March's Writers' Showcase - Glen Lee

 Glen Lee

So far in this series, I’ve showcased the writers Ruth Loten, Jane Langan, BeckCollett, Ron Hardwick, L.N.Hunter,   Katherine Blessan, Jill Saudek, Colin Johnson, Sue Davnall, Alain Li Wan Po, Lily Lawson and Philip Badger. You can find all these showcases by scrolling back through the material on this blog.

Our third showcase of 2024 turns the spotlight onto writer Glen Lee.  Glen is a writer of fiction who studied for an MA in Creative Writing with the Open University, graduating in 2020, and subsequently became a valued member of our alumni writing group, The 20-20 Club. As you will find from the material below, Glen is an experienced writer who takes her work seriously. I can attest from personal experience that she is also a generous giver of excellent, useful feedback to other writers.

Glen Lee

Biography

Born and bred in Leicestershire, Glen has been writing for over 20 years: poetry, short stories, articles (often local history).

She’s had short stories and poems published in magazines and the small press, and received prizes in competitions.

She runs two writing groups and has an MA in Creative Writing. Loves to read, write, and travel.

[Find out more about Glen in the questionnaire section below]

 ******

Borobudur, Java [photo provided by Glen Lee

  ******

Below, you can read a story by Glen about prejudice, intolerance and compassion.

Let Them Perish 

Her hand bled, gashed on the hovel’s doorframe when I pulled her away. She shouldn’t have resisted arrest. 

My name is Edward. I was the village constable for Whetstone, and when the Justices handed me a warrant, I carried it out. Felons, poachers, drunks or dissenters, it made no difference. Arresting Quakers was part of my work.

Papists and dissenters threatened the new ways Our Lord Protector had brought after years of war. All I wanted were quiet times in which to bring up my children and, finally, God’s peace had been restored. My work was to keep that peace.

I dragged Elizabeth to the cart. She’d refused to pay her tithe to the Church. She’d be fined five shillings for a first offence and held in Leicester gaol until her possessions were sold to pay the fine.

Grasping her bloody wrist, I pushed her onto the cart and tied her hand to the rail. I noticed how cold was her flesh, the brown spots that covered her arms and the thinness of her claw-like fingers. She wouldn’t be long for this world. Let her answer to her Maker, I thought, turning back to her hovel which stank worse than my cow barn. I gathered her bedding and clothing into a bundle. She had a ladle that might be worth a few pennies but there was little else of value. I doubted her possessions would fetch a shilling at market and took everything. If her Quaker friends didn’t pay the extra to cover her fine, she’d most likely die in prison. It wasn’t my problem 

When I gave her into the care of a sullen gaoler, Elizabeth said, ‘Thank you, Edward.’

The following day, Sunday, the Priest handed me a warrant as I was leaving church.

‘I know it’s the sabbath,’ he said, ‘but God’s work never ceases.’

An illegal gathering of Quakers had been reported and I hastened to the house named by the informer. Through a window, I saw many of my neighbours. Everyone was sitting in silence. It was unnerving, but with God as my witness, I strode inside and grabbed the arm of Nicholas Pawley. We’d played together as children and I couldn’t understand how a boy who’d loved stealing apples from the Kenney’s trees, could have fallen so low.

Nicholas turned his face to me and smiled. ‘Greetings, Edward,’ he said, his voice calm.

Before I could arrest him, a company of soldiers rushed in, brutally scattering those people who stood or sat in their way. A man was dragged from their midst. One soldier screamed at him, calling him a preacher and blasphemer.

I knew of this man. George Fox, the man responsible for this Quaker contamination. He didn’t look dangerous, more like a shepherd in his sombre garb than an enemy of the realm. How could such a meek-looking person have the power to spread the poison that had rolled through my village like a disease?

I lost Nicholas in the commotion but arrested many other Quakers, as did the soldiers. My neighbours, bruised, dirty and dishevelled by their rough handling, were taken before the Leicester Justices the following day. Their protests about ill-treatment were ignored when they refused to take the Oath of Loyalty and they were straight-away gaoled. It was what they deserved. I’d carried out the Lord’s work and my knuckles were sore.

In my dreams that night, Nicholas and I climbed trees. I threw apples at feeble Elizabeth and laughed when Nicholas tried to stop me.

‘We’ve thrown acorns at pigs,’ I said. ‘What’s the difference between that and throwing apples at Quakers?’ 

The following week, on the evidence of the informer, John Smith, I arrested Nicholas for attending an open-air meeting. Justice Cole gaoled him until a fine of ten pounds was paid. The warrant called for the seizing of goods, to be sold to pay the fine. 

The morning after the trial, I heard a loud banging. My wife was frightened to find Smith on our doorstep, a cudgel in his hand. Smith was a dangerous man and threatened me saying, if I didn’t complete the warrant immediately, I’d be fined and gaoled.

I hurried to Nicholas’ house to take his only cow, while Smith made sure all the Pawley corn was threshed before being taken too. Emma Pawley stood and watched, her children in a quiet huddle round her skirts.

I hesitated, but in justice had to say, as Smith thrust a loaf into my hands to put on the cart, ‘If we take everything, the children will starve.’

‘I don’t care,’ he said with a harsh laugh. ‘The fault is their father’s. The sooner this Quaker scourge is wiped put, the better.’

Walking into Leicester with Nicholas’ cow, I considered the madness in which I was involved. I was an honest man, went to church and hated dissenters, but Smith worried me. I’d overheard him telling the Priest, ‘Pawley were preaching when I first saw ‘im.’

Smith received a third of every fine. This wasn’t the first false accusation I’d heard, and it meant Nichola’s fine had been doubled. The priests and the Justices surely knew what was happening. Maybe it was expedient to ignore false witness?

The cow sold for twenty shillings, which the Priest would distribute. I asked him what would become of the poor man’s wife and children.

‘Let them perish together,’ the Priest said. 

I worried that my church had abandoned the second commandment.

At home, I found two jugs of milk in the scullery and with my wife’s blessing, took one to the Pawley’s home. Emma opened the door, invited me to enter. There was bread on her table and apples. I put my jug with them. Her parents were there, her children and some of our neighbours, sitting in silence. Everyone smiled at me.

In a home where I expected misery, there was peace. Where I thought to find starvation, there was the bounty of neighbours. Where I would have expected hatred towards me, I found only friends, and sympathy.

My name is Edward. I am a farmer. I am a Quaker.

  ******

 

Borobudur, Java [photo provided by Glen Lee

  ******

And finally we come to The Big

 Interview, in which Glen kindly answers 

writing-related questions and lets us 

into some of her writing secrets...

 

How old were you when you first knew you wanted to be a writer, and what set you off down that journey?

Fifteen maybe? O Level English. We were given the task of inventing an isolated island and had to imagine the people and the flora, fauna, customs etc.

 

Tell us about the books and writers that have shaped your life and your writing career.

I always think of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World as my first inspiration. That led easily into Ray Bradbury, particularly Fahrenheit 451.

Other worlds, other peoples, other customs: John Wyndham (The Chrysalids) and John Christopher (Death of Grass) led from Ray Bradbury to a love of utopia/dystopia. My dissertation for my BA was heavily grounded on such texts as Marge Piercy (Body of Glass), Thomas More (Utopia), Plato (Republic), Yevgeny Zamytin (We) and George Orwell (1984) - and science fiction, such as Philip K Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), Ursula Le Guin (The Dispossessed) and David Brin (The Postman).

For my MA, I relied on my travels (age 15 to now) and the journals I kept. The work of authors in that field underpinned my more meagre efforts: Bill Bryson, of course, and the incredible Dervla Murphey, introduced to me by the Open University by a reading from ‘Eight Feet in the Andes’.

The nonsensical has always attracted me too. Terry Pratchett is top of the list.

 

Have your children, other family members, friends or teachers inspired any of your writing?

My initial answer was ‘No. I’ve had no mentors’. But then I thought of Bead Roberts. I have attended her workshops for writers in Leicestershire for many years and learned to trust her praise and her critiques. And now we both attend Phoenix Writers in            Leicester, and I am still getting the benefit of her praise and her critiques, only this time, for free.

 

Does the place you live now, or have lived in the past, have any impact on your writing?

I’ve lived in Leicester. I’ve lived in Johannesburg. They are polar opposites. I can’t say my writing changed with my change in venue, except, hopefully, it’s improved. Every     day is a new day. New challenges, new adventures, new people. I hoover them all up, absorb them, use them.

Is there a particular place in which I am inspired? I have travelled a lot. I was ten in 1956 when David Attenborough explored the island of Java in his quest for the largest lizard in the world. The black and white TV documentary of his adventures transported me from Leicester to ... elsewhere. He filmed ‘Not only animals but also the people and their everyday life’. I wanted to follow in his footsteps. How could I ignore the call? I trusted him. He is a Leicester lad.

He described the 8th century Buddhist temple of Borobudur, an unpronounceable enigma to me for over half a century until John and I visited Java in 2013. We made our way up the nine platforms to the top, the tenth level, and walked three times round the huge, ornate dome; once for peace, twice for success, three times for happiness. It was hot, 90 degrees, but we did it. I became badly dehydrated. Less ‘happy,’ more ... ‘wobbly.’

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld; bright colours, inexplicable smells and bizarre characters. Not everywhere is like its capital, Ankh-Morpork, but I’ve found glimpses of it during my wanderings across the globe.

           

We’ve travelled the world with an organisation called Friendship Force (FF), experiencing other cultures from the inside looking out. You can’t learn a culture’s complexities in a week, read the codes of behaviour or its nuances, but you can begin to see beyond the differences that divide people. We’ve visited people all over the globe, staying in their homes, eating with them, laughing with them  and others have come to stay with us.

           

Travel certainly has had a major impact on my writing. My MA was a personal essay about my family, politics, my love of flying and my travelling.

           

I can write at home, or in the passenger seat of the car, or huddled in the window seat of a plane. In all these places I can find the one place I need. Even with radios blaring          or children crying, I can find the solitude to let an idea creep in and once it does, it        hits me over the head and shouts, ‘Me! Write about me!’ So I do.

 

How would you describe your own writing?

I hope my style is different when I’m writing a murder or a          violent scene to that which I use when I’m writing tongue in cheek.

 

Are there certain themes that draw you to them when you are writing?

I will tackle anything. I won a prize for a short story about female genital mutilation. I won another for a story about a dog. And another based on a true story about a Victorian ruffian who took a knife to his young son’s throat. What does that say about me?

Tell us about how you approach your writing. Are you a planner or a pantser?

Definitely a pantser. I like the surprise at the end. Sometimes my writing starts with an opening paragraph and the ending paragraph. Then I work from one to the other, diverting and digressing along the way.

 

Do you have any advice for someone who might be thinking about starting to write creatively?

Never say ‘I don’t have the time.’ Just write. Even for only five minutes. It’s amazing how those short snatches of time can mount up. To over-use a cliché, I would advise ‘Don’t get it right, get it written.’

But whatever else, enjoy writing. If it makes you laugh or cry, you must be doing            something right.

 

Are you, or have you been in the past, a member of any writing groups, online or face-to-face?

Writing is a solitary past-time. How can you, without the help of others, judge if you are developing bad habits, like over-using clichés or alliteration? I would always advise people to join a group. I have tried several over the years, including online, and have tried to give as much as I take from them. Most of them have been critique groups. Some have been gentler than others though I have found them all to be helpful. I have never run across anyone who has been rude or has criticised the person rather than critiquing the work.

I run two writing groups. I didn’t set out to do so, but they fell into my lap when I wasn’t looking. There is so much talent out there, but the main problem is lack of confidence. That is hard to overcome. But as a group we work on it. I don’t teach; I’m not a teacher. But I do listen and encourage.

Each of the three groups with which I am involved is different to the others. It’s a matter of evolution, I think.

 

You have an MA in Creative Writing. Have you studied creative writing on other formal courses?

I have tried other courses: Open College of the Arts, Open University, Oxford University Summer School, a week on retreat in France. I enjoyed them all, but I would still recommend the humble, local, writing group, certainly to new writers. The support such groups give to each other is worth more than gold.

Have I learnt anything about myself whilst ‘teaching’ creative writing? I’ve been leading one group for seven years. I never thought I would have the stamina to continue,      week in/week out, but it’s been easy. We laugh a lot and I know we learn a lot. This group, by the way, was set up in the village in which Sue Townsend grew up, so we have a high standard to live up to.

 

What do you think about getting feedback on your work from other writers and/or non-writers?

I have only had feedback from writing group members. The members of the Saturday group are mostly novelists and it is the toughest of the groups when it comes to giving and receiving feedback. I write down and take away the observations made    by others. Later, I think about them and alter my manuscript as suggested or I decide not to do so. This is the way we all work.

 

If you have experience of self-publishing, what have been its challenges and rewards? 

I have no experience of self-publishing, although some of the members of the three           groups have. Two friends have published their memoirs and a third has just published her second book of poems. They all investigated the world of publishing, then ended up self-publishing at a local company. It’s an excellent company but an expensive business. I do know one person who has found an agent – a rare creature!

 

They say that successful writers need to be selfish. How far do you agree with this? 

I write every day but not always creative writing as such. Currently, I am ghost-writing the memoirs of a friend whose eyesight has deteriorated to the extent that using a computer has become difficult. I have known her well for many years. It’s not a chore. I an editing three books written by a woman who died and whose husband wants to publish the books. They are slim books, about dragons. Fortunately I like dragons.

Are successful writers selfish? I suppose if I was the old woman who lived

in a shoe and had too many children, I would either write and neglect them or vice-versa. As it is, being retired, I have a husband who spends hours in his shed, rebuilding motorbikes, so all I can neglect is the dusting. Which I do.

 

Beyond your family and your writing, what other things do you do?

I read. We travel. We have always danced, since he came up to me at Leicester’s Palais de Danse in 1966 and said ‘Do you want to dance?’ and I thought, I may as well. We love American Two-Step but there’s not much opportunity for that type of dancing but still we dance once a week. It’s mainly ‘extreme line dancing.’ To pop music mainly, fast and furious as often as not. It’s a great work out. That is, after two hours of this we all crawl away from the dance floor begging our teacher for mercy.

I am retired but I do work. Apart from exam invigilating, last June I agreed to help out at a nearby parish council which was having staff problems. No problem, I’d been Clerk to my own village council for over twenty-seven years. In this recent job, the problems were not resolved, and it all ended in a huge explosion a couple of weeks ago and when the dust settled, I was the only one left standing. Chaos still reigns. The situation is eating into my writing time and may not be resolved for        another six months. But I’ll cope. A ‘case of having to,’ as my Mam would say.

 

Would you describe yourself as a ‘cultured’ person?

Culture? Define culture. No, I don’t go to the theatre or to concerts or to the cinema. And I find five minutes in any art gallery to be enough. I watch TV, usually cosy crime,            like Death in Paradise and the slightly grittier, Vera. Together, John and I watch documentaries. And I watch a lot of news, on more than one channel to try and find a way through all that propaganda.

The contemporary art world leaves me untouched. I’d sooner ask a friend for a book recommendation than to reach for the latest literary novel that may have been praised to high heaven in a newspaper column or on radio. Sport is part of our culture. I don’t like that either. I’m not much into music either, though I’d listen to Leonard Cohen on CD all day - except that my family have banned it! Too depressing they say.

My favourite author? Perhaps John Wyndham with his novel, Chrysalids. It is the one book I could read on a yearly basis. In a dystopian world, there is a shining ray of            hope and optimism for a better future.

What is the worst book I’ve ever read? I’ve read a great deal of science-fiction over the years, including those written by Iain M Banks. I’ve enjoyed every one of his books, including those under the name of Ian Banks, but I was very disappointed when I tried to read the sci-fi novel, Matter. I had to give it up. Too many characters, too many time-lines, too many worlds and too many alien species. And that was only chapter 1.

 

Are you interested in history and if so does it impact on your writing?

Writers need all those tools in their toolbox. How can you write without context? Even that story in the evening news can be considered as ‘history’ by this time next year. How can you write in a vacuum? History is happening all around us, all the time. My parents were the children of Victorians. What tales they had to tell. What a remarkable resource for a writer.

A couple of years ago, I dug around the internet and census records etc. for

my husband’s family tree. The family came from Northumberland. They were reivers, thugs and robbers. Several were hung, drawn and quartered for treason. That was fun research to do! Did you know that … no, it’s too horrible to describe what came after the drawing and before the quartering!

I used to write a monthly 100-word article on local people and events for the community newspaper. I only stopped at No.99 when the newspaper folded. I was forever rummaging in the Records Office and interviewing local people, but my favourite source was the Victorian newspapers which were online at the British Newspaper Archives. Which is where I found the story about the ruffian who tried to cut his son’s throat in the mid-1800s. The Victorian newspapers were such a rich source. The reporting was amazing, including a great deal of dialogue. I do like quoting people who are over 170 years dead.

 

How did the Covid pandemic affect you as a writer?

John and I were locked down first in Las Vegas when President Trump closed the borders. We escaped on the only plane out, as we had tickets to New Orleans, which locked down as our plane’s wheels touched down. On St Patrick’s Day on Bourbon Street, we found two drunken 30-something ladies, hanging onto each other, looking for a party in the city’s deserted streets. Of course, I wrote about it.

The silence of lockdown was a blessing to writers and poets .You could actually hear what was left of the dawn chorus. And the sky was free of contrails.

Of course, we were doing our EMA [The OU MA course’s End-Of-Module-Assignment] during much of lockdown, with fewer interruptions than we would normally have had. I had to alter mine because the research I wanted to do and the people I wanted to talk to, were not available. Six months’ worth of research was wasted.

 

There is a lot of talk at the moment about political correctness, about the Woke movement, about cultural appropriation, about diversity, about ‘cancel culture’. What are your thoughts on this, with regard to writing?

Should I feel free to write whatever I want about anything? Of course, I should.

Do I think that I should be able to write as a person from another culture other than my own? Of course I do. Otherwise, all I would be able to write about would be working-class women. I would tire of that and cease to be a writer.

‘Updating’ children’s classics? What good does it do to sanitise old stories?

Why not write something new, something fresh for today’s children and leave my heritage alone.

If ‘sensitivity readers’ were used, surely every book ever written, including the Bible, would have trigger warnings. I despaired when I heard there was a trigger warning on Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea because the extreme fishing and the cruelty contained might upset sensitive readers.

End game in all of this? Comedy is no longer funny, and literature will become anodyne.

  

Where would you place your own stories/poems, on a continuum with PURE FANTASY at one end and COMPLETE REALISM at the other?

Fantasy of the sword-and-sorcery type is the only genre I don’t read and write. Magicians on the stage or the TV leave me cold. I’ve been known to leave the room or the venue out of sheer boredom.      

However, all creative writing is surely fantasy? Or lies? Well, it’s all made up! So I have to separate sword and sorcery into the separate genre of Fantasy, with a capital ‘F’. But I do like dragons – they have the poetry that grumpy old men with beards and spells don’t seem to have for me.           

Fantasy apart, I have everything from dragons, through sci-fi, through poetry, to reality on my shelves. At the moment, I am reading about a murder in Quebec in winter – Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead.

 

Are you worried about the rise of AI in the artistic world, particularly in creative writing?

Fear AI? Of course I do when so much time, effort and money is being

spent on it and how it has the capacity to skew everything. I say this because of my one encounter with it.

Not so long ago, I entered a story into a competition, the King Lear Prizes. My story did not win, and I thought no more of it. Till I received feedback, which the organisers were upfront in telling me was written by AI.

AI judged my story on the first 300 words.

There was a section titled, It reminds us of … similar writers:

 

·       Graham Greene: Known for his use of complex themes and characters

·       Muriel Spark: Her writing was known for its wit, dark humour and strong characterisation

·       E M Forster: Forster’s writing was noted for its insight into human relationships and social dynamics

·       Joseph Conrad: Conrad’s works often explored the psychological and moral implications of imperialism and colonialism

·       Virginia Woolf: Woolf’s writing was known for its eloquence and its exploration of the inner lives of her characters

·       D H Lawrence: Lawrence’s works often explored themes of sexuality, gender and morality.

 

There you go - and I just thought I was writing about an old folks’ home and a grumpy old lady in a wheelchair who went up in a lift to her room and helped solve a robbery!

The feedback ended with A topic for a new short story prompt: my mysterious journey to the rooftop. (Yeah! Right!)

After preening myself for a couple of seconds when I read the above, I realised how ludicrous it would be to compare myself to major writers in the canon of English Literature.

******

Thank you very much, Glen, for such a detailed and insightful showcase. 

******

In April, I will be showcasing 

another of the fabulous 20-20 Club writers: 

D.H.L.Hewa

Not to be missed!