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My Writing Process Taryn Leigh

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writerMy Writing Routine

I try to write whenever I can have moments alone, which are long enough for me to take my mind into the world of my characters.

Because writing currently isn’t my full time profession, this means that I cannot have a formal writing routine, but instead have to write when I get the chance.

My name is Taryn Leigh, and I’m a South African based Author, whose first book was published in the UK.

Although I write books that are considered to be romance or contemporary fiction novels, I try to ensure the reader can walk away with something of value after reading the book. Because of that, my books deal with real life struggles that women endure.

My first book was called Perfect Imperfections, and is available in Paperback, Audiobook and on Kindle.

My current book is called The Secret Letters and launched on 09 August in Paperback and Kindle.

What you are promoting now. 

My latest novel, The Secret Letters, which deal’s with real topics of gender based violence, and the mental battle that comes with that.

It’s also a story of love and hope, and how to overcome your worst nightmares, especially in the arms of someone who loves you.

A bit about your process of writing. 

I look out for stories that peak my interest, and then I let them mull over in my mind for a while, as I start to imagine the lives of the characters, as if they are real people. Only once I feel that they feel real to me do I start to put pen to paper and plan things more formally.

Do you plan or just write?

I have a very broad plan. Mostly the main characters and main events. I normally know how it should start, when the big reveal should be, and how it should end.

The rest, I just write and see how the characters develop over time, who they meet, and what additional relationships are formed.

What about word count?

I am conscious of it, but more towards the end of the book, because if I worry about it the whole time, I won’t get the story out.

I aim for 80,000 words or more, that can then be edited down during the editing process.

What do you find hard about writing?

Finding time to be alone, the rest, I absolutely look forward to.

The other part is editing and writing a blurb. It seems so hard to condense over 400 pages into a few lines.

What do you love about writing? 

Meeting my characters. Might sound strange, but they feel like real people to me. They make me laugh and cry as I write their stories. They take me on adventures, I just love it.

Advice for other writers

Find your own voice and be authentic. Don’t try to write for the mainstream. You need to believe in what you are writing and the story will just flow.

Also dont give up, even when you feel stuck in the book, just keep going, it will all come together eventually.

 

How Women Live with Fear and ‘Don’t Turn Around’ by Jessica Barry

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Melissa Pimentel - Random House, author, writer, How Women live with fear and ‘Don’t Turn Around’ by ,Jessica BarryHow Women live with fear and ‘Don’t Turn Around’ by Jessica Barry – published by Harvill Secker at £12.99

I wanted to explore the female-specific relationship to fear in my new novel, Don’t Turn Around. The novel opens with Cait and Rebecca driving through the night on a deserted road. Their destination is unknown. Out of the darkness, a pair of headlights appear, intent on destruction. The two women – who, up until that night, were strangers to each other – are forced to dig into their pasts to understand who might want to kill them. 

The answer, as most women know, is not straightforward.

Is it someone from their past? Their present? Is it a complete stranger with a thirst for blood? 

Cait has experienced the full terror of online abuse first-hand. An article she wrote about a bad date was met with vitriol, and she became a figure of hate on ‘men’s rights’ chatrooms. She receives death threats from total strangers. Worse still, her home address was published on the internet without her consent, so anyone who wanted to make good on those threats can find her. Is it possible that an online troll has finally tracked her down in the flesh?

Rebecca is the wife of a prominent politician in conservative Texas. She’s spent years playing the happy campaign life, but now she finds herself in a desperate situation. Her husband has turned against her, and there’s no one she can trust to get her across the Texas state line. She has to rely on a stranger – Cait – to shepherd her to safety. But there’s no guarantee that her husband hasn’t had her followed.

What about the man at the diner who stared at them so openly? Or that strange man at the gas station? Danger lurks around every corner. The world bristles with possible menace. 

Every day, women live with fear. It’s a low-level constant, familiar as breath. We mitigate it, negotiate with it, rationalize it. We make thousands of tiny calculations and calibrations on its behalf. Is that man following me? Should I turn around and face him, or should I run? Will my shoes let me run fast enough, or should I take them off? If I scream, will it scare him? Or will it just make him angry? Is there anyone around who would hear me?

For women, the potential for danger is everywhere. Walking through an empty parking lot at night. Going for a run. Sitting alone at a bar, or in a park, and a stranger approaching you. A guy standing a little too close behind you in line at the grocery story. The car that followed you ten blocks, horn blaring, because the driver thought you cut him off.  The moment you post on social media expressing a political preference, or a divisive idea, or critique. The sickening drop a few minutes later, when the first commentator calls you a bitch.

The statistics speak for themselves. Over half of women in the US have experienced physical violence. A quarter have experienced physical or sexual assault at the hands of an intimate partner. One in five women are raped in their lifetime. One in six women are stalked. 

Things aren’t much rosier in the digital world. One study found that seventy-two percent of online harassment victims are women. Individuals using female-skewing usernames are sent threatening or explicit content twenty-five times more often than those with male-skewing or ambiguous usernames. Close to two-thirds of female journalists have been threatened, intimidated, harassed or been subject to sexist abuse online. 

Of course, men are also the victims of violence and harassment: I’m not pretending otherwise. But I think that that women view the world through a specific lens coloured by the constant potential for danger. 

Ask a man what precautions he takes before going out for a run in the morning and you’ll likely be met with a confused look. Ask a woman and she’ll tell you about pre-planned routes and high-traffic areas and the importance of keeping your headphones at a low volume so you can hear someone coming up behind you. These seemingly-minor decisions shape how we move through the world. 

To live as a woman in this world, the question isn’t so much ‘What if something happens’ but ‘When? Where? How? Who?’ And the answers are ‘Anytime. Anywhere. Anyway. Anyone.’ 

Anyone could be behind that pair of headlights. Anyone could be waiting for us around a darkened corner, waiting to strike.

So far, so dark: I know. But there’s a silver lining in all this, and that’s the way that this fear bonds women together and, in a way, it’s what makes us who we are. You know that old cliché, ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’? That’s a way of life for us. Those mental calculations make us sharper. Those keys clutched between fingers make us tougher. Those close calls and rough scrapes and stories of survival make us stronger.

In order to survive their night on the road and make it to safety, Cait and Rebecca will have to work together. They’ll have to draw deeply from their experiences and from their personal strengths, and above all, they’ll have to learn to trust each other. 

Lucky for them, they’ve had a lot of practice at the art of survival. 

My Writing Process Stephen Deutsch

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Stephen Deutsch, author, writerI was born in New York, but have been living in Britain for fifty years! The first part of my career was spent as a pianist, composer and conductor.  Many of my works have been broadcast on the BBC, especially as scores for their Classic Serial, but that was some time ago. I live in Dorset with my wife and her garden.

What you have written, past and present.

A late arrival to novels, I had previously written TV plays, some of which were broadcast on the BBC. My first novel, Zweck, a historical comedy about music, was published four years ago. It concerns a fictitious nonagenarian composer who knew everyone and hated most of them. In this novel, the main characters are fictitious but everyone else is real. It is set in the 1970s.

What you are promoting now. 

My most recent novel, Champion, is a true story, a novel of persecution and heroism during the Second World War. It is based on the stories of two men from different worlds, both struggling in the febrile atmosphere of Nazi Dominated Europe. 

The first is Herschel Grynszpan, dark haired, slight, with deep-set eyes. He is an undocumented Jewish adolescent living in Paris. He receives a postcard from his parents – recently bundled from their Hanover flat, put on a train and dumped, with 12,000 others, on the Polish border. Enraged, Herschel buys a gun and murders a minor official in the German Embassy.  The repercussions trigger Kristalnacht, the nationwide pogrom against the Jews in Germany and Austria, a calamity which some have called ‘the opening act of the Holocaust’.

Intertwined is the parallel life of the German boxer, Max Schmeling, who as a result of his victory over the ‘invincible’ Joe Louis in 1936, became a poster boy of the Nazis. He and his movie-star wife, Anny Ondra, were feted by the regime – tea with Hitler, a passage on the Hindenburg – until his brutal two-minute beating in the rematch with Louis less than two years later. His story reaches a climax during Kristalnacht, where the champion performs an act of quiet heroism.

A bit about your process of writing. 

I try to write every day. Usually I write in the morning and revise in the afternoon (often something I had written some days before – one chapter might be revised several times, even in the first draft).  I try to read every word out loud, to get the sense of the rhythm of the words. This is especially true for dialogue, which I really enjoy writing. You can tell so much about a character by the slight variations in their speech patterns, not the ums and ahs, but the choice and order of the words they use. I like to feel that when the book is finished, I had written, read and weighed every word.

Do you plan or just write?

Both.  I normally have a plan, but once that scaffolding is in place, I let the characters do the writing themselves. It depends on the story.  In Champion, the events unfold as they actually happened, so I didn’t need to work out a plot structure. In the historical novel I am now writing, Dallas, fictional characters set in a real historical time and place, The structure is fluid, but to some extent needs to fit into the chronology of actual events. It isn’t set at the time of Kennedy’s assassination – I was at the parade, but didn’t witness the shooting. A story for another time.

What about word count?

Horses for courses, really. Zweck  was a heavyweight, coming it at 120,000 words. Champion is leaner and meaner, only 80,000 words.

What do you find hard about writing?

Starting.  It is a new problem every day. It’s easier to encourage myself to edit a previous chapter than to begin a new one. There are various subterfuges and helpers I can use to get started.  Dictating some random thoughts onto a recorder can grease the wheels. A blank page is less terrifying if it contains even the smallest thought, the shortest sentence.  Then you feel like going on. I also use a software package called ‘Scrivener’. This allows me to enter text, import web pages, and most importantly, to see and change the shape of the entire book as it develops.

What do you love about writing? 

Almost everything.  Each book, each situation teaches me new things. And of course the internet makes researching both pleasurable and far less tedious than it used to be – especially as I don’t live in a large urban area with libraries, etc., at my disposal. Sometimes, when researching a particular item, I accidentally find something else, which can liven up what I am writing. And the act of writing itself, passing the time with my characters, is immensely pleasurable.

Advice for other writers. 

Whatever your style or genre, literary fiction or mass market romances, my advice is always to write as well as you can. Write every word. Spot clichés and either remove them, or turn them on their heads. For example, ‘You make a happy man very old’ is a great twist on a sclerotic saying. The best advice I can give is to enjoy what you are doing, do it every day, and while doing it forget everything else.

 

My Writing Process Caroline Walker

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caroline walker, authorI came to writing through teaching. After graduating in Geology, I couldn’t find a job (in the 1970s it was virtually impossible for a woman to be employed in what was still considered a man’s world), so I changed direction and trained to teach English as a Foreign Language. It was a decision I’ve never regretted. I’ve taught teenagers, overseas graduates and business professionals both in the UK and abroad and a big part of my job was improving their writing skills for letters, reports and dissertations. It was good preparation for the writing I began at the end of 2006.

 What you have written, past and present?

I’d become fascinated by my great-uncle MacDonald ‘Max’ Gill (1884-1947), artist brother of the controversial sculptor Eric Gill. Max was best known for the beautiful maps he painted for places like Lindisfarne Castle and the humorous posters he designed for the London Underground. I was astonished to find that his story had never been told so I decided to write it myself. Over the years I’ve curated several exhibitions of his work and written text for these as well as articles for magazines such as Country Life. This year – fourteen years after I started – my biography MacDonald Gill: Charting a Life has finally been published, receiving a five-star rating in its first national review.

What are you promoting now?

Recently I’ve been busy writing articles for various publications to promote the biography. I don’t have any plans for another book at the moment – this one has taken so long, I think I deserve a break!

A bit about the process of writing

The key to writing a good biography is meticulous research. This has been one of the greatest pleasures too – days spent delving in libraries and archives, the excitement of finding pieces of key information and long-lost artworks, and the joy of meeting hundreds of people eager to share their own connections to Max. A pivotal moment was the discovery of a major private collection of Max’s work and memorabilia. Thankfully, I was permitted to photograph all the letters, diaries and work documents, so I could pore over these at home. I made copious notes, highlighting important events and quotes that I might want to use later. I also kept separate lists of names, artworks and key dates. Setting aside good chunks of quiet time for writing was essential, as was having a table and space of my own.

Do you plan or just write?

I don’t write a plan although I do think it’s vital to have a basic structure in mind. With a biography, it’s quite easy as it’s a chronological narrative. Writing articles is different – I always think hard about the audience so that the angle, text and images are relevant.

What about word count?

As my publisher’s submission deadline for the biography came ever closer, it was clear the manuscript was far too long so I had to make some major cuts and revisions. It still ended up at just over 300,000 words! 

What do you find hard about writing?

I was unsure how to begin until a writer friend suggested: ‘Why don’t you start by setting down why you want to write this book?’ So that’s what I did. The words then flowed easily and I often found it hard to stop. I do sometimes agonise over sentences and even single words – I may change a passage umpteen times but end up with the original. 

What do you love about writing?

It’s an absorbing, creative process that – for me – has been the way to achieve recognition for a neglected artist and relative. And I now realise that I can actually write quite well!

Advice for other writers

Don’t be afraid of the blank page – just get something down – you can always change it. Use your own ‘voice’ – don’t be tempted to copy others. Remember to save when you’re writing (I once lost several pages when my laptop crashed). Avoid cliché and don’t be afraid of using tools such as a thesaurus if you can’t find the right word. And finally, have faith in yourself and enjoy the experience!

MacDonald Gill: Charting a Life is available here. 

The Books That Changed Me by Catherine Yardley

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Is there anything more powerful than a book? I don’t think so. Life-changing, knowledge-giving, and entertainment. Though sometimes not all at once. They have the power to change the world and make us feel every emotion under the sun. With that in mind, here are the books that changed me and made me the women I am today.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

This book follows Raskolnikov, an poor student wrought out by his own nihilism, and thoughts of the struggle between good and evil. He brutally murders an old woman who is a pawnbroker as he beliefs he is above the law. He justifies his actions, but later is overwhelmed with guilt and terror. Raskolnikov confesses to the crime and goes to prison. He realises that happiness and redemption is only achieved through suffering.

This is an intense psychological thriller from the most famous Russian novelist. Dostoyevsky was in a bad way when he wrote it, his wife and brother had both died and he was living in poverty. Crime and Punishment will awaken your brain and make you rethink your opinions on crime and punishment. This is the perfect book on redemption and how our actions in life matter. The very last page has some of my favourite lines in literature, including the fact that a new life is not given for nothing. I will not spoiler you by sharing anymore but it is a hard, yet fascinating read. It opens your brain right up and makes you more intelligent by the end. Do not just read books that are easy to read, that is not how you end up smarter.

Life if Pi by Yann Martel .

A ship sinks and a boy ends up on a raft with a tiger he calls Richard Parker. This is a book about survival and wisdom. It is outrageous with its plot but is never not believable. This spiritual novel changed my entire way of thinking. This book will feed your imagination like nothing on earth. It is so cleverly done I will be forever be jealous that I will never be as good a writer as Yann Martel . It was made into a film that is a good enough watch, but the book is untouchable. This book left me with a spiritualness that has stayed with me until this day. Read it with a highlighter pen and go back to it often.

Catherine Balavage with Margaret Graham at the Words For The Wounded Literary Festival

Catherine Yardley with Margaret Graham at the Words For The Wounded Literary Festival

Becoming by Michelle Obama.

Before reading this searingly honest memoir from the former First Lady of the United States I felt like a failure as I had never become who I was supposed to be. I was forever changing and no one ever told me that was a good, and normal, thing. There are so many stunning quotes in this book and it is filled with wisdom. Michelle Obama leaves no part of her life untold: she discusses miscarriages, IVF, politics, race and her marriage. Michelle is from a working class background and her father was disabled. She has triumphed through hard work and intelligence. I cannot think of anyone I find more inspirational than Michelle Obama. Well, other than the next novelist….

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

Maya Angelou. What a woman. What a life. What a writer. I am full of admiration and awe. I am obsessed with Maya Angelou. I read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings when I was about thirteen. I already wanted to be a writer and I was already writing. I knew I was nowhere near as good a writer as Maya Angelou, I doubt I ever will be. What  I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings did for me was crack me open like a nut. I learned a lot about racism and I became even more political, I also learned a lot about life and wisdom. I learnt that everyone has a hard life and we should be kinder to each other. It is more than a good book, it is a book that teaches you that strength of character, and a love of reading, can overcome trauma and create a beautiful life.

The Wives By Lauren Weisberger.

This book makes me appear much more fun than my other selections, I am aware. Lol. I think Lauren Weisberger is underrated. She has such a keen eye for detail and the satire of everyday life. Yes, there is The Devil Wears Prada which was a runaway (ahem) success. Lauren holds a mirror up to sections of society and captures them with absolute perfection. Her characters are honest, flawed and real. She makes me laugh and nod, and cry all at once. The Wives is a sassy and entertaining sequel to The Devil Wears Prada. It features Emily, you know, the one who looked great in her dress because anytime she was about to faint she ‘ate a tiny bit of cheese.’ Her books are a joy to read because she makes writing them look easy. There are anything but and Lauren Weisberger is a fearless writer.

The Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook.

Now, this book really did change my life. I have written my entire life. I wrote poems when I was in single figures and I tried to write my first novel when I was ten. It was terrible and I only got to fourteen pages. They were all written longhand. I decided to send some of my poems off but, how and where? Enter this book. It had so much advice and numerous agents and publishers to send my stuff too. I still use it to this day. The 2021 version has pride of place on my desk. This is an essential and life-changing book for all writers.

Guests of The Emperor By Janice Young-Brooks.

My parents have always had a house full of books. We had so many bookcases and books our home was more like a library. One of the books on my parents shelf was Guests of The Emperor By Janice Young-Brooks. It is a World War II novel about a group of women who are ‘guests’ in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. The characters were so vivid and the story so well told it has always stayed with me. It is a good history lesson too.

What books changed you? Send us your selection to frostmagaziine@gmail.com.

My debut novel, Ember, is available here and here.

 

A STUDY OF STUDIOS: AN INTERVIEW WITH ART AUTHOR ROSIE OSBORNE

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Rosie Osborne, author, While still in her teens, author and award-winning photographer Rosie Osborne made a vow to herself. She promised that by the time she turned 30 she would have published a book collecting her exclusive access-all-areas interviews with some of the UK’s most dynamic contemporary artists such as Sylvette David and Danny Fox. 

All those years later she achieved her ambition and the result is fascinating new coffee-table tome Free Spirits. We caught up with Rosie to find out more…

Q. Free Spirits is obviously aimed at art lovers, but what do you think is its unique appeal?

A. I hope that it offers an insight into the private side of artistic practice, and the everyday struggles and triumphs that artists experience. I think there’s a very human side of art that can sometimes be hidden by the polished gallery shows or the museum retrospectives and that’s what I have tried to delve into.

Q. All the interviewees must have been fascinating to speak with, but are there any that especially stand out to you?

A. Interviewing British artist Danny Fox last year was fascinating. Fox is a self-taught painter who grew up in St Ives, Cornwall, where I spent a lot of my childhood. As a teenager, he worked long hours in restaurant kitchens, washing up dishes to save up to buy paint. I remember him saying at the time that if he was offered a job with more responsibility, he’d turn it down, because he didn’t want to take up the mind space that he needed for painting. I went to his first exhibition in St Ives when I was 15 and was really moved by his painting style. Although Danny didn’t go to art school or have any contacts, he moved to London, where his work started to gain more and more recognition. Over the years following, his paintings were featured in shows all over Europe and America, and he is now based in Los Angeles, California. Danny’s work ethic from day one always inspired me, and his paintings are amongst my favourites, up with Picasso and Matisse. Last year, 15 years after attending his first exhibition, I interviewed Danny back in Cornwall. It was so interesting to discuss all of the years that had passed, especially back in St Ives, where it all started.

Q. You interviewed artists over a space of 17 years. Does this mean there are more interviews yet to be published and, if so, what are your plans in this regard?

A. Yes, I selected 13 interviews for Free Spirits, but I’ve got around a hundred interviews ready for publication. I publish some interviews on my website, but I hold on to lots in order to wait until what feels like the right time to release them.

A.  You were only a teenager when you started conducting the interviews. Did you find any resistance to your interview requests and how did you overcome this?

A. I’ve learnt that it’s really important to use rejection to propel you to move forward. Many of my requests to interview my favourite artists as a teenager were left unread, or I just never heard back from them. Over the years, I started to see it as a process of elimination. Four artists out of five may not have replied, but one often did. Putting everything into making that one interview as good as it could possibly be would mean that the likelihood of future artists saying ‘yes’ was much more promising. I saw it as a process, like any person learning to improve or perfect their trade. Nothing comes easy. I truly believe that if you can learn to take rejection on the chin, and turn it into a positive force, nothing can hold you back from getting to where you’ve always wanted to be.

Q. How would you describe the importance of contemporary art to those who may not be familiar with it?

A. I think that in order to attempt to understand contemporary art, it helps to look back to what came before it. Picasso said that, “Every act of creation begins with an act of destruction”. Everything in art is consciously, or subconsciously, a reaction to something that has come before it, so the symbolism or meaning of a piece of contemporary art can sometimes be linked to something that came hundreds of years before.

Q. If you could travel back in time, which one artist from the past would you like to speak with, and what would you ask them?

A. I’d love to interview Henri Matisse, towards the end of his life when he worked from his studio in a wheelchair. After undergoing surgery for cancer, he lost his mobility. Instead of giving up, Matisse drew incessantly and rediscovered the medium of paper cutouts. He talked about how he felt completely reenergised, and called the last 14 years of his life “une seconde vie” (his second life.) I’d love to ask him about this stage of his life, and how the work that he was able to do in the studio, in a sense, saved him.

Q. Your book features a wealth of photos with the artists in their studios. Why did you think this important to include?

A. It’s impossible to describe some of the studio scenes in the book with words! They’re all completely different: some are orderly and tidy and some are filled floor to ceiling with collected objects and everyday items alongside art materials. A studio space that I really enjoyed documenting a couple of years ago belonged to Cornish artist Samuel Bassett. I tried to take photographs of his working space that were really honest, so that the reader feels as if they’re standing in the room, observing every detail. His small studio was filled with surfboards, crates of paint, sofas, packs of cereal, saucepans and all of his kitchen items, along with works in progress and paint dripped over absolutely everything. It was great fun spending time there. It’s honestly impossible to describe, but the images say it all! Artists’ working spaces are often very transient places. As Samuel no longer paints there, the room was painted white, ready for the next artist, and the spirit of that room has changed and become something else. That’s why I felt compelled to try to record the atmosphere in that room in some way.

Q. Free Spirits also serves as a memoir of your personal development. What achievements to date are you most proud of?

A. Getting the book out into the public sphere felt really significant to me. I promised myself at 17 years old that I’d publish the book before I turned 30. Free Spirits came out the day before my 30th birthday. It’s definitely the personal accomplishment that I feel most proud of.

Free Spirits by Rosie Osborne is available now, priced £30 in hardcover. Visit www.rosieosborne.com 

 

Anxiety and Modern Identity

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Anxiety and the pressures of modern life seem to go hand-in-hand, with many describing the crippling condition as a ‘21st century epidemic’.  Author Steven Romain is no stranger to anxiety and has drawn upon his own experiences of the illness for his new literary novel, True-Life Walter, which features a central character who takes radical action to rid himself of anxiety, and by so doing also finds himself freed for the first time from the oppressive burden of social expectation.  

By Steven Romain

Caption: Author Steven Romain believes that anxiety is deeply connected to the confining expectations thrust upon us in the 21st century. Copyright Steven Romain 2019

The only people whose ideas about anxiety should be listened to are those who actually experience it. Like a wild dog, anxiety has a particular nature, conducts itself in specific ways, and is even characterised by unusually acute powers. A wild dog hears the heartbeats of a herd of springbok from a hundred metres away and selects the buck with the weakest heartbeat as his target. They have a ninety percent success rate as hunters. 

The complication with being human is that the definition of success eludes our grasp. If those walking around the world with anxiety are impaired in certain ways, and we may safely say they are, they are also gifted with special powers like artistic sensitivity; a highly suggestive imagination; and empathy. In addition, the fact of living with the condition for many years fosters wonderful species of fortitude and bravery. It is impossible for a non-sufferer to know what I mean, but it is a fact that simply getting up in the morning and dressing is, for many people, a great achievement. It’s very much like escaping from the captivity of a sadistic bandit.

The anxiety-sufferer wrestles with his angel from the moment he wakes up in the morning till the moment he falls asleep at night. To me, (especially since I am one of the club), it’s clear that this battle forges a person’s personality to a tremendous degree. And this brings us back to the question of defining a successful hunt for human beings. Who among us is living a successful life? 

Caption: Author Steven Romain, an ordained rabbi, draws strength from his faith to make sense of an increasingly chaotic and superficial world. Copyright Steven Romain 2019

Many might point to the socially adjusted, the financially successful, the intelligent, or the famous. All these I would characterize as effective in some way. I, for my part, see something wrong with this view. Look around you at the world: stars, galaxies, electrons, insects, fire, water, ice, elephants—not to mention dreams, visions and spirits. This is a world which is marvelously complex and mystical, held to together inexplicably by The Holy One. And the crown of it is man, but what was he put here for? To become something, to know his Creator, in my opinion, but the point I wish to make is that G-d didn’t make this wonderfully interconnected world so that there should be people sitting at coffee-shops punching buttons on phones. This can be a pleasant pastime and I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I do think the question of ‘What was I put here to do?’ should be one that is considered in relation to our actual lives and not just pondered theoretically. Effective people can’t be the point of the whole world, for the reason that their effectivity only solves problems, and the Creator did not make the world to solve a problem, since He has none.

If you agree with me that dressing in the morning might be a genuine achievement, you probably also agree with me that succeeding in school, university, socially, romantically, or spiritually do not necessarily make for real achievement. Just a little bit of thought suffices to prove this. Each one of the items on this list is naturally easy for thousands of people, making for little challenge, and for thousands of others an apparent success in one of these areas would really be a failure. Take, for example, someone whose life circumstances are such that academic achievement is inappropriate for him. He has a pressing need to earn money. His graduation seals a four-year-long (and costly) wrong choice. 

A man is a very mysterious thing. Take a fresh look at him: what is he? He is made, in the sense that his powers and faculties are determined by his Creator, but he also makes himself. A very awkward man I know chose, in his youth, to devote himself to a kind of social work that entails mingling closely with tens of teenagers every day. Now, after years of habituation, no one could ever imagine him as anything else. It is what he is. And it came about purely from his choice. Plus, we all know that after the little dance we do on this earth we’ll be sailing away to a totally different place. The question that I’m proposing should at least seem like a question is: what is the dance I should do while I’m still here? The question should be asked again and again, day after day, because many of the answers we give might be straight-out wrong. There’s no point in just following everyone else’s answers: that would be like frantically neatening up an office the whole day, vacuuming and straightening and polishing, when the whole building is set for demolition.

A man like me wakes up this morning and faces the familiar forms of his anxiety, like an old enemy standing over his bed, waiting for him. Who is to say what it means—in this fantastically mysterious world—that he manages to put on his shirt, his pants, his shoes, drink a cup of coffee and drive to the supermarket? Maybe, as a result, it will rain on farms in Kenya. Maybe, when he leaves this world in his old age, the angels will tell him that the dance he did down here was just perfect: the heavenly hosts were cheering him on for every move. And maybe a man who is sentimentally eulogized as the greatest benefactor of mankind in his generation, a lifelong philanthropist, is told by the angels, on his departure from this world, that his life was a dismal failure. A totally different dance was expected of him.

Caption: Steven Romain’s new literary novel True-Life Walter features a central character suffering from extreme anxiety. His actions to free himself from the condition, and what follows, elucidate the deeper meanings of identity and purpose in post-Apartheid South African society. Copyright Steven Romain 2019

The relationship between anxiety and the crisis of identity in our age, in which many of us are divorced, for certain reasons, from our real purpose, is too complex to deal with in a short article. Like everything in G-d’s world, anxiety is not only one thing. The Divine wisdom manifests through it in many different ways. But it is worth noting that, through anxiety, we disable our own lives in their futile rush toward vain ends. We are forced to re-evaluate what we are and what we want to be. 

In my novel, True-Life Walter, I explore modern anxiety by depicting it in the setting of modern Johannesburg, where, for men of colour like my protagonist, new identity is built every day. New lives are lived in newly discovered social and economic statuses. New possibilities of achievement dawn all the time: identities shift and change. As does any writer who strives for real art, I strive to render the suchness of anxiety in modern life without reducing it to easy tropes and explanations. In this way, literature has a unique power in assisting our understanding of anxiety, which is, at this point, an issue we need to take strides toward, not so much comprehending, as appreciating.

True-Life Walter by Steven Romain is available on Amazon priced £3.47 in paperback and £2.46 as an eBook.

My Writing Process – Damaris Young

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damaris young, author, the switching hourI was an avid reader growing up. I would try and copy my favourite stories, filling notebooks with fantastical worlds much like Alice’s wonderland. As my confidence grew, I started writing stories of my own, often to entertain my four younger brothers and sisters. When I moved to Bristol as an adult, I continued writing stories, eventually studying on the Bath Spa Writing for Young People MA, where I wrote my debut children’s novel, The Switching Hour. 

The Switching Hour is my first published book, but I have been writing stories ever since I can remember. I have so many half-written novels hidden away in my desk draw and on long-lost USB sticks!

What you are promoting now?

My debut The Switching Hour, a fantasy story aimed at young readers, is being published by Scholastic on the 1st August. It is about a girl called Amaya who lives with her grandmother, her small brother Kaleb and her pet goat in a land suffering a terrible drought. Every night, the doors must be locked after twilight, the Switching Hour, because the drought has awoken Badeko, a creature that snatches people away to eat their dreams. Three days later, the memory that they existed is gone from those that knew them, and those that are left are afflicted with The Sorrow Sickness – a grief which consumes a person without them knowing why. When Kaleb is taken by Badeko, Amaya must journey into the terrifying forest to find her brother before she forgets him.

The Bookseller has reviewed it as being ‘Highly atmospheric and genuinely spine-tingling, the power of family and female friendships shine in this assured debut’ which was wonderfully encouraging as The Switching Hour makes it’s way into the world for the first time.

A bit about your process of writing. 

I allow the seed of the story to grow by indulging in all the different ways the plot could go, no matter how ridiculous! I spend time thinking about the characters, how they talk and think and what they want most in the world. Once I have an outline for the story, I do lots of research. For The Switching Hour, I looked into what life would be like living through an extreme weather phenomenon, as well as being inspired by my experience growing up in central and southern Africa. I also had to do a lot of research into goat behaviour as my main character has a pet goat who is very much a part of the story!
Do you plan or just write?

I get the first draft down by furiously writing, without looking back on what’s been written. Once I have the first draft written down, I put it to one side and start from scratch all over again. This may sound quite discouraging, but for me the first draft is for getting a sense of the characters, testing out the plot and immersing myself into the story. The subsequent drafts are where the planning really starts and the manuscript begins to take shape. 

What about word count?

The Switching Hour is aimed at 8-12-year-old readers, so the general word count is expected to be around 50,000 words. I’m a ferocious editor of my own work so I do find it a struggle to keep my word count up!

What about structure?

I structure my story around the key narrative points, the exposition, the inciting incident, the peak and the resolution. When you’re writing for children it is especially important that you get to the inciting incident as soon as possible, to really capture the readers attention. In The Switching Hour, the inciting incident is when Amaya’s younger brother is taken by the Badeko and she must journey into the forest to find him. If you can create intrigue from the very first page all the better! I will always rewrite my opening chapters last, which may seem strange, but it helps to understand how the story ends in order to know where the best place is for it to begin. 
What do you find hard about writing?

Self-discipline. I write from home, sitting on my sofa with my two dogs snoring next to me and I’m easily distracted by social media, emails and even the washing up when I’m in the middle of a tricky chapter! It’s important to take time away from your laptop and just allow your mind to mull over the story, letting the character take up space in your head (and heart) but there’s no getting out of the fact that you have to just sit down and WRITE! 
What do you love about writing? 

I love getting swept away by writing, when I’m immersed in the story and I’m creating something that I really care about. I also love the way that my characters can surprise me by acting in ways that I hadn’t anticipated. Amaya in The Switching Hour was initially boisterous and outgoing (something I thought I wanted her to be) but I soon found out Amaya was actually a younger version of me, someone who felt unsure of herself and sometimes alone, yet fiercely protective of those she loved.

Advice for other writers. 

Believe in yourself and your writing. It’s all very well taking courses, reading books about writing and going on writing retreats (all things that will help you improve!) but if you don’t believe in your ability it will show on the page, so be your own biggest supporter! Another piece of advice would be; don’t follow trends. The publishing process can be slow and so by the time you have written the story about the latest trend, the publishing world will have most likely moved on. Write what you enjoy and aim to write it as best you can. And most importantly, just keep writing!

The Switching Hour is available here. 

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