How My Work Influences My Writing

I help teach GCSE English to adults with learning difficulties. These include dyslexia, Aspergers and mental health issues. My students have experienced barriers to mainstream education because it is not sufficiently geared to their needs. Not only barriers but failure. Many have been told that they will never pass an exam, and see themselves as sub-standard when it is the inflexibility of the system that has let them down.

Classes such as mine offer them a second chance. Recognising and acknowledging the intelligence of a previously written off student can change their life.

That is what I wanted to capture in my writing. Both my books feature previously ‘written off’ heroines.

Elvira, in The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr, is a young woman with a Condition (I don’t specify what, because her struggles are also universal ones, but she would score fairly highly on the autism spectrum). She is both protected and undervalued by her parents but, after her mother has a devastating stroke, she suddenly has to find her own way in life.

At first adrift, Elvira clings to the comfort of routines – eating the same meals on the same days – and familiar things: David Attenborough box sets, Delia Smith cookery books and categorising her biscuit wrapper collection.

Forced by circumstances to broaden her horizons, she is encouraged by her helpful neighbour to get her own computer (previously forbidden: ‘Predators’ said Mother). There she discovers support groups for women with her condition: ‘they’d all felt outsiders at coffee mornings and said the wrong things about people’s hairstyles … I wasn’t alone.’

Because Elvira feels like a tourist in a foreign country, she thinks a guidebook to the customs of ‘NormalTypicals’ would be useful. Using the information on the websites she draws up her own seven rules to ‘normal behaviour’: ‘Keeping to these would help me to move around the world of NormalTypicals, without getting into trouble, without Incidents, perhaps without them even noticing I wasn’t normal, underneath.’

Of course, any such rule is bound to be imperfect, but, with their help, Elvira enters previously unexplored territories and her life expands. Along the way, she discovers that things she had taken for granted are not at all what they seem …

In my second book, Maggsie McNaughton’s Second Chance, out next year with Mantle/Pan Macmillan, my heroine is also a marginalized young woman, but her character and circumstances are very different from Elvira’s.

Maggsie is small (‘Four foot eleven and a fag wrapper’) but, ‘I don’t make an issue of it. Don’t let no-one else make an issue of it, neither’, and from a disadvantaged background. She has dyslexia and, in fact, cannot spell her own name (‘If the penpusher that’s asking for it looks disapproving, I just give them a go-fry-yourself stare.’).

She has been in and out of prison, until a probation officer comes up with a job opportunity: ‘a charity scheme, one where they give ex-cons a leg up in the world.’

Never having had a job before Maggsie is sceptical about sticking at it. But, during her last prison sentence, a fellow prisoner, Enid, has taught her the basics of reading: ‘reading’s going to put you on the right road this time, my girl.’

Before she has even started work, on her first day, she is confronted with an emergency situation, something entirely unexpected, something which will change her life. (‘Someone said, later on, (it) had been a catalyst … but nothing to do with cats, which is a pity because I like cats.’)

Enid is right about the reading, but Maggsie’s ‘road’ has many twists and turns. It swerves from new, and rewarding, but unlikely relationships, to revisiting her past (painful), to making her (tiny, underprivileged) presence felt in more positive ways.

Working with ‘second chance’ adults has influenced my writing style as well as content. Student worksheets have to be as clear and simple as possible. I use short sentences, everyday language and avoid long words.

I do the same in my novels – simplicity and accessibility are always a good idea. For the same reason I write in the first person.

If you are writing about painful things you have to have a light touch. If you do not your book will be a bleak read. And humour is always welcome – after all, life is both funny and sad.

Using simple language and humour does not mean you cannot write about complex issues or profound emotions. Elvira’s mother dies and Maggsie experiences homelessness and difficulties with alcohol.

‘Written off’ heroines winning through in the end make my books part of the ‘UpLit’ genre. ‘UpLit’ features ‘broken’ people finding redemption, being helped to fix themselves, and being given a second chance. It is entertaining and satisfying because there is a deep human need for justice; for things to be put right.

Elvira has been limited by her parents’ narrow expectations, Maggsie by poverty and by assumptions that she’s stupid. But both characters, helped by the kindness of others, find their own way in the end. Against the odds they challenge barriers and struggle towards full, independent, pro-active lives. Elvira and Maggsie are ‘Cinderellas’, but the magic comes from their own grit, determination and resourcefulness.

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The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr is Frances Maynard’s first novel. It was shortlisted for the Good Housekeeping First Novel Award, the Mslexia First Novel Competition and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. This year it was runner-up in the Society of Author’s McKitterick debut novel prize. Frances teaches English to adults with learning difficulties. She is married with one grown-up daughter and lives in Dorset.

Website: www.francesmaynard.co.uk
Facebook: FrancesMaynardAuthor1
Twitter: @perkinsfran1

The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr by Frances Maynard

Elvira Carr is twenty-seven and neuro-atypical.
Her father – who she suspects was in the Secret Service – has passed away and, after several Unfortunate Incidents growing up, she now spends most of her time at home with her overbearing mother. But when her mother has a stroke and is taken into care, Elvira is suddenly forced to look after herself or risk ending up in Sheltered Accommodation.
Armed with her Seven Rules, which she puts together after online research, Elvira hopes to learn how to navigate a world that’s full of people she doesn’t understand.

Not even the Seven Rules can help her, however, when she discovers that everything she thought she knew about her father was a lie, and she is faced with solving a mystery she didn’t even know existed …
Funny, heart-warming and ultimately triumphant, The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr is the perfect story for anyone who doesn’t quite fit in – and for everyone who chooses not to.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips