When the muse strikes

Most writers will tell you that if you want to write, then write.  There is  no such thing as waiting for the Muse to strike.  There is no substitute for practising your craft as often as you can.  The same is as true for writers as it is for a piano player or a potter - practise, practise, practise makes perfect.

The message came over loud and clear during the 2016 Gibraltar International Literary Festival.  I was fortunate enough to attend a number of talks given by visiting writers, and also by local writers - more about the distinction in another blog.

The first emphasis on the value of writing as much and as often as possible came from Giselle Green. An award winning novelist, Giselle Green was born in England, grew up in Gibraltar and now lives in Kent, not far from where I, born in Gibraltar, grew up.  She has been a busy Mum, raising six sons.  I'm raising a brood of six myself, some boys some girls.  What differentiates us, besides Giselle's obvious talent, is that she writes, and wrote for years, a lot.

Giselle Green's website

Photo borrowed from Giselle Green's website

"It's all grist to the mill," she said, "writing around a large family or other commitments is very hard, but the more you do, the better your writing will become until one day it will be good enough to publish."  I can't do justice in words to the sense of encouragement that gave me.  Keep going was the message, so back to the keyboard it is, even if the best I can do sometimes is a couple of posts on Facebook and some entries on this blog.  I passed the message on to the Gibraltar Writers' group and I think it hit home with them too.

I listened to Gabriel Moreno talk about his constant exploration of language, from listening to the lyrics of rock songs as a young man to the voracious reading and analysis of English and Hispanic poets.  Without that constant playing with words, his writing, the lyrics of his songs, the beautiful music of his poems would never have taken shape.  He inspired during his talk, which interestingly also linked language to culture, identity and the expression of these, and he inspired during a wonderful evening of poetry, music (and, in my case, large gins and tonic) with poet Rebecca Faller adding her sharp, witty and often amusing poems to the event.

Gabriel Moreno

Photo by angels from www.gabrielmoreno.co.uk

Tom Mogford, who writes fast-paced "whodunnits" set in Gibraltar, or in nearby Mediterranean countries and following the adventures of a fictional Gibraltarian detective, also told of his many attempts at approaching potential publishers and dealing with rejection letters - one he read out took four years to reach him!  He kept going and going strong, his fifth book in the series recently being published.  Another inspiration.

Thomas Mogford

Shadow of the Rock

Louis de Bernieres was another author who spoke at the Literary Festival and he talked, among many things, about how he is a voracious reader.  Writing and reading go hand in hand - whether you read to understand your genre, your market, for pleasure, for research, this is the way a writer learns best how to handle the chosen medium: words.

Louis de Bernieres

The Dust that falls from Dreams

Back to the local authors, Carmen Gomez' gave an interesting exposition of her book with all its many observations of Gibraltar and the Gibraltarians during a time of cultural and economic upheaval, a time which was key in developing a post-colonnial identity.  Unfortunately I could not attend David Bentata's talk on his poetry which was a shame because I am utterly fascinated by what is being written by such a large number of talented and creative people, in a tiny city, where only a few years ago it was rare to find local published poetry and fiction among the mainly non-fiction historical works which focused on Gibraltar as a military base.

I did, however, attend the talk by Christian Hook, an award winning artist.  Hook is incredibly talented and already feted by Gibraltar and internationally.  He has produced a book hence his link to this year's literary festival, but what I found particularly interesting and ultimately inspiring, was his view on creativity and how he achieved his success.  Like the other creatives whose talks I attended, Christian spoke of the sheer level of work and dedication that eventually led to his success: hours and hours and hours of drawing the same object over and again until he was finally good enough to start work as an illustrator.  He combined self-belief, a sense that his gut instincts will lead him to the right places and sheer effort and talent and summed up that overall, without work, talent goes nowhere.

Christian Hook

I daresay there are many motivations behind holding a literary festival: there is the promotion of a town to encourage visitors, boost the local economy, engage international attention, maybe even to give a bit of a leg-up to a growing cultural movement towards the written word.  The Gibraltar Literary Festival seems to have a mix of purposes, although the salient one seems to my eyes to be more about the tourism product and providing an opportunity for the middle class literati to indulge themselves.  Still,in so doing, some of the underlying reasons for  having a festival in the first place are addressed: to bring Gibraltar closer to the rest of the world in cultural terms, to  give at least moral support to a growing body of literature based in, around and about Gibraltar, to somehow give some kind of international validity to Gibraltar's ever-evolving cultural identity.  

This latter deserves far more pointed and constructive attention than is provided for by just holding an annual International Literary Festival in the current format, and I will mull over this point in future posts.  But for now, as a writer and a reader, I enjoy the festival to the max.  Tomorrow, I will keep writing.  And the next day and the day after that regardless of whether the Muse comes to pay me a visit.