)

If you are intent on expanding your vocabulary, as I am, keep a little notebook too, to scribble down new words and meanings so that you remember them.

I have a very nice Chambers Dictionary, which my mother-in-law gave me. It was second hand, but the meanings it gives are accessible, and it has a wide enough variety of words to satisfy my needs at the moment. It is also a chunky 5.5cm thick, with nice fine paper, and so is a really satisfying thing to handle too. You can pick up reasonable dictionaries in stationers and book shops this time of year at great ‘Back to School’ prices, but second hand bookshops and charity shops are always a good bet too, because dictionaries are slow to go out of date, and the basics will always be of use.

(Some readers will be bouncing around in their seats at this point, and crying the praises of online and digital dictionaries. Yes, I get that they are useful, but they do not have the browsing dimension that real books do, and therefore I still recommend you get the hard copy.)

I originally wrote this as one post, but it got so big I decided to split it. I think it words better that way, and I hope you agree! So the next post, on Friday, will be about the second crucial book you need to have on your bookshelf. The thesaurus.

Meanwhile, Happy wording,

Inspiration Monday: Support your local library

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I am tempted to break into my own, rather wobbly version of Petula Clarke’s ‘Downtown’ here, but slight amendments the eponymous destination.

“When you’re alone

And life is making you lonely

You can always go:

To the Library!”

Okay, it doesn’t work, but you get the idea. The Library is your friend. It’s your soulmate. It’s a world of excitement and adventure cocooned within four walls. And it’s currently free (at least at the moment it is in the UK– but David Cameron, I’m watching you!)

I have always felt a strange sense of peace amongst books. Not for me the sudden flash of panic as the realisation dawns that there are never going to be enough hours in one’s life to read everything one wants to. Books en masse produce in me a kind of nirvana, a bliss, a calm. It doesn’t matter how bad things are, a library is one of the two places I can go to know peace. (The other is the beach, in case you were wondering, but that’s another story.) This is no coincidence.

Jeanette Winterson, in her emotionally complex autobiography, credits working her way (alphabetically – how pragmatic) through her local library with saving her life from a traumatic and abusive childhood. Books give us the power to escape, to transcend, to find knowledge and wisdom, happiness and peace.

And more than that – Terry Pratchett notes the strange distortion that occurs when books are gathered together. He calls it L-space, a phenomenon in which the power of knowledge bends the time space continuum so that all places and times are accessible from the magnificent Library of the Unseen University (although travelling in L-space can be dangerous!). This is really just a charming metaphor for what Winterson reports. Libraries open up unexplored and unimagined realms for us without our ever having to leave their environs. Although, if you have ever visited Kim’s Bookshop in Arundel, Sussex, you might agree with Pratchett that L-space does indeed exist!

Libraries have changed greatly since the days when my Dad used to take me down to our village library every Friday night with my fist full of little cardboard pockets to exchange with the kindly librarian for books that enchanted and fascinated me all week long. Now I frequent the UK’s most popular library, the Millennium Library at the Forum, Norwich, which is housed in a breath-taking vision of modern architecture, and has the highest borrowing numbers in the country. No wonder. Its great.

My favourite treat is to go to the library without a time limit, and just browse, as if I were in a sweet shop. I can wander about, dipping into sections, picking out jewels here and there like a magpie. I can have whatever I want to try, and I don’t have to worry about how much its going to cost me. Often I find books I have been hanging my nose over on Amazon or favourite blogs, wondering whether I should buy them – with the library I can try them out, and see if they are worth the investment.

I always make sure I browse the ‘Just Returned’ trolleys too. This is a great way to come across books that you would never have tried otherwise, because they are shelved in sections you would not normally think to visit. These eclectic shelves are a great way to expand your reading by picking up whatever appeals to you.

Appeal is crucial. Sometimes I go in with the challenge to choose books on the basis of their covers alone! This is a fun thing to do with fiction particularly, because you end up not only with a bunch of stuff you would never have found otherwise, but also you get to sample the publishers’ strategies on book design, which is a useful thing to know about if you are a writer or illustrator.

If I find a book that proves especially useful for research purposes, I always make sure I record its Class Number as well as the author and title details in my writers notebook, so that I can find them easily again.

One of my most profound library revelations of recent years is the idea that if I choose a book that it turns out I don’t like, I don’t have to keep it the full three weeks. Yes, I can take it back the very next day, if I like. Nobody will judge me. Its like test driving a car. If it doesn’t prove useful, its not the end of the world. I used to have such an investment in choosing the right books to borrow. But there are so many books to delight in. Why worry? Just try a few on for size. Its not as if you have to pay for them.

Libraries are an enormous resource. As are librarians. Many of them are highly trained, and they really love it when a borrower asks them a question which is something more interesting than ‘why won’t my card work in the machine?’ They love to ferret out unusual and rare tomes, and rifle through the vagaries of the inter-library loan system. They are usually only too happy to help you with your research questions. There is so much knowledge and expertise on offer, and most of time we don’t even know it is there.

This week, give yourself the best treat ever. Go and gorge yourself at the library!

Happy browsing,

evenlodesfriend

Speak Your Truth: Writing and Creativity