Sheer Cliffs and Shearwaters: Interview with Richard Kipling

Rich and a Shearwater chick

It’s my great pleasure to introduce guest blogger Richard Kipling, one of my fellow grad students (who now holds a PhD) and a fellow member of the Mature Students Union at Aberystwyth University (Wales) during my sojourn there in 2009-10.

Rich is the author of two recent books, his brand-new Sheer Cliffs and Shearwaters: A Skomer Island Journal and El Caminante: On the Road to Field-of-the-Stars, a travel journal published in summer 2012, co-written with another writer-scientist, Damon Hammond. Damon was president of MSU and illustrator Michael Roberts was also a member of MSU while I studied at Aberystwyth University in 2009-10.

Rich’s scientific work naturally led to his writing about nature – coincidentally, one of my favorite types of creative nonfiction writing:

For two years I was lucky enough to spend spring and summer on the island of Skomer, an internationally important nature reserve off the west coast of Wales (UK). I worked surveying the spectacular seabird colonies, watching the seasons change and experiencing the strange mixture of communal spirit and separateness that comes with island life. Sheer Cliffs and Shearwaters is the story of my first season on the island; a journal of work and life on this amazing reserve, a record of my reflections and experiences, and a taste of island history, from the mystery of the prehistoric Harold Stone to stories of more recent times.

The charismatic, inquisitive puffins which woo so many visitors are the instantly recognisable face of Skomer, but the island holds a richness of nature and history of which they are just one part. Skomer is a place where the elements retain a power to shape and challenge, and where the cycles of nature are uniquely close to the human community living in their midst. This cannot help but bring a new perspective on modern life and our relationship with the natural world; a perspective I try to describe and explore. I hope that my book captures some of the feel of the island, and a little of the beauty and atmosphere of a place that is special to so many people.

KR: I haven’t yet read Sheer Cliffs and Shearwaters - I discovered that El Caminante is on Amazon US and just bought a copy! I hope SI will also be available here soon.

There are so many beautiful nooks and crannies in the UK that are fascinating both from an aesthetic as well as a scientific viewpoint. Please tell us a little more about your studies and your work.

RK: Here is a slightly adapted version of the preface to the book, with some info on Skomer and my work there:

I first visited the island of Skomer in the September of 2004, as part of a team undertaking a survey of the unique Skomer Vole. During that week of late summer sunshine I began to get a feel for what a special place the island is. It occupies a position that appears romantically distant even on the map, lying as it does off the southern tip of St Brides Bay, isolated by the turbulent waters of Jack Sound in one of the most far flung and beautiful parts of Wales. In 2011, an opportunity arose for me to return to the island as a Field Assistant with the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales; I jumped at the chance. ‘Sheer Cliffs and Shearwaters’ is an account of my time working on Skomer, of life in the small, transient community that occupies the island through the summer months, and of the natural events that mark the passage from spring to late summer in that part of the world.

Skomer Island is famed for its population of Puffins, but there is far more to the island. It has been an Iron Age settlement, a medieval rabbit warren, a farm and, latterly, an nternationally-important nature reserve. My role in 2011 was to carry out surveys of seabird breeding success, visiting colonies of Guillemots, Razorbills, Kittiwakes and Fulmars each day, identifying territories, following each pair of birds in a survey plot from egg laying to the fledging of chicks, and recording successes and failures. I hope the following pages will show some of the natural and historical diversity of Skomer, a diversity which continues to make the island a source of fascination for naturalists, historians, archaeologists, and day trippers alike. This diary is also a personal reflection, tracing my own journey through the seasons on this remote and beautiful rock. I hope it passes on a little of the magic of this hidden treasure of the Welsh coast.'

And here's an abstract from the book; a reflection written at the Garland Stone in August:

‘Stepping out into the courtyard this morning, the softness of the air has a new edge, a coolness that is not yet a chill but betrays the changing season. For the first time the shifting colours of the island mark senescence rather than the appearance of new flowers. Crisp brown is gently spreading from leaf tips of Bracken and Bramble, darkening the yellow blooms of the Ragwort. Along the path through North Valley, the volunteers have been scything back the vegetation, and the scatter of cut Bracken over the path is like a harvest.

At the stream, the Water Dropwort stems are brittle and dead, the carpet of Creeping Forget-me-not reduced to a few pale-flowered plants under the Willow leaves, themselves tarnished and fading. In the rabbit exclosures. the purple haze of heather flowers alone defies the coming autumn, and bees twist and turn between the inflorescences. The air is still, and there is a quietness; the island is peaceful after the frantic race to breed and fledge young, to protect new life.

Here on the north coast, a gentle breeze ruffles the pages of my notepad, the lobster-pot men work below me off the Garland Stone and the sounds of the boat’s engine and various clatters and mechanical noises drift up to me. From half a mile away, the hum of generators on the stationary tankers percolates the silence. Although it is eleven in the morning, the light has the quality of a late afternoon; the warmth of the sun is lessened by high cloud, and in the clear air, the fissures and colours of the rocks are picked out precisely. There is an air of waiting. Even the sea is tranquil, though in the tidal race the smoothness is an illusion that hides turmoil beneath.

Waves lap at the foot of the Garland Stone – hard now to imagine those spring storms, when spray crested its rocky peak. Glancing up, I can see the Irish ferry, my old friend, white against the grey of sea and sky, drifting through the stillness.’

KR: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Rich! I wish you many more natural adventures.

***
Sheer Cliffs and Shearwaters (Brambleby, 2013) is available [in eleven languages!] to order online from a number of outlets in addition to the publisher, including Amazon UK, and includes illustrations by Michael Roberts, like the illustration of a gannet in flight, below, and the Shearwater on the book cover.

Gannet in flight by Michael Roberts

This Life, This Sky

“Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish.”

“Look up to the sky. You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down.”

                                                                                                       

                                                                                           ~ Charlie Chaplin

If life is truly a beautiful magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish (and I suspect it is, since all beings, whether jellyfish or zebra or human being, fight for survival and aim to avoid suffering) then I see no reason why we human writers should not also find life to be a beautiful magnificent thing, even while experiencing great suffering.

Who better to illustrate these quotations than the man who said them – Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, better known as Charlie Chaplin. His childhood was defined by poverty and hardship, but he became one of the film world’s most beloved characters during a career that spanned seventy-five years. His films showcase that tug between slapstick comedy and pathos, one of life’s greatest dualities and why Chaplin became so popular and is loved to this day.

Witness some victims of the Boston Marathon bombing who made inspirational statements from their hospital rooms. Many had lost limbs, but they had already moved past anger and sadness and seemed ready to take the world by the tail again, grateful to be alive.

I doubt I'd do as well in similar circumstances.

Other graceful and larger than life people in the current spotlight are the parents of Trayvon Martin, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin. They continue their positive work with their son’s legacy through their foundation, seeking to protect other families’ children from suffering the same fate as Trayvon because of SYG laws and the racial and criminal profiling that often accompanies this mindset. They face their obstacles and their detractors with far more class than I would, especially after such a disappointing joke of a verdict at the killer’s trial (he whose name shall be forgotten, in my mind).  I would have difficulty maintaining composure under the great pressure and glare of the twenty-four hour news cycle that these folks have faced.

My problems are trivial by comparison. Heck, I can’t even get through minor daily issues without sniveling and cussing. But then, I fight a bit more depression and anxiety than the average person, something that goes along with the gift of creativity, as the scientific pundits say.

But I do cherish the “beauty in the breaking” - that underlying sense of equanimity that lives within our hearts even when everything is all wrong - and also the fleeting moments of bliss that we all encounter, whether in something so minute as observing a raindrop poised on a flower petal, (the microcosm) or walking in rainfall through a lovely forest (the macrocosm). And of course, there are always the joys of human events – births, graduations, weddings, (or sometimes just waking up in a decent mood) and for us writers, manuscript acceptance letters and story or book publication days!

Even setting a few words to paper (or screen, in this case) for a blog post makes my heart go pitty-pat!

So, as someone who moans loudly and often about life’s inequities, it almost seems hypocritical to tell you to look up at the sky. But I will do it anyway to remind myself.

It’s really all we have in this moment – this life, this sky.

Glastonbury Tor, 2010

© Kate Robinson

Geek Out About Your Story: Guest Blogger C.A. Brown

I'm always fascinated by creativity - and by my own and everyone's else's creative process. So I thought to pierce the underwater gloom at Jellyfish Day with posts by guest bloggers to show us how they roll.

I met May's guest blogger in our postgraduate creative writing program (that's programme in UK parlance)  in 2009. We're both fans of fantasy and sci-fi fiction, and we've kept up a lively correspondence about sundry facets of the creative life ever since. 

C.A. Brown is a writer, artist and comics artist with an MA in Creative Writing and a BA in English & Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University whose interests include dystopic cyberpunk sci-fi, film censorship, obsolete technology, late 1990s/early 2000s computer & video games, 1950s pre-code American horror comics, heavy metal, gothic rock , Sherlock Holmes, daydreaming, Red Dwarf and a host of other eccentric things. C.A. posts about creativity (and other random things) at  PekoeBlaze and art and comics at deviantArt.com.

I'm excited to hand the controls to a young geek who cut milkteeth on videogames, computers, and other technological wonders . . . please welcome C.A. Brown!

Five Visualisations to Help You Geek Out About Your Story

In one of my blog posts at Pekoeblaze, I wrote about how important it is to seriously geek out about your stories when you're writing them. Or, to quote my other article: 'If you aren't the most obsessive fan of your own work, then how can you expect anyone else to be? '

Anyway, in this article, I thought that I'd offer a few visualisation exercises which might help you get into the right mindset if you're having trouble geeking out about your own work. Some of these visualisations are probably fairly obvious, but hopefully some of them aren't.

Well, I say "visualisations" - but what I'm really talking about here are daydreams. You don't have to sit in the lotus position, do any kind of breathing exercises or listen to New Age music when you do these visualisations. In fact, it actually kind of helps if you do them when you're doing something else - just make sure that it isn't anything which could be dangerous if you get distracted from it.

Like the Voight-Kampff test in "Blade Runner", these visualisations are designed to provoke an emotional response in you. If they're doing nothing for you emotionally, then you're either a replicant or it's a sign that you need to change your story into something you can really geek out about...

Surfing the Internet: Imagine that you're a random fan of your work. A random person sitting at a computer and reading about your story on the internet. What do the reviews for it look like? What does its TV Tropes page look like? What does its Wikipedia page look like? etc...

In short, what does everything surrounding your story on the internet actually look like? What will it look like? When you get to the point where you start mentally quoting parts of your story's future Wikipedia/TV Tropes page to yourself, then you're doing it right.

Adaptations:  Imagine your work being faithfully adapted into other types of media (after all, this is a daydream, there's no point bogging it down with cynical realism). Imagine what the TV series/film/videogame adaptation of it would actually look like. Imagine holding a physical copy of the adaptation on DVD or VHS or Blu-Ray or whatever - what does the cover art look like? What certificate/rating does it have? What font is the title in? What does the blurb on the back look like? What special features does it have?

This type of visualisation is also quite useful because it makes you think of your work as a story in and of itself rather than just as "a novel"/"a comic"/"a short story" etc...

Briefly Become a Film Censor: This is a slightly strange one, but imagine what a film censor would think when they looked at your story. How would they rate it? What would they pick out? How would they describe your story in their report?

Although this visualisation is kind of strange, it can be useful because it makes you think about your story from the outside. It makes you think about how someone who is only interested in categorising (rather than appreciating) your story would think about it. It also makes you look at your own story in more detail too, since censors usually go over things in minute detail (albeit usually looking for four-letter words or whatever). Plus, it also helps you to clarify what kind of audience you're aiming your work at too.

This visualisation might not work for everyone and it helps if you've read a bit about film censorship before you do it (I seem to be both opposed to and absolutely fascinated by film censorship), but it can really help you to see your work from another perspective and think about it in detail.

Lecture:  There are two versions of this visualisation - one where you're delivering the lecture and one where you're listening to someone else deliver it. Choose whichever one feels best for you. Anyway, imagine that your story has become so well-acclaimed that it's actually being studied in universities. Imagine that it's part of the reading list on the English Literature course and it's sitting on top of the pile of set texts which every student on the course has to read. For the sake of argument, let's also assume that your story is interesting enough that all of them have actually read it too.

Anyway, there's a lecture about your story. Everyone attends it. What does the lecturer say?

If you're not particularly interested in academic lectures, then you can imagine a speech at a convention or whatever instead. The important thing is to imagine either you or someone else talking enthusiastically and in detail about your story. And, not only talking about it in detail, but taking it completely seriously too.

Omniscient Writer:  Ok, this one is slightly egotistical, but it can really help you to geek out about your work. Just imagine your (hypothetical or real) fans eagerly waiting for your work to be released, speculating about it on internet forums, reading every preview they can find and counting down the days until it is released. Now realise that you know a lot more than they do about your story - in fact, you're the one person on the planet who knows the most about your story and they're relying on you to pass the story onto them.

At its best, this kind of visualisation can almost make you feel omniscient - as if you know everything before anyone else does. It also makes you feel like you're the best and only person in the world that can tell your particular story too (and you are!)

Plus, in a slightly indirect way, it makes you imagine what the fans of your work feel about it too. If you do this visualisation properly, then you'll feel both a sense of omniscience about your own story and also the enthusiasm of your fans as they eagerly wait for your story and wonder what it will be like. Both of these emotions are extremely useful when it comes to geeking out about your story.

--------------

Anyway, I hope this helped you to get into the right frame of mind to tell your story. Just remember that, although geeking out about your story is really important, actually writing it is the most important thing of all.

C.A. Brown publications:

Emergency! 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block 

Some Tips for Developing Your Own Art Style

Your First Webcomic

Blogs:
 
PekoeBlaze

Liminal Rites - A Surreal Detective Story

Webcomics:

PekoeBlaze at DeviantArt

Catching Thoughts

Whew!  My head hurts. Too much thinking!

In a quest to fill in the gaps about my knowledge about literature and how to better write critically about it, and also to explore other general topics about composition that I last explored long ago as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, I started taking free online courses at Cousera.org. Coursera is a wonderful resource supported by major international universities and there's a wide range of class topics to choose from.

I have to admit I also took a film class just for fun and was pleasantly surprised to find how much I enjoyed learning how filmmakers explore and present story with images, color, and sound - or the lack thereof, since we began the course by watching some old black and white silent films and explored the progression of adding sound and color to film into the 21st century.

If you haven't participated in on online course before and would like to try one, enrolling at Coursera is a great way to give the process a whirl. If you want to earn a certificate in your class, you must participate fully and follow all the conventions, but if you'd like to dabble for your own enjoyment and skip assignments or to work at your own pace and ignore the deadlines, most course instructors encourage you to do so. The course material is generally left online to browse through at your leisure after courses close.

Now, back to my regularly scheduled programming! My coursework and my editing and consultation work have kept me occupied and silent to a great degree the last few months ...

I ran into a great writing quote the other day, replete with sea creatures and jellyfish, and I've been itching to share it:

"One rule of writing practice: keep your hand moving. Mine does and mind goes blank. However, writing practice knows what to do. Like a barracuda with his wide mouth, he catches thoughts like passing sea creatures in a boundless ocean mind. Sea bass, seahorse, seaweeds, jellyfish or jellybean, it does not matter. Writing practice captures them without discrimination. Everything goes into the same container, across pages."

~ Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg is, of course, the much-loved author of Wild Mind: Living the Writers Life and Writing Down the Bones. I've not yet gotten around to reading her more recent books on writing, but should and shall because her take on writing as a Zen practice speaks to me, as does her admonition to practice writing daily.

I'm not much of a journal keeper myself and prefer to gather and channel my energy into blogging or projects rather than setting random thoughts to paper . . . of course, jotting down random daily thoughts in journals  can become great seeds for articles, stories, and blogs, if you like that sort of discipline. I somehow manage to write a little most every day because of my work and classes, and sometimes even because I'm creating something new from culling the jellyfish and seaweed from the ocean of my mind! This hasn't happened often enough lately and I've vowed that in 2013 I'll do more original writing, once I get past this heavy learning phase.

The closest thing to a writing journal I've ever kept is a dream journal. I taught myself to write fiction, in part, by turning my dreams into flash stories, and the practice became a passion. I took this practice a step further after many years faithful recording and during my MA studies I explored the topic of dream literature - literature that is inspired by dreams or in some way uses sleep and dreams, usually in the form of fantasy or slipstream, since dreams are often bizarre in some respect. I hope to extend this topic someday soon in a PhD dissertation, a much deeper and more detailed study of how dreams, creativity, and environment meld into story. If I don't make it off to another university, I'll work on the project independently and informally. The years are ticking by quickly . . .

I'm fascinated by the way our subconscious minds (known as unconscious minds in academe) work with our conscious minds to gather ideas. I feel as if I'm far more driven by my subconscious mind than my conscious mind in a creative sense, unless I'm writing critically or academically or editing, so when I write fiction, I feel more like a fisherman casting a net for thoughts into the sea of consciousness, as much by night as by day.

I have to admit that I sometimes rebel  about writing in my dream journal and have to sometimes "trade dreams" in e-mail correspondence with friends and then copy from the e-mails into my journal. I tend tos resist structure and routine no matter how good it is for me and often climb through the window rather than enter through the door, so to speak!

Whatever your writing practice is, keep it reasonably regular and keep going. Too many long gaps and you're out of condition - your writing suffers and you'll struggle more when you do write. Too much pushing and you become stale, even panicky about writing. Like everything else, the writing life requires a certain balance. And intuition. And passion. And sense of fun.

The latter the us the main thing, I think – when you're trawling for thoughts, have fun doing it. Have fun with your writing!  

 

Dana Point, California 2011