It may be ‘deeply unwise’, but keep on trying ... and have a good time

Recently I've been researching the links between mental health and creativity and have come across the following extracts from Daniel Nettle's book Strong Imagination. Nettle is an anthropologist and a psychologist and he provides this warning to those of us who aspire to produce creative works:

“Now to take on a major imaginative project requires remarkable chutzpah. If, dear reader, you aspire to be a writer, poet, actor, artist, film director, or musician, then however you sell it to yourself, you must believe something like the following statement to be true. You have to believe that you can do something that is difficult, in a way that has never been done before, which will be of so much interest to your fellow creatures that they will reward you for it. But I have news for you, I am afraid. You are almost certainly wrong. I say this purely on statistical grounds. The vast majority of would-be writers, artists, musicians, and actors never become known for anything. This doesn't mean they don't have a good time trying, but it does mean that they were probably, in some orthodox sense, deeply unwise this to follow the path that they did.”

While reminding us that the creative impulse is in a sense a pathological one, Nettle is right to point out that, however wrong-minded creative people might be in an orthodox sense, we might at least have a good time trying to produce something. If we don't at least have a good time trying then it becomes even more questionable why we should bother:

“Writing, painting, and composing are lonely occupations, which lack the online feedback that in other domains, such as sports and social interaction, keeps us motivated, concentrated, and happy. Any feedback that comes, and mostly it won’t, will come years later when the person is working on something quite different. To ride through a difficult and enervating task, week in, week out, quite alone, without any validation from the outside world, one has to sustain an unreasonably enthusiastic mood. In fact, one has to be in a mood which, from the point of view of most other activities in life, is pathological. One should not blast on with unabashed cheerfulness in a relationship that gives nothing back for months, or persevere in economic activity that seems to be yielding nothing. The adjustive function of the mood system should draw us gently away from these things. But the creator of imaginative products has to remain abnormally, almost irrationally, buoyant, and, to be successful, he has to produce a lot ... What distinguishes the most eminent producers from the rest in any cultural field is not that their work is consistently excellent. It is mainly that they produce a lot, and the more they produce, the more likely it is that some of it will be excellent.”

from Strong imagination - Madness, creativity and human nature by Daniel Nettle (Oxford University Press, 2001) pages 153 to 154

Short stories with a poetic touch

Review of Graham Mort’s Touch

(published by Seren, 288 pages, £7.99)

The Bridport Prize is one of the highest accolades for writers of short stories so, when those splendid people at Seren sent me of a review copy of this anthology by the winner of the 2007 Bridport, I was delighted. Seren Books are one of the few publishers in the British Isles to publish short story collections and they are to be applauded for bringing together these 21 stories spanning two decades of Graham Mort's writing career.

The prize-winning story The Prince is a mesmerising piece of prose. Recalling one summer in the narrator's Yorkshire boyhood, it is a rich meditation on childhood and death. Touch - the story that gives this anthology its title - is an equally fine but very different piece told in a series of alternating scenes, cutting back and forth from Miles in Uganda (who works for a UK-based NGO) and Carol, his schoolteacher wife, in Yorkshire. Each is contending with the daily battles of life, far apart from one another, and the story describes the anatomy of a marriage surviving this work-enforced separation. Several of the stories centre on couples. In Annik and Serge a husband struggles with his wife's mental illness, their stark situation reminiscent of a Beckett play. Blood from a Stone features a couple half-heartedly house-hunting: “She was from Wolverhampton and it never seemed to bother her,” the narrator explains, “She'd have been happy with a new house on one of those estates that made me want to scream." The tone of many of the stories is quite downbeat, evoking a slightly seedy atmosphere and a barely suppressed rage. In The Caretaker a single parent tries to cope with a sick child: “the lights were still on in the florists ... It was getting close to Valentine's Day. It made her want to smash something... "

For me, the opening story, A Walk in the Snow is one of the most effective - another story of a couple - and an impressive display of Mort's poetic talents: “snow-water floods the gutters and gurgles into grids. In one solitary entry we find undisturbed snow. It peers back at us like a blank page, quiet as a swallowed cry.” For once, the warmth of the relationship here seems to prevail over the hostility of the setting.

This collection is full of dazzling and convincing writing. There is not, though, much light to contrast with the dreary worlds many of these characters inhabit. My other slight grumble about Touch is the cover design which shows a woman wearing a necklace of amber beads (presumably taking its inspiration from the story Annik and Serge). It's not a cover which would attract many male readers, I suspect, if they happened upon Touch in a bookshop. These two criticisms leave me pondering two bigger questions for short story writers, readers and publishers: is there no place for humour or light-heartedness in contemporary literary short fiction and are anthologies of short stories - even those by male writers - thought to be only of interest to a female readership?

Windmills, pineapple sage and a dream pub - six of 2010's happiest finds

As 2010 draws to a close, with Arctic weather and the promise of a white Christmas, my thoughts drift back over the past 12 months to some special places I've happened upon this year. Two cafes, two countryside walks, a cinema and a dream of a pub - here is a selection of my favourite discoveries of 2010, in no particular order ...

1. A walk around Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England

We discovered a walk in the country around the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock, along Wenlock Edge, that takes in not only a disused railway line but a disused windmill. How romantic can you get! The lightning-damaged, 17th century windmill is under the care of - who else? - the Much Wenlock Windmill Preservation Society.


2. Coffee#1, Chepstow, Monmouthshire, Wales

If you take the scenic route from Worcestershire to Bristol, you pass by Tintern Abbey and then it would be rude not to stop in the lovely town of Chepstow. A short walk from the castle up to the town and you happen upon Coffee#1, an elegant, relaxing coffee house that does scrummy food and, inevitably, wonderful coffee.

3. Yorkshire Lavender Farm, Terrington nr York, Yorkshire, England

On holiday in York, we visited Yorkshire Lavender - an award-winning attraction that is free to visit, although you can repay the owners' hospitality by savouring a pot of Yorkshire tea and lavender scones and by buying some blueberry and lavender conserve and lavender sugar - to make your own lavender scones when you get home. My great delight, apart from the tea and scones here, was being invited to rub the leaves of a some pineapple sage between my fingers and enjoying the childlike pleasure of my hands smelling of pineapple. The sights, scents, tastes and touch of this place are unexpectedly therapeutic.


4. Jaffé & Neale Bookshop and Café, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England

En route from Worcester to Oxford, in the Cotswold town of Chipping Norton, it's almost compulsory to stop at Jaffé & Neale. Two things I love - brilliant independent bookshops and fantastically friendly coffee shops - are here rolled into one. Life doesn't get much better than home-made cake and coffee surrounded by an intriguing selection of books.



5. Irish Film Institute, Dublin, Ireland

On a recent trip to Dublin, I stumbled across the Irish Film Institute in Eustace Street. Under one roof, a cafe bar selling Guinness and food, a specialist bookshop that would be a film studies student's heaven and an impressive range of films on show. When I was there in November they were showing a season of Powell and Pressburger films. That doesn't happen every day so I just had to return the following evening for a viewing of the 1941 classic 49th Parallel. Inspirational.

6. Pivni, York, England

Every once in a while, I am lucky enough to happen upon a dream of a pub. When I lived in Brittany it was Le Pressoir in St Brieuc. For a few years in North Wales it was The Kings Arms in Bangor. On two recent visits to York, the Pivni in the city centre met all the criteria to join my list of dream pubs.
Pivni was formerly called the Pivo bar (taking its name from the Czech word for beer) but was changed to Pivni after a copyright dispute. Housed in a timber-framed building dating back to 1190, it couldn't have more character. The bar sells a selection of the finest cask beers from the UK, and draught and bottled beers from around the world. It's cosy enough and friendly enough for a man to sit with a newspaper and a pint without feeling self-conscious, but equally comfortable for couples of a certain age to chat together without feeling too old. In term-time, it becomes a student pub, in summer time a tourist pub, but neither of these things exclusively.
Pivni combines the best elements of a snug European bar with the charm of a traditional English pub. It has the world's best jukebox and, upstairs, board games are provided to amuse groups of drinkers in need of an ice-breaker. A pub like this is, to me, the pinnacle of civilisation and, if I were prime minister, I would make it government policy to ensure every town had a place like this. I could spend hours simply soaking up the atmosphere - and the beer ... and I probably did. Cheers!

2010, like every year, has been full of surpises, unexpected journeys and unforeseen discoveries. As the year draws to a close I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you - fellow passengers in time - a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Martin Simpson in Worcester

Martin Simpson live at Huntingdon Hall, Worcester,
Friday 29 October

Worcester's Huntingdon Hall (a former 18th century Methodist Chapel) lends itself particularly well to folk music. Martin Simpson, an outstanding guitarist and a fine singer/songwriter, performed solo and without even a support act - just an acoustic guitar in an open tuning.

The songs that worked best, for me, were his re-workings of traditional ballads, particularly the stunning Little Musgrave, but the performance of his 'hit' (inasmuch as English folk singers have hits) Never any good was as moving as ever. The Chris Wood song Come down Jehovah was also very effective in the hallowed ambience of Huntingdon Hall but I was disappointed, given the ecclesiastical setting, that we weren't treated to one of my Simpson favourites - his version of Jan Struther's children's hymn When a knight won his spurs. Still, for an example of what can be achieved with an acoustic guitar and a voice steeped in English tradition, Martin Simpson is hard to beat.

Back to school

The 11th October was one of those golden, sun-drenched days of autumn and I had the great pleasure of travelling to my home town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire and on to the nearby village of Hanwood. I was off to visit the children of Class 3 at St. Thomas and St. Anne’s CE Primary School. The children had been learning about what it would have been like to have lived in their local area in the past and also about stories with historical settings. I was delighted and humbled to see the class had made a display on the wall of books with historical settings which had my own A Passenger in Time ranked alongside Goodnight Mr Tom and The Railway Children (the latter with a cover design uncannily similar to that of my book!) Hallowed company indeed.
I began the afternoon by talking a bit about my own childhood, growing up in Shrewsbury in the 60s and 70s. I talked about my favourite book as a child, Mystery at Witchend by Malcolm Saville. We talked about adventures and how children's books - and the world - had changed since I was the same age as Class 3. I read a couple of extracts from A Passenger in Time and then the children took part in a writing workshop which they entered into with real enthusiasm and imagination. Halfway through this, a photographer from the Shropshire Star turned up and invited one of the children and myself to have our picture taken with a pile of my books, sitting in the playground in the October sunshine. I had a lovely afternoon. I hope the children and the staff had as much fun as I did and I hope, in some small way, I have inspired some of the children to read - and to write - now and in the future.

'White Ravens', 'Out Stealing Horses' and my Shropshire school visit

One of the great things about travelling away from home and from work is that it often provides a few precious opportunities to catch up on some reading for the pure pleasure of it. On my recent trip to Ferryside I took with me an appropriately Welsh book - White Ravens by Owen Sheers. White Ravens is a novella inspired by a story from the Mabinogion (a collection of native Welsh tales taken from two mediaeval manuscripts). It's a very unusual book, weaving together characters from the present with a story from World War II, and linking the ravens in the Tower of London with a journey from Wales to Ireland. It was the perfect book to accompany a quiet few days in Wales and introduced me to a new publisher Seren (actually the book imprint of Poetry Wales Press). I'm currently reading another Seren book - a collection of short stories by Graham Mort called Touch.

On holiday in York, I read a beautiful novel by the Norwegian writer Per Petterson. Out Stealing Horses is another book which links the present day with the 1940s. An old man, living in an isolated part of Norway, reflects back on events that happened when he was 15. The book was so beautifully written, and so touching, I now want to read everything Per Petterson has written. Everything I've tried to read since has seemed disappointing by comparison.

I hope I'm not going to be a disappointment to the children of St. Thomas and St. Anne’s CE Primary School in Hanwood, near Shrewsbury. I am delighted to say their teacher Mrs Preece-Dawson has invited me to come in and talk with them about A Passenger in Time on Monday 11^th October. Mrs Preece-Dawson is already reading the book to the children so I hope they're enjoying it and that they won't give me too hard a time when I meet with them. I'm really looking forward to my visit.

Back from my travels

I've just got back from a family holiday in York and have decided to tidy up my office space ready for writing. As part of this new tidying-up frenzy I've also 'refreshed' the Passengers in Time blog. I hope you like the new look and, as ever, I welcome your comments.
York was my third trip away from home this summer and I've been meaning to bring you up to date on all this travelling.

Early in June, my wife Sue and I spent a weekend on Dartmoor at The Forest Inn, Hexworthy. We joined members of the Malcolm Saville Society on some wonderful country walks , following in the footsteps of characters from Malcolm Saville's Saucers Over the Moor. I should explain I have been a member of the Malcolm Saville Society since 1999. You can find out more about the author, his books and the society at www.witchend.com

The Hexworthy weekend involved an eight mile walk from Dousland to Princetown along the route of the old Yelverton to Princetown Railway (me and my disused railway lines again!) It also included a three or four mile walk alongside Wistman's Wood, complete with a dramatic fording of a steam and a march through uninvited fog. All appropriately adventurous. As ever, the members of the Malcolm Saville Society were delightful company.

Later in June, I spent a week in Wales at The Three Rivers Hotel in Ferryside, a quiet little retreat eleven miles from Carmarthen. This was meant to be business not pleasure - I was helping to run a week-long training course - but Ferryside is so peaceful that, in the evenings, I felt as if I were on holiday. Each evening I would walk up the steep lane at the back of the hotel - the only place I could get a mobile phone signal - to phone home. Sometimes, I'd take a moonlit stroll alongside the estuary. It reminded me a lot of the Menai Straits in Bangor where I lived as a young university student.

Ferryside has the feel of a seaside place but actually the expanse of water is not the sea but the Three Rivers Estuary of Carmarthen Bay (the three rivers being the Tywi, the Taff and the Gwendraeth). Walking along the sand, with the tide coming in, I could see Llanstephan's ancient castle across the water. Both Hexworthy and Ferryside gave me plenty of time for walking and reflection - part of the process of writing, long before ideas take shape as words on the page.