The Monster Belt

I struggled yesterday with chapters 26 and 27. Lying in the bath, sometimes the best place for ideas, mainly because you can't write them down, I realised the problem. The main characters, Jess and Harris are separated here, one chapter each. At this stage in the book, they may be separate, but the reader must be shouting, 'YOU SHOULD BE TOGETHER!!' so in each chapter, they need to be juxtaposed.
Also, the London scenes aren't working. It's getting there with changing the focus, but I need Judith (Jess's cousin, who she's staying with) to point out a few home truths. This will be the first time that someone says out loud that they think Jess is screwed up. And this will give the impetus for Jess to make a move.
Ta-ra! Thinking time. That's all it takes.

What writing throws up.

I thought this week would be easy, but it's hard. Monster Belt is throwing up so many things about my childhood, things mum's told me about her parents and their life, her life and it's all falling into this book and it's wrapped up in the Yorkshire moors which can be bleak beyond desolate. And that's my childhood too. I remember how cold it can be. Chillingly, bone achingly cold.

It makes you want to reach out to people in the past, ones I never knew (I never knew my grandparents) but I can't. It's a different world. And as I'm writing, I'm wondering where this novel, in fact, any of my novels fit.

Erosion

Right. Finished that edit of Erosion. Now it's put away for a few weeks and then I'll revisit it, hopefully, please dear God, hopefully for the last time.
So, re-working the synopsis as I find those so difficult and continuing with Monster Belt. I'm glad. Looking at Erosion again, I can feel the characters of Monster Belt taking over and they can't, they're different. So it's a relief that I can put Erosion away for now.
And an image for Monster Belt. So much choice. What will it be? Goodbye Lizzie and Jez, hello Jane and Harris. Oh, and hello to the monster that lies in the crevices in everyone's head.

Driving

I drove over to Ilkley in Yorkshire this evening to pick up my mother. Re-reading that, it sounds funny, but I'm not going to re-write. Set off about half past six, quarter to seven. I came off the M60/62 and headed on the M66 Bury-Colne-Skipton route. I love the spectacle of Saddleworth Moor high on the tops, but this way, the Colne direction, I enter Yorkshire through the quiet way in. The hills spread almost immediately beyond the towns and you sense very soon that the countryside is nearby.
The sunset tonight glowed to my left and then behind. Deep rose flushed with warmth. And as Addingham and Ilkley loomed, Beamsley Beacon and the moors and tree tops lay tinged in a golden pink glow as the sky began to darken and the sun dipped behind the horizon as at a private bonfire.
The air smelt clean and of straw. I know what I mean by that! A tractor ploughed late. Three horses, sheep grazing, cows, heads down nuzzling grass.
It was a good drive. It felt like home.

Time and place

'...I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.'
Emily Bronte.

This is the last paragraph of 'Wuthering Heights.'

This is what I'm aiming to capture in 'Erosion.' A sense of place. My father is buried in a graveyard on the edge of the moor on the top side of Haworth. Moths fluttering over the heather and the soft wind blowing through the coarse grass is what you see and hear up there. And you do feel at peace.
I want to capture the vast sky and grey sea and the thick reedy grass and the wiry heather. I want to capture what Yorkshire is as Emily Bronte does. I see and feel it so let's see if I can put it down on paper.

South Riding

I read in the Radio Times that the BBC are airing a more contemporary costume drama called South Riding this year. It is set in the Depression-era North. No not now, but in the 1930's. Andrew Davies who has adapted the novel by Winifred Holtby's 1936 novel says,
"I feel as if we've rediscovered a forgotten masterpiece."

Well, it is a very very good book. A forgotten masterpiece? Have the BBC and he forgotten the brilliant Yorkshire Television Series of the 1970s starring the wonderful Dorothy Tutin and equally well-cast Nigel Davenport?
I received this book as a Sunday School Prize from Hawksworth Methodist Chapel, a village in Yorkshire. This is a very Yorkshire based book. I still have it.

There are many series that I wish I could see again. I would love to see this series again. I still remember the girls in it and their struggles. The faded state of Robert Carne's (Nigel Davenport's) home. The weather. Loving Sarah Burton (Dorothy Tutin)
Why remake a classic series? Yes, it is still relevant today. Has this original series been lost? Where is it now? I dare you to reshow it Yorkshire Television, if it still exists, though Yorkshire Television hardly exists now does it? Find it someone.

And Mr. Davies. Who rediscovered it? Someone at the BBC department that recommends
novels to be adapted...have any of you seen this original series from the classic book by the Yorkshire born writer who died at the age of thirty-seven?

I don't know why exactly but I feel very territorial about this book. I will watch the adaptation. Makes me feel sick because what I want from the BBC is for them to reshow classic adaptations and dramas from past years for new audiences while concentrating on adapting novels and new dramas that have never been made before by them or any other company.

Of course audiences now may find a series from the 1970s too slow, too faded, too whatever they think it is but when my daughters have watched a film from this period they have been impressed by the realism of the cast. They like the fact that the actors don't look airbrushed and perfect and more attractive than the person they are portraying.

The good thing from this article in the Radio Times has made me take down my copy of South Riding from the bookshelf, with Dorothy Tutin on the cover, and I'm going to reread it before watching Andrew Davies' adaptation.

The article says...

Not sure you can read the article from The Yorkshire Post dated Saturday November 6th 2010. Article by Simon Bristow, photograph by Gerard Binks.

" They say an Englishman's home is his castle.
And an elderly couple from East Yorkshire are proving there is truth in the old adage by refusing to abandon their home to coastal erosion.
Land on the coast at Aldbrough between Hornsea and Withernsea is now so unstable that East Riding Coucnil has moved a concrete barrier 10 metres inland to prevent vehicles falling over the cliff.
But the move has left Edith and Brian Grantham trapped in their bungalow in Camp Lane. Their only access is through a privately-owned caravan park whose owner does not want them to use it. The council has offered alternative accommodation but they prefer to stay put.
Mrs. Grantham, 76, said: "We don't want to be moved, we want to stay in our own little homestead. We are comfortable, we've got a lovely home and I'm not shifting. The alternative is to move to a council house but I don't want to live in a council house."

Paul Allison, general manager at Aldbrough Leisure Park said he could only give customers access to the park because of insurance and health and safety reasons and he had offered to sell the council the dividing land.
A council spokesman said: "The council is continuing to investigate the feasibility of several alternative access options for affected residents of Campsite Road."

Could be two of the characters in 'Erosion.'

Erosion Re-writing

I've reached the part in Erosion, Chapter 27, where it's not editing now, it's re-writing. I'm excited, because I know this is what is needed, but it's going to be hard work and take time. I think I've got four weeks to get it clear and then re-edit the lot. Then I'll be busy with other work and looking at other people's work, so won't have the right head space for mine. Editing will be fine then, but certainly will be difficult to be creative.
I really like the people in Erosion, really like them. Group hug? Don't think they'd like that at all. In fact I know how one or two of them would definitely react. Not pretty.
Right. Stop distracting myself. You have a deadline missus.

Yorkshire

It is the weekend before Christmas in the photograph of a church near Blubberhouses in Yorkshire. Very cold, very beautiful. Fewston Reservoir is below, part frozen and the sign says we are banned from swimming. Will have to check if that is winter only. Snow filled air makes your cheeks feel clean and fresh and your eyes as though they've been thought a blow cleaner.
I never forget, living in Manchester, how breathtaking Yorkshire is, but more and more it makes me feel peaceful. Not only the scenery, whether it's the prettiness of the woods in spring and summer or the bleakness of the wintery moors and rivers, but the people. I feel I belong and that is a very warming feeling. I belong in the place as well as with the way people talk to each other. Now, that's me feeling that, others may look at me and say (inwardly) or even outwardly for that matter, 'Why does she think she belongs/has anything in common with me?' That's not what I mean. We all come from different stand points, I mean, having lived away, it is a relief to relax in the environment as well as in the soul. Whatever the connections or non-connections, I like it. And that's 'like' in an acceptance that it is natural and flowing and there's nothing I can do about it sort of way. I'm writing here, not editing, not really thinking, trying to capture a feeling that is in its early stages but gathering strength. It used to make me sad leaving Yorkshire to cross the Pennines, for these two reasons, people and place, now I feel less sad leaving, but always very glad to return.
Now I like living in Manchester for very different reasons. But they don't belong here.