Fall

As it's National Poetry Day today I thought I'd post Sophie's contribution from chapter twenty of my novel, Writing Therapy. In the course of preparing her for this final form of therapy, student nurse Will Caxton encourages the teenager to try all sorts of writing exercises, one of which leads to the following...

Fall

Some girls at school seem not to care who sees

Their bodies wet and naked from the shower.

The others hide behind a towel, like me,

And fret about it all for hours and hours.

One girl, though, just doesn’t seem to care:

She seems to love the thought of being bare.

She likes all the attention - no fig leaf for her.

She doesn’t care if what she does is wrong.

But she’s not sweet or innocent, she’s aware

Of what she does, and knows it won’t be long

Before he turns from her and goes for me.

And that’s her motivation - jealousy.

To set a trap you need to have a plan,

And tempting fruit is such a common feature.

How could she ever hope to trap the man

Without bringing an apple for the teacher?

She offered him her gift and knew he’d bite,

And I was left to watch, consumed with spite.

The ripe fruit was the bait, my sweet temptation.

Once bitten, though, the fruit turned brown and sour.

And now I sit and wait for inspiration,

As the lonely classroom clock ticks down the hour.

How could she eat, like Eve, and still be free?

I ate the apple once: it poisoned me.

On tour....

For the next five weeks Writing Therapy will be on a blog book-tour. You can catch it at the following venues:

Gary Murning (http://garymurning.wordpress.com) - wb. 3^rd August

Joanna Penn (http://www.thecreativepenn.com/) - wb 10^th August

Nik Perring (http://nikperring.blogspot.com) – wb 17^th August

Melanie Trevelyn (http://www.melanietrevelyan.co.uk/blog/) wb 24^th August

Gadjo Dilo (http://chantree.blogspot.com/) – wb 31^st August

Do pop along to these wonderful blogs and say hello. Most points of the compass have been covered! And then coming soon, this September - an exciting new development! Watch this space!

Coming soon....

The blog book-tour. During August, I'll be doing the rounds of several blogs, discussing Writing Therapy, writing, mental health and well-being, nappy-changing and just about anything else that anyone wants to talk about. I'll publish the itinerary here as soon as possible. In the meantime, you might want to listen to an interview I gave to Judy Theobald on BBC Radio Lincolnshire a couple of weeks ago, about, well... Writing Therapy, writing, mental health and well-being, nappy-changing and just about anything else. Maybe it'll whet your appetite!

You can find it here.

In the Free Press

My home-town newspaper recently ran a story on Writing Therapy's nomination for the Young Minds book award 2009. You can read it here. And you can find out more about the Young Minds book award by clicking here. In fact, if you're under 25 you can become a judge! They're looking for a team of young people to read the nominated books and select the shortlist. So, of you're interested, check out the website and click on the link.

Fact from fiction

Can you learn anything from fiction? As a writer, the answer has to be a resounding 'yes'. But what about the reader? What can a reader take away from something that never actually happened? Writing Therapy is, first and foremost, a fictional account of a teenage girl's recovery from depression. Frances Nolan is a young girl with a problem. She's been doing too much reading. So much, she thinks that she's a character in a book that she's creating. But the way this young girl chooses to recover reveals another layer to the writing. Because Writing Therapy is a book about writing, too. In it's first ever review (by D.J.Kirkby) Writing Therapy was described as being "ideal for those preparing to write their first full length manuscript," and as "an effective 'how to' book cleverly disguised as an innocent novel." Serena Rain, a writer living in California has just said, "It's a great read and an entertaining writing manual." And as a story about the process of personal myth-making and the complex relationship between fact and fiction, Writing Therapy can clearly be a useful introduction to a number of ultimate truths. Even though it's 'only' a work of fiction.

Review by Sue Guiney

I've been very lucky. Not only has Writing Therapy received a decent number of reviews, but so far they've all been very positive. Sue Guiney, author of the novel Tangled Roots (among many other things) is the latest, and her review is here. It's really pleasing to find out that what you had intended in a piece of writing seems to strike a chord with readers - the more so when I recall the long list of rejections that littered the road to publication. Of course, both writing and reading are highly personal, and what works for one person isn't guaranteed to work for everyone. And I never anticipated Writing Therapy would. At best, it's a niche book: something for someone looking for a book that's just a little different; something challenging, perhaps, but ultimately, something very satisfying.

"Boys being girls being girls being boys..."

Writing Therapy is told in the first-person by the book's main character, Frances Nolan (though later in the book she decides to be called Sophie Western). She's a teenage girl; she's struggling at school; she reads a lot of books. In fact (just like her alter ego) she sets herself a challenge - to read every work of fiction in the library, alphabetically. Unlike the protagonist of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, she doesn't get very far. A catastrophic crush on a male teacher, school refusal and an episode of self-harm lead her to the local psychiatric hospital. There all manner of therapies are tried before the one that works, that cures her - Writing Therapy.

Now Frances/Sophie is a girl. And I'm not (at least, not when I last looked). Can a man in his mid-forties, albeit one who has spent twenty years plus working with teenagers, write convincingly as a teenage girl? This seems to be the single most important question exercising readers of the book. Why choose to 'speak' through someone so much younger, someone of a different gender? What conceit makes you think that you can 'catch' her voice?

I'd be lying if I didn't say that it was difficult. So difficult, in fact, that I had sections of the book narrated by a different (adult male) character. And although the voice is authentic, I'm not perhaps the best judge of its success or failure. What matters more, perhaps, is whether Sophie is the best narrator of the book. Is her 'voice' true? And she's been called "...one of the most engaging characters you could wish to spend your time with, even though she’s a patient in a mental hospital" by Sally Zigmond. And she goes on to say "I was particularly impressed by the way [the author] gets convincingly under the skin of a teenage girl. The other characters are also well-portrayed as are the power games and personal animosities between the professionals in the unit. Tim Atkinson tells it all without analysis, without grinding any axes, without any agenda."

Sally's not the only reader to have decided that the delicate balancing act in Writing Therapy is a success. But I'd like to know what other readers think - not just, perhaps, about my own book but also about the fundamental question: can a man write as a woman, and a woman as a man?