Lit Soc: The Creative Writing Process

In this week's Lit Soc, Bryony Hart explained why she writes and offered insights into the process of writing . 

(image by Brandi Redd)

I can’t believe that I opted to do a talk for Lit Soc this week about the creative writing process.  I recall at the age of 18 my Business Studies teacher badgered me to read out a poem I had written, which had been published in the Sixth Form magazine, and I vividly remember the heat of embarrassment rise upon my chest, up my neck and onto my cheeks as I was forced to read what, looking back at it now, was a pretty dire ‘poem’ - if one could call it that. I think I vowed to myself then that I would never read a poem out in public again, but I have found myself doing just that over the past few years. Perhaps age does bring confidence after all. 

However, despite the rocky start, that feeling of being able to express a feeling, observation, story or occurrence through simple words is one that has never left me. Let me put it into context. 

Growing up with a interior designer/Head of Art dad and a fine artist/teacher of art mum, there wasn’t really an escape route for me and my siblings - art was our destiny and we were cajoled and pushed into drawing, painting and printing from a very young age. My dad was a bit of a trailblazer and liked to invent new gadgets and methods to use in his teaching, all of which were tested by us first and then launched in his oil-paint infused classroom. I can remember him setting up still life scenes at home and we all had to sit around on a Sunday afternoon drawing pots and pans and strings on onions lovingly plaited by mum (we had an allotment). And I remember the feeling then of the pencil not quite capturing exactly what I could see in front of me - it felt awkward and although I may have drawn a pretty decent saucepan lid for a 7 year old, I hadn’t managed to capture the essence of the scene: the tumbling onions, the aged pots, the lazy Sunday sun streaming through our net curtains and onto the little vignette so lovingly set up by my parents. 

Despite this, I sat my AS Level at 13, my GCSE at 14 and my A Level at 16 (don’t question the order of it - my dad was a bit bonkers), and off to Art College I went. I could draw and paint - exact replicas of whatever was placed in front of me - basically copying - but I could never express with paint, pencil, print, clay, photography, or any other form I got my hands on, what was buzzing in my head. It was a frustration watching real talent around me unfurling great artistic creations in the run-down art rooms, and I knew pretty quickly that Art was not my calling. I started in the September and was gone by Easter, signing  up for A Levels at my old school much to my parents’ disappointment.

Mr Pike, my English teacher, must have seen something in me because he pestered me to join his week-long creative writing residential trip to Arvon in Devon. I think I went because all my friends were going - not for any desire to sit in an old cottage and write poems on battered old typewriters. 

This was the precise turning point. 

In those 7 days, I realised that words, little words, line and verse lengths, could excavate right down to what I was trying to express for all those years through a paintbrush and 3B pencil. Don’t get me wrong, I really missed the pungent smells of oil paint and white spirit, the graphite under my nails and its smudge on the side of my right palm and forearm. But the HB pencil, sharp at all times, felt like it had always been there and was ready to create art through language.  And the performance day at the end of the creative writing residential was epic: old barn, big old candles, a couple of published poets who seemed to be drunk pretty much all of the time, trying to ply us all with cheap red wine as we stood upon bales of hay and read out our poems with such pride about darkness and memory and our youthful experiences of life. 

So, my writing process is probably quite a familiar one to those of you who dabble with writing like me. I am my most productive when things are really dark - not the weather, but my state of mind. I have to have a feeling of something oppressive looming over me before I can attempt to write anything that I deem half decent. The only way I can express it is that I have to be caught in my head and have a little walk around with the words and phrases that appear and then they often come tumbling out in one go. 

An example of this was written many years after my miscarriage, such a taboo subject I know but it happens, more often than you’d think. Lily and Ivan were playing in the garden, so it must have been about 5 years after. Even then, every day I woke and thought about it, so I guess it must have been an oppressive and dark feeling that needed to get out, but also there was a moment of great joy at the same time. I had just started to snow and the kids were trying to catch the snowflakes - I could hear them squealing with delight. When I miscarried it had been snowing too and Lily had played out in the garden with grandma.

Catching Snowflakes

Five years ago the snow lay quietly

And you danced through its drifts.

Joy in Nature’s glory 

made you scream

With excitement, 

Hands red-raw against the white.

And in your exhilaration at life, 

It spilt from me.

You gathered up icy molecules

Marvelling at the miracle in your small palm

Whilst molecules cramped and contracted 

Within me 

Unable to catch the life

That had tripled at conception. 

Now the downy blanket

Covers the ground again.

I watch at the window, 

Five years past, 

Two vessels of innocence 

Hold up three fragile flakes

And wonder at the perfection. 

Now, the ‘five years’ phrase is actually accurate in terms of the time that I am recalling in the poem, but it is a phrase that I have read many times before, in fact, in Mr Pike’s English classroom. It comes from the start of  Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’, one of my favourite poems, and I didn’t actually mean to borrow it but there you go. Words and phrases get lodged and I guess that it is impossible not to absorb what you read. The ‘three fragile flakes’ was a feeling that I had been holding on to for some time after the miscarriage of triplets - I didn’t really know what to do with it but I had stored it in my mind. This poem took about 5 minutes to write but the thought process behind many of the words and phrases, or the feel of it, had been in the creation for, in the most part, Wordsworth quote excluded, five years. In summary, I think I brew my poems. 

The second thing that I have realised about my writing process is that I need space away from my life. We usually escape to France and I write a lot there - there’s no TV, we have long walks, we drink cider in the evenings, so it only seems right that poetry comes out of that. But I think it is more about finding a place where I can achieve deep thinking without interruption. Most of the poems written there are about observations of the natural world - which is so vibrant and alive it can’t really be ignored. But I have also been able to contemplate things and try to make sense of the world. As I get older, I realise that my poetry is me trying to figure stuff out. Free therapy, some might say!

This poem ‘Hillside’ was written after a mass tree-felling occurred in our favourite local pine woods in our village in Brittany where we had walked for 20 years. When we drove into the village the hillside was naked and I vividly remember the feeling of loss and shock. But the poem became more than just a sketch of the scene - it became a reflection of the unrelenting nature of time:

Hillside

There was no warning: the hillside was bare, 

Ripped and raped of years of growth.

On our pilgrimage past Pierre du Sacrifice, 

The mulch-strung pathway undulated as usual:

Well-worn steps, twenty years’ worth, ingrained into our gait.

As we descended, 

The expectation of cool pine 

and eerie silence - 

The silence of thick tall growth that canopied out light from the forest floor - 

Was whipped away from our memory.

If only I have known - 

That final descent in April would have been savoured, 

Relished and branded for future sensations sweet:

Muscle-memory of suspended ground

Made from years of pine needles;

Light elbowing through cracks in the thick blanket above;

Shards of light - moted and moving;

darkness , shadows and exhilarating fear;

Unravelling daylight at the wood’s exit …

Replaced with a barren and shocking absence:

Nash-like tree stumps, fallen branches, withered leaves, 

Not even a whiff of decay.

Beyond decay. Fresh. Raw. A pillaging. 

We tentatively stepped through the debris, 

Soldiers emerging from gashes after intense gunfire, 

And we ran our hands across the land’s wounds. 

Crouching, we counted forty clear rings.

And again, again, again another forty rings

Reverberated from the tight epicentral core

To the calloused periphery.

Her narrow six years’ were traced and compared;

Our four decades lay wide-open and exposed.

Forty years ago, a young farmer plunged saplings

Deep into this fertile earth.

Today the land lay bare. 

Lastly, I want to talk about how I record my poems. I have a book that is for my final poems but I sketch my first ideas out on paper first, a bit like sketching the outline of a still life at art college really. See, the artist is never far away and I am grateful for the transferable skills. I will reword the sketches, moving things about, scratching out, replacing, removing, until the poem arrives. This is the only way to describe the feeling of a complete poem. You just know. I suppose this is the same as a painting. However, I can’t think of one painting I created where I felt this. I will then take out my good pen and transfer the complete poem into my book. 

BUT!!! The other day I was supposed to write an article for the blog about Florence Nightingale and I sat to do it on my laptop and a poem appeared. I have discovered a different process and I think I quite like it. It was my first word processed poem ever. The idea for the poem that appeared in the blog, which I will refrain from reading because I suspect we are out of time, was based on my observation that carers hold the hands of our loved ones and cradle their deaths. This is not supposed to be a morbid reflection, but an observation that I have stored after listening to my own sister, who was a carer, talk about holding the hands of her dying clients. They become the thread that links memory, death and remembrance. 

The Keeper of Fragile Threads

Dedicated to all the nurses and carers who hold their hands and do not let go

The candle light dances 

As you bow your head close

To the dry lips of a man

Who holds on to life

By one fragile thread

It is taut 

And you hear his whispers

Of life before 

Of his girl

His babe 

Warm in his arms 

It vibrates

And memories flood 

His mind

Of times when 

Young

He ran wild through grass

Tripped on tree roots

Slipped from thick branches

Sliced flesh on stone

Hidden beneath the murky depths

The thread is wrapped 

Around your heart

And you lean in

Closer

For him to dip further 

To the time when

Just 17

He held her hand

In the shadows of pews

And prayers 

Binding his soul to hers

Til death do us part 

And when

Standing solemnly 

Outside their chamber

Her violent screams chilled his bones

And he feared that 

The dark hand would 

Take them both

Mother and child

And he feels that dark hand now

Slipping into his calloused hand

Not with the warmth

Of youth or innocence

But with the sadness 

And disappointment

That comes with war

Where man is fixated 

On the annihilation 

Of all things good

Of love

Of innocence

Of faith

Thousands of miles

Away from here

She swaddles her babe

And whispers a tune

That finds its away 

Upon the thread 

And through the 

War destruction waste

To his side

To your voice

As you hear him take

His final few breaths

That are filled with 

Remembrance of

Love innocence faith

Don’t let me go, he pleads

Until I’ve gone

And let her know 

That I remember

You sing the tune

That comes to you

Without warning 

And he sighs his last

With his hand in yours