I’ve just returned from a three-day break to Northern Ireland; the trip was definitely a mix of pleasure and writing research – the first thing I did after checking in at the wonderful Europa Hotel (the most bombed hotel in Europe) was to head for the Belfast Central Library Newspaper archive.
And The Buntings Flew, the novel I’m half way through writing, is based in 1970s Northern Ireland, specifically, Belfast and those of you who have read my blog posts will know that it’s at least partly autobiographical, with a generous pinch of artistic licence.
My research at the newspaper archive bore some fruit, but this success was tinged with sadness and uncertainty; the Troubles left very few families untouched, and I now have to contemplate and investigate the new information I uncovered.
Despite any unease I felt while reading through the microfiches from 1975 and 76, they did offer, for a writer, a wonderful window on the past. I was particularly interested in the world news, and closer to home, the adverts; in 1975 the Northern Ireland government had members warning that if the UK voted to join the EEC (Common Market, and we did), that it would grow from a trade agreement to a federation of European states with a loss of UK sovereignty, which was a very topical read!
Some of the job adverts would be illegal today; some jobs called for “men”, “Christians”, and the jobs that females could apply for often called for “girls!” Such was life in the 1970s.On the plus side, a three-course meal with entertainment could be had from as little as £1.20 per head at a selection of Belfast hotels and restaurants!
I’ll be posting some more about some of the information I found in the archive library, but for now, I just wanted to post some pictures from our trip of the wonderful places to visit in Belfast and the rest of Northern Ireland (we confined ourselves to County Antrim on this trip.)
I’m also pleased to relate that I brought back lots of Thompsons Tea and vegetable roll, both Northern Irish treasures that I wrote about in my article lauding the Foods of Ulster!
The title of my story is “The Expedition” – it was published in the 27/4/16 weekly edition, but if you have difficulty locating it in the Flash eBook format, I’ve saved a copy for your perusal here!
As with much of my writing recently, this is another short story based on one of my childhood adventures.
Please do visit the site and have a read of (and vote for!) the stories featured; Ad Hoc Fiction provides a great platform for flash fiction writing; the most-voted-for stories win the authors free entry into the Bath Flash Fiction Award.
Woohoo! Three pieces of flash fiction published in one month, my all time best!
Today I have a new story published on Tim Sevenhuysen’s fantastic fiftywordstories.com, it’s called A True Story, and it is in fact based on an event in my childhood.
Please have a read of my story, and check out the other great submissions on Tim’s site, including the award-winning flash fiction author Bob Thurber.
This is just a quick night post to proudly announce that one of my flash fiction stories has been published by Richard Hearn at Paragraph Planet, a brilliant creative writing site that has published one 75-word story every day since 2008. I’m very pleased to have my story featured as the 27th March entry!
Please check the site out, it has an archive of all 1,600 plus stories published, as well as author interviews and bios.
My story’s title is “The Poke”. and it was inspired by my childhood in Belfast, which was vividly brought back to me by the above picture, which I found when adding pins to my Pinterest board And the Buntings Flew.
My day job has just got a lot busier; I’m involved in business readiness for a large transformation IT project at work for the next few months. So what do I do? I create a new writing website! My timing seems atrocious, but I think under the surface I am becoming more confident in my writing and am enjoying immersing myself in all aspects of improving as a writer.
I noticed a small apparent gap in the market for sites that accept and publish short/flash fiction between 300 and 500 words. I’ve written a few stories of this length (you can read one at the new site), but some of the websites I found were sadly defunct, or not accepting new submissions.
I chose the name for two reasons; it seems interesting and catchy (to me anyway!), and the name embodies what the site is about: short stories, up to 500 words in length, so stripped down, but literature all the same. Most genres are welcome (see the submission guidelines for more info); I hope in this small way to provide another outlet for writers of short fiction.
I’ve been busy setting up the site and Twitter, and am proud to present the fruits of my labour.; now all we need are some short story submissions!
So go ahead; put on your writing caps and write a story, ideally between 300-500 words; the theme for the first edition of the site (which will be published as a PDF file and hopefully as an ebook anthology eventually) is…New Beginnings!
I’d love your feedback about the idea and the site, or any suggestions to make it better?
This is just a quick post to proudly announce that one of my 100-word stories has been published by John Xero at 101fiction.com.
Please check the site out, now in its sixth year online, it has some fantastic flash fiction.
My story’s title is “Wireless” and it is published in the March 2016 issue. The theme of this issue is “air”.
It’s an unsettling little Horror/Sci-Fi tale that’s inspired by my day job; I work in the utility/energy industry and I often marvel at the almost-magical and very scary properties of electricity. Maybe it’s also a mini revenge tale…
I recently read a great article in the Guardian Food in Books series by blogger Kate at The Little Library Cafe; – you can read the latest article here.
Kate writes about the food that features in some of her favourite books, and she often recreates recipes for foods as described in such classics as To Kill A Mockingbird, The Fellowship of The Ring, and Vanity Fair.
I love this idea, and it got me thinking about the food that’s featured in the novel I am writing, And The Buntings Flew, which is set in 1970s Belfast.The food of Northern Ireland was and still is very traditional, and may seem limited (not much pasta or rice was in evidence, and salads were sorry affairs), but Irish meat, dairy produce and vegetables are of world class quality, and food was often bought fresh from the butchers and grocers, when shopping was a little-and-often affair before the widescale introduction of supermarkets.
Below I’ve listed eight of the Northern Irish food and drinks you can read about in And The Buntings Flew, and if you find yourself in Ulster, please do try as many as you can!
Both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have their own popular tea brands, one of which is Thompson’s “Punjana”. In the 1970s, the period in Which And The BuntingsFlew is set, loose leaf tea was the norm; I still think it’s more flavourful, although spitting out errant tea leaves is one of its drawbacks. One of my memories of my late father is of his never being more than a few feet from either a mug, cup, teapot, flask or bottle of strong white tea.
Punjana loose leaf teapot, courtesy of Punjana.com
Ulster Fry
The BBC asked if the Ulster Fry was the best-cooked breakfast in the UK, and the answer to that is surely a resounding yes! What’s so special about a wee fry you ask? For me it’s the addition of the Potato and Soda breads, adding a range of glorious flavours and textures that toast simply can’t match. Vegetable roll is also a winning addition to the cooked breakfast, as are the wonderful Irish sausages, which usually have a higher meat content than their mainland counterparts; put them all together and you have a taste extravaganza and a meal that sets you up for the rest of the day!
A cheap, simple but wonderful dish celebrating the potato and made even better with flavourful Irish butter; potatoes mashed with butter and milk, with the addition of chopped spring onions, or scallions as they’re known in Northern Ireland. The scallions give the mash a real tangy kick.
Scallion & brown onion champ, courtesy of Voodoo and Sauce.com
Dulse
Dulse (Palmaria Palmata)is a strongly flavoured, salty seaweed that grows on the northern coasts of the Atlantic, including Northern Ireland. Dulse is harvested at low tide by hand during the summertime and then dried.Dulse can be found for sale in little plastic bags at markets, fairs and bars; we always bought a few bags on day trips to Ballycastle, where it is also sold at the Ould Lammas Fairin August. It is something of an acquired taste!
Another potato dish, this reminds me of Sunday evening teatimes and was often in evidence if there wasn’t much in for dinner. The main ingredient is leftover mashed potatoes mixed with plain flour, a pinch of salt and a knob of butter or a drop of buttermilk if available. Potato bread is dry fried in a pan or griddle, is quick and easy to make and is absolutely delicious. A true Ulster Fry must include both Potato bread and soda bread, at least in my family!
Soda Bread
Soda bread was created in the 19th century when locals used baking soda and buttermilk for raising agents as a substitute for yeast. Soda bread is divinely soft and fluffy, and is served either fried or sliced with butter (my preference) on its own or as part of an Ulster Fry.
Irish Soda bread, courtesy of blissfuldomesticity.com
Yellowman
I have happy memories of munching bagfuls of crunchy bright Yellowman on days out to the seaside, but I haven’t seen it outside Northern Ireland; it is similar in texture to the bags of honeycomb you can still buy at fairs and markets, but chewier, with a hard, rock-like “rind”.
The name “vegetable roll” is a total misnomer for this sausage-like roll of fatty meat (often beef brisket and rib trimmings) seasoned with onion, carrot and celery. Vegetable roll can be served in an Ulster Fry or on its own with potatoes or champ, or with mashed carrot and swede. My wonderful late aunt always brought home a batch whenever she returned to East Belfast.
Vegetable Roll, courtesy of McCartneys of Moira
I’d love to hear from you if you’ve tried any or all of the above Northern Irish food favourites, or if you feature any of them in your writing?
Margaret
(With grateful thanks to the following websites and blogs)
I try to ensure I always have the means of making a note close to hand; Evernote on my phone and tablet, a notebook and pen in my bag, a voice record option on my phone. Post-it note pads everywhere. You never know when a great idea will spring to mind! But sometimes circumstances prevent me noting a potentially blockbusting idea or plot twist, such as driving to and from work along the M25. Luckily I have had a passenger sharing many of my commutes recently; my beloved son. We were talking the other day about my novel’s progress and some of my ideas to address a plot gap I have arrived at (picture my brain sat in a ten junction M25 traffic jam!)
A Plot Breakthrough
I’m nearly half way through writing And The Buntings Flew. I know how the story will end, and the main characters are all either in the draft or captured on my timeline and characters spreadsheet. But I had a thorny issue; I need to join two major strands of my story, and this will need to involve some fairly young characters. I am also keen to include some Irish folklore in my story but in a natural, realistic manner, as befits the tone of the story and what happens to some of the main characters.
Minor spoilers ahead; my main character is a young girl living in Northern Ireland in the 1970s during “The Troubles” who (maybe!) identifies a terrorist who attacked a member of her family; she subsequently struggles to share her secret with the adults in her life. She is sent away for a short while to stay with friends, and this is the point at which events accelerate to a thrilling climax! I planned for this character (Purdey) to witness the aftermath of another violent event, and I wanted a suitable foreshadowing.
Playing with friends in a reputedly haunted house was one idea I had, based on a “real” house near my own childhood home (elements of the novel are based on my own childhood). In discussing this with my son, we veered off on a tangent to discuss Irish myths and folklore; phone in hand he was able to Google as we spoke and I told him of the Irish spirit, the Banshee. The idea of the children believing the house was haunted appealed to me, and had been mentally penciled in previously, but I only had a vague idea of the Banshee’s characteristics; we discovered that not only is she meant to be the spirit of a murdered woman who cries and wails to warn of an imminent, nearby death, the Banshee was also believed to be particularly attached to people with (Irish) surnames that have an “O” or “Mc” prefix.
This is where the synchronicity/coincidence occurred, as it has often done before when writing; the characters I have planned to be the victims of a shooting are two young brothers, whose surname begins with “Mc”. Another fact I wasn’t consciously aware of was that a possible explanation for the origin of the Banshee is the eerie, pronounced screech of the Barn Owl, common in Ireland as it hunts by night. Birds feature very prominently in And The Buntings Flew, both in terms of the plot and thematically; here was an Irish supernatural Folklore figure that might also have a prosaic, real life explanation; the screech of a bird! It fitted beautifully into the story and is an elegant segue to the next sequence of events in the story.
More synchronicity was in the air when I read The Creative Penn’s Joanna Penn discussing her creative writing process, in which she describes coincidence and synchronicity as almost magic or supernatural elements that commonly occur in the creative process of writing.
I think there are many reasons for this phenomenon, many of which centre around our individual and collective unconscious; Joanna Penn discusses the idea of the Jungian Archetypes(which I will visit in a future post!) but equally important I believe are the elements at work on the run up to these coincidences making their way to your conscious attention. By this I mean the process of planning and immersing oneself in a creative work; for me that consists of capturing the initial idea, making copious notes, as and when ideas spring to mind, researching just as hard as I did for my MBA dissertation, and devoting to the idea of my story a single-minded vision and attention, even when not actively writing. Travelling and visiting locations where I can carry out primary or secondary research (the location itself or resources such as museums, churches, news archives etc) are all elements in priming the unconscious to offer up these scraps of information that then seem to “magically” work for your creative endeavour.
Creative Feedback Loops
I originally had an equation as the title of this post:
Planning+Notes+Research+Synchronicity=Creativity!
This was an attempt to summarise my creative process for writing fiction; but there are other ways of stimulating the collective unconscious to offer up synchronicities, even if you aren’t able to do much external research or travel. Blogging helps me practice the art of writing, and posts such as these are a feedback loop; thinking and writing about elements of the story prompts me to read and research more, leading to more ideas and prompts, in a “virtuous circle” or creativity!
I am also enjoying my recent initiation to Twitter; I enjoy finding relevant quotes or information about my story or the writing process, and reading the thoughts and views of others; used judiciously (and not allowing it to devour all my time!), Twitter is proving another useful creative tool, as is the Pinterest board I created for And The Buntings Flew(thanks for another great idea Joanna Penn! 🙂 )
Have you had similar coincidental/synchronicitous breakthroughs with your story? I’d love to hear from you with your experience!
One of my favorite authors, Robert Harrisis doing a Goodreads “Ask the Author” Q&A mid January and I’ve just posted a question about his latest novel “Dictator”; fingers crossed that he answers!
My question is about the historical character, Roman lawyer, politician, orator and consul Marcus Tullius Cicero, who is the central character in Harris’s latest trilogy, although he is surrounded (and intrigued) by historical heavyweights such as Julius Caesar, Augustus, Mark Antony and Pompey the Great.
Would an enormously clever and talented, but relatively humble orator like Cicero rise to the top echelons of government today?
Cicero was a very talented, largely self-made man in a key period of history that was dominated for the most part by men with an aristocratic or very wealthy background. My question to Robert Harris was, does he think that there is, or could be a public figure like Cicero today, and if so, is there someone he would identify as being that person?
One of the main themes for me in reading Robert Harris’s historical first century BC novels is that politics is timeless, as are the scheming, betrayals, uneasy alliances and real-politik that dominates it today. Would an enormously clever and talented, but relatively humble orator like Cicero rise to the top echelons of government today, or as in the time of the Roman republic, would that require huge financial backing? Has much changed? The 20th century featured one or two very ambitious orators who had humble beginnings, and that didn’t work out so well for humanity.
If I do receive an answer I’ll post it here, and if this type of historical/political fiction is your thing, please do check out Robert Harris’s novels if you haven’t already.
Firstly, I’d like to belatedly wish my readers and fellow bloggers a very happy, healthy, successful and productive New Year!
I read a great post today by Donna at a little bird tweetsabout reading lists for this year and last; I decided that I need a similar challenge for 2016, so here’s my list of what I did and didn’t read in 2015, and what I want to read in 2016. For me it seems very much to be filling in the gaps in books I know I should read; my list lacks newer works, so please feel free to suggest any you think I might enjoy!
As my last post details, 2015 was the year I started to write-up the draft for my first novel, and was also the year I set up this blog; perhaps for these reasons I didn’t read as much as I would have liked. Tellingly, I also had a series of events occur in 2015 that robbed me of all but one week’s holiday, and holiday binge reading is a big catch up time for my reading, so all in all, not a vintage reading year.
What I read in 2015 (that I hadn’t already read; a lot of my reading is re-reads; is this a good thing?) can be broken down into two sub categories:
Books I read (semi) annually
First time reads
Books I Read Annually
As I noted above, 2015 hasn’t been a stellar reading year for me so I have skipped one or two; on the whole however this is my go-to list for books I have to rediscover and consume on an annual-ish basis:
Lord of The Rings/The Hobbit: J.R.R. Tolkien
A selection of historical “whodunnits” from Agatha Christie/Ellis Peters the Cadfael series)
One or two Dickens novels from the following list:
Great Expectations/Little Dorrit/The Old Curiosity Shop/Bleak House/Barnaby Rudge/The Pickwick Papers
One of the Brontë sisters’ novels; I usually alternate between Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre
The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake; I tend to miss the last book of the trilogy, but unusually this year I just read Titus Alone and enjoyed rediscovering the story after a hiatus of several years
The “Emperor” series of novels by Allan Massie: Caligula, Tiberius, Augustus and Caesar
The collected works of H.P. Lovecraft – all of it!
Something by Stephen King, usually while I’m on holiday – this year I’ve been preoccupied by ideas for a novel set in prison, so it was The Green Mile and Different Seasons (four novellas, one of which is Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption).
These are all fantastic reads, and I have tried to wean myself off them, but they are a habit now! But I’m resolved to read a lot more books that are new to me in 2016 so I’ll have to temper my craving for repeats. Is this something fellow readers can identify with or am I unusual in having so many books on repeat-read?
Books I First Read in 2015
Dictator, the third book in the Cicero trilogy of novels by Robert Harris – I was eagerly awaiting this book for nearly five years, after reading Lustrum and Imperium in 2010. I love historical novels, I have a lifelong fascination with the Roman empire at the time of the Caesars (I read I, Claudius as a teenager and was enraptured), so I’m possibly biased, but this trilogy is a fantastic read;not only does it wonderfully evoke the sights, sounds and smells (especially smells!) of 1st century BC Rome, the real life character of Cicero is drawn with a touchingly believable, all-too-human vividness.If you haven’t read any books by Robert Harris yet, I urge you to try him; his 20th century dystopian offerings Fatherland and Archangel are both bleakly compelling.
The Trial by Franz Kafka – I love the original German title – Der Process – it seems to sum up the subtle horror of the long-winded, nightmarish bureaucratic trap awaiting the protagonist, Josef K. I found reading this book almost ridiculous at points, dreamlike and horrifying at others; unsurprising as The Trial is a Dystopian/Absurdist classic. Kafka offers several books in these genres to unsettle you; if you haven’t read them already, you’re in for an unsettling treat.
I picked up a leaflet at London Bridge underground station last summer; as part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the birth of W.B. Yeats, Transport for London featured poems by Irish artists; I discovered a translation of Antoine Ó Raifteirí’s I Am Raferty the Poet, by one of Yeats’s closest friends and allies, Lady Augusta Gregory, along with some Louis MacNeice poems I hadn’t come across. This inspired me to buy and readPoems on the Underground; for years the poems on the underground have given me pleasure, and something beautiful to look at while assiduously avoiding my fellow commuter’s gazes; I had often tried to memorise a particular poem, and usually failed. This is a beautiful collection to dip into, and has led me to many new favourite poets.
The Elements of Style by Strunk & White is a book I’d meant to read for years, which I finally got round to buying last year.I felt that reading this book was a necessary prerequisite to starting my first draft. It’s a short book, just over 100 pages, but it manges to cram in a wealth of writing rules and guidelines that crisply and lucidly insist upon themselves. I now use the guidance from this book in all my writing and it’s corrected me on some errors of style I was persistently, if unknowingly guilty of! I will never again sign off an email with “Thank you in advance” -I was suitably chided! It’s a little bit stuffy, prissy almost, but it very clearly lays out some golden rules that every writer needs to be aware of, even if they break them.
The Great God Pan & The Three Imposters – These two novellas have long been on my “to read” list, as their author, Arthur Machen, comes recommended not only by Stephen King but also by the “dark baroque prince of 20th century horror” himself, H.P. Lovecraft. So I bought a couple of Machen’s books on Kindle for a week’s holiday reading in August: although some of the prose is a little dated, there is something truly uncanny about Machen’s tales, that left me with a creeping feeling of mounting weirdness and horror. And this is praise! I will definitely be reading more of Machen’s works this year.
My 2016 Reading List
Again I have two categories of books I want to read this year:
The following are some of the books I own that have sat, unread, on my shelves (or Kindle) for years that I am determined to read this year:
The Once and Future King by T.H. White; someone bought this for me as a Christmas present about five years ago, and I’m ashamed to say it’s still unread. The synopsis sounds great; a magical literary retelling of the Arthurian legends by an author with a genius for recreating the details of the past in his work.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville is another book that has languished on my bookshelf for far too long; a classic tale of one man’s obsession, countered by the community spirit of the crew of the Pequod. Sadly this is a tale that is still relevant today.
Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson; my son bought me this book last Christmas and I have to read it soon as he keeps asking me what I think of it! Set in a not-too-distant future, this sci-fi cyberpunk novel takes the reader to a post-modern world that isn’t that different from the way our own present is heading.
Other books that I want to read this year (in no particular order) include:
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman has been recommended to me several times; I have yet to read any of Neil Gaiman’s books which is definitely an oversight; this tale of a city under London will make the ideal commuter read for my trips on the Northern Line from Euston. Gaiman’s The Ocean At the End of The Lane also sounds intriguing.
Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee’s sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird; the mixed reviews leave me unsure whether I want to sully the beautiful memory of TKAM.
Our Endless Numbered Daysis the début novel by author Claire Fuller, and I’m intrigued by its premise: my love of gardening and interest in self-sufficiency is documented in my blog, but my reading has sometimes strayed into areas that cross over into the “Doomsday Prepping” communities; to me they are fascinating and worrying in equal measure.So the blurb for this book caught my interest; a young girl taken away from home by her father to live in a remote self-sufficient community.
I haven’t read any books by Donna Tartt yet, but the one I’m drawn to is her latest,The Goldfinch. This novel was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014 so I am expecting good things. Possibly I am interested in the young protagonist, thirteen year old Theo, and how his life is affected by a terrible accident, and how this echoes some aspects of the story I am writing in And The Buntings Flew.
Taking of which; one book I definitely want to read from start to finish in 2016 is my own! My target is to complete at least a first draft of And The Buntings Flew, and be on the way to a decent second draft by the end of this year.
This isn’t a comprehensive list, and I hope I read a lot more new books this year; as well as write, write, write, a writer’s mantra should also include read, read, read. I believe that I can learn something from every book I read, even if it’s How Not To… but I also believe that every book will reward me for taking the time to read it, and that a connection WILL be made between me, the reader, and the author. And isn’t that one of the reasons we all write?
![Cesare Maccari [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://margaretmcgoverne.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/512px-maccari-cicero-1.jpg?w=512&h=312&crop=1)
