I have been asked by Keith Livesey to contribute to this series as he
must believe or think I’ve something worth saying despite not being a
Historian. Keith and I are very old friends, and I remember the first day we met.
It was sometime in the spring of 1996 and I was walking down Oxford Road close
to All Saints Campus of M.M.U. He was flogging a political paper at the time,
standing outside the Student Union and asked me to sign a petition. He used the
word “antidemocratic”, and I didn’t know what that meant exactly, so I asked, “What
do you mean by this?” He then explained,
had a nice way about him, and I signed my name; I found myself in agreement,
wanting to defend democratic rights against antidemocratic practices. He looked
at my signature and commented with a smile: “It’s interesting to know what a
fellow Livesey thinks?” We started a
correspondence, he changed my life and the rest is history. I owe a lot to
Keith and as we’re not spring chickens anymore, I’d like to express my sincere
appreciation and gratitude despite our differences. Tomorrow is not a given;
too much in life is taken for granted. Time passes and we wish we’d said more
to those who passed on when they were alive. This is my opportunity to give
thanks openly and honestly to a good friend while there’s time.
With all of that being said, I would like to tell the reader what I am. I’m
not a Historian, as already mentioned, but I am an artist, gardener, mother,
sister, daughter, crafter, scientist, retired C.A.B Generalist Adviser, revolutionary
thinker and an Allied Health Professional. I have a B.A. with (Hons) and a BSc
with (Hons). In the latter, I attained the highest first out of my entire
cohort. I worked hard for that degree whilst bringing up my daughter single
handed so I am not bereft of having experienced many struggles of everyday life.
I am a humble human and write this essay to help anyone who struggles to put
pen to paper. God knows how I have struggled, but I sometimes found a way
through and succeeded. I will share my struggles, what caused them and how I
overcame them; the rest will be up to you.
It would be really easy to write a mechanical piece about the A, B, and C’s
of writing. It might go along the following lines: first you do this, then you
do that, etc, and bingo! Before you know it, you’re a writer. That would be as
dull as dishwater and would not begin to highlight anything insightful for me.
It would be a one-sided list of tips that you could probably get off the
internet, and if I did do this, it would beg the following question: Would I be
bringing anything new to this series? Writing and thought are far more complex,
and although tips are useful, we’d all have become writers years ago if all
that was needed were tips! It also needs to be said that I can think of many
more reasons why most people don’t write than do. This essay will, therefore,
be far longer than others in the series and is aimed at a much broader
audience. I am not pitching this to academia; it is aimed at the many and not
the few. People will make up their minds as to whether they find this work
helpful.
My family of origin is pretty messed up and complicated, but certainly
not unique. I am the middle child with two brothers, one on either side of me.
I was born to an Electronics Engineer who was brought up by an R.A.F Warrant
Officer and a cleaner/lollipop lady who left school at 14 without formal
qualifications. They are from very different class backgrounds, with an age gap
of 7 years. This is more significant than it ought to be because one was born
one year into the Second World War, and the other was born 3 years post-war.
They were born into very different worlds. They had completely different
outlooks, psychologies, expectations and attitudes to children and their
rearing. The home slowly descended into chaos and a battleground after my
younger brother was born. I forgive them for I understand them; only living in chaos
neither provides the conditions to sit down with mum and dad to read nor have
your mum or dad read to you. My dad’s attitude was if, “It’s in them, it’s in
them!” a very passive attitude that smacks of biological determinism. My dad
had no interest in how his acorns would grow into mighty oaks and believed it
was all to be done by the school system as he’d done his bit, which wasn’t his
job. I read very little as a child before starting school and preferred picture
books and watching television. Thankfully for my dad, the 1970s had superb
educational children’s programmes. I loved the 1970s children’s programmes from
Tony Hart Oliver Postgate and productions from Cosgrove Hall. This is where and
how my love of drawing and being creative sprang from, as well as watching my
mother knit and sew.
My family life was difficult at times. My older brother was a bully and
perceived me as a threat or a target for humiliation, so there was quite a lot
of anguish at times in my everyday life. There are only 22 months between us,
and when I came along, I’m sure his little world was turned a bit “topsy turvy”,
shall we say. He was never disciplined for his behaviour, and I often felt
cheated and invisible. Feeling injustice and having no voice from such a young
age affects you. Having parents who fought (clashes could be quite violent at
times) created a hostile environment, and I became a bit shy.
It soon became apparent that by the time I was 7, my needs wouldn’t be
met half the time (emotional and intellectual needs), so I started looking
elsewhere and escaping into school and playing out virtually all the time with
my few friends. I wasn’t brave enough to make my friends’ and the friends I had
would choose me and not the other way around. I was extremely passive in this
area and ended up with friends who would later show they were no good for me.
Not because they were delinquents but because of their issues and upbringing. My
primary school was amazing as it was progressive and naturally didn’t focus on
the “3 R’s” traditionally and formally. So, although I was a bright child, the
school didn’t pressure us or give us an imposed rigid structure from above. The
teacher wasn’t an authoritarian character that was dictating to us. The teachers
in this school were more of guides and facilitators to our learning. They
embodied healthy authority and provided us with leadership. This meant that the
child led and decided their learning activities for the day and let me explain
how this went down. I don’t know any other person who went to a primary school
like the one I did, and I would be extremely interested to hear if anyone did.
We were the only school in the area out of 6 others nearby and were called
“Wheelockians”. It was very amusing in retrospect, but at the time, it left me
feeling less than my counterparts from other schools. We were known to be different,
and this labelling was very telling.
Some teachers at secondary school saw us differently and weren’t behind
this type of school, probably because they measured success by whether we
passed the stupid Richmond Test or not. Absolute Bullshit, in my opinion,
because what did it measure? We had such a rich learning experience and were
free of fear, and this quasi-11 plus exam couldn’t measure that. If a teacher
measures success by the limited yardstick of the Richmond Test then they are
extremely limited as human beings. Education shouldn’t be about filling the
child with pointless facts and figures but surely to develop them into well
rounded human beings that can face the world and contribute to it, and even
impart some wisdom. In this endeavour, our education system truly fails. Still,
a different philosophy once existed, tested in reality and moved on from a
theoretical hypothesis developed by Piaget and Montessori. This type of
teaching and school has been strangled to death by every single government
since 1979.
I started primary school in April of 1979 at age four, and I recall
sitting on the floor cross-legged in a home bay as the school was completely
open-planned. For a good number of weeks, we were given free milk at a set time
each day, which I later learned had been taken away by none other than Maggie
Thatcher, the infamous “Milk Snatcher”.
The school was great, and we had there Sheep, hens, ducks, hamsters, terrapins,
clay, glazes, kilns, a large library, and a large practical area where you
could make a mess and paint all day. We had an incubator where the eggs from
the hens were placed to hatch. We had a woodland area, a massive playing field,
the best school dinners, book fairs, Christmas fairs, a nit nurse, Sport’s day,
a cookery area, a mobile building, a greenhouse, and I could go on. We had teachers
who could play the guitar and the piano and believed in their profession and
that a child learns through play and instruction. We were taught how to read
music and play the recorder. We also had spinning wheels where the fleece from
the sheep was spun into yarn after being carded. I recall bookbinding and
covering our handmade books with paper that we decorated with marbling.
We watched the sheep being shorn and had a pond that we would dip into
with nets and examine the water boatmen from our “haul”. Looking back, we had
huge human and material resources, which was a great place to be. However, this
is not a criticism: it didn’t turn me into a great “writer/reader” other than
Judy Blume at age 11. That’s the level I got to, which is perfectly respectable
and age-appropriate. Blume deals with themes that a young girl like me would
soon come to encounter and it was forearming oneself. She spoke to me, and her
books were devoured by those of us living in the bloody real world. Those of us
who were being and not striving to be what our parents wanted (mine didn’t seem
that bothered) nor what some freaky teacher thought we should be. I enjoyed a
wonderful primary school education. I had a very happy time at primary school
and can recall so much of it, like yesterday. No trauma happened that I’ve ever
needed to block out, and there wasn’t a competitive atmosphere except on Sports
Day. We were allowed to grow organically, but by 1986, that was about to change
dramatically, which I will come to later.
So, at my primary school with so much great stuff to do and be allowed
to do, reading and writing wasn’t some activity that we were bullied into
mastering. We were taught through the breakthrough method, which gave us a
great foundation. I remember real excitement after I’d learnt a new word as it
was put into our dictionary booklets and I remember taking to it quite easily.
I must have been about five years old, and one day, I desperately and excitedly
asked my dad if I could read to him. He said “No,” and I never asked again. I
was quietly upset and shocked, a little like I’d done something wrong, and
children are generally acquiescent and I found myself accepting that it was
just something he wouldn’t do for me. Development of my reading and writing
skills wasn’t being nurtured at home, and my dad would watch B.B.C. Open
University lectures that were way over our heads. We left him to it. He did his
own thing and had his reasons and attitudes that I would learn about later. I
got the maximum of input around reading and writing from school, it would have
been more, but they rightly focused on so much other stuff. Even our P.E.
lessons were great. After climbing the ropes, I recall the delight and glowing
sense of achievement the first time I touched the main hall ceiling.
So, I went to an all-girls secondary school where I failed the “Richmond
Test” beforehand and was put into a lower band form. This might be unfamiliar
to some as I’m 50 soon, and things were different back then. But this is how
things were. It was before the internet, mobile phones, and society believed in
the right to a childhood. There was no sexualisation of children or at least no
outward display of it in the community. This is not to say that nefarious and
sinister activity wasn’t happening behind closed doors somewhere, but I
certainly wasn’t aware or privy to it. Self-harming and eating disorders were
non-existent. There was no single case of this at primary school (1979-1986) or
the odd case at secondary school (1986-1991). I had a tiny tears doll and not a dreaded B.R.A.T.Z.
Doll, for example, and we dressed appropriately for our age and did
age-appropriate things like not taking drugs or carrying knives. Children were
children and weren’t tried as adults in a court of law either. Different for
sure! I think giving context to the time
I’m talking about is important. So much has changed and that change has neither
been in the right direction nor for the right reasons. Examining this would
require a lot of work and is for another time. Still, it is safe to say that
education across all levels has suffered due to the interference and policies
of every single government since 1979! A lot has been lost.
I believe the breakthrough method of teaching a child to write and read
will always be above the phonics system. I have a child who is a millennial who
was taught via phonics. How did anyone ever learn before this revolutionary phonics
system, I might ask? I believe my child learnt despite it and not because of it,
and phonics is a reactionary and cheap way of teaching a class that is so
heterogeneous there’s no other option. This was applied to all schools, even if
the class demographic was more homogenous. This is why you get outraged parents
who don’t agree with trying to be all things to everyone, as what was worth
conserving (breakthrough method, for example) gets diluted or completely lost
and cast aside. It also creates a chasm between some children and parents like
me who learn in a completely different way. It’s hard to bridge sometimes. What
working-class person has the time to learn a whole new system when the one they
had worked perfectly fine? It raises more questions than it answers.
Working-class parents have become so bogged down by these new radical teaching
methods that faith in our education has waned for a long time. Is it any wonder
that homeschooling started to become a viable option? Of course, this isn’t the
only reason for homeschooling, but it is for some, and there are more homeschooled
kids, most notably because the parents reject the school for some reason.
At secondary school, things completely changed but I still didn’t
develop into a writer! Certainly not a good one. There was no confidence in my
writing and a resignation. Essentially, although I digress at times, the
picture here is of a working-class kid (me) living in a fairly affluent area
but struggling with a chaotic home life whilst surrounded by kids with more
harmony outside of school. I bumbled along, not knowing any different, and the
conditions weren’t there at that time to improve. The books in my house were
either my dad’s advanced technical books with two fiction books thrown in, “The
Swiss Family Robinson” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. I only found those
after I was 18. My mum’s small collection consisted of Mill’s and Boon's
romantic paperbacks, cookery books and knitting/sewing patterns. My mum is a
wonderful woman and hid the fact that she has dyslexia as best she could. And I
was so ashamed due to living in the area I did that when she wrote a note to
secondary school about an absence or the need to be let out of school to go
into town at lunchtime to buy fabric for a Home Economics project for example,
that I would rewrite it and forge her signature the shame was so bad.
My dad was unapproachable and saw his daughter as her mother’s problem.
I am trying to explain here the atmosphere around writing and books. I thought
that because my mum couldn’t do it very well, I would never be that great at it.
I wasn’t pushed, stretched or encouraged to improve as I was a woman who would
marry and make babies anyway, so what need was there to put much effort in with
me? God, how wrong my parents were, and I’m sure I’ve been a major
disappointment at times, but I was able to forge my paths and change my
trajectory where writing was concerned, but this change didn’t happen until my
20s. Even though I can pinpoint the shift (meeting Keith) in my reading
materials (a qualitative and quantitative change), the writing didn’t develop
until years later; it was not until I was 39 that I put my new skills,
knowledge and attitudes into action. I could read at secondary school, don’t
get me wrong, but it was for escapism and I skipped any words I didn’t
understand and gave little attention to them. I paid no attention to the format
of the writing either.
Punctuation for me was capitals at the beginning of a sentence, a few
commas and a full stop at the end. There was no mastery of colons, semi-colons
or correct paragraphing. I got by (badly), and any manuscript I submitted was
covered in red ink, shouting constantly at my many mistakes. I just thought I was
my mother’s daughter, which was normal. I realised I’d had major writing
problems in my early 20s and was even more confused. So confused that trying to
express thoughts and feelings articulately was like pulling teeth without
anaesthetic; agonising, time-consuming and a losing game. I didn’t even know
what a metaphor or literary device was until my daughter asked me when I was
around 36. The internet is a truly wonderful thing in the right hands. We move
on if we can have the courage to admit our short comings and want to do better.
First, confess what you don’t know and not be ashamed of where you are. It most
likely wasn’t your fault but a combination of factors beyond your control. It
certainly was for me.
At G.C.S.E., I took Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography, French, Maths
and English. Out of all of those subjects, I hated English. I hated English,
and it made me physically sick. The stress I would feel at trying to answer the
essay question and understand Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Miller, or Orwell was
just crippling, and I felt tremendous shame at not understanding it or being
able to formulate ideas around the question. I didn’t understand and was too
unsupported by my teachers, parents and friends to develop further. Because I
thrived in the sciences, they thought I was fine. I wasn’t fine and I didn’t
have the skill or inclination to seek the right books to guide me to improve. I
didn’t know they even existed! I just felt stupid when English was concerned
and resigned myself to suffering. I was a kid, and nobody taught me any
better.
In this area, I seriously underachieved. Out of 17 assignments for G.C.S.E.
English, I submitted 11. I would not produce the work as the stress and shame I
had around this was incapacitating. I struggled with writing and thinking and
it was totally in silence. Somehow, I evaded being pursued by teachers for the
missing assignments. It just got swept under the rug. I was never disciplined
with the threat of detention, nor was I threatened with parental involvement.
No teacher told me, "We’ll have to inform your parents of this”. Nothing
happened about it other than my internal stress and shame engulfed me at times with
English assignments. And I, too, hid it, just like my mum’s dyslexia went on
without much detection, or it was passively accepted as the inevitable outcome
of poor genes or poor education. Either way, my crappy-quality essays weren’t
earmarked as something to address.
Although I kept quiet, looking back, there were very subtle expressions
of my disquiet, but they were slight and still within the scale of what was
normal for someone my age. I was always clean and well-dressed, so no one
thought I was neglected. Materially, in most areas, my needs were met (except the
books), I was nourished, I had dental care, and I didn’t freeze as I had a warm,
clean bed. Still, I was neglected emotionally and intellectually without a
shadow of a doubt. I never tried to talk about it; I didn’t have a voice at home
and didn’t believe my parent could find a solution even if I had. I hadn’t much
of a voice anywhere else except with friends my age.
Looking back, we were taught English G.C.S.E. badly. I would go as far
as to say that it was appalling. When we read “Animal Farm” it was delivered to
us as this is a political satire. Stalin’s and Trotsky’s names were mentioned
briefly, but I had no idea who they were, what they did, and what political
satire meant. At 14, I had no idea of this or way of finding out. I think this
was one of the assignments I just ignored. The teacher didn’t go on to explain
anything about the Russian Revolution. As I didn’t take history but chose
geography, I couldn’t rely on any knowledge I may have acquired elsewhere. I
didn’t have any books at home that I could paw over. There were no
encyclopaedias or anything like that. Shakespeare, I, too, hated.
I didn’t relate to the language as many don’t. I didn’t know you could
buy books that walk you through what is being expressed, so I neither developed
an understanding nor an appreciation. I drew a blank, moved on and the same
with Arthur Miller to an extent. We read The Crucible, and I was disturbed by
it. My only reaction to this novel was: “What the hell happened to innocent
until proven guilty?” None of my peers responded similarly to it, and I felt
completely isolated, and there was something wrong with me. Again, we weren’t
given any historical context to these novels. Somehow, at 14 years of age, I
was expected to know all about “McCarthyism” and “The Salem Witch Hunts” and
discuss all of Miller’s literary devices, motifs, and themes and do it all with
perfect spelling, a broad vocabulary and perfect grammar. I had no cat in hell's
chance at delivering on this, so I repeatedly swerved on such a demand.
But here’s the thing: I wasn’t conscious of this at the time, but I’m
certainly mindful of it now and have been since my late 20s after I started to
try and grapple with improving my writing. On reflection, the only essay I ever
wrote for my English G.C.S.E. confidently and competently was “The Chrysalids”
by John Wyndham. For a change, I wanted to read this book and having prior
scientific knowledge was my saviour. Here, I could scrape a B grade for once,
but because that was unusual for me, I wrote it off as a fluke. It wasn’t a
fluke at all. I understood because I could see what he was driving at because I
knew the scientific field. Not studying history at G.C.S.E. was a big mistake
looking back, especially as it had always been my best subject. It would have
been the candle in the dark I so desperately needed to see and be able to
write. I’m not good at writing and bullshitting my way through anything I don’t
understand. We are what we are, and I’d rather have integrity than peddle
another version of the “Emperor’s New Clothes”.
I would also like to add that I had three jobs at the time of my
G.C.S.E.. On Thursday and Friday evenings I would collect milk money for three
hours. I’d walk about 4-5 miles in this time each evening. I had a Saturday job
working from 12 pm -5 pm, and I would babysit Saturday nights until midnight.
Money was tight, and my brothers and I were made to get jobs. Looking back,
money wasn’t tight. It was badly managed due to the discord in my parent’s
marriage. The reason this pisses me off is because I secretly wanted to be a
Doctor. I concluded that I wasn’t bright enough and was from the wrong side of
the street. My parents never knew this; I don’t think they know it today.
Getting into Medical School would have required absolute dedication, commitment
and the right conditions for serious study. I had none of these. Arguments
could erupt in the blink of an eye, and although sporadic in rhythm, they
showed no signs of abating. Having gotten all B’s at G.C.S.E without any
revision and a C for the English language, such grades, from my perspective,
were just more nails in the coffin of my dream. My dream was then buried and
went on to present itself as an utter fantasy. Due to this, I went on to align
myself to a completely different path.
I want to come back to the matter of the Richmond test that I talked
briefly about earlier in this essay. I briefly remember the day it happened. It
was a rather uneventful and business-as-usual morning until year 7 (as it was
called back then) was ushered into the main hall and directed to one of the
many single desks. We weren’t warned or told about what would happen beforehand
in any way, shape or form. I don’t recall any letters being sent home or mum
and dad wishing me well. I remember nothing surrounding this event but the
event itself. There was an exam paper on each desk, and we were asked to answer
the questions in a set amount of time. I wasn’t stressed, worried or anything.
I did my best, and we all walked away and it was forgotten as far as I was
concerned. I don’t recall talking to friends about it or exchanging anything
with anybody. No teachers brought it up, and we moved on. We were all going to
secondary school and didn’t know there was a rite of passage to this so I never
put the two and two together.
The only question I remember was about a map and being asked about
coordinates. I was 10, had never read a map, and had no idea what coordinates
were. I wasn’t even bothered that I didn’t know. I was a summer baby born in
July, so I accepted, not knowing as much as a September or winter baby. This
gap between different children is played down, but it matters. Put a summer
baby alongside a September baby, and they will have 9 months of knowledge and
experience, if not more. You’re always at a disadvantage under what month you
were born, whether you like it or not. It can only be bridged for the average
child if all things were equal by concerted effort.
It would only be later in life that I would realise what the “Richmond
Test” was for and its significance. I bombed that test and I know this because
I was put into a “lower band” form at high school. I didn’t think I was in a
lower band form until the end of the first year as I was the brightest in my “lower
band” class and got top in every exam. I was moved into an “upper band” form
and cried with sadness when I heard the news. I was happy where I was, liked my
normal, nice friends who were quite pleased and didn’t feel like I didn’t fit
in. I was, therefore, moved from a predominately working-class cohort to a
lower-middle-class/middle-class cohort. I hated it, and believe me, this layer
was far more competitive and bitchy than I’d ever have thought. I got the piss
taken out of me by a particularly arrogant and entitled individual because I
once said that L.Cornes was my “best” friend. Bestest isn’t exactly correct, I
know (who cares at 11 years old anyway?), but it was the venom with which she
desired to humiliate me that caused me alarm. I had no issue with being
corrected, only how it was done. This is what they were like. I was called
“thick” to my face by what I thought was a close friend, and another so-called
friend would like to say such things as “Wow, that’s a big word for you”. It
was a climate of less than. I was made to feel less than by these people, and
it unfortunately gained a lot of traction and worked.
The new cohort was not nice. I didn’t relate well; I identified myself
as working class and quite normal. I didn’t have a horse or a Pilot for a
“daddy”. I couldn’t play the clarinet, flute or piano to grade 6,7 or 8, and I
lived in a modest three-bed house and not a five-bed house on a posh housing
estate, for example. I was placed there because I did okay in exams but didn’t
like being there. Being moved also impacted my English as I felt less than in this
context. I survived, but I wasn’t at home, shall we say. The Richmond test was
a little like an 11-plus exam. The Girl’s School was once a modern secondary
school, and there was a grammar school, too, at the same time. The Grammar
School ceased to be such when I moved up and was just a boy’s school. However,
after the secondary modern model was ditched and my secondary school became a
single-sex school, the “Richmond Test” was used to stream kids. Based on the
results, it couldn’t be excluded, but it sure enjoyed sieving through “ability”
and grouping “similar” together instead of making a mixed ability class.
I continued to get my head down and was good in some areas. My education
from 11-15 ( remember, I’m a summer baby and have sat my G.C.S.E.’s before
turning 16) was all about passing exams. It was pretty boring towards the end,
and we just went through the motions of it. I enjoyed science the most because
it taught me something new and useful, and I grasped it. I wasn’t competitive,
so I wouldn't say I liked sports even though I was okay. Art was also dull
because of the girls I had to take this class with and how it was taught. The
resources were also a bit thin on the ground here. Luckily, I had one friend in
this class, and we were not strictly outcasts, but we did not swim effortlessly
with the stream. It was the competitive climate that drew me in. Cooperation
and collaboration are more superior orientations and one of my mum’s refrains
is: “Two heads are always better than one!”
She had many a saying, and so did my dad. They have stuck with me to
this day. They weren’t perfect, but they weren’t intrinsically bad people. Just
two people struggling a lot of the time like everyone else in the lower middle/
working class. But they didn’t overcome their limitations and work towards
solutions. That’s the crime and failure as it made life far more difficult than
it needed to have been and needless suffering resulted.
So far, this essay should be called On: Not Being Able to Write. I make
no excuses or wish to spin it in any other way. I had huge struggles with
writing and comprehension where English was concerned, and I’m sure I’ll never
be alone in this. However, it stopped me from doing what I wanted, so after
gaining my secondary education, I studied “A level” chemistry, biology and art.
There was no essay writing here and I deliberately dropped general studies as I
didn’t want to write any essays. Unfortunately for me, level art required a dissertation,
and my woes came back with a vengeance, and I played truant. I always felt ill
as I went to a posh sixth form college where lots had been privately educated
and had the arrogance that goes with that. I suffered in this period, and from
my report, it is documented that I had 84 absences in the lower sixth. Despite
this, I got my A levels, which weren’t that remarkable. I did manage to get an
A grade in art, the only A grade I’d ever had, so I threw myself into this and
went to Art College, thinking it would be easier. It wasn’t any easier, and I
was lost, not having a clear idea of where I was going and what I wanted to do.
Eventually, two years after my A levels, I got a place at University for
an arts degree. Three months into this bloody shite show, I knew I’d made a big
mistake. Not knowing how to remedy this, I carried on in a state of depression.
Other reasons in the background also affected me, but I had no idea how to
solve them. I endured this and suffered. There was writing on this degree, much
more than I’d anticipated and I was met again with myself and my inadequacy
around writing. At the time, I did not know just how bad things were regarding
the degree itself. I thought it was just me due to the less-than mentality that
I’d developed being educated alongside “mean girls” and originating from humble
beginnings. After the first year of this degree 33% had dropped out! I later
learnt that the degree I was enrolled on had had more complaints than any other
degree in the entire University. I was shocked by this, but particularly
shocked at learning it was possible to complain to someone. I had no knowledge
of this or anyone in my life who could have heard my concerns and signposted me
to a place that might listen. I hadn’t a clue. Some people referred to some of
our tutors as witches!
Although there were problems with this degree course, I didn’t help
myself being so depressed. I, too, was to blame a bit here because I never
attended a single art history lecture in my first year. I didn’t believe it was
useful and that I would even understand it, so I skived them all. It may have
helped me, but I was at where as was at. Despite not attending the lectures, I
still had to submit an essay for this module and earn credits. We were given five
titles, which I ignored for a long time. I ignored it until the night before
and painted myself into a corner. There was no way out of this other than
putting pen to paper. I just wrote and did the best I could. It was by hand,
written in a black fountain pen on lined A4 paper. There was no editing or
reworking of this piece whatsoever. I handed it in, forgot about it, and
expected to perform quite badly and took a bit of solace in the fact that at
least I’d tried. Our essays were returned a couple of weeks later, and
something really strange happened, and I developed quite a profound cognitive
dissonance. I was only three marks off the first despite grammatical and
spelling errors. I didn’t get it.
I was so concerned, alarmed and doubtful that I made an appointment with
the assessor of my essay. She was taken aback as students would usually come to
her asking for it to be reassessed because they weren’t happy with their grades.
After all, it was thought to be too low. I was pleased but confused as I didn’t
believe it was correct, and she’d marked me higher than I deserved. I was so
confused that I cried in her office, and she didn’t know what to do with me.
She said, " even though there are mistakes that I’ve highlighted, your
overall arguments are sound, compelling and showed more thought than any of the
others”. I listened to what she had to say but still didn’t believe her. I
thought it was just another fluke, a good day, and I was lucky enough to have
something to say as I’d picked the correct essay title out of the five on
offer. Despite this achievement that no one other than me knew about, having no
one to celebrate this success with meant that I didn’t have a countering force
to my already ingrained attitudes. It was a real success, but I continued with
my fear of writing and still didn’t improve.
What changed for me was when I met Keith. Subscribing to the political
paper and reading real stuff that was deeply interesting changed me. Nothing at
University was all that interesting, but this stuff was gold. The fact that I
didn’t understand everything didn’t matter. It showed me how little I knew and wanted
to know and understand. I bought book after book after book. I remember my
older brother commenting to my mum around this time. He said: “What’s wrong
with her mum? She’s always got her head in a book?” It wasn’t normal practice in my house, and it
showed. But I carried on and would read into the early hours. There was no
structure to this or guidance which could have helped, I just knew I knew
nothing but as sure as hell wanted to. It was tough. I bought books on many
subjects: economics, politics, art, history, film and philosophy. Some weren’t
the best examples, but I trusted they were all sound because they’d been
printed. This isn’t true of a book, but I didn’t understand this at the time,
only having had children’s books at home. But when I look at the books I did
have in childhood, they are fantastic examples of illustrated children’s
literature. I was really lucky and privileged to have had those that I did.
Hindsight is wonderful if you are willing to look back objectively, with
honesty and humility, as then you can learn something unknown.
The 1960s and 1970s were a golden age for children’s books; I may write
about this in the future. I have a strong desire to write and illustrate one of
my own. I have a body of work and illustrations in my portfolio (that I’ve kept
hidden away) that would lend themselves well to this sort of thing. Maybe it
will be something I can pull off one day if I’m lucky and all the stars are
aligned in my favour.
At this point, I’d like to say that if anyone is struggling to put pen
to paper, please stop and think. Everyone can write, whether it’s a simple
note, letter, or shopping list. Forget the formalities around writing for now,
as that is something that can be gained later. If you get hung up on the
slightest little things, they will become much bigger things that will stand in
your way. Yes, writing has a form to it, depending on its function. A list is
simply a list as an aide memoir and doesn’t need to be anything else. Depending
on the audience and what it’s about and for, an essay will have a different
form altogether. A short fictional story will have another form. Poetry has a
different form altogether, but it is most certainly related to its function,
and there are no hard and fast rules about content in any writing. Your
audience will influence the content if you want to educate and inform them. The
language will differ greatly if you write for a small, specialised audience.
Who are you writing for matters a great deal?
Most of my writing until now has been to pass exams and was a means to a
definite end. Writing for pleasure, I’m sure, will be different again. For
academic or “serious” writing, you must have ideas, a fairly reasonable
vocabulary, and be willing to work on the conventions of how it’s presented. It
will take work and effort, but there’s plenty of instruction in books or
online. First, you will have to read and live to become a writer. Be picky
about who you read and why. If possible, read those you identify with most, as
this will strengthen you. Then read those you don’t. A lot of precious time can
be wasted trying to make sense of rubbish. It can drive you insane if you are
isolated and new to an area. Some books can leave you feeling profoundly dumb
when they have deliberately been written so badly they are obscure and illusive.
Books on art and postmodernism fall into this category and I may write about a
couple I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure to experience.
First of all, read what you are interested in and pick accessible
sources that are easier to comprehend. A saying sums things up quite nicely:
average minds discuss people, good minds discuss events, but great minds
discuss ideas! You can’t do anything without ideas other than reporting. Read
and read and have a thesaurus and several dictionaries by your side. I have a
medical dictionary, a Latin dictionary and a legal dictionary. I have a
dictionary of proverbs, too. This is how your vocabulary and comprehension will
grow and how you will come into contact with knowledge and ideas. It won’t be
handed to you on a plate. Work needs to be done here, and there are no shortcuts
unless you plagiarise. Not something I would recommend. You will only be
cheating yourself, and you will be found out!! You might hold prejudices about
yourself like I did. Believing I was less than others and not producing much
evidence that spoke to the contrary left me in a state of non-progression for a
very long time, and no one helped me out of that until I met Keith.
By introducing me to a whole load of writing and ideas I was interested
in, I was helped to start helping myself. Keith never did the work for me but
opened up a path I was brave enough to follow. I had someone to bounce ideas
off and discuss things with. Choose a patient, non-patronising or condescending
type of person for this. He might have rolled his eyes on the odd occasion but
was approachable. I also adhere to the belief that there is no such thing as a
dumb question. You are where you are, and others will think the same thing. On
my second degree, I received a wonderful compliment from a Muslim student after
a lecture one day that came out of the blue. She told me how grateful she was
that I often asked questions and appreciated how clear and straightforward I
was when I spoke. Having a pretty flat accent and a bit of courage meant she easily
understood me. Our foreign students do find it difficult to understand “Scousers”,
“Brummies”, and “Gordies” because the accent is just too alien to someone who
doesn’t have English as their first language.
There’s a writer in everyone if you want it badly enough, but you must
have something to say. You can’t write any essay without knowing something
about the subject or having thoughts about it. Before becoming a writer, you
become an ideas, knowledge and information gatherer. Keeping a notebook with a
pencil and rubber in hand is quite useful. Jot down anything that resonates
with you or a principle about something you fully understand. And this helped
once I realised that when a book is your property, you can underline as much as
you want to. You can scribble in the margins to highlight everything pertinent.
It’s not a crime or disrespectful.
Academics and great thinkers have been doing it for eternity. Never in a
million years would I have thought of doing this until I’d seen it done.
Believe it or not, that was a breakthrough for me. Let me also tell you about
something else I learnt after seeing it in my 30s. I was corresponding with a
Hegelian/Marxist Philosopher from across the pond and he sent me an image via email
of a fragment of Schelling’s work. The devil Schelling had scribbled on it and
doodled the picture of a squirrel. It’s not precious until you decide it is and
needs to be polished for ease of consumption. Your work is your work and should
be as individual as you are.
Being mechanical and formulaic will not bring anything new, so be
daring. No one has a monopoly on content unless you let them and cave in. There
might be certain conventions to follow, but the content is entirely down to the
author. You have complete control in this regard or ought to if the writing is
to be free, authentic and originality. As Shakespeare said, “Be true to thyne
own self”. We hold these published learned thinkers in such high regard at
times and come to know them through pages and pages of the polished written
word. These works will have gone through so many rounds of editing and proofreading
before printing that I imagine they lost count, and we must never forget that.
These thinkers were as fallible and human as you and I; they had to start
somewhere like everyone else. We are never shown the entirety of their
personalities, characters or mistakes but only the end product. We are never
given the story of how they got there. The finished work is never the whole
story!
I must confess that I have read Orwell’s essays and thoroughly enjoyed
them. After reading “Why I Write”, I took one significant pearl of wisdom from
it. If you care about your audience and wish to reach a wide one, write with as
few words as possible. Don’t go overboard with long and fancy words that are
unnecessary. It will dilute the message and make you look like a prick. If the
idea is the most important thing, keep it simple and choose the most familiar
words to describe and explain. I don’t write for academia but to impart
knowledge or insight to as many people as possible. Knowing your audience and
caring about them matters.
I would also recommend that you look at your beliefs and how you feel
and think about things. Ask why, who, what and when as often as you can. What is your gut telling you? How does
something sit with you? I remember being very attracted to what Einstein once
said: “Peace cannot be created through force but through understanding”. Having
respect for this genius meant it chimed, and I took it on board, applied it
quite broadly, and sought to understand it before anything else. Once you
comprehend you can set about good expression of it and not before. But it
certainly helps to know yourself well and not be ashamed of where you are or have
come from.
What I find very important is setting out your aims. This is usually
crystalised in a title and should guide you. I have no exact idea about what
the readership of this blog is like. I should imagine there are many history
buffs or students and I can’t strictly help you with an academic historical
essay other than look at your method. You will no doubt have to Harvard
reference content and fulfil certain conventions to pay the correct respects to
academics before you and show that you have assimilated the knowledge and
worked intelligently with such material. This is academia and it has its role,
but it can also serve to be like an intellectual straight jacket. You will come
up against some trends in thought that are reactionary and purely fantastical,
totally idealist and have very little robust theory to support them. Please
remember that we live in a class society, and competing theories get censored,
held back, drowned out, dragged through the mud, bastardised, deliberately
misrepresented and buried.
The victors often write history, and it is extremely one-sided. Be aware
of your sources and who they serve. Read far and wide to balance your views
before you commit to something and take it as gospel. Don’t be loyal to ideas
that do not serve your interests; you will be inauthentic and missing the
bigger picture. You will be punished for not reiterating the most acceptable of
ideas at times and will be marked down. This happened often to me in my first
degree because I didn’t quite agree with the status quo. Sadly, this happens
but it’s the world as it is and not as it should be. Completely accommodate
yourself to this and you will not produce anything all that original, I
guarantee that much. Whether you do this or not isn’t any of my business, but
your work will have little originality and you will be just going through the
motions to pass exams or make money. This satisfies some people, but it doesn’t
satisfy me. I urge people to also read straight from the horse’s mouth.
Don’t read a book about Orwell. For example, read his works. Don’t read
a book about Trotsky, read the works he wrote with his hand and that flowed
from his thought. The same applies to anyone:
William Morris, Lenin, Marx, Freud, Nietzche, Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky,
Hegel, Aristotle or whoever. If you are struggling to understand them, and at
times, you most certainly will go to a trusted, robust source to help walk you
through it. A kind source that isn’t patronising or condescending and has the
interest of empowering you rather than browbeating you. Then, you will start to
grasp stuff and move forwards instead of being uncertain in your thinking. I’m
sure this doesn’t happen to everyone, but it does happen nonetheless.
To summarise this contribution, I would say that writing is an art form
and, essentially, like all the arts, is about expression. Skill and mastery of
the conventions of this art form are a must but the content is down to you. You
must have something to say and express before starting, even with limited
skill. Like a painter, there must be something to paint that is yearning to
find expression. Before starting, the artist sketches privately in a book and
learns through exercise. Any mistakes made are hidden in this little private book.
There must be mastery of mixing colours, knowing paints, an understanding of
brushes, palette knives, sponges, and their mark making abilities and how to
vary these at will to gain the desired effect. There must be an appreciation
for composition, attention to how it looks on the page or canvas and how to
manipulate and change this to make the expression of the content the best
version of what it is trying to say or reveal. You may be laughed at and sneered
at for your efforts, but an individual will never learn to swim if they don’t
jump into the water.
Although I’m not a historian, I have certainly had to look at my own
here, so perhaps I am one after all, and I say this with a wink! Whatever I
have written has been done with the best of intention and I hope it urges
anyone to improve and give yourself a try. This work will undoubtedly have some
mistakes, but do you know what? I don’t care at this stage as it’s not an
academic piece of writing ready to be published and published in print. It is
simply to provoke thought from inertia into movement with momentum. I wish you
well on this journey, and may your destination be a piece of work that you are
proud of and that resonates with the many, not the few.
