Latest / Mythmakers / The Welsh Episode with Claire Fayers - Part 2

Transcript

The Welsh Episode with Claire Fayers - Part 2 · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Do you think there are untapped seams to mine, if we carry on a mining metaphor here, stories
• 0:14
  that you've thought all this would, this is new, this is different, this has been forgotten?
• 0:20
  I think they're allowed and I think it is a case of digging below the things that are
• 0:25
  known, the Mabinarian and the stories of dragons and king Arthur and so on, and actually
• 0:31
  they're delving into these these small bits of folklore and that seems what we can bring
• 0:37
  out of them because some of them are, oh, almost not even stories, it's just fragments
• 0:42
  of bits, it's like the tapas in the mind, there they are, the story in my book. I had that
• 0:48
  as probably the one I have the most trouble with because it's not really an actual story
• 0:55
  that goes with it, there's just an ocean that they are, the family folk in the mind
• 0:59
  of the world who will tap and I had to come up with something to go with it, but there
• 1:04
  are instances of that, that could just, yeah, provide great inspiration, there's actually
• 1:11
  a rock up in the hill where I live now, moved house during lockdown and I'm just outside
• 1:17
  of the avenue now and close to where I live, there's a stunning stone, it was just left
• 1:22
  over from the quarry when they close the quarry, they stuck it there as a thing to say, oh,
• 1:27
  we were here once, there's now a story around it that it was a farmer who was so cruel that
• 1:34
  his wife drung herself in the river Esk, which is the one that runs just by the village
• 1:41
  and he got turned to stone as a punishment and every midsummer's eve, he will turn back
• 1:46
  into a person again and wander along the river bank calling for his wife, who has got the good
• 1:52
  sense, never to reply, I'm happy to be turned to stone and that's why the stone is there
• 1:57
  and that one has quite fascinated me because at some point somebody, although knowing that
• 2:03
  it's just a stone for the quarry, came up with this whole thing which has then become a bit of a
• 2:09
  local legend, I mean the things like that, I mean stunning stones are a great source of inspiration
• 2:16
  of course. And I suppose in a few generations, the fact there was a quarry there, that part may
• 2:21
  be forgotten because that's every day interesting and people latch on to suicide, husband and wife
• 2:28
  turning a certain, it's much more exciting isn't it, isn't it? It's a much more interesting story.
• 2:32
  Yeah, yeah. So we've touched on this a little but in fact what you've just spoke to has really
• 2:43
  illustrated this, that folklore hasn't stopped that we're carrying on adding to it,
• 2:48
  would you say that it retains in Wales a national flavour, something about being Welsh or is it
• 2:56
  become more of sort of human-conditioned universal story?
• 3:02
  I like to think that there is a different national flavour and I think the same as there's a
• 3:08
  particular flavour for English and Scottish and Irish folklore but of course some of it is just
• 3:14
  as the populations become more mobile and you get far more of a mix of people in different places
• 3:20
  than I think the stormies become more universal in a way.
• 3:25
  Yeah, I think there's probably two, two pools. So in England, you wouldn't be saying this should
• 3:31
  say Cornish, Yorkshire, North East, you know, you'd make it quite, it would be really good.
• 3:37
  And for me, I'm living in Oxfordshire so it's the kind of world of
• 3:42
  wind in the willows and, you know, Tolkien, it's that rural Hobbit stuff around here.
• 3:49
  So our most recent folklore is probably now known as Great literature which is just the sort of
• 3:57
  I think in the willows, there's a story about the famous river down there,
• 4:00
  somebody went and sat on the bank and said, hey, you know, there was a mole.
• 4:05
  So we've got a lot of projections of our local environment that then ends up on the world stage
• 4:15
  but I've got this feeling there's lots of lots of things happening all around the place,
• 4:19
  like David Arman is great at stories about his world up in Newcastle.
• 4:27
  I'm not sure what's happening in Cornwall, I've tried to think about that other than Poldark but
• 4:31
  we're not talking Poldark. It's just me not having thought long enough about it.
• 4:39
  So what do you think of the lessons for others writers thinking about our own original work
• 4:43
  rather than as collectors of stories? I think let your environment inspire you.
• 4:52
  Yeah, but your relationship with your immediate surroundings is something that's unique to you.
• 4:59
  And so if that percolates through into the writing, it's going to give a flavour to your writing that
• 5:03
  that is all yours and that nobody else can replicate. So be on the lookout for local stories
• 5:09
  and things but also when you're walking around, look at the stone on the hill and think
• 5:13
  oh, I wonder where that came from or the the funny shaped tree or what have you and just make
• 5:21
  a habit of making up stories? I think I like the specificity of it as well.
• 5:28
  Difficult word to say. And I noticed this, it was one of the things that I absolutely adore
• 5:35
  about talking is that it's not just a general tree, it's an oak or an elder or a film and they sit
• 5:43
  down beside a particular kind of river. So it's not just they sat in the banks of the river,
• 5:49
  you know, it's got a willow tree that roots going in in a certain way and that's sort of
• 5:55
  moving out of the general fog of description to something where you feel you're there.
• 6:01
  I think it is a real art to make fantasy as convincingly real.
• 6:08
  Yes, and seeing the landscape through the eyes of your characters.
• 6:14
  So, almost as we as narrators, we'd be seeing the things who are all nice and trying to
• 6:22
  convey that but of course your characters are not you. Yes, I'd have aspects of you in them but
• 6:30
  your characters are their own individual people. So to think about how your characters are actually
• 6:37
  going to see the landscape, what they will notice, the stories that might come into their heads as
• 6:42
  they look around the things can be a real way of showing the connection between your character and
• 6:47
  the world that they're in and then taking both of them to life more.
• 6:52
  Yeah, and it's also that little one of those tips for show don't tell, you know, so if you want to
• 6:56
  introduce their idea of their religion or something or the way they believe the world was made,
• 7:01
  you can do it through them looking at a stone can or yes, you know the hill over which the sun
• 7:10
  rises, I don't know what it depends. Well, it's something that's significant to them, yes.
• 7:15
  And the things that your character will care about in the in the world and pay attention to.
• 7:20
  Indeed. So Claire, it's wonderful that you've recently joined the team of tutors for the
• 7:27
  Oxford Center of Fantasy and your inexperienced teacher of creative writing. Are any of these
• 7:33
  worlds of missing legends, things which you find useful to bring into that teaching practice?
• 7:41
  Yes, I use them a lot actually. I do a lot of creative writing classes in schools and this year
• 7:48
  a lot of it has been focused on Welsh folktales and so whenever I go to a different school,
• 7:54
  I will try and look up something that is local to that school that I can tell them and then get
• 7:59
  the kids to write a sequel to it or use it as a spring off point for coming up with their own ideas.
• 8:08
  So I will show photographs, I will get tell what are the stories I can find.
• 8:14
  I'm just use that as inspiration.
• 8:18
  I think the very local aspect of that is really key because you know, going back to where we started
• 8:23
  about looking at a library and not seeing a Welsh lady's writing up there. But if you actually say
• 8:31
  look, these are stories about what happens outside your door. I've got a version of that which is
• 8:37
  not connected with missing legends. I always talk about how you are the expert.
• 8:42
  As a younger person, it's very hard to feel the expert on anything because teachers tell you
• 8:47
  how much you don't know. Whereas that corner of the neighbourhood, that tree you swing on
• 8:55
  and make and climb, you are the absolute expert on that. That's your tree, your backyard,
• 9:01
  that's your, if you want to claim somewhere for a story.
• 9:06
  That is true, yes. I find that children become, I know as a child I would become very excited
• 9:13
  if I ever saw anything that reminded me of my sort of home area which didn't happen much in
• 9:21
  books. But the kids become so excited to find out that there are stories about their area,
• 9:29
  about their local rivers and that they've got their own stories that are worth listening to.
• 9:36
  And I think also for adults, when you're teaching adults, connecting back to that time in
• 9:41
  childhood, when you're perhaps, hopefully not treated like an indoor cat, but you're allowed to
• 9:46
  roam a little bit. If you remember the way you interacted with your local area, those memories
• 9:55
  bring back that acuity of perception, don't they? I can remember the rough ground on the
• 10:04
  sort of out the back of our house where I grew up in Essex, which probably adults would look at
• 10:10
  and think, oh, that's rough ground, a spoil of some sort of building projects. The children
• 10:16
  looked at it and we thought that's our den, that's the den of the rival group over there.
• 10:22
  We've got a height here because it was near a golf course, we've got a height here if we see any
• 10:25
  golfers. You know, it became an area of adventure and just thinking of those feelings and how you
• 10:31
  knew everything. We tell stories about what other people have done there, accusing others of
• 10:38
  doing all sorts of the various things. It's just ripe with story, a tiny little patch of love.
• 10:42
  It is, it is that, that's the end of it. It's an area where there are stories and there's a real
• 10:50
  physicality to interacting with your environment as a child, that you're clandering over things,
• 10:55
  you're feeling everything, you fall down, you grace your knees, you get back up again, which
• 10:59
  and I don't mind, you said just walk across that rough patch of ground without paying it any
• 11:03
  attention. But there's this, this is still, yeah, physical interaction with the, with the place.
• 11:10
  And the whole wealth of storytelling that the children do when they're playing.
• 11:16
  And it's, yes, that's an adult writer trying to tap back into that and bring that excitement
• 11:23
  back that your world is one where adventures can happen. And there's something special about
• 11:29
  your environment that other people don't notice. So if people are listening to this wanting a
• 11:35
  sort of a writing exercise, I think having a go at remembering somewhere like that, because I'm
• 11:39
  sure it will open doors and you'll find yourself recalling so much, because memories have a way
• 11:47
  of hooking other memories onto them. Yeah, so yeah, so it would be a good thing to have a go at.
• 11:53
  So I've been talking about you as a collector of stories, but we did also mention that you've written
• 11:59
  your own fiction books for children, something about them and the directions you've gone on,
• 12:06
  gone in as a writer. Okay, well, the first book I'm holding it up here, I'm nobody can see it,
• 12:15
  because this is a potentially, well, there will be a visual version of this as well.
• 12:19
  Okay, but the, I think, yes, the book is, it's the accidental
• 12:25
  private voice to Magical North was my first one, which I actually did as a nano-rimal book,
• 12:32
  National Novel Writing Run through Tubmans in November of the year, and I sat down and just
• 12:36
  wrote it for fun. Wrote on a list of everything that I liked to read about, or I thought it would
• 12:42
  be fun to put into a story, so it was private, magic, sea monsters, sort of fighting Swinger or
• 12:47
  Chandalee as the whole lot, penguins, because I like penguins, and I just challenged myself to
• 12:52
  see if I could put it all into a book, which I finally did, and I eventually entered it for a writing
• 13:00
  competition and won that and got the publishing contact for three books through that. What was
• 13:07
  the competition? Is it still run? In case, yes, the competition is called Undiscovered Voices,
• 13:13
  which is run by Scooby, the Society of Jordan's Book Writers and Illustrators.
• 13:19
  It's open to everyone in the UK, and you're up, currently, I believe, and happens every other year.
• 13:26
  You basically submit your first 4,000 words and this in offices, and the winners are put together
• 13:32
  in anthology, which is sent around to all publishing houses and agents.
• 13:37
  So, the year I entered, one of the judges was an agent, she contacted me straight away,
• 13:43
  and she said, I really like your opening, I think, what should you do?
• 13:47
  The most surprised person in the world, so I eventually, yes, I'm with her, and then, yes,
• 13:51
  got the contract with Millen. So those of you listening in the States, there's also a Scooby
• 13:57
  SCBWI, if you could Google it, in the States as well, which may do something similar.
• 14:03
  I suspect it does. I suspect it does. They do have a lot of
• 14:07
  competitions and help for new writers. So, yeah, if you're writing for children,
• 14:11
  I would definitely recommend having a look at it, because it's a very good, yes, it's a great
• 14:17
  organisation. Yes, well, I think, yeah, it has been a big thing, my second one is Journey to Dragon
• 14:24
  Island, so you can guess what appears in that book. Can you point that title again, so that again?
• 14:29
  Yeah, the next one, Journey to Dragon Island is number two. Is it still with pirates?
• 14:34
  It's still got the pirates, it's got the same pirate troop, but they're off to
• 14:39
  the type of film that I like watching as a child where the special effects were by
• 14:44
  Ray Harryhausen and everything would blow up. So I try to come up with my own original twist on all
• 14:53
  of the tropes of going to some sort of magical pirate islands and exploring it and finding
• 15:01
  various things there that were, yes, traps and monsters and things that they have to deal with.
• 15:07
  So yeah, they were a lot of fun to write, and there is a big theme of storytelling in them.
• 15:14
  The first one is all about how legends start and the types of stories people tell.
• 15:19
  My evil magician is not at all happy that he's been cast us the villain in all of the stories,
• 15:25
  and they do point out to him, well, if he doesn't want to be the villain, maybe he could stop acting
• 15:29
  like one. I thought it was that one. Yeah, and so yeah, I wasn't thinking about myself being
• 15:40
  well should tall in those books, so I was just writing what was in my head.
• 15:45
  And actually what you've just said is important because we're passing through a phase now of
• 15:52
  huge like focus on identity, which is obviously a reaction to the lack of representation and
• 16:02
  diversity in literature, the days of the white men with beards as you started that saying.
• 16:10
  But it also, there is a pressure now on people to somehow speak for a group, so I'm speaking
• 16:17
  for the Welsh. I'm speaking for women born in Essex for me, having to swim upstream from the Taui,
• 16:26
  the only way Essex influenced here. For those of you in the States, this into this, there's a
• 16:30
  particular program, reality TV program, which has set the image of people from the place I came
• 16:40
  from. So I'm trying to suggest it and all like that. But we end up sort of carrying the can,
• 16:47
  and my mind is less honest, but if you're somebody with a different ethnic background or
• 16:55
  gender perspective, you know, all that stuff, sometimes it's just nice just to write as yourself
• 17:01
  and not feel like I've got to be. Yeah, that's true, yes, rather than feeling that you're representing
• 17:07
  the whole group, because to some extent you can represent the group, us, and if you identify
• 17:16
  with a particular thing, I mean, I know very much identify with being Welsh, but I'm still me
• 17:22
  and maybe in Welsh is very different from somebody down the road who's also Welsh or somebody
• 17:28
  up north who's Welsh. We have very different experiences of living in the country.
• 17:32
  This is actually a very interesting book of essays that came out this year called Welsh Plural,
• 17:39
  to anybody wanting to look at Welsh culture and writing. They got some, they're great,
• 17:44
  it's a mixture of about 20, 25 different writers, just writing about their experiences of
• 17:50
  living in the country and how they perceive themselves.
• 17:55
  So, we always end, coming to the end, I suppose I've gone back to near where we started. We always
• 18:04
  end with deciding where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something.
• 18:09
  Because one of the unique things about Wales is its history of mining, slate mining, coal mining,
• 18:16
  gold mining, under the Romans, I think gold mines. So I thought we'd have
• 18:24
  where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place to be a miner.
• 18:31
  But as in a someone who digs things out of mines, there's lots of rubbish places to be a miner.
• 18:37
  Yes, and yes, you do not want to be a miner in Norway,
• 18:43
  the borough of to come. Yeah, after a lot of thought there's one book that came to mind, it's a
• 18:49
  modern fantasy series by Patrick Sanfair. Oh, based around a character called Mennig Thorn,
• 18:56
  who is a not terribly good mage, it's sort of like the Justin Files, but setting a high fantasy
• 19:02
  setting. And the city where he lives, the city of Agatos is built on the remains of dead gods
• 19:10
  and the body parts of the dead gods are literally still there and contain huge amounts of
• 19:16
  magical power. So if you're a miner in Agatos, you never know what you're going to be pulling up,
• 19:21
  you could be sort of digging around and suddenly come across some fingernail of a god that will
• 19:28
  make you the most powerful person in the city. So I think about that would be yes,
• 19:33
  a bit dangerous, but rather interesting. So can you repeat the name of that book again?
• 19:38
  Yes, so the series is called, it's the Mennig Thorn series by Patrick Sanfair, the first book
• 19:45
  in the series is Shadow of the Dead God. And the notion is that yes, there are bits of dead gods
• 19:52
  littering the landscape. Yes, when I set this question, I immediately sort of all the bad places
• 19:59
  to be a miner, because you know, you often think there is punishment for crimes, it seems
• 20:05
  in fantasies, particularly modern like sci-fi fantasy, mining planets where you get sent as punishment
• 20:12
  is quite a common trope. So I decided the only place I could think where it was at all a pleasant
• 20:19
  lifestyle was Snow White in the Seven Dwarves, Disney version. It's full of jewels, they're just
• 20:27
  there, you know, they're just there anything. So that's where I would pick smuggle myself in amongst
• 20:38
  the dwarves. Thank you so much Claire for telling us about that. We will put a link to your books
• 20:46
  in the show notes, the people can, if they want to expand their knowledge of wealth, miss
• 20:52
  and legends or pick up the accident, accident and iris, they'll be able to find them.
• 20:58
  And so thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much. You're welcome.
• 21:02
  Thanks for listening to MythMakers Podcast.
• 21:11
  Brought to you by the Oxford Center for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCenterForFatasy.org to join in the fun.
• 21:19
  Find out about our online courses. In person stays in Oxford. Plus visit our shop for great gifts.
• 21:26
  Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide.