#creativewriting

September 17, 2020

Kathryn Tse-Durham: My Journey with Ellanor

Hedgehog Publishing / 作者文章 Author's Blog / #creativewriting, #hedgehogpublishing, #hongkong, #kathryntsedurham, #theellanorchronicles, fantasyfiction /

I’m driving to Central, and the sun is beating down as I meander through the traffic. As usual, there is another standstill. “Mummy, what is that?” my little four-year-old chirps, and I turn my head a fraction to the left and flinch. “Ow!” I groan, massaging my neck. The crick has been bothering me since I submitted my manuscript for my third book to my publisher a few days ago. I’d spent the last week staying up late into the night editing and making final revisions to the manuscript. The stress of meeting a deadline and hours and hours of sitting and typing must’ve strained my neck and upper back muscles. But alas – Huzzah! – the third installment of The Ellanor Chronicles is finally ready to come out at the end of this year! Elated and relieved, I ordered a bunch of delicious take-out and feasted with my hubby as we binge-watched Cobra-Kai and reveled in 1980s nostalgia. Amidst this pandemic, this has become the new normal – celebrating quietly and without much fanfare at home with loved ones.

People often ask me what it’s like to write and get a novel published. There are those who assume it’s an uncomplicated process where you sit down and type out the whole story in one go, and there you have it. I can’t tell you how far this is from the truth. If a writer takes their craft seriously and is determined to write a good story, especially one with a huge scope like The Ellanor Chronicles, it requires a tremendous amount of discipline and perseverance. It starts with brainstorming and planning out the story, outlining the chapters, followed by the actual writing which could take months, even years. It took J.R.R. Tolkien over ten years to write The Lord of the Rings (whose ethereal elves inspired my elves in The Ellanor Chronicles), and six years for J.K. Rowling to finish Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (which then got rejected by about twenty publishing houses until a sharp-eyed literary agent named Christopher Little snagged it).

After the first draft is ready, the strenuous process of rewriting and editing begins, and it is this last leg of the journey that can be most tedious and stressful because you want to polish your work to a shine before it gets revealed to the world. It is imperative to have an excellent, perfectionistic editor to guide you through this process to help enhance your writing, which involves correcting at least 90% of the typos and errors. But as the author, the final process becomes a personal crusade to fill in every little plot hole and inconsistency and edit every misplaced punctuation mark and inconspicuous misspelling that the editor has missed. Because even if it is fantasy fiction, the world the author depicts must still be convincing to the reader. So yes, writing a book to meet a professional standard is a great deal of hard work, especially if you are not James Patterson with a slew of ghostwriters and editors at your beck and call.

When I think back on my writing journey, I’m amazed by how much has transpired. There has been a series of triumphs, disappointments, surprises, frustrations, elations…But ultimately the journey has enriched me and made me grow. Back in 2013, I had been married for two years, working hard as a Speech Therapist and contemplating doing a Ph.D. I had already gotten in touch with some professors to see if they would want to become my supervisor. But embarking on a five-year academic journey meant that I wouldn’t have the time or the energy to do what I had dreamed of doing for years: writing and publishing a novel before I started a family. So I put aside my Ph.D. aspirations and set out to realize my childhood dream, no matter that it sounded foolish and fanciful. And the rest is history.

These days, bookshelves are overcrowded with young-adult fantasy novels about vampires and werewolves (don’t get me started) and dystopian futures. To be fair, some of these are excellent (e.g. the Scythe series by Neal Shusterman), whereas the success of some confounds me to no end. But I wanted to offer something different: a planned series in which elf and human worlds collide, and the heroine is a unique young elf much like a young female Indiana Jones, who lives out her dream of being a globe-trotting explorer after she is pushed through a portal into the contemporary human world. My protagonist is an elf named Ellanor Celendis, better known as Elly, who resides in the elven realm of Alendria. The series charts Elly’s adventures as she blossoms from an insecure twelve-year-old into a strong-headed teenager who learns to take on responsibility and fight for the people and the world she loves. Elly is sweet-natured and struggles with feelings of inferiority as she is ostracised at school for being an oddball as well as being the grand-niece of the one who allegedly betrayed his people to the goblins during a war that took place centuries ago. A recurring theme in this story is that appearances are deceitful; things are not always what they seem.

Through my story, I want to convey to readers that though there is much darkness and evil in this world, there is also light and much that is good. Through Elly’s adventures and expeditions, readers get to learn about various cultures and different life issues that affect the human experience. Through her inquisitive eyes, I want to convey to readers that regardless of race, skin colour, or social upbringing, we are all essentially the same in the most fundamental ways, and we should treat one another with respect and dignity. We live in a world where people of all ethnicities and cultures make society interesting, lively, and functional; this is something that I want to exemplify and celebrate in my story. The first book takes the reader to London, where Elly learns a bit about British culture as well as Chinese culture when she befriends a Hong Kong-Chinese immigrant family. The sequels take place in different parts of the world, including South Korea, Europe, and other places that I will keep mum about for now as I don’t want to reveal spoilers!

So you might ask – is all that hard work worth it? All I know is that one day I will be gone from this world, and if my books can make even the tiniest difference – if they can make my readers smile and dream and think and talk about things that matter – then yes, it would have been worth it. “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin

Last year in October, I was interviewed by RTHK Radio 3 about my journey on becoming a writer and published author. You can listen to the interview here.

Kathryn Tse-Durham
Author of The Ellanor Chronicles
17th September 2020

This blog post is also posted on Kathryn’s Facebook Page. Visit here.

August 13, 2020

Kathryn Tse-Durham: The Giant that was Clive Staples Lewis

Hedgehog Publishing / 作者文章 Author's Blog / #creativewriting, #hongkong, #kathryntsedurham, #theellanorchronicles, author, fantasyfiction /

My little boy and I have a ritual. We started this around April amidst the surreal and mostly homebound year of Covid-19. Instead of reading him books at bedtime, he wanted me to tell him tall tales that I would make up on the spot. I discovered this is good practice for me as a writer. Every night at dinner, he rattles off a list of characters on his little fingers, characters that I had made up for him off the top of my head. “Mommy, tonight I want a story about James the Giant, Dillon the Dinosaur, Goldilocks, Calvin the Cockroach, and…” He would often pause and try to come up with a new character, perhaps a gargantuan scorpion or snake or other. And I would smile gamely and wrinkle my brow and thank God that He blessed me with some skill for weaving the fantastical. For every bedtime story, my little boy always includes James the Giant, who started off quite villainous, but got rehabilitated into a gentleman by the nosy but good-hearted Goldilocks and her little human friends (one of them named Jonathan, of course).

There is another type of giant that walks among us, one that makes the earth shudder not in the literal sense, but in the figurative sense. There are certain people that we look up to, people that seem bigger than life and inspire us to take that risk, walk that extra mile, put in that extra hour of practice. Clive Staples Lewis, or more commonly known as C.S. Lewis (or “Jack” in his social circle), is a literary giant who is best known for The Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters, and dozens of other notable works such as The Four Loves and Mere Christianity. He was known to be one of the most brilliant yet humble intellectuals with a wicked sense of humour. Apparently, he liked to play pranks, and he donated much of his earnings to charities and never told anybody about it. And he was very kind. Even his personal secretary attested to this, and a personal assistant often knows more about their boss than even their own friends or family. This is what made me want to learn more about him. Great writers are usually known for their intellect, but not always known for their kindness and warmth and humanity.

Actually, I am an avid fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, who was a great friend and colleague of C.S. Lewis at Oxford. One day I will write about Tolkien, who was an extraordinary person in his own right. In my younger years, I never got into The Chronicles of Narnia because it just didn’t captivate me like Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings did, a colossal story that is forever seared into my heart. But I felt compelled to write about Lewis after a recent discussion I had with my husband, during which I learned some very moving things about the man and made me realize something important: before one becomes a good writer, one should strive to be a good human being. This is because writing is an organic process that reflects our world view. If we do not understand people, if we lack compassion, if we do not believe that all humans of all races and skin color and backgrounds should be treated with respect and dignity, it will show in the things we write about. And what good can writers with intent to preach evil do for humanity? Adolf Hitler wrote the Mein Kampf, the autobiographical manifesto which describes the process by which the Nazi Party leader became antisemitic and his plans to destroy Jews and other ‘impure’ peoples and transform Germany into the world’s conquering power. But such works should serve to remind us of the atrocities that we should avoid at all costs, not to inspire us to be more hateful and destructive. C.S. Lewis famously quoted, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.” The man believed passionately in God and love and all that is good and wholesome, all that grows and nurtures the human spirit. In all that he writes, you can see his beliefs and values shine through, and this is how his writing has given hope and inspiration to many over the decades.

As a writer, I was curious about the advice that C.S. Lewis imparted about writing. I have been reading his masterpiece The Screwtape Letters, a one-of-a-kind story about how the devil trains his apprentice to lure a Christian man from his faith. Though I am only a few chapters in, I am already struck by his unique prose, which is at once sardonic, poetic, and searingly clear. There are times when you come across something in a book and you go, “Yes, I totally get that! I’ve thought about it in vague terms, but never was I able to put it into words like that. How did the writer articulate it so well?” Lewis had a great talent for this, as most great writers do.

In his letters and other sources, C. S. Lewis left various bits of advice on the craft of writing, and I’ve shared some of his words of wisdom here, with bits of my thoughts embedded throughout:

Avoid distractions. So, turn off the radio and the TV and devote an allotted time to your craft.
Read all the good books you can. Only by reading good writing can you learn to become an even better writer and broaden your horizons.
Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. Hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.
Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about . . .)
Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he needs to know—the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn’t the same in his.
Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.
Avoid ambiguity. The way for a person to develop a style is to know exactly what he wants to say, and to be sure he is saying exactly that. The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the reader will most certainly go into it.
Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence could not mean anything else. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them. Avoid fancy, unnecessary words. There is nothing worse than reading a piece of pretentious, convoluted writing that makes you want to stop in two minutes.

C.S. Lewis said, “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.” And I agree. Literature in the form of good stories don’t just reflect life; it enriches and adds colour to life that can at times feel unbearably dull, repetitive, and mundane. This is why doctors, bankers, lawyers, and others who slave for hours at the workplace stumble home bleary-eyed and melt onto the couch and wind down with a good dose of Harry Potter or Netflix. We crave stories because they give us renewed hope and rejuvenate our fatigued souls. Loving stories is neither a weakness nor a frivolous thing. It is being wonderfully human. And by all accounts, C.S. Lewis was a wonderful human being, a gentle giant, and that is probably why his writing is achingly beautiful. For my Jonathan, one day I shall name one of our bedtime giants “Jack” and whisk my boy off to the world of Narnia.

Kathryn Tse-Durham
Author of The Ellanor Chronicles
13th August 2020

This blog post is also posted on Kathryn’s Facebook Page. Visit here.

May 24, 2020

Kathryn Tse-Durham: My Two Cents

Hedgehog Publishing / 作者文章 Author's Blog / #creativewriting, #hedgehogpublishing, #hongkong, #kathryntsedurham, #theellanorchronicles, fantasyfiction /

“Miss Kathryn, have you finished your third book?”

I often get this question from students and readers who have finished the first two instalments of The Ellanor Chronicles, my fantasy book series. After having hosted a number of creative writing workshops with the English Schools Foundation (ESF) and my private ‘Atomic Da Vincis’ classes, teaching about creative writing feels like a calling that I could do for the rest of my life. And yes, I have indeed been working on my third book, and the manuscript is currently with my wonderful editor. The truth is that writing a book requires a tremendous amount of hard work, and some people, bless them, may think it is as easy as jotting down notes on a piece of shorn paper.

I’ve been racking my brain about what piece of essential advice about creative writing I can impart. My two cents. Something that may seem painfully obvious, but just isn’t really emphasized and deserves mentioning. I mean, these days it’s so easy to find information about creative writing tips online. So what wisdom could I possibly impart to you, dear reader? Most who have taken a creative writing course might remember (or not) the ‘Elements of Fiction’ – Plot, Character, Setting, Point of View, Style, Theme. Use ‘Show Not Tell’, and make sure to use a good range of vocabulary words. Make sure you proofread and use the correct grammar. You know, the usual fare. But at the back of my mind, I knew there was something that just hasn’t been emphasized. An important point that is often glossed over. And out of sheer providence, a few days ago I came across a short video clip featuring Dr Jordan B. Peterson, an acclaimed Canadian clinical psychologist, social commentator, scholar, and author…and possibly one of the most intelligent people I have come across. In his usual conversational but profoundly eloquent way, he was speaking on the topic of writing, and his words so resonated with me that I sat bolt upright and shouted, “That’s it!”

This is what Dr Jordan B. Peterson said in his distinct voice that conveyed his incredulity: ‘“What blows me away at universities is that nobody ever tells students why they should write something. People think it’s because you need the grades. But, no. No. You learn to write because you need to learn to think. Thinking makes you act effectively in the world. Thinking makes you win the battles you undertake. And those could be battles for good things. And if you can think and speak and write, you are absolutely deadly. Nothing can get in your way. So that’s why you learn to write. And I can’t believe people aren’t just told that. It’s the most powerful weapon you can possibly provide someone with.”’

Dr Jordan B. Peterson absolutely nailed it. Learning to write is important because it hones your mind, a blade that needs sharpening. Writing and thinking sharpens those edges and makes you intellectually lethal. When I took a distant creative writing course through Oxford University back in 2009, I’m sure I grew new brain cells from all those writing tasks that made me think, analyze, critique, rewrite, polish. Those few months were one of the happiest times of my life. I not only grew as a writer; I also grew as a person. I learned to see the world through a wider, sharper, more colourful lens. This is that I want to emphasize – good writing requires you to be a good thinker and a good observer of the human condition. You need to be curious about the world and ask questions and figure out right from wrong, truth from false, the sensible from the senseless. If you want to write a good essay, thesis, poem, screenplay, short story or novel, and you want it to stand out and engross readers and make them go, “Wow, I want to keep reading this!” – then you need to think well. If you want people to listen, you have to communicate well. Writing is essentially a form of communication, isn’t it? Good writing requires layer upon layer of planning, critiquing, analyzing, organizing, revising, rewriting, editing. And here’s what I’ve found – writing can be so much hard work, but it can be loads of fun, too.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that good creative writing can change the world. Why do we tell stories? Sure, we want to entertain. But ultimately, it’s because we have something to say. We want to communicate something important. I strongly believe that telling stories is one of the most powerful ways to say something to the world. And so, you have to use those Elements of Fiction: Plot, Character, Setting, Point of View, Style, Theme – and use them to their full potential.

Let me refer to a particular short story as an example. Many of you may have heard of or read the wonderful children’s books of master storyteller, Roald Dahl. ‘Matilda’, ‘The BFG’, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ are timeless tales. To this day, Matilda makes me laugh and tear up. I didn’t know that Roald Dahl had written a collection of short stories for adults until I was at university, and boy, did they blow my mind. I didn’t think I could be more impressed by Dahl, but I was in for a surprise. One particular short story has stayed with me: The Landlady. It is a dark and terrifying look at 17-year-old Billy Weaver’s first and last stay at a bed and breakfast. If you haven’t already read it, then you should. It would be thirty minutes well spent.

As a writer, you have to create characters that are multi-dimensional and real, flawed but likeable enough that the reader still roots for them. In ‘The Landlady’, the protagonist is young Billy Weaver who comes across a seemingly harmless landlady. On the surface, she epitomizes the ‘grandma-next-door’ and offers him a room at a big discount at her little bed & breakfast. With the subtlety that comes with a great storyteller, Dahl’s writing style (which involves plenty of dark humor, sarcasm, and suggestive dialogue) masterfully builds up the suspense and dread the reader starts to feel for poor Billy, who is so trusting that you want to shake him by the shoulders and yell at him to open his eyes and see the old woman for what she really is. The setting should press all the readers’ sensory buttons, and this is where the technique ‘Show Not Tell’ comes in – as a writer, we need to show how things unfold in the story through the reader’s sense of smell, touch, sight, hearing, and taste. Roald Dahl masterfully created the setting so that it is easy for the reader to know that the story is set in London just after the Second World War, by the way the buildings look, by the way characters talk and dress, and by the things they eat, and much more. Then the plot is what a good story hinges upon. Planning out the plot is one of the things my students have most difficulty with. It nearly always involves the character facing some sort of dilemma that makes the reader wonder how it’s all going to end. There needs to be a climax, the moment in the story where the protagonist is faced with some problem that the reader wants them to overcome. Some endings resolve happily, and some don’t. Because that’s life, right? Not everything ends well, and good people die everyday, and injustice is around every corner. And as the reader, you start to brace yourself as you notice strange things about the gregarious landlady who doesn’t seem so kindly anymore, and then you get the sense that danger is looming, that there is no doubt poor Billy Weaver is in the clutches of a taxidermy-loving psychopath who so stealthily lured him into her web. And though it isn’t explicitly told, the story ends in a way that makes you realize Billy is doomed to die.

Every good story, whether or not it has a happy ending, conveys a message to the reader. Some like to call it the theme or moral, but however you label it, we can always take something away from a good story. And so as you finish reading The Landlady, perhaps somewhat spooked and shaken, you might think: in life, things are not always what they seem. Looks can deceive. Danger can come in the smallest, sweetest, most innocent-looking packages. And that is the life lesson you can take away with you. Roald Dahl’s dark tale, like many wonderfully written stories, makes you ponder and learn. It may even change your life in some way.

Think about it: writers not only get to create an entire universe with the words they write, but with these very words writers also have the power to change the world. When it’s put that way, writing seems like a pretty darn cool thing to master, huh?

Kathryn Tse-Durham
Author of The Ellanor Chronicles
24th May 2020

This blog post is also posted on Kathryn’s Facebook Page. Visit here.