Delighted to share a short story of mine, recently published by Epoque Press in the 7th Edition of their é-zine, on the theme of ‘Isolation’.
You can read BOOMER TRUDY alongside some other wonderful work, HERE
Feature Image is copyright of Epoque Press. 2020
Unprecedented days. If you’re struggling, you’re not alone – and you know what – unless you are one of our magnificent and brave frontline/essential services workers, not afforded the option of self-isolating – staying safe, healthy and sane are all that most of us need to concentrate on right now.
For the writers among us, productivity may have waned, which may also have us feeling a strange kind of guilt, so I thought I’d share this Facebook post from 2011:
This was a much appreciated ‘break in the clouds’ at the time, and if it helps any emerging writer to go easy on themselves, I’m happy to share that it took me so many years to finish Lady Beth. It was always a marathon. It was never a sprint.
For most of that time, I was riddled with self-doubt. Convinced myself that no-one would want to read it. That no-one would be interested in what I had to say. Then it happened. I got a break – someone saw the potential. And it fired me up again. I kept at it – for another six years until I published it on 2017 – though I continued to struggle. (Still do!) But what I’ve learned is that if it’s in your blood to be a writer, you’ll be one.
It will and should take time. You will and should have difficult days when you question why and what for. You’ll be sticking your neck out, your ego out, your vulnerability. Not everyone will be kind and supportive. Those voices might even deafen you. Paralyse you.
Consider those battle scars as ammunition. Wear those nasty paper cuts with pride as you learn to push aside the negative forces. Shove them out of your way so that you can hear those others. The positive voices. The encouragers. The mentors. The enablers.
Take your time. You’ll be honing your craft ‘til the day you die. Be open to making mistakes, but also be open to learning from them. It’s not a competition. It’s just you and the words. Tell your stories. Take all the time you need to tell them in your unique voice.
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A writer and filmmaker, Caroline is the author of the novel LADY BETH and the writer/director the short film FRAMED (2018). An award-winning screenwriter, she has also written the short films IN RIBBONS (2015) and ADAM (2013).
Strange days are these, and everywhere I turn, there is advice for writers. How to make the best of all this spare time during social isolation. How to be more productive. How to finish that WIP. And I fell into all of it — putting pressure on myself to produce, to create, though nothing of worth was emerging.
I was riddled with guilt that I wasn’t writing — until I copped on!
So I stopped trying. Left it alone. Shut the laptop and stacked the notebooks. I read more books, practiced my amateur knitting, stared out the window, did some housework (only the essential stuff!) and used the time to let the mind wander. To let new thoughts percolate. To be inspired.
And this happened: Not Writing. A Poem (Of Sorts) published by Pendemic, a wonderful site, created to publish new writing in response to Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Check it out for some insightful writing and writers.
Not Writing
Of disquiet
The pang that lingers as reality bites
Mornings open to inspection
What next?
Of the belly ache. Someone forgotten
The distance. Forced and unnatural
Of the worry
The vulnerable
The children not cherished
Of fragile safety nets undone
And inevitable loss
Of love for kin held close
And the hollow of their absence
Of soul friends
The warmth of their knowing
Of energy sent and received
Of being blessed
Of hitting the reset button
For the chance to begin again.
The thing is, we all have the belly aches, the worries that churn. We are all filled with self doubt that our art doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to a world in turmoil. A world closing in to protect itself. To protect us. But, we’re a resilient bunch, us humans. We’ll get through this. We will thrive and we will reset.
And the creativity will flow.
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Caroline E Farrell is a writer and filmmaker. She is the author of the novel, LADY BETH and the Writer/Director of the short film FRAMED. She is also the writer of the short films IN RIBBONS and ADAM.
One thing that all writers can agree on is that we are fascinated with the surface of things, or rather, with picking away the veneer from the surface of things. That invisible gauze between thought and process, where all the ‘what ifs’ wait for us to discover them. To decode. To create story, the stuff of good and evil, of life and death. Through the written word, I lean into the path of freedom of expression. My writer’s palette is abundant with words and tones that build worlds around my troubled characters, writing through the tangle of the dark, I like to call the process. I am currently back there, in the beautiful mire of my next novel, a ghost story. My heroine is a complex character with a dark past, similar, yet different to the female protagonist of my last novel, Lady Beth – primarily a suspense thriller, but as the story darkens, a tone of otherworldliness creeps into the subtext.
I am comfortable with the gothic nature of my fiction, my heroines are generally deeply haunted protagonists – but when asked to define what kind of writer I am, I find it a struggle to come up with a single term that fits. I’d rather not be categorised by genre, and just let the reader decide, for like all writers, I just want my work to be read, to be understood, to be impactful, and perhaps, if I’m lucky, to be remembered. The visual artist, without rules or constraints, uses colour and imagination to build his or her vision on canvas. The filmmaker uses images and action. No-one questions the independence or uniqueness of their creations, how they blend and sculpt. As creators, we all have something in common, the universal medium of storytelling. And hero or heroine, we are all unique.
I am one who regularly wakes up between the hours of three and four in the morning, the witching hour, some might call it, when the in-between spaces open up and invite my imagination to step right in. It is between these layers where story lives, a pure form of escapism, like vivid dreaming, and when I go there, however dark the ideas become, I am happy to stay. Many writers develop an intrigue for the dark side of human nature from a personal place; early trauma or a challenging experience. I am no exception. My experiences have become my personal mythology, the stuff that gives meaning to my life and work and helps me to make sense of the world I live in, and all of that directly affects the stories I choose to tell.
Storytellers cherish the power of memory, and the knowledge that even during fractured times, absorbing all of the experiences, good and bad, will grow that innate sense of knowing, of curiosity and empathy, the most essential components for any writer’s toolbox. My understanding of this deepened when I read Joseph Campbell’s books The Hero’s Journey and Pathways To Bliss. In the latter title, Campbell differentiated myth from history, and how myth is transcendent in the relationship to the present, “…any mythic tradition can be translated into your life, it it’s been put into you. And it’s a good thing to hang on to the myth that was put into you when you were a child, because it is there whether you want it or not. What you have to do is translate that myth into its eloquence, not just the literacy. You have to learn to hear its song.”
Serendipitously, while preparing to write this article, I searched for and found an essay that I wrote many years ago when I was studying for a post-graduate diploma in adult education. It was a summary of a learning journal that I had kept through a year of academic study and was filled with self-reflective insights and snippets of free-formed poetry and prose. Looking at it now, I find it quite a revelation to revisit my writing from that time, a bit like peering into the thought processes of another being, someone I used to know, using the written word to navigate and record my personal journey, and all the discoveries that I now realise are continuing to creep into the places and spaces of my creativity.
There is a sense of something tangible between the lines, of brewings, of new beginnings as I alluded to the journey of the heroine and how our paths twist and turn at any age, often without guidance or planned navigation, and sometimes, through circumstances completely out of our control. I quoted Maureen Murdock in the essay, from her book, The Heroine’s Journey which at the time, offered a vital insight from the perspective of my gender, “She is alone at night metaphorically, wandering the road of trials to discover her strengths and abilities and uncover and overcome her weaknesses.” And I see how far I have come, with the beneficial wisdom of that journey so far, writing my heroines into being – through the dark tangle.
I wrote this feature article for Booksbywomen.org and it appeared on their website in October 2017.
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I am a writer and filmmaker from Dublin, Ireland. Author of the novels LADY BETH which won the award for BEST NOVEL at the Carousel Aware Prize and ARKYNE, STORY OF A VAMPIRE, I have also written several feature-length and short screenplays including ADAM [2013] and the multi-award winner, IN RIBBONS [2015]. I have recently written and directed FRAMED, due to begin a festival journey in 2018. I am a member of the Writers Guild of Ireland, the Irish Writers Union and The Irish Film and Television Academy.
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When I choose to purchase a book, it is because I connect with it in some way, and often for reasons that I can’t quite explain early on. Put simply, the magic is in the writing, and I’m captivated. I’ve read a lot of books on the craft of writing, and while some remain classic bibles and helpful tomes, I’ve learned to avoid the formulaic drones from the ‘experts’. You know the ones – telling us how to ‘DO IT’ but actually, ‘DOING’ fuck all themselves. [Other than keep flogging the ‘how to’!]
Now and again, I discover a book that gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling, like I’ve made a new friend. A frisson of connection that makes me look forward to getting back there, spending more time there, all cosied up between the pages as sentence upon sentence layer up to enlighten and soothe my senses. Opening up new ideas to me while also affirming what I know, what I feel, and articulating it in language that appeals to me; in language that matters to me.
Bird by bird, some instructions on writing and life by Anne Lamott is one such book. It’s funny, it’s helpful, it’s a kick in the arse and it is honest – probably the most important quality of all. As a self-confessed perfectionist, I balked, squirmed but ultimately laughed out loud at the following passage…
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and your shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”
And hallelujah to this brilliant insight!
“The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgement, doom, guilt. Also, there is hypochondria. There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk. There is a vague pain at the base of your neck. It crosses your mind that you may have meningitis. Then the phone rings and you look up at the ceiling with fury, summon every ounce of noblesse oblige, and answer the call politely, with maybe just the merest hint of irritation. The caller asks if you’re working, and you say yeah, because you are.”
Whether you are just starting out, or like me, have been scribbling away for years, you are bound to get something meaningful from this book. So do yourself a favour – don’t pass it by, and of course, it will be all the easier to spot if you quit looking at your feet!
Bird by Bird : some instructions on writing and life / Anne Lamott. Anchor Books. A division of Random House, Inc. New York. 1995
Hosted by the excellent Irish Writers Centre, Dublin, I attended an interesting talk recently on an aspect of the history of copyright law, which casts an intriguing light on when and where copyright originated from.
And so it goes, that one thousand years before Queen Anne passed a copyright law in 1707, a 6th century Irish saint, Colmcille, copied a book of psalms from a psalter written by Saint Finian. Intending to keep the copy, Colmcille was of the opinion that the words of God belonged to everyone and therefore, could not be traded.
Finian, believing the work to be his intellectual property, was not impressed and a dispute between the two men ensued, resulting in Colmcille taking his case to the then High King of Tara, Diarmuid.
The king decreed the first ruling on copyright law with the following judgement:
“To every cow, its little cow, that is its calf, and to every book its little book (copy). Because of that, Colmcille, the book you copied is Finian’s”.
The ruling resulted in Colmcille going to battle with King Diarmuid at Cooldruman, Sligo on the slopes of Benbulbin. Popularly known as The Battle of the Books, Colmcille triumphed, but decided not to assume the role of High-King as he was entitled to do.
Instead, he left Ireland as an exile to do penance for the numbers of men killed in the battle and in 563, he settled in Iona, off the coast of Scotland.
T’is Interesting!
The talk was presented by novelist and solicitor, Ronan Sheehan. In the 1970’s, Ronan was co-founder of the Irish Writers Co-op with such luminaries as Neil Jordan, Peter Sheridan and Dermot Healy. You can read his paper on Colmcille and the Irish Tradition here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/49461019/Colmcille-and-the-Irish-Copyright-Tradition
The image reproduced here is not the copyright of the author.
This is the title of the Artist’s Notebook that I kept in 2011, which was part of a project and exhibition curated by Kildare County Arts Services. Forty-four Moleskine notebooks were created by writers, filmmakers and visual artists, and donated to the KCC Arts Service to become part of a permanent touring collection.
The exhibition can be viewed this coming Thursday, 8th March, at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick from 11am-6pm.
You can see extracts from my moleskin notebook here: http://www.ninnyhammer.net/ArtistsNotebookProject.html
carolinefarrell 