During my time at the University of Chester, my second year
in particular, we focussed a lot on retelling old stories in new ways. We
studied Atwood’s The Penelopiad, for example. A novel that looks at Homer’s
Odyssey and decides that perhaps all is not what it seemed. Another novel that
uses the same myth: Joyce’s Ulysses.
It was stressed in that module that contemporary writers
need old stories, myths, fables, fairy tales, legends.
Stories echo other stories; no matter how unique they seem,
all stories fall into an archetype. I didn’t realise how true that was until
studying for my BA. I noticed it within a lot of stories, some were harder to
find than others and then I started to notice it in my own.
I have always been interested in fairy tales and myths,
sometimes, when I was younger, I would knowingly try to rewrite them but as I
and my work grew, I started coming up with my own worlds and my own characters.
I thought I was being completely original and that no one would ever have seen
anything like what I’d written before. While that might’ve been true about the
style, it was not true about the stories and that’s not a bad thing. If I had
realised this at the time of writing these things, I would have been mortified
that I couldn’t come up with a simple story that hadn’t been done before but
now I am embracing it. I love reading novels and discovering little nods to
other works, little tidbits that you might miss if you weren’t looking, if you
weren’t paying enough attention and I hope that people will love the same about
my work someday.
It is impossible to write this post without mentioning
Angela Carter, whose work is so rich with reinvention that it makes me
incredibly jealous and a little bit like I want to be her. The first thing I
ever read by her was ‘The Snow Child’ from The Bloody Chamber. It was so short
but it had such an impact. At first, I didn’t know what to think, I didn’t
really understand what I had just read but then I read it again. Then I bought
the book and she came up on the reading list for my course (this time with
Fireworks). I am slowly working my way through her novels now, after reading a
lot of her short stories (I think I am missing one collection).
There is no doubt that she is an influence on my work.
However, it is important to note that she is not the only influence. You can
never have enough influences, it is when your writing begins to mimic that
there is a problem.
A little about method: I do not go into writing stories
thinking ‘I am going to reinvent this today’. I just start writing – I don’t
tend to plan until I’ve written the beginning, having something written down
enables me to visualise the rest of it more than trying to plot it out before
writing anything. Either while I am planning or while I am writing, I will
notice something; an echo. Once I’ve noticed it, I can decide whether I want to
keep it, shape it into something I can use or scrap it. It’s normally the
former.
There are a lot of fairy tale reinventions happening at the
moment, an influx of fairy tale movies have been appearing and series like Once
Upon a Time (which I am addicted to) and Grimm have catapulted on to the
television. But it’s nothing new, it’s just being told in a new way. And that
is fantastic. It’s not hard to understand why writers, filmmakers, photographers, dressmakers
(you name it!) are constantly revisiting these themes and these characters: it’s
because they work.
'Snow White' by myself and Dress.Simple. Model: Victoria Emslie.
It isn't just my writing that delves into the land of fairy tales!
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