Books, Glorious Books!

 

As this first week of March slips away, a week when we usually celebrate World Book Day - this year on 4th - I finally got back to a little bit of writing. Other than some entries in my journal, and the day job, I have actively avoided any kind of writing, especially creative writing, and including this blog. But I couldn't resist it. Reading tends to make me reach for my pen, and, as I have mentioned in previous posts, is something in which I wanted to indulge what snippets of spare time I have.

A browse through the internet and especially my own social media showed the usual flurry of activity for World Book Day. Despite the drawbacks of the pandemic and the lockdown which is still only slowly lifting, it did my weary soul a good deal of good to see kids heading for school dressed up as their favourite characters and many of them with the associated book in their bags. 

What I did find rather churlish was some snarky comments on social media, from somewhat sour adults mostly, decrying the youngsters for dressing up as characters from films, notably as Harry Potter and his many chums. What is their issue? Maybe these are people who, aware of their own shortcomings in the literary department, are all too quick to criticise others. As a mother of six who has spent most of her life skint and bringing the kids up on a hard-earned shoestring, Harry Potter was a glorious relief; throw a length of black cloth over their shoulders, borrow Grandma's specs, hand each a twig from the garden and voila, World Book Day dressing up sorted.

The Harry Potter films, like many others that are based on books, like Matilda and Four Children and It, are wonderful examples of skillful storytelling. They have a narrative with pace and drama, with humour and darkness, with flights of fantasy and yet are believable. They touch human themes such as bullying, lack of self-confidence, courage, fear, the search for love, and, most importantly, of the struggle between good and evil. Why would immersing yourself in the movies be anything other than a superb way of helping kids explore narrative, character development, dialogue, scene construction and so much more. Let's bear in mind that scripts are written, and that scriptwriting is as much a form of writing as a Jacobean tome. Consider the tight dialogue of Pulp Fiction, or Casablanca, or Taxi Driver or One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest...I could go on and on. All hail those scriptwriters - what talent, and what art!

And if the kids haven't read those books yet, they probably will. And they will probably read more. The work their teachers put into World Book Day will often bear fruit, if not immediately, then often in years to come. Don't knock it. Far better to immerse yourself in a good movie and the story it tells than in scrolling and trolling.

But back to books. Bookshops have had a pretty hard time over the past decade or two, especially with the advent of Amazon and other commercial problems like the general demise of the High Street. Not least in Gib, where I still mourn for the loss of even the small book shops we had. And yet, when the world closed in on itself in the face of Covid19 and locked down, our isolation was assuaged by books and by reading. Online sales have soared. Booksellers found themselves working harder than ever to get orders of print books out to their customers and their customers were now from all over the world, and not just those from the nearby streets. Readers turned to e-books but found renewed pleasure in print books. With more time on their hands through furlough schemes, many people turned to old classics...you know, the ones where they watched the movie and now thought they'd try the original in book form.

I set out this year to read more Gibraltarian writers, to immerse myself in Gibraltarian literature and try to understand it a little. I might love reading - would love to read all day everyday if I could - but sadly I need to earn a crust and the day job takes exactly that, all darned day. But I have manage to read some, starting with Gooseman, by Mark Sanchez. 

What a great start to my reading year. Brilliant. Funny. Dark. Shocking. And he tackles some great themes, like mental health and racism and Brexit and how the Brits treat their former colonials, and how we, the former colonials, still try to be their lap dogs. Also, as a Gibraltarian and with the novel set partly in Gibraltar and partly in London with the odd llanito comment thrown in, I found there was a familiarity about the characters and the places that drew me in straight away. More than that, there is an almost intangible Gibraltarian quality about the book. Perhaps it's the rhythm of the sentences, or perhaps it's that there is a sense that the lead character, Johann Guzman, is laughing at himself at times, just like we, in Gibraltar, readily laugh at ourselves too.

I've also got through a Giselle Green - also Gibraltarian in my eyes even if she has lived in UK for many years. She writes beautiful stories that touch on some of our deepest emotions. The Girl you Forgot speaks about memory and about relationships and about truth. Some parts of it are almost lyrical and yet it flows and undulates as do the hills of England where Giselle lives. It is a satisfying and emotional journey of a story.

Humbert Hernandez' El Agente Aleman was just perfect for grey winter days; it cheered me up no end. The stories are so funny in places, I laughed out loud, which was disconcerting to passers by as I perched on a low wall waiting for my cab to work one morning (some of us would have loved to lock down fully but couldn't). These stories are told in our tongue, the language of my early childhood in the old town of Gibraltar and are populated by people that are recognisable, although dwindling in numbers as they age and pass on, just as the patio culture of the middle of last century is dwindling and disappearing into apartment block living. But Hernandez has kept those stories alive, and those characters live on, at least in these fictional works.

I've also managed a thriller and am currently making my way through Greek myths in Stephen Fry's Mythos. Next up on my e-reader is a Joanne Harris, Peaches for M. le Cure, and on my bedside table is a Mary Chiappe novel, Shaking the Dandelions.

As for my writing? It's simmering. I've sketched out some ideas, pottered with some research. Oh, and I've just signed a publishing contract no less. But more about that in another post. For now, I am wallowing in books, glorious books, and always wanting more!

Gibraltarian Literature - or is it?

To read...or rather, what to read?

As some of you who know me will tell you, I was never going to keep away from writing for too long, despite my resolve to keep the pressure off the pen and only pick up my laptop for work writing (as opposed to writing fiction or poetry or writing for pleasure). But at the start of the month, I figured that taking a pause and reading might be a good way to ease my way through lockdown anxiety and the ensuing writer's block. 

The only thing I needed to do was decide what I was going to read. Should I do the usual thing I do of reaching for whatever is to hand, which makes my reading choices varied but not necessarily focused? Should I set out to read a genre I don't usually read? Should I avoid reading anything off the best seller lists and stick to a catch up on those classics I always meant to read but never got round to? Should I nose around books by writers from a particular country, or go non-fiction and gen up on the conversation around empire and its legacy? So many choices and thank goodness for e-readers, much though I prefer paper books (can't wait for the library to reopen after lockdown).

I opted to catch up on Gibraltarian literature. There are plenty of books about Gibraltar or set in Gibraltar, some by Gibraltarian writers, some by non-Gibraltarian writers. But which to choose? Which would fall under the banner of "Gibraltarian Literature"? Does it comprise non-fiction as well as fiction and therefore include all those history books written about Gibraltar, mainly by English writers but also by Spanish writers and some Gibraltarians too? Would I be reaching for works by Dr Joseph Garcia, Dr Clive Finnlayson, Ernle Bradford, Nicholas Rankin, Lesley and Roy Adkin, Gareth Stockey and Chris Grocott among many others? Or by "literature" do we mean fiction?

What is "literature"? 

There are all sorts of open discussions going on between academics and writers around the world about how to define a national literature. I am not remotely qualified to add anything of use to that discussion but felt I needed to define the parameters of it for myself - simply so that I could decide what books to select to read that I could comfortably call Gibraltarian lit. - you know, like you would call the subject English Lit. if you were picking it as an A level subject.

I made that my starting point, since I never did study English Lit for A level. What is English Literature? That might help me head in the right direction. 

When I think of English literature, I generally envisage William Shakespeare wielding the quill, Charles Dickens, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, Byron, Keats and Shelley, George Orwell, Iris Murdoch, Beryl Bainbridge, A.S. Byatt, Zadie Smith, Carol Ann Duffy...so many...But I tend not to include Charles Darwin or Edward Gibbon, and much as I adore so much of his work, even Sir David Attenborough doesn't tend to feature as a literary figure.

So I have narrowed the list down to fiction - prose, poetry, short stories, novels, plays and scripts. To me, literature isn't just a body of written works, a collection of words; to be literature, the written work needs to rise above the telling or imparting of a fact to deeply engage the imagination and the emotions, which is precisely what a good poem or a good novel does.

Yes, I agree that this is simplistic and there are grey areas and blurred boundaries, but this is my thinking given voice and you are very welcome to add your thoughts (politely) in the comments section.

What is "Gibraltarian" literature?

The next step for me was to decide what would fall into this category as Gibraltarian. When we speak about "Gibraltarian literature" do we mean only work written by people born and living in Gibraltar? Or people born in Gibraltar and perhaps living and working somewhere else in the world but with family ties to Gib? Or people who are born in another part of the world to a Gibraltarian family? Or people with none of those links but who have spent some time here and have been inspired by the place and the people to let their writing be influenced somehow by Gibraltar.

In other words, I could take either a narrow view or a broader view. The latter might dilute the concept of literature that is somehow deeply linked to Gibraltar, the former might mean only being able to select from relatively few publications. Because Gibraltarian literature in its narrow sense of works written by people born and living in Gibraltar, about Gibraltar and using Gibraltar's languages is not replete with published works.

I'm not sure I have fully answered this question. To me the term "Gibraltarian literature" is as yet undefined, and maybe that is a good thing, because it means that as writers, we can fuel our writing energy with the impetus born of an urgency to add to the body of literature that is ours, our stories, our experiences, our emotions, our evolving culture and identity. 

I would, however, love to know your thoughts on this. Please engage through the comments section, on the Gibraltar Writers Facebook group, or via my email address: jackiegirl@hotmail.co.uk

In the meantime, I have just finished reading the masterful novel "Gooseman" by Mark Sanchez, am halfway through "The Girl you Forgot" by Giselle Green and have also started "El Agente Aleman" by Humbert Hernandez. All three very different, and all an indubitable pleasure to read. 

                                       

                                       "Gooseman" by M G Sanchez

"The Girl you Forgot" by Giselle Green

"El Agente Aleman" by Humbert Hernandez

Taking a break: a resolution for writing for 2021

 

There goes the first week of January 2021. Back when life was normal (as in, this time last year) the first week of January for me would be a time for tackling writing projects with the renewed vigour born of a rest over Christmas and perhaps one or two resolutions. My writing resolutions normally involved things like: I will unfailingly set aside two evenings and one afternoon each week to dedicate to writing fiction or poetry or whatever I'm inspired to write. Or: I will complete project X this year and start on project Y. Or something similar. More often than not, by February I would have forgotten these or been distracted by a new project or a fresh idea.

This year, no resolutions for writing. Blame the pandemic, blame my age, blame my hormones, blame my steadily depleting bank account. Heck, blame Brexit and the riot in Washington last week. But I know the reality is that that I need to take some time to stop. A pause in which to reflect on last year, on this year, on today and on tomorrow. 

I am one of those writers who has not been remotely creative in lockdown. I did put together an e-book of short stories at Christmas to raise money for charity, but they were mainly written some time ago. Unashamed promotion, so here's the link:

All They Want for Christmas by Jackie Anderson

But other than this and 'work' writing, there was nothing. Not a squeak of nib on paper that left other than a meaningless scrawl.

There's something grim and insidious, nasty, to tell the truth, about this odd pressure to be creative, to do something worthwhile with this extra time that we apparently all have. Well, try telling a nurse doing double shifts at the CCU, that he's got more time. Or a police officer, or a firefighter, or a road sweeper or a rubbish collector or the supermarket shelf-stacker. And yet the TV and radio and social media are blurting away ideas and examples of all the creative things people are doing in lockdown, which have a tendency to make you feel a bit inadequate if you simply can't get anything remotely meaningful to hang together into a paragraph let alone complete a poem or story.

So this post is being written to declare, loud and proud that actually, getting through a pandemic like this is tough and if you haven't got the energy left for your creative project or learning a new skill, that's ok. If you're getting through each day, then that's enough. Thank you Joe Wicks, the exercises are great for some, and thank you for those musicians and actors laying on online performances, and thank you those writers who pump out prose and poetry brilliantly and publish work precisely because they have to stay at home. I mean it. The creatives have kept most of us ticking over reasonably well. We have had entertainment, and we have learned new things.

But, if like me, your work (real work that puts bread and butter on the kitchen table) did not slow down, just shifted location, or you stepped up a gear caring for locked down family members, or you were simply too anxious to concentrate, you are not alone. And if your feelings about the pandemic - fears, anxiety, impatience, even incredulity - left your pen dry, you are definitely not alone. I have been dry as a bone since the start of last year, and I was greatly relieved to surf the net and found many writers saying similar.

So in 2021, I plan to read my way out of pandemic-induced writer's block. I will read for pleasure, mainly, not for instruction or to broaden my mind. I have no intention of straining my brain, just to rest it and enlighten it. I will enjoy the delights created by talented others. I will finally spend time listening to music that I kept meaning to listen to but never tried. I will listen to podcasts and possible audiobooks. I will explore the theatre online and visit online museums and places I am never likely to visit even when lockdown lifts and travel is permitted once again. I'll watch classic movies and binge watch Netflix. I might do some yoga stretches, maybe, if I can find the energy. But I certainly won't allow myself to feel guilty if I don't. There'll be enough negativity to deal with while vaccines are rolled out and start to work and hopefully the relentless gloom starts to lift. 

If I write, it will be because I have to write for work (somehow I never class my feature writing as writing, probably because I want to be a fiction writer), or I write some journal entries, or letters to family and friends, or because finally the creative spark has been relit. I might well add posts to this blog, just to keep the fingers remembering how to type.

I do know that some Gibraltar Writers are busy working on a number of projects, and some plan to start new writing projects this year. Others are less sure of their plans but plan to write more. Which pleases me hugely, and hopefully they will provide lots of reading material: one of the things I want to do this year, is read as much Gibraltar writing as I get time to read. I hope we can get the library open soon! 

What will you be writing in 2021?