Write What You Know

“Write what you know” is a piece of advice to new writers that can be very inhibiting. What do we know? If writers restrict themselves to writing about their experience, we would have a lot of boring books about humdrum lives. Whole genres would not exist: fantasy, science fiction, paranormal. But there is a grain of truth in the saying. We should write what is real, even if what we write is fantasy. So how do writers do that? This is a question that fascinates me.

In some cases the answer is obvious: Tolkien may have been living the quiet life of an academic in Oxford, but he was a world expert on Anglo Saxon and Norse mythology. However the Lord of the Rings is more than a rehash of old stories. The book is seen through the eyes of the hobbits. Their tale is profoundly influenced by Tolkien’s experience as a young officer in the trenches of World War I. The hobbits are the British regular soldiers, whose stoicism and good humour Tolkien so admired. As an officer Tolkien had led them over the top into the Mordor-like landscape of no-man’s land. They bring a sense of reality to the book.

Most writers do not have such rich personal sources on which to draw. But we do have the reality of our fantasies. We can take that reality and spin it into something much larger. The Bronte sisters’ novels are a good example of this.

I have three main sources of inspiration for my novels. Mother of Wolves was a historical fantasy novel, so clearly history is a massive source of material for me. History gives an almost unlimited range of themes, settings and storylines. For Mother of Wolves I drew on the history of the persecution of the romanies (gypsies) in Europe. I discovered that in the 18th century they were hunted by men with dogs and guns as if gyspies were simply vermin. Such a hunt features in my book. The central character is a woman who rises to be a gypsy queen, so I used the examples of great women leaders, such as Boudicca and Elizabeth I, to help me understand what it takes to be such a woman. As these women are extraordinary, I could never hope to meet one in person.

The second source is the landscapes, towns and peoples of the world. Travel can be a great aid to the writer, but it is also possible to use the landscapes of one’s homeland and elaborate them. In my magic-realism book Girl in the Glass I created a fictional city. The city is a large port set on several hills and on one hill stands a university which lives in an uneasy relationship with the rest of the city. I have been asked which city it is based on, as it seemed so real to the reader. The answer is that it is several cities combined: Istanbul, Oxford, Victorian London to name three. In Mother of WolvesI came closer to home and set the story along a fictional river, which was based on an enlarged River Severn and the history of the people along its banks.

The third source is my personal experience and those of people I have met. I have been blessed with a loving family and a life untroubled by war, disease or other misfortune, but for about twenty years I worked with people on the margins of society. I am able to draw from their stories of fleeing their homes and countries, of persecution, of homelessness. I’d like to think that I don’t just use them, but I am a writer and writers will find inspiration everywhere.

So should a writer follow the advice “Write what you know”? If we read, study, travel and listen, what we “know” is only limited by our capacity to understand.

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

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.

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.

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

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. 

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.