A Writer’s Goody Bag by Chris Longmuir
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that a writer with life
experience has an advantage over writers with none. We start at the cradle and
continue to learn as we grow and develop, and this gives us a cupboard full of
goodies to tap into.
When I think of my own journey in becoming a writer it sets
me wondering how on earth this ever came about. When I was growing up I didn’t
know any writers. Oh, I knew books. I loved books, but the people who wrote
them were mystical beings. Probably not even real people. And the teachers who
taught us how to write compositions weren’t much help. I well remember the
requested three paragraph composition with a beginning, a middle, and an end.Nowadays, my granddaughter is tasked to write stories, and allowed to let her imagination roam free. Maybe I was born too early because my teachers would have held up their hands in horror at the thought of writing stories. As for imagination, that was frowned on. It was learning by rote, and the dreaded compositions.
No wonder becoming a writer was the furthest thing from my
mind when I left school. It was all about getting a job and how much money you
could bring into the house to add to the housekeeping. So, although I’d been
taught bookkeeping, shorthand and typing, as part of a commercial course, I
didn’t remain in an office job for very long. It was too poorly paid. When I
think about my wages then - £1/10s (£1.50) a week – it will help you understand
why I went to work in a mill. The girls who were office workers looked down on
the lowly millworkers, but I reckon the mill girls had the last laugh, because
we were earning the princely sum of £4.9s8d (£4.50), three times as much as the
office girls.
Three years later, when I reached the grand old age of 18, I
left the mill to become a bus conductress which was even better paid because we
got the same rate of wage as the male drivers. That was unusual in an age when
women did not earn as much as men. My wage in this job fluctuated because of
the shifts and unsocial hours worked, but I never took home any less than £10.
That was a fortune for a woman to earn at that time. I stayed in that job until
I married. That was another cultural aspect of the time. Women weren’t expected
to work after marriage.
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| Chris on the right with shop assistant, Wilma |
I can’t say I took too well to domestication but times were
gradually changing, and after a succession of part-time jobs, plus a couple of
seasons back on the buses, my desire for something better led me to open my own
small shop in a side street. A few years later I moved it to a prime spot in
the town’s High Street, next door to Woolworths. In case you’re wondering, it
was a wool and craft shop.
I think I must have a restless nature because I never seem
to be satisfied with what I achieve, I’m always striving for something better.
So, as well as running the shop, I studied for a degree with the Open
University. This was a challenge (I like challenges) because I’d left school
when I was 15 with no qualifications. Well, I got my degree, and you’ve guessed
it, I didn’t rest until I put it to good use. That meant selling the shop to
pursue a career in social work.
I attended university, for a post graduate qualification to
tack on the end of my degree, as well as college to gain a qualification in
criminology.
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| Chris sitting, with her clerical staff behind her |
As a social worker I learned all about the dark side of
life. And working in Scotland
where probation was not a separate profession, I gained a wide experience in
criminal justice, as well as child care, and everything in between. I’ve met
vulnerable people needing help, as well as murderers, drug users, petty
criminals, and all sorts.
So, I reckon I’ve built up a decent sized goody bag to
plunder for my fiction. I’ve already been dipping into it, and I have a
spinning mill scene in “Death Game”,
the novel I’m currently writing. I’ve used memories of how people live on sink
estates, the deprivation of their surroundings as well as their living
conditions. I included a snake scene, from my goody bag of memories, in my
award winning crime novel, “Dead Wood”. My
retail experience came in handy when I was writing “Night Watcher”, and I’m sure my child care experience was
reflected in “Missing Believed Dead”. So
far I haven’t used my university or college experience as a mature student, but
there’s time, and it’s rattling about in there at the bottom of the bag.
The other aspect of course is that everybody has emotional
experiences as they travel through life, and the longer you live the more of
them you have. There are sad times, happy times, bereavements, celebrations, a
whole gamut of emotions. All these are in your goody bag of life experience.
Go on, give your goody bag a shake and see what
surfaces. Your writing will be all the better for it.
Chris Longmuir
Comments
Chris, I so enjoyed this post - thank you!