200th Post - Getting There Alone

When I was in my early teens my mum gave me a copy of A Tale of Two Cities for either Christmas or a birthday. I read it but it didn't make much of an impact on me. Although I was an avid reader throughout my youth I don't think classics really touched my radar. I think I rebelled against them, probably due to the fact my paternal grandfather had bookshelves stacked high with Dickens, Milton, Fielding and Shakespeare. Who doesn't instinctively feel as a kid that they should be the exact opposite to their family?

Of course, I was exposed to Shakespeare throughout my schooling and appreciated the tragedies enough to see Hamlet and Macbeth on stage at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. I studied the first chapter of Great Expectations for my GCSE coursework and looked at Tess of the D'Urbervilles for an A-Level module. I think Tess proved to be the breakthrough text. Certainly, when I got to university I was more than happy to find myself on a Victorian fiction unit. I remember vividly sitting and reading Jane Eyre in the lounge of my student accommodation, curled up on one of the cheap Ikea chairs and gazing up once in a while to look at the view of Lincoln Cathedral. Jane Eyre was followed by Wuthering Heights then the full text of Great Expectations and other selections. Although these books were part of a syllabus, reading them wasn't a chore (perhaps reading Middlemarch was though). I was then (and still am) a rather shy girl, reluctant to speak in seminars, but I really did enjoy the literature. I hadn't come to the texts on my own as such, but I'd found enjoyment in them because I'd been able to look at them as something other than the books my grandfather enjoyed.

Reaching conclusions about your tastes on your own is satisfying. Most people, unless they're exceptionally eager to please, can't get enjoyment from acting to suit others. When you finally sit down and consider the things you like, there's a certain thrill in knowing that these tastes are yours alone. They may be influenced by the prejudices and encouragements of your past but, if you have even a smidgen of self-awareness, you can pinpoint why you like them and not why people you've known like them.

Look at me and Victorian fiction. From being ambivalent about A Tale of Two Cities I've progressed to studying a minor author at PhD level. Classics of all eras find their way onto my reading piles. I'm intrigued by the literature and culture of the nineteenth-century in particular but I count Tom Jones and Mrs Dalloway amongst my favourite books. But I read them because I want to, not because somebody stern wants me to.

We've got a serious problem in Britain at the moment. One in three children live in houses without books. This is a nightmare and I dread to think where it'll leave us in a few decades. But I don't think pushing so-called 'good' literature on them from a young age is quite the way to go. Some will be receptive to it but a lot won't. It might put them off for life. When I was younger I loved Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and whatever mystery books I could get my hands on. I happily read tie-ins with my favourite television shows - Sabrina the Teenage Witch springs straight to mind. That's a great way to get children from screen to page without much of an effort. Then perhaps when they get older they'll go looking for fiction they might enjoy themselves. Perhaps they'll even discover Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte and Wilkie Collins on their travels... Ah, well, an academic can dream.

Imitating Greats

Today I stumbled across this quote, attributed to Mae West: "Let Shakespeare do it his way, I'll do it mine. We'll see who comes out better."

It struck a chord. What writer hasn't looked at the work of their literary idol (be it Shakespeare, Emily Bronte, Graham Greene or Dan Brown) and wanted suddenly to be that writer? It's not just about the prestige and the recognition those writers have received either. As a novice it's so much easier to have an answer to those questions from people trying to appear interested in your work: "what kind of stuff do you write" and "who are you like then". Is it just me who gets those questions from well-meaning friends?

I have my literary idols, of course. Katherine Mansfield, Edith Wharton, Sarah Waters - too many to mention here. One activity I did for my MA Creative Writing was to write something in the style of a famous writer, a pastiche. We were given extracts of pieces by Raymond Chandler, Henry Fielding, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Ernest Hemingway. I immediately grabbed Henry Fielding, Tom Jones being a favourite book of mine, and set to work. Here's a few lines of what I came up with that session:

Petula McBride, our disillusioned heroine, was the only bearded girl of Patty and Mickey McBride, and sister to the smooth-skinned Ramona, whose reputation at present is quite illuminating. For the family we have looked with mass trepidation and little success: we faltered in tracing them farther than the great-grandmother who masqueraded as Margaret the Moose and was sister to that famed contortionist, Millie. Was there family before this it's impossible to say. It is left to the dear reader to deduce the origin of her bald patch.

Be gentle - it was written in twenty minutes and had to be read out aloud to the group!

I really enjoyed writing this. It was easy to get caught up in Fielding's mannerisms and, despite the fact he was centuries out of date, my tutor commented that a pastiche like that could be popular with modern readers. The trouble is, if you focus too much on being Henry Fielding then you forget who you are yourself.

I love nestling into a bit of pastiche writing, or even fan fiction, when I'm in the mood. If I'm having trouble with my work in progress or just having one of those droughts where every word feels out of place and extraneous then it offers an outlet where I can carry on writing but with something of a blueprint to follow.

Inevitably, though, I yearn to go back to my own voice. If imitation does anything it reminds me that trapped inside of me is a unique voice struggling to get out.