Tag: fiction

The Writing Comeback (Week III)

Published on by Kevin Bonfield1 Comment

It’s Not All About The Numbers

Ahh, the blog post you’ve all been waiting for.

Here goes – week three of my writing comeback. Not everything can be measured in numbers.

Not for me anyway. Pleasure should not be quantified, happiness isn’t counted. Not in our house.

There’s a great interview with Zac Smith on this week’s Other PPL Podcast where Zac and host Brad Listi talk about how the pleasure of writing comes in the writing! It sounds obvious but, again forgive my analogy, it is just like running – one step at a time, one word at a time – it clears my mind.

Thinking very much counts as writing ✍

What about progress? Surely I’ve always measured my running – longest distances, fastest times, PBs – and I’m guilty as charges I’m afraid. But it is till mainly about the feeling.

This reboot of mine (read this if you fancy) is all about BEING a writer and just as soon as my foot is healed, it will be about BEING a runner too

Of course I’ll be using numbers to measure my progress! Hopefully writing my estimated 90,000 words of the first draft of the novel, tentatively titled Dogs That Don’t Look Like Their Owners (DTDLLTO) by the end of the year. But a good stint of writing will still be successful, if it FEELS successful, regardless of how many words I get down on the page.

SO, for your (and my) pleasure, here’s week three’s progress (and yes there are some numbers!)

Monday: I finalised and posted two, count ’em, TWO blog posts – Click here to read all about the two months since Nicky and myself became vegans or here to catch up with last week’s writing update.

“Making people on paper, much like making them in your uterus, takes a long time, is physically and mentally exhausting, and makes you wee a lot. So brace yourself, we’re going in.“

Writers HQ offering a reality check for the writer!

Tuesday: Busy McBusyface didn’t get chance to add words today.

Wednesday: On the timer, I managed 1100 words of the first draft of DTDLLTO. I also pre-ordered David Keenan’s latest offering today. It is a prequel to the extraordinary This Is Memorial Device (which I reviewed here).

Thursday: Busy trying to keep fit and then grandadding, so little time for words. The wonderful non-fiction journal, Hinterland dropped through the letter box today – I managed to read some of the excellent articles in there while little Charlie (the grandson, not the dog – I know it does make for some confusion having a pet and a 10 month old sharing a name) had a sleep.

Friday: Not feeling great. Ran out of time. Bit of noodling with Writers HQ working out how to join the virtual writers’ retreat.

Saturday: We had a bloomin lovely day out I’ll have you know. You can read about it just as soon as I’ve written the next blog post!

http://www.writershq.co.uk

Sunday: Writers HQ Online Retreat. If you’re fancying doing a bit of writing and find yourself struggling for time (& money) have a rummage around their website. This was the first time I’ve done one of their writing retreats – which became online when that there pandemic arrived – and what a marvellous success it has been.

It just shows that prioritising writing, sitting at a desk which faces the wall, rather than having the laptop on my actual lap and sitting downstairs by a window, works a treat. For me, writing in chunks of time works so well. I did 5 sets of 30 mins of my novel today and wrote 2990 words of this first drafting. I’m just getting the story out and trying not to edit as I go!

Using my desk to lean on, you’ll be shocked to learn, is more productive than my lap!

A big chunk of wordsmithery time today paid dividends in more ways the number of words. I also started to get a richer understanding of the relationship between my two main characters, I found I could tap into a wider range of emotions, hopefully gradually changing between scenes. When I write in very small time windows, I find I force a feeling into a scene without the context of the scenes either side of it.

As the wonderful AL Kennedy says, once characters start developing through the act writing their lives, they will start to live in the writer’s head more. Thus revealing themselves in greater detail. I’m just letting these two show themselves to me as I go. They haven’t been created from nothing, in many ways they’ve been created from everything. And what a privilege it is to be their narrator.

A Certain Thought To Finish

Now here’s thing. A proper thing.

There’s a certain something about a certain writer. Or a certain podcaster. A certain friend, a certain relative or even a certain random character on Twitter. There is a certain something about these certain people which instantly inspires me to write. There certainly is.

You people know who you are 🙏

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Published on by Kevin Bonfield1 Comment

I posted a picture of this book on social media recently prompting a good friend to remark that he read it 50 (fifty!) years ago. And it was already nearly 50 years old by then. Written originally in Zamyatin’s native Russian in the 1920’s, it wouldn’t appear in print in his homeland until the 1980’s. There have been various translations over the lifetime of the book. My copy is the 1996 Clarence Brown translation, which seems to be universally acknowledged as faithful to the original.

Often, probably too often, We is referred to as the book which inspired George Orwell’s 1984. I don’t dispute the comparison, and the timing is certainly right, I’m looking forward to re-reading the Orwell classic to make my own mind up about this. As an aside, Aldus Huxley is rumoured to have been unlikely to have had a chance to read We before publishing Brave New World.

None of that mattered once I’d sat down with the book, it is a fine piece of stand alone literature. I’m a sucker for a good dystopia, but this is so much more than that. It’s more of an anti-utopia I reckon.

Set in One State, a world where nature and the ancient ways are excluded by a green wall. One State is ruled by The Benefactor, to whom all humans now both worship and service. It is narrated in the first person, by way of a series of written records to be carried to other worlds, by our protagonist, D-503 (people all have code numbers instead of names).

It is an intense read, it doesn’t have the grand gestures or jingoism of other dystopian fiction. The narrator gives us the story of rebellion and glimpses of past worlds (as well as the life still happening outside the wall) with a very personal, intimate and increasingly emotional delivery.

Like 1984’s Winston, D-503 is drawn into becoming involved with anti-One State thoughts by a woman. I-330, as she is known, is a corrupter, seducer but more, she is a leader, capable of influencing even the most loyal minds to follow her rebellion.

Often the prose is, to use modern slang, quite ‘naval gazing’ and, like I say, very personal to D-503. His mental health deteriorates and improves in waves as his loyalties are drawn from side to side. I sometimes found the abstract telling of his thoughts quite challenging and there was a bit of re-reading as I tried to uncover his motives.

I imagine generations of people have read We and used the story to hold a mirror to the fears of whichever time it was being read in. That the masses actually felt that One State was utopia, perhaps echoes the fears of what is sometimes imagined to be socialism, certainly communism. But, conversely, the tables could be turned and fears of a fascist state with a leader who can’t be removed are also here.

It would be churlish of me to expand further and spoil the plot. We is a powerful and deeply thought provoking book which does require the reader to get involved in order to enjoy its full impact. Don’t expect a racy, pacey, hard hitting dystopia, but do expect to be challenged and maybe need to look away occasionally as the text provokes your own reactions.

If I’m going to be ever able to say “I read We fifty years ago” I will need to live to an unlikely age…….

This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan

Published on by Kevin Bonfield3 Comments

What can I say? I read it in a couple of days, despite work etc, so I must have loved it! 

Let’s set the scene – a novel about the post-punk music scene in Airdrie (think early 1980s). But it’s entirely fictional. But told as a sort of documentary. But a documentary collated and curated by two (fictional of course) non-journalistic types. It is wonderfully chaotic.

Through conversations, interviews, letters and memories, the short life span of the band, This Is Memorial Device, is pieced together. There is no ordered chronology which seems to be pitched perfectly for the book. The level of detail in here kept me having to remind myself that it is indeed fiction. This includes a discography as one appendix, with a list of all the bands and derivatives, in Airdrie, during the period the book covers in another.

Like I say, it really is chaotic – a cacophony of random noise and an entourage of bizarre narrators, each offering their mostly psychedelic  takes on the music, the relationships and the band itself. These voices are friends, family members, lovers, members of other bands and the curators themselves. If you find yourself irritated by a narrator, fear not, there’ll be another one along in a minute. And then another, and then another……

Having briefly been in a band and enjoyed the interplay between the characters, I found myself smiling at some of the ensuing carnage. But this carnage is at a whole new level. As is the prose, this book will never be criticised for ‘descriptive’!

Pretty much all of the voices are a step removed from the physicality of what they are describing. There is so much psychological wandering with dreamy and figurative metaphor. Apart from the sex! The ‘cocks’, ‘scrotums’ and ‘tits’ are described in admirable detail. 

Honestly, I’ve never read anything like it. I bought into the story completely and devoured it in a couple of days. But you need to want to read it, you can’t just fall into it. I’m just glad my life has none of the random unpredictability the book describes.

If you’re looking for something new and completely different to challenge your reading brain, and maybe are of a certain age to appreciate some of the reference points in the book, I’d recommend giving this a whirl.

Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan.

Published on by Kevin Bonfield1 Comment

On a day off work, with our exercise, work and dog walking done, we enquire of each other “are we in?“.

Yes we are!

Gentle music on, dog snuggled on the sofa, books out. Interrupted only by the need to eat.

Our two-people-and-a-dog-book-club goes from strength to strength.

We very often end up enjoying the same books. If we time it right, we simply swap as we both close the cover on our latest reads.

Nicky has recently enjoyed Strange Flowers and was fairly certain I would too. “Quite different and exploring so much.” she described it to me. So, as Nicky got stuck into Deborah Orr’s childhood memoir, Motherwell, I set about Donal Ryan’s latest offering, Strange Flowers.

I recently heard the author, Donal Ryan interviewed on Radio 4’s Books And Authors and found him to be engaging, humble and quietly hilarious.

I wasn’t to be disapointed, it is an exquisite read.

If I wrote human beings even a hundredth as beautifully as Donal Ryan, I’d be a proud scribe. Ryan’s characters aren’t just fully formed, they’re multi-dimensional, you can feel them around you. He places them. I experienced the story from all angles, like being sat amongst the most subtle of surround sound systems, every voice pulls your attention in another direction.

Set in rural Ireland, the story starts in 1973 when Moll, the only child of Paddy and Kit, ups and disappears aged 20. The parents lead a simple life which is devastated with the gradual realisation that Moll may be gone forever, her fate unknown.

The pain suffered in the years after Moll’s disappearance, and the toil of Paddy and Kit’s life is deftly articulated. As they toil on through life, never recovering, one day Moll simply walks back through the door.

Where she has been, why she left, and what and who she brings back into the simple, rural life is a master class in plot and story telling. There’s no dramatic revelation, no big, attention grabbing scenes. The lives of those close to the family, the people Moll has been with while away, and those of the rest of the villagers are gently knitted together as beauty, tragedy and realisations ease into the story.

Donal Ryan, who has twice previously been long listed for The Booker Prize, tells of love in layers. He shows love for some can be delicate, fragile, brittle almost. But he also shows love at strongest, combined with loyalties which can suffocate. The way faith is threaded through the relationships and how religion can both dominate and soothe is also carefully and honestly portrayed.

It is a tale of people. In this small family, and those close to it, Ryan has held a mirror up to us readers and let us deal with our own instincts. The complexities of race, of religion, of status, class and ownership, of sexuality, of coming of age and of bravery and fear are all exposed. His telling of the characters gets the reader under the skin of their exchanges. The man knows people, he knows emotion. The novel oozes emotion on every page.

I found I needed to absorb every single word. to me there isn’t a wasted sentence in the book. It’s early in the year but if there’s going to be better reads than this in 2021, I’m going to be feasting on words. When the book ended, which it does with a gorgeous light touch, I found myself nodding and watery eyed but contented and almost wishing to go straight back to page one and devour it again.

I heartily recommend.

Check out what else I’ve been reading in 2021 and the books I enjoyed in 2020 too. If a book has grabbed me and time allows, I tend to write a few words about it.

In Praise Of 2020 #4 My Favourite Reads Of The Year

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“The more I read, the more I enjoy reading“

My clumsy attempt to explain how I feel about books.

With my beautiful lady wife Nicky being such a book fanatic (and her having rejuvenated my own love of both reading and writing) it is hardly surprising that the conversation regularly turns to books.

I’m currently deep into the 750 ish pages of Barak Obama’s A Promised Land. This is my 41st book of the year and I’m quite proud of the diverse range of titles I’ve challenged myself to tackle. Nicky has gone further and currently has the ‘do not disturb’ sign up as she laps up Emma Donoghue’s The Pull Of The Stars, her 52nd book of 2020.

See here for a list of the 40 I’ve read.

BEST FICTION BOOKS I’VE READ THIS YEAR

When it comes to fiction, I’m struggling to look beyond Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize winning Shuggie Bain when choosing my favourite read of the year. Nicky read it earlier in the year and was periodically overwhelmed the power, the lyricism and brutal truth of Shuggie’s upbringing at the hand’s of his damaged mother in an alcohol soaked 80’s Glasgow. I also found myself having to lower the book and take a breather from the emotions the book recalls. Loved it.

There’s some hot competition here, of the fiction I’ve read, there’s probably only one which makes me ‘meh’ as I scan the whole list.

But, I can’t get past how much I enjoyed and was moved by Benjamin Myers’ The Gallows Pole (which I reviewed here). And this would narrowly beat the most beautiful dementia novel I’ve had the heart-breaking pleasure to read, We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas.

BEST NON FICTION BOOKS I’VE READ THIS YEAR

Lemn Sissay’s My Name Is Why is a book that will probably never leave me. A memoir of his growing up in an ever more brutal and cruel care system. Having been born in Wigan to an Ethiopian mother, Sissay went into foster care. The slow deterioration of his placement there, and the subsequent placements, make reading almost unbearably painful at times. Shocking, honest and a labour of love for Sissay – it took him 34 years to get the records of his care from the authorities. What he discovered hidden in these documents was as damaging (and damning) as any of his memories which were already haunting him. Stunning .

I’ve delved more into creative non fiction and memoir this year. Choosing just two more as runners up is tough. The great combination of being characters whose work entertains me, who I greatly admire and who then turn out to be great writers too has led me to Coal Black Mornings by Brett Anderson (reviewed here) and 26.2 Miles To Happiness by Paul Tonkinson.

It is none of my business where you buy your books from but consider using HIVE which runs a scheme to support a local independent book shop (you get to choose who you support with your purchase). Lots of book shops are doing mail order or click and collect schemes. I used one to get a surprise book package to Nicky during the first lockdown.

Foyles and Waterstones are much more highly regarded in the world of writers and readers than Amazon and so maybe consider them and only use Amazon if you really can’t find the books you want elsewhere. Similarly, the supermarkets are naughtily undercutting the more traditional book retailers by displaying popular titles at a massive discount. Again, none of my business and we’re all in need of a bargain, but this punishes the publisher and the author who are on a small enough percentage of royalties at full price. A bit like with music streaming, any sale is better than no sale I guess. The independent sector is in a fragile state, despite an increase in popularity of reading, small shops and independent publishers are clinging on at the moment.

Anyway, here’s to a 2021 full of good news and great reads.

When is a blogger not a blogger?

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When is blogger not a blogger? A runner not a runner? A writer not a writer?

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When we have managed to get out running……..

I’ve been soul searching about questions of my ‘identity’ for the last few weeks. With the positivity I’ve been encouraged to nurture I’ve concluded that, as long as I’m returning to any of these, that’s enough to still ‘be’.

I’m still a blogger (phew, I hear you all gasp). There’s always something in my head which will end up in the blog sooner or later.

If I’m blogger, I’m writing, no? That makes me still a writer then. BUT there is sooooo much more to me as a writer now. Since becoming a member of Writers’ HQ I feel I have started to belong.

Whilst, as yet, I haven’t bitten off huge chunks of their plethora of course material, I have been breaking crumbs off the corners and nibbling on them.

I’ve particularly enjoyed the short fiction exercises, blogs and course content. Many an idea has become the start of something tangible – a challenge, a character, a scene, a quandary – I’m in the habit of scribbling all these thoughts and ideas into either my trusty notebook or a clever app thingy whenever they materialise.

So, at some point in the future, you can look forward to tense friendships lived in a dream state through old postcards, eyes with tiny but endlessly deep black pupils, lucky Blu Tak, an unlikely apocalypse and much much more.

The novel is still flickering too (one of the short stories is rapidly becoming ‘long’ too) and I’m still tinkering, reassured by professionals of this craft the first draft is ‘supposed to be shite’.

So, yup, whilst I’m not doing much in the way of ACTUAL WRITING, I am very much still a feckin’ writer.

Running? We did sneak off for The Otter River and Rail 10k on Saturday

Well, 4 weeks today we’re planning a boat trip from Mevagissey to Fowey. I’ll either be celebrating having completed The Plague the previous day, nursing battered legs and eating ALL the food…. Or I’ll be recounting heroic tales of how and why I didn’t complete the whole 100km. One. Hundred. Kilometres.

Nicky, and blog regular Martin are both doing the 50km again and another friend, Jan, doing the 11 mile version. This will be my 3rd visit, and Nicky’s 4th, to this, my favourite EVER event. Read about how much I enjoyed it last year HERE (and also about how Nicky was ‘retiring’ from ultra marathons!)

I’ve managed some running lately, hitting the trails for a few 3,4 even 5 hour runs these last few weeks, squeezing in other runs where I can.

I promise you (and myself) this: with everything I’ve got I’ll be on that start line at 5 minutes past midnight as Friday becomes Saturday (12th August), hopefully skipping through the finish line sometime later on Saturday afternoon.

Right now, as I sit in the garden writing this, the reason I might just make it (to the start AND finish lines) is lying on the rug next to me ploughing through a Charlie Resnick thriller, commenting on how novels written of their era can become dated – 2018 thrillers don’t tend to feature cassette tapes or searches for telephone boxes.

I digress.

My beautiful wife, Nicky, and I embarked on 20 mile training jaunts around the tracks, lanes and trails of South Devon this morning. This afternoon we are treating ourselves to rummaging through The Observer, racing through the afore mentioned Resnick thriller (by John Harvey), dipping in and out of The People (a Seline Todd political history) and DOING SOME ACTUAL WRITING!

Nicky (how, just HOW did I get to be this lucky, every single day I wake up to find out my heart has won the lottery!), my soul mate, my team mate, my lover, my best friend and my constant inspiration, has quietly, determinedly, carefully and lovingly nursed my tired body and soul through this last month to get us to right here. Right now.

Identity? Well, the most wonderful role I’ve ever had in my life is being one half of the magic that is ‘US’. Everything else only works BECAUSE of that.

In an attempt to be relentlessly positive, this blog post comes to you without any ‘there’s no time’ or ‘I’m too tired’

We’re Team Bonfield. We only deal in solutions.

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Team Bonfield have been busy bees…..

 

There are no ‘cheats’

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Nope.

My two favourite hobbies. The one I tend to do alone and the one I sometimes do alone but MUCH prefer it if my beautiful wife is doing it with me.

“Of what do you witter now?” I hear you cry…..

Writing, of course, and running, naturally. Although keen observers have rarely described me as running ‘naturally’!

Anyway, it turns out you can’t just pitch up with your pen or your trainers and instantly be a published author or complete a marathon.

Nope.

You’ve got to write.

You’ve got to run.

Luckily for me I REALLY enjoy running and I REALLY enjoy writing.

Phew!

It all depends what I want my hobbies to give me back.

I could run like Forrest Gump (and there’s plenty who’d suggest I already do!) and still never become an ‘elite’ athlete but I will always get so much pleasure from each and every step.

Writing, on the other hand, well, there might just be a chance of writing becoming a double edged sword, slicing backwards and forwards through the fatigue of life. Yes, with some focus and commitment, writing might just open a few doors.

So what does a man who is regularly barely able to drag his aching feet high enough to stand on the bulging demands and pressures on his time trying to squeeze them into the available hours do?

Signs up for a Creative Writing course. Naturally…….

Wish me luck…….

Never be the same again….

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Sat not three feet from the gently rippling Caribbean sea, I turned the last of the 415 pages of Preparation For The Next Life by Atticus Lish. As a few beads of sweat from the wonderful, sweltering heat dripped onto the cover as I gazed at it in awe, I’m sure there was a tear or two amongst it. I would never quite be the same again. Heart-warming, heart-wrenching, heart-breaking, this brutal modern romance consumed me, amazed me, horrified me and illuminated me.

Desperate for more, yet exhausted from having my emotion squeezed to the end.

Set in post Iraq war New York, an unlikely couple emerge from the wreckage of their lives. Zou Lei is a Muslim illegal immigrant from the east, sucked into, spat out from, hidden from, persecuted by and constantly in fear of the authorities. Brad Skinner is a veteran of three active tours of Iraq and has been physically, emotionally and psychologically butchered in his few adult years to date.

A chance encounter in the maze of New York’s mess of an underground world, where a hidden (mostly illegal) immigrant community lives in a desperate economy all of its own, leads to comparing of muscles and rare laughter.

Zou Lei’s strength is her work ethic and single minded determination to make the most of her, apparently destitute, existence. Brad hitch-hikes into town, with the remainder of his forces pay out withering in his bank.

They, with their ragged clothes and lives, somehow find their souls alive.

His desperation, her devotion, their private battles, their joint journey and the unlikely chaotic romance which ensues are dealt with in a style who’s prose is honest, clipped and, like the characters, on the verge of breaking. It’s like having a window into this couple’s world through filthy and cracked glass.

Wonderful.

Commentators, far more informed than I, have suggested that this tale of how the hopes of the hopeless are crushed by the inequality and heartlessness of a fast and selfish world is important in its belief that these tales need to be told. Fiction it may be, shockingly real it definitely is.

You’ll get no plot spoilers from me, but if you’re looking for a twee love story I’d perhaps recommend you avert you eyes.

It is a rare thing for a book to bring tears to my eyes, yet on this wonderful holiday we have just enjoyed, two books have managed to achieve just that. (Expect a review of the other soon)

A heartily recommended read.