Meet our Tutors: Mel Parks
In September, the Creative Writing Programme will be launching in East Grinstead on a Saturday morning. It will be taught by Mel Parks, an experienced writer and tutor. Here she talks about her writing life.
When do you first remember wanting to be a writer? I have always loved books, reading and stories, but pushed the idea of being a writer out of my mind when I was young. I didn’t feel very good at it and I certainly didn’t think it would earn me any money. But it was something I was naturally drawn to and I began to write articles for the membership magazine in my charity job. After that, at the age of thirty, I did a creative writing evening class and it was as if a lightbulb went on in my head. I LOVED it and almost 25 years on, I am still writing.
Your short story Reach Out I’ll Be There based on the Aberfan mining disaster was longlisted for the Bridport Prize. Could you tell us about why you wanted to write about this? I grew up in south Wales, not far from Aberfan and although the disaster happened five years before I was born, it was a story that was in my cultural heritage. I wanted to write a story that centred the experience of working class mothers before 1970s feminism, to amplify their previously unheard voices. It was a scary one to begin though and I nearly didn’t write it. Thankfully, I had a lot of encouragement from other writers around me.
You were also commissioned to write a series of lyric essays on moon cycles, seasons and menopause, could you tell us about this? In peri-menopause, I felt adrift when my menstrual cycle was no longer regular, so I had the idea of using moon cycles to help my writing process. I applied for and was very thankful for Arts Council funding (DYCP) to do a month of creative experiments tying in with the moon and then write essays exploring these. I am still working on getting the essays published, but you can read more here.
And you write poetry as well, could you tell us how your creative process differs when writing poetry to long form writing? I don’t really think it does differ. I write a lot (freewriting, exploratory writing) before I get to the essence of what I want to say, and sometimes getting to that essence takes fewer words! Recently, the lyric essays I’ve been writing have been a blend of memoir, non-fiction and poetry. I love making connections between ideas and images which leads to a new personal insight.
You have tried your hand at so many different literary forms – do you have a favourite? No, I don’t have a favourite, but I write morning pages nearly every day and have done for twenty years. It helps me connect to my intuition and sort out my many thoughts. This is the writing I would continue to do if I had to choose.
Which of your many publications are you most proud of? As part of a University of Brighton research project into gender-based violence in the pandemic using storytelling and creative methods, I devised a method of collaborative poetry for the research team. This used a Japanese form based on haiku called ‘renga’ that I had previously had fun with in my creative writing workshops. We wrote small poems in response to each other by email and then I led the writing and publication of an academic article about the process. I am most proud of this because it brought together lots of my creative interests and ideas and I began to see how my work could really make a difference in the world.
And you have taught creative rriting for a number of years. How does teaching creative writing impact your own creative process? I love teaching creative writing. The weekly groups I run are very consistent, which means I need to continually challenge myself by thinking of new ideas for them. The people that come are all so brilliant and continually inspire me. They show up every week and no matter what I throw at them, they respond in a beautifully unique way. It is never dull to hear them read aloud what they’ve written in the moment. All of this means that I am immersed in the creative process.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given about writing? I do not know where the advice came from, but I am continually reminding myself to trust the process. Over the years, I have learned to have a very gentle approach when it comes to nudging myself towards writing (I definitely did not start out doing this!). Begin by opening the document, I tell myself. And when I open the document of my current work in progress, if it’s been a while, I’ll just read it through. Once I’ve done that, I will usually see what needs writing or working on and I can move forward. I’m very much aware of my process now but I definitely need a lot of self-encouragement and I have tools for this that I love to pass on to other writers.
What’s your go-to book about the craft of writing? I read a lot of books about writing, and I turn to different ones for different reasons. But one I’ve come across recently that seems to tick a lot of boxes for me is: The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft and the Writing Life by Pricilla Long. I began reading it online but then found it so useful I ordered a hard copy. Because I have been studying more about editing lately, I wanted to delve deeper into the nitty gritty of sentences and as well as being generally encouraging, this book has a whole section on writing sentences!
What are you working on at the moment? As well as working on getting my Moonpause essays into a publishable shape, I have also begun work on a follow up project inspired by Celtic moon goddesses: Moonifesto. This will use these stories and a method I’m calling mythic autofiction to explore ageing in women and my Welsh working class motherline.
Mel will be leading the Creative Writing Programme on Saturday mornings in East Grinstead Library. If you’re in or near to East Grinstead and want to write a novel, why not come along to a taster day on 25 April, 4 July or 12 September and see if the course is for you. You’ll meet Mel, and our course director Cathy Hayward, see where you’d be learning and get a sense of how the Creative Writing Programme works. Any questions? Please just ask.