|
January 17th 2012
Giving a Talk is always a challenge. The first challenge is to decide what to talk about; the second is to make it interesting. I remember the first time I heard the word ‘challenge’ used as a substitute for ‘difficult’. It was when I went to a really tough school and the Head told me they had a ‘challenging’ school. It was, but two minutes into my first workshop, it was clear everyone wanted it to succeed.
This Talk, however, was to older people so I settled on the influence of my home town on my writing. I’m always amazed at the good nature and courtesy of groups that listen and get involved in what you’re saying, even if, as with this group, many of the people did not come from the town itself.
Anyway, I spoke about how small things in any place can highlight really big things. The first small thing was a row of cottages, one of which had hollyhocks in its garden and how, one morning, after my Dad had died, I was walking past these cottages and saw it was hollyhock time again. That set me to writing a poem about my Dad. I wrote it whilst I was standing at the bus stop waiting for a bus home. My Dad had a brother who looked very like him and I remember seeing him that morning and my heart just about missing a beat because, for a second or two, I thought it was my Dad.
That poem, WHEN YOU WERE HERE, is alongside.
Next, I spoke about how PRIVATE-KEEP OUT, published in 1978 and still in print, was loosely based on my family, the town and the people around me. In this book, I have 3 brothers and 2 older sisters but, in reality, one of my sisters died when she was 6 months old and my other sister was 8 years younger than me. But that’s what being a writer is all about. You make up stories. I used many parts of the town that were familiar to me and loved. The sand quarry – the streets – the shops. Nothing spectacular. Just places that become important because you love them.
I used a former Chapel I knew well for my short story SPRING-HEELED JACK and later, there was a ‘looking back’ piece in our local paper that spoke about the Spring-heeled Jack who had actually been known in our town fifty years ago – which would have made it about 80 years ago or so. The reaction to this real Spring-heeled Jack was just as I’d thought it would be.
The very old Priory church in the town I used in BONNY STARR AND THE RIDDLES OF TIME. When I was a girl, I knew there was an unguarded well in part of the church yard – just a round hole in the ground. It’s gone now but it was really important to this book.
There was much more and I enjoyed sharing the influences of the town on my work.
|
