Anita Belli Books

So Many Sequels, So Little Time!

As my new book The Renaissance of Giovanna Brown begins its long journey towards publication sometime in the future, I am reminded about how much of myself I put into my fictional stories. Often unintentionally. I think all authors do this to some extent; our themes and ideas come from our life experiences; from our interest and passions. And the more life we have lived, and the more interests we have, and so, our stream of ideas, thoughts and themes for our books is deeper. And this means that we have even more stories to tell. So many stories, so little time!

The themes and ideas for my books come from a number of experiences in my life, be it place, theme or character.

The Traveller and The Rose, for example, was influenced by the time I spent in Andalucia and my neighbour’s reluctance to talk about the Spanish Civil War.

Divas, Dogs and Dreamers is set backstage in a touring musical theatre show,

Once Upon a Blue Moon draws on my younger life in Camden Town and my filmmaking days.

The Art Forger’s Daughter explores my love of Art History and the themes of truth and lies – secrets from the past which haunt the present generation. This is a recurring theme in many of my books.

Ruby Sixpence Whistles up a Storm however, is based on a character – a Wiser Older Woman – or a witch – and kickstarted my love of mystical and spiritual exploration which continues in my latest book.

In , The Renaissance of Giovanna Brown, I draw heavily on family stories of the Italian community in Manchester, and also on my love of art history. There is more of me in this book than any other, although I must emphasise that it is NOT autobiographical. All of the characters and events in my story are imagined. It also differs from my other books in that I have plotted this one from the character out – not from the story in! It has been the hardest book to write and I am grateful to Arts Council England for supporting me through the process with a mentor from The Literary Consultancy. I might not have kept going without this support.

SUMMARY

It is 1972, and Giovanna Brown is vulnerable.
Rejecting her family’s plans to spend the rest of her life in the café they run in the Italian community of Manchester brings her to art school in London, where her eyes are opened. Unfortunately, her childhood imaginary friend Perdita has come along for the ride and encourages her to sample all the delights that the 1970s London art scene has to offer. But her new life comes crashing down, and only a road trip where she meets a witch, a nun and a priest can free Giovanna from the constraints of the mundane future planned for her by her family. Is this a bad joke, or a glimpse of a more positive future for Giovanna?
Continue reading “So Many Sequels, So Little Time!”

An Author in the Classroom

1 – Your Roll in School

You don’t have to write children’s books to work with children in schools. Being an author is enough. Nor do you need to be a teacher. I’m not, and have never been a teacher in schools, (although I taught in Higher Education some time ago.)

What you do need in order to work with primary age children is an open mind, a curious nature and be able to pass on your love of writing, and stories to children. You need kindness and an understanding that all children bring a different quality to the room; and that some children are carrying burdens which we are unaware of.

‘Stop Thinking and Just Do It!’

Head versus Heart in the Creative Process

Isn’t it interesting how words echo back at us down the decades? They seem to come from a random source, triggered by some thought process we are unaware of.

These words are etched deep into my memory, not because they were hurtful or upsetting, but because they struck a chord. These words form one of those seminal points in my life where a fragment of truth joins up with another piece of a giant puzzle and you see something you hadn’t seen before. You know something which you may have already known, but which now, you understand.

The Big Ship Sailed

The big ship sails through the alley-alley-o
On the last day of September

This is a playground song from my childhood and it came to mind this week as we approach the end of September. I remember a life changing event which happened on the last day of September a decade ago.

This was the day that a programme which had transformed many peoples lives and made a difference to creative learning across the country, closed.

Creative Partnerships was the UK government’s flagship creative learning programme and its aim was to develop young people’s creativity through artists’ engagement with schools across England.

My own life was transformed by this programme. As Creative Director, I was able to develop my understanding of creative learning and share a vision for creativity with schools in my region. I also learned about the reality of working in schools day to day and the value of creative learning for both staff and pupils.

Creativity is:

A LETTER FROM THE PAST

THE EMOTIONAL TRUTH BEHIND FAMILY HISTORY

My family has recently been exploring our Italian heritage; sharing photos, family trees and anecdotes in a WhatsApp group. There is so much that each of us holds separately: memories scattered across the globe like a jigsaw. Some stories I have never heard, others I have forgotten until prompted. Brothers and sisters, cousins I haven’t seen since childhood; nieces and nephews, second cousins, great nieces and nephews, all holding fragments of the story.

One story in particular has intrigued us all.

It is the story of my Aunt Rose, my father, Rocco’s sister. Dad had told us that his younger sister, Rose died when she was 17. He was just a year older and heartbroken by her death. And then we found a letter she wrote to her father Nazarene, dated July 1941.

The letter was addressed from
Convict 103, Concentration Camp,
in which she says,
‘I turn sweet 17 on Friday.’

Seeding a Story on a Blank Page

I am about to start a new book and the blank page is daunting. There is a long way to go from a thought or an idea, maybe a theme or a character, to finished novel.

So where do ideas come from? Where do I start? Ideas for stories are all around us – outside ourselves – and also inside us, in our hearts and minds.

Ideas spark stories, and mine are usually seeded from a mixture of different sources.

A PLACE OR IMAGE
The seed for The Traveller and The Rose, a love story set in the Spanish Civil War, was a location and an image. I saw the hills of Spain south of Granada, and a young man walking through the landscape in the days just before the Spanish Civil War. (Inspired by Laurie Lee – As I Walked Out One midsummer Morning.)

A CHARACTER
Ruby Sixpence is a character I had long wanted to write. She is an older, wiser woman who can be outrageous and make people’s dreams come true. She created a whole world of magical realism around herself.

FROM A STORY
The Arts Forger’s Daughter, began with stories I had heard about art forgery in WWII. I wanted to understand how the past has a habit of catching up with later generations. I explore this idea through the themes of memory, truth and lies; and how these vary depending on who is telling the tale.

IDEAS ALSO COME FROM INSIDE OURSELVES
Mining our past life, and our emotional landscape is the most powerful source of ideas. It is where we find the themes which run through our stories. It is also where our own truth and authenticity as a writer lies.

If we imagine that we are like a Russian Doll; the outer layer is what we are now, but all of those smaller versions are still inside us. Then imagine a five or ten-year gap between those versions of ourselves and think about the spaces in between. here is where we will find the love and laughter, the hurt and the tears. The things we have done, seen, felt, experienced and most importantly, learned. These spaces leave a resonance which we can tap into.

My new story will unpack itself like a set of Russian Dolls. So far, I have themes and characters. These ingredients become a story exploring identity through the different perspectives of two women: Gianna is on the threshold of a new life, whilst her aunt, Zia, (who is not unlike Ruby Sixpence, without the magic,) has lived a full life and can offer counsel to her niece.

Whatever the seed ideas for a new novel, I use my three-step process to build a story.

PART ONE is to explore as many ideas as possible. At the moment I am trawling notebooks for snippets and anecdotes and looking for thoughts ideas, reflections, memories and feelings; perhaps even universal truths which resonate with many women. I don’t have a time limit on this part of the process and I have reached the stage where my ideas pool is too vast and complex for one book. There are many stories emerging and I need to find one golden thread which I can draw out. Each idea then has many variations and those variations open further routes. My head is jumble of possibilities, what ifs…? and unexplored routes which I have mapped onto a large blank page.

How do I know which is the right path? I don’t, yet. So time for:

PART TWO of the three step process which is to ask a lot of questions. I will interrogate each character until I know them inside out and then I will ask the best question of all …

PART THREE: I will make connections between themes, places and characters

In reality, these three stages overlap and are messy but I must take care not to miss any out. By the end of this process, I will have a cast of characters whom I understand from the inside out, and a clear idea of their story. I will be ready to write a long synopsis of the story from beginning to end and from that, I will begin a detailed plot of how I will tell it.

Watch this space …

For more information on my creative process check out:

Unlock The Block

Kickstart Your Writing

Author in the Classroom

This latest work in progress is supported using public funding by Arts Council England

School’s Out For Summer!

It is the end of the school year and my work as Author in the Classroom has ended until September. So, back to the day job of being an Author and guess what I am writing about? Quite by coincidence, my next publication will be a Non-Fiction book for writers called:

How to be an Author in the Classroom

It has a deadline for the end of July (which is now half way through and the book is not yet edited and ready for publication, and is without illustrations!) Gerald Hornsby and I will be delivering a short course workshop at Swanwick Writers’ summer school about this and it would be handy to have the book ready.

https://www.swanwickwritersschool.org.uk

Challenge that Squinting Modifier!

My crusade to liberate literacy and develop creative writing in KS2, suffered a setback today. I discovered what a squinting modifier is!* Arghhh!

I have just completed a project to deliver over 40 creative writing workshops in seven schools creating poetry, stories and non-fiction writing.

In my sessions, we start with a warm up, which is usually a fun word game or a story game, and then we create a story, or poem all together. It can involve rolling dice, raising the stakes or just generally being as adventurous with our ideas as possible.

The children are all fired up with ideas, and then the well-meaning teacher steps in and says:

‘Don’t forget your fronted adverbials, and I want to see an expanded noun phrase and a subordinate clause. And I want you neatest handwriting with capital letters, commas and full stops in the right places!’

The session just died. The children wilt and all attempts at telling exciting stories have been sacrificed on the altar of LITERACY.

Author in the Classroom

I am back in schools next week and planning the sessions for a project I have delivered a few times before in many local primary schools.

It is a project funded by my local council which was originally aimed at educating children about hate crime. It has now turned into a bigger project about cultural awareness and transforms the participants into Junior Ambassadors for their school and community.

The project involves artists from Africa, India and China as well as a session from local refugee support, an illustrator and my sessions as an author.

My job is to follow these other creative practitioners into the school and to deliver a creative writing response to the stimulus from their art forms.

So, for example, I will develop poems with the children following their Bollywood Dance experience, and focus on feelings and the senses. After the African drummer and storyteller, I will deliver a creative writing session which I call the ‘Story Bones’ where we will uncover the nature of story, and write our own African stories. And after Chinese calligraphy, we will explore ‘characters.’ I will use China as the setting and the characters will be based on the animals of the Chinese Zodiac. For the sessions about refugees, we will look at first hand testimony from refugees and write an account, or a letter home following an exploration of their journeys.

I am followed in each school by an artist, who explores images with the children which will illustrate their writing. The local council will then print a booklet of the children’s writing and pictures for the school’s library.

It is a big commitment from the schools, which are complex organisations under constant pressure to measure children and meet targets. And yet I have found that all the schools I have worked in have embraced this programme and managed to incorporate both the method and the message into their teaching schedule, especially admirable in a time of Covid.

Falling in Love with the Adventures of Mole

I have spent almost every day so far, this year developing A Month of Writing Adventure for children. It has been a mammoth task, working with an artist, and compiling words and images into a book which is a combination of a teaching guide and creative notebook. It is beautifully illustrated by Charlotte Cleveland who has brought my ideas and story to life. I am sure A Month of Writing Adventure will excite even the most reluctant writer.

By combining story structure with creative skills, A Month of Writing Adventure is a roller-coaster ride with The Story Moles. Full of interesting tasks and challenges, with space in the book for children to explore their own stories though words and pictures.

It has been my constant companion for 2021 so far, and I have, this week, sent him off to the printer!

I must confess, I was reluctant to let him go, which has never happened to me before. Usually, after all the time it takes to plan, write, re-write, edit, proof and prepare a book for publication, I am glad to see the back of it.