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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

Climate Chaos: a 99-word flash and the novels of Maggie Gee

28/4/2014

10 Comments

 
PictureThe climate is constantly changing on the moors
Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry: how the British love to talk about the weather.  With climate change in the offing, we’ve even more to chew over: floods, drought, winters that drag on for ever or seem never to arrive.  How could a Britisher not be inspired by this week’s prompt from Charli Mills for her flash fiction challenge?  Climate change in fiction: bring it on!

I’ve already turned up the heat on Annecdotal, with my previous post on the novel, Instructions for a Heatwave.  I’d been going to save it for a sultry summer’s day – should we get one this year – but Charli’s prompt makes it equally topical as we come to the end of a showery April.  What I recall of the summer of 1976 is how unprepared we were for the heat here in Britain.  How we must’ve sweated in our heavy nylon clothes as we endeavoured to keep up our cold-climate routines.  Just as Gretta in Maggie Farrell’s novel continues to bake her own bread in inflated temperatures, I have a vivid memory of how, the heat already unbearable, my ironing just had to be done.

We seem equally unprepared for the floods that now beset our shores with alarming regularity.  I’m not sure exactly when I read The Flood by Maggie Gee – but given that it was published in 2004, it can’t be that long ago – but, since then, events that seemed exaggerated in the novel have been played out again and again on the evening news: stinking streets; stranded cattle; ordinary people going about their business by boat.  The privileged are determined to continue as normal in Maggie Gee’s apocalyptic London: the infrastructure may be crumbling, people may be homeless and the rain interminable, but President Bliss directs his energies into wooing celebrities at an evening “do”.


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Instructions for a novel: some things I’ve learnt from Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell

24/4/2014

23 Comments

 
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I read for pleasure, for the blog and for lessons in how to write.  It’s particularly satisfying when a novel ticks all three boxes, as has happened recently with Maggie O’Farrell’s Instructions for a Heatwave.  This is the unputdownable story of what happens to the family of Robert Riordan when he sets out to buy the morning paper and doesn’t come back.  It’s the work of an accomplished novelist at the top of her game yet I hope that by peeling back the skin and examining its viscera, I can drag myself a step closer to creating something comparable of my own.

The setting

Geographically, the novel takes us from North London to New York and Gloucestershire to its climax on a small island in Connemara.  While the streets, houses and workplaces are beautifully sketched, it’s the heat and attitudes of the English 1976 summer of drought that defines the setting right from the opening paragraph:

The heat, the heat.  It wakes Gretta just after dawn, propelling her from the bed and down the stairs.  It inhabits the house like a guest who was outstayed his welcome: it lies along corridors, it circles around curtains, it lolls heavily on sofas and chairs.  The air in the kitchen is like a solid entity filling the space, pushing Gretta down into the floor, against the side of the table. (p3)

Despite Elmore Leonard’s diktat to never open a book with the weather, this setting works by exposing the characters to a situation beyond the everyday: the melting tar, the bands of sweat along the hairline, the unnaturally clear blue skies, the fissures opening up in the lawn provide a back-drop of unease, mirroring the boiling emotions and frayed tempers within the family. 

The voice

Related in the third person from the points of view of Robert’s wife and all three adult children, the voice is elegant without being flashy.  It’s not only the heat that feels physically present.  Here’s the eldest son, Michael Francis, escaping momentarily from the family home:


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Fictional memoir: Charli’s flash challenge

21/4/2014

13 Comments

 
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Carrot Ranch Communications is one of the great new blogs I discovered on the podium of Norah Colvin’s Liebster nominees.  Here, along with buckaroo-tinged insights into the writing process, Charli Mills poses a weekly flash fiction challenge.  Now, I thought I’d cracked the art of the short short, but my shortest story to date is four times the length of the 99 words set by Charli, practically a saga in comparison.  Each week I checked the writing prompt and each week I let it go by, while admiring the efforts of others who managed to shoehorn a proper narrative into under 100 words.

Maybe it was things winding down for Easter, maybe it was the theme of the challenge, but this week I decided to plunge in.  But boy, was it hard!  Much as I relish pruning back redundant words, this was like growing bonsai.  But I persevered in the knowledge that limits can be liberating for writers, and Charli’s introduction had already drawn me in.

She writes about how a glimpse of the world can spark a memory, and that memory can lead us towards a choice of creative paths.  One leads to memoir, another to fiction: why someone might follow one route rather than the other to tell their story is something I’ve been pondering lately, as I’m looking forward to hosting a post from a memoirist here later this month.

Charli’s 99-word challenge is to “write a biography for a character, alter-ego or you”.  Well, I struggle enough with the bios editors request to accompany my short story publications, so you can guess which way I was going to go.  And I thought it would be useful to tighten up my thinking about a character I’m musing on.  So it’s over to Bernie, in her ninety-nine words:

Winning the TV quiz show, Family Challenge, assured me a rosy future.  My encyclopaedic knowledge would fuel my teaching career.  I hadn’t bargained for a pregnancy midway through the training.  When I surrendered my baby for adoption, I lost my sense of purpose too.

Can’t complain, though.  I work in a school, albeit in admin.  I’m extremely popular on quiz nights down the pub.  But, if people ask if I have children, I don’t know what to say. 

Everything’s changing again, as Jason has made contact.  Given he’s about to become a father, can I call myself Grandma now?

After reading some of the beautifully poetic contributions already up on the site, I think I might have fallen into the trap of prioritising information over style.  Clearly, more practice is in order, but at least I’m getting to know Bernie a little better.

13 Comments

A novel take on six degrees of separation: a romp around my debut novelist Q&A’s

16/4/2014

11 Comments

 
If you’ve ever visited this blog before, you may have noticed that I’m rather partial to linking.  So when I came across the recent trend for blog posts on six degrees of booky separation on Isabel Costello’s literary sofa, I wondered how I might join in.  This month’s starting point is Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, but I thought I’d take myself down a different track involving the titles I’ve featured in my debut novelists Q&A’s.  After various deliberations, I’ve ended up with a loop of eight novels, each connected to the one on either side as well as to the one in the middle, for which I’ve selected my most recent addition to my growing list, Johanna Lane’s Black Lake.  Some of the links might be rather tenuous, but I’m pleased with how I’ve managed to bring most of them together, my only disappointment being that I couldn’t find a place for Anthea Nicholson’s The Banner of the Passing Clouds (but perhaps that’s for another time).  Let me guide you round the circuit and perhaps you’ll find something to inspire your reading or an “x degrees of separation” of your own.
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The launch-point is arbitrary, but I’ve chosen The Lighthouse in honour of Alison Moore’s generosity in stepping forward as my first virtual interviewee.  The loneliness of the main character, Futh, is somewhat reminiscent of John in Black Lake.  Both men struggle to make meaningful emotional connections with their wives, although, as Johanna Lane says in her virtual interview, the outcome for John is more hopeful.

Futh’s narrative in The Lighthouse is interwoven with that of Ester, a somewhat disturbed and scheming woman.  We meet another wonderful scheming woman in Frances, the narrator of Alys, Always by Harriet Lane.  I connect this novel with Black Lake, not only by the coincidence of the authors sharing the same surname, but in their exploration of the lives of privileged families.  In Alys, Always, this is from the outside in, as Frances sets out to inveigle her way into the family of a woman who dies in a car crash.  In Black Lake, we are invited to accompany the impoverished “landed gentry” through a period of unwelcome change.


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10 blogs to celebrate: my Liebster nominees

10/4/2014

15 Comments

 
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The Liebster Award is a badge of honour for blogs with fewer than 200 followers. As with a chain letter, recipients are expected to put on a little performance on their blog (answer a bunch of questions set by the person who nominates them) and recruit up to about a dozen more bloggers into the fold. Well, I’ve had my What, this little blog? moment, I’ve responded to the excellent questions put to me by Norah Colvin who was kind enough to nominate me, so now it’s time for me to step out of the limelight and pass on the mantle to another clutch of blogs.

One of the great things about blogging is the diversity of approaches and voices.  While my main interest is in all things literary, I’ve tried, in the blogs I’ve nominated, to represent something of that range, hoping I can point readers to something new. If you’re listed here, I hope you’ll want to take part in the process, to answer my questions on your own blog and pass on the favour. But should you decide it’s not your bag, that’s fine too. This thing’s about playtime rather than heaping another load of responsibilities an already busy people’s shoulders.

Paying it forward to 10 bloggers' blogs


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Take a long hard look in the mirror

4/4/2014

17 Comments

 
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Writers learn early to be wary of mirrors. It’s painful to have to score through that purple passage eloquently describing our protagonist’s physical appearance from the top of their head to the tips of their toes. When what we took for writerly innovation is revealed to be a cliché; the first time we allow our narrator to look in the mirror, could be the last.

Yet a character who never caught sight of their reflection would be an odd kettle of fish indeed. Plate-glass windows, stainless steel doors: the built environment abounds with reflective surfaces, never mind the mirror above the bathroom sink. Should these be totally out of bounds for writers? Our protagonist’s relationship to mirrors can be useful way of illustrating their character or mood. Are they obsessively drawn to mirrors or avoidant; are they anxiously checking their appearance, or an ordinary woman using lipstick and mascara to compose her outdoor face? Surely it’s the information dump that’s the problem. After all, Elmore Leonard preached against detailed description, not mirrors.

A skilfully employed shiny surface can reflect more than is apparent to the eye. For example, in Harriet Lane’s debut novel Alys, Always, Frances sees


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    My published books
    entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
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    My third novel, published May 2021
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    My debut novel shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize
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    My second novel published May 2017.
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    Short stories on the theme of identity published 2018
    Anne Goodwin's books on Goodreads
    Sugar and Snails Sugar and Snails
    reviews: 32
    ratings: 52 (avg rating 4.21)

    Underneath Underneath
    reviews: 24
    ratings: 60 (avg rating 3.17)

    Becoming Someone Becoming Someone
    reviews: 8
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.56)

    GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4 GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4
    reviews: 4
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.44)

    The Best of Fiction on the Web The Best of Fiction on the Web
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 3 (avg rating 4.67)

    2022 Reading Challenge

    2022 Reading Challenge
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    Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.  
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    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
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    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
    recovering psychologist, 
    struggling soprano, 
    author of three fiction books.

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