First, Gwyneth Hughes was in conversation with Michael Stewart. Michael is a poet, novelist and creative writing tutor at the University of Huddersfield and Gwyneth Hughes is an award-winning writer of television screenplays who talked about her career from the Sheffield Morning Telegraph and Yorkshire Television, to directing documentaries and moving into drama.
Gwyneth Hughes wrote the Granada Television drama Blood Strangers (2002), starring Caroline Quentin., Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith, a hard-hitting exploration of relationships, crime and prostitution and a fantastic clip was shown to the audience. The story of this piece is still very much in the public domain with the recent publicity around the grooming of young white girls by older Asian men and Hughes revealed that she wrote this fictional drama without apportioning blame. She had meant to write a small part for the Sheridan Smith character, but she just grew and grew as she was writing it.
Her powerful drama Mysterious Creatures (2006) was based on the true story of the Ainscow family who had for years tried to cope with and get state help for, their daughter Lisa, who suffers from Aspergers syndrome. Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall starred as Mr and Mrs Ainscow who tragically took an overdose of sleeping pills and waded into the Atlantic ocean off Tenerife. Wendy Ainscow survived but sadly, her husband did not. The audience were treated to a clip of the drama where the couple agree to end their lives and slowly walk into the water hand in hand. Powerful drama with Oscar-worthy performances, this was a true testament to the brilliance of Gwyneth Hughes' writing. Hughes had many meetings with Mrs Ainscow whilst researching the story, who sadly continued to try and take her own life.
Her most recent film for the BBC, The Girl (2012), which told the story of Alfred Hitchcock's obsession with his leading lady, Tippi Hendren, was nominated for the Golden Globes, Emmys and Baftas, and won the Writer's Guild Award. A clip was shown from the movie depicting the moment that Tippi is in the glass booth reacting to 'invisible' birds, when a prop bird on a wire smashes into the glass, shattering it all over her. Obsessed with his leading lady, Hitchcock put her through five days of sadistic filming like this, because she had spurned his advances.
Hughes talked about the research she undertook for writing this screenplay and how she believed that even though Hitchcock was without doubt an amazing film Director, no-one should be treated this way. Michael Stewart agreed and informed the audience that Hitchcock had famously said that actors were cattle and that sometimes he did what he had to do in order to get the shot.
The floor was then opened up to questions and she revealed that she hates it when a Director/Producer takes out one of her lines, or worse, when it is said in the wrong way that changes its meaning and when asked what she wished she had written the screenplay for, she answered Game of Thrones - good answer.
Multi-award winner Jim Crace discussed his long and successful career as a novelist with well-known critic Suzi Feay. Jim Crace won three major awards for his first novel, Continent (1986), including the Whitbread First Novel award. His 11th novel, Harvest (2013), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Introduced as a real writer's writer, Crace joked that this meant that he sells no copies, just wins prizes. He believes that this is because people are frightened of his books as there is lots to scare them.
Being Dead (1999) was a novel about death and his publishers advised him that the title would cost him sales, but he felt that it was too stitched into the fabric of his book to change. He sold 20 odd foreign editions of a Chinese edition in Taiwan and still gets cheques from sales there. He found out that the title there translates as 'love on the beach.'
He revealed that there was no set rule for beginning a project, but with Being Dead he felt it was a comforting title as he wanted the novel to end 'and these were the ever ending days of being dead.' He believes that Dylan Thomas did exactly the same thing. When asked about the poetic cadence of his sentences, he said that he reads poetry but some time ago a Japanese maths and Cambridge linguistics professor got a grant to show the difference between prose and poetry, i.e. the mathematical formula, and 4 quartets by T S Elliot and his The Quarantine novel proved the test. When ordinary conversations were tested, all spoken language is poetry. He chooses the vocabulary and music of the sentence.
Crace had told Mariella Frostrup that Harvest would be his last novel and Suzi said that writers normally stop when they drop dead. At the time Crace meant it, but he revealed there were various reasons. Writers are socially disruptive to their partners and he wanted to give his wife a break from that (when people ask what he does he tells them he is in publishing in the supply side). Also, he had tried to write an autobiography and had written 40k words but it had not worked. He felt 68 was a good life of writing and that it couldn't last forever, people will eventually have had enough and he was also fit and well and happy in retirement and there were so many other things to do to make him a lot more happy. Part of his ambitions have come true, but he hasn't stopped, so there will be more novels. This was news was very well received by the audience. He revealed that ideas for short stories and novels are still in his head and that the muse has not left him, but he still prevaricates. For example, when his novel failed he had taken 18 months up to June and he had July to December to deliver Harvest (the novel that took its place).
He listened to an interview once on woman's hour that featured someone from the slush pile office and when asked if they read every book, she revealed that certain categories meant they wouldn't:
1) If the name of the main character is in the first line (e.g. Call me Ishmael from Moby Dick)
2) Exclamation marks (it would be bye-bye Westward Ho!)
3) Any novel written about or posted from Cornwall (Daphne Du Maurier, John le Carre).
Crace feels that landscape is always important in all of his novels and feels that the English landscape has its own narrative. The novel he is working on at the moment is about poverty and he read an article about how soya bands are stealing lands in Brazil and it is having the same effect on them as it had in Britain when land was taken (The Guardian), so this gave him the why, when and reason for writing.
He also likes to write heroes who are not heroic and heroines who are not beautiful and that literary books are more of a risk When he was first published, it was about giving him a career, not about profits as the big sellers would pay for the literary works.
From the things he has learned as a writer, he finished with sharing his golden rules of writing:
1) Don't be frightened of the blank page, be prepared to write badly before you write well as the writing is in the re-writing
2) Reading isn't absolutely necessary (if you only read to write it is rather like the snake eating its own tail). Experience - first sources - living life is more important
3) Be ambitious. If you set hurdles low, no risk is no excitement. Really take risks, do something no-one else has done and be prepared to make mistakes.
He believes that you can teach creative writing and he gave an example of a Writing Group member that observed well but kept stating the obvious, so every time she did, the group made magpie noises (she had described the black and white magpies in her writing previously) and when she wrote a short story about the break up of a marriage, her final line was 'Bonfire at the bottom of the garden always emitting smoke' so when they made the noise, she came back and had changed the line to 'Bonfire at the bottom of the garden always knitting smoke.' This sort of awareness can be taught, so he believes Hanif Kureishi is wrong.
#HLF2014 #GwynethHuges #JimCrace
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