Beryl Fletcher

Fourth Week:  22-28 November, 2008

 

Should established writers leave a budding genius alone in his or her attic to write the Great New Zealand Novel or should we teach creative writing to anyone who wants it? This issue is hotly debated amongst writers, academics and students of literature.

 

It came up again for me this week when I signed a contract with the University of Waikato to work with Peter Wells for the second time as a tutor for the summer school course on creative writing that he has designed. Six weeks of intensive work with over thirty students at all levels of ability and ambition and emotional maturity. The added complication is that all the work must be assessed towards a grade that contributes to the awarding of an undergraduate degree. How can something as subjective as creative writing be assessed in this manner? 

 

I’m going to come right out front and state that I believe that creative writing can be taught as long as there is an understanding between the teacher and the student that it is by its very nature, a limited exercise. 

 

The teaching of creative writing at a tertiary level, has, (with one or two exceptions) been slow to develop in New Zealand. It has become an enormous industry in countries like the United States and the UK. As long ago as 1985, the prominent editor and essayist Ted Solotaroff said:

 

“I don’t think one can understand the literary situation today without taking into account the one revolutionary development in American letters during the second half of the century: the rise of the creative writing programs. At virtually one stroke we have solved the age-old problem of how literary men and women are to support themselves.”

 

Solotaroff ( a long time editor of American Review) goes on to say that steady academic employment distorts literary careers and has “devitalized the relation between literature, particularly fiction, and society”. (page 56, A Few Good Voices in my Head: 1987)

 

He talks about the sameness of the writing that comes from a particular centre of creative writing. Editors of literary journals can often correctly identify a ‘house style’ of a particular submission without knowing the name of the writer.  (The phrase literature-lite springs to mind).

 

In workshops that I have tutored both here and overseas, there is often one person in the group who proudly announces that they never read other writers in case their own creativity becomes contaminated. This is completely wrongheaded. A major part of any course on creative writing is to read a wide range of other writers so that we can learn by example.

 

I believe that there is a finite set of problems that arise for a writer embarking on a creative project. And I also believe that there is always a solution to these problems. For example, changing the point-of-view (or the tense) can radically change the ‘feel’ and ‘truth’ of a story. To see how published writers ‘solve’ these problems is of enormous benefit to the novice writer.

 

I strongly believe that the tutor/teacher of creative writing must be a published writer. Unless a person has been through the process of writing and rewriting draft after draft and has survived the publishing experience and the inevitable critical attack, they cannot really understand the horror (and the joy) of becoming a creative writer. 

 

One of the most important spin-offs of creative writing courses is that it develops a much deeper understanding and appreciation of literature in the wider community. Millions of students around the world have now completed a hands-on creative writing course. I sometimes wonder what would have happened to book sales and to the love of books without the development of the creative writing movement.

 

Now back to the story of Hannalore. Last week, we learned that Hannalore had been given the punishment of interment after she had been censored by the elders for her role in saving the life of the drowned man, Mr Cattermole….

 

now read on…

4

 

All through the night Hannalore sat on her canvas cot next to the open window. She watched the incandescent stars pierce the vast canopy of a sky that deepened from indigo to black. To her, the stars appeared as white hot torches of judgment.

 

Each hour she removed another garment baring more skin to the air until she was almost naked. She was unconcerned that the other women in the dormitory might open their eyes and see her exposed white flesh. The other members of the community had been forbidden to comment upon her bodily states until the period of interment was over and the women obeyed without question. They did not register her nakedness by the flick of an eye. She might as well have been made of gelatine or isinglass.

 

She had not comprehended until now the loss that imposed invisibility could bring. Even Juno had looked through her with a strange floating gaze, empty and unfocussed, as if her flesh had vanished and she no longer had the ability or substance to cast even the thinnest of shadows.

 

The wintry air acknowledged her presence by shrouding her body in an icy cloak that made her shiver. Hannalore welcomed the scourging of her flesh. She could offer no explanation for her ability to bring life back into a drowned body. The elders had tried every trick in their extensive repertoire to force her to tell them the truth. She desperately wanted to please them but to do so would force a moral descent into the sin of lying.

 

She tried to comfort herself by conjuring up a vision of her mother. The sound of Eleanor’s voice was still with her, reciting stories of domestic mishaps that through constant retelling had taken on the power of grand epics but Hannalore could no longer see the outline of her face or remember the colour of her eyes.

 

This fading away of Eleanor’s physical presence was almost complete. All that remained was a blurred glimpse of slender ankles disappearing beneath the uneven hem of a long skirt and the sight of an ear lobe shedding blood when caught in the clasp of a faulty obsidian earring.

 

Hannalore concentrated on the memory of Eleanor’s voice, the way she paused at a climatic moment in her stories, the way she whispered conspiratorially to her audience so that they had to strain their ears in order to hear the crunch line at the end.

 

Hannalore wondered how Eleanor would have told the story of the drowned man and the hand clutching at her like a claw. She tried to visualise her mother taking hold of Mr Cattermole in the cold river water and all at once she saw a clear view of Eleanor’s hands fresh from the rigors of the wash tub; one crushed finger nail on her left index finger; a ragged purple scar on the back of her right hand that in a certain light could look like a dog’s head or a crude map of Australia. 

 

This unexpected recall of her mother’s wounded hands gave Hannalore a sense of comfort. Something that had been lost to her since she was a child had been given back. She closed the window and climbed beneath her grey blanket just before the dawn light began to break out behind the hills.

 

5

 

Sarah was the only woman permitted to speak to Hannalore during the time of interment. She brought food and brief snatches of conversation to Hannalore when the others were working on their assigned tasks. Hannalore did little else except lie on her cot and day dream. When the early morning sky was clear of rain clouds she watched the silhouette of the steep bush clad hills emerge with the coming of a new day. She listened for the roosters to serenade the return of the light. She listened to the restless sheep dogs rattling the doors of their wire cages. She listened to the sound of the wind sighing through the mamaku tree ferns that held their delicate green umbrellas above the regenerating scrub of kanuka and mahoe. 

 

When the wind changed direction and came from the south west it brought cold driving rain that formed rivulets of mud around the buildings. The women brought candles in at night and held them up to the windows so that they could see the depth of the slush outside. Mud was their enemy. Their long skirts became sodden with sticky clay soil as they scampered between the kitchen and dormitory and the children’s house. The pulley in the kitchen ceiling was strung with wet washing and the men complained that their shirts and union suits smelled of mutton chops and stewed tea.

 

When the south westerly blew itself out, fogs crept up from the river and devoured all before it. Not one leaf moved, not one bird sang. One by one the trees melted away. The fog brought a terrible silence outside her prison that emulated the social death within.

 

Without work her sense of time became distorted. The nights were long. After the last candle was extinguished the women who shared this hut with her went to sleep instantly and slept like the dead. It had never occurred to her before that all of them were in a constant state of exhaustion. They worked every minute of the day and beyond unless the candle box was empty and the night too dark to work at their mending.

 

The days were difficult to bear. Sarah brought her two slices of brown bread spread with honey for her breakfast. This had to satisfy her until teatime when she received a cup of water, a bowl of cooked vegetables or soup and another slice of bread.

 

On the sixth day Sarah pinched Hannalore’s upper arms to see if she was fading away. Hannalore said she was but not because of the food. Although her body remained the same her soul was becoming diminished.

 

‘I’m frightened,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I forget where I am. My body lies here but my spirit is sitting up in a tree waiting for me to come outside.’

‘Hush now,’ said Sarah. ‘Eat your potatoes and drink your tea.’

‘But tea has been forbidden to me.’

‘Drink it while it’s still hot.’

Hannalore gulped a mouthful of tea. ‘I wish my mother was here.’

‘You must be careful not to speak of her to the others.’

‘What colour were her eyes? I am forgetting to remember.’

‘Oh,’ said Sarah. ‘I thought this might happen.’

Hannah drank the rest of her tea. ‘If I just had one photograph…’

 

Sarah gathered up the dishes and put them onto a tray. She hid the empty cup in the front pocket of her apron. ‘Don’t tell anyone. About the tea I mean.’

‘Go now,’ said Hannalore. ‘Your transgression is safe with me.’

Third Week: 15-21 November, 2008

 

Today is Friday. A warm early summer’s day. At seven o’clock in the morning I watered some juvenile rosemary plants that I have propagated from the mother plant at my front door. Steam rose from the sunlit ground. Already the earth is heating up. In New Zealand, we are at the mercy of the ozone hole that forms each spring in the southern hemisphere. I forgot this a few days ago and sat in the full sunlight on my deck for almost 15 minutes. I got burned. Forgot to look at the time, forgot about the mid day sun. Forgot.

 

I can see Mount Mangatautiri in the distance from my kitchen window. This mountain has a 45 kilometre fence around the summit. This is no ordinary fence. It is made to keep out cats and dogs and ferrets and possums and stoats and weasels and any human being intent on harming the birds. Inside the fence a few male kiwis are (hopefully) incubating the eggs laid by the females. We in the Waikato district are waiting for the hatching with bated breath.

 

A wonderful project. But one that would have seemed completely bizarre a few short years ago. Building an expensive fence to keep kiwi incarcerated? Madness. Keeping out of the sun for months on end? More madness.

 

One of the consequences of getting older is the ability to experience change at a gut level. One lives in a state of permanent incredulity. How can it be that there are only a few kiwi left in the wild? How can it be in this land of wilderness and wonderful beaches we have learned to fear the sun? And how can it be that (according to some media reports) the book as we know it is about to disappear.

 

A year ago this month Amazon.com released a small e-reader (the Kindle) weighing only 10 ounces. It caused a sensation amongst publishers, writers and readers alike. It is a device that downloads digital books that can be accessed and read on demand. It is the literary equivalent of Apple’s iPod which has revolutionised the music industry by changing the power structures that formed the relationships between music makers and music sellers. Now, Sony’s e-book has been launched and some say that it is better than the Kindle. It comes to the consumer with 100 classic books already downloaded and is said to be much more user friendly than the clunky looking Kindle.

 

The revolution is underway and given what has happened in other areas of digital creativity, the e-book will soon get smaller, cheaper and make the world of books available to all at a very low cost. Call me an optimist, but I can’t wait.

 

If we can transport books from writer to reader at the click of a mouse without the cost of paper, transport and all the layers of management that make books so expensive, we will see the barriers between writers and readers melt away. Some say that this will result in a load of rubbish being published. What’s new? This has always been the case. But then, one readers ‘rubbish’ is another readers enjoyment. Publish everything, let it all hang out, let the reader decide. 

 

The fascinating thing for me is not so much the technology (which is nothing short of breathtaking) but the negative reaction to it. Many of us have powerful emotional attachments to books and to the act of reading itself. I am one of those people. I also know that any change always brings fear. When the first printing press was invented, some people were worried that if books became mass produced, anybody would be able to read them. Knowledge could no longer be controlled by the power elites.

 

It is ironic that I have chosen to set my first online fictional work in the past (1920). In the first few pages (posted last week), we see Hannalore rescuing a drowned man from a river that runs through the closed religious community where she lives. Now read on…

 

Part Two: Hannalore: The Music of the Spheres

 

One of the men dismounted and climbed down the rough track. It was Abraham. He removed his felt hat and held it by the brim. He ordered her to release her skirt from her waistband and to leave the body alone. It had nothing to do with them. He covered the man’s flaccid genitals with his hat. Juno giggled.

 

‘This innocent child should not be exposed to such sights,’ said Abraham. ‘I will ride into town tomorrow for the constable to come with a konaki to retrieve the body.’  

 

‘But he is still alive,’ said Hannalore. ‘God in his infinite grace has saved him.’ 

 

♫♫

 

Hannalore threw lumps of fuel into the fire box of the coal range. The room was infused with the smell of roasted potatoes and mutton. Abraham came into the kitchen and ordered the women on cooking duty to prepare barley soup and bread for their unexpected guest and to find him some decent clothes. Then send him on his way.

 

‘No,’ said Hannalore. ‘The poor man is too weak to make his way on foot through

the bush. He must stay until he has regained his strength.’

 

There was a hush; everything stopped except for the rhythmic clanking noise Juno was making by hitting an empty saucepan with a stick. Tap! Tap! Tap! 

 

Hannalore would not let it go. ‘The man’s horse has been swept away in the river taking his saddle packs with him. He has nothing left.’

 

Tap! Tap! Tap!

 

Hannalore opened the oven door and began to turn the potatoes over with a wooden spurtle. Abraham said for the sake of my sanity would someone please control that child.

 

Tap! Tap! Tap! Hannalore removed the pot and the stick from Juno. The child clicked her tongue and tried to mimic the sound of the stick. Tip! Tip! Tip!

 

Abraham said that the situation was murky. Jimmy and Conrad had been sent to the river to find the drowned man’s horse but after searching for many hours they had failed to find any trace of the beast. It was becoming clear that the situation required further investigation. There had been a suggestion that the man had been sent to spy on them.

 

Tip! Tip! Tip!

 

‘I am a fair man,’ said Abraham, ‘and one who adheres to the sacred principles of Christian justice. The stranger is permitted to stay until he has recovered on the condition that before he leaves there will be a hearing. Hannalore will have every chance to tell us the truth about the drowned man and how it was that she brought him back to life.’

 

He turned and left. Juno began to chant back to life back to life in her copy-cat voice. Hannalore placed a warning finger on her mouth and the child fell silent. The women in the kitchen came out of their collective trance and murmured between themselves. Hannalore turned her back on them and finished attending to the potatoes. The heat of the oven blasted her face.

 

The murmurs became louder and the comments and questions more pointed. Then the old woman Sarah stood up from her stool and clapped her hands. ‘Be silent,’ she said. ‘The food will be spoiled with this idle chatter.’

‘Her shame is written on her body,’ said Augusta. ‘There is no need for words.’

‘In that case,’ said Sarah, ‘let there be an end to it.’  

 

3

 

The trial was brief and to the point. Hannalore denied prior knowledge of Mr Wilfred Cattermole before she saw him washed up on the banks of the swimming hole. She did not understand why she had removed his underclothes. She did not understand why she was able to put the breath back in his body. Someone or something had guided her.

 

Mr Cattermole was seated in front of Hannalore in the meeting room. When he turned his head to look at her, she barely recognised him from the glacial being that had lain beneath her at the swimming hole. He looked relaxed and healthy and his beard was neatly trimmed. He was dressed like the other men; flannel shirt, denim dungarees and a felt hat.

 

Mr Cattermole was not able to explain what he was doing near the river. His memory had gone, flown away like a paper dart, skedaddled. He can remember leaving Piopio on his horse some time ago. After that, it’s a blank. No, he does not know Miss Hannalore Cooper. Never laid eyes on her before. He didn’t even know that this place existed. He would like to know when they had arrived here to take up the land.

 

‘We are not here to answer your questions,’ said Abraham. ‘You are the trespasser, not us. You must leave today and go back to where you belong. Jimmy and Conrad will take you to the boundary of our land.’

‘What was the name of the river that took my horse and almost took me?’

‘Our land has its own name and so does the river,’ said Abraham.

‘By the look of it I reckon it to be a tributary of the Mokau River.’

‘You will not find us on any map.’

Mr Cattermole stood up. ‘Don’t bother with an escort. I am well used to the ways of the bush. I can find my way back to Piopio.’

‘Go then,’ said Abraham. ‘There is a package of food and a bed roll outside on the porch. Take them and leave.’

 

Mr Cattermole turned at the door and doffed his hat at the assembly. He gave Hannalore a conspiratorial wink.

 

She was mortified by this unwanted gesture of familiarity.

 

Worse was to come. Abraham summoned her to the front of the room and instructed her to face her accusers. Did she not understand the gravity of her actions? She had shown disrespect towards the elders since the unfortunate incident by the river. Her arrogance must be reined in.

 

‘I am loath to do this,’ he said, ‘but I have no choice. You will be subject to the punishment of interment for the period of one lunar month beginning next Sabbath when the moon is at its lowest point.’

 

Hannalore could feel her body close down. Her legs shook. She tried to hold her head up high and look them in the eye but none would engage her.

 

Abraham asked the assembly to pray for her soul. Then he read from the book of Samuel from the Old Testament. Saul said unto his servants seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit… and his servants said to him behold there is a woman that has a familiar spirit at Endor…

 

The felt hats nodded in approval. Abraham put down his bible and took hold of Hannalore’s head. She locked her eyes onto his. She forced herself to stay calm. He will not make me cry, he will not…

 

‘Learn your lesson from the sacred book,’ said Abraham. ‘Only God has the right to bring back the dead. Do not enter the dark and dangerous world of the bone-conjuror even if a king himself begs you to do so.’

 

Hannalore could not speak.

 

Abraham went to the door and ushered in old Sarah. ‘Take her,’ he said. ‘Take her now. You know what to do.’

 

Second Week: 8-14 November, 2008-11-14

 

Have you ever experienced the uncanny feeling that when you embark upon a new project, information seeks you out? Suddenly, a book you pick up, a programme on TV, a movie, a chance meeting with a stranger, leads you to a richer understanding of what it is that you are attempting to do.

 

This week, I had the good fortune to meet up with Julie Starr, the current Editor in Residence at Wintec in Hamilton, New Zealand. Julie was an instrumental member of the team that developed the operations of The Daily Telegraph (UK) into one that integrated the website and print newspaper operations into a single, multi-purpose newsroom. Check out her blog on http://evolvingnewsroom.blogspot.com/

 

Julie directed me to the novel in progress that is currently being published piece by piece in The Daily Telegraph by the prolific writer Alexander McCall Smith. He writes a short section of the book (Corduroy Mansions) publishes it online and then invites comments from readers on how to proceed. The result is astounding. Instead of the reader receiving the text as a finished product signed sealed and delivered, there is always a sense of flexibility and above all, of a genuine creative process in action. 

 

To discover this interactive work by a prominent writer gave me confidence to begin my own project; a weekly journal of the processes involved in the writing of a novel. It looks so bland written down like this; it reminds me of a list of ingredients in a cook book. Cream butter and sugar, beat in one large egg…This is all very well but this is a fictional story and decisions have to be made about who is doing the cooking, who is going to eat it, and what the hell happens next. The author necessarily must become a mad chef running amuck in the kitchen.

 

Writing fiction is a surreal art. I have learned to switch from the world of imagination to the mundane world without missing a beat; but this took years to perfect. I write in a room at the front of my house. There is constant noise from the high school across the street. Each afternoon dozens of noisy schoolboys swarm like bees overdosed on testosterone to wait at the bus stop at my front gate. They hit the metal bus shelter with sticks of wood or their fists because they enjoy making a big noise. I don’t have a problem with this, in fact, I have become so habituated to their exuberant joy at being let out from their classroom cages that I miss them when the schools close down for holidays. 

 

The place where one writes, the rituals of writing, are very important. Each writer has to learn the pattern or structure that suits them best. Some writers need absolute silence and one phone call can throw them away from the virtual world and into the everyday world of repetitive domestic events. I was once like this. However, after years of immersing myself in the internet I am now able to cruise quite happily between the virtual world and the world of brute experience. I believe that the internet in all its various forms is radically changing the essence of human consciousness (and community) in ways that we have as yet barely begun to understand.

 

My decision to write online in an interactive fashion has already changed the framing and the structure of my new novel. Originally, I had planned to make the book the same length of my other novels, that is, about a hundred and twenty thousand words. This new one (possible working title, A House for Hannalore? The Raupo Hut?) needs to be shorter and instead of my usual practice of arranging the work into long chapters, it needs to be somewhat more episodic in style. I was wondering how to do this when serendipity struck again and I was given a copy of the latest novel from Cormac McCarthy called The Road. This book is written in short sharp fragments but the narrative holds together brilliantly. There are two main characters, a father and a son and it is written exclusively from the point-of-view of the father.

 

I have taken this lesson to heart. Long rambling books with a multitude of characters are fine for printed novels but this style may become too cumbersome for online writing. (I hope I am mistaken about this.) So I will have one main character, Hannalore, and the story will all come from her point-of-view. This method does have some restrictions in that the reader/interrogator only ever sees what she sees. Originally, I wanted to write this book with a time span of three decades. I have decided to shrink this down into a time frame of a few years, perhaps 1920 to 1925.

 

To finish the blog this week I am taking my courage into both hands and providing that terrifying first page. Next week, I will talk more about the themes of the book. I can’t talk about the plot because there isn’t one. The plot will evolve and develop at its own pace and with the input of whomsoever wants to make comments. I do know how the story starts and how it will end but that’s all.

 

 

CHAPTER ONE: The Music of the Spheres

 

1

Some floods are silent, slow moving, tone deaf to the possibility of fugue and counterpoint. Not this one. For weeks, the rain had held a polyphonic conversation on the galvanised iron roofs of the settlement. Sometimes the rain sang a lullaby, but when the wind came roaring up the valley pushing a wall of water before it, the roofs reverberated like a kettle drum. There was talk about the rising level of the river. Abraham announced that they faced the prospect of becoming completely cut off from their supply route. Hannalore was not concerned. Wet or fine, her tasks in the community remained much the same. The only problem was Juno. She hated to be cooped up inside and Hannalore had to devise extra activities in order to keep her apart from the others. 

One afternoon, the rain drifted away. At first the change was so slight that Hannalore did not register the fact that a pale sunlight was threading through the thin white trunks of the mahoe that grew in profusion outside the kitchen windows.

Juno came to tell her about the return of the light.  ‘I want to go outside,’ she said. 

Hannalore took her hand and told her to be quiet. She led Juno into the washhouse. It was set apart from the other buildings in the settlement. They took oilskins from the coat rack and put them on over their knitted tops and long skirts.  They removed their cotton slippers and borrowed two pairs of leather boots from the men’s shoe rack. Hannalore had to tie the laces around the outside of Juno’s boots to stop them from falling off her tiny feet.

They crept away into the bush. The sodden branches of trees and ferns hung low with moisture and they had to constantly duck their heads to avoid taking a cold shower. Soon, their head scarves were soaking wet and Hannalore wrung them out and placed them on a manuka bush in the hope that the sun might gain strength in the late afternoon.

They heard the river roaring below them before they saw it. Hannalore helped Juno down the steep track to the swimming hole. The flood water had eaten away the shallow banks of the place where in summer the women came to wash their long hair in the cool fresh water.

Now, in flood, the once gentle stream was dark and agitated. The weeping willows were half submerged and the swift current tore at their lower branches as if to rip them from the arms of the mother lode.

Juno sat on a flat rock at the edge of the water. She began to remove her boots. Hannalore restrained her. ‘No paddling today, too dangerous.’ 

Juno pointed at one of the willow trees. ‘A man down there.’ 

‘What?’

‘A man in the water.’

At first Hannalore thought that Juno was playing games; she often saw things in the physical world that existed only in her mind. Hannalore looked more closely. Yes, there was something caught in an eddy at the edge of the water. A willow tree obscured the view. She walked slowly along the edge of the swimming hole being careful not to sink down into the mud.

Then she saw it. A man lying on his back, half out of the water, trapped by a fallen branch. One arm was stretched above his head displaying a roughened hand with thickened fingers. She took hold of this hand and it was dead and cold and white.  

Juno called out. Hannalore could not make out her words. Something about a horse. She sounded frightened. Hannalore ordered her to stay exactly where she was.  

All at once the hand moved. It clung to Hannalore’s fingers like a disembodied claw. Whatever this entity was, life still moved within.

Hannalore grasped the man beneath his arm pits and began to pull him clear of the fallen branch. She managed to pull him onto the mud at the edge of the water. She turned his head towards her and saw the ugly face of a stranger, a face with a matted beard, purple lips and stained teeth. 

She ripped off his worsted underwear and tucked her skirt up into her waistband. She sat astride his naked body and placed her lips on his. She blew the air into his mouth until she saw his lungs shudder. She turned him on his side and watched him disgorge copious amounts of river water and dark oily clumps of something solid. 

She became aware that she was under surveillance. Juno silently appeared at her side. Hannalore was about to reprimand her for coming too close when she looked up and saw two men on horseback, partially obscured by the regenerating scrub. She called out to them. ‘Help me, please, help me!’ 

 

(to be continued…)

 

 

First week: 1-7 November 2008

 

Come with me on a journey to discover a story not yet told. I am about to embark on writing a new novel, my seventh book, and I want you to accompany me through the process of discovery, disappointment, rage, joy, depression, that almost without exception, becomes the everyday world of anyone who aspires to write a novel or a volume of creative non-fiction like memoir.

 

I am not speaking exclusively from my own experience, although I pay frequent visits to this pit of despair. Other writers sometimes speak of this space as an abyss, a place without words, a place that has no language, no meaning. 

 

On Tuesday, through the wonderful technology of free computer to computer telephone calls (Skype), I heard my friend Niloufar Talebi  speak of this space from Upstate New York where she is currently a writer in residence at Ledig House. Niloufar has spent the last few years working on the Translation Project, a multi-media project to bring contemporary Iranian literature to the world. Niloufar’s particular task was to track down a group of exiled Iranian poets and translate their work from Persian into English. The result is a fine publication titled Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians Around the World: (North Altantic Books, 2008, USA).

 

A terrific project and a great achievement for one so young. But now, here she is, in transition, moving from the difficult work of translation to writing her own original work. From scratch. She wants to merge the genres of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She said that she felt a great emptiness. Like smoke and mirrors she grasped a few themes she was interested in but they were vague and she could not get a grip on what to write about or how to write it; in other words, she had entered that abyss of emptiness where one stares at the blank screen day after day, write a few words here and there, yell out loud this is a load of banal crap! And other more vulgar expressions.

 

Three writers that I know have published one successful book and signed a two book deal with a publisher only to be completely unable to produce that second book within the time limit set by the publisher. One became ill with grief. Another stopped writing all together. Why does this happen? Perhaps it has something to do with the nature of language itself. Creative writing is an intensely personal experience. Any public outing of your own words is fraught with danger. Judgement in the guise of ‘helpful’ criticism or by low sales and complete indifference from the literary community can destroy body and mind.

 

I have thought about this problem ever since I started to write and publish in the early nineties. Enter the internet. I believe that the loneliness of the creative writer can be overcome by the evolving technology of the internet, where every writer can now control his or her writing away from the necessity of pleasing an editor or a publisher. The blog in particular allows us to enter a form of virtual community with other writers and readers from all around the world. The blog will not obliterate the traditional publishing scene but will become, I believe, a complimentary technique of creating a link between writer and reader that is intimate, immediate, and an ever changing mode of expression.

 

This my first blog. I will be posting a blog every Friday from now on. Next week, I will begin work on my next book. I have done months of research for this book which will be set within New Zealand/Aotearoa from 1920 to 1945. I have done some preliminary work on the main character, a young woman aged twenty called Hannalore. Do you think that this is too unusual a name for the period? Hannah was a popular name at the time.  Hannalore is a German name and I do have a reason for calling my character this instead of Hannah. More of this later.

 

I want to develop this blog along the lines of sharing Hannalore’s story with you as I write it. Usually, I never show the text to anyone until I have completed the final draft. I hope that this will ease the tightrope that, in common with many other writers, I walk each day. How can I to achieve the necessary solitude that writing a long fictional work entails without becoming a grumpy old hermit who refuses to answer the phone or go to the door when someone knocks? How can I get a balance between writing and being sociable? How can I get over the feeling of being alone with my own thoughts as I write another book? These are questions that I would love to share with you.

 

Postscript: Good news from upstate New York on Thursday. Niloufar sent a chat message to inform me that after our conversation, her juices had begun to flow and she was writing furiously.