A Life in Words

Antagonising Protagonists

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Dean Samways's avatarIndie Blog

In last week’s Tuesday Takeover, Sam King started a dialogue about creating believable characters in literature. This week, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side author Chantelle Atkins picks up where Sam left off, by discussing the idea of heroes and villains.

In Chantelle’s opinion, the way to create believable, fully-realised characters is to pepper them with imperfections, paint them grey and put words in their mouths that are plain language.

Read Chantelle’s character creation guidance and join the conversation about writing a wholesome cast of protagonists and antagonists by clicking the links at the end of this article.

Enjoy and leave your thoughts in the comments box below.

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Antagonising Protagonists

The cast of Trainspotting

It’s fair to say most good books have a protagonist; a main character the author hopes the reader will become involved with. However, not all stories have an antagonist, and you certainly don’t need to…

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100 Happy Days

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Day 100! I’m not sure how many of you are aware of this social media challenge, and I’ve no idea how successful it’s been, but I decided to take it up for two reasons. One, I liked the thought of a challenge apparently 71% of people failed to complete due to lack of time, or possibly lack of things to be happy about? Two, I liked the whole positive vibe of it.  It may have helped that I took the challenge up when I was in a particularly happy place personally, (pregnant with my fourth child and full of the joys, longing to share, that sort of thing) but it also got me thinking.  About a year before I had not been so happy.  In fact I think its fair to say, and I’m sure my facebook statuses of the time would concur, that I had got myself trapped in a cycle of moaning.  I even ended up annoying myself with my own negativity.

So what changed?  Life events, or just my attitude?  I think, in reflection a bit of both.  Things improved financially for us, so that is always one less thing to stress about, and obviously the pregnancy was a huge factor in the smile on my face.  But before this challenge came up, I was able to wake myself up a bit, and remind myself of how damn lucky I am.  The thing about the challenge is it makes you look for things to be happy about.  What a positive approach to have!  So on greyer days, I would post about the baby wild rabbits I had spotted in the hedgerows while out walking, or the spread of dead nettles in my garden which were doing a great job encouraging the bees.  On days when I felt like moaning I was forced to search for what had made me smile, and suddenly the stuff that annoyed me seemed less and less important.

So looking back at a 100 days of happiness, I can see a clear pattern emerge.  Without a doubt I am an extremely fortunate person with a hell of a lot to feel happy about.  My posts are either about my kids, my pets, my garden, my writing, music, or the environment around me. It actually got hard to choose which thing to post about each day.  A lot were simple things, simple pleasures, like my duck enjoying a freshly filled bath, or my dog resting his head on my baby bump, or one of my kids leaving me little notes outside my bedroom door, or my son smiling broadly as he harvested his first pea pod.  Little things.  Free things.  Happy things.  

So on day 100, I find myself thinking about the whole thing.  I just feel lucky.  I think i knew I was before, but now I feel it even more and it is making me smile a lot.  I feel like I am surrounded by good things; from the seven year old who insists on making his own breakfast every school morning now that the baby is here, to the cool joys of a shady lane filled with birdsong to walk the dogs down .  The ponies in the field behind, and the sunsets that set the landscape ablaze, the wall of green that surrounds my garden and fills the views from my windows, to the sound of the river shushing by us in the middle of the night.  The satisfaction of my fingers flying over the keys while i thump out a brand new story, the absolute joy of reading a good review, the making of new friends, the holding on to old ones, the genuine sweet and unprompted kindness of so many people i know.  Happy, healthy, funny, questioning children with lots of crazy hair.  Two dogs racing across the common, their back feet overtaking their front, their ears flat against their skulls, eyes filled with pure joy when they return.  Music, all the time, everywhere, in the car, in the kitchen, in the lounge, outside in the garden.  Singing and dancing and being silly and getting lost in the memories that certain songs kick off.  Emotions heightened by chords, tones and arrangements, feelings swollen by lyrics that get it just right.  Excitement for the future…a baby boy growing and changing before our eyes…good times ahead.

Even today I would have struggled to decide what happy thing to post about, hence me deciding to write a blog entry instead.  There was the five hour block of sleep the baby allowed me last night, and also the gorgeous big smile he gave me at silly o’clock this morning.  There was the happiness in all the kids faces when they discovered the shop on the way to school sells loom bands! In a basket, right near the till!  There was the gift of an awesome Stone Roses t-shirt for the baby from a lovely, kind hearted friend, and another gift of the hungry caterpillar book and toy from my friends at book club.  Such kindness.  Then there was watching highlights from Glastonbury while I fed the baby, and just grinning at all those people in the crowds, all those people so so happy because of music and togetherness, and it’s so genuine and real and it’s the beautiful potential in all of us to be nice and get along and find joy and hold it tight, and having days like that, times like that.  Because that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day.  Having the time of your life.  As much as you can.  Whenever you can.  For whatever reasons you find.  

So i end my 100 happy days as happy as I started.  I’ve got a lot.  I hold it all dear and I won’t let it go.  You never know when things might change, you never know when luck might take a different turn, so you have to keep smiling while you can.  We haven’t got a lot in terms of money, or material things, but interestingly it was never those kind of things that made me happy anyway.  It was all the free things, all the things that were already there, and I just needed to remember that, and I just need to never forget it again!

 

Britpop: Music, Writing and Me

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Dean Samways's avatarIndie Blog

Autharium’s Tuesday Takeover

You can be inspired to write by lots of things; a news article, a family event, the view from your deckchair, a conversation with a friend, a relationship. The list of motivators endless. One of the biggest influences for published Autharium writer Chantelle Atkins is music. The Golden Age of Britpop; the media-fuelled fisticuffs, the gangly swagger of Pulp’s lofty frontman, and the mildly angst-riddled soundtrack to Thatcher Britain. Music, specifically that period of 90s UK indie rock, is ever-present in Chantelle’s work. Her two-part book series, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, even borrows its name from a Smiths track.

It seems only appropriate then for Chantelle, in her first Tuesday Takeover, to talk about her love of music and shed light on exactly how it shaped the writing of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side. However, there’s much more to the post than…

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20 Years Since Britpop?

~ ChanAtkins ~ 1 Comment

So this is what they are saying; it’s been twenty whole years since the rise of Britpop.  I’m not quite sure I believe them.  Twenty years since the alternative became the mainstream and had its turn in the spotlight? But I object!  It only feels like five minutes since I stepped out of that teenage bedroom, walls plastered in massive posters, Super Furry Animals and Definitely Maybe and every centre fold from Select and NME.  Five years is a long time, ten years is an endless forever, fifteen, eighteen…but twenty?  Twenty??

So you know what this means, it means we got old.  We never thought we would, we never believed that it would, or could happen. But it did, it really did. And now the time that was ours, the years that shaped and inspired us and set us on fire, they are not just moments behind us, they are not just funny old photographs that we actually took into Boots to be developed and pinned to our actual walls, not our Facebook walls…they are twenty years behind us!  Twenty years gone and dusted and done.  Faded.  Sometimes.  Until you put the CD’s on of course.  Then it all comes back to life surely?  Rock and Roll Star on the school run….I Am The Resurrection when you’re cooking the dinner…

What do I remember about Britpop?  That time, that place…What did it mean to me then?  What does it mean to me now?

I had an A4 hardback notebook which I used as a diary.  The front and back covers were adorned with pictures cut from Select magazine.  Kula Shaker and Space, Oasis and Blur, Pulp and Supergrass, Elastic, Sleeper, The Charlatans, Ash and Suede…The inside covers were a scribbled mess of quotes from the songs.  Live Forever I wrote in huge letters around the edge of the pages, you and I are gonna’ live forever….We believed it too. When they said it we believed it.  Mishapes by Pulp.  Was an anthem for me and an equally oddball friend.  The lyrics told us that it was okay to be different, to come out of the darkness and shine, that this was OUR time, that we were getting revenge…We loved it.  Of course we did.  The uncool kids became cool.  The underground bands were now on Top Of The Pops thrashing guitars with their hair in their eyes.  We didn’t have to pretend and go out and try to look like them, because we already did, because we always had.  They had always spoke for us and about us, but the time for shuffling your feet on the dance floor with your head hanging low was ending.  Fashion had swung in our favour.  Parka coats and John Lennon glasses.  Flared jeans and tracksuit jackets.  Band t-shirts.

So Britpop, what was it?

It was British.  It was a time.  It was music and attitude and naughtiness.  It was a backlash against the mainstream and the banal.  It was original songs written by original artists who played their own instruments.  It was going back to basics.  It was Rock and Roll.  It was guitars and drums and Indie kids.  It was ours.

I remember…the excitement…that music we liked was in the charts, was on TV, winning! It felt like victory and affirmation.  And as they coined the phrase and the ball rolled on, there was more and more and more of it…and it kept on coming and it kept on lifting us up, showing them what real music was; it was heart and soul and guts and truth and obsession.  Love letters with lyrics circled….we see things they’ll never see….today is gonna’ be the day….and on it went. What was it to me?

It was getting ready for a night out in my teenage bedroom, drinking Hooch and Two Dogs, singing along to Supersonic, pulling on jeans, and it was the morning after, lying in bed with the music still going, writing the lyrics around the edge of the pages of my diary…because it was okay to say; I need to be myself, I can’t be no one else! It was an entire pub full of people on New Years Eve singing and swaying and hugging to the strains of Champagne Supernova, it was love in everyone’s eyes…It was going to see Pulp with my best friend, it was geek chic and being accepted, it was ribs crushed against the barrier while the crowd surged and pushed behind you, it was being at the front, and watching Jarvis strut his freaky stuff, thin as a whip, lighting a fag and handing it to a fan and telling us all to be careful because he didn’t want anyone to be hurt, and it was us afterwards, and in our bedrooms, singing along to Mishapes, no we don’t look the same as you…and we don’t do the things you do…but we live ’round here too, oh really?  It was Disco 2000 because that year would surely never come, and if it did, then we would have grown up…and it was Common People like us, like us…

It was paying a dodgy bloke a tenner to get into Glastonbury, lugging crates of beer and manky tents, it was a cramped hot car ride and marmite sandwiches, absinthe around the fire, passing out…it was in the middle of Super Furry Animals when they sang The Man Don’t Give A Fuck and we all screamed along and someone drove a truck into the middle of the crowd and everyone was climbing on it…no he don’t give a fuck about anybody else…it was Gomez and the most beautiful sunset I’ve seen in my life…it was Travis, singing Why Does It Always Rain On Me…in the rain…It was me stood on my own at the back watching Blur…

It was Blur versus Oasis but we loved them both so we couldn’t possibly lose…It was in the newspapers and on the TV, and on TFI Friday and The Big Breakfast.  It was Shine compilations and making mix-tapes….The Longpigs and St.Etienne and Echobelly and The Stereophonics….taping stuff and swapping them about, listen to this, you have to listen to this.  Summer BBQ’s and turning the tape over constantly…

It was Uni life and the discovery of a dark club, off the beaten track, where everyone looked a happy mess and held their pints aloft with every good song that was played…Spiral staircase up to the heroic DJ, every request received and praised, puke in the toilets then back out to dance again….shuffling back and forth, swigging cheap beer and a massive sense of belonging, here, among your own, vest tops and jeans, hair piled high, eye liner thick.

I guess it faded out towards the end…and we grew up.  We did grow up.  We got jobs and flats and had babies and not much time.  We moved on, without realising it at the time, without admitting that it happens to us all, that our time back then had been short and sweet and ours alone.  Music shifts on, turning its attention to the next generation, to what they want and need.  And that’s not for us, not really, even if we nod to it and approve of it, it’s not ours and we know it.  Our time was then, and our time has gone.  So now we are like our parents were, rolling our eyes at how far things have drifted, how alien things seem, with downloads and itunes and the death of Top of The Pops and how old fashioned our physical CD’s and cassettes seem now…We sometimes feel disjointed and confused, that this happened, that time passed and we actually aged…I mean Christ!  Really?  How did that happen without us noticing?  How did we let it?  It feels like it’s our fault…We let go and gave it up.

And now they point out that it’s twenty years…everyone is like, oh my god really? Twenty years, two decades, that makes me feel so old… so it’s time to talk and think about it all again…to dust off the memories and the CDs just for a little while maybe, just to have a smile and a laugh, and remember. And I know what I will remember; music and songs that felt like they had been written just for me, aimed and directed just at me, that they meant something just to me and would follow me through my life, year after year after year, and that every time I play them, every time a certain drum intro kicks in, every time a certain guitar solo starts up, I get that tingle all over again, right down the spine and right back up again.  I shake out my body and I can’t help but smile, and kids or no kids, I am singing right along, as loud as I like and there is that one word that stands out to me, like it did back then, maybe because of the guy who snarled it best, maybe for other reasons, for what it stood for, what it meant to every geeky Indie girl or boy who found victory, just for a short while, their obsession validated, their passions approved by the mainstream…shiiiiiiiiiine….because that’s what Britpop was and that’s what Britpop did, it shined, and we shined with it.