Blog Tour: Guest Post from Beth Merwood, author of The Five Things, on Memories of Writing

Huge thanks to Rachel's Random Resources for arranging this tour and inviting The Crime Warp to host a guest post from Beth Merwood on Memories of Writing. But first, here's the blurb.

The Five Things blurb

For nine-year-old Wendy, the summer of 1969 will never be forgotten.

Local kids have always told stories about the eerie wood on the outskirts of the village, and Wendy knows for sure that some of them are true. Now the school holidays have started and she's going to the wood again with Anna and Sam, but they soon become convinced that someone is trying to frighten them off.

When a terrible event rocks the coastal community, the young friends can't help thinking there must be a connection between the incident, the tales they’ve heard, and the strange happenings they’ve begun to witness. As glimpses of a darker world threaten their carefree existence, they feel compelled to search out the underlying truth.

Purchase Links

UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Things-Beth-Merwood-ebook/dp/B08ZMN5PC5

US - https://www.amazon.com/Five-Things-Beth-Merwood-ebook/dp/B08ZMN5PC5

Guest Post: Memories of Writing by Beth Merwood

As an adult, I find there are very few pastimes that completely absorb me. I rarely lose track of time, and throughout the day I will be continually distracted by other thoughts or by the urge to pick up the phone or put on the kettle. Writing, however, is an exception.

For me, writing has always been important and somehow special, something that soothed my mind and helped me to work things out. I find it very satisfying to take a thought that has been roaming around in my head and manage to successfully put it down in words. The satisfaction is purely personal: I don’t need to share the writing; the resulting material may never be seen by another soul.

I have often felt the need to write something down in order to understand it, particularly a feeling, an emotional reaction to something. Once on paper it seems less painful, or in terms of a positive emotion, it seems captured.

There are occasions when I find it hard to say the right thing at the right moment, but I can write it down. Again, this is more than likely to be for my own purposes only.

My earliest memories of sharing my writing are from school, as I’m sure they are for a lot of us. At primary school, I was allowed, on two occasions, to write and put on a play for the other children. That I was allowed to do this seems astonishing to me now. I still remember a little boy from the youngest year group approaching me in the playground following one performance. He asked me how I’d managed to make the teapot move — which I suppose indicates what type of play it was! That the production had made so much of an impact on the boy, that he had been interested enough to seek me out and ask me about it afterwards, took me aback.

It was pretty much all downhill from then on, but at home I made tiny books by cutting up sheets of paper, folding them and stitching them in the centre to form a spine. I don’t remember much about the subject matter. I enjoyed stories made up by my elder brother, and can remember being astounded by a tale written by a young schoolfriend at our middle school. He had used a lot of slang dialogue in an essay, and at that stage of our education it seemed to me to break all the moulds. That pupil, I am fairly sure, did not go on to be a great author. In fact I believe he left school at the first opportunity and took a job that had nothing to do with words or letters. I am no longer in touch with him, but I bet he could still write a thumping story.

In my teenage years I wrote the usual poems & songs. We had a band and played and sang our songs sitting on the bed in the lead singer’s bedroom. We recorded the material on a cassette tape recorder and proudly played our works to a few other carefully selected companions.

Writing has always been there: enjoyable, helpful and necessary. I see it as exercise for the mind, like going for a walk in your head and making a note of where you went to.

Author Bio