August 2014 – Jude Higgins

The Freecycling Writer

I’ve been giving away furniture on the Bristol freecycle site. Freecycling is great in all sorts of ways. Everyone is pleased – people get things for free which would otherwise go to the dump and they come and take away stuff almost immediately, an amazing bonus. A lovely, cheerful guy spent ages dismantling a monster Ikea bed which a tenant had left in the house. A mother and daughter patiently took a sofa apart to get it through the door, two strong women hauled out a heavy washing machine. A woman whizzed in and filetted a battered leather sofa of its cushion stuffing. She’s making her own sofa from pallets and is going to send me a picture of her creation when it’s complete.

Freecycle is brilliant for writers who are looking for stories. If you scan the daily digests of wants and offers, you get a window into people’s lives, those telling details that bring characters alive. Yesterday I saw a post from someone wanting a futon or old sofa. He said the sofa bed needed a firm mattress, enough to support a weight of ten stone. Not really that heavy, you’d think. But in this case it was for his ten stone Great Dane who needed a comfortable new bed! I do have a futon to shift, so maybe I will get to meet the man and his dog.

Last week there was a brilliant post from a man wanting to freecycle a surf board. I include it here with thanks to its author.

“Offer: One old and quite mangled green foam surfboard. It is approx 8ft, old school shape, single fin and made of soft foam, which is falling to bits. It’s probably just about surfable and guess it would be ok for messing about in the waves but not going to be great except for a laugh. Could possibly be repaired, but probably not worth it, unless you are desperate, or need a challenge. Would be good for fancy dress, or a theatrical prop, or some kind of strange project like some people seem to be doing.”

I like the idea of a story about a desperate surfer wanting a challenge, or a person involved in a strange project. I should write this story perhaps – a desperate older woman surfer in need of a new challenge in life…?

Listening as a writer

I worked for over twenty-five years as a Gestalt Psychotherapist and became an extremely good listener. To listen well, you need to bring as much as yourself as possible to the encounter with another. You shuttle between your own emotional and physical experience in response and notice how a person is speaking, as well as attending to the content. The whole body and being are involved.

As a writer, when I create characters, they live and breathe in my imagination. I picture them moving around in their world, the sound of their voices, the expression on their faces. I ‘listen’ to them to understand their motivations, empathise with their situations and guess what they might think, feel and do. I am sure most writers do this. Often, writers say their characters begin to have a life of their own – do surprising things. But in order for those characters to stay convincing in their actions, it is necessary to pay them close attention.

Gestalt therapy is primarily concerned with raising awareness, and the Gestalt therapist’s focus is to help a person become more aware of their experience – thoughts, feelings, sensations – in the present moment. In that way, change happens. Of course, there is a lot more to Gestalt therapy theoretically, (read more here) but the practice of awareness is something I always enjoyed.

Being immersed in awareness practices for years, doesn’t make it any easier to write. Sometimes I am only minimally aware of my bad writing habits. For example, I have just edited this blog and altered clumsy sentences. I am sure there are others. If I look carefully at my prose, read it out loud and listen, I can have moments of clarity. One simple question I used to ask as a Gestalt therapist was: ‘What are you aware of right now?’ You could ask yourself the same question about your writing – eg. ‘What am I aware of about my writing style?’ Or ‘What am I aware of about the process of writing?’ Listen to the answer. For eg. I asked myself this question and became more aware of constructing awkward sentences. I can’t explain the grammatical errors but if I refreshed my knowledge of grammar and understood what I was doing, it might help my writing in general – now that’s a new awareness.

When I was a psychotherapist, I sometimes used to read a poem or a short story before I started work, because it would put me in a different frame of mind and allow me to be aware of something different in myself or in the person I was working with. Reading before writing is a good practice to adopt. Like a dream, the story or poem will feed your imagination, shift your awareness and help you listen to your characters in a different way.

My 4* Review of ‘My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You’ and ‘The Heroes’ Welcome’, by Louisa Young.

‘The Heroes’ Welcome’ by Louisa Young is a sequel to ‘My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You’, the story of the lives of Peter, Riley, Nadine, Julia and Rose in the lead up to and during the Great War. I recommended the first novel to my friend, journalist Lesley Gillilian who is writing a wonderful novel partly set during the second world war and she said it was the best book she’d read all year. I agree and think the sequel is equally as good.

Many themes are covered; Louisa Young explores the characters’ struggles with class difference both in love relationships and relationships between officers and men in the trenches. There’s a fascinating contrast between Riley’s facial reconstruction by a pioneering surgeon in a military hospital and the devastating consequence of the botched face-job beautiful Julia undertakes to make herself look younger and more alluring to her traumatised husband, Peter. Yes, rich women were having their faces covered in acid one hundred years ago to ‘improve their complexions’, so it is all the more shocking to think that equally damaging ‘beauty’ procedures are promoted today. Conversely, it is all the more amazing to see the developments in plastic surgery – extraordinary events like the 3D printing of prosthetic limbs.

Other women’s issues are covered: Rose works as a nurse, and post-war is offered a scholarship to train as a doctor – almost unheard of then. She is torn. Surely her role is to look after others, rather than remain unmarried and follow her own career path? All Julia can do is be beautiful – she didn’t get an education. With little support, it’s hard for her to be a mother and a wife. Nadine struggles hard against her mother’s disapproval to marry ‘beneath her’ and become an artist.

The most striking element of both novels is the way the impact of war is shown on all the characters in different ways – psychological scarring, physical disability, ruined marriages and their affect on the next generation, alcoholism as well as the strong determination to survive and flourish against the odds. The first book shows the damage as it occurs, the second shows continuing trauma and steps to recovery. I found both books an emotional read and became very involved with the characters, so wanting ‘everything to be all right.’ Of course, as a reader, I would have been disappointed if recovery had progressed easily in a linear way. A hanky is definitely required – a retro cotton one, Dad or Grandpa sized. About two thirds of the way through ‘The Heroes’ Welcome, there’s an event that gave me such a shock, I felt almost I was witnessing it, as part of the fictional family. ‘Oh no,’ I thought. ‘That can’t be happening…things were just getting on an even keel.’ It’s a masterly stroke on the part of the author, brilliantly written.

The book does end on a hopeful note although things are not neatly tied up. Maybe Louisa Young will write a third novel charting the story of the same characters and their children up until World War Two. I can’t wait.