New Blog

Dear all readers,

I have relocated my blog to Wordpress, for many reasons, but mainly because I find it much easier to use and I already had a blog over there, Bridal Body Blitz (This blog focuses on my weight loss journey as I aim to look great my wedding day).

My new writing blog, still The Road to Creativity,  can be found at http://stephjoneswriter.wordpress.com/

I am for it to be a much more active blog than previously. I will continue to upload my reviews of novels, but also aim to write about issues I face and hopefully overcome whilst writing my first draft of my work in process, and of course problems I face as I work towards publication.

I may also venture into the world of podcasts and videos as I go along, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

For now, if you enjoy reading my blog please subscribe to them and continue reading them.

I am always excited to discover knew blogs so if you have one or know of one that you think I'd like then please feel free to reply to this and let me know.

Thanks

Steph

Return to Writing

Between the blog I wrote on 8^th May and today I have changed a lot. My Nana, a woman who has inspired me in my life, was diagnosed with lung cancer. At first we believed she’d battle through it, like she did with everything else, but within a month of the diagnosis she had passed away. The months of May and June were unbearable. We spend every day fighting the natural urge to believe there was no hope, so when we were told it was terminal it was a big blow. We didn’t allow ourselves to weep but focused on completing my Nana’s wishes. Firstly her 60^th wedding anniversary was coming up in October and she wanted to be able to celebrate it, so on 26^th May 2012 we threw a party for her, my granddad and close family and friends. The rain clouds had hidden away and the sun was shining her face down on us. It was a very emotional and beautiful day.  My sister and I wrote a speech and poem about how our grandparents had guided and inspired us, my mum created beautiful flower arrangements and a family friend did all the catering, and together we saved to buy my Nana a diamond bracelet (which I will be wearing on my wedding day on 26^th May 2013).

Two days after this celebration, she got much worse and spent the next week in hospital. It became mine and my fiancé Lewis’ role to compile her poems into a book and get them printed. My Nana wrote the most beautiful poems. She could twist and turn ordinary words to create vibrant images that stock in your mind, but most importantly she told you a story.  A week after her anniversary party I received a phone call saying she was doing to die and I needed to make the 4 hour journey up to Wales as quickly as possible. Never in my life had I felt so helpless. Lewis put his foot down and we drove in a wild panic up to Wales, getting stuck behind tractor after tractor on the way. It was when we were stopped, five minutes away from the hospital, by a crossing train that I broke down. I wept. I couldn’t bear the thought that I wouldn’t get to say goodbye. I clutched onto the book of poems, which had arrived that morning, as though it were the Holy Bible. Nothing would tear me away from it and I knew I would protect it with my life. We made it to the hospital and I jumped out the car, whilst Lewis was parking, and run up to the room with my sister, who was waiting for me. We found Nana surrounded by the family and memory of her appearance, so different from that of my Nana, will never leave me, no matter how much I want it to. Being the fighter she was, Nana clung on for nearly a week. Conscious for two days and then asleep for the other four. Those first few days were a miracle. We were on borrowed time, time she wasn’t meant to have, but for some reason had been given. She seemed to brighten up and at times it was hard to believe she could be dying.

We spent wonderful hours with her watching the initial Jubilee celebrations and reading her poems; she even found time to tell us a story so funny my Aunty and I were crying with laughter, about the Queen tripping over her corgi and being unable to do her royal wave, so my Nana having to do it and her hand be superimposed onto the royal footage. Seeing my Nana’s eyes light up with pleasure as she saw our reaction to her story was something I’ll never forget. On 8^th June around 2am, she passed away in her sleep.

After her death and funeral, I developed a love hate relationship with writing. Writing has always been my escape. I write to be transported to a wonderful place of life and possibilities,  but this has always been somewhere I’ve shared with Nana, so I felt that I couldn’t go there anymore because I would just write about her, and I wasn’t ready for that. I even struggled with my amateur dramatics rehearsals because I just didn’t feel like I could let myself feel anything , this meant my acting was wooden and shallow. I couldn’t talk about it and I certainty couldn’t write about it. But then something changed. There was a moment were my passionate for writing was re-ignited.

Lewis had gone off to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to perform in his Improvisation show, and I’d been left home alone. I was so scared of the emotions I hadn’t let myself feel, coming out, so I booked in with the University’s counsellor. I figured it was healthier to moan and cry to a counsellor then it was to sit alone in a flat and sob myself to sleep; and it did help. I talked for an hour about all my fears, my memories, my worries and cried until my eyes were sore and inflamed, and my head felt like it would tear open. This was step one of my return to writing; letting the pain out.

Two days later my future parents-in-law held their 25^th wedding anniversary party. As Lewis was away, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go, as I’m very awkward in social situations and struggle to spark conversations. However, as the alternative was being alone with my thoughts, I decided to chance it. About half an hour in, a man came over and introduced himself; his name was Darin. He was tanned, with light hair and had pale blue eyes that had an x-ray quality; when I looked into them I was sure he could see into me. As it turned out, he was a literacy agent and a family friend of the in-laws. I started speaking to him about my current work-in-progress (YA Fantasy) and he was actually interested in the story. On some level I’d always believed it was a good story, but I’d never imagined anyone else would be interested in it. Darin really inspired me that night and made me realise exactly what the real story within my story was and where it needed to go. He made me realise how much of me is in this story and why I was compelled to write this one first. I left that party feeling confident and most importantly, desperate to get behind a keyboard. This was step two of my return to writing; revitalisation and letting myself get excited about my story again.

It just so happened that two days after this party I had booked to spend four days and three nights in a converted stables in a village near Telford. I’d booked it months and months before, for the purpose of being a writing retreat. After my nana’s death I’d feared going somewhere unfamiliar, being alone and writing, but after my encounter with Darin I was actually excited, though very nervous. I spent the first day writing out everything that happened in my novel and working out what order and in what chapter it should all take place. It was hard realising that certain characters and events weren’t needed and needed to be cut out. Though it stressed me out, after this waffle had been cut, I felt refreshed and excited about my story again. Strangely enough, the hardest part of getting back to writing was actually doing it. I had forgotten how to write. And I don’t mean I’d forgotten how to write dialogue or spell, I mean I sat down by the computer and…nothing happened. I tried everything. I tried having a cup of tea next to me, having chocolate, being outside, being inside, playing music, having silence, but  I just couldn’t do it. In the end I found I needed to be outside with a bottle of water and one head phone in, listening to music that had similar emotions to what I was writing. In truth it didn’t matter, I could have written hanging upside down from the ceiling (though I agree it would be difficult), but because I was starting again, writing anew, I was scared and needed to feel comfortable. This was the third step of returning to writing; remembering what works for me and doing it.

So this is where I am now. By the end of that trip I had written drafts of my first three chapters. Since then I haven’t done much and yes I could blame it on the new job, moving house, planning for the wedding and my play’s, closely approaching, opening night, but in reality it’s my fault, because I haven’t followed the fourth and final step of returning to writing, and that’s creating a routine. I haven’t continued writing regularly and so that means that it doesn’t feel like a priority, more like a treat. I admit this something I know I need to work on. I need to put my foot down and drag myself to the computer and rather than writing blogs (oops), write stories.

Anyone been through a break in their writing and have any advice?

 

Pike's Quest Review - KJ Bennet (Fantasy)

I was very excited aboout reading Pike's Quest because I'd read positive reviews about it, and followed the blog of the author, KJ Bennet. The blog is extremely well written and holds many excellent pieces of advice which a young writer could only expect to obtain after years trying to break into the business. I knew the writing would be great, but I have to be honest and say I was not a fan of the novel.

Firstly I have to be honest and say that I only managed to get through the first half of the book, I couldn't push myself any further, so if the book changed miraculously in the second half then I wouldn't know.

The main things I disliked about this novel were the pace and the characters. The pace is strange. The first big event of Pike meeting Morlock happens instantly, so we have no time to get our bearings of the surroundings or even the characters. In Fantasy the hero's quest is always larger than life and have deverstating consequences. The journey pushes the hero so much and challenges them and so it is vital that the reader is interested and cares for the hero, otherwise why would we want to dedicate weeks of our lives to reading about them. So the problem with Pike's quest starting so quickly is that the world hasn't been established, which leaves us confused, and we don't yet know Pike. After this first event the action is incredibly slow and I found it quite boring. It seems completely irrelevant to the rest of the story, as it's just Pike being explained, at a snail's pace, what he's supposed to do on his quest, as well as meeting some characters. The character's are not developed and not rounded in the slightest. In faireness to the writer, I think he has intended this novel to be more about the jokes and not the characters, but I personally found the lack of characterisation to be the reason I didn't want to read on. I think my idea of funny is also very different from the writer's.

On a positive note the writing itself was of a high standard. It was easy to read and description was particularly well done. Also the premise of the story is unique and interesting, but I just don't think it was executed strongly.

I won't recommend this to anyone I know, but from reading the other reviews on Amazon, it is clear that those people enjoyed it.

This story is like marmite, you will either love it or hate it.

2/5

Silence Review - Becca Fitzpatrick (YA Fantasy) (contains spolier)

I have just finished reading Silence, the third of the four books from the Becca Fitzpatrick Hush Hush series, and I would recommend it for all lovers of Young Adult Fantasy.

When I first came across the first book, Hush Hush, I was instantly attracted to the premise. A girl, Nora, meets a dark handsome stranger, Patch, in school and instantly finds herself drawn to him, though he's a bit of an idiot. It turns out that Patch is in fact a fallen angel and wants to kill Nora in order to become human. After trials and tribulations they fall in love and Patch ends up saving her instead. In the second novel, Crescendo, cracks begin to appear in Patch and Nora's relationship and, after discovering their relationship is putting him in danger, she breaks up with him on. The novel ends on a cliff hanger when Hank Millar, the father of Nora's bully, corners her and Patch, after their reconciliation.     

Silence focuses on Nora who turns up in a grave yard after being held captive for months. She has no memory of this, and no memory of a few months previous to this. Nora is unable to accept that she won't know what happened to her and desperately tries to piece things together. Bit by bit her memory returns and so does her love for Patch, who even when erased from her memory, she can't seem to stay away from. Nora becomes a player in the Nephilim and Angel battle in this novel and because of this I believe this is the best instalment so far. In Hush Hush and Crescendo Nora is always a witness in the battles, who never adds nothing to them, but in Silence Nora knowingly gets herself into danger but is prepared for it and fights back. It’s so refreshing to see a female lead, in the Young Adult genre, who doesn't just sit back and moan about her problems, like Bella in Twilight. The plot complex and there are several things going on at once and sometimes they overlap, this means that it's easy to get confused but also that it's so much more exciting than Hush Hush, which in comparison seems amateur and predictable. Silence is fast paced throughout and I couldn't put it out; Becca Fitzpatrick is close to mastering the skill of storytelling.

In Silence Patch is a lot gentler and likeable. Previously, I disliked Patch as a character. He was extremely arrogant, cold and often dismissed Nora, as though she has nothing of importance to say. I could never understand how Nora could like him and this, I believe, is a major flaw for a YA Fantasy. The love interest in a YA Fantasy needs to be desirable to everyone. It's okay if there are two love interests, like Gale and Peeta in Hunger Games or Edward and Jacob in Twilight, because if you don't like one, you can like the other, but be warned that they both need to have an equal shot at winning over the heroine otherwise there's no point in having both of them. In Silence the alternative love interest is Scott. I really like Scott and think he would be a much better boyfriend and companion to Nora than Patch, but unfortunately Nora doesn't like Scott as much as I do. In Young Adult novels it’s important that if there are two love interests that they are there because they are genuinely two people that the main character cannot decide between, that way the reader has a chance to root for someone. Why would we bother rooting and caring about who the heroine picks if we already know who she’ll choose? I haven't read the final instalment yet, Finale, but I think we all know Nora is ending up with Patch; I'd bet my life on it. And that's boring. I don't want to know who Nora will choose from the onset, I want there to be competition right up until the end.

Becca Fitzpatrick writes the theme of memory loss and trying to regain memory, in a fresh and interesting way. Never does the language seem clichéd, but instead it focuses on how she’s living with the memory loss, rather than the memory loss itself. It was extremely frustrating, but effective, that I now knew all the information that was key to Nora making the right decisions. This made me feel like a part of the story as I had insight into the possible outcomes.  The excitement came from how Nora would avoid the likely outcome rather than what the outcome would be.

Silence is exciting and adds something new to the YA Fantasy genre. The fact that the characters aren't just good and bad, but rounded, and we know more of what's happening than Nora, gives us as a reader more chance to figure things out and predict what's to come, when otherwise the lack of knowledge could have been boring. By the ending, Nora had grown from a fragile girl to a strong minded woman, who doesn't shy away from responsibility, and with the twist at the end of the book placing Patch and Nora on opposing sides, I look forward to reading Finale and finding out whether Nora chooses Patch or the survival of her race.

4/5

Identity

I've been scared of writing something in this blog that's too personal.
The purpose of this blog was always to document my road to creativity; my writing. But now I realise how ridiculous that is. Our creativity and our personal lives intertwine too closely to be separate. Things that happen to myself and others, inspire me and lead me to the path of a new story. So how can I separate them?

After having this revelation I decided that from now on I will write what I want in this blog. They say you should always write for yourself, and so that’s what I’m going to.

 So here goes, this is what’s inspired me recently:

 Am I still Welsh?

 On March 1^st 2012 I wore my daffodil with pride. Unfortunately it the temperatures soared that day and the symbol of my identity wilted. So many people that day asked me if I was wearing the daffodil to show my family’s Welsh heritage. They assumed that I was English, and for some reason this really upset me. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with English people, my fiancé is English, my issue is that even when I corrected these people and told them I was Welsh, they didn’t believe me. Apparently I don’t sound Welsh enough to be Welsh. We Welsh, even us North Walians, are expected to measure up to the stereotypes of what Welsh people should be and sound like, by shows like Gavin and Stacey.  I don’t fit in that with that stereotype.

I questioned for hours that day, what made me Welsh? Yes I was born there and have a Welsh surname, but I’m not fluent in the language nor do I know the whole of Wales’ history. Sometimes when people say ‘You’re not proper Welsh then’, on some level I agree with them and it makes me feel like a traitor to my country.

As of May 2013 my surname will be Harrison-Barker. It’s not a horrible name, but I don’t like double barrel surnames, they sound too posh, and Harrison-Barker is pretty much as English sounding as you can get. That is my real issue with it. I don’t want people to think, even more than they already do now, that I’m English. I want to be able to embrace my heritage without people thinking I’m just a crazy English person who’s great great great Grandmother was half Welsh and I’m just desperate to be different.

The themes of identity and belonging are predominant in my stories at the moment and that’s because they’re such a predominant part of my life at the moment.

I’m scared of losing my identity. I’m scared of losing me.

What's to come

The past few weeks have been extremely trying with lots of ups and downs. At one point I believed I'd taken on too much, but now I'm in a much more comfortable place and ready to get back to blogging.

I'm currently studying an undergraduate English Language module as well as working full time, rehearsing most nights for a play and trying to write a novel. Last week I was a wreck. I still hadn’t learnt my lines, I was struggling through coursework, work was busy and I hadn’t done any writing. Somehow, I pushed through it (with the help of chocolate and lots of tea) and am pleased with what I’ve achieved. My coursework is done, my lines learnt and I have begun writing my novel. So okay I only have about a thousand words, but compared to the zero I had on Friday, I’m pretty chuffed. I don’t work well without deadlines and the fact that there isn’t a deadline for my novel has always meant that it seems to sink to the bottom of the priority list, but now I’m applying for a Masters in Creative Writing for this September, and the application requires five thousand words of a novel, so it’s given me the kick up the bum of motivation that I needed. I’ll keep you posted on the novel.  

So that’s me done explaining why I haven’t written a blog entry in a while, so let’s get to business, what to expect in this blog.

The next blog entry I write will be continuing the fantasy theme of the previous post. Last time I looked at the good vs the bad fantasy hero, and next time I will be looking at what makes a good fantasy plot.

If you have any comments or examples on good or bad fantasy heroes or even fantasy plots you like for next time then please feel free to reply.

My Fantasy Hero

Belated Happy New Year Everyone!

For Christmas this year, the same as every other Christmas, I received a lot of books. Apart from ‘One Day’ by David Nicholls, they’re all Young Adult Fantasy novels. I know already that I will write Young Adult fiction with a hint of fantasy and romance. I know this because these are the stories I enjoy reading. As you can imagine, I’ve read a lot of this genre and so in this blog I thought I’d write about something, within this genre, that interests me, and today that is the Young Adult fantasy hero/heroine.

Though this blog entry is focused on the Young Adult Fantasy hero, I believe this also applies to the hero of the Fantasy genre as a whole. In my opinion, the hero is the key to making the story work. In YA Fantasy the hero’s journey is so much more intense and epic compared to those in other genres that if you dislike the hero, you’ll put the book down instantly. I believe that in order for us to care about the hero first we need his world to be created and established. So many fantasy novels start with a big life changing moment (a bang) which might work if we were watching a film, but in the case of the novel it has the opposite effect. We don’t really care if our hero’s father died on page one because we haven’t known either character before this event and have no connection with them. So instead we have to wade through pages of the hero whining over their dead father, which is great in terms of character because most of us would be upset if our dad died, but for us as a reader it gets very boring, very quickly.

The way it should be done: ‘Harry Potter’ by JK Rowling.  We enjoy Harry as a character for a few chapters at the beginning of the first book and slowly get to know about his past, whilst being given enough questions and information to keep us entertained and interested.  Then suddenly we find out he’s a wizard and this is exciting because by this point we feel like we know Harry, and we know he deserved it, and we know this is his chance to go on an adventure and leave the Dursley’s; so we want this as much as he does. J K Rowling has invested time in the first few chapters allowing us time to get to know Harry and so when the journey begins we want to follow Harry to the end. If she’d started with Harry being told he was a wizard, would we really care enough about him to want to follow him to Hogwarts?

The way it shouldn’t be done: ‘Evermore’ by Alyson Noel. The story starts with the heroine, Ever, starting a new school, as she’s just moved in with her Aunty because her Mum, Dad and sister died in a car crash, that she survived. Though we know Ever is upset over her family’s death (as it is mentioned in the text), we’re not given any flashbacks or even prologue of her life before the accident, so we don’t really feel sorry that three people we didn’t know are dead. I think that the fact that her dead sister haunts her bedroom might have been the author trying to make us care about the sister as a character, instead it’s just an odd distraction from the plot, but don’t get me started on that. When Ever is moaning and crying over her dead family, we are unable to find out anything about her as a character, so we’re forced to stereotype her into the role that seems to fit her best, and that is the role of the victim, which for me, is why I stopped reading the story less than half way in.

I hate victims. A victim is not a hero. In YA Fantasy, the victim is someone who constantly moans and cries over how bad their life is and doesn’t do anything about it. The hero should be someone who might lack confidence in their abilities at the beginning but grows from each up and down they experience, and become stronger from it. They might not be smart or powerful, but they’ve reached a point of development that makes us know they’re ready to face whatever obstacle they have in their way. Bella from ‘Twilight’, by Stephenie Meyer, is a good example. When she’s being attacked by Vampires she doesn’t get through the situation alone, sometimes it’s pure luck or because someone stronger or more experienced has helped her, like Harry in ‘Harry Potter’, but she never sits down and cries about it. Bella lets herself learn from the experience and it changes her. She doesn’t wallow in pity (except of course when Edward leaves in New Moon). It’s okay for someone to be unwilling to be the hero to begin with but they must embrace it in the end, whether or not they want to.