Trash or Treasure? by Victoria Chatham

 

AVAILABLE HERE

We writers can be a weird lot. And before you ask, yes, I include myself in that statement. Writers are well known for being a bit different, and thank goodness for that. Every single one of us is, like snowflakes, unique. What makes writers different is their penchant for often being somewhere else, off in the clouds, or out of it entirely while their brains deal with recalcitrant characters, create new worlds, or give birth to dragons.

There are myriad ways in which writers write. Some need utter peace and quiet while other writers like listening to music or even require the buzz off a pub or coffee shop, ‘white noise,’ to keep them focused, or partnering up with one or more other writers and having group writing sessions. Like diets, one way does not suit all.

Then there are those writers who like a pristine work surface with no clutter around them. Then there are the clutter bugs who, like bingo players and their lucky dobbers, have to have their talismans, good luck charms, or just things that make them comfortable while they write.

I come somewhere between the two. I like my desk to be clear, but I have objects around me that create my comfort zone. The first is Tigger, a gift I bought my DDH (dear departed husband for those not familiar with this acronym) because, much as he loved Eyore, Pooh, and Piglet in that order, Tigger was his favourite character from Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear stories by A.A. Milne. He thought Tigger was fun, and when I saw this in Toys‘R Us many moons ago, I bought it for him for Christmas. Given his sense of humour, it could not have been a more appropriate gift. Tigger now watches me write, a constant reminder of my DDH’s mantra of ‘Have you written today?’

My right-hand aid is my Scotch whisky-tasting glass. This glass was a birthday gift from said DDH to me, along with a bottle of 15-year-old Dalwhinnie, my preferred Scotch, although I’m happy with any single-malt Scotch. I might add that my glass doesn’t always have Scotch in it! My other aide de comfort is my collection of owls. Owls symbolize wisdom, knowledge and good luck. I hope I have the wisdom and knowledge to write exciting stories and the good luck to have readers enjoy them. Each of the owls in this picture is from different places. The tall, black obsidian owl at the back came from a location close to Teotihuacan in Mexico, while the little white owl in the front came from the island of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland.

So what might be trash to one writer can be an absolute treasure to another. It is up to the individual writer what they are comfortable with, what aids or deters them and sets them up to write in their own distinctive voice.

 

​Victoria Chatham

  AT BOOKS WE LOVE

Images from author's collection.

The Wisdom of Winnie the Pooh...by Sheila Claydon

Click this link for book and purchase information

http://bookswelove.net/authors/claydon-sheila-romance/

I often have children in my books and this was especially the case when I wrote Double Fault. The battle for their children, which was at the heart of the story, sometimes made me want to knock Kerry and Pierce's heads together. Yes, I know I invented the characters and wrote the book, but still...that's how it gets you sometimes!

Something else got to me recently. It happened when I was watching a Winnie the Pooh Disney film with my youngest granddaughter. It was the wisdom of children as illustrated by Winnie the Pooh and his friends.

Piglet: “How do you spell ‘love’?”
Pooh: “You don’t spell it…you feel it.” 

Such a simple question and answer, but one that goes right to the heart. And as a writer of contemporary romance, it's a philosophy that features in my books. Fanciful sometimes maybe, but how comforting.

And the pearl of wisdom below must surely be a translation of how Pooh's author, the writer A.A. Milne, felt sometimes when he was sitting in front of a blank page wondering what to write next.

“But it isn’t easy,” said Pooh. “Because Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.” 

And as he said later, when he was standing on the bridge in Hundred Acre Wood:  “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” 

And talking of Hundred Acre Wood, I've actually been there. It's part of Ashdown Forest in the county of Sussex in South East England, about 40 miles from London. It dates almost to the Norman Conquest when it became a medieval hunting forest. The monarchy and nobility continued to hunt there well into Tudor times, Henry VIII being the most notable. 

The forest has a rich archaeological heritage with evidence of prehistoric human activity dating back 50,000 years, and it contains Bronze Age, Iron Age and Romano-British remains.

It was also the centre of a nationally important iron industry on two occasions, firstly during the Roman occupation of Britain and then in the Tudor period when England's first blast furnace was built at nearby Newbridge, marking the beginning of Britain's modern iron and steel industry.

In the seventeenth century, however, more than half the forest fell into private hands. The remaing 9.5 square miles were set aside as the common land which still exists today, and it is the largest area with open public access in South East England.

Nowadays, it is more heath than  forest. Nevertheless, ash trees and hazel vie for space in the wooded areas and in Springtime it's carpeted with wild flowers.   It's the sort of magical place that small boys, like Pooh Bear's friend, Christopher Robin, love. A place of adventure, a place that feeds the imagination. 

”We didn't realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun,” said Winnie the Pooh to his friends. 

And when his best friend, Piglet, said, “‘We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?’ 

‘Even longer,’ Pooh answered.” 

He even understood the need to talk things through with a friend when life gets tough.“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” 

“When you are a Bear of Very Little brain, and you Think Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” 

The wisdom of Winnie the Pooh, aka A.A. Milne and the young Christopher Robin could, and did, fill books. And they made Pooh and his friends famous. So famous that many years later Walt Disney made some of them into films that captivated new generations of children (and their parents and grandparents). It wasn't all honey though, even though Pooh Bear considered honey (hunny) to be the cure for everything. For many years the real Christopher Robin hated the celebrity he had thrust upon him. He was teased at school and, in later life, felt he didn't live up to his Father's expectations. He was also estranged from his mother. But Pooh even has an answer for all of that, an answer that Christopher Robin seemed to acknowledge in his own memoir The Enchanted Places, which he wrote in 1974, and which is the basis of the latest magical film Goodbye Christopher Robin.

“You’re braver than you believe and stronger and smarter than you think.”

Or if, like Pooh, you sometimes look at it another way...

”The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually.” 

So there was even angst behind the magic of Winnie the Pooh, as there is angst in everyone's life to a greater or lesser degree. But pick one of Winnie the Pooh's snippets of wisdom and somehow nothing seems quite so bad. 

”I must go forward where I have never been instead of backwards where I have.” – Winnie the Pooh