A teller of tales

My dad was a teller of tales. He knew that the truth, the actual facts about anything, needed honing and shuffling about to make a story. He loved an audience. He’d sit at the head of the table when we had visitors and tell the same old stories, the ones that made Mum and me roll our eyes, because we’d heard them so many times, and because we were almost always the stooges. And sometimes Dad would slip in something new, and you’d listen as he told it, thinking ‘what’s this, I haven’t heard this one,’ and in the end it would turn out to be a joke embroidered with reality to keep you listening.

He was much in demand to give speeches at conferences. If his performance was anything like the speech he gave at my wedding, he deserved his reputation. Imagine the perfect father-of-the-bride speech. You get the silly stories and the little digs: at me, at my new husband. You get the references that take in every group in the room, so that we’re all in it together. You get his pride and his good wishes. I’ve got his speech on video somewhere, and now that he’s gone I’d like to find it, to watch him in full flow, notes he scarcely looks at in one hand, gesturing with the other, looking around to involve everyone in the room.

I get being a reader from my mum. She’s a book-a-day type reader. I’ll never keep up with that, but it was she who nurtured my love of books and my constant need for new and involving stories. Dad was never a reader. Reading fiction simply wasn't his thing. But I think perhaps I get being a storyteller from him. Certainly I feel I'm having a Dad moment when I’m telling my children about something that’s happened and I find I’m framing and adjusting the facts so that there’s a satisfying punchline. And when I'm writing and I realise that I’ve woven into my entirely fictional narrative some real event or experience which has been crying out to become part of a story, maybe that instinct comes from Dad too.

Thanks Dad. Miss you.

Writer seeks audience

There are few things as thrilling as having someone you don't actually know tell you they love your book. It's not a thing that's happened to me much yet. Not because people don't enjoy my writing, you understand, but because not all that many people I don't actually already know have read it yet.

My husband asked me the other day if it really mattered if no one ever read what I've written and I didn't know how to answer. Yes, I thought. Of course it matters, but it's hard to say why. 

It would be nice to earn pots of money and have people offer huge sums to make movies of my books or stand in mile-long queues to get me to sign their treasured collection of my complete works. (It happens. I can dream!)

It would be nice if people thought enough of my books to pay me sufficient money that I could do nothing but write. Of course it would.

But of course it's not just about money and being able to afford to spend your time doing what you like best.

I need people to tell me they've enjoyed what I've written. I need to know how they loved or hated the characters, how I made them cry or how I was right or wrong about something. What I need is to get people to respond to what I've written. 

Why is that hard to explain? I suppose because what I'm seeking is affirmation. Perhaps, if the writing is good, it should satisfy me in itself, and not require affirmation. It doesn't though. I am writing for me but I'm writing for other people too. I'm a storyteller and a storyteller needs an audience.

And the best thing anyone could say to me?

'I can't wait for the next one!'

If you're interested, you can read a taster of my YA novel here.
I'd love to hear what you think.

Disenchanted reader

I've just finished reading Enchanted Hunters: the power of stories in childhood by Maria Tatar and I'm feeling frustrated. The quotations and the blurb promise me that she will pin down, analyse and explain the magic of storytelling and the power of reading in children's lives. Hurray! I thought. Therein lies some questions I'd like answered. But it revealed nothing at all but rather repeated the purely obvious: stories allow children to explore situations and other emotions beyond their own experience and allow them to indulge their imaginations by plunging them into fantasy. Perhaps I have not read carefully enough and there's more substance to this than I'm seeing. She has interesting things to say about various books (especially about the child-centredness of Lewis Carroll and Dr Seuss), and I enjoyed the part about how story-telling morphed into bed-time reading over the ages. There's also an entertaining appendix of quotations from different authors about how they first experienced reading. But on the whole, a disappointment, and I didn't follow Maria Tatar's explanation of why she used a quotation from Lolita for the title at all.

I come away with unanswered questions:

Why does the fantastic appeal to children? Why do they love magic and other worlds, time slips and aliens?

Why do many adults lose the taste for the fantastic? Do they gain something else? Is it to do with the fact that the whole world is less mysterious to them? Is it to do with the fact that they have learned to be critical and can no longer suspend disbelief?

Why do I still like to read children's books? Is this childish? Do I read them the same way as I did when I was a child?

Why do some children become so involved in stories? Or perhaps how? Do they feel part of the action? Or is observing enough? Why do reading children seem to get this all-encompassing involvement often, whereas I only occasionally reach this point with a book (I suspect there is a time-to-spare factor here!).

So here's my plan. I'm going to search out some books about reading, about how we read and why we read, and some books about children's books (or I could reread the dozen on my shelves whose contents I seem to have forgotten). And I'm going to think about it. Maybe the reason Maria Tatar didn't come up with any revelation is because there isn't any. So, more on this at a later date, but if you have any answers or can suggest any promising leads in my quest, let me know.