I'm dreaming of........

When I was a horse-mad child, all I ever wanted was a pony.  I put it on my Christmas list every year and even though I knew deep down there was no way on earth my parents would ever afford to buy and keep a pony, I woke on Christmas morning hoping that a miracle would occur and my dream pony would be waiting for me in our tiny garden.

This was a dream that was never fulfilled.  As my dear late mum would say, it wasn't meant to be.
(And in the words of Joni Mitchell, "You don't know what you've got til its gone." I would give anything to have both my parents back, so I treasure every memory I have of a happy childhood).

So I started writing about pony-mad girls just like me - and in my stories, their wishes came true.

When I was a teenager, all I ever wanted was to be a full time writer.  In my head, it would be a glamorous lifestyle and I would be incredibly successful and probably famous. 

Half of my dream has come true - I am a full time writer, after 40 years of dreaming. 

Be careful what you wish for........

Related posts:
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/different-chapter-same-book-power-of.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/reflections-on-being-full-time-writer.html


I have also read a simply wonderful post by from Mariellen Ward on her blog Breathe, Dream, Go reflecting on dreams and ambitions.  Read it here: http://breathedreamgo.com/2014/12/stumbling-road-dreams/

Different chapter, same book: the power of memory

We are constructed from memories.  We are making new ones every second.  How, what and why do we remember some things and not others?  Memories are a treasure trove of data, sensory experiences, adventures and emotions that we can process, translate and re-invent to create new stories.  

When the present becomes the past, our perception of the experience changes, undergoing a mysterious transformation.  Often it is only in hindsight that we appreciate the value of what has gone before. Regeneration is about change and transformation, and we are all – like Dr Who! - regenerating constantly.

These issues are explored in the amazing Life after Life by Kate Atkinson, which I would recommend to everyone - especially if you are a writer.  In this story, the heroine is born, dies and is reborn many times, each life different, although sharing common threads.  (It reminded me of some of the ideas in the film Sliding Doors - the consequences of one action compared to another.  How the same story can have different endings, or different stories, the same conclusion). Is there such a thing as fate or is life simply a sequence of random events? 

You can check out my review of Life after Life and many others here.  It always fascinates how stories can be so differently perceived by different readers. It's one of the challenges - and magic - of being an author. 
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16181718-life-after-life

Sci-fi visionary Philip. K Dick is another writer who shares my obsession with the nature and construct of memory, a topic he explores in so many of his stories. It was a theme that haunted and obsessed him.

Does memory re-visit the past or simply re-construct it?  Is memory life itself? Is life, memory?

These are questions I keep asking.  Can we ever know the answer? 

Related posts:

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/picking-flowers.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/life-stories.html

Whose story?

Last week I’d written in my diary “Start sequel to Beware of the Horse”.  Instead, I wrote another story.  Something I’d intended to do for ages, but kept putting off.  The Sunday before last,  I created a Just Giving page in memory of my parents to raise funds for Pancreatic Cancer UK. It took all day and well into the evening and was emotionally draining. Which I’d anticipated, and the reason I had put it off. Because to make it work, you must, as the charity help sheet advises, tell your story.

That’s hard and painful.  And it’s not my story.  I need to tell it properly and it's a huge responsibility. I want to honour my parents, but how would they feel about me doing this? And when I think of the last few years of their story, it breaks my heart.  So I try, for now, to block out the bits that haunt me (and will forever).  Real life is brutal and messy, tragic and unpredictable.  Recalling the detail can be too harrowing to contemplate.  Memories remain to be both feared and cherished.

Deciding which photo to use on the Just Giving page was also difficult.  I have lots of family pics , so I chose one of my favourites of a time before, when Mum and Dad were on holiday together, and happy.  One day, perhaps, I can add the photo taken on their 50^th Wedding Anniversary.  It is especially poignant, as it was so important to Mum that they made it that far together, and she determined to stand up, with Dad’s support, to cut their celebration cake, the wheelchair put out of sight (she was still recovering from her stroke then). At this time, Dad was being treated for a heart condition and prostate cancer, but the pancreatic cancer was not yet diagnosed.

Less than a year later, just 2 weeks before what would have been their 51^st anniversary, Dad had passed away, and less than 6 months later, also suffering from pancreatic cancer, so had Mum.

Enough.

Here’s the link for the Just Giving page.  https://www.justgiving.com/Jane-Seaman1

To everyone who has ever set up a Just Giving page in memory of loved ones, I salute your courage.

Related post: http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/life-stories.html

Cybermen and Clay: objects and emotions

Today you will find me over at Creatabot, talking about cybermen, a golem and a clay horse called Ernie.......click link below to read the article

http://creatabot.co.uk/2013/10/11/cybermen-and-clay-objects-and-emotions-by-jane-ayres/


Related posts:
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/run-wild-run-free-memories-imagination.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/my-bookshelf-and-precious-memories.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/grief-and-writing-routine.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/write-what-haunts-you.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/picking-flowers.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/wise-words.html

My bookshelf and precious memories

I really enjoy the TV show Through the Keyhole with Keith Lemon.  So here's a glimpse through mine...

Every item  - photos, ornaments, trinkets - has significance for me ; it's an altar to precious memories as well as a home for my published work.  

Related posts:

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/run-wild-run-free-memories-imagination.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/grief-and-writing-routine.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/write-what-haunts-you.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/picking-flowers.html

Write what haunts you

       Photo of rocks in ocean mist by Roger Hyland

I just read an interesting post by Melissa R. Sipin called Write What Haunts You on Glimmer Train which really resonated with me. We are often told that passion for our subjects should shine through the writing, which I agree with, although this can often be hard to sustain.  Everyone has ups and downs with writing, days when you feel like giving up, or that you have no more to say, or are simply burnt out.  

But writing what haunts you - that is wonderful advice. I'm not talking about the supernatural here (although it can encompass this) but thoughts and ideas that compel us, that revisit us time and again; issues that preoccupy us; problems to solve, that won't leave us until we have worked through them.  Whether this finds release and voice in a diary or fiction doesn't matter.  We have pictures and images in our head that remain fixed - happy or sad - or precious moments and memories that we hold and will never forget. These "ghosts" can transform our work and lend it authenticity.

Most writers discover, sometimes over a period of time, that there are themes that they continue to revisit, characters they want to return to; or simply obsessions that embed themselves into the work, unbidden but persistent threads, that are so much a part of us that they will not be silent. 

What haunts us can be deeply personal, not to be discussed with another living soul, but which can find a safe haven through the words we write.

In my own work, journeys continue to haunt me and find expression. What haunts you, and can you use it to enrich your writing?

Related posts: http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/journeys

Picking Flowers and Childhood Memories

I’m still in reflective mood after my previous post. Yesterday I went for a run.  I only started running again last week, after recovering finally from two debilitating chest infections which led to my asthma worsening.  Running provides a structure and routine that I lack in pretty much most aspects of my life, including writing.  Especially writing.

It was good to feel the warmth of the sun, at last, and for the first time in ages my feet found a rhythm again and I was able to relax. Noticing all the flowers in bloom, I was transported back to childhood, walking home from school across the field and picking wild flowers to take back to my Gran. Everyone walked to school in the 1960s and 70s.  My parents didn’t even get a car until the early 70s, but even when more people had cars, the thought of being dropped off by your Mum at school was definitely not cool!  As kids, we were all far more independent, thank goodness.  

Anyway, back to the flowers.  Lots of yellows; coltsfoot, celandine, pale mustard, dandelions (which for some reason we thought made you wet the bed), golden buttercups, and a sweet pea-like flower that when paired with purple clover we called egg and bacon. Another purple flower, delicate and intricate, which I think we called vetch, was popular with red ants and you had to be careful to brush the angry insects off when you plucked it from the grass.  Daisies grew in every patch of green. Wild flowers were abundant then.

As Mum and Dad both worked, my brother and I had breakfast and lunch with my Gran, or Nanny, as we called both our grandmothers then. Ethel was my Mum’s Mum, a matriarchal figure who had given birth to 15 children, all at home (which for the first three children was a barge on the river Nene).  I used to be fascinated by her long silky grey hair; it reached right down to her waist in a long plait, which she wound around her head.  She had been born in 1900, and I marvelled at the things she must have seen, living through two wars, and enduring endless hardships and challenges. I wanted to know about her past, her childhood, and I was always full of questions which she seemed bemused by.  Why did it matter?  It was past, done.  Life was about the present. She just got on with it. When we lost her to bowel cancer, well into her eighties, she had never spent a day in hospital and passed away in the council house where she had brought up her large family and lived in most of her life. Those women were made of strong stuff.

So, I started out this post running and then moved on to the death of my Nan. That’s what fascinates me about the way memories work and how they are triggered.  I run outside, I see wild flowers, they remind me of childhood and I am back in Nanny’s kitchen presenting her with yet another straggly bunch of wild blooms which she puts in water in a reused jam jar.  And as I write, I am crying for what has been lost.

Not long after Nan’s passing, I wrote my second children’s book, Wild Horse Island, and she found her way into the story – a different version of her, but with the same heart.  She reappears in a more recent book, Always in my Heart.  A writer can immortalise that which is precious.

We are constructed from memories.  We are making new ones every second.  How, what and why we remember some things and not others is a mysterious process.  I’ve mentioned before the visionary sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, who was obsessed with the concept of memory and explores it in much of his huge body of work.  I can really relate to this.  As writers, our memories are a treasure trove of data, sensory experiences, adventures and emotions that we can process, translate and re-invent to create new stories. 

Related posts:
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/run-wild-run-free-memories-imagination.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/my-first-pony-and-remembering.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/thinking.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/nigella-lawson-and-me.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/leaving-footprints.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/writing-routines-and-running.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/writing-in-cupboard.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/running-writing-and-living.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/running-cats-and-writers-block.html

Run Wild, Run Free: memories, imagination and nostalgia

Recently, I returned to the Isle of Wight for a weekend.  I remember, over 40 years ago, wonderful childhood holidays spent there with my family; carefree days on the beach in the sun (remember sun?).  On the train to Lymington Pier to catch the ferry, I felt the old thrill of excitement as I watched the wild ponies in the New Forest, and I recalled a book I read as a child called The White Colt which was made into a film called  Run Wild, Run Free starring the young Mark Lester.  It was a tear jerking tale of a mute and emotionally damaged boy whose life is changed when he befriends a wild colt on the moors. This got me thinking about the reasons we revisit books and places that meant something as a child; those precious happy memories.  

I had a penfriend on the The Isle of Wight as a child; David, who lived in Newport and had a pony called Copper.  Most of my penfriends had ponies and my childhood dream was one day to own a house in the country with a paddock and stables attached for my future horse.   

Do memories play tricks on us?  Or is it just that so much changes over the years?  Including dreams.  I enjoyed my visit to the Isle of Wight, despite the chilly winds and cloudy skies, but left with a tinge of sadness.  Like so many seaside resorts that depend on tourism, it has suffered from the recession and the popularity of cheap flights, and holidays where the sun is guaranteed.  It seemed smaller and lonelier somehow.  I wondered how it will look in another 40 years.  

Hopefully, whatever the future holds, ponies will still be running wild and free in the New Forest.

Experience has taught me that it's not always a good idea to go back, to revisit special places.  Better to preserve those wonderful memories intact. 

Related posts:http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/happy-endings.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/run-wild-run-free-memories-imagination.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/my-bookshelf-and-precious-memories.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/grief-and-writing-routine.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/write-what-haunts-you.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/picking-flowers.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/wise-words.html

Journeys and shapes

I was once asked about my need to document everything.  I had never thought about it directly.  Maybe it was a way of not forgetting.  That’s why I always make lists.  But it is more about remembering emotional states, situations.  Having proof.  In nearly 50 years of life I have experienced so much yet how much do I remember?  A tiny fraction.  That makes me sad.  I want to remember everything, to be able to access my hard drive whenever I choose.  It can be a struggle remembering a long way back, yet we might hear a piece of music or smell a scent and in an instant, it can open a door to access a long forgotten memory.  How amazing.

Everything we have done or felt shapes us.  The people we meet and how they impact on our lives.  Love and loss, pleasure and pain.  It makes us who we are and we are evolving constantly, incrementally.  As writers, who and what we are, all the baggage we have acquired or offloaded on the journey, finds a way consciously or unconsciously into our work. 

When I re-read work written years before, tiny details – a name, a turn of phrase – can once more evoke a situation, a person – and I retrieve a once forgotten memory. 

Writers are told in manuals and on courses to write from experience.  But we can’t help it.  That doesn’t mean it has to be literal but it often is.  Writing can illuminate, help us understand ourselves and the world. 

Life is a journey.  Writing is a journey. They are inextricably linked.

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/for-journey.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/more-on-journeys.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/wheels.html