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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Weaving stories and rattling words

9/1/2017

13 Comments

 
Two novels I read recently – The Underground Railroad and Homegoing – touched on how, historically, the production of cotton depended on slave labour. A lot of that cotton came to Britain and helped transform weaving from a cottage industry to, with the invention of Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny and Arkwright’s water frame, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the bedrock of the industrial revolution. The legacy of this rich industrial history can be explored within about an hour’s drive from where I live; unfortunately, while I’m interested in how past generations earned their livings, I haven’t yet prioritised visiting the museums.
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Fortunately, I don’t need to study mechanics of weaving to pick up on the parallels between transforming thread into cloth and ideas into a story. It’s such a commonly deployed metaphor, I can even borrow other writers’ words to illustrate it – these are from a collection of quotes on “storying” I’ve been obsessionally pulling together over the last couple of years.
 
The story I told Paul in the taxi amounting to little more than fabrications and approximations, after all, a story stitched together like one of my mother’s samplers, bits of this and that sewed together to form a whole, a sum that might appear – the thinking goes – more pleasing than its parts.
(Aria Beth Sloss, Autobiography of Us, p277)
 
Every story contains a moment you can point at and say, ‘Look, there, that’s where it all unravelled,’ and maybe this was such a moment. […] But Tony was a storyteller, and he knew that if you looked at any narrative closely enough you could trace the unravelling back and back and back – right to the very beginning, if the story was good enough.
(Nick Hornby, Funny Girl, p222)
 
A major difference, to my mind, between literal and metaphorical (literary) weaving, is that the latter is much quieter activity. Being particularly sensitive to noise, I’m much more suited to weaving stories, and I’m grateful to find I have a choice. The one time I visited a contemporary (as in about ten years ago, like much of the manufacturing in Britain, it’s now closed) textile factory, I was shocked by the volume of the rattling machines. I can’t locate it on the map, but there’s a hamlet near me called Rattle supposedly based on the noise made by the weaving frames.
 
Those who follow the Carrot Ranch will see how I’ve clumsily woven the disparate threads of this post to form the canvas for this week’s flash fiction challenge to write a 99-word story about a rattling sound. I must confess I’ve been fairly rattled by the process, and can’t help thinking how much easier it would’ve been if had a novel to review in which a baby throws its toy out of the pram. (Although I have previously reviewed a novel – The Ballroom – that starts in a mill.) And, well, here’s my attempt at historical flash fiction, my research (belatedly noticed that this is a site for children, appropriate to my level) taught me another original meaning of a commonly used word:

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Scavenger

“You a simpleton?” the overlooker roared above the rattling machines. I shook my head. But the job wasn’t so scary when Ma explained it.  
Dodging his stick, I squeezed into the narrow passageway beneath the loom. Thunder in my ears, nostrils clogged with dust, I gathered the stray strands of cotton from the floor. Slid out again and onto the next.
It was dark when Ma brought me, dark when I limped home. A cough rattling my chest, fear rattling my mind. Aching back, arms, legs; buzzing ears. Rich kids went to school at six, I went to work.


Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
13 Comments
geoff le pard link
10/1/2017 09:08:45 am

as a man living with a weaver i get to experience modern non industrial looms and they are both fascinating and daunting things to contemplate. Stringing them is the work of a combined mathematician and saint (for the patience). Not for the faint of heart. The noise though isn't too bad.
Your flash is desperately poignant; I was in a museum in Bristol not that long ago, looking at the slave trade influences and the age of the children working throughout the process appalled me.

Reply
Annecdotist
10/1/2017 10:46:52 am

Thanks for chipping in, Geoff. I thought of your weaver as I was writing this post, painfully aware that I knew very little about the mechanics! But I did find audio files of the difference in sound between an industrial and domestic sized loom – I don’t think you’d want the former in your house.
Thanks for the feedback on the flash. It’s interesting how those various injustices link up and of course children are still being exploited that way today. There are places are up in the Peak District where this history is still apparent in the remaining architecture, some former mills converted into luxury flats. I really ought to know more about it.

Reply
Charli Mills
12/1/2017 07:57:05 am

If I get the chance, Geoff, I'll find a Navajo loom in the area and send your weaver some photos! I also wanted to comment on slave trade influences because I just realized an obvious but overlooked connection in the US: the slave-picked cotton in the south fed the industrial north; it was the west that caused the real threat to both slave influenced industries with its vast resources and land. Always thought-provoking in Anne's corner!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
10/1/2017 10:46:56 am

I enjoyed the metaphors you wove into your post, linking your writing to your flash. Yes indeed, a baby's rattle could have made it easier, for both of us. The "research" you linked to was both interesting and horrifying. It is good to see that we have made progress in some areas at least. I hadn't heard the term "scavenger" used that way before either.
Your flash paints the tragic picture very clearly, with different ways of interpreting the word rattle - the sound of machinery, and the cough in his chest, as well as his unsettled mind. Those lucky rich kids getting to go to school at six. The income divide was, and still is, perpetuated. Only a lucky few claw their way over, and an unlucky few fall through. Great portrayal.

Reply
Annecdotist
10/1/2017 10:52:45 am

Thanks, Norah, I was intrigued that I’d got my most useful information from a source directed at children. Which is it just goes to show that we can learn in similar ways at any age. I think there are lots of interesting resources, both online and in museums, teaching children about the past through identifying with their own age group. As long as they’re not forced into “think how lucky you are”!
I haven’t come across that meaning of scavenger either, and my desk dictionary doesn’t mention it. Glad you liked the flash.

Reply
S A Edward link
10/1/2017 02:57:24 pm

This post took me into a world I know very little about. Lovely piece of flash too. I particularly loved the last sentence.

Annecdotist
11/1/2017 08:51:22 am

Thanks, Steff, and happy New Year. Great to see you here again!
Yes, indeed, a harsh world – the Industrial Revolution was just a step away from slavery for some.

Deborah Lee link
11/1/2017 03:02:34 am

I have a couple of friends who weave and I am jealous of the beautiful items they produce! Not sure I'm coordinated enough to do it myself, but the shushing back-and-forth sound of a loom is very lulling, to me. Your flash paints an entirely different picture.

Reply
Annecdotist
11/1/2017 08:53:52 am

Thanks, Deborah, it’s interesting how we’ve come full circle regarding weaving, at least in the West, with the large-scale noisy operation outsourced to other countries but with people taking up the craft again in their homes.

Reply
sarah link
11/1/2017 09:38:21 pm

I love that flash, Anne. The rattling of machinery and of a bronchial type...brilliant. Sad and poignant.

Reply
Annecdotist
12/1/2017 12:07:40 pm

Thanks, Sarah, I was imagining the character already having chest problems through living in a damp house, then exacerbated by the dust of the workplace.

Reply
Charli Mills
12/1/2017 08:01:29 am

Reading the history you linked to, I was appalled at the quote from 1832: "....it is very dangerous when they first come, but they become used to it." That's the heart of what I read in your flash, almost a perversion of wanting to please Mother, and doing the work that had to have been horrifically frightening. I think it has the capacity to make one a simpleton, and thus perhaps the goal of holding those in poverty in their place. Great weaving!

Reply
Annecdotist
12/1/2017 12:05:57 pm

Thank you, Charli, and I agree that quote is scary. I was imagining the little boy having some sense of pride that he was finally old enough to start work (at six) but not having been able to imagine how hard the job was going to be. Then an abrupt end to his childhood in realising this is going to be his life. Thanks for the prompt.

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