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Welcome to my blog
My name is Helen Carey. I am the author of a number of novels (see menu above), some of which have managed to creep into the best-seller category! If you haven’t read them already, I hope you will enjoy them.
I have taught creative writing at university level and have, in the past, worked as a reader for a literary agent. I am also a bit of an artist and an avid environmentalist! I live in beautiful Pembrokeshire on a small organic farm which my husband and I run as a wildlife haven. Also living with us is a rather large dog who had spent ten years on a chain in Greece before we found her and brought her back to Wales.
I don’t post very often, but you will find pieces here about my books, my writing, my reading, my art, and sometimes about other elements of my life. I hope you will find something to interest you.
Please feel free to get in touch via the comments tab if I can answer any writing or reading questions. Or if you would like news of my upcoming book, a brand-new wartime adventure, click here.
With all best wishes, Helen
Happy Christmas
This is just to say Happy Christmas to my followers and thank you for taking an interest in my blog over 2012. I hope you all have a lovely, restful holiday period and a very Happy New Year too.
Apologies to those of you who are waiting for my next novel, there is a bit of a delay I am afraid, unforseen circumstances have intervened! It will now be coming out in 2013 (working title is London Calling). Hopefully it will be worth the wait!
With all best wishes, Helen
Don’t overdo the senses
‘Use the senses,’ they say on creative writing courses. It’s like a mantra: ‘Sight, Smell, Sound, Touch, Taste. Include reference to these in your writing and you can’t go wrong.’
I can already ‘sense’ you twitching with excited anticipation, and indeed there is some truth in it. Dextrous use of ‘the senses’ engages the reader in your scene. I think you will agree that, ‘I stayed the night at a monastery,’ is nowhere near as emotive as, ‘I rang the bell and a bearded Franciscan in clogs unbarred the door and led the way to a dormitory lined with palliasses on plank beds and filled with an overpowering fug and a scattering of whispers.’ (A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor)
So yes, you do indeed need to feel your way into descriptions, taste the fear, smell the roses, touch the depths of your hero’s despair and see it writ large on his face.
And yes, that sounds all right on the surface – but when you scratch, dig (or even delve) deeper into the concept you can quickly start to smell a rat. It’s all too easy to overdo it, like a Masterchef contestant adding too much scented rose water to his crumbly textured granola. Here’s a sniff of a clue, almost as obvious perhaps as the eyes on your face – falling back on cliché or labouring the imagery, like a pungent old peasant beating his donkey in the hot sun, leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.
This may all sound (or indeed smell) like a red herring to you. After all, who really cares? We know what kind of writing we like and we all have to take the rough with the smooth anyway.
But if you want a taste of the high life, and after all, who doesn’t crave the sweet scent of success, just take time to savour the descriptive passage, handle it with sensitivity and respect, don’t flog it to death. And touch wood (or knock on wood if you are in the US or Canada) your writing will be as effortlessly, elegantly atmospheric as Patrick Leigh Fermor’s (this time describing a 1930s German ‘Burgomaster’).
‘After dinner he tucked a cigar in a holder made of a cardboard cone and a quill, changed spectacles and, hunting through a pile of music on the piano, sat down and attacked the Waldstein Sonata with authority and verve. The pleasure was reinforced by the player’s enjoyment of his capacity to wrestle with it. His expression of delight, as he peered at the notes through a veil of cigar smoke and tumbling ash, was at odds with the gravity of the music. When the last chord had been struck, he leapt from the stool with a smile of youthful and almost ecstatic enjoyment amid the good humoured applause of his family.’
wearing my poppy with pride
I’ve had terrible trouble with my poppy this year. The first one’s stalk broke within ten minutes. I replaced it with a stick-on one which had disappeared before I had even got home. The third one fell to bits today as I put on my coat after a delicious lunch in a tapas bar (aubergine stuffed with pine nuts, fresh anchovies, a warm beetroot salad and tortilla). As I scrabbled under the tables to retrieve the various bits, the cardboardy red flower, the flimsy leaf and the black centre button, I heard someone mutter, ‘Why do you bother?’
Straightening up I glanced at him, wondering whether he meant why did I bother rescue the poppy pieces, or why did I bother wear one at all. I was tempted to say that I bothered because, whatever the rights and wrongs of it, young men just like him had died fighting in wars. But my friends were waiting at the door and I didn’t want to get into a big discussion (and judging by the look of him it wouldn’t have been a fruitful discussion anyway). So I just smiled apologetically and left. Later of course I wished I had said something.
Several years ago we spent a week in Sicily with some friends. Before setting off we happened to visit my elderly aunt who reminded me that her brother Basil (my uncle, a wartime glider pilot) had died during the invasion of Sicily in 1943 and was buried in Siracusa. ‘It would be so lovely if you could go and put some flowers on his grave,’ she said and we promised that we would if we could.
Unfortunately when we arrived in Sicily we discovered that we were staying right at the other end of the island. ‘It’s too far,’ we said to each other. ‘It would take hours to drive all over there.’
But we felt guilty – after all my uncle had sacrificed his life and we wouldn’t sacrifice one day of our holiday. So we decided to go.
It took us seven hours solid driving to get from from Capo San Vito to Siracusa. (Sicily is somewhat bigger than it looks on the map.)
We arrived at about three in the afternoon, bought two bunches of flowers and made our way to the cemetery.
We were completely unprepared for the emotion that hit us. Lines and lines of small white headstones, each engraved with a young man’s name. We found my uncle’s grave quite easily, it was in the front row. Capt Basil Beazley, 29 years old.
The glider assault had been a disaster. They were launched from too far out to sea and the winds were too strong. Most landed in the water, some even crashed into Mount Etna. Military planning at its worst. Those young men must have known their chances were slim, but they did it anyway. Amazingly my uncle survived the landings but was killed later trying to hold a crucial bridge.
Seven hours later we arrived back at the villa in the pitch dark. ‘Did you have a good day?’ Our friends asked as we staggered in.
We looked at each other. For some reason I wasn’t on the car insurance so my partner (now husband) had had to drive the whole way. ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘We drove for seven hours, cried for twenty minutes and then drove seven hours back again!’
But it had been worth it.
We had picked up some pebbles and a bit of dry earth from the grave and when we gave these to my aunt a few weeks later she cried too. ‘I still miss him so much,’ she said.
That’s why I rescued my poppy.
Idioms and petards
I’m never one to toe the line and I may be flogging a dead horse, but as you know I am fascinated by language, so in this post I am going to look at the real meaning behind some of our most commonly used idioms and expressions. I will leave no stone unturned to get to the derivations. It won’t be easy but I would be lily livered not to make the effort. I will try not to let the cat out of the bag in one fell swoop. If I succeed I will be on cloud nine, I hope I won’t be hoisted on my own petard if I don’t. So … to get down to brass tacks.
‘Toe the line’ – Apparently this derives from the lines drawn in front of the two sides of the British Houses of Parliament. The lines are drawn at just the right distance from each other to prevent opposing MPs from reaching each other with their swords (shame they don’t still use them!) Anyone stepping across was sternly instructed to ‘toe the line’.
‘Flogging a dead horse’ – Not a sad animal derivation after all, but a nautical derivation to do with the equatorial ‘Horse’ latitude where winds are very weak. Since sailors were paid by the day there was no point in working hard to get through the area quickly, so the slow mid ocean period became known as ‘flogging the dead Horse.’
‘Leave no stone unturned’ – After the Greeks defeated the Persians in 477 BC Polycrates was unable to find treasure he was sure they had left behind. Eventually he consulted the Oracle at Delphi which suggested he ‘move every stone’ in his search. Sure enough he soon found the booty. At 2500 years old this may be one of our oldest idioms.
‘Lily livered’ – Greek again – When sacrificing an animal on the eve of battle, it was considered a bad omen if the poor animal’s liver was pale and ‘lily’ coloured, suggesting the battle would not be fought with red blooded, courageous ferocity.
‘To let the cat out of the bag’ – Live suckling pigs were sold in sacks in medieval markets. When the unsuspecting buyer arrived home and opened his ‘bag’ he would sometimes find a cat had been surreptitiously substituted.
‘One fell swoop’ – Our old friend Shakespeare got this falconry image going – Macduff (in Macbeth) bemoans the death of his wife and children ‘What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop’.
‘Cloud nine’ – In the 1930s the American Weather Bureau categorised clouds into classes 1-9. Cloud 9, cumulonimbus, is the highest at 40,000ft. In the Johny Dollar radio show, when the hero (Johny) was knocked out he was then transported to Cloud 9 where he was revitalised (and presumably filled with glee) ready for the next episode.
‘Hoisted on one’s own petard’ – A medieval petard was a big iron container filled with gunpowder. It was generally placed against the enemy’s gates and blown up. The wicks, however, were unreliable and the container often blew up prematurely ‘hoisting’ the unfortunate attackers up into the air on their own ‘petard’.
‘Brass tacks’ – Derives from Cockney rhyming slang where ‘brass tacks’ are traditionally substituted for ‘facts’.
Ah, I promised myself 600 words max so I have been saved by the bell …! (- Not from boxing terminology as I’d always assumed, but from the army. One night in the Victorian era a Horseguard sentry was accused of being asleep on duty. The punishment being death, he denied it and said he could prove it because he had heard Big Ben strike thirteen times at midnight. The clock was checked and a faulty cog had indeed caused it to make an extra strike. On this evidence the lucky soldier was famously freed.)
(You can find many more idioms and their derivations in Albert Jack’s brilliant book Red Herrings and White Elephants.)
Take it easy …
People often remark that I must be very disciplined to be a writer. If only they knew … (see my earlier post about life getting in the way!) But displacement activity aside, there is an element of truth in the observation. There is certainly more to writing than just dreaming up a good story and a few characters to act it out. There is the sitting down at the desk for one thing, and the getting the words down on the page another. Those things are certainly a key part of a writer’s life, they do take self-discipline and are clearly important.
But giving time to the dreaming is also important.
Good ideas, links, snatches of dialogue, observations, all grist to the writer’s mill, come to me at the oddest moments, and usually not when I am in my office. Motorway driving is often a fruitful source of inspiration, as is walking the dogs, cooking, eating, lying in the sun (or the bath), traveling, or even reading someone else’s book.
I’m not advocating that writers give up on self-discipline in order to lead a life of sybaritism (tempting though that might be), but I am advocating sometimes taking it all a bit more easy. Too much discipline and application can tend to have the effect of making Jill a dull girl, and it often seems to me that writer’s block has a tendency to set in when writers are trying too hard.
Writers obviously have to write, but it is also important for them to live. Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way calls it ‘refilling the artistic well’ and she is right. We writers need to be constantly stocking up on our experiences, our awareness of other people’s quirks and foibles, our knowledge of life and times and our use of language. We need to keep ourselves fresh and open to new ideas, new insights, new phraseology that we can recycle in our novels in order to keep them fresh, innovative and lively too.
So if you are having trouble thinking up ‘the next bit’ (or feel you are getting repetitive strain in your typing fingers) I suggest taking a break, take it easy for a day or two, relax, take a trip, go to a museum or an art gallery, do some shopping or some cooking, let your mind wander and have some fun. Don’t allow yourself feel guilty, just see it as part of the ‘discipline’ of being a writer.
Managing expectations
‘It’s the taking part that counts’ says the Olympic motto, but all we seem to see and hear is regret about missed medals, or even (amazingly) about the bitter disappointment of getting silver instead of gold.
It’s a similar story with writing. ‘So, how are the books doing?’ people ask. Is it enough to say you have finished a new novel, or have just got one published and that readers are enjoying it? No. We long to say we have a top agent, publisher or film company sniffing at our heels, or that we are in the bestseller lists (or the Amazon top 100 at least), or that we have recently won one of the prestigious literary prizes. But usually we can’t. So, somehow, despite all the effort of writing the damn thing, all the satisfaction of finishing and getting a good book out there, we writers somehow end up feeling disappointed.
Yet, clearly not everyone can write a bestseller every time. Not everyone can write a bestseller full stop. But then not everyone can write a readable book at all. It sounds easy – if you haven’t tried it. ‘Oh yes, I’d write a novel if I had time’ people sometimes (clearly unaware of the danger they are in) remark airily to writers. But it takes grit and determination, inspiration and a considerable amount of luck to write a novel, let alone a really good one. It is certainly not plain sailing (as British yachtsman Ben Ainslie is finding today as he tries to secure his apparently ‘certain’ gold in the Open 49er class).
So why has the ‘winning’ (and not the taking part) suddenly become so important? In some countries just being a writer is a cause for some acclaim. And how nice that is! Because writing isn’t a competition, it is a personal, private endeavour. The truth is that, despite all the judging and criticism that goes on, you simply can’t compare one book with another. Not with any real objectivity at least. They are all completely different, they appeal to different audiences, at different times, in different moods. We all have books on our shelves that we enjoyed in the past that we wouldn’t touch with a barge pole now. In my teens I loved The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse – I can barely get past the first page nowadays. And yet Great Expectations, which I utterly loathed at school, has (rather appropriately for this post) seen me through a recent illness with total absorption and delight.
I know people crave success (and financial reward) and there is nothing wrong with striving for it, but, as with the Olympics, there are only so many places on the podium. We should try to be content with our capacity to take part, and celebrate even the small achievements. We writers are doing a great thing. We are providing entertainment, escape, excitement, learning, humour and a myriad of other wonderful things to our readers – what more acclaim do we really need?
Beating the Bounds – living history rather than fictional history
I imagine that it is not every day of the week that a young boy is beaten by a mayor on top of a mountain! But before you start to reach for your telephone, please be re-assured, no children are harmed in this ceremonial event (apart from a few sore feet perhaps).
No, this now purely symbolic assault on a young lad takes place during the annual August re-enactment of an ancient tradition – the perambulation, or ‘beating’ of the bounds of the Barony of Newport, our local town.
In his book, ‘The Ancient Borough of Newport in Pembrokeshire’, local historian Dillwyn Miles explains:
‘The custom of perambulating the boundaries of a parish is said to date from the fifth century when the incidence of plague and tempest prompted the Bishop of Vienna to lead a procession chanting litanies and imploring divine protection on the three Rogation Days preceding Ascension Day. The custom continued with the parish priest being followed by the parishioners and children, all carrying white willow wands bedecked with the rogation flower, the milkwort and ribbons. The procession halted at boundary marks where small boys were beaten so they would always remember where the boundaries lay, and they were afterwards rewarded with cakes and sweetmeats.’
These ceremonial perambulations ceased in 1888 and it was not until 1964 that the custom of beating the bounds was revived in Newport. The full circuit is about 26 miles but nowadays a slightly shorter route has been adopted. So each year a band of walkers and horse-riders congregate in the town square in order to follow the Barony flag for a (mere) 9 mile ‘perambulation’.
Heading off first along the beautiful, rugged coast path, the group then climb up through ancient lanes and fields to the wilds of Waun Fawr common. It is at the Bedd Morris boundary stone that some poor unsuspecting youth is ceremonially beaten by the Mayor and the perambulators are offered ‘cakes and sweetmeats’.
Thus refreshed, the party then heads on up over the remote heather, gorse and sheep covered hillside to patrol the boundary behind the dramatic crags of Carn Ingli (Mountain of Angels – the location of one of the key scenes from my novel SLICK DEALS), and finally back to Newport.
Everyone who completes the circuit is rewarded with a Certificate presented by the Court Leet (a body of ‘Burgesses’ and ‘Aldermen’ who traditionally serve the Newport Barony). Participants also take away an abiding memory of a walk (or ride) undertaken with a sense of purpose and of being part of living history.
Last year about 35 walkers, a dozen or so riders and a selection of dogs successfully ‘beat the bounds’ on a particularly lovely August day. 
If you are in the Newport, Pembs area do join us this year. We will meet in Market Square at 1 pm on Friday 17th August. Young boys are especially welcome!
Don’t start too soon
For the last year I have been lucky enough to have a fellowship post at Aberystwyth University sponsored by the Royal Literary Fund. This involved me sitting in a pleasant office on campus one day a week so that students (and staff) could come and consult me about writing issues. These ranged from queries from undergraduates about punctuation (whatever do they teach in schools these days?) to major structural issues in PhD theses. The idea is that novelists are ideally qualified to help students write both better English and better essays, and thus hopefully get more out of their courses – and better marks.
So from one hour to the next I found myself grappling with subjects such as Mary Shelley’s concept of sexuality in Frankenstein, the specific chromosome present in albino Palomino stallions, the psychological behaviour of dog owners when visiting vets, military law in Afghanistan, the music of an obscure Polish filmmaker or a report comparing the marketing techniques of Toyota and Ford.
But whatever the subject, the problems were normally pretty similar. Voice, grammar and choice of vocabulary were relatively easy to deal with, but the real reason those hoped for grades weren’t being achieved was lack of planning and structure.
Rattled by deadlines, students generally started writing too soon, before they had completed their research, mustered their thoughts or decided on the argument they wanted to make. So either they would get poor marks, or they would get stuck half way through the essay and come to me for help.
It is much the same with writing novels, scripts or even short stories. It is so easy nowadays to switch on the PC and launch straight into Chapter One. ‘I can always change it later’ is the mantra. Yes, of course you can tweak and edit, cut and paste. The good old days of Tipp-Ex and retyping are long gone.
But what it’s not so easy to do is change the theme, the voice, the plot progression, the character motivation or the story structure. Life becomes so much easier (and stories more readable and saleable) if those elements are sorted out first. It’s when those go wrong, (as they so often do,) that you find yourself, like Nick Clegg, with a half written novel in your bottom drawer.
So my advice to students and creative writers is much the same. Don’t start too soon. Mull, research, make endless notes, and mull again, until the moment comes when the story (or essay) is there, complete in your mind (or your notes), and all you have to do is write it down.
Nick Clegg’s first line
Last night I was invited on to BBC Radio 5 Live to talk about the UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s novel writing aspirations. (Apparently he has recently admitted to having the start of a ‘shockingly bad’ novel hidden away in a bottom drawer. Don’t we all?)
Imagine my surprise when, instead of the promised informal chat about story structure and Nick Clegg’s reading habits (Dostoyevsky, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Coetzee), I found myself being subjected to a ‘famous first lines’ quiz with my fellow guest , poet Goff Morgan.
Having been too slow on The Tale of Two Cities, it was with considerable relief that I recognised Pride and Prejudice and, by a lucky fluke, correctly hit on Harry Potter for the next one. Feeling I had now pretty much exhausted my knowledge of famous first lines, I was relieved when the result was declared a draw, only to discover that plans had changed and the entire programme was going to focus on the importance of first lines.
Now I have always believed there were essentially three criteria necessary to write a successful novel, the ability to string a few sentences together (Nick Clegg was once a journalist and has written a number of non fiction books so we can assume he would be OK on this one), the ability to tell a compelling story (not sure about NC’s prowess in this department, although like most politicians he likes to spin a good yarn) and the ability and determination to stick it out for 100,000 or so words (he’s clearly fallen at this hurdle before.)
Wonderful opening sentences, useful though they are, have always come quite a long way down my list of more specific requirements (see my post ‘5 tell-tale signs of a novice novelist’). So when the Radio 5 Live host asked me (before I had recovered from the stress of the unexpected quiz) to explain why they are so critical I found myself re-examining my ambivalent feelings towards them even as I answered the question.
A good opening line can set the tone of the novel, it can introduce a character, a location, a mood, it can intrigue the reader, ask a question, hint at excitement to come and so on. It is like a tiny hook to capture the reader’s attention and as such it is clearly important. But, if the second, third and fourth sentences fail to keep the reader on the hook, then that first line has been rendered useless, however perfectly crafted it was.
Then, as listeners calls began to pour in with opening lines for us to comment on, I realised that I am perhaps alone in my rather dismissive attitude. People clearly love first lines and attach a huge amount of importance to them.
So all I can really say is, yes, opening lines are important, but don’t agonise over them for too long. Just write on, put the real effort into creating authentic characters and a compelling story structure, then come back and tidy up the first (and the second and third) line later.
The Jubilee and Dunkirk spirit
Sixty years ago Princess Elizabeth’s honeymoon in Kenya was cut short when her father died and she returned to the the UK as Queen Elizabeth II (but was only actually crowned a year later in June 1953).
Whatever your views on monarchy you have to admit that she has done well to stick it out through thick and thin for sixty years!
But sticking out out is what the British royal family does. During my research for my first wartime novel, Lavender Road, I discovered that people who lived through the war had been impressed that King George VI and the royal family (including the two young princesses) stayed on in London right through the Blitz. As we all now know from the film The King’s Speech, the Queen’s father King George VI had terrible problems with public speaking. Nevertheless, despite his stammer, people admired his courage in trying to give them moral support during those dangerous times. In Oct 1940, right in the middle of the Blitz, even the fourteen year old Princess Elizabeth made a radio broadcast (her first of many) to reassure the evacuee children of Britain.
Some of the other European royals weren’t quite so gritty. Historians believe that when Mussolini fell in 1943, the vacillation of the Italian King, Victor Emmanuel, not only prolonged the war but also caused immeasurable suffering to his own people. His chronic indecision about what to do allowed the Nazis to occupy Italy, which meant the Allied forces had to fight the whole way up the peninsula. And in May 1940 the King of Belgium let the side down in a big way by surrendering his country far too soon, thus causing the Allied troops to be encircled at Dunkirk.
In fact, as well as the Jubilee, this weekend is also an anniversary (the 72nd) of Dunkirk. As 750,000 Nazi forces poured into Belgium, Allied forces frantically retreated to the coast where they became stranded due to the lack of vessels to evacuate them from the beaches. While their rearguard forces fought a valiant defensive action to hold the Germans at bay, a call eventually went out for private boats to come and help. And suddenly what had seemed like a crushing defeat turned into one of the most amazing and spectacular rescue efforts ever as hundreds of tiny inadequate vessels ploughed across the English channel, braving bombs and heavy machine gun fire from the Nazi air force, to rescue their compatriots. And what’s more, some (like my character Alan Nelson in Lavender Road) went back more than once, risking their own lives in their determination not to leave anyone to the mercy of the Nazis.
And so was born the concept of the Dunkirk spirit. Whether it was partly due to the continuing presence of the King in London we will never know, but I am quite sure that the Queen believes it was, and it is her innate Dunkirk spirit that has helped her weather the storms of the last sixty years!
