Sunday 12 January 2014

Self doubt


I am currently working on the first draft of my next novel. I say “working” because that is very much how it feels: the words just aren’t flowing. Nor are the ideas. Nor is my confidence.

The new book is very different to my previous ones. My first four novels were all set in the same world, and three were narrated by the same character – someone I knew so intimately that I could just slip into her mind and voice without thinking about it. This book is set in the real world – in Prague in 2010 – 2013 in fact. There are two very different POVs in it – one a male detective, the other a young British woman – and both are totally unlike yours sincerely.

In November I took part in NaNoWriMo and hit the 50,000 word target for this book, but then I lost momentum. One reason was that I needed to do some research. This was achieved with a stay in Prague and questioning various Czech friends. But still the log jam did not shift. I came back to the UK to Christmas, an elderly father in hospital with a broken pelvis and the rest of the family collapsing with various bugs, so no work was done for several weeks.

Now I no longer have any excuse, apart from the usual ones of work and family pressures. But still I can’t settle down and start writing again. This is more than the usual problem of starting the engine post-Christmas. I just can’t work out what is stopping me. I have at least booked my flights for four weeks in my Czech writing refuge. But my plan was to spend the month rewriting, not writing from scratch.

I have a number of methods of overcoming writer’s block:
  • going for a walk often works, but with floods and torrential rain that isn’t really an option,
  • boarding myself up in my Czech cottage (see above),
  • writing first thing in the morning, indeed working on the story even before I get up (a friend of mine swears by it),
  • forcing myself to sit down and write, which so far has been unproductive,
  • writing something else (such as this!).
I fear it all comes down to self-doubt. I am worried I have not the skill to finish what I have started. There is always in my experience a point in writing my books (usually at 30,000 words) where I have a dark night of the soul, where I doubt my ability to finish. I wonder whether this 50,000 crisis is worse, because the NaNoWriMo target made me press on through the 30,000 word barrier, when I should perhaps have taken a break to reflect on where I was going. I don’t know.

Will I come through this? Watch this space

Thursday 21 November 2013

The Black Dog - Magic and the Real World




As you know I am active on the Magic Realism Facebook Group as well as on the Magic Realism group on Goodreads. It is the fate of all people interested in magic realism to be endlessly discussing the definition of magic realism. One of the recurring debates is whether we “white westeners” can really write magic realism. We are so out of touch with our magical roots, that we are playing at magic realism, whereas other cultures still have magic at their centre. There is a lot to say for that point of view. And sometimes I do indeed feel a fraud.

But then I think about my childhood and I realise that in some ways I too grew up in a world infused with magic. I went to a small Church of England school, where I learned the bible stories, which were then reinforced by what I learned at Sunday School. My childhood faith was profound and I believed in a world in which angels and devils existed in equal quantities.

But there was also another magical world that was part of my childhood, one which had its roots in pre-Christian tradition. There was for example the story of the Black Dog. The dog was said to have eyes of fire and be huge in size. It was a supernatural beast, the sight of which foretold death. A hound of hell. Those of you familiar with British folktale will know that the black dog appears all over the British Isles and probably dates back to the days of Herne and the Wild Hunt. Alan Garner features the Hunt in his Brisingamen books. Our town had its own black dog, which sometimes could be seen on Sudeley Hill. Perhaps it is not by accident that hill is also the location of a prehistoric trackway. As children my sister and I believed in the black dog, so much so that on one occasion my sister became hysterical when she thought she saw it at the window. That was about fifty years ago now.

I haven’t heard talk of the black dog for many years. But that doesn’t mean that the myth has died, merely that it has morphed. What you get now in Gloucestershire and indeed in other areas where the black dog once roamed are sighting of big cats – usually described as black, presumably pumas. Take this account on the BBC – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-16760599

38 sightings of big cats were reported to the Gloucestershire police in four years, and no doubt many more went unreported. I even know someone who claims to have seen the beast. What is going on here? Is it that we are trying to apply a modern realist interpretation (escaped captive animal) to ancient magic?  Maybe you only have to scratch the surface of modern realism to find the magical hiding underneath.

Sunday 24 March 2013

Winner - EPIC Ebook awards


My poem for voices Fool’s Paradise has won the best Poetry Book category in the EPIC (The Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) ebook awards. 



Blurb:Three travellers meet a fool and his dog on the road to a great city. This long poem for multiple voices follows the divine fool and his companions on a journey to hell itself.

Sunday 16 December 2012

Poem -The Breaking of the Blood


The Breaking of the Blood

It is very clear to me,
as it is clear to all of us,
that memory
of the first trace of blood.
It was a surprise,
as it is always a surprise,
for each woman
who comes upon herself
with the breaking of the blood.
And I thought as I gazed
at my blood upon the water 
of the time
when reaching 
into fine white snow
my hand found glass.
I thought
of a child’s fairytale
of a queen at a window
wishing herself a child
snow-white
and lips of blood. 

This poem was first published in Grandchildren of Albion ed. Michael Horovitz

Monday 10 December 2012

Ghost at the Feast - Meet the Family Bloghop



Our family has its very own ghost of Christmas past – her name is Betsy Hilda Morrison and she was my grandmother. She died thirty years ago, but she wouldn’t miss Christmas for the world (or otherworld in her case). She stands like a beaming Yoda at the end of The Jedi Returns benevolently looking on as the family continues the traditions she established.

Betsy, or Bessie as she was known, loved Christmas – she looked forward to it from one year to the next. If she had had her way the Christmas decorations would have stayed up until Easter, but my Aunt Zoe insisted on taking them down at Twelfth Night. Christmas Day was not enough for Bessie. On Christmas Day she and Aunty would arrive complete with presents at our house in time for Christmas lunch and leave in the evening. But on Boxing Day the process was reversed, we went to their house and what would you know – Father Christmas always seemed to get horribly confused because he had filled stockings for us there too! So we had Christmas twice, thanks to Betsy Hilda. When Boxing Day was over Betsy would look forward to the next big event – the trip to the January Sales at which she would buy Christmas presents.

Anyone meeting my charming grandmother could be easily be mistaken into thinking this little woman with white hair she referred to as “baby’s bum fluff” was a sweet old dear. But behind her considerable charm was a formidable mind and memory and a will of iron. Betsy was a matriarch of the first order and God help anyone who wronged her or hers. This killer instinct came in very useful in the run-up to Christmas as Granny did the rounds of the local whist drives. She never came away without winning something. Her memory and head for figures making her virtually unbeatable with a good partner. I remember regularly getting into my Aunt’s car to be told “Your Granny’s won another turkey!”

When Betsy died, my Aunt continued the tradition of the family Boxing Day although by now Father Christmas was mistakenly delivering presents for the next generation. No longer oversupplied with turkeys Aunt would bone and stuff ducks for Boxing Day, which were to my mind preferable to turkey. And when Aunt Zoe died, it was my turn to take on Betsy’s baton and celebrate our very special Boxing Day.

We live in Aunt Zoe’s house and when we started going through her things I found the Christmas Box. In it were the Christmas tree decorations with which we used to adorn the tree, taking orders from a seated Betsy. Also in the box were supplies of wrapping paper and labels, which dated back twenty five years to a time when Betsy had had a corner shop in the Forest of Dean, and which, when Betsy had retired, had come with her to her new home. I still have the labels, I don’t use them – they are far too old fashioned – but “waste not, want not,” as my Granny would say. 

Born at the end of the nineteenth century, Betsy was brought up by her grandparents and used to keep me enthralled with her memories of a very Victorian childhood, including memories of Christmases of that very different time. Memories of a stocking which might if you were lucky contain an orange no doubt inspired her in making her family’s Christmas so abundant.This blog post is part of the Meet The Family Blog Hop. 

Saturday 1 December 2012

My other blogs


It’s a while since I wrote about my other blogs. You might think one is enough and maybe I could have combined them in one large Zoe Brooks blog, but the content and approach is so diverse that it didn’t and still doesn’t make sense to me.

The first blog I ever created and which is still going is my blog Adventures in the Czech Republic.
It’s all about how I came to visit and fall in love with the Czech Republic, so much so that a few years ago I bought a house there/here. It is the place where I write all my books. The process of writing this blog in many ways brought me back to writing, I had virtually given up for about a decade. In fact I would recommend blogging as a quick, easy and not too demanding way of beginning to write. The secret is to create a blog on a subject you are passionate about. The blog allowed me to be lyrical and chatty, to write about my observations of this wonderful country and people and share those observations with others.

A more recent blog is my Magic Realism blog.
This I set up as a book blog in which I monitor my progress on my magic realism challenge. I am reading and reviewing one book a week for a year from a list of magic realism books which I have drawn together from various authoritative lists. The reviews all are on the blog as is the reading list. Part of the fun of this is trying to work out what is magic realism. So far I have decided that it isn’t actually a genre, but more of an approach to storytelling. This view will no doubt evolve as the challenge progresses. Why magic realism – well because I was told by several people that I wrote it and had no idea that I did so.

Monday 26 November 2012

Photo Inspiration - the Severn Bore


My novel Mother of Wolves is set in an imaginary landscape along a great river. It will not be a surprise to those of you who know that I live in Gloucestershire that the river which had most influence on my imagination was the Severn.

A turning point in the book is when the heroine Lupa uses the river’s Autumn bore to her advantage. It was inspired by a trip to watch the Severn bore one very chilly morning. It proved impossible to photo properly, so this must suffice. The force of the tide is unimaginable. It is able to reverse a river’s natural flow and form so powerful a wave that it crashes into a bank like this. As you can guess I went away inspired.