Monthly Archives: April 2023

Imagination is more important than Knowledge: Discuss.

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“Imagination is more important than Knowledge.”

So said Albert Einstein, thus inspiring today’s blog, a continuation from last week’s blog, which was about researching the taxi driver’s ‘knowledge.’

In that case, ‘knowledge’ was the thing London cabbies need before they can start transporting passengers around the metropolis. In Einstein’s case,

‘knowledge’ meant learning, what facts we have accumulated and, literally, what we know.

So, what he’s saying is pretty clear:

it’s more important to imagine than it is to know.

Thinking that, reminded me of the old adage, ‘Write about what you know.’ How many times have I heard that? I remember being told it at school when we had to write essays and short stories for English classes. However, I also remember when I was first inspired to write creatively, and here’s a little story that, unless I lose my train of thought, will point up the idea of creativity and imagination being more important than knowledge.

Soon to be Twelve, Never Been to Egypt

Picture it…

I am sitting in the library of an independent school in Folkestone, Kent. The wall opposite is filled with books, my best friend is sharing the table with me, and there’s a man with a beard facing us and the rest of the small class of uniformed pupils. It’s March 1975, and I am a few days away from being twelve years old. A few days ago, the television news carried the appalling story of a tube strain disaster at Moorgate station in London, where 43 people died because the train failed to stop and drove into a wall at speed. Not exactly the subject for a discussion during an English lesson with Mr Whitney, housemaster, historian and all-round inspirer of pupils. After a discussion about the train crash, our homework was to write a short story inspired by the event, which you might think was a little unusual or bad taste, but that’s the British public school system for you.

So, off I went after school, walking up the road to the bus stop with John (the best friend), discussing not English homework, but Hammer Horror films, because he collected the magazines, and we both liked the films, and having said goodbye, I continued to the bus stop and went home to write my short story.

Flashback: 1972, I am nine years old and in a long queue, eventually entering a huge building, walking through echoing halls and into dark chambers to wonder at the gold funeral mask of a pharaoh, Tutankhamun, and other treasures. Flash forward a couple of years, and I am watching one of the Universal ‘Mummy’ films, Boris Karloff or Lon Chaney Jr., it doesn’t matter which, I am fascinated by pyramids, Egyptian tombs and things buried underground.

Flash back to the story, and I am sitting down to write my homework based on the tube disaster. Of course, I didn’t know what it was like to be involved, I’m not even sure I’d been on a tube train by then, so all I had to go on were the images I’d seen on TV and my imagination. Oh, and my interest in Egyptology, such as it was at 11 years old.

My story, presented at the next English lesson, concerned a team of archaeologists investigating a pyramid, when that pyramid collapsed. All I remember of it were limbs sticking out from beneath rocks, dust, darkness, screams and other horror elements, and the ending; a man in a hospital bed where instead of flowers in the vase, there were the same dead arms and legs. I also remember the praise I received after its presentation in class. Mr Whitney singled it out because it had a beginning, a middle and an end, and told the whole class he’d chosen it for singular praise because I ‘Didn’t once mention a blessed train, like the rest of you. Imagination! It is far more useful than knowledge.’ Or something very similar. He then, rather annoyingly for an 11-year-old, told me it needed improvement, and I was to write it out again in my best handwriting, but not to copy it. What he did was tell me to write a second draft, thus teaching me the pain and value of editing.

The point of that story was simply to highlight the title of this piece, that you don’t always need knowledge to write creatively, and to be truly creative, imagination is more important than knowledge.

Now hang on a minute… We can take the opposite view with no hassle whatsoever and be perfectly pedantic by saying: You need to know how to write. Ah ha! See, that’s knowledge. Yes, and quite right. Except, as far as we know, Homer never wrote a word, he spoke his stories, as that was the only way to pass them down back then. He didn’t need to know how to write, he needed to know how to tell a story, but storytelling is in all of us, whether it comes out in the written word or spoken, in art, journalism, comic books or gossip; we all have the ability to tell a story.

Yes, but… I know what you’re going to say. How can you write about something you know nothing about? How can you write a story set somewhere you have never been, or about something you have never experienced, or have no knowledge of?

Yeah, yeah, blah-di-blah… Tell me, dear sceptic, how many times did Shakespeare visit Italy to research his Merchant of Venice or any of the other 13 plays he set in the country? Did Bernard Cornwell OBE fight against Napoleon, or live among the Anglo Saxons of the Dark Ages? I think not. Yes, writers research, and some who write historical novels are learned historians, but they’ve still never been back in time, and let’s not mention Azimov or Arthur C Clarke, and others who write science fiction, fantasy or steampunk. Come to that, Bram Stoker never went to Transylvania or, as far as anyone knows, got bitten by a vampire or had his head chopped off.

Write about what you know, and if you don’t know about it, research. That would be a better maxim, in my book.

Ideas are the Seed of all Achievement

I found that delicious quote, from journalist, Anastasia Haralabidou, in an article titled ‘Great Ideas: Is imagination more important than knowledge?’ (2015, you can find it here.)  In her article, she points out how imagination has inspired knowledge. Example: an apple falling from a tree and narrowly missing Isaac Newton… Why did it do that? How come it fell and didn’t float away? And there we have gravity.

It’s a case of saying ‘What if?’ and then following the what if to a conclusion, and to do that, you need to use imagination, not knowledge. If you don’t have the knowledge, you can gain it, if you don’t have the imagination, well, frankly, you’re scuppered. As Haralabidou also says in her article,

“Imagination is the highest freedom of all and the one that no one can deprive us of.”

How good is that? We all have an imagination, it is as inherent as storytelling, and you don’t need knowledge to release it, you only need to know that you can, and we all can. Some with more success than others, I grant you, but it is within us all to tell stories, and if those stories are set in a time or place about which we know nothing, then, like a soon to be 12-year-old transposing what he’d seen on the news to the pyramids of Giza, we research what we must, and imagine the rest.

This all reminds me of another saying I heard once many years ago which has always stuck with me. Prevention is better than knowing who did it. That, I fancy, might be the title of a future blog.

Work in Progress: 6.02

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The Unnamed

‘The Unnamed’ sounds like the original title of ‘Dracula,’ The Undead. My new story is definitely ‘undead’ because it’s very much alive and kicking. I am up to 24,000 words and the end of act one. The main characters have their initial setup, time and place have been established, and now, there is a quest for the main character, a dilemma, a fair amount of pressure and a big decision to be made. I think Jack Merrit is to be something of a reluctant hero, because he doesn’t want to do what he has to do, and there is both an external reason for that and an internal one.

By external, I mean an action-driven reason for him to react, and by internal, I mean he has a personal dilemma to deal with, and it’s a big one.

What I haven’t yet convinced myself of is the action spine; the events that will drive the physical action through to the end. Initially, what I had in mind sounded interesting and is based on an actual event. However, it strikes me it might be flimsy when transformed into a novel because it is basically a search for a location, and we can’t have 50,000 words of a man driving up and down London streets looking for a particular place. Well, we can, but other things will have to happen along the way, otherwise the reader will soon be asking, ‘Are we there yet?’

Once I’ve finished other work this morning, I will continue with chapter eight and see where that leads me. We have visitors arriving on Sunday for two and three weeks, and I’m not sure how much I will be able to get done during that time, but I will carry on carrying on, and I’ll let you know how it all goes in my regular blog posts.

From ‘Street Life in London’, 1877, by John Thompson and Adolphe Smith (Wikimedia Commons)

Learning the Knowledge for a New Series

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If you read my Wednesday work-in-progress blog, you will know I have embarked on a new series, currently titled ‘New Series’ in one folder, and ‘Victorian Series’ in another. So far, I have written four chapters in draft one, a rough outline, some character notes, and some research notes.

Part of my research has been around cab drivers because one of the two main characters is a young cabman, and that led me to a couple of books, a few websites, and a coincidence.

The Knowledge

When London cabbies train for the job, they spend on average two years learning ‘the knowledge.’ That’s the layout of all 25,000 or more London streets in a six-mile radius from central London, roughly.

If you’ve ever taken a black cab, as we call them nowadays (though they are not always black), you’ll feel assured that once you step in and say, ‘471 Kingsland Road,’ the driver will say, ‘Righty-o, Guv,’ and off you go. You can give as obscure an address as you fancy and, the chances are, your driver will know where it is because he’s got ‘the knowledge.’

When this term came into use, I am not sure, but then, I’ve not completed my research yet.

My ordered book has arrived, ‘The History of the London Horse Cab’, and I’ve read the introduction, but there’s a long way to go yet, so my knowledge of cab work and ‘the knowledge’ currently equates to knowing only about five streets out of the 25,000 or more.

I’ve also been looking at various collections of writings from Victorian times that I’ve found on websites, including my favourite, The Dictionary of Victorian London, compiled by Lee Jackson.

A Coincidence

While looking around for various resources, I came across a Facebook page dedicated to a book, ‘Carter the Cabman.’ After a little investigation, I discovered that this book was available on Kindle, so I downloaded a copy and set to reading, out of interest.

It turns out to be a novel, presenting in a nicely clever way, a collection of papers discovered in an antique shop in 1988, and those papers were written by a cabman called Carter in 1888, at the time of Jack the Ripper. That’s as far as I have got with my reading as I only bought it yesterday, but already, I feel a weird sense of coincidence. My Clearwater Mysteries series begins in 1888 at the time of the Ripper (though it’s not Jack), and my new series is not only about a cab driver, but is also set in 1888, though the Ripper murders are not part of the plot this time. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of ‘Carter’ and perhaps asking the author if he’d like to appear here in a guest post. (Though I’m not sure how to tell him that the word ‘weekend’ didn’t come into usage until after 1912, so his cabman author of 1888 would not have used it… but that’s me being pedantic.)

More About ‘New Victorian Series’

My notes are vague in places, and detailed in others. I have in mind a set of investigations that my two main characters will undertake, but unlike the Clearwater and Larkspur mysteries, these will involve a different investigative style. Clearwater and Larkspur use a lot of unlikely but not impossible scenarios, and inventions of the time or just before the time, such as vanishing and reappearing ink, telegraph printers, and glow-in-the-dark paint. The new series will, if all goes according to plan, focus on real issues of the time and how my two MCs put things right. A little like ‘Guardians of the Poor’, where our heroes uncover corruption at the Hackney workhouse. I have in my list of ideas notes such as:

  • Slum landlords Vs paupers,
  • The Thames Murders (cold case),
  • Mediums,
  • Quacks,
  • Lunatic asylum, and
  • ‘gay’ cases.

The latter one is also a hark back to Larkspur, where the initial idea was to base characters and stories on actual events, which I did all the way through: Dalston Blaze and the workhouse scandal, for example, or Edward Hyde’s incident on the train and the court case with that nasty Tory MP. But don’t think this new series is going to be all special investigation and doing the right thing, and don’t think it will be a repeat of issues and events from the other two series.

So far, I know that it is going to involve the following:

  • Clues
  • villains
  • adventure
  • A slow-burn romance over a couple of books
  • A character with an undefined ‘problem’ who will turn out to be a genius (at something)
  • Brotherly love
  • Bromance and MM romance (of course)
  • Falling in love, falling out of love, blah-di-blah
  • Humour
  • Real places and events

That’s where I am with ‘New Victorian Series’ right now, researching and learning more knowledge about life in Victorian Britain, especially London, around the end of the 19th century. It all starts with a journalist discovering a handsome young cabman in tears late at night on August 17th 1888. Why is he crying? That’s what you will one day find out.

Work In Progress: 6.01

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Untitled

These past few days, I have started on a new novel which I intend to be the start of a new series. So far, the folder is titled: Victorian Series, and I have in it chapters one, two and three, plus a file called ‘New story ideas,’ and one called ‘The cabmen from James Greenwood.’ Let me explain…

Who was James Greenwood?


James Greenwood (1832–1927) was an English social explorer, journalist and writer, who published a series of articles which drew attention to the plight of London’s working poor. He was one of the first journalists to cover stories incognito, and is regarded as one of the pioneers of investigative journalism.

[Wikipeadia.]

What’s he got to do with anything?

When I was writing ‘Banyak & Fecks’ and investigating what it was like to spend a night in a casual ward of a London workhouse, I came across an article Greenwood had written following his experiences of spending a night in such a place. I returned to him for background reading for this new series, and in particular, the book, ‘Tales from Victorian London’ by James Greenwood and Henry Mayhew. There is a chapter in it where Greenwood recounts an interview with a hansom cab driver who tells him a tale of catching burglars, and that was the inspiration for my ‘New Victorian Series.’

Since reading the article and others, I have ordered a book about the history of the hansom cab, and have read other articles and stories from the time (mid-1800s, though my story is set slightly later). I have also been trying to find a street map of London from 1887 with street names, though that’s proving a little more difficult. What I need is an original A to Z, although that invaluable street atlas was not printed until the 1930s, so I am left with online maps, many of which don’t name the streets.

Why the need for street names and maps?


The simple answer is because, my main character is a cabman, a driver of a hansom cab, or a cabbie, as they were and are also known. So far in the story, the MC has decided he needs to earn more money, and so, steps in to take his grandfather’s old job driving a hansom cab.

Not an easy task. It takes the average London cabbie two years to learn ‘the knowledge’, the layout of every street, the names, places, locations, short cuts etc., of the city. There are, and were in 1887, thousands of streets, and new ones being built all the time. Having a map will make it easier for me to be accurate, because unlike the Greychurch and Limedock of ‘The Clearwater Mysteries’, the new series is to be set in Whitechapel, Limehouse and other places where I will use the real place names, events and possibly, people.

Who is our new main character?

There are to be two.

Meet Jack Merrit…

a 24-year-old carter and labourer at the East India Docks who has an estranged father working in the music hall, an absent mother, a younger brother who has ‘an undiagnosed problem’, and who lives with his grandparents, Reggie and Ida Merritt in a two-roomed dwelling in Limehouse.

My visual inspiration for Jack came from a photo of a prisoner taken sometimes during the late 1800s. This chap had such a bewildered look of ‘I’m innocent’ about him, it stirred my heart and made me think, ‘Poor young man, his only crime was to fall in love—with another man.’

My second main character, the one who, after a first-person introduction tells the story in the third person, is

Larkin Chase,

a well-to-do ‘journalist’, investigative reporter as we’d call him now, a solver of mysteries and a champion for the rights of the put-upon. Larkin is 30, and meets Jack in August 1888 much in the way James Greenwood met his cabbie, late at night in South London.

And there I shall leave this update so I can get on with chapter three. Before I do, I will let you see a snippet of chapter two, which only gives away two plot points, that Samson Merrit, Jack’s father has died, and his grandfather, Reggie, has suffered a stroke.

The only way his parents or children heard of [Samson Merrit] was from the variety newspapers and bill posters, and, when Jack was twenty-four, via a messenger from Shoreditch who brought news of a tragedy.
Samson Merrit suffered an untimely but entertaining death on the stage of the Shoreditch Music Hall early in eighty-seven. He left behind his two sons, a shocked audience, and an even more shocked Marie Lloyd, with whom he had been performing a duet version of ‘The Boy I Love is up in the Gallery.’ The coroner said it was heart failure and had nothing to do with his fellow performer. Ida Merrit said he’d had it coming and good riddance, but on hearing the news, Reggie suffered apoplexy that brought an end to his cabbing career the moment he staggered backwards into his chair and collapsed.

More updates to come next week, and on my Saturday blog.

And Back to the Desk

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Hello, and Happy Easter from here in Greece, which is celebrating Orthodox Easter a week after Western Easter. I have had both. Last weekend I was in Prague, where it was Easter, and now, I am back at the desk and ready to pick up where I left off.

Prague and New Experiences

I’ve put up a few photos of my recent trip, not the best, but my old camera/phone is getting on a bit. I went, via Rhodes and Athens, to Prague with my godson, Harry, the perfect travelling companion and my music student.

Among our experiences were:

Harry’s first time out of the country and his longest flight to date, using a different currency, the museum at Athens Airport (yes, they have one, it shows you what was there before the airport was built), the usual Prague tourist sights like the astronomical clock and the Old Town square, the castle, St Vitus cathedral, the Lobkowicz Palace for a lunchtime concert, lots of eating, seeing two Canaletto paintings and other treasures such as Beethoven’s original parts for two of his symphonies, a piano that one belonged to Franz Liszt, and a wild Nutria (coypu) that we thought was a beaver (and boy did we laugh about that; sorry, but boys will be boys, and so will some middle-aged men). Also, some underground cellars from medieval Prague and a tour with alchemy and a torture chamber thrown in, another cathedral, a funicular railway, the top of the Petrin Tower at 64 meters — and I don’t do heights anymore, but I managed — the observatory, the Museum of Music, the Lego Museum, and a night at the opera to see ‘The Magic Flute,’ Harry’s first opera and theatre experience.

On the next day… sightseeing and shopping around the Old Town, the Agricultural Museum and the Technology Museum for the science, cars and, for me, locomotives, more walking and shopping (averaging around 7 miles per day on foot, 10 on one day), rode trams, sat on a police motorbike (H might want to be a policeman one day), visited various street markets, ate lots, and in the evening, went on a river cruise with a dinner and live jazz music included. Then, on the way home, stopping for a night in Athens/Piraeus, we visited the warship, the Averoff, before catching our overnight ferry home.

The Next Book

Before we set off, I’d written the first chapter of a new book, which I hope will spark a new series. On my first day back, having had virtually no sleep because I don’t sleep well on moving objects, even with a cabin, I returned to the chapter, read it, edited it and continued. Yesterday, I laid down the start of the story proper and began writing some backstories which may or may not stay in, but which will be useful in some form. What is this book?

Good question. I have recently read a true account of a journalist meeting a London cabman, and the story the cabman told him sparked an idea. All I can tell you right now is that it is set in London in 1888, starting on the night of the (possibly) first Ripper murder, Martha Tabram, but has nothing to do with the Ripper. If the story gathers momentum and it turns out as I want it to, it will be taking place at the same time as the Clearwater Mysteries books one to four, and onwards. Who knows, some of the Clearwater and Larkspur characters may even turn up in this… whatever it is to be. It will involve mystery, a slow-burn romance, bromance, friendship, hardship and fun, like my other historical novels, but it’s going to take some time to put together.

On which note, now I am back into typing, I may go and take a look at what I wrote for chapter two. I’ll give you more info on Wednesday’s Work in Progress blog, so, see you there.

Taking a Break and Why

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This week, I wanted to let you know that I will be taking a break until 15th April. Why? Well, there are two reasons.

It’s important for writers to take breaks

I don’t think I’ve had a break from writing for the past four years. Even when I have been away, I have had a book in my head, a notebook with me, and I’ve been planning and plotting while travelling. Then, on my return, I’ve dived straight back into the story. However, next week, I am going away for a week, and I have no story in my head. I’ve just finished the Clearwater and Larkspur series of 18 novels, and am about to move on to something new.

What?

That’s the question and the reason for the break. I know I want to write something set in the same time period, late 19th century England, but if I launch straight in, there’s a danger I will write the same characters as I wrote for the previous series but under different names. There’s also the possibility I will repeat my story themes, and I want to come up with new mysteries, characters, and a new series. Some things will be the same (a mix of fact/fiction, bromance/romance, fun, adventure and nasty villains), while others will change, and if I start now, the chances are what I write will be too similar.

Similar is good, because people obviously like the characters, time, plots and mysteries I have been writing (I had five of my books in Amazon’s top 100 list for LGBT Historical Mystery this week), so something similar is what’s called for. However, too similar and everyone will say, ‘It’s just the same thing.’ Hence, a two-week break.

But…

Having said that, I do have an idea or two and will no doubt think about them while I am away, but the pressure will be to work on newness, and not simply come up with a plot. I must start with a character or two, the MC and the IC, and get them firmly fixed in my mind before I start on detail. I have already started researching and gathering some notes and ideas, because there’s no point not writing down ideas, but I’ve not yet started on Chapter One. These images represent today’s musings…

  • LEAD Technologies Inc. V1.01

By the way, MC stands for Main Character, and IC for Impact Character. As we had Lord Clearwater as the MC in the Clearwater series, so we had Silas Hawkins as the IC, the one who makes an impact on the MC’s life, aims and actions. As the series progressed, we had other MCs and ICs, such as James Wright in ‘Twisted Tracks’ and Thomas (as the IC). In the Larkspur series, we had Dalston Blaze as the MC of ‘Guardians of the Poor’, and Clearwater as the IC (who was also the protagonist, because your MC doesn’t have to be the protagonist). Later, we had Chester Cadman as the MC in ‘Seeing Through Shadows’ and Frank Andino as the IC, and so it goes on.

Where to?

No doubt you are wondering what his new series idea is and where it is going to. Well, you’re not alone, because so am I. You may also be wondering where I am travelling to, and the answer is simple and exciting. I am taking one of my godsons to Prague for a few days. He’s been learning piano and music with me (as it’s not taught in our island school), and I can’t think of a better place than Prague for music and culture – not on my budget, at least.

So, we have a classical lunchtime concert lined up for one day (at the Lobkowicz Palace), a performance of ‘The Magic Flute’ at one of the opera houses, and a boat cruise/dinner with varied live music another evening. Those are the highlights, but along the way, I am aiming to view various other cultural sights he won’t see on our island, and probably not in Greece. I’m thinking of cathedrals, the museum of music, the astronomical clock, the Klementinum, other museums, and simply just the lifestyle and architecture. So, an exciting, if exhausting, time is planned. We’ll only be there for four nights/three days, but there’s a two-day journey to get there from here, and a three-night journey to get back. All part of the experience.

We arrive back during ‘Great Week’, the week leading up to Easter Sunday, so as soon as we step off the boat, we will be into dynamite, celebrations and festivities that come with a Greek Easter on Symi. I’ll blog about all this and the new series idea as soon as I get back.

So, that’s why I’m not going to be around for two weeks, and who knows what story ideas I will come back with. Keep reading!