Being brave enough to show some ankle – Part One

A post on Graham’s blog yesterday has lit up the time travel circuit in my brain. This circuit is very strong, I obsessed about time-travel for a significant part of my teenage years. It was later reinforced by discovering a yellowed Ray Bradbury anthology with the immensely wonderful “A Sound of Thunder” short story within it and then… well, I’ll come to the last part of that love affair later.

I’m not going to talk about time-travel though, I’m going to talk about the other brain circuit that lit up as a result of this one – how I nearly never wrote again. Twice.

My grandmother says that I starting writing stories when I was four years old. She has a memory of me sitting at the kitchen table, writing something so seriously that she asked what I was doing. She told me I answered “Writing a story” but neither of us remembers what it was about. I started writing stories before I understood why.

At primary school, I was blessed with an amazing teacher called Mr Axon, who had a long face akin to Abraham Lincoln and the single most impressive pair of black sideburns that I will ever see on a real person in my lifetime. He nurtured a love for storytelling with remarkable talent. He would pluck a dramatic story title seemingly out of the wiry bristles on the side of his face, then give a wicked grin and say; “Now go and write what happens next.” I hope he is happy and well, wherever he is now.

That was between the ages of ten and eleven. All good so far.

At thirteen I attempted my first novel. I would guess that it was more a novella, about 80 handwritten A4 pages. My childhood was… complicated, disrupted. I wrote then to escape. After watching me write it for weeks, a lodger living with us at the time asked to read it – I took it everywhere with me and slept with it under my pillow so she had to ask rather than peeping. I found it agonising, but exciting, I hoped for some kind words I guess. She read it. She looked at me and said, “Well, that’s obviously all about you and your Dad.”

It felt like the marrow was sucked out of my bones. I froze, and words, usually so fluid, so near to my tongue, disappeared.

I had no idea you see. I thought my story was about something totally different. She was right of course, it was painfully obvious in hindsight – i.e. the second after she’d said it. But being blind to that, I had let her read without fear. If I had known, it wouldn’t have been seen by another soul. Naked doesn’t begin to express what I felt.

I didn’t write another story for four years.

That was the first time I almost never wrote again. I made models of spaceships instead. I read a lot. I learnt how to sew. I got into films in a big way. But no words gathered together under my hand during that time.

At seventeen, a story came to me that I had to write. It had to come out. It did more than demanded it, it physically took me to my desk, picked up the pencil and didn’t let me stop until it was told. It was a short story called “Newton’s Third Law” and it was about time travel. It was therapeutic and I liked it. I liked it enough to submit it as coursework for my English A-level. After all, my extended essay was about the works of H.G.Wells so it seemed fitting.

You’re still with me? Wow, thanks, this is a long one.

So, it was time to apply to university, and I had made a pact with my best friend to apply to the same one as her. It’s difficult to get into and she didn’t want to try alone. My teachers said I didn’t have a chance in hell of passing the entrance exam, which was one route, and there was no point in me trying.

I argued my case – I didn’t want to let my friend down – and they finally conceded that trying the alternative route of sending example work to secure an interview was the way forwards.

I diligently crafted an essay in Spanish and an essay on something Shakespearean. My English teacher intercepted me as I was literally carrying them in my hand, in envelope, ready to post off to the university. Then I had one of the most important conversations in my life.

“Is that the entrance application?” she asked, looking more flustered than normal.

“Yes. I-“

“Take out the Shakespeare.”

“What?”

“Take out the Shakespeare and put this in instead.”

She thrusts the story at me, having just reviewed it for coursework marking.

I blink. “I can’t do that! It’s science fiction!”

“Do it, take out the Shakespeare and put this in instead. If you never listen to me about anything again, that’s fine, but do this. Please.”

I shrugged, peeled it open, replaced the Shakespeare thinking that one of the oldest universities in the world would bin my application at the sight of a short story about a girl and time machine.

I got an interview.

There was a drinks evening the night before the interviews started, where candidates and tutors mingled over mulled wine and stilted conversation. We had to wear those awful white rectangular stickers with our names written on in marker pen. I felt out of place, a fraud. I wanted to go home and watch Dune.

A woman approached me, squinting at the sticker over the rim of her glasses.  “Ah!” she exclaimed, upon deciphering it. “You’re the one who wrote the story!”

I was non-committal. Thankfully she continued regardless, these scary academics, they’re like that. “You do realise that it’s that story that has secured your place here?”

Silence. Swallowing. “My story?”

“Yes.”

“But I haven’t got a place here yet, I haven’t had my interviews.”

She laughed, as if that were irrelevant and then walked off.

I lurched forwards. “Wait! What did you think of my Spanish essay?”

She turned back to me. “My dear, I don’t read Spanish.”

I got the place. Because of that weird little story, if she is to be believed. I later found out that she was the Admissions Tutor and not some insane old woman.

I didn’t write another fictional word for over ten years.

But that’s enough for one evening’s telling. Time to put the kettle on. Maybe you should too – if you got all the way to the end here with me, you must be parched!

Tagged as: science fiction, story-telling