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WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN READING?

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We asked some of our postgraduate researchers in Creative Writing to tell us about a few things they have read and particularly enjoyed in 2024.

RAMISHA RAFIQUE

During the summer, I found an amazing article about Nida Manzoor’s We Are Lady Parts – a TV show about a female Muslim Punk Band. Muzna Rahman’s ‘Indigestible performances: Women, punk, and the limits of British multiculturalism in Nida Mazoor’s We Are Lady Parts’, in The Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2024), was really entertaining to read. I wished she’d written it sooner, as it made me want to write about a Punk Postcolonial Flâneuse (something I’m currently working on). I also made a conscious decision to read more poetry and fiction by Palestinian writers and poets. Two poetry collections that stood out to me were Forest of Noise: Poems by Mosab Abu Toha (2024) and Hasib Hourani’s Rock Flight (2024), both beautiful expressions of resistance and empowering Palestinian voices. Hourani also visited Nottingham for a reading at Five Leaves Bookshop in December, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him read. Links: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17449855.2024.2361148 https://fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/product/rock-flight/ https://fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/product/forest-of-noise/

JULIE GARDNER

My supervisor once told me that I can’t just write about the poets I like, but here I am writing about two of them. Barbara Kingsolver is well-known as a novelist but I hadn’t realised until recently that she is also a poet. The poems in How To Fly (in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) are accessible, witty and thought provoking. The first poem in the book is ‘How to Drink Water When There is Wine’. It begins, ‘How to stay at this desk when the sun / is barefooting cartwheels over the grass.’ I was hooked. Rebecca Goss is one of those poets whose name is familiar but who never seems to be in the limelight. I think she should be. Her fourth collection, Latch, was perhaps my favourite poetry find of the year and having read it I wanted to read more. Since then, I have also read two of her earlier collections, Her Birth and Girl. They didn’t disappoint.

LUCY GRACE

Two short novels I’ve enjoyed recently are Clear by Carys Davies (Granta, 2024) and Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Vintage, 2024). At 146 and 136 pages respectively, they could be seen as quick reads, but it is worth lingering over the carefully crafted sentences. Clear is set in 1843 on a small island between Shetland and Norway, and Orbital is set on an orbiting space station. Both have limited characters with different languages and ways of being, both describe the natural world, and both have a ‘ticking clock’ device – over a period of four weeks and over a single day. The concise writing is an excellent model for my own fiction. Orbital is available to listen to here. In my thesis, I’m writing about literature concerned with geology, deep-time and Iceland. Here, artist Ilana Halperin discusses ‘the idea of living in geologic solidarity. We are part of a growing geosocial family with shared responsibility that extends across the surface of the Earth.’ I first came across her work in Nottingham Contemporary Gallery in this 2022 exhibition.

STEVE KATON

Two of the favourite things I read last year were Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain and Wild: Tales from Early Medieval, both written by the historian Amy Jeffs. Storyland starts with an origin story for Albion, describing how it was populated by Syrian refugees, all women, who were washed up in a small boat on the Kent coast. (Anyone sensing the irony there?) They gave birth to giants after coupling with fallen angels! Each chapter in both books begins with one of Jeffs’ excellent retellings of an old myth, followed by a critical analysis talking about her sources, her travels and any liberties she may have taken with each tale. As a critical/creative PhD student myself, I found her writing and presentation inspiring, but to be honest I just love the way she tells stories. Also, I reread Lord of the Rings fairly regularly, so finding Andy Serkis’ audiobook versions to listen to on long car journeys made me very happy!

BOOK REVIEW

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Jonathan Taylor, A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline and Other Lessons (Goldsmiths, 2024), reviewed by NTU Creative Writing PhD student Julie Gardner.

In the first chapter of A Physical Education, Jonathan Taylor –  an author, editor, lecturer and critic who lives in Leicestershire – writes: ‘I want to explore the hall of mirrors that is criticism and autobiography […]. I want to explore the uses and abuses of educational power from a subjective, rather than pseudo-objective, perspective.’ In a book that wears its evident scholarship lightly, Taylor reflects on his own experience in educational institutions, referencing literary criticism, philosophy and sociology – and achieves his aims with clarity and grace.

Having been a victim of workplace bullying myself, at a large primary school where I was deputy-head, perhaps I was looking for some kind of validation of my experiences as I read this book. I found it, but not until Chapter 7, ‘Politics’, when I recognised in Professor Caligula many of the behaviours that had broken my physical and mental health to such an extent that I finally resigned from a job that I had loved. As Taylor says, ‘most bullying is complex, nuanced, full of incongruities and ambiguities.’  As I read the earlier chapters of the book, I found myself thinking, sometimes uncomfortably, about my own behaviour as a teacher, and that of my colleagues. I remembered an incident in the mid 1970s when I had witnessed a boy being asked to remove his plimsoll so the headteacher could hit him with it, and the irony of the child’s ‘thank you sir’ as his shoe was returned to him. As Taylor notes, corporal punishment was banned in British state schools in 1986, when he would have been in his early teens: ‘I was there’, he writes, ‘at that watershed moment. I witnessed the change from a system based on caning to a system based on surveillance, one that attempted to act “on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations.”’

As is evident from its title, this book is not just about bullying, but also about discipline. Superficially, these are two separate concepts, one acceptable, the other not.  ‘Discipline is the legitimate exercise of authority, bullying is illegitimate, abusive, verboten’ – but, as Taylor points out, ‘the problem is that the line between them can easily seem hazy, even arbitrary.’ This haziness can result in a climate in which ‘disciplinary systems reflect, even enable the bullying they were meant to deal with’, and this, Taylor argues, is ‘institutionalised bullying.’

The book is obviously of particular interest and importance to anyone who works in schools or universities, but it does not confine itself solely to educational institutions and is accessible and engaging enough to appeal to a much wider audience. There are observations and memories about family (‘in general’, he writes, ‘the nuclear family is a little machine for bullying’), including a description of Taylor trying (and failing) to cope with the demands of two-year old twins while his wife was out for the afternoon. Ideas from Foucault, Freud, and Hegel are weaved in, alongside characters from Dickens, Kes and the Harry Potter books – all contained within what is essentially memoir. But A Physical Education is more than memoir: it is an invitation for the reader to think about the nature of power, to consider, in the words of Mary Beard, ‘what we mean by the voice of authority and how we’ve come to construct it.’ It challenges the status quo of our (still) overwhelmingly patriarchal and hierarchical society. ‘After all, to question someone’s authority in any hierarchical system is implicitly also to question the system itself, which is responsible for raising that person up according to its own criteria.’

Towards the end of the book is a brief account of a time when Taylor’s experience of being bullied by a particular boy was at its most intense: ‘After being whispered at a hundred times about my lack of British patriotism, defective testicles, and similarity thereof to Adolf Hitler, I lost my temper, stood up, and threw a chair at Lee. He threw one back, accusing me of bullying him.‘ Like most teachers, I can well imagine this scenario. Indeed, I have faced something similar on several occasions. To say it is challenging would be an understatement. Not only does the teacher have very quickly to establish his or her authority, because to fail to do so could lead to complete chaos, there is also (and arguably more importantly) the need to keep pupils and staff safe in a situation which could escalate quickly. The teacher in question in Taylor’s anecdote was a Mrs Dee, by implication someone ‘who refuses to be ventriloquised by the system bearing down on them; someone who understands that violence, discipline, and bullying are not entirely deterministic – that the bullying cycle can be broken.’

It is principally in these many moments of thoughtful unpacking that Taylor challenges ‘commonplace British wisdom’, arguing that ‘less discipline can mean less misbehaviour; less violence can equal less violence. Sometimes, not punishing, not disciplining, not bullying can actually be a sign of strength rather than weakness.’

This is an important book. I hope it is read widely by teachers, academics, and politicians, and by anyone who is still haunted by past bullying.

If you are a Creative Writing student at NTU and would like to contribute a book review to this website, please get in touch with Rory Waterman.

LILLE AND BEYOND

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NTU BA English student and young writer Emilie Holmes reflects on a competition win for her flash fiction (which you can read in a link below), and on her continuing journey as a writer, in this thoughtful and candid blog post. You can find her on Instagram: poetrybyemilieholmes.

When I found out about the Universite de Lille flash fiction competition I had already been working on ‘Summer Gardening’, the piece I submitted. I thought it was a perfect fit because the prompt was ‘independence’ and my story conveyed the fine line between self-determination and isolation. However, when I found out it had won I was surprised, and not only for the expected reason. I’d submitted it over six months earlier, and if I’m being honest I had completely forgotten that I’d entered.

You can read the story here: Emilie-Holmes.pdf (flsh.fr)

It follows a girl experiencing a groundhog-like day, tormenting herself by being a creature of habit, unable to leave the comfort of her home. Throughout, the narrator is associated with fragility: when the sun follows her she moves her chair to face the wall, implying she doesn’t want to be perceived, not by daylight, not by anyone. The depiction of fragility only builds towards the end, as she’s compared to glass. In the beginning, the girl places her last tea bag into the only mug she owns, which acts as a catalyst for the ending as she realises she has run out of tea, which forces her reluctantly to leave her home and ultimately return to civilisation. I also used her connection with nature to allude to returning to oneself before going back out into the world: we are nothing if not from nature. Instead of listening to music, which she seems to keep skipping, she chooses to ‘listen to the hum of the cricket instead and share flowers with the bees’, portraying a reconnection with nature and life itself through sensory images and grounding techniques. The ending fuels her need for companionship and resilience: ‘It’s so remote here I wouldn’t be able to catch an engine even if I closed my eyes’, she says, insinuating how closed off from the world she is, to the extent that she can’t even hear humanity, let alone see it.

Nottingham Trent University has so many opportunities for young writers, which is very beneficial for English students like me. Since 2021, NTU and Université de Lille have partnered on student-led research trips as part of an initiative by NTU Global. The Flash Fiction competition is a result of such trips, aiming to provide publication opportunities for students writing in French, Spanish and English. Selected work this year is published in an anthology co-edited by Suzanna Bray (Lille) and James Walker (NTU), with competition winners voted for by seven independent judges.

 I was also fortunate to take part in the WRAP Live! and Bad Betty Press showcase of poetry, where I worked with the published writer Jessica Murrain, who helped me refine my poetry before I performed my work in front of a large audience and a livestream. It was such a pleasure to work with people who are just as passionate as I am about literature, and I enjoyed being exposed to a variety of voices. Opportunities such as these are crucial in helping you step out into the literary world, and I look forward to making use of them in the remainder of my time at NTU.

Watch WRAP Live! x Bad Betty on YouTube.

I mostly write poetry. My writing is usually philosophical with subtexts relating to mental health, feminism and female rage. I like to write what I feel I can’t necessarily otherwise say explicitly. Writing became a haven for me at a young age, and came hand in hand with reading. I had a hard time at school so I would turn to fantasy and supernatural texts as a form of escape. Even now, I use writing as an outlet.

It wasn’t until I was completing my GCSEs, though, that I considered taking writing seriously. I fell in love with Shakespeare amongst the other texts we were studying. My family always told me that if you find something you’re good at and enjoy you should pursue it, and I have never looked back. During the first lockdown in 2020, I completed my first novel which I absolutely despised and which now lives under my bed. It’s strange how writing can improve over such a small amount of time. I think wider reading is also key for improvement, but perhaps I will look back on what I’m writing now in a year or two and cringe just as much as I do now at what I wrote a few years ago. When I started writing poetry I was eager to get it out into the world, no matter how small my audience, and I performed in pubs and open mics, mostly just to share my work with my friends. I’m happy to say that eagerness is here to stay.

Though I convey my own ideas and experiences through my writing, I am also inspired by my favourite writers such as Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Margaret Atwood. To The Lighthouse and The Robber Bride are two of my favourite novels. I am currently finishing a collection of poetry which I dream to publish one day.

DO SOMETHING THAT SCARES YOU!

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CLAIRE SUZANNE, a mature student on the BA Creative Writing at NTU, discusses fear and the joy and benefits of overcoming it.

Do something that scares you – a phrase I’d heard many times, but I’d never listened. I was the mute child, the socially awkward teenager, the adult who had nightmares about public speaking. I would shy away from the limelight, tucking myself into my homemade office, where I would create fictional worlds that allowed me to be the confident person I always longed to be. But that was before I came to NTU. At uni, I pushed the boundaries and left my comfort zone. At uni, I would no longer be a fictional character.

Bring on year two at NTU, wrap up some Bad Betty Poets, throw in a stage, sprinkle some students on top and what was I doing for my 41st birthday? Reading poetry to an audience, of course! The opportunity arose through WRAP – an extracurricular reading and writing group where I volunteer as an ambassador. WRAP was collaborating with Bad Betty, a poetry publisher that was offering one-to-one mentoring with published poets and performers. The opportunity was open to all NTU students, regardless of course or level of study, and I was surprised to find it wasn’t just Creative Writing students who wrote poetry in their spare time. I was the opposite: a Creative Writing student who did not write poetry in her spare time! This, then, was the perfect opportunity for me to find out if there was a poet hiding inside somewhere, waiting to be let loose.

My mentor, Molly, was amazing. Not only were we the same age, but we also had a similar sense of humour. Her poetry made me smile, especially her references to Dawson’s Creek, traffic jams, and finding the ability to be your genuine self, all of which were relatable. Yet when it came to picking themes for my own poems, my mind went blank. All I knew was that I didn’t want to depress the audience, I wanted to entertain. Then I realised I had to talk about my fear of aging – grey hair, wrinkles, and the dreaded menopause. After all, the reading was taking place on the day I officially became ‘over forty’.

Being on stage was no longer a new experience for me, I’d already read two pieces of prose at the Metronome. But those pieces had won competitions, they had been vetted, judged as ‘good writing’, which gave me the confidence to read them. But my poetry, that was new, it was unheard, it was… uncharted territory! I had nothing to compare it to, and I’d certainly never read my poems to an audience before.

My legs moved in slow motion as I approached the stage, but as far as I was concerned the walk to the microphone could last forever. Then I was there, facing my audience, their faces blurred by lights. My heart bashed against my ribs, and my clammy hands created wet imprints into the piece of paper I was holding. The room was silent, yet the slightest cough or mutter rang in my ears to let me know the audience was waiting.

Then I did something that scared me, and it paid off. To hear the audience laughing and applauding made it all worthwhile. Was the poem metaphorical? Not really. Did it rhyme? Yes. Could I write poetry for kids? Probably. But the most important thing was the experience. An experience inaccessible to me before I started at NTU, and one I will never forget, whatever future successes I might have.

Fiction became reality.

Poetically speaking

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Laura De Vivo discusses her rediscovery of contemporary poetry.

I have dabbled in almost all genres, broadly speaking. As the years rolled on, I slowly leant more towards prose, neglecting  poetry, and I think I have done myself a disservice. So, entering my second year of the Creative Writing Degree at NTU, I felt it important at the very least to have a respectful understanding of the discipline, and dare I say even a greater appreciation for it. I enrolled on the optional Poetry and its Contexts module, where I would read and discuss several collections of contemporary poetry and write my own.

The first lecture terrified me: I felt I had bitten off more than I could chew. Enveloped by knowledgeable lecturers and students that have a real passion and flare, I was guided through the fun-loving verses of Wendy Cope to the long-lined, discursive poetry of Togara Mazanenhamo. In his collection Gumiguru, Muzanenhamo’s imagery had me hooked and for the first time I didn’t feel like I was drowning. He spoke my language, and he spoke of home, a theme close to my heart.

I soon found words falling from my fingers. Guided by lecturers, I was polishing drafts, and, like a magic eye picture, the stories I wanted to tell were emerging. It was around this time that I took leave of my senses and applied for a poetry scholarship, through NTU’s WRAP (writing, reading and pleasure) programme. After a tense wait, I was shocked to learn I had a place. I had gone from hiding, to committing, to standing on stage in a Poetry showcase, where I was to speak my own words for five minutes. I was petrified.

WRAP was working in partnership with Bad Betty Press. Fifteen applicants received one-to-one mentoring from a Bad Betty poet right up until the showcase. I was paired with the talented Jake Whitehall who, with his boundless enthusiasm, knowledge and friendship, got me from apologising for how terrible I was to standing proud on a stage. Meetings became an opportunity to consume coffee and talk writing and life. Emails flew between us, and words were axed and added – no syllable was safe. Each new draft pushed me closer to a polished piece. When I dreamed of being a writer, I never considered that I would have to get used to performance and public speaking, but it was time to crawl out from behind my laptop.

In addition to the poetry inspired by Muzanenhamo, Jake asked me to write a ghazal, a beautiful style of Persian poetry with a thought-provoking pattern and refrain. Writing something new made me glow inside and I was ready to share it. It wasn’t until I was on the stage that I realised all my heartfelt personal words, thoughts and angsts were about to be laid bare, and I wasn’t sure I could do it, but Jake was there with hugs of encouragement. I wasn’t allowed to doubt myself for a second.

As I stepped into the room, one of the fifteen, I sought the faces of my family, like a child. There they were, ready to witness my flight or fall. I told myself I knew my poems, I knew how I wanted to deliver them and what emotions I wanted to evoke. I had worn a hole in the carpet outside the culture lounge pacing while practising my diction and delivery. Here was my chance to tease reactions from an audience. This alone was priceless, I realised, and I’d keep it in the back of my mind in future. Then, concentrating on not tripping onto the stage, I stared out into the blackness. And I saw no one – in that moment I was alone. I read from my heart, I read like a poet, in fact I gained a fan who asked for an autograph. With feedback like that, I have to accept I am now a poet.

Laura De Vivo has just completed the second year of the BA Creative Writing at NTU.

One rainy day in Nottingham

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LAURA DE VIVO, a second-year mature student on our BA Creative Writing, discusses travel writing and taking opportunities.

It was on a wet March day in Nottingham that my fellow Creative Writing student Claire and I made our way through the city centre to Hockley. On a weekend night, this end of the city swells with revellers moving from bar to bar, but on a wet Tuesday afternoon it was drab and mostly empty. In my youth, this was a largely forgotten end of town unless you wanted to visit the few shops that carried favour with those more alternative types – which included me, so. I spent many a hedonistic hour in the patchouli-scent-filled shops, smoke circling my head while I bought clothes decorated with tiny mirrors, or black make-up that my father was not impressed to see me apply to my face before heading out on student night. Many buildings have been refurbished and repurposed now, and house swanky bars and upmarket eateries.

And, hidden among it all, on this wet afternoon we were to attend a travel writing workshop.

As you can see, I’m drawn to telling a tale, and I’m in awe of anyone who tells tales for a living. Being given the opportunity to meet a living, breathing travel writer was too good an opportunity to turn down. Not only that, but it was also free. All that was required was to agree to the commitment by way of an online form and then turn up. NTU offer many free opportunities that can either be found on the NOW notice board or which come direct from the lecturers, who often organise the events. University offers real opportunities to enhance your degree – and to enable you to create a well-rounded CV when your time in higher education has finished. It is worthwhile to expose yourself to as many opportunities as you think you can manage alongside your studies.

These sorts of writing opportunities also offer a chance to develop your craft and skill. I have also just finished working on a project with Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, taking writing out into the community. This sort of thing gives you a chance to try out roles you may be considering, and to gain real hands-on experience. Put simply: taking part in extracurricular activities during your time at university will enhance your employability prospects when you leave. Doing more than is expected will make you stand out to employers. It also provides opportunities to socialise and meet likeminded people.

So, back to my story.

After a few awkward nods by way of greeting, and equally awkward introductions of ourselves, we settled down to the workshop with Peter Moore, author of The Wrong Way Home and Vroom To The Sea, and another four travel books. Peter also once worked for Wanderlust, so has sat on both sides of the travel writing desk, or fence, making him a very knowledgeable man. His stories were enthralling and filled with bravery way beyond mine. Being able to speak to Peter, to probe him and ask all those questions that I have always wondered about, was the highlight of the afternoon. He offered an honest appraisal of the industry, and we gained insights into what travel magazines are looking for, how to get noticed, and how the job has changed over the years. Seeing Peter’s enthusiasm for travel left me with one overriding message: that all those who wish to write travel tend to wish to deliver the same message, that ‘you’ve got to come here!’ Each new trip feeds the desire to take the next. Travel writing is as competitive as any other writing role and the tenacity to prove you are the person to tell that story is integral to seeing your words in print.

We stepped back onto the wet pavement two hours later, thoughts of where our first article was coming from filling our conversation. Then we boarded our separate buses, no more exciting than the simple rides home. But, as Peter told us, stories can come from anywhere.

T.J. KLUNE: CAPTURING THE LITTLE LIFE

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Second-year BA Creative Writing student Tilly Hollyhead discusses T.J. Klune and the unique nature of his writing.

Before I came to university, I didn’t have any particular favourite book. Whenever anyone asked, it was as though everything I had ever read had vanished from my mind.

I didn’t have a favourite author either. I never had the experience of searching for a specific name on the shelf or hunting for more of someone’s work, because that wasn’t something that mattered to me. It was the characters that I liked – they were the things that would make or break a novel for me. As long as the plot gave them enough room to breathe, I would never consider the author behind the words – which is perhaps an oversight, considering I’m trying to become one of them!

It was the characters who lead me to The House on The Cerulean Sea. Or, more accurately, it was my friend raving about it, but the point is that I ended up buying the book. A good choice.

T.J. Klune managed to fill a world with magic and wonder in a way that I had never expected. He created a world in which people could be made of slime, where gnomes didn’t get along with the rest of society, and where even the spawn of the anti-Christ could become someone endearing. It was a world with so much potential, and with characters that captured my heart in an instant. I tore through the book, expecting him to do something fantastical with the universe that he managed to build.

But he never did.

This man created a world that people could only dream of, and yet we only travel between two or three locations! We spend the opening in an office building and the rest of the time in someone’s house.

And yet this is part of what makes the story brilliant.

There’s no sprawling adventure that spans across three books and three sequels. There are only the characters we see in front of us, who have no intentions of going off to save the world and fight evil. They want to live their lives, no matter how odd those lives might seem to others.

They were like me, and yet so wonderfully different. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand them, despite relating to them on so many levels.

So I found myself doing the one thing that had never previously made much sense to me – searching for books with his name on them.

Whenever I saw one of his books on a shelf, the dent that it would put into my bank account seemed to be so richly compensated. The prospect of escaping into these worlds again, to only get a glimpse of the wider picture before settling down alongside our characters, was something of a dream.

Under The Whispering Door introduced me to the supernatural. Ghosts were no longer something to be feared, but a grandfather who enjoyed messing with the living and someone’s childhood dog. The Grim rReaper was not some ghastly figure in a hood, but a woman who had been given the job by chance. The door to the afterlife was not some grand structure, but the smallest opening in the smallest room in someone’s home.

We’re teased by grand ideas. We even see what we can only assume is the creator of the universe. We get to see him conversing with our characters, giving us cryptic messages about his grand plans, yet never providing answers.

Want to know what the meaning was behind all the hints he provided us with? I don’t.

Klune writes in such a way that we adopt the same attitude of our characters – we could not care less about why the universe was created or what is going to happen next. We just want to see the people we love safe.

It’s crazy to think about. In almost any other book, the author would take the opportunity to raise the stakes. There would be a final battle spanning across multiple chapters, perhaps. One of our beloved characters may even die, spurring on the others in their final moments to defeat the evil in charge of the universe and make everything right for the future souls that need guidance. This book ends with the creator of the universe still in charge, our characters finding peace with that through the knowledge that they can all stay together.

It sounds like the most unsatisfying ending in the world and the only thing I can say is try it before you judge.

So, what’s the take away from this? Am I just a rabid fan trying to get more people involved with my favourite story? Or is this a short review-essay that will be lost among thousands of others?

Well, it’s all those things. But it’s also a piece of advice to writers. Try to capture life.

Sometimes we get caught up in the overarching plots of our novels or the messages we’re trying to convey. It’s easy to forget that people are often meant to be at the heart of our stories. Their lives are what makes our stories unique. Their backstories, emotions and morals are the things that propel the plot forwards in a way that is meaningful.

Humanising characters serves to bring out the strongest parts of your story. Any emotional beats or deaths are heightened by the fact that these events are happening to people we perceive as real, people we care about.

There’s something amazing about capturing the little lives of our characters. Those little lives lead to big things.

INSPIRED BY PAIN

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Second-year BA Creative Writing student Laura De Vivo recently watched her monologue, ‘The Demon in My Head’, being performed on stage. In this blog post, she writes about what inspired her, and the experience of seeing the work brought to production. You can watch it below.

When inspiration hits, its like a bolt of electricity through the body. Writing can be cathartic, and that was certainly the case here. I suffer from the rare condition called trigeminal neuralgia. The need to be strong, to fight it, to be the one that stays on top is a daily battle and not one I always win. Not only that, but I go head-to-head with an invisible demon. How can I fight it? With what I have at my disposal: words.

The opportunity to fight came, surprisingly, in the form of a writing prompt from a wonderful theatre company directed by Alice Connolly. Set up during lockdown, Message in a Bottle Monologues provides opportunities for writers and actors to collaborate. Initially, this was over Zoom, but word spread fast as the world has opened back up.

Alice, herself a writer and actress, provides the prompt; the writers provide the material; the actors provide the performance. In November 2023, the prompt was ‘Darkness and Light’, and instantly I knew what I would write. I was going to give trigeminal neuralgia a form and put it in its place while raising a little awareness.

Writing about something so personal and so raw was easy. As Hemingway said, ‘just sit at your typewriter and bleed’. I played on the qualities of each symptom and my reactions to them; I took all my anger from deep in my belly and exploded it onto a page. With the piece written, I nervously sent it off to Alice, not knowing whether it was what she was looking for. She loved it, and my five minutes of anger was accepted.

The premise of the show is clever: the writers and actors all remain anonymous; the actor is revealed at the beginning of each performance, and the writer at the end. On the night, you are invited to attend as an audience member. While mingling with drinks, there is an expectation that you will not discuss anything that might undermine the mystery. The theatre is littered with writers, actors and spectators, only Alice knowing who is who, and how they have been paired.

I sat through each performance on the edge of my seat, afraid to breathe, not knowing when my piece would be announced, trying to concentrate on the other pieces, and – more than anything – worrying about myself being revealed. I even had a painful wait through the interval. Finally, second to last, the title of my piece was announced. This was it – my talent, or lack of it, was about to be laid bare. I held my breath, eyes unblinking, as James Doolan (‘my’ actor) took to the stage. I was transfixed. Would he play it how I hoped? Would he give it the anger I had when writing it? Would it live up to my expectations?

I was in awe. Every raw emotion was delivered with all the venom I had intended. Yet I couldn’t believe those words were mine, that they had taken a journey from my head through my fingers then out of his mouth, almost seamlessly.

As a writer I hide behind my laptop, never needing or wanting to be seen, yet my moment in the spotlight was coming. All the writers were interviewed, to shed some light on their pieces. Standing on that stage was daunting, but after James’s wonderful performance I was proud to claim every word. When the show was over, I was suddenly swamped with people congratulating me on a job well done, asking to stay in touch, asking what was next. It was overwhelming, an insight into things that could be mine with hard work and determination, and I left the theatre that evening feeling like I had won an Olivier Award. It was an inspiring experience that had me burning for more. And I had put trigeminal neuralgia in its place. For a little while, anyway.

GET UP, GO OUT!

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Leah Jackson, a first-year BA Creative Writing student, went to Paris and Florence, and came back full of ideas.

Many writers tend to struggle with ‘writer’s block’ – it is even the subject of a recent post on this blog. This term may be used when a writer feels lost and insecure in their ideas and projects because of a lack of motivation and inspiration. However, I believe this need never be permanent, as I have discovered a way to combat it: go and see something new, if you can!

Throughout 2023, I was very grateful to find myself experiencing lots of opportunities to travel. I visited Paris with my college friends in February, and saved up my money to visit Florence for a week in December with a close family member. Every time I was traveling to a new area, I noticed my inspiration was like a bouncy ball of energy in my head, whizzing around full of creative ideas. I had never received that kind of inspiration when staying in my safe university hall bedroom). Breaking out of my comfort zone filled me with refreshing and exciting ideas I would never otherwise have added to my writing journal. Not only that, but it was also helpful to my research for my writing.

When I travelled to Paris, I was captivated by the beautiful city and the fashionable people I walked past. The architecture was extravagant compared to what I was used to. I found myself writing a lot of thoughts down in my journal during my time there. The building in this photo got me thinking creatively: I wondered whether this was an apartment building, and if so, who might live there? Is that person good? What is their occupation? Do they ever leave the building?

I hadn’t travelled outside of the UK since the age of eight, and I remember being scared at first to leave the country without my family. However, I soon found that it transformed my mind to become more flexible, adventurous and open to understanding other ways of living, and I wasn’t scared anymore, just eager to explore. Writing in an unfamiliar but gorgeous city helped me to sharpen my storytelling skills and experiment with unique characters based on strangers I met or observed. Looking back, these characters were the most authentic and unique I had ever written. Writing had become exciting again.

I had been most comfortable writing scripts in the genre of dark comedy. However, when traveling to Florence, I found my new love for writing romance when seeing the historical sculptures and magnificent Florentine buildings. I had never found these types of romantic ideas before anywhere else.  The famous historical geniuses that had built and lived in the breathtaking city also left me questioning what life may have been like here during the Renaissance.

My mind was full of curiosities. Did Leonardo Da Vinci used to sit where I am sitting and think about his next painting? What was Michelangelo thinking when sculpting his famous David? Was it painful work? What was it like to be a member of the Medici family – or one of their servants? Thinking about this made me realize history can also provide a lot of inspiration. Traveling to Florence helped me to gain inspiration for characters and experiment with a new genre I had never tried writing in before.

If you ever find yourself lost for ideas, then, I strongly recommend pushing yourself to break your comfort zone, to widen your mind to what the outside world has to offer. This doesn’t have to involve traveling abroad – it could be going for a walk to your local cafe or nearby forest, traveling to a part of your country you’ve never visited before, or going out of your way to meet new people you would never find in your usual friendship group. By doing this you are improving your writing skills with new knowledge. If you are in Nottingham, you have wonderful places to explore all around you. Getting yourself out there, whether it is your back garden or another country, can always help refresh those creative thoughts and stave off the dreaded ‘writer’s block’.

Here are some tips that can help you keep these new special ideas safe:

  • Always carry a pocket or bag-friendly notebook with you, I usually carry around an A5 journal and this can fit in my small satchel bag! This makes it easier to travel with.
  • Always bring a pencil or a pen. If you would like to make it more fun, some colourful highlighters or different coloured gel pens, stickers and washing tapes can be used to spice up your pages in your writing journal. (This can also make the ideas more memorable for you!)
  • A small laptop or iPad can also be used if you prefer to type up your ideas instead of writing them traditionally. I prefer the latter, but we’re all different.
  • If you do ever find yourself having a boost of inspiration and you happen to have forgotten your notebook and stationery, you can obviously also use your phone’s ‘Notes’ app, and jot them down in your journal later.
  • Buy yourself a professional camera or use your phone camera to capture whatever inspires you! Then you can always come back to that photo and brainstorm even more ideas. The photos in this blog post have mostly been taken on my recent travels. Using photography to boost inspiration can also be effective.

MAYBE THIS IS SOMETHING I COULD ACTUALLY PURSUE

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Helen Cooper is a graduate of our MA Creative Writing. Her third novel, The Couple in the Photo, was published by Hodder & Stoughton this year, and she is returning to the MA next term for a guest lecture. In this blog post, she discusses how the journey began.

People sometimes ask for my advice when they’re considering doing a MA in Creative Writing. They ask if I think it’s worth it, if it made a difference to my writing and career. I’m always cautious about advising people one way or another, because everyone’s different and there are so many factors to consider. But the truthful answer, from my point of view, is that doing the MA at NTU was one of the best decisions I made.

I started it in 2009, during a time in my life when I was deciding on my next steps. I had an English degree, was working in retail, and wrote stories in my spare time without showing them to anybody else. I wanted to do a postgrad, but the only thing that really got my heart pumping was the idea of doing an MA in Creative Writing. It felt a bit indulgent, but my family urged me to go for it, and I’m so glad they did.

There’s a long-running, sometimes controversial, debate about whether creative writing can be taught. And maybe there are some elements of it – and some elements of anything – that can’t; maybe you need a natural flair for language and storytelling. But if you have that, I strongly believe you can get much better by studying, practising, reading, reflecting, seeking feedback, and learning from more experienced writers. And for me, that process began with the MA.

During one of my first fiction seminars, as my peers and tutor Graham Joyce discussed a story I’d written, I remember having several epiphany moments. One was the realisation that showing people my writing was not as terrifying as I’d feared – in fact, hearing them talk about it as if it was worth their time was kind of lovely. And I realised you HAVE to show people your writing if you want it to work. You need insights into how your words come across, how you’re making people feel, the parts that are confusing or distracting or boring, even the parts that split the room. Those workshops taught me my first essential lesson as a writer: seek out feedback, reflect on it, then edit, edit, edit.

Learning to critique other people’s work was just as helpful. They say one of the major things a writer can do to improve is read widely. I’d always done that, but the MA showed me how to read like a writer, how to look for the craft behind the storytelling. Combine that with one-to-one meetings with a dissertation supervisor, guest lectures from industry experts, and all the extra discussions that happen before and after formal teaching, and I really did feel enriched, encouraged, and inspired. It was the first time I thought, ‘Maybe this is something I could actually pursue.’

And I did pursue it. Relentlessly! The MA was the start of my learning but it certainly wasn’t the end. Afterwards, I did some further short courses with Writing East Midlands and other local organisations; I continued in a writing group with friends I’d met on the MA; I devoured every book, magazine or blog post on writing I could find. Most significantly, I kept writing. I finished the novel I’d written for my dissertation – my first completed book – and began submitting it to agents.

That wasn’t, however, the fairytale ending! That novel got rejected more times than I care to remember. But I had some near-misses, and encouraging responses from agents about my writing. In fact, through this process, some of the things I’d been taught on the MA began to make even more sense. Know what you’re writing. Know your genre, your audience, your hook. I’d been told the importance of these things. But as I experienced the toughness of the industry first-hand, somehow it spurred me on rather than made me give up.

The third novel I wrote was the one that finally saw some success. I was teaching Academic Writing at Birmingham University by this point, and I will never forget receiving THAT email while I was halfway through giving a lecture. An agent called Hellie Ogden loved my book and wanted to take me on.

You’d be forgiven for thinking this was the fairytale ending. However, like all good stories, it wasn’t so simple. That novel went out on submission to various big publishers in 2014. Its first few rejections weren’t too troubling; they contained lots of praise, and phrases like, ‘I’m certain it’ll be snapped up elsewhere.’ Unfortunately, by the end, everyone had said the same! I was devastated, but my agent remained positive and determined, and I clung to two realisations. Firstly, several publishers had said they’d be keen to see future work; and secondly, they’d provided thoughtful feedback, which I could use. I set about a painstaking analysis of all their rejection notes. Afterwards, I knew what I needed to do next time: strengthen my ‘hook’ even further, increase the pace, and sit more firmly in the genre of psychological suspense.

The next book I wrote started from a simple scene I couldn’t get out of my head, and grew into a multi-perspective story about secretive neighbours embroiled in the disappearance of a teenager. In writing it, I drew on everything I’d learned up to this point, every piece of feedback or writing advice I’d ever had, and went all-out to try and nail it.

In September 2018, on my agent’s last day in the office before she went on maternity leave, we sold The Downstairs Neighbour to Hodder and Stoughton in a two-book deal. A few weeks later, we also sold the American rights. I now have three books published – the most recent being The Couple In The Photo, this year – and a fourth in progress. And I honestly don’t think it would’ve happened if I hadn’t written all those other books before it, starting with the one I submitted for my Creative Writing MA.

Creative writing courses aren’t magic bullets. But for me, the MA was just what I needed at the time: a chance to meet other writers, get feedback on my work, learn about the industry, learn about craft. To this day, when I’m drafting my novels, I still remind myself of a piece of advice I got from my dissertation tutor, David Belbin: “with ever chapter you write, think: what is the reader waiting to find out?” I’ve added other nuggets to that along the way – raise the stakes, my agent always says; give your characters clear goals, is one I got from my current writing group, Leicester Writers’ Club – and I’ll keep collecting them for as long as I keep writing. Striving to be a better storyteller does go beyond the length and scope of a creative writing course: it involves scribbling in notebooks, thinking in the bath, reading, being read, persevering, taking risks. But I’m not sure I would have got to this stage if I hadn’t taken that first leap.

Buy Helen’s most recent novel, The Couple in the Photo, here.