Mastering Life’s Major Events by Ms Paige Turner

I was all set to write a homily this bi-month about graduating from the University of Cambridge last weekend for my Masters’ degree in Creative Writing. The Master of my college St Edmund’s, gave a delightful speech about how, as Cambridge graduates, we will change the world. With yet another birthday tomorrow and having spent an hour walking and waiting in this heat to enter the Senate House to simply sit down with a member of the Red Cross, I’m not sure ‘changing the world’ is on my agenda. Actually, I think the Red Cross man – or was he St. John’s Ambulance? – was bored. He could see I was old enough to parent all those gowns and hoods and he fed me fudge and water and chatted until I needed to kneel and collect my degree from the delightful master. So I was going to talk about this major life event but then my cousin died.
And that seemed so much more important today. Betty had Alzheimer’s for a number of years and Elaine Mulvaney, the winner of our ‘Dear John, Dear Anyone …’ film monologue project so beautifully captured a dignified poignancy in writing about this disease. I know Elaine has lost her mum to Alzheimer’s and now members of my own family in Belfast have lost Betty although, of course, in some ways we all lost her some time ago. We lost her by degrees.
Betty forgot so much but Betty was unforgettable. I have written some sentences to be included with her eulogy.
‘What a blessing it is to have had Cousin Betty in our lives, especially if you had the good fortune to pass sunny hours with her as a child.
She took the business of family child caretaking seriously. Child caretaking was an art form for Betty who adopted the dual role of companion and caretaker with ease and laughter. We have been enriched by her unique, unforgettable humour, her summer magic and the warmth she radiated. It’s so fitting that she died on the hottest day of the year. Cousin Janet. Loved you, Betty Tate. 3/10/33-19/7/16’
She changed my world for the better.

‘Water, Water everywhere’ by Ms Paige Turner.
I think I’m entitled to a bit of water imagery this month for three reasons. Firstly, I’ve just returned from lecturing aboard Cruise & Maritime’s Magellan. Miss Trial and I did a two week serious bonding on a Baltics cruise. It rained most of the time, especially in St Petersburg where the quality of the rain is somewhat denser than anywhere else on this earth. I know. I’ve been there before and nothing there changes much except for the politics. But we’ll come to Politics later. Wet weather’s good for lecturing though and I had a good turnout for Write Beginnings and Effective Endings, From Big Idea to Publication (which I did in one hour) Sixteen Steps to Successful Suspense Writing, The Serious Business of Humour and Writing Your Life Story (which we all did in six words). Mister Justin Case spent two rainy weeks at our home in Cape Town to give mother and daughter some cabin space.
As we were coming in to dock in Tilbury our prime minister resigned. His use of ship metaphors was impressive and it’s fair to say that the boat got docked and rocked slightly. That’s a bit of an understatement as, to coin a cliché, we’re apparently now into unchartered waters.
Seeing my metaphors through I then switched on to my emails when I returned home to find that I had won Bloomsbury Publishing’s ‘Writers and Artists’ International Sonnet Competition in conjunction with the Royal Society of Literature and judged by Ruth Padel. The brief was to write a sonnet inspired by one of Shakespeare’s very own. I chose sonnet 30/When to the sessions of sweet silent thought.
Here’s the link:
https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/2016/06/on-having-to-choose-only-three-out-of-a-whole-rainbow-of-wonderful-sonnets
What has this to do with water? The sonnet is called ‘Silver Surfing’.
Well, all I can say is, “Rock on silver surfers.” We may need to in the coming months …
Still that one place left on Tuesday morning ‘Get Inspired’ course beginning October 4th at the Fitzwiliams Centre, Beaconsfield/Creative Ink for Writers. Email me for this or a place on the ‘Get that Book Out of You’ course/assessment, editing and one to one consultation.

Cliches by Ms Paige Turner.

Proust wasn’t into them …

The Creative Ink autumn Tuesday morning ‘Get Inspired’ course begins on October 4th for 5 weeks at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield. Half term is Tuesday 25th October. The fee is £170 to include up to 3000 word assessment/edit and proof read, coffee and biscuits, update if absent and all the relevant hand out sheets. The course is restricted to 12 places. 1 place left. Please email me for a syllabus or enrolment form and the usual thing – book early to avoid disappointment.

‘Get that Book Out of You’ course will work this way: £120 for 1 ¼ hours one to one consultation with 3500 word assessment/edit/proof read and 500 word synopsis which can be submitted before or after the meeting. Up to 8 places (although this is filling up) and can begin any time from now until mid-November. Just email me if you are interested. All other assessment details can be found on my website.

Flash Fiction by Ms Paige Turner

Proust wasn’t into it.

The Creative Ink autumn Tuesday morning ‘Get Inspired’ course begins on October 4th for 5 weeks at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield. Half term is Tuesday 25th October. The fee is £170 to include up to 3000 word assessment/edit and proof read, coffee and biscuits, update if absent and all the relevant hand out sheets. The course is restricted to 12 places. 1 place left. Please email me for a syllabus or enrolment form and the usual thing – book early to avoid disappointment.

‘Get that Book Out of You’ course will work this way: £120 for 1 ¼ hours one to one consultation with 3500 word assessment/edit/proof read and 500 word synopsis which can be submitted before or after the meeting. Up to 8 places (although this is filling up) and can begin any time from now until mid-November. Just email me if you are interested. All other assessment details can be found on my website.

Reach Poetry (no 213) has just published my poem ‘Death of an Actress’ and my novel ‘Blackberry Promises’, available on Amazon has just been commended in the Words for the Wounded national novel competition.

Dialogue with the Queen

Last night I dreamt the Queen said to me,
“Oh Janet, weren’t you in the crowd at Jubilee
in … nineteen seventy seven?
Wasn’t it that little town in Devon?”

“Falmouth,” I replied.

“Ah yes, and in nineteen eighty two
at Regent’s Park, we remember asking you –
‘how has been the weather?’”

I said,“I replied to you, ‘not bad’ but I lied.
In fact the weather could not have been wetter.”

“Janet,” said she,
“you were the invisible voice of Puck’s fairy.
This, I believe, is what you have always been …
A little one doing good deeds unseen,
It’s always so nice to see you
and we are always so interested too
to know how you are in particular.
And so is the Duke of Edinburgh.”

This is called ‘illusions of grandeur’.

The Creative Ink autumn Tuesday morning ‘Get Inspired’ course begins on October 4^th for 5 weeks at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield. Half term is Tuesday 25^th October. The fee is £170 to include up to 3000 word assessment/edit and proof read, coffee and biscuits, update if absent and all the relevant hand out sheets. The course is restricted to 12 places. 4 places left. Please email me for a syllabus or enrolment form and the usual thing – book early to avoid disappointment.

‘Get that Book Out of You’ course will work this way: £120 for 1 ¼ hours one to one consultation with 3500 word assessment/edit/proof read and 500 word synopsis which can be submitted before or after the meeting. Up to 8 places and can begin any time from now until mid-November. Just email me if you are interested. All other assessment details can be found on my website.

An Honest Thief – by Ms Paige Turner
Is there ever one? Or is it an oxymoron? I was asking you to look for one (an oxymoron not an honest thief) on my last blog as I had said phishing for emails or contacts was a sin but then I had written a feature for Writing Magazine advocating the lifting of Shakespeare’s characters and plots for our own fictional ends. Was that a contradiction in terms or are they two separate issues?
What is plagiarism? I think it’s knowingly stealing someone else’s idea (and by the way ideas are cheap and there is no copyright on them) or someone else’s words or Facebook Friends’ list for our self promotion. I don’t think plagiarism is using a well-known character or plot line to suit your own story cloth. In fact, no plot line is unique. There are seven basic plots and Christopher Booker goes into depth in his huge book by the same name to outline them all. There. I’ve made an acknowledgement and that’s a vital thing to do.
There is a difference between riding on the back of someone else’s success and/or hard work and trading it for your own and using basic ideas or plots for your word mongering.
But here’s my nub: I don’t like the practice of using another person’s Facebook Friends’ List to recruit ‘friends’ or ‘potential customers’ with the sole intention of selling one’s wares. Once you have accepted a ‘friendship request’ if you don’t hide your Friends’ list, all your friends can be targeted. And it seems okay to accept the request when ‘mutual friends’ are listed. This practice is not illegal: some would say it’s called ‘networking’. In my opinion it’s just not honest. Someone you don’t know will then have access to an awful lot of personal data. I console myself in the knowledge that if you are trying to sell utter rubbish you won’t keep reaching out anyway. Be careful when you click though. I have now found the ‘manage’ button on my Friends’ page.
Our term and academic year is drawing to a close at Creative Ink. In October, the ‘Get Inspired ‘course will run for five weeks at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield and we’ll be taking ‘Journey’ as a theme. (Limited to 12 places.) For the foreseeable future, Thursday ‘Get that Book Out of You’ will cease as a five week course, but you can come to me on a one to one consultation with 3500 word assessment and 500 word synopsis from June until November. (8 writers only.) Email me if you are interested in either course. Honest thieves only apply please.

‘To thine own self be true …’ Blog 136 by Ms Paige Turner
It was an odd thing for such a lecturing old woman of a Polonius to say: ‘To thine own self be true.’
I’ve never been quite sure of what it means. What’s ‘myself’? And what involves ‘being true’? I guess in current speak it might mean not gluttonously and knowingly climbing on the back of others’ work, successes or reputations when you haven’t put in a jot of backbone like phishing for emails et al. Take what belongs to you and no more.
Of course Hamlet’s Polonius was lecturing all the time and look where that telling got him. Stuck up in an arras. And anyway, Polonius would probably have interpreted his words as ‘protecting his own interests’. Truth, or being true, is a question of interpretation.
It was a delight to lead the Black and White workshop at Amersham the week before last and the day workshop at Missenden Abbey yesterday where we examined amongst other things, what truth really is and concluded: elusive.
The next evening workshop in Amersham in June is Green so enquire within if interested.
Watch out for the second of my features on filching Shakespeare’s plots and characters for your own fiction in next month’s Writing Magazine. www.writers-online.co.uk And the first response in to spot that oxymoron will receive a prize of my choosing.

Beyond the Bard … by Ms Paige Turner
Commemorating the 400th anniversary of the supposed birthday and dying day of William Shakespeare on April 23rd, Writing Magazine www.writers-online.co.uk are publishing the first of my two features: ‘Beyond the Bard’ in their May edition. It’s on sale on the High Street. This month demonstrates how we can use Shakespeare’s plots as a springboard for our own stories.
I’m looking forward to this coming Wednesday evening’s workshop in Amersham on the theme of ‘Black and White’ because nothing ever is, is it, apart from the colour of my blog? There are also still some places on the workshop which is definitely running at Missenden Abbey on April 23rd ‘Unlocking Your Creative Unconscious’ and places left on the Get that Book Out of You course running for five weeks from Thursday 21st April so email me for any more details of anything in this paragraph.
Tuesdays/Get Inspired – full with waiting list.

The Power of the Garage Wall … Blog 134 by Ms Paige Turner

‘Dolly Pop and the Garage Wall’, one of the poems from my collection: Red Lipstick and Revelations has been published in South Africa’s New Contrast poetry magazine/April edition www.newcontrast.net
I’m very proud to be starting a publishing career in South Africa – and with such a prestigious magazine which was established in 1960 and boasts JM Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer as former patrons. I’m also a huge supporter of garage walls. My earliest philosophical conversations took place when my dad’s ignition to his Ford Escort van was switched off. We would have come back from the Cash and Carry: suppliers of Danish bacon and all sorts for our small grocery shop in Croydon. Subsequently my husband and I have enjoyed chat facing bricked walls. The garage at The Arbour: our home in Fish Hoek, Cape Town is a halfway abode housing washing machines and dryers, an outside toilet, a bucket and spade and two braais. This garage is a pause between what is going on in the thoroughfare either side of it and intimacy can burgeon when speaking to walls. I hope you will order a copy: especially Fish Hoek Scribblers or West Coast Writers or Creative Inkers reading this.
Closer to this UK home, I have one place left on Tuesdays/Get Inspired starting April 19th for five weeks and a few more places on Thursdays/Get that Book Out of You starting April 21st for five weeks. At the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield. Email me for a syllabus and enrolment form.

Tomorrow …
Performances of ‘A President in Waiting …’ took place at the Masambe Theatre, Baxter this last weekend and I had the privilege of taking part and reading my sonnet ‘Birds in the Hand’ commended in the Oxford University’s poetry competition. There was an open forum after each performance to discuss the possible fate for Khululwa …
Young Xhosa students from Masiphumelele attended, as did some black female visitors from the USA. The latter had some interesting views on my inclusion of references to Maya Angelou and Rosa Parkes: two black female Americans who paved the path for women’s rights. The performances served as a platform also to those people who are interested in getting the play and open forum into Cape schools and more townships. Do contact me if you are able to help engineer this. Many thanks to Thami Mbongo, the artistic director at the Baxter and his team for including us in the festival. Thami provided creative support, re-ordering and inventing further on my script. He also attended the open forums and contributed to this ongoing debate: what can we all do for our tomorrows?
Creative Ink for Writers’ term will be back Tuesdays/Get Inspired on 19th April for 5 weeks/2 places left and Thursdays/Get that Book Out of You on 21st April for 5 weeks. Email me for a syllabus and enrolment form.