Tuesday 31 January 2023

Jan Moran Neil, Evergreen Author

 

 

Today Jan Moran Neil tells us about Evergreen and her writing.  

How did you hear about our competition?

WRITING MAGAZINE

What inspired you about the theme?

 I had been both fascinated and appalled by the story of Matilda Scheurer, a hat fluffer in the late nineteenth century.

I had written the poem but the story never left me. When i saw the theme ‘evergreen’ it spurred my on to write the story especially as I discovered my great-great- grandmother was a fancy box cutter at this precise time. So fiction took hold.

 

How did you get to write short stories?

I have been writing stories since I was a child.

 

In no more than three sentences can you summarise what made you become a writer?

I come from a performance stable. I write to perform.

 

What else are you working on?

My own memories rather than ‘memoir’ – as it is from this hub that all else

revolves.

Jan Moran Neil: www.janmoranneil.co.uk

www.janmoranneil.co.uk/blog

Jan’s novel Shakespeare’s Clock and Creative Ink pandemic anthology When This Is All Over ...

are available on Amazon.

Read Jan's story 'Scheurer's Green' in  Evergreen


Monday 30 January 2023

Chris Simpson Evergeen Author


 

I'm presenting a short series about the authors who have contribute to Evergreen.  First up, Chris Simpson  

How did you hear about our competition?

I believe it was the newsletter.

 

What inspired you about the theme?

It was specific, but you could hit it from any angle. As there were several ways I could approach this story, I tried several ways. The first draft, and subsequent five, came from the point-of-view of Sandra. The more I drilled down into the story, it seemed that Tom's perspective was more interesting as he couldn't see that he had to change. There was opposition and in that I felt he was a good, natural, enemy to the theme.

 

How did you get to write short stories?

Failure. I started in misanthropic mid-90s suburbia as a teenager writing screenplays when I had no good reason to be doing so other than escaping my environment. This was after I gave up a dream of being a priest, which is handy seeing I'm now an atheist and a husband. After failing to making films, I started doing stand-up comedy in my very early twenties which was both hilarious and awful. I came late to reading literary fiction late and when I did, like all good love affairs I fell hard. I've been failing and falling ever since.

 

In no more than three sentences can you summarise what made you become a writer?

Throughout wanting to serve, make films, tell jokes, the only thing I've ever done which has felt like me being me - is writing. My favourite quote on writing is this by Thomas Williams: "I write so I don't die before I'm dead." That's how I feel about it.

 

What else are you working on?

I'm on the second draft of a domestic noir. I write both literary and crime fiction so while editing that, I'm constantly submitting work around and have work ready for print. Rarely on social media, you can find me at: www.writerchrissimpson.com

Read Chris's story 'All her Tomorrows' in Evergreen.

  



Tuesday 17 January 2023

Where do you get your ideas from?

Fairy, Pixie, Fantasy, Flower, Dust

That is the question I always used to dread when I used to do school visits. I was always at a loss how to answer it. But I thought I might take a few moments now to analyse that a little more. Is there a science to it after all?

Nobody scatters magic fairy dust … or do they?  

Starting out

When you first start out at writing you tend to be full of great ideas. Then gradually they dry up. This is partly because you do genuinely use all the ones you’d first thought of. It’s also because you have a little less faith in some of your ideas because by now you’ve met a few that don’t work.  You also become more self-critical.

Never running out of ideas

I’ve always dreaded the day when I wouldn’t be able to think of what to write next. It’s never happened. As I write my sixth book in my SF YA series I’m already thinking of the seventh and that will be the final.

I’m also now working on the seventh book in my Schellberg cycle.  I’m spending time in cafés and on trains looking at my characters and creating vignettes from their past. Many of these snippets may not make it to the novel but they’re allowing me to get to know my characters well and I’m teasing out a shape for this story.

And after that I have a three book series planned about a character that loosely resembles my maternal grandmother.   

Using prompts

Some people hate them but I actually like writing to them. I seem to be even more successful with this if I’m also timed in my writing or have a strict word count. I write short stories as a relief from my novel writing and I’ll often look for a themed call to submission for that. There are lots of places where you can find prompts – on Twitter (I’ve put a few there myself), on my Writing Teacher site, in my Big Book of Prompts.

Out and about

So many things that I see on my travels suggest stories: who is the young man who didn’t have the bus fare for his dog,  what is the story of the girl with the cello, who is selling that pretty little terraced house and why?

Physical activity tends to encourage idea

It’s rarely as I’m at my desk that the ideas come, though sometimes whilst I’m writing I’ll find my story taking on a life of its own and bringing in twists and turns I hadn’t planned. The eureka moments come though when I’m walking, cooking, ironing, swimming or driving.

News stories

Sometimes you can look for the more human stories behind the news items. Get into the minds and hearts of the players and find out what really happened.

There are always the old favourites

Nobody ever needs to be stuck for ideas. Bring a fairy story, Bible story or story form another religious book, or even something form Shakespeare into the 21st century, or tell the story of a minor character or of the antagonist.

Yes, there are plenty of ideas. We need never run dry.  It can seem sometime thats it’s magic fairy dust after all.           

   

 

Wednesday 11 January 2023

Sharon (S Nadja Zajdman) tells us about her life as a writer

 


 

 




What do you write?

 

I write whatever bubbles up.  I’ve written a lot about my late parents, because they were fascinating, larger-than-life characters.  Also, writing about them has been a way of continuing to be with them. 

 

 

What got you started writing?

 


School teachers got me started writing.  They also spooked me into stopping.  From the time I penned my first compositions my mother kept getting called in, because my teachers didn’t believe I was producing my own work.  They refused to believe that what I handed in was the work of a child.  They would be embarrassed when my mother showed up.  In their eyes, Mum appeared to be little more than a shabby immigrant woman with an accent.  They assumed she could not have done my homework, either.  Finally my mother suggested, “Why don’t you keep Sharon in after school, give her an assignment and watch her while she writes.  Then you’ll see what she can do.”  My teachers followed my mother’s advice.  It put an end to the suspicion of plagiarism, but it did not put an end to the pressure.

            When I was barely twelve, I read an article in the Saturday supplement of the now defunct Montreal Star.  It was called The Art of the Warsaw Ghetto. Among other horrors, the author of this piece claimed that people would slice the  skin off corpses and use it as parchment, in order to have something to write on.

            As you know, my parents were Holocaust survivors, though the media had yet to coin this term.  At the time, Holocaust education did not exist.  Meaning to protect me and my brother, our parents did not speak about the war, though inadvertently information was transmitted through our mother’s sometimes confusing and erratic behavior.  Our dad called the predominantly Jewish neighbourhood we had recently moved to (after the Six Day War, and in response to it) “a golden ghetto,” and I knew that Mum came from the city of Warsaw, which was the capital of Poland.  I had picked up the term “In Ghetto” in reference to Warsaw.  When I asked about the Warsaw Ghetto, I was told it was “the Jewish district in Warsaw.”  So I pictured the Warsaw Ghetto as a middle-class suburban neighbourhood.  Until I read this article.  I was shocked.  I also realized that my parents were hiding something hideous.  I didn’t feel I could confront them with this article, so I turned to my English teacher.  This woman was a frustrated writer who, after retirement, carved out a second career as a minor poet.  But that lay in the future.

            When I showed Mrs. Yelin the bit about the skin of the dead being used as writing paper, she rolled her emerald eyes and exclaimed, “You see, my child!   You see what it means to be a writer!  A true artist will resort to any means in order to be able to write!”  Now I was not only shocked; I was traumatized.  If this is what it means to be a writer, I thought, I don’t want it.  At the time I said nothing, neither to my mother nor to my teacher, but I stopped writing.  For years.   It was only after leaving school that I once more took up a pen.

            Years later, when Mum and I could speak freely about her past, I told her about the article and my teacher’s response to it.  “Nonsense.”  She put my childhood fears to rest.  “It never happened.”    

 

Do you have a particular routine?

 

No, but I work best after sleep.  Either first thing in the morning, or after a nap.  I consider the sub-conscious a helpful writing partner.  Writing problems tend to get solved during sleep.  I trust the phrases which manifest behind my eyes before I open them.

 

 Do you have a dedicated work space?

 

Yes.  I work at a desktop, in front of a large-enough monitor.  I don’t sit on a chair.  I sit on a fitness ball.  It keeps me lifted.  As I write, I bounce and rotate and work my core.

 

When did you decide to call yourself a writer?  Do you in fact, do that?

 

I decided I was a legitimate writer after being published three times.  For years I have called myself a writer.  In the past year, with the traditional publication of two books (I self-published a book ten years ago), I stopped calling myself a writer, and now define myself as an author.

 

How supportive are your friends and family?  Do they understand what you’re doing?

 

My mother was my greatest ally.   She was my best friend and first phone call.  When I was eight years old she said to me, “Everybody has biiiiiig feelings!”  Mum illustrated the immensity and intensity of such feelings by opening her arms wide and seeming to lift the air.  “But few people are able to express their feelings in writing, the way you can.  By the way you write, in the way you write, you can show us our feelings and help us to understand them.”  At the moment I write this I can hear my mother saying it.  I can see the light of hope and encouragement in her eyes.  At the time I thought, “I can do this?  What a responsibility.  I’m not even sure what it means.”   

            Other allies turned up along the way.  When I was twenty, the man to whom I Want You To Be Free is dedicated said to me, “Your talent is mature, but you are not.  You’ll have to grow into your talent.”  They are all dead now.  The last to be taken was an historian and history professor.  He managed to avoid the pandemic by dying in December of 2019.   He considered me a serious, albeit unrecognized talent.  Lately I’ve been thinking of him.  I recall when he compared my work to that of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill.  Of course it was a great compliment, but it took a while to realize what he meant.  Williams and O’Neill were outsiders who exposed the dark side of Family.  They aired dirty laundry, transforming it into art.  In their work, they were uncompromising.  When I feel uncomfortable with what is clamoring to be expressed, I try to remember that.

            A friend who read I Want You To Be Free called it “a work of maturity.”  The man, so long gone, to whom the book is dedicated, would’ve been pleased to hear it.     

 

What are you most proud of in your writing?


 

 I am most proud of the memoir I Want You To Be Free.  It is a labour of love and a tribute not only to my courageous mother, but also to those she loved.  I have succeeded in honouring them in a way which would be most meaningful to my mother—in the form of a book.  With this work, I believe I have fulfilled the potential foreseen for me, and in me.  It is a great relief to have finally done so.  Though it doesn’t mean that I will stop writing!

 

How do you get on with editing and research?

 

I just do it.  When I feel stumped on research, I turn to the reference department at my wonderful local library.  This library has become my second home.  No question is too large or bizarre for its dedicated staff.  The head of the department has said to me, “I live for questions like yours.”  They were immensely helpful with the historical research needed for I Want You To Be Free, and I officially thanked them in the Acknowledgements page.  

 

Do you have any goals for the future?

 

I have completed work on another memoir.  This one is of my dad.  I wrote it not only to celebrate the life of a beautiful human being, but also to challenge the public perception of Holocaust survivors and offer a different perspective.  As I Want You To Be Free is about Memory, Daddy’s Remains is about Legacy.  The title was inspired by the fact that my father was buried twice.  As I wrote, the narrative developed and evolved into an exploration of my father’s legacy through the lives he touched, through the children he left behind and what happened to them.  I consider it a companion piece to I Want You To Be Free.  It may not be marketable, but it was satisfying to have written it.  There is also a comic novel sitting on your intimidatingly long waiting list.  I look forward to working on it with you. 

 

 

Which writers have inspired you?

 

When I was young and for a long time, I claimed Shaw as my favourite writer.  I began my professional life in the theatre, and Shaw wrote terrific roles for actresses.  I was also enchanted by his satiric wit.  Shaw’s halo slipped when my historian friend informed me that the jester of Ayot St. Lawrence kept a portrait of Stalin in his home.  Since then I have turned to women writers for inspiration—Alice Munro showed me that a Canadian woman can create a literary landscape as legitimate as any other, and Anita Brookner’s novels modelled the dignity of a woman on her own.   But ultimately it is Mark Twain who strides like a colossus above the rest, not only as a writer, but also as a human being.  Born into pre-Civil War America Twain, who came from a slave-owning family, evolved into an abolitionist.  Unlike Dickens or even Shakespeare, there is nothing to apologize for, in the works of Mark Twain.  He took on all the important issues of his time.  He was prescient and humane.  His message was serious, yet delivered with wit.  He sustained personal tragedy which would’ve destroyed a lesser man.  He outlived his wife and two of his three daughters.  He lost a son at the age of eighteen months, and out of his grief Tom Sawyer was born.   It is Mark Twain’s example which taught me what can be redeemed from bereavement and grief. 

 

 

 

 

Tell me about your book.

 

I WANT YOU TO BE FREE is a memoir of my late mother, the pioneering Holocaust educator and activist Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman.  In 2011, terminally ill, my mother was awarded the Polish government’s Order of Merit, which was a singular honour not only for a Canadian citizen, but especially for a Jew.   I Want You To Be Free is more than my mother’s story; it is her wish for posterity and her message to the world.

 

 

Tell us about your research for the book.

 

My mother left a wealth of documentation in the form of several filmed testimonies, myriad recordings, speeches and documents, and a private memoir which she intended to be used as a reference for her children and grandchildren.  All were helpful, especially the memoir.  I have woven passages from this work through my own.  In the book, the blending of my mother’s words with mine becomes a form of posthumous dialogue.  The recordings I relied on most were the last, which we made together during day-long infusions in hospital.  Mum knew her time was running out and she finally revealed all to the daughter she trusted and loved.  In her final days, at home on morphine, she was still making notes for me.  What additional information I could no longer get from Mum, I got from the library.

 

What inspired you to write this?

 

Grief.  Soul-searing anguish, torment and grief.

 

 What’s next?

 

As I said earlier, I’ve completed a memoir of my dad, as well as a novel.   After this, I just don’t know.  I don’t know if I have another book in me.  But I do and will keep writing.  My mother knew that after she was gone, writing would sustain me.  She was right.

 

How can we get a copy of the book?

 

In the UK, it is possible to buy the book in physical book shops, as well as on Amazon.uk.   Google has a listing.  Outside the UK there are various outlets, but the best bet would be Amazon.

 

Do you have any events planned?

 

In early December of 2022 an international virtual launch was held under the sponsorship of Montreal’s Holocaust Museum, in partnership with my local library and a hook-up to the publisher in the UK.  The program was recorded and can be accessed through YouTube.  At the time of this writing (January, 2023) there are no further plans.