All the Bells – Work No. 1197

At 8:12 am today I took part in ‘All the Bells’ to ring in the first day of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The event was masterminded by Martin Creed and the aim was to ring all the bells in the country as quickly and loudly as possible for 3 minutes. It was timed to be exactly 12 hours before the opening ceremony of the Games, which starts at 20:12 this evening.

At St. Michael’s Church, Boldmere in Sutton Coldfield we chimed the heaviest 6 of our 8 church bells.  An official Olympic volunteer at the football in Coventry, Debbie, came along in her (very smart) uniform to support us and took the picture below (I’m the one in the middle with the black T-shirt).

All this Olympic mania made me wonder what happened to the 100 chosen to be ‘Olympic Storytellers’ after the invitation for us all to apply last year. I wasn’t successful and have heard nothing about it since. But a quick trawl of the web has thrown up the Olympic Story Tellers’ Website. Here each of selected writers has published their news and views of the Olympics. There are poems, photographs and blog posts – take a look if you get a minute.

Mincing Your Words

Did you know that many of our swear words have religious roots? Or have you any idea where the phrase ‘mincing your words’ comes from? I’d never really thought about it until I heard Thought for the Day on Radio 4 last Monday with Clifford Longley.

He explained how years ago swearing in public could get a person arrested and punished. Bad language would be noted down by the police officer who had witnessed it and then, in court, the piece of paper would be silently shown to the judge so that he could decide on the offender’s comeuppance.

The most offensive swearing had its basis in religion and therefore contravened the commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Hence, the reason that many people took offence.

To avoid the repercussions of their bad language, people used to ‘mince their words’ to disguise what they were really saying. Here are a few of the minced expressions:

By Our Lady (which referred to the Virgin Mary) became Bloody

God Blind Me became Blimey

Christ became Crikey or Cripes

By God’s Wounds became Zounds (I have to admit I’ve never heard of this one)

These minced words passed into common use at different times in the last few hundred years. So, if you write historical fiction and have characters with a tendency to bad language – take some time to discover exactly what they would have said and whether they would have been in danger of getting arrested for it!

Paranormal Book Winner!

All the names went into a cereal bowl (not with the Weetabix!) and the winner was drawn.

It is … (pause for effect with camera close-ups of all the contestants to see how they’re bearing up to the tension) …

REBECCA otherwise known as Littlemerants and she is the author of the Pint-Sized Rants blog. Do go visit her and see if you share her opinions on erotica, sharks and reality TV.

Thank you to everybody that entered – it’s reassuring to know that I’m not blogging into a big black hole where nobody’s listening!

Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer

Could you co-write a novel with your teenage daughter? That’s what Jodi Picoult did when her daughter Samantha pitched an idea to her for a young adult novel.

The result is Between the Lines. It is based on the idea that the characters in a book can live their own lives when the book is closed. When the book is opened they must jump back into their pre-ordained story roles, like actors who appear in the same production night after night.  But what happens when a teenage girl falls in love with the illustrations of Prince Oliver in a fairytale book  and the prince wants to live a life outside of the story pages?

Jodi and Samantha came to Birmingham Library theatre last week to talk about the novel and I went along to hear them. Samantha is 16 now and suggested the idea to her mum 3 years ago. They spent 1 school summer holiday talking about the concept, the following summer writing it, the next summer editing and this summer they are promoting the finished book.

Jodi was the disciplinarian, setting the number of hours per day they would work or the number of pages that must be completed. She also did the typing, just because she’s got quicker fingers. The two of them sat side by side in Jodi’s office and literally spoke the story aloud to each other, often coming out with exactly the same words and ideas – I’m sure this is only possible if you have an extremely good relationship with your teenager!

Despite being only 16, Samantha was a very confident young woman and gave a reading from the novel as if she were a born actress.

The audience at the Birmingham talk included several school parties who asked Samantha for advice on becoming a writer. She urged them to write to a set schedule in order to get it done. Jodi added that taking some sort of writing course was also extremely useful.

Finally, Jodi says there are 2 skills which are essential to any writer:

• Be able to write on demand
• Be able to self-edit

So, it shouldn’t be too difficult to produce that bestseller if those are the only 2 things we need to master!

Don’t forget you have until midnight tomorrow (Monday 16/07/2012) to enter the draw for a copy of Writing the Paranormal Novel by Steven Harper. Click here for details.

 

Related articles

• Samantha van Leer and Jodi Picoult spill the beans (bookwitch.wordpress.com)

Book Giveaway!

A few months ago I won a copy of Writing the Paranormal Novel by Steven Harper in one of those ‘Win a Book’ competitions in Writing Magazine. It’s sat unopened on my bookshelf ever since. That’s no reflection on the book itself - it’s just that I’m not into the paranormal. I prefer to read and write about reality.

But there is a booming market in paranormal tales so I’d like to give my copy of Writing the Paranormal Novel away to someone who either already writes in this genre or someone who is interested in trying it out for the first time or someone who just wants to know more about it.

The strap line for the book is ‘Techniques and Exercises for Weaving Supernatural Elements into Your Story’. The chapter headings include things such as:

• Magic and the Superhero
• The Paranormal at Large
• Arc, Plot and Subplot

And that last heading sounds like it could be useful to any writer.

Steven is an English teacher in Michigan, USA and has written several novels. He also uses the pseudonyms Steven Piziks and Penny Drake.

All you have to do to win the book is leave a comment on this blog post before midnight on Monday 16th July 2012 and indicate that you want to be included in the prize draw. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, ‘Please put me in the draw’ will suffice.  Unfortunately postage costs mean that I have to restrict entries to UK addresses only.

Good Luck!

On a completely different subject, any mother who has ever torn her hair out trying to concoct a suitable ‘literary’ costume for her child to wear to school on World Book Day, will love this link to a mother who dressed her child as a Kindle – click here.

CAKE!

No, not the spongy, creamy, totally bad for you kind – CAKE is a project to help unpublished writers get their work in front of

the public. It’s based in Manchester and distributes short stories free of charge via a network of cafes and bars. Each issue of CAKE is also available to download from the website.

There’s no payment for the stories printed (as you would expect since no-one appears to be making any money out of this) but CAKE will do their best to give feedback on any stories submitted plus, if your story is selected for publication, you will also get a plug for your website/blog.

Stories up to 2200 words will be considered and there are no rules about having to live in Manchester to submit. Full details of the submission process are here.

Sadly, those of us who have been published in magazines are not eligible to submit stories but there is still something useful for us to take away from the FAQs on the website. Apparently over half the submissions they receive are about death in one form or another, so if this is the subject of your story then you need to find a unique way of making your tale stand out from the crowd or write about something completely different. I’m sure this advice will apply equally well to any short story competition that you choose to enter.

By the way – did you know that this is Love Your Local Bookshop Week? It runs from 30th June to 7th July. Reading about it made my conscience prick about the purchases of both traditional and e-books that I make at Amazon. So I used my postcode here and was amazed to find that I would have to travel 15.66 miles to get to my nearest independent book seller, even though I live close to a large city. These shops have suffered badly from the growth of internet and supermarket purchasing and, sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any way back for them now.