Landscape and Theme - by novelist Rosy Thornton

I suppose it came to me while I was walking the dogs. We have two of them, both lively and requiring a lot of exercise, so I spend a good deal of time out in the countryside around my home, in all weathers, alone with my spaniels and my thoughts. It’s actually when I’ve done a lot of my best ‘writing’ over the years, for all that I carry no notebook or pen: I’ve constructed dialogue, solved log jams in plots, and reached understandings of my characters’ motivation.

Home for me is the flatlands of the Cambridgeshire fens, a landscape which is far from commanding immediate attention. Wide, wet and as lacking in features as it is in contours, it provides in many ways the ultimate blank canvas against which to project the constructs of one’s own imagination. Much of the time, I never saw my surroundings at all.

Setting, however, has always held a particular fascination for me. I’d just finished writing a novel (The Tapestry of Love, 2010) in which landscape played a major role: in that case, the dramatic mountain beauty of the French Cevennes. This set me to thinking about why I had chosen to locate the book in a place so spectacularly different from my own. It set me to thinking, but also to looking: really looking at the fens in a way I had hitherto been too preoccupied to do. Because once you open your eyes to it, the fens have a drama all of their own.

First there is the water. Once, not many centuries ago, this land was rescued from it by a process of damming and pumping and draining, and every year – with or without human connivance in the shape of global warming – the water threatens to reclaim its own. It clogs the fat, black, peaty soil; it runs and trickles in ditches and culverts; it lies never far beneath the surface of the fields so that a mere half-day’s rain can swell it into flood.

Then there is the wind: this is a landscape windswept like no other I have known. To the east and north, nothing rises by more than a few dozen feet above sea level between here and the steppes of Siberia, and you can tell. Walking in one direction the going may be easy, the sun warm on your face, but turn back and the breath is knocked out of you in an instant; blinded by tears, you’re forced to lean into the blast like Amundsen nearing the Pole.

So, when I realised that I had to write a novel with the fens as a backdrop, it was neither character nor plot which came to me first but theme. This had to be a book about the elements, so constant a presence in the fen landscape – a book about fire and water, earth and air. Ninepins is, on its surface, a standard work of women’s fiction, a book about families and relationships, about mothers and daughters. But percolating through it, like water beneath the reclaimed soil of the fens, lurks the thematic pull exerted by its setting. As I told my story, I found the same ideas kept intruding: of breath and breathing, fire and flood, choking and drowning.

Walking the dogs has never been quite the same since.



Rosy Thornton writes commercial women’s fiction as well as lecturing in Law at the University of Cambridge, where she is a Fellow of Emmanuel College. Her previous novels include Hearts and Minds (2008) and The Tapestry of Love (2010). Her fifth novel, Ninepins, will be published by Sandstone Press on 19th April 2012.

Guest Blog by Rosy Thornton - The Rights and Responsibilities of the Writer

Writers around the world have always been in the forefront of the fight for freedom of expression. Here in the UK, of course, we have that right, enshrined in the Human Rights Act and article 10 of the European Convention. Which means that as a novelist I can write whatever I want. Can’t I?

The thing is, though, that with rights come responsibilities. I was brought up on the feminist writings of the 1980s (Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings and others) which critiqued the traditional, liberal, rights-based ethics with which we are all so familiar, proposing that the moral regulation of human conduct should be founded less on individual rights and more on a recognition of community, of interrelationality, of responsibility: a so-called ‘ethics of care’.

Oops, slid into lecture mode there for a moment. I can hear you muttering: what on earth has this stuff got to do with writing commercial women’s fiction?

Well, freedom of expression means that an author is free to write about whatever characters she chooses, and to endow them with whatever views and attitudes she wishes. Besides which, we have to be true to our characters, don’t we? We have to reflect the world as it exists. A novel is not a soapbox.

But my personal version of the ‘ethics of care’ tells me that the flipside of freedom of expression is responsibility for what we choose to express; that as writers we have a duty to think about the potential impact of our work on those who read it. Societal attitudes are influenced not only by upbringing, family, friends and workmates, and by the news media, but also by the ambient culture: by film and television, and by the books we read.

It is for this reason that, speaking personally, I would never write a character who held views which were intolerant (racist, sexist, homophobic…) and who did not have those views challenged before the end of the book.

Even though much of my work is romantically themed, I would never write a story in which a female character relied for her self-worth, her entire happiness, her 'redemption', upon finding a man. I would not write a moody 'alpha' hero who is mean and even cruel but whose meanness is portrayed in a sexy light – even though there are whole swathes of genre fiction pedalled to young women which are based on precisely this scenario. I would only ever write female characters who are strong and independent and follow their own ends, and are in control of their sexuality.

These decisions are entirely personal – just my own individual choices. I'm not saying other writers 'ought' to make the same decisions. But we are all responsible for the stories we elect to write. They do not arise in a vacuum. And for me, although the way I write about the characters, interactions and relationships I portray is dictated (I hope) by being truthful to my characters, my choice of story is to some extent prescribed by my personal moral politics.

Does that make me peculiar? Very probably. But this is me trying to be honest about a difficult subject.

Rosy Thornton is a successful, talented writer of Women's Fiction. Do visit her website here.

Guest Blog by Rosy Thornton - Whose Voice is it Anyway?

The novel I have just finished writing is narrated exclusively from one point of view. It’s not in first person, it’s in third, but I tell the story entirely via the perspective of my main character, Catherine. This is the first time I’ve tried this approach, having always previously narrated events from a variety of viewpoints.

Catherine and I have been together for nine months now and we have come to know each other pretty well. So well, in fact, that we are now almost inseparable: she’s there in my head when I’m walking the dog, when I’m chopping vegetables for the kids’ tea and even (see how intimate we are!) when I’m lying in the bath.

Fair enough, you might say. Good characterisation is premised on our ability to know our characters inside out. My problem, though, is that we are almost too close. I have begun to lose my ability to tell where my thoughts end and Catherine’s begin.

The key to writing good fiction, we are told, is ‘voice’. We have to develop our own individual style of expression, because that’s what will make our work fresh and original and distinct. But our characters, we are warned, need voices of their own, too: also distinctive, also unique. For me, with this book, the two have begun to blur in my mind. My voice and Catherine’s – which is which?

It ought to be easiest to tell us apart when I’m writing dialogue. If Catherine is speaking, using her own words, then that’s her own voice, right? But even then it’s probably 2 or 5 or 10% me. Across characters and across novels, it should still read like my writing, shouldn’t it? Mr Darcy doesn’t talk like Colonel Brandon, nor Emma Wodehouse like Anne Elliot, but in the speech patterns of all four we nevertheless recognise a unique Jane Austen style of dialogue.

Then there’s the narrative – all that undifferentiated other stuff that’s not in inverted commas. That should be in my voice, yes? Or should it? Because if I’m in Catherine’s viewpoint, and seeing events with her eyes, shouldn’t the narrative be partly her as well as partly me?

I think the percentage of each of our voices present in the mix varies across different parts of the narrative.

Sometimes I’m absolutely inside Catherine’s head, and what I am saying about events is more less entirely in Catherine’s own words, just as if it were external dialogue. (Some authors use italics or even tags – ‘she thought’, etc. – at such points, to indicate it’s the character’s own internal musings. But in ‘free indirect style’ which most of us now adopt, we don’t need to bother, right?)

At other times, although I’m telling the story from Catherine’s point of view, I’m more detached from her immediate thoughts, telling them from the outside. Here I use my own narrative voice far more, my own choice of words and patterns of construction more than hers.

Those are just the two extremes, however, and there is a whole muddled spectrum of shades in between, where the me-to-Catherine ratio swings to and fro, often with bits of me and bits of her thrown in cheek by jowl without any tidy separation. Small wonder if she and I suffer an occasional confusion of identities!

How about this little exchange, as an example? Catherine is talking to her ex-husband, Graeme, who has just split up with his second wife, Suzannah.

Catherine laid her hand on top of his, where it still rested on her arm. ‘And how about you? How are you doing?’
Without Suzannah. She genuinely wanted to know, and she knew he knew it.
‘Not too bad. I guess we both saw it coming, but it didn’t make it any easier.’
Is this what remained, eight years after a marriage? A residual loyal watchfulness; a fearfulness for each other’s hurts.

Some snippets of the commentary which frames the conversation are 95% Catherine. ‘Without Suzannah’, for example. Or the two sentences beginning ‘Is this what remained…?’ Those are her reflections, not mine.

But when I say ‘Catherine laid her hand on top of his’, that’s pretty well 100% me. Similarly, ‘She genuinely wanted to know’ – although it’s still from her viewpoint in that I am giving the reader access to her thoughts – is probably 80% me, because those are my words. She wants to know, but she isn’t thinking with her conscious mind, ‘Ooo, I genuinely want to know.’

Whereas that phrase ‘she knew he knew it’ is, I’d say, close to 50:50. On one level it’s me saying to the reader that he knew she knew, but it’s also a characteristically Catherine-like phrase – and actually, because we’re in her viewpoint, I’m also indirectly letting the reader know that Catherine knows that he knows she knows…

Confused yet? I thought so. And if you’re confused about what’s what and who’s who, then you are coming somewhere close to understanding my chronic identity crisis!

Strictly Writing is very pleased to welcome back Rosy Thornton. The paperback of her most recent novel, Crossed Wires, is now available.

The Winners are...

Firstly, the winner of our Guest Blog Competition is…GARY WILSON!

Well done, Gary, for your intriguing idea of writing about “What is Inspiration?” Gary’s post will appear in June when he will receive a signed copy of our very own Rebecca Connell’s Art of Losing.
We would also like to give special mention to Deborah Durbin, Julie P and Deborah Riccio for their thought-provoking entries!



Secondly, the winner of our Rosy Thornton Prize Giveaway, decided under our usual stringent conditions (one of my children drawing a name from a hat) is… GARYFEN!

Well done! Gary seems to be the lucky name this month! Email me your address and we’ll post you the signed copy of Crossed Wires.


And lastly, we Strictly Writers are winners, having managed to persuade two talented writers to join our team! A big welcome to the lovely Fionnuala Kearney and Roderic Vincent who is hoping to inject a bit of testosterone into the proceedings. It’s great to have you both on board and we look forward to reading your opinions.


Have a great Bank Holiday everyone! We’ll be posting again on Tuesday.

Quickfire Questions with... Rosy Thornton...+ Prize Giveaway

Rosy Thornton is a talented author of Women's Fiction. Have a chance to win her third novel, Crossed Wires, which has just come out in paperback, by posting a comment! The winner shall be drawn from a hat and announced this coming Friday, 1st May. (Sorry, Strictly Writers are not eligible!)

Who is your literary hero?
Harriet Vane from Dorothy L Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey novels.

Which 3 writers, living or dead, would you invite to dinner?
Elizabeth Gaskell, Simone de Beauvoir and Maya Angelou – three women who’d really set the world to rights.

What's your favourite writing snack?
I have a fetish for dried mango at the moment – texture like shoe leather but tastes like heaven.

Longhand first or computer?
Computer – but I do jot things down on old shopping receipts sometimes, when waiting at red traffic lights.

Win Booker prize or land Hollywood film deal?
Both, please!

Daily Mail or The Times?
Neither. Not really a tabloid girl, and I won’t buy a Murdoch newspaper!

Independent bookshop or Amazon?
Huge guilt trip, this question. I know what the answer ought to be, but Amazon is so easy.

Left on a cliffhanger or told all?
Cliffhanger – or at least a nice, muddy ending.

You really must read…
Anything by Barbara Trapido.

My biggest tip for a fiction writer is…
Don’t be too hidebound by ‘the rules’ – relax and find your own voice.

I am inspired by...
People and their endlessly entertaining foibles.

Writing - a hobby, passion or unhealthy obsession?
A bit of all three.

My proudest writing moment so far has been...
Being compared to Barbara Pym.

My family thinks my writing is...
A bit annoying, because they’d rather I were playing Cluedo.

The worst thing about writing is...
There never being enough time to do it!

The winner is...

Under Strictly-controlled conditions (i.e. Sam's son pulling a name out of a hat), the prize draw for a signed copy of Kill-Grief has taken place, and the winner is...

LUISA

Well done Luisa – please email me at caro_rance (at) hotmail.com with your address, and I'll get the book in the post to you.

A huge thank you to everyone who took part and left such entertaining comments. There are more chances to win coming up soon on Strictly Writing, starting with a prize draw for Rosy Thornton's latest novel, Crossed Wires, on Tuesday 28 April. Then on 1 May we'll be announcing the winner of our Guest Blogger competition, so check back then to find out who has won a copy of Becky's book The Art of Losing , plus their article featured on Strictly Writing.

There'll also be more competitions coming up in May, plus of course the usual entertaining (we hope) words of wisdom from the regulars.

For now, though, I'll take this opportunity to indulge in one last little bit of shameless self-promotion, at risk of being told off by my fellow Strictly Writers. Here's a video trailer I made for my book, which is available here. Thanks for watching, and see you next time.


Caroline

Is There Anybody There? - Guest Blog by Rosy Thornton

Writing – any writing – is an exercise in communication. Writing fiction, in particular, is a peculiarly intimate kind of communication. The writer creates a private world which she wants others to share and enjoy; she puts down on paper, through the medium of story, some of her most personal thoughts and feelings about life, relationships and the things that are truly important, because she feels she has ideas to impart. And then…?

For the unpublished writer, the hoped-for dialogue is all in the future; the lack of anywhere to obtain feedback and validation is a perennial and much-vented problem. But when I am published, you tell yourself, all that will change. At last people will read what I have to say. I will get to communicate.

So, your book is eventually published, your words go winging out into the world. And… nothing happens. There is no dialogue – only the same buzzing monologue there always was inside your head. After a time you receive figures of sales, and of library borrowings, and you stare at them and tell yourself that, yes, some real people must actually have read your book. But what did they think of it? Did they get past chapter three? Did they agree with you?

HELLO, you want to shout, IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?

Then one day you receive your first piece of ‘fanmail’. Now, I shouldn’t want to give the impression here that I am some kind of popular writer or anything. With three novels published, my mailbag has contained to date – from persons to whom I am unrelated – precisely five letters. But each one has been a pearl, a diamond, a precious drop of glistening response from out of the otherwise echoing void.

What I have loved about my (five) readers’ letters has been their diversity – and also the way in which, in every case, something I wrote spoke very personally to somebody somewhere whom I don’t know and will almost certainly never meet.

My first novel ends with Ipswich’s first gay wedding, on the day that the Civil Partnership Act came into force. I received an e-mail from one of the staff who was on duty at Ipswich Register Office on the day in question, and actually presided at the town’s first civil partnership ceremony. She said she felt as if the book had been written especially for her.

My second novel is set in a fictional Cambridge college. A gentleman who was at my own college many years ago wrote me a letter (signing himself gloriously with the words ‘matric. 1957’ beneath his name) to tell me how interesting it was to hear what the place was like these days – what with there being women about now, and everything.

A widowed grandmother in Western Australia got in touch to say how much she had enjoyed my book. Just one sentence, in particular, out of the many thousands I had written, had connected with her – about how the little everyday things, which used to be imbued with such meaning, suddenly seem empty and valueless when there is nobody there to share them with. She still sometimes talks to her dead husband, she admitted, even after twelve years alone. It was a comfort, she said, to read about someone else feeling the same way.

Have you read a book recently and enjoyed it? Did it resonate in any small way with the experiences of your own life?

If so, then think of the lonely and frustrated writer, sitting in isolation at her keyboard. Dig out some notepaper – or click on the author’s website and find the contact page. Write back. Let her know she has communicated: that she has been heard and understood.

Right, I’m off now – to write a letter to the author of the book I’ve just finished.

Rosy

(matric. 1982)


Rosy Thornton is an exciting, original author of contemporary women's fiction and has three novels published by Headline Review - "More Than Love Letters", "Hearts and Minds" and this year's "Crossed Wires". Do visit her website at http://rosythornton.com/