Beryl Fletcher

 

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.   

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 7:53 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.