The inspiration... and the cookies
WHEN acclaimed crime writer Sharon Bolton put her head in her hands during our one-to-one at the National Writing Centre of Wales, I realised things weren’t going too well.
But Sharon, award-winning author of The Sacrifice, The Buried, The Craftsman, was not to be defeated by The Confusing Ideas of Ceri Gould.
She just needed a pen, a piece of A4, patience and her expertise to put the peculiar people in my head into the three-act structure of a novel.
Sharon was fair, rigorous, helpful and, thankfully, not kind. When you’re trying to write a novel, kindness is not your friend. Belinda Bauer, superstar author and course leader, had this to say: “We only have you for five days,” she laughed. “We can’t waste time being kind.”
(Belinda has an incredible laugh. Full-throated, joyful, infectious. That she laughs like that while also saying, “that’s terrible, oh no, no that doesn’t work at all,” is a rare gift.)
And so the 12 of us wannabe novelists gathered at the beautiful Ty Newydd in Criccieth for five days of feedback. We bravely shared the identities of our dysfunctional protagonists and pointed to the floorboards where we’d left some bodies. We defended accidental killers and justified the trussing up of bad bosses. We made up whole new worlds and we tortured the characters within them.
Under Sharon and
Belinda’s expert tuition we wrote. We read out loud. We rewrote.
We ate too many cookies. We went to bed early, dreamed wildly and rose early.
We sweated over the homework
– describe your novel in
100 words.
Now do it in
50 words.
Can you tell it in 10?
There was magic in the air. It crackled when someone read what they’d written and the words gave us goosebumps. It sagged when something that had sounded so clever in your notepad, or on your laptop, died a stagey death, in front of everyone.
Just when you needed them, there were cookies and Sharon and Belinda who’d point out that, yes, what you’d just read out was awful, but why don’t you cut this, tweak that, try another point of view? That week was the best investment I’ve made in myself since answering the advert offering trainee reporter roles on Celtic Newspapers.
We left Ty Newydd with a pithy blurb for each of our (to be written) novels. I feel sorry for anyone ever trapped in a lift with me, I have a Bauer/bolton elevator pitch that’s to die for (awful crime pun intended).
We set up a Ty Newydd Whatsapp group (of course we did). We felt smug. We’d bagged ourselves the best tutors (we even had dinner and then generous advice from the amazing Clare Mackintosh, that’s how smug we felt), but we’d also discovered a fun, supportive group of strong writers.
If I’m being picky then we weren’t all wannabes. The impressive Karen Walls wrote the brilliant A Killing Sin published under the pseudonym of KH Irvine. Jacqueline Harrett is a published author three times over. If they both weren’t so lovely, I’d say it was cheating. But, as Belinda and Sharon were at pains to explain – every novel needs to come to life in its own way. While there are templates to follow and beat sheets or structures to use, each story lives (and dies) in its own way.
In our group, we’ve bastardised The Strictly Come Dancing catchphrase for our own uses. Whenever one of us is struggling, someone will pipe up, “Keep writing!”
Next weekend, I hope to be in Aberystwyth for the Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival, Wales’ first international crime fiction festival. Jacqueline Harrett will be there on Saturday – reading an excerpt from one of her books in the Close Up session before the Spirits of Welsh crime debate.
You’ll find Belinda Bauer at Ceredigion Museum at 11.30am, Saturday, debating with Philip Gwynne Jones and Louise Mumford the pros and cons of writing standalone crime novels versus novels in a series. There is an evening with Clare Mackintosh, Philip GJ and Katherine Stansfield on the cards on Saturday.
But that’s just a flavour of what promises to be a fabulous festival – the first of its kind – that starts online on Thursday, April 20, with David Baldacci, in real life on the Friday afternoon – don’t miss the dragon parade from Castle Point, along the prom to the bandstand. The festival continues in Aber until Sunday with two online sessions on April 24.
Who to thank for this? Step forward author Alis Hawkins who first had the idea to set up a group for crime writers in Wales. Then fellow authors Matt Johnson and Rosie Claverton got involved and the three launched Crime Cymru with the ambition to support crime writers, develop new talent and take Welsh crime writing to the world.
From that came Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival which ran virtually last year with thousands logging into the seminars.
The #crimecymru festival ambition is – a biennial international literary festival for Wales in Aberystwyth, alternating between online and in-person. It wants to bring the beauty of Aberystwyth, Wales and Welsh culture to all festivalgoers. And, of course, to help continue the founding aims of Crime Cymru itself – support fellow writers, develop new Welsh writers and, I may be paraphrasing here, but world domination too?
And why not?
As for me? I’ve just re-read my (almost written) novel. My head is in my hands. Sorry Sharon.
■ For details on the festival, visit www.gwylcrimecymrufestival.co.uk
her interest in psychology, theatre and the position of children and women within both the family and society.
She chose to study at St Martins – an abstract school – because, while she knew she wanted to paint figurative art, she did not want to be constrained by the traditions of a figurative school.
“St Martins was very free. It was very open,” she says. “It was to do with marks and paint and colour and the thickness and fineness of paint and it suited me because I wanted to find my own language by kind of not having it imposed upon me as a part of a very figurative art school.”
After completing her degree, she started