Post by radged on Apr 3, 2013 19:56:10 GMT
the val boyle interview
questions by nick watson
val was a young fresh-faced english teacher in 84, new to BP, given just enough time to introduce a room full of muppets to one of the most influential books of the C20th. here are some of her memories of teaching at BP as well as thoughts on her more recent literary work.
thanks to VB for agreeing to be interviewed - especially knowing she was to be the first.
val, left, with friend martina
Orwell
1. You had to teach us orwell but what is your attitude towards his work?
Well I love his lucid prose and there’s so much of interest in his journalism and essays, but I guess you mean I984: it was amazingly prescient, and Thatcher must have had it by her bedside. The Falklands War got her re-elected and so much else has come to pass: we were already Airstrip One – and culturally we’ve come under American influence to a huge degree, but other things such as surveillance, control of education, spin, doublethink, linguistic impoverishment, divisive social reforms, cheap opiates, the lottery…
2. Did it occur to you there was some irony in teaching 1984 in an authoritarian school environment, especially one that smelled of boiled cabbage in some parts?
I don’t know whether you were in the group that made a film in school, drawing those exact parallels? It was brilliant, and I so wish I still had a copy…
New novel
3. can you give us a summary of the plot of your new novel?
Not really, but the mystery of a child who goes missing in 1919 is solved in the present day. In each period there’s a soldier with PTSD. There’s a dash of Downton & a whiff of Wuthering Heights. Rival sisters, lost love, war, food production , community action, heritage… I’m not very good at summarizing!
4. What was your motivation for writing it?
After my mum died, I visited the village in Lancashire where she’d grown up before escaping to Manchester, and it stirred all sorts of thoughts up about family and places. When I saw the farm where she was born and started wondering about her parents, particularly my granddad, who survived the trenches and lived until I was 12. I’d also recently been counseling a Gulf War veteran whilst I was teaching Othello. All sorts of things that have distilled over the years started to coalesce into a story. I went to interview Edwin Booth to talk about locally-sourced food, stumbled across the Preston suffragette Edith Rigby, and I was off!
5. How long did it take to write?
I wrote the first 30,000 words in 6 weeks, while my brother was having daily radiotherapy, & it took my mind off what he was going through. The first chapter and synopsis were Highly Commended in a big competition, and as a result of that, an agent wrote and asked me to send the whole novel when I’d finished it. That was a great incentive, so I wrote the rest during last summer, thanks to the crap weather!
6. Did you have any writers block crises or was it easier than that to write?
None at all, it was amazing how it just came out, though I’m not sure I ‘ve got another one in me! The only stumbling block was that when the agent read the completed draft, she asked me to integrate the two timelines and I didn’t want to, so I stubbornly sat on it for a few months, but finally did it in January, and dammit, she was right!
7. Which other writers influenced your writing – it’s titled after an orwell quote.
Hmm, understandable that you should think that, but it isn’t Orwell originally. (What kind of rubbish English teacher did you have?). ‘Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree’ is from a poem by Longfellow called The Village Blacksmith. Other writers, I suppose Thomas Hardy, particularly Far From the Madding Crowd. Tim Smit for his book about The Lost Gardens of Heligan. Othello for the insights into a professional soldier’s mind. Rebecca Hosking’s documentary ‘A Farm for the Future’ was hugely influential.
8. What advice would you give to aspiring novel writers?
JFDI! There’s a vast array of delaying tactics to distract aspiring writers, notably all the magazines and courses on How To Do It. I’m a big believer in learning by doing. Getting in the zone is the problem, but I guess all our circumstances are different. I really admire people who make time to write in busy lives. I made that my excuse for too many years.
9. Which authors / genres do you read?
I like books with something to say and ones set in an unfamiliar place or time. Recently I’ve enjoyed books by Margaret Atwood, Rose Tremain, William Nicholson, Iain Banks, John Banville.. I suppose ‘literary fiction’ would be the name of the genre. Fantasy turns me off, though I really like Kate Atkinson’s flights of fancy.
10. what is the general response when you tell people you’re writing a novel?
‘Oh what’s it about?’ which I find it impossible to answer without making them wish they’d never asked! Or ‘When’s it going to be published?’ like it’s that simple! I obviously hope it will be published on paper, but if I don’t get a contract, I’ll print it with Lulu and publish it as an e-book.
Snake davis
11. You said you and jane evans went to these gigs tho I don’t remember seeing you there. Do you have any particular memories of those nights at central station?
Are you doubting my veracity, Nick? Yes, we went half a dozen times, and I only know it was a school night, so what were you doing there when you should have been revising? I’d give you some more detail, but my memory has erased everything except Snake’s Sexy Sax, and sadly Jane’s too ill to provide me with any colourful details.
North east
12. You live in the north east. Has this influenced your writing in any way?
No, but we love it here! We came for a 2-year posting 25 years ago and put down roots.
Teaching
13. How would you sum up your teaching years at BP?
I’ve worked in 5 other schools, but I have to say that was easily the most fun staff-room.
14. Why did you leave?
We moved to Wakefield and I got a job as second in department at a girls’school in Batley.
15. You’re still friends with jane evans. Do you keep in touch with any other BP teachers?
Not really, though I’ve bumped into Welly in Otley a couple of times.
16. Do A level students generally come across as bright or a bit dim when it comes to interpreting set texts?
Blimey, that’s quite a question! Impossible to answer really. You just want people to engage with the text, and people who you think are not going to respond can surprise you. The only thing that’s really hard is teaching people who really don’t give a rat’s arse about literature or ideas.
17. Is there anything we should know from the BP staff room?
I’m sure there is, but I’m not going to be the one to tell you!
Feminism
18. What does feminism mean to you?
For me and many others who grew up in the 60s & 70s, weaned on Manchester radicalism, suffragettes, Love on the Dole, Hobson’s Choice, Mary Barton, the central tenet that women should have equality of opportunity is as natural as breathing. The difficulties of putting that into practice took a while to dawn on me. I was at a girls’ school and I still believe single-sex education can benefit girls, in fact even more so now.
Our teachers were all unmarried and keen for us to have professional careers: I didn’t realise until later that women were expected to leave work when they married and that seemed a huge injustice. Not many mums had professions, so I was incredibly proud of mine, who was in the police (as was my dad) Through them, I began to understand the ways in which actual equality was difficult to achieve, but it’s nonetheless an abiding ideal. The issue has become so knotted up with the sexualisation of our society, power in the wrong hands, trafficking, desperation. All I know is that, in general, women need more help from policymakers than men do.
19. What was an early feminist inspiration?
The Wife of Bath as taught by my own hugely influential English teacher, Sylvia King. Then Germaine Greer.
hobbies
20. Apart from literary pursuits do you have any other interests?
I do a lot of volunteering – for the Mining Institute, the Lit & Phil Library, mentoring refugees, and conservation work for the National Trust. We run a rock & blues club at our local pub and I do their website. I spend a lot of time battling the undergrowth in the garden, I swim, walk, do yoga, sew, watch arty films, and make mosaics. And I bloody love every minute!
questions by nick watson
val was a young fresh-faced english teacher in 84, new to BP, given just enough time to introduce a room full of muppets to one of the most influential books of the C20th. here are some of her memories of teaching at BP as well as thoughts on her more recent literary work.
thanks to VB for agreeing to be interviewed - especially knowing she was to be the first.
val, left, with friend martina
Orwell
1. You had to teach us orwell but what is your attitude towards his work?
Well I love his lucid prose and there’s so much of interest in his journalism and essays, but I guess you mean I984: it was amazingly prescient, and Thatcher must have had it by her bedside. The Falklands War got her re-elected and so much else has come to pass: we were already Airstrip One – and culturally we’ve come under American influence to a huge degree, but other things such as surveillance, control of education, spin, doublethink, linguistic impoverishment, divisive social reforms, cheap opiates, the lottery…
2. Did it occur to you there was some irony in teaching 1984 in an authoritarian school environment, especially one that smelled of boiled cabbage in some parts?
I don’t know whether you were in the group that made a film in school, drawing those exact parallels? It was brilliant, and I so wish I still had a copy…
New novel
3. can you give us a summary of the plot of your new novel?
Not really, but the mystery of a child who goes missing in 1919 is solved in the present day. In each period there’s a soldier with PTSD. There’s a dash of Downton & a whiff of Wuthering Heights. Rival sisters, lost love, war, food production , community action, heritage… I’m not very good at summarizing!
4. What was your motivation for writing it?
After my mum died, I visited the village in Lancashire where she’d grown up before escaping to Manchester, and it stirred all sorts of thoughts up about family and places. When I saw the farm where she was born and started wondering about her parents, particularly my granddad, who survived the trenches and lived until I was 12. I’d also recently been counseling a Gulf War veteran whilst I was teaching Othello. All sorts of things that have distilled over the years started to coalesce into a story. I went to interview Edwin Booth to talk about locally-sourced food, stumbled across the Preston suffragette Edith Rigby, and I was off!
5. How long did it take to write?
I wrote the first 30,000 words in 6 weeks, while my brother was having daily radiotherapy, & it took my mind off what he was going through. The first chapter and synopsis were Highly Commended in a big competition, and as a result of that, an agent wrote and asked me to send the whole novel when I’d finished it. That was a great incentive, so I wrote the rest during last summer, thanks to the crap weather!
6. Did you have any writers block crises or was it easier than that to write?
None at all, it was amazing how it just came out, though I’m not sure I ‘ve got another one in me! The only stumbling block was that when the agent read the completed draft, she asked me to integrate the two timelines and I didn’t want to, so I stubbornly sat on it for a few months, but finally did it in January, and dammit, she was right!
7. Which other writers influenced your writing – it’s titled after an orwell quote.
Hmm, understandable that you should think that, but it isn’t Orwell originally. (What kind of rubbish English teacher did you have?). ‘Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree’ is from a poem by Longfellow called The Village Blacksmith. Other writers, I suppose Thomas Hardy, particularly Far From the Madding Crowd. Tim Smit for his book about The Lost Gardens of Heligan. Othello for the insights into a professional soldier’s mind. Rebecca Hosking’s documentary ‘A Farm for the Future’ was hugely influential.
8. What advice would you give to aspiring novel writers?
JFDI! There’s a vast array of delaying tactics to distract aspiring writers, notably all the magazines and courses on How To Do It. I’m a big believer in learning by doing. Getting in the zone is the problem, but I guess all our circumstances are different. I really admire people who make time to write in busy lives. I made that my excuse for too many years.
9. Which authors / genres do you read?
I like books with something to say and ones set in an unfamiliar place or time. Recently I’ve enjoyed books by Margaret Atwood, Rose Tremain, William Nicholson, Iain Banks, John Banville.. I suppose ‘literary fiction’ would be the name of the genre. Fantasy turns me off, though I really like Kate Atkinson’s flights of fancy.
10. what is the general response when you tell people you’re writing a novel?
‘Oh what’s it about?’ which I find it impossible to answer without making them wish they’d never asked! Or ‘When’s it going to be published?’ like it’s that simple! I obviously hope it will be published on paper, but if I don’t get a contract, I’ll print it with Lulu and publish it as an e-book.
Snake davis
11. You said you and jane evans went to these gigs tho I don’t remember seeing you there. Do you have any particular memories of those nights at central station?
Are you doubting my veracity, Nick? Yes, we went half a dozen times, and I only know it was a school night, so what were you doing there when you should have been revising? I’d give you some more detail, but my memory has erased everything except Snake’s Sexy Sax, and sadly Jane’s too ill to provide me with any colourful details.
North east
12. You live in the north east. Has this influenced your writing in any way?
No, but we love it here! We came for a 2-year posting 25 years ago and put down roots.
Teaching
13. How would you sum up your teaching years at BP?
I’ve worked in 5 other schools, but I have to say that was easily the most fun staff-room.
14. Why did you leave?
We moved to Wakefield and I got a job as second in department at a girls’school in Batley.
15. You’re still friends with jane evans. Do you keep in touch with any other BP teachers?
Not really, though I’ve bumped into Welly in Otley a couple of times.
16. Do A level students generally come across as bright or a bit dim when it comes to interpreting set texts?
Blimey, that’s quite a question! Impossible to answer really. You just want people to engage with the text, and people who you think are not going to respond can surprise you. The only thing that’s really hard is teaching people who really don’t give a rat’s arse about literature or ideas.
17. Is there anything we should know from the BP staff room?
I’m sure there is, but I’m not going to be the one to tell you!
Feminism
18. What does feminism mean to you?
For me and many others who grew up in the 60s & 70s, weaned on Manchester radicalism, suffragettes, Love on the Dole, Hobson’s Choice, Mary Barton, the central tenet that women should have equality of opportunity is as natural as breathing. The difficulties of putting that into practice took a while to dawn on me. I was at a girls’ school and I still believe single-sex education can benefit girls, in fact even more so now.
Our teachers were all unmarried and keen for us to have professional careers: I didn’t realise until later that women were expected to leave work when they married and that seemed a huge injustice. Not many mums had professions, so I was incredibly proud of mine, who was in the police (as was my dad) Through them, I began to understand the ways in which actual equality was difficult to achieve, but it’s nonetheless an abiding ideal. The issue has become so knotted up with the sexualisation of our society, power in the wrong hands, trafficking, desperation. All I know is that, in general, women need more help from policymakers than men do.
19. What was an early feminist inspiration?
The Wife of Bath as taught by my own hugely influential English teacher, Sylvia King. Then Germaine Greer.
hobbies
20. Apart from literary pursuits do you have any other interests?
I do a lot of volunteering – for the Mining Institute, the Lit & Phil Library, mentoring refugees, and conservation work for the National Trust. We run a rock & blues club at our local pub and I do their website. I spend a lot of time battling the undergrowth in the garden, I swim, walk, do yoga, sew, watch arty films, and make mosaics. And I bloody love every minute!