Do you write gaps into your story?

Mind the gaps or join the dots - you choice

Maria Nikolajeva is writing a fascinating sequences of blogs at the moment and one really caught my attention the other day. She was writing about 'Gaps'.  The idea that reader's anticipate and want to fill in these gaps particularly struck a chord. I particularly liked Aidan Chamber's idea that didactic texts have no gaps. (It is an essay I must find) I felt better about the number of times I have been telling my own students recently to leave clues but don't tell the reader everything. Leave them space to engage with the text.

I have been contemplating this idea for a few days and yesterday I found myself writing a ''gap' in. I only found it when I looked back at what I had written during the day. I had left that space ready for my reader to make their own decisions. I'd left, as Blanchot suggests, questions on the page and it is up to the reader to interpret and answer them in their own way. All based on that cultural moment that I've spoken about before. I realised that the gap I left required some historical knowledge to fill. Is this a problem? I am not sure it is.

I would like to say I had thought far enough ahead to plan this 'gap' but I hadn't. It just happened and was a natural part of the writing process. It was an integral moment in the story, a raised eyebrow and a shifted sheet. As I said I hadn't planned it but I started wondering if an unplanned 'gap' is more effective than a planned 'gap' that is inserted during the editing process. This is something I am going to have to explore more, I am intrigued. When I have made a decision I'll let you know.

Do you deliberately write in gaps?

And here is a bit of my most favourite new man...Josh Ritter and Empty Hearts

Stories are never ending

One of the happiest days of my life!

It is a year ago since this photo was taken. Again it has been an amazing year. I have two jobs now that I didn't expect to have then. I am involved in a fantastic project which I also knew nothing about then - there will be more information about this in the next few weeks. I had my first independent article published. I have had a chapter in a book on teaching creative writing published. Plus I have given papers and I worked on collaborative paper/chapter with a great friend and colleague from the other side of the world - Skype is a wonderful thing. I have a book proposal in and I have been asked to write a chapter for a book with a colleague. On the creative side my novel is being read  by an editor - what more could anyone want. All potentially mind blowing experiences, particularly if they all come about. At the time of my graduation I wasn't sure anything could beat that feeling but life is pretty good, if exhausting these days.

Yesterday I bought the little man in the picture his first shoes. He seems to be growing up so quickly.  His idea of bliss is to sit and take every one of his books off the bookshelf so they all surround him. He then spends hours 'reading' each and every one of them. (there are a lot and those are just the ones downstairs). Some are old traditional ones, others are brand new and innovative, all are respected and loved by him. One of his all time favourites at the moment is Old MacDonald Had a Farm. My daughter and I would love to know why because the actual illustrations are not the best I've seen. It intrigues us. Perhaps it is in part because he loves the actions we all do when we read it to him. The most important point is he loves books - what more could a grandmother ask for.

I believe I have said this before, but as children's writers we are lucky, there is a perceived ever growing market for us. At the moment people still love giving books to children. They love the tangible feel of a book. I am also aware as I watch my grandson work my phone and my daughter's tablet that the current generation will probably get as much out of ebooks as they do 'traditional' books. Is this really a problem as long as they are reading and we (children's writers) are writing these stories? Does it matter what media it comes in? Not really I suppose but I confess I do love a good book to hold in my hand - showing my age I imagine. I will just keep writing my stories and not worry about what format they will be produced in. Having said that I do sometimes look at my stories and think, would this make a film? Does anyone else do that?

I was reading a bit of Al Alvarez's The Writer's Voice and this one phrase struck home: '...prose is never quite finished.' (London: Bloomsbury, 2006 p.44) How true is that? For me it goes along with the idea, which I know I have mentioned before, of Blanchot who suggest that the writer leaves questions on the page for the reader to pick up.  Thinking of both these ideas seemed to highlight that a story is never ours alone, it belongs to everyone. Every reader will interpret it differently, influenced by their own cultural space and experience. In the same way, and we tried this in class the other day, if we gave every one the same sentence to start with or sat them in the same place and asked them to write about it, every story would be different. (And it was, some brilliant pieces came out of the exercise) That is what is glorious about creativity. We all have different stories to tell even if we start in the same place.

A TED talk worth listening too is by Chimamanda Adichie and the danger of the single story.

Cathy Cassidy put this up the other day and I feel it is quite appropriate. It is Elvis Costello's 'Everyday I write the book'

Different countries, different books

My brain

Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis maybe aware that I am an academic as well as a writer. And it was as an academic that a few months ago I was approached by a journal who asked me to write a review essay for them. They very kindly sent me a collection of six YA books which I had to read and they wanted me to compare them with UK YA fiction.

For part of my PhD I explored the representation of drugs in British contemporary realist fiction and how it had changed since Melvin Burgess's Junk. The idea for this review essay was that I would look at these new books from a foreign land and see how they represent drugs in their YA books.

It has been an interesting experience as I was surprised how different they were. The drugs they use to illustrate drug use tend to be different to ours and some of them were far more didactic. You could almost feel the author wagging their finger at you and shouting 'DO NOT TAKE DRUGS' as they lurched from one episode of drug taking to the next. It seemed to me that some didn't follow Blanchot's idea of leaving questions on the page ready for the reader to pick up and explore. These weren't questions they were statements/directions.

But it also made me think about my own writing and how 'international' it could be and should that be something I even thought about as I wrote. Is it something you planned or it just happened?  I have moved the setting of my story from France to  a non specific city in the UK. I am assured this is a good move but we will see. I would love to hear what the rest of you think about this and whether you consider it when writing?

The picture above is mine but it also represents my brain at the moment as I try and flit between the academic/critical writer and my creative brain as I am thinking of a new story.Wish my luck, it is a bit like pulling teeth.

And in the spirit of things here is Karima Francis playing The Author, which seemed appropriate today: