Writing Away (or Going Away to Write) by Malachy Doyle

 I'm lucky, me. I have a study.

I also have a writing hut.

But I still find that some of the best ideas happen when I’m away.

When I started writing, over 20 years ago now, I went on a week-long course at Ty Newydd. It’s on the Lleyn Peninsula in Wales - and it’s a wonderful place to write. 

The tutors were Kevin Crossley-Holland and Valerie Bloom and they were both fantastically encouraging. ‘You’ve got it, Malachy,’ they said. ‘Now go home and do it!’

So I did. And two of the stories I was working on that week became books (The Football Ghosts, 11 years later, and The Snuggle Sandwich, 14 years later!)

A year after that I got a bursary from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and spent it on a week at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan.  Another superb place to write.

Three of the stories I was working on that week became books - Una and the Sea-Cloak, The King of the Birds and Moya, The Luck Child.

These days, when I go away, it’s generally to help other people write. I’ve been back to Ty Newydd many times, running courses, including with both Kevin and Valerie.   

I’ve also led residential courses at Annaghmakerrig and at all three of the Arvon centres across England – courses for schoolchildren and for adults. It’s great to give back, to encourage, to inspire, to help people find their voice… And it’s wonderful to discover the occasional just-about-fully-formed-but-didn't-yet-know-it writer to whom you can say, ‘You’ve got it! Now go home and do it!’

At the Totleigh Barton Arvon centre in Devon I was teaching a new writer for children, Anthea Simmons. She wrote her first picture book story ‘Share!’ there. It’s gone on to be published in many languages, and already has two sequels.

 In the same place, on a course I taught with Vivian French, we helped a new and very exciting young writer by the name of Michelle Robinson find her picture-book voice. (She's been known to lurk hereabouts.)   

And just the other day I heard from the illustrator Guy Parker-Rees that a character he developed on an Arvon course I was teaching a while back has not only become a book, but has sold to Brown Bag films for development as an animation series.

Running courses helps my own writing too. I generally sit in on the sessions of my co-tutors, often finding myself inspired to write things I’d never have written at home. I was recently teaching an Arvon schools course with Sheena Wilkinson, a fellow Northern Irish writer, and wrote a story in one of her sessions (in fifteen minutes flat, as you do!) that, fingers crossed, will soon be a picture book.

So, yes, I’m a big fan of writing courses and of the idea of going away to write. It's a excellent way to shift gear, to see things differently, to try a new approach or a whole new genre and to find the confidence to follow where it leads...

And if anyone’s tempted, I’m leading one at The Hurst (the newly-refurbished and delightful Arvon centre in Shropshire) at the end of May.

It’s a Tutored Retreat, so rather than running workshops, I’ll be available all week, with my co-tutor, the very excellent Narinder Dhami, to help you with your writing. Whatever you’re working on – from picture books to young adult, it’ll be a great place to find inspiration, to write and to develop as a writer. And maybe, hopefully, like me, you’ll get a book or two out of it. Arvon tell me there are still some places left, and that there's a possibility of bursaries for those who can’t afford the full fee. Oh, and our special guest on the Wednesday night is the superb Geraldine McCaughrean – not to be missed.

So has anyone else any suggestions as to other good places to go away and write. What works for you, and why?

 

 Malachy's latest book is Sea Stories, published by OUP in their series
 'The Greatest Stories' (Oxford Reading Tree: Treetops), May 2016

And if anyone would like to find out more about the tutored retreat at The Hurst, go to the Arvon website:

http://www.arvon.org/course/childrens-and-young-adult-fiction-tutored-retreat/
 
or ring The Hurst 01588640658 (from UK), email thehurst@arvon.org

In the Beginning there were Folk Tales (by Malachy Doyle)

My very first picture book was The Great Castle of Marshmangle. I wrote it 19 years ago, and life was never the same again.

 

I'd been writing for two or three years by then, but in October 1996 I went on a week-long Writing for Children course at the Ty Newydd residential writing centre in Wales. The tutors were Kevin Crossley-Holland and Valerie Bloom, and not only were they brilliant, but they were immensely encouraging of me and my writing. I've since taught courses at Ty Newydd with both Kevin and Valerie, and it's always a delight to be giving back to new writers, a thrill to be back at such a wonderful place, and a particular delight to see them both again.  

Kevin talked a lot about retelling folk tale, and about the responsibilities of approaching traditional material.
'Yes,' he said, 'many folk tales are dark, but naming the terrors helps children understand them - it's damaging to pretend there are no terrors.'
Yes, he said, they may be about people a world and an age away from us, but 'the deeper we look the more we're willing to grant humanity to those who are unlike us - to see that they are who we are - to realise that there's so little difference between us all that it's not worth mentioning.'
'Folk tale is healing and reconciliatory' he said. 'It looks for common ground between all of us who are human. The stories decode a hidden world but also celebrate a shared identity.' 
(And yes, I was taking notes, and yes, I have them still. I was a most determined apprentice!)

He asked us to find a folk tale, to take a folk-motif, and make it our own. He told us that his book Storm, one of my all-time favourites, came from an eight line section in a Scottish folk tale of a girl who goes on a night journey. I found a story called The Ghosts and the Game of Football in a Patrick Kennedy collection and turned it into one called Famous Seamus that went down a treat on the Friday night read-around. It eventually found its form as The Football Ghosts, published nine years later by Egmont in their Banana Books strand - particularly pleasing as Kevin's Storm, a Carnegie medal winner, was also a Banana Book.

 

And I've been doing it ever since - playing with folk tale. Probably somewhere approaching half of my books, including many of my picture books, either retell folk tales or more often use lines, ideas, motifs from folk tales as a starting point. If they've survived for hundreds, for thousands of years, changing with every telling, then there's obviously some core of truth and relevance and entertainment that will survive one more retelling, one more adaptation.

I got back from Ty Newydd in October 96, all fired up and searching for folk-tale inspiration. I was reading Ciaran Carson's superb book on Irish traditional music, Last Night's Fun, and was very taken with a story he quoted from the musician and story-collector Seamus Ennis. (It also appears in Joseph Jacobs' English Fairy Tales as Master of all Masters). So I wrote a picture book, and then, just to be sure, rang Ciaran Carson to check he didn't mind (and to clear with him that there weren't likely to be any copyright problems). Faber and Andersen made immediate offers, I went with Andersen, and it became my first book with the legendary Klaus Flugge (and the very lovely editor, Janice Thompson).

I had great fun, aided by my then teenage daughter Hannah (who's recently illustrated my Pete and the Five-a-Side Vampires), coming up with all the wordplay: Smoulderglow for fire, Soggadrop for water, Sandcastle Stompers for wellington boots, Brainbox Banana for a top hat... A teacher once told me her class had found the book invaluable when they were studying kennings - and was shocked when I told the class I hadn't a clue what one was. Oh, and I just loved the illustrations for the book by the masterly Paul Hess

It got loads of foreign editions and I was up and running: thanks to Kevin and Valerie, to Ty Newydd, to the wonderful and never-ending resource that is traditional story.