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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.

TELL ME MORE

Adventures in the multi-verse: walking and blogging with our fictional friends

11/8/2014

14 Comments

 
Picture"Thornfield" in Jane Eyre
I’ve said it before and no doubt I’ll say it again: I love the webbiness of the World Wide Web. I love writing posts that link to other posts, both mine and other people’s, even as I worry that those phrases picked out in blue might impede the reading process. Even when I’m not forging links across the Internet, I enjoy rooting for commonalities, such as those between the novels of those writers featured in my debut novelists Q&A’s or plucking from my bookshelves novels on a specific theme, such as water or transgenerational trauma. (You can see how it gets obsessive and it’s little wonder my posts take so long to write.) Yet I’m much more cagey bringing different spheres of my own life into the blog. Yes, I’ll prattle on about gardening and make oblique references to the pleasure I get from singing in a choir. But until I started my series on fictional psychologists and psychotherapists, I kept my professional background entirely separate from my identity as a writer and, even now, the more structured and formalised are the alternative universes I occupy, the less comfortable I feel about providing a portal to them here.

PictureLooking back across the valley
If, as it says on the sidebar, Annecdotal is the place where real life meets the fictional, those other “me”s are bound to creep in here. My voluntary work in the national park edged its way into the blog last year when I wrote about a storytelling walk and I’ve mentioned it again on Twitter at the beginning of this month when we repeated that walk in the rain. I’ve also shared my nascent plans for a similar walk around “Jane Eyre territory” (and discovered, courtesy of Luccia Gray, there are actually three contenders for the location of Thornfield, although only one fits with my proposed route). While on one level it’s obvious I’d develop my interests in this manner, on another level it feels as if I’m breaking a taboo to mix up my writing and rangering selves. Which brings me to the latest prompt from the ever-imaginative Charli Mills to craft a multi-verse situation in 99 words. You’d be better off checking her blog for a definition, since I’m still not sure how it’s different to the slipstream fiction I’ve written previously or, indeed, to magic realism (for which I’m referring you to this lovely new story from Teagan Kearney). I’ve ended up borrowing from Charli’s flash to come up with this little tale of the collision between my fictional and walking worlds:

Picture From the viewpoint (excuse my feeble zoom)
Shrugging off my rucksack, I find a flattish rock to sit and imbibe the view. Deep in the valley, the manor house nestles among fields of sheep. They tell the tourists North Lees inspired Rochester’s home in Jane Eyre.
I swivel round to watch the climbers on the gritstone and, when I turn back, flames lick the battlements of the hall below. I jump up and race towards it, skirt dragging on the heather, bonnet ribbons flapping in the breeze. I hear the ghoulish laughter of the woman in the attic. My heart calls out to Edward, my love.

This mélange of real life and fiction also reminds me of a question I asked of my Liebster nominees: If you could invite a fictional character to write one of your posts, who would you choose and why? Lora chose the poodle from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Liesel from The Book Thief; Susan chose any bookseller other than Bernard Black; Nicola passed on this one because of the impossibility of occupying the mind of another writer; AnnMarie plumped for Anne of Green Gables; and Ava wanted Rick Dockery from John Grisham’s Playing for Pizza. If you’re also a blogger, I wonder who you’d invite?


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.
14 Comments
Teagan Kearney link
11/8/2014 03:59:44 pm

Love your use of 'webbiness' with relation to the internet, Anne. I stopped off here after reading your tweet, but then got diverted over to Charli's post! I think your use of links is a great way to share others' posts with your readers.
And a seamless timeslip in your flash fiction - brilliant use of the image of the burning house - takes us vividly back to Jane Eyre's world. Great job! And thanks for the link to my story - much appreciated.

Reply
Annecdotist
12/8/2014 10:14:24 am

Glad you got diverted, Teagan, and that you managed to find your way back. That's what it's all about. Thanks for your feedback on the flash and glad it worked for you.

Reply
Charli Mills
11/8/2014 08:54:57 pm

When I come to one of your posts, I know it will be to savor that interconnectedness you weave throughout. It reminds me of being young and reading with my dictionary; of being in college and marking notes in the margin to research; and now I marvel at the ease of accessing new worlds, books, other posts, ideas, cultures. It's as if your posts are already revolving multi-verses!

Splendid flash. What works so well is not just the change of costume, but of action. The narrator sits and views, then as Jane she is running. It goes from passive to active. But that she now feels her heart call out makes me think, it always wanted to. Great writing!

Reply
Annecdotist
12/8/2014 10:19:14 am

Thanks for your support, Charli, and glad you see more interconnectedness than random flights of fancy!
Your comment on the switch from passive to active in the flash is interesting, as I wasn't aware of this myself (but it's something I'll try to keep in mind as a writing technique for the future). Perhaps I hadn't noticed because I am very aware of how far she's walked to get to that point and so ready for a rest (which could be a downside of writing from memoir/ personal experience, I'm not sure).

Reply
Charli Mills
12/8/2014 06:45:27 pm

Don't you love it when something like that happens? We bring our own details and make up others and somehow it all works!

Annecdotist
13/8/2014 04:33:50 am

Absolutely! It's great how stuff can leak out without the writer even noticing and then the reader can make of it whatever he/she wants/needs

geoff link
12/8/2014 04:52:30 am

...so if I'm to blame for Charli's prompt do I get some credit for your excellent post and flash? I love the way you leap from the now to the then.

Reply
Annecdotist
12/8/2014 10:23:04 am

Nice one, Geoff! Perhaps we all need to credit each other for our interconnections that spark off ideas, sometimes in ways that we are unaware. In fact, the more I think about it, maybe it's all about the multi-verse and the idea of a single world is a myth. Or perhaps I've been sitting at the keyboard too long?

Reply
Laura link
12/8/2014 07:05:24 pm

I love how your character is immediately transported and called to action with no time to orient herself to her new surroundings. nice post.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/8/2014 04:29:57 am

Thank you, Laura, and good to meet you at the carrot ranch!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
12/8/2014 10:07:44 pm

Hi Anne, I love the way you weave the links into your posts and take us back and forth in time to previous posts as well as to the posts of others. You have used the same technique of slipping back in time, the movement almost imperceptible, but the effect complete. I agree with Charli about the change from passive to active. I think it comes naturally from the way you see the scene. The photograph adds so much to the ability to visualize the events.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/8/2014 04:32:09 am

Thanks, Norah, makes me sound almost integrated! Glad you like the photo although I suppose the job is to transmit all that in words.

Reply
Linda link
13/8/2014 12:44:04 pm

Whatever you call it - multiverse, slipstream, fantasy - stepping in and out of real and imaginary worlds is something that makes perfect sense to me, especially when I'm out walking.
I liked your story. I was running down that hill with you!

Reply
Annecdotist
15/8/2014 06:13:03 am

Thanks, Linda. I too have a lot of thoughts when out walking that can take me to an entirely different realm. I'm not sure I'd have managed to run down that hill in a long skirt without taking a tumble – the heather's pretty thick around there.

Reply



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