"Exploring Strange New Worlds.....To Boldly Go!"

My blogging has become rather sporadic over the past few weeks. The Christmas period and all that it entails has been the main factor but there have been other issues. Firstly I’ve been busy with U3A (University of the Third Age) matters having just assumed the role of membership secretary of the local branch.  But the  most significant reason for my lack of presence on the blogsphere is because I have newly discovered interest which has increasingly called upon my time!

The opening pages to "Girl on a Train" and "Candlelight"

Just before Christmas I joined one of our local U3A groups – a creative writing group. It was not an easy decision because although I spent much of my life in the classroom developing children’s writing I had really done little myself – certainly not writing as an adult or for adults. It was a bit of a step in the dark and for me a little daunting. Our small group meets every couple of weeks. Prior to each meeting we all write a short story or poem on a pre-set theme. We then take our efforts to the next meeting, read out our work to the rest of the group who then make suggestions and comments on its quality and format. Some of the themes we have tackled so far include “Girl on a train”, “New Year Resolutions”, “Candlelight” and so on. The group leader will, at the end of the year, draw up an anthology of a cross section of the efforts.

From the moment I put pen to paper (or rather lap top to printer) I was hooked. It was complete escapism. Quite unlike blogging (or at least my blogging) it took me into different worlds. I love blogging; it allows me to be a grumpy old man, to comment and moan about politics and world events and to set out my thoughts on a subject of interest. But this was something quite different and has increasingly fulfilled a different part of my consciousness. I could never, I think, give up blogging but this short story writing provides a different avenue for my interests.

For the first time I really understood why great authors (or maybe actors or song writers) often say that they are compelled to write, act or sing. As soon as I put the metaphorical pen to paper I am in a different world and a different person – inhabiting the world of which I am writing and the persona of the character involved. To say that is liberating is, I think, an understatement. Once I am in that different world I am thinking of, enjoying and worrying about the lives of the characters in my story not my own; I forget my own world and its ups and downs and become part of a new reality which, of course, I can escape from at will as soon as I switch the lap top off! Blogging allows me to explore my own personal world but short story writing allows me to escape from that and explore a make believe world, someone else's reality!

David Bowie as his alter ego Ziggy Stardust

Today we have learned of the death of the legendary David Bowie. I have never been fan of Bowie or his music but I cannot deny his fame, his world stature and how he has profoundly influenced generations. A few minutes ago I was watching a film clip of him speaking  in which he said “It’s [writing songs] more than a drug it is just something I have to do. I could not live without it”. Well, I’m no David Bowie but having, through writing a short story, experienced the joy and liberation, of being able to suddenly inhabit a different world and different persona, I think I am able to appreciate a little what he was saying.

In writing this I am reminded of a comment that I know well and which suddenly popped up the other night as I continued to read David Kynaston’s mammoth and brilliant history of post war Britain. I am currently reading the second volume – “Family Britain” – which covers the period 1951 -1957. (see blog  “When is austerity not austerity?” 23^rd Nov. 2015) Kynaston spends a good deal of time describing and commenting upon the advent of TV and its growth in home ownership in the early and mid fifties. At about that time the BBC undertook a survey amongst children about their views on this new bit of technology which was finding its way into  front rooms across the nation. Children were asked (amongst other questions) whether they preferred to listen to a story on the radio or to watch it on TV. The majority opted for the TV but one boy answered that he preferred the radio version because  “the pictures were better”. When questioned further on his reply he made the perceptive comment that his imagination allowed him to picture the events and characters in the story in whatever way he wanted and, he added, what he imagined was invariably better than which he saw on TV. In a way, he suggested, was that he was almost part of the story and not simply an outside observer.  I know exactly what he meant.

The statue in Berlin  to remember the
children of the kindertransport

We live today in a world where everything is made visual. Little is left to the imagination. Our films and TV depict  everything in the raw – violence, sex, excitement, horror and the rest. Nothing is left to one’s imagination or to nuance. We live in a world of text messages, Tweets,  Instagrams or Facebook  where brief simplicity is the required format. There is no place in the world of Tweeting for nuance or subtly - to coin a phrase, it has to be "in your face". Millions will write something as simple as “feeling happy today” and then, in case we didn’t understand this message, place a smiling emoticon at the side to ensure our comprehension. Not a week passes it seems without a new virtual reality game coming onto the market. At Christmas my three grandsons sat glued in front of their new Xbox  Star Wars games zooming across outer space, shooting aliens and visiting new planets  - each one more bizarre and  extravagant than the last. There was no need for an emotional or imaginative involvement or attachment – simply the ability to press the button quickly. No tears were shed when someone was blown up, no pain was felt, no thought was required. In short this really was virtual reality – it was reality without the aspects that make up actual reality:  hope, fear, doubts, joy, sorrow, ambition, desire and all the other qualities that define us as humans. It is the reality of the machine not of the human.

But reading, and now for me writing, allows me to enter a different world from that in which I exist. I can be who I want and live the life of that person; relive their hopes and fears experience their desires and their excitements. In my story about the "Girl on the train" (in fact, I wrote two stories on this theme!) I imagined an elderly woman, who as a young Jewish girl,  had travelled, as Europe plunged into war, on the kindertransport from Berlin to the relative safety of England. Lottie (the name I gave her) by chance and after more than seventy years discovers that her twin sister is still alive in Germany. I tried to tell the tale, build up a history of Lottie and understand her feelings and those of her family as she made her trip back to Berlin to see again the sister that she had not seen for more than a lifetime. In another of my short stories ("Candlelight") - this one based on fact -  I imagined that I was my elderly grandfather who in 1919 after the first World War wrote to the War Commissioners in London pleading for an increase in his disability pension because of the wounds that he had sustained in battle (see blog “Touching the Past” 21 Feb 2011). I tried to understand what he would have felt - a proud tradesman incapacitated and unable to provide properly for his young family - and what might have gone through his mind as he sat down one night in March 1919 to write his letter by candlelight.

Mine is not great literature – not even good literature; it is not the work of a budding Dickens or Jane Austen. It will never be published nor would I happily display it on line. It is simply for me and allows me in a curious way not to just write a story but to explore what it might be like to be another person and experience what I think might be their dreams or fears. When writing about Lottie or my grandfather I could not possibly even begin to understand their feelings or life – I am not a woman,  I have never experienced the horror of war, never had a twin sister, never had to write a begging letter........... . But I can imagine it and that, I think, is important  for it helps one to understand the actions of others.

The starship Enterprise "boldly going" to  new  worlds!

So, I will have to juggle my grumpy old man blogging with my new found interest of becoming the next Dickens. I don’t think, however, that Dickens or Hilary Mantel or Salman Rushdie need fear for their popularity or sales. My writing is simply an enjoyable and cathartic experience not for the consumption of others (I’m even rather embarrassed about showing my work off to my wife, Pat when she asks to read it!). In the immortal words of the Star Trek title sequence it simply allows me to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before”   (apologies for the split infinitive!) or as the boy said to the BBC all those years ago to enjoy “the pictures in my head!”