Beryl Fletcher

Blog Number Ten: 10 January, 2009

 

It’s Friday night. And hot. The TV news contains the usual holiday news: murders, road accidents, giant jellyfish, drownings, and yesterday, the most bizarre incident, two young brothers killed by the collapse of a massive ice overhang at Fox Glacier. 

 

New Zealand people (and tourists) seem to throw caution to the winds during the summer holidays. Talkback radio ran hot on how stupid people are to forget life jackets, to be beneath an ice shelf, to go hiking alone, to get drunk and fall into rivers, to go out to sea on a jet ski, to roar along rivers in jet boats, to drink a bottle of whisky and get stuck up on a ledge in a remote bush area… it goes on and on.

 

There is a puritanical streak in the New Zealand psyche that loves to denigrate any individual who comes to a sticky end. For example, there has been a spate of fatal house fires, the latest killing four children. The cause of the fire was a chip pan that was left unattended. I could hardly believe my ears when people rang a local talkback radio with various comments on the tragedy that ranged from claiming that the parents were drunk (not true) to bad mouthing the parents for allowing their brood to eat cheap filling foods like chips instead of healthy snacks like avocado and brie and smoked salmon. (Words fail me). After rubbishing the victims, the callers quite often called for further legislation or an enquiry into the particular Government Department that ‘should have’ prevented the accident in the first place. The cultural reaction to tragedy is a fascinating topic and one that writers have often mined. The New Zealand attitude (and I confess I am sometimes guilty of this) claims that everyone else (except me) is a bloody idiot, and why doesn’t the government DO something about it?

 

This week, Peter Wells and I began to teach the summer school on Creative Writing at the University of Waikato. We were surprised and somewhat disconcerted when fifty students turned up on the first day. The room was crowded and hot and some of the students had to wait until some extra chairs could be found. But the students seemed to be a good humoured mob and keen to learn. The in-class exercise on creating a character devised by Peter went well.

 

Forty-three students came to the second session. We had a larger room this time and just enough chairs. This class is much bigger than the one we ran last year and I think this will change the interaction between us and the students. There may be less time to give the students the individual help that we were able to provide last year. However, my impression so far is that there are a greater number of students this year who have already had some exposure to creative writing.

 

I began the lecture by covering some of the technical aspects of writing the short story using the wonderful story by Tolstoy, How Much Land Does a Man Need? I followed this with discussion and analysis of a few New Zealand stories including the recently published story Closer by Peter Wells and My Beautiful Balloon by Carl Nixon.

 

Peter Wells finished off the class by talking about the book On Chesil Beach written by Ian McEwan. This was to give the students some guidance to the format and style of the book reviews that they will be presenting to the class starting from next week.

 

Saturday, 10 January, 2009

I feel somewhat saturated with fiction today so after finishing this blog I had planned to read the first few chapters of the book my sister Alison lent me. She called it a ‘must read’.  It’s called Climate Wars, and is written by Gwynne Dyer. I’ve just flicked through the first page of the introduction. Dyer, a respected commentator on international conflict and socio-political change, goes way beyond giving us a run down of the science of climate change. He points out that political realities will override most attempts to co-ordinate the measures required to heal the wounds that we have inflicted upon the planet. He predicts a rise in the use of violence in the food wars, the water wars, and the civil wars that are to come.  

 

Oh hell. Come back fiction; all is forgiven.

 

So sorry not to be able to post the next episode of The Black Stones of Hannalore this week. No, this is not a case of writer’s block. The reason is the course on Creative Writing and the extra work and energy it has required to get it off the ground. I will try to behave myself this coming week and work harder to write the next fragment. This is more for my benefit than the readers. I know from bitter experience that once you leave characters stuck in a particular place they sometimes wander off and do things that contradict their back story and the sense of character that you are trying to convey.

 

 

Blog Number Nine: 2 January 2009

 

Mid December: I have begun to write the second part of my novella The Black Stones of Hannalore. I should be honest and say that I have almost begun to write.

 

It’s Tuesday morning two days before the old year of 2008 dies for ever. I am sitting at my laptop not writing. Waiting for the first two paragraphs to begin Part Two.  Waiting waiting. There are so many ways of starting a new part of the story. An added problem is that as a novelist, I have a natural inclination to spin out the lives of my characters in minute detail that could ruin the concise format of the novella that I am trying to write.   

 

To make matters worse, I keep looking out of my workroom to make sure that my giant tomato plants have not fallen over with the weight of the fruit. My partner Mike had to come to the rescue with some hooks and stout cord to attach the plants to the wooden box where they are trapped within tomato cages. Just as well he was a Wolf Cub in Canada during his boyhood. Out of the dim past came the memory of a couple of professional looking knots invented no doubt to fasten a sail to the bowsprit or some other nautical function.

 

The tomatoes have become so large and top heavy that when the westerly blew yesterday and the rain fell in horizontal strings, I feared for the plants that I have watched and watered for two months now.

 

See how writers divert their imagination? Here I am worrying how to introduce Hannalore and Juno into the frontier town of Piopio in the King Country and how to reveal the relationship between a man that Hannalore is about to meet and her lost mother… and all I can do is think about are two tomato plants that have grow too big for their boots.

 

It’s now Thursday the 1^st of January 2009.

 

A hot afternoon. Progress! I think… Outside, the motor mowers roar across the extensive grounds of the boy’s high school just opposite my house. School is out until late February. I miss the raucous scenes at the bus stop when the boys are let out of their cages each afternoon. I once used the noise of the boys to excuse myself from the keyboard until I realised that I was playing mind games. We writers excel at making excuses not to write. It is something to do with the deep terror engendered when creating imaginative stories in written language. Once written, once published, they stare back at us flawed, banal and trivial. The only safe way to cope with this is to stop writing. Or hide your work away. Or grow a thick skin. Or learn to love it. 

 

But I’ve started to write Part Two and although it is painfully slow, I think that the ‘voice’ and the characters that I have established carry over well from the first part of the story.  I’ll leave the readers to decide if it works or not.

 

I have worked out over the years a system that seems to work for me. I understand the fatal error of distraction. Each morning I try out my excuses why I cannot write today. Too busy, too tired etc etc. But I know from experience that writing long works of fiction requires a certain stubborn doggedness that has some kinship with athletes who train each day for years to produce the desired effect in one event. The ‘writing’ part of the brain needs to be used each day. It does not need to be a long workout; three hours is my limit when writing the first draft. I consider it a good work day if I produce 300 to 400 words in this time. Little and often seems to be the answer. For me anyway.

 

The other thing that works for me is that I play CDs that seem to fit the mood of the section I am writing. Classical mostly, not opera though. Anything with words must be banned because I begin to listen to the words and this diverts me from the ‘words’ I am battling with on screen.

 

For those of you following the story of The Black Stones of Hannelore go to the PAGES menu on the right hand side of your screen and click on Hannelore: Part Two.

 

 

 

 

 

Blog Number Eight: 28 December 2008

 

So much for Christmas then. I have survived, just, the unwanted Christmas cards that once flooded my mail box. You know the ones; chirping red robins sitting on a snow covered branch, or that fake old man in the red suit driving a sledge. I must be getting through to my family and friends though, because this year, I got cards with pictures of native birds and pohutukawa trees. Two were standouts. My granddaughter who designs and makes her own cards gave me one decorated with pentacles and instructing me in big bold silver letters HAVE A MERRY HEXMAS. And a dear friend, currently living in northern England and coping with icy winds and snow drifts, sent me a card with a photo of New York City on it because “Glittering NYC is where I’m not-so we have that in common this Christmas”.

 

I loved this card especially when I read the back of it and found out that the card was made from renewable trees and the ink from soya beans. It made my vegetarian heart sing. Problem is, I don’t know whether to keep it or eat it.   

 

The weather is warm and sunny and Hamilton city has become eerily quiet. That is because everyone has left to go to the beach. This town is right in the middle of the North Island and “too far” from the sea. By local standards that it. But the west coast is only a fifty minute drive from my house and the east coast about an hour and a half drive.

 

I am constantly reminded that my homeland is an island. Has this shaped our culture? Damn right it has. New Zealand people have the sea in their bones. To live near it or on it is the goal. To live far from it is to be bereft.    

 

I am in the process of reading books that illustrate the various forms of creative non-fiction that may be of use to me when I begin tutoring for the course that Peter Wells is lecturing for summer school at the University of Waikato. I came across a book called The Ash Range written by the celebrated Australian poet Laurie Duggan. (Pan Books, Melbourne, 1987). The book is an epic story written in prose and poetry about the white settlement of Gippsland, Victoria. The foreword is written by Don Watson. The very first sentence sets the tone. “Until very recently I had not realised that Gippsland was an idea as well as a place.” He goes on to talk about the prominence of snake stories that he heard as a child. “Deep in the Gippsland subconscious there lay a coiled snake. If it had been a Catholic province I believe there would have been an annual festival.”

 

This got me thinking. If we had to choose one symbol that haunts our subconscious it would have to be a waka of some kind; a double-hulled canoe or a sailing ship. We are always on the move, a restless people, a people who have an extremely high percentage of the population with current passports. It is a standing joke that wherever you go in the world, no matter how remote, some @#%$* Kiwi will already be there in jandals and shorts and drinking a steinlager.

 

There is currently a moral panic going on about massive numbers of New Zealand people moving across the Tasman Sea to Australia. It has become a political football, each party blaming the other for the exodus. Waste of time. It is the old pattern repeating itself albeit in a different guise. When questioned about their reasons for leaving, the ‘traitors’ almost always quote economic advantages. It does not matter how many people crunch the numbers to prove that the taxes are higher there and the cost of living in a city like Sydney horrendous, the myth is firmly entrenched.

 

Anyone who strives to ‘get ahead’ (meaning get more affluent) is praised to the skies even when we are in the grip of the total breakdown of the world-wide monetary system. The media is flooded with finger-pointing moralisers who cry Greed Greed Greed! Everybody wants too much, they say, and we are doomed. It is nonsense to put the blame on individuals and groups for being too greedy. We as a society are ear bashed daily about the ‘need for greed’. Witness the current push to make people spend more on Christmas presents to ‘keep the economy going’. Capitalism needs greed and constant growth to stay afloat. Let’s be honest; we praise the self-made person, we are obsessed with the rich and we all dream of winning lotto. Besides, it is impossible to pull out one aspect of capitalism and decry it without seeing it as a moral universe far deeper than the superficial economic arguments for and against the institutions that keep the system afloat.

 

I find the media so tedious at the moment. As we approach New Year all we hear about are the so-called highlights of 2008. This includes the ‘best’ people of the year. Mostly sports heroes of course. To write an article about the worst people of the year would be fun. Any takers?  Who would they be? People like me who don’t own anything and have a substantial sum of money in a bank account that pays no interest? I do this through choice. But guess what, I am seen as a fool to live like this. More than a fool, as one who has somehow let the side down, big time.

 

I am in the process of changing the format of my website. I have had some feedback from readers who have become a little lost in the online writing. From this week on, my blog will be separate from the story of Hannalore. I will continue to post the story on the Page part of the software. If you look at the right hand side of the opening page of my website, you will see a new page titled Hannalore: Part One. This will be a repeat of the story so far with a small addition at the end. This will enable the readers to follow the story as it is written and will be easier to read in chronological order. The novella will be in three parts and with numbered sections as before. I would welcome any feedback on the new format.

 

Blog Number Seven: 13-19 Dec 2008

 

One of the themes that fascinates me as a writer is the constant shifting of identities that we undergo in one lifetime. This has accelerated markedly in the modern age. For the first half of the twentieth century you had your life path laid out before you at birth; rigid, under constant judgment, inflexible. You passed through the stages of child, parent, and aged person and took on the roles and clothing and speech of your group. People who enjoyed these roles thrived within them. My own parents had a long successful marriage lived entirely within the prescribed gender roles of breadwinner and mother.

 

This year I became seventy. I was born in 1938, the third pregnancy in a row for my mother Joan. I spent most of the first decades of my life trying not to ‘be her’. I loved her but I did not want her life.

 

My mother was a wonderful woman who overcame her lack of education (she did not make it to high school) to be someone who developed a deep understanding of how human relationships worked. I am very close to my four siblings, all of us in our sixties and seventies, and I’m sure that I owe this legacy to my mother’s wisdom.

 

I have a clear memory of the very moment when she realised that she had become an old woman. She was seventy-two and was ill with the flu. I was caring for her. She had a mild fever and was lying in her bed. Outside her room a winter’s storm raged. Her left hand was on top of the duvet. All at once she let out a devastating cry: whose hand is that, whose hand?

 

‘Don’t be silly Mum. It’s your own hand.’

‘But it looks old.’

‘That’s because you are old.’

 

A silence. I could have bitten my tongue off. She gave me an anguished look, not of anger, but of fear.  She whispered, How did this happen? I don’t want this…

 

From that moment on, my mother became what some would term a hypochondriac. She kept a strict watch on her bodily ills, both real and imagined, that eventually became dramatic characters in their own right. She kept quite good health until the age of eighty and died at eighty-three, demented, fearful, crying for her own mother, not understanding why she and my father had to live apart in the last eighteen months of her life.

 

Every aging person develops a reassuring identity that creates their final narrative. This may be a stubborn adherence to an identity long gone; in the case of women, a youthful way of dressing from a bygone era (the ubiquitous beehive hairstyle springs to mind) and for men, a sexually desirable person who chats up any woman under thirty, a practice that may earn him the derogatory title of ‘dirty old man’. 

 

I sometimes ask my younger women friends what sort of old woman they want to be. There is usually a shocked response. Like my mother, they simply can’t grasp the fact that they may one day be an old woman. In this time of the rapid rise in the numbers of old people on the planet, the zeitgeist is playing a dangerous game of hide and seek with us. Coming ready or not Boomers! A woman is not permitted to look old. To do so, is seen as letting down the side. Get rid of wrinkles, age spots, flabby chins and above all grey hair. Shove hormonal cream up your vagina (what’s left of it) and keep your g-string on to hide your bald mound. 

 

I am going to stick my neck out here. Old people are not a sexual turn on. Sex is for the young. Sex for life is a cruel commercial slogan. (Please note that I am referring here to heterosexual sex.) Women become invisible to the male gaze at about fifty. It’s great to move around the world as an invisible being; a blessed relief to be honest.

 

Here are some of my resolutions so far on becoming an old woman.

 

I will use the word old. It’s honest. I will not say things like so-and-so is fifty years young.

 

I will not use age specific words like sprightly, querulous, or refer to someone as ‘young for her age’ (whatever the hell that means). 

 

I will not dye my hair or cut my pigtails off. (Why is it that pigtails on an old woman annoys some people? I have been confronted by complete strangers who want to know why I want to look like a school girl.)

 

I will not get plastic surgery or do botox to try and look young.

 

I will not turn into one of those women who try to shock others so that they are seen as moving outside the stereotype of ‘little old lady’.

 

And above all, if I get tired and need a ‘nana nap’ or use a walking stick or anything else that age throws up at me, I will damn well do it. This is because the popular media and every health book you pick up has a recipe for NOT getting old. We see men of ninety running marathons, old women enduring pregnancy and surgical births after having other people’s embryos implanted in their ancient wombs and so on… but these people are exceptions. Most old people have health issues either chronic or acute. Once you hit seventy, your genes (if not your sins) will find you out.

 

What bugs me is that if you do get an illness, it’s seen as your OWN FAULT. If only you had exercised more, if only you had taken omega three or anti-oxidants, if only you had not boozed your brains out when you were a teenager or eaten too much sugar, if only you had kept your knickers on, blah blah blah… 

 

OK. So what’s all this rave got to do with writing? Plenty. A recent article (forgotten where I read it) asked why it is that old men [sic] were still writing novels. Writers like the great Philip Roth were quoted as an example of older male writers honing in on bodily decay as metaphors of social ills…

 

I fail to see the relevance of this critique. Of course a writer changes as his or her life (and the outer world) changes. Anyway, who would want to read work from a writer stuck in one era writing the same book over and over again. Old people make terrific characters in fiction. They are interesting, annoying, dogmatic, clever, whatever you want to make of them. Some writers avoid them like the plague because old people are thought to live (mostly) in the past and are just hanging around waiting to die and this can bore the readers.  

 

OK. Here’s a challenge for writers out there. Write a short piece of fiction from the point-of-view of an old person in the present tense without flash backs. Dare you to.   

 

 

Part Six: The Black Stones of Hannalore

 

Last week, in part five, Hannalore and Juno leave the community settlement with the help of Sarah and Jimmy. Sarah gives Hannalore three photos, two of her lost mother Eleanor and one of the front window of a men’s wear shop that Hannalore has never seen before. She and Juno climb aboard the konaki (bush sledge). Hannalore becomes fearful of Jimmy who begins to behave in a strange manner towards Juno. Jimmy leaves them alone in the bush to repair the konaki and together they run away from him only to lose their way in the bush.

Now read on….  

 

 

10

 

They struggled for hours through thick bush. Hannalore had no idea where they were. She knew that they should try to find a creek and follow it downhill until it joined a larger river, but they seemed to be climbing uphill for most of the time. Although the rain had stopped the trees were still dripping with moisture. The bush was stirring with birds drying off their feathers. A few drowsy bees drifted around looking for nectar. The air smelled fresh and sharp with an aroma that Hannalore recognised as rewarewa, the native honeysuckle. She took this early flowering to be a good omen that warm dry weather was on its way and that soon this wild wet winter would be over.

 

A kereru flapped noisily just above Juno’s head. She shrieked and tripped over a fallen ponga. She cut open her left leg just beneath the knee and shrieked even more loudly when she saw the blood emerging from a rip in her woollen stocking.

 

Hannalore tore the fabric away from the cut. She washed the wound with a handful of precious water from the bottle. She retrieved the package of sandwiches from the pikau and smeared her fingers with honey. She transferred the honey from her fingers to the patch of blood below Juno’s knee. The blood thickened and the bleeding stopped.   

Juno said that she wanted to go home. She hated the bush, she hated the bird that had tried to cut her legs off with its wings. If they had stayed with Jimmy he would have killed it stone dead. 

 

‘Hush now,’ said Hannalore. ‘You must be brave. We still have a long way to go.’

 

Juno announced that she was hungry. Hannalore waited until Juno had eaten some cheese and one of the thick pieces of bread before she suggested that they keep on walking.

Juno was reluctant to move. She said that her feet hurt and she was tired. Out came her lower lip again.

 

Hannalore lifted her pikau onto her back. ‘I’m off then,’ she said. ‘See you later.’ She left Juno lying against the fallen ponga trunk and did not look back. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell the girl that this journey was to save her from the clutches of strangers but she knew that it was pointless to try to make Juno understand her vulnerability. Juno had just one version of events, her own. Her world was what she saw from her own eyes and what she heard through her own ears. 

 

Hannalore remembered something that Sarah had said when she passed on the information that the community wanted to get rid of Juno. Be careful not to build your life around another person. To love too much can be the worst sort of tyranny.

 

Hannalore paused to get her breath. Several days ago it had become clear to her that Juno’s expulsion was not the only reason she was leaving the settlement. It had provided the catalyst and the justification for her actions but there were deeper issues at stake. The long period of solitude imposed upon her by the elders had given her time to think about herself. This was against the rules of the community. Selfishness, in all its manifestations, had to be ruthlessly stamped out. 

 

Hannalore heard something rustle in the undergrowth. She and Juno sometimes played hide and seek in the bush.  It could be that Juno was creeping up on her. The undergrowth at the edge of the track was thick with the tangled spiked branches of juvenile matai. Hannalore left the track and crouched behind a tree trunk. She waited to hear Juno reciting the familiar chant, coming ready or not!

 

Something moved behind her. She jumped up and turned around. Facing her was a black and white dog, a border collie. The dog moved slowly towards her with its stomach close to the ground, stalking her. It did not take its eyes off her, almost mesmerising her. She saw two eyes staring up at her, one brown the other a startling blue ringed in black.

 

‘Here boy,’ she said. ‘Here boy, come here.’

 

The dog seemed confused. It stopped in mid track, lowered its eyes and trotted off without making a sound. Hannalore wondered where the dog had come from. She knew all the dogs at the settlement. She had raised some of them from puppies, spoiling them until they were ready to be taken away by the men to be trained into working dogs. 

 

This animal was out of its territory. Unless it was lost, there must be someone who had allowed it to come into the dense bush. The dog would know how to return to his master. Perhaps she could persuade the dog to come back to her and lead her down to cleared ground and to the river bank. She put her fingers in her mouth and whistled. Nothing. She whistled again, more loudly this time. Again, no response.

 

She was not looking forward to another night out in the high country with Juno. As if on cue, she heard Juno calling out to her. ‘Where are you? Where are you?’

 

Hannalore ran back along the track. She found Juno walking along slowly with her head down. Hannalore said she was sorry for leaving her for so long. She asked her where the bed rolls were.

‘Dunno,’ said Juno.

‘You must have left them somewhere. We can go back and find them together.’

‘Jimmy took them.’

‘Did you see him?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Never mind. We can find some ferns to make a bed.’

Juno cheered up. ‘Make a bed, make a bed.’

 

They walked on. Hannalore told Juno about the strange dog with one brown eye and one blue eye. Juno claimed to have seen him too. He could not bark so he said hello chickadee to her instead.

 

Towards the end of the afternoon they stumbled upon a track that Hannalore hoped would lead them out of the high country. Much to her relief, it did. They descended a steep hill. The bush thinned out. The ground beneath their feet became wet and swampy. Now, there were cabbage trees and rafts of dense green flax bushes and wading birds rising up in huge flocks into the fading sun.

 

They came upon a creek in flood. Hannalore filled the empty water bottle. The light was deepening. They moved onto higher ground. Juno said she was hungry and tired and that there was a blister on her heel. Hannalore said soon we will eat but first we will make our bivouac for the night.

 

She took a knife from her pikau and slashed some branches from a clump of silver tree-ferns that grew close to an outcrop of rock. A cleft in the rock provided some shelter from the rising south-westerly wind. She unfolded the canvas ground sheet she had taken from Jimmy’s konaki. Her initial idea was to string it up to make a roof but she did not have a cord to pass through the metal eyelets to secure it to the rock. 

 

Juno played with a fern frond turning it round and round from green to silver and back again. Hannalore asked her to put it back on the ground with the others. It was part of their bed for the night. Juno refused. Hannalore felt like shaking her but she knew that she must not show anger or fear in front of Juno. Every decision she made from this moment on would have a direct bearing on whether or not they survived.

 

‘Don’t wanna sleep here,’ said Juno.

‘But you like the silver leaves. Look how they shine.’

‘I want to go to the little house.’

‘We can’t go back. Sarah would be angry with us.’

‘Sarah not here.’

Hannalore gave up trying to reason with Juno. She unwrapped the remains of the bread and the cheese wheel. Juno ate most of it and drank the water bottle dry. Then she announced that she wanted to go to the dunny to do number twos. Where was it?

 

‘You’ll have to use the ground. Go over there behind the rock well away from our shelter,’ said Hannalore. ‘I’ll go back to the creek to get some more water. Stay close, don’t stray.’

 

Juno nodded. Hannalore made her way back to the flooded creek and refilled the bottle. She found a small bush of rangiora half way up the bank and collected some of the leaves for Juno to use as toilet paper. She sat for a while on a flat rock looking down at the rushing water breaking over the sandstone outcrops at the edge of the bank.

 

The task of keeping Juno free from fear and physical harm was greatly magnified out here in the wilderness. Back at the settlement there were always others to share the burden. Perhaps she had been too hasty in stealing this needy and damaged child away. But things could be worse. This creek could lead them into a tributary of the Mokau. Tomorrow at first light she planned to follow the direction of the water and see where it takes them. But first she needed to get both of them through the night.

 

10

 

She hurried back to their shelter through the darkening air. The wind had died down. The cabbage trees had transformed their spiked heads into stark silhouettes against the backdrop of a vivid sunset muddied by black streaks of dissipating rain clouds.

 

She reached the rocky outcrop. The canvas groundsheet and the pikau were gone. Where was Juno? She called to her. There was no reply. She called again, more loudly this time. Again, no answer. She put her fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle. The rays of the dying sun slipped down another notch.

 

She sank down onto the fronds of silver fern and put her face in her hands. This was the end. Juno could be drowning nearby in a foul swamp, calling for her, deathly afraid. Or perhaps Jimmy had tracked them down and taken Juno away. This would explain the missing pikau and groundsheet.

 

Something touched her left leg. It was the dog with the odd eyes. He pressed his damp nose once more against her leg. He made no sound. Hannalore grasped his collar. She was determined that the dog was not going to leave her again. She tied her headscarf onto his collar to make a short lead. The dog did not seem to mind and made no effort to get away.  She walked him around the rocky outcrop for a few minutes. She had hoped that he would take her to Juno. ‘Seek,’ she said. ‘Seek, seek.’

 

But he just stared up at her with one luminous blue eye and one dull brown one, docile, obedient, walking when she walked, stopping when she stopped. 

 

Then she saw it; a light shining from within a dense cluster of manuka and cabbage trees in the distance. A flickering light. And that meant human company.

 

She ran, holding onto the short lead on the dog’s collar, almost choking him in the process. He willingly kept pace with her.

 

The light had seemed close at first but the more she ran, the further away the grove of trees seemed to be. Her shoes were heavy with mud and her calf muscles were stricken with cramps. A tremor began to beat inside her chest; tick tick tick. She wondered if she was losing her senses.

 

Then the dog stopped running. He lay flat on the ground and rested his face on his front paws.  Hannalore untied the headscarf from the dog’s collar. ‘Sorry boy,’ she said. ‘You are as lost as I am.’

 

The dog jumped to his feet and set off at a good pace. He ran ahead of Hannalore and when she faltered he waited for her to catch up. Ah, there were the cabbage trees and the manuka and there was the light, stronger now. She did not see the hut at first. It blended in perfectly with the trees that sheltered it. It was a raupo hut, partly demolished, but with most of the walls still intact. And yes, there was a fire burning inside. Wisps of smoke threaded between the gaps in the bundles of nikau palms that formed the low slung roof. A finger of smoke rose from the slab chimney set apart from the back wall. The entrance lay open to the weather, the door long gone. 

 

Juno was inside, sitting on a wooden butter box close to the chimney, holding her hands out to the fire. 

 

‘Who brought you here?’ asked Hannalore.

‘No one,’ said Juno. ‘I seen it for myself.’

 

Hannalore looked around. The hut was old, and did not seem to be inhabited. There was a rectangular gap in the side wall that could have performed the function of a window but there was no glass, just the chewed remnants of a sheet of unbleached calico that someone had tacked over the opening to keep out the wind.

 

‘Rats,’ said Juno. ‘Eat everything.’

 

There was a pile of dry bark and some small logs stacked neatly near the chimney. The pikau and the canvas groundsheet were placed upon the clay floor.  

‘Do you like our little house?’ asked Juno.

‘It’s lovely,’ said Hannalore. ‘You are very clever. How did you light the fire?’

‘I took the swan box from your pikau.’

‘You should have waited for me. That was our last match.’

 

Juno pushed out her lower lip. To distract her, Hannalore drew her attention to the dog lying down at the doorway. Juno patted him and tried to make him enter the hut but he would not. Hannalore said that is yet another proof that he is a working dog, trained to stay outside. ‘Someone must be out looking for him and that comforts me.’

 

Juno smiled. ‘Look, on the shelf.’

‘Food tins?’

‘I put one on the fire. Dunno what’s inside, rat got the label.’

 

Hannalore grabbed two pieces of wood to use as a lever to pluck the tin from the flames. The tin was already bulging, about to explode. Juno laughed. Hannalore waited until the tin was cool and then stabbed it with her knife. A putrid smell like dead fish blew out into their expectant faces. After her initial shock, Juno laughed again. Then she pleaded for something nice to eat. She claimed that her stomach was like an empty paper bag with teeth and that it had started to eat itself. 

 

Hannalore took a flannel from the pikau and moistened a corner with a little water. She wiped Juno’s face and hands. She explained that there was just half a piece of bread left. It must not be eaten tonight. They would share it in the morning.

 

Juno yawned. She said that she could not stay awake. Hannalore made a nest for her out of the canvas ground sheet. The dirt floor in the centre of the hut was hard and shiny unlike the damp sections at the sides of the hut. But Juno did not want to go to sleep in the middle of the floor. She said that things can walk around her and when the fire goes out it will be too dark to see the old people standing at the end of her bed. Hannalore promised that she would try to keep the fire burning all night. Juno grumbled a little longer but soon her eyes closed and she fell into a deep sleep.

 

Hannalore slept fitfully throughout the long night. She was vaguely aware of a passing storm that dumped a copious amount of rain on their shelter. She was surprised at how dry the floor was in spite of the open doorway and the holes in the roof. Once she heard something or someone howling mournfully through the trees. This thing seemed to call her name but in the end she decided that it was just the wind. She awoke stiff and cold and hungry. Her ankles were swollen. The fire had almost died down. She fed the embers with some dried bark and some of the smaller pieces of wood. Soon, small red and yellow flames licked around the edges of the logs. She held out her hands to the warmth and felt a flicker of life move up into her arms. 

 

She hobbled outside the raupo hut to find a place where she could pass water without disturbing the still sleeping Juno. The wind had died down taking the rain with it. The dawn light filtered through a thin mist that shrouded the tops of the cabbage trees. The silence hummed. She crouched underneath a clump of manuka. The hot urine splashed against the inside of her thighs.

 

The smoke from the fire drifted slowly upwards from the top of the slab chimney. There was no sign of the blue-eyed dog. Hannalore wiped herself with her headscarf. She wondered what Sarah would think if she could see her doing this. She tied the damp cloth to the manuka as a token of her presence here, or perhaps to leave a message. 

 

She did not know what to do. She did not want to spend another day walking. Both she and Juno needed to rest. They had little food left and after the experience with the rotten fish the night before she was not pinning her hopes on finding anything edible in the remaining tins. 

 

She went back into the hut and put some more wood on the fire. Juno awoke and began asking for food. Hannalore told her that she thought it best that they stay here for one more day and one more night so that they could rest. Then they would follow the river to find some houses and people who would feed them. Juno said that she wanted to leave right now; she had liked the little house yesterday but not today.

 

Hannalore opened her pikau to retrieve the last piece of bread. All that was left was a chewed piece of brown paper and some fresh rodent droppings.

 

‘The rats, the rats, the rats,’ said Juno.

‘I forgot all about them.’

‘I want my breakfast.’

‘There’s no bread left.’

‘I’ll have porridge then.’    

 

It took all of Hannalore’s strength not to break down. She had been deluding herself. What on earth had possessed her to believe that she could care for Juno all on her own? Sometimes she felt more like a child of five than a grown woman. We are truly sisters, she thought. Others have always decided what I should do and say and be. The same thing has happened to her. I don’t know if this can ever be undone.

 

‘You have persuaded me that we should leave today,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

‘I’m hungry.’

 ‘I’ll find some porridge for you.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

Sixth Week: 6-12 December 2008

 

One of the joys (or horrors) of writing online in draft form is that the book becomes a shape shifter that is made available to readers while still in a fluid state. This happens with all forms of writing but is made visible as a process when you write directly onto the internet. At this particular moment I have changed my mind yet again about the structure and time frame of the book. But I don’t care. The truth is that I have fallen in love with online writing. I feel rejuvenated, alive, creative, and above all free.

 

I had not realised how weary I had become with my old way of writing fiction; the loneliness, the uncertainty, the lack of energy to go back day after day (sometimes for years) to revisit a world lived entirely within my own imagination. What other occupation requires a person to live like this without any feedback until the job is finished, published, done and dusted and then thrown out to the circling sharks (aka book reviewers)?

 

Not only have I fallen in love with the online process I have also become enamoured with the possibility of the retrieval of an earlier fictional form that is currently out of favour: the novella. The novella was once an important form in nineteenth century German literature and often had a rigid structure with strict narrative rules. This is no longer the case except for the necessity of creating an intense gaze upon one major theme.

 

A novella is not a short novel written by a novelist who ran out of ideas. It is not an extended short story. It is what it is; a slippery customer that I am just coming to grips with. It is not the word count that is the crucial factor although novellas are usually shorter than novels. This annoys some contemporary publishers who see novellas as having little commercial value. In novellas, character, incident, theme and language are focussed on one issue of universal significance. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann is a wonderful example of a writer using the novella form to portray a story of love, death and obsession and the tragedy of the loss of identity and hope through the aging process. I wonder how different his book would be if he had written a full length novel. I believe that the intensity of emotion and drama would have become seriously watered down.    

 

I might end up writing three novellas, the first one being my current work The Black Stones of Hannalore (working title). Each novella will be set within the same landscapes of the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The time frame will be just after the end of the First World War, then moving to 1946 for the second book, and the last one being in the near future, about 2020. This means that I won’t be able to have the same characters in all the books but they can be linked together by descent. This is not a problem because it is the themes and the landscapes (and in particular domestic landscapes) that will remain constant throughout.  

 

None of the above is set in concrete. Meanwhile, I tend my summer garden and tie up the tomatoes that are threatening to outgrow their cages. I have two deep wooden boxes filled with organic compost on my front lawn and green plastic bags bursting with potatoes down the back. When the writing stalls, I go outside and pluck the laterals from the Beefsteak and the Money Maker and smell the distinctive aroma of crushed tomato leaves on my fingers. This brings me back to earth with a jolt. Growing vegetables is similar to writing fiction: you start from a tiny seed and the narrative develops from that. The story ends (hopefully) in a feast.  

 

 

Part Five: The Black Stones of Hannalore

 

In the last episode, we learned that that Juno’s position in the community may be under threat. Hannalore is released from interment so that she can take control of Juno’s increasingly strange behaviour. Hannalore tells Juno that they are leaving the religious community soon. She swears her to secrecy. Now read on…

 

Two nights after the scene in the kitchen Hannalore was awakened by something blowing softly into her left ear. At first she thought that a flapping moth had taken up residence inside her head but then she heard a faint whisper. ‘Wake up, wake up.’ It was Sarah.

 

‘Has something happened to Juno?’

‘No, she’s sound asleep.’

‘Can’t this wait until the morning? I’m tired.’

‘Sorry,’ said Sarah. ‘But I need to speak with you urgently.’ 

 

Heavy rain was falling. The howling wind performed a series of suspended cadences that never quite developed into a decisive final note. Hannalore crept out of the hut and followed Sarah to the kitchen. 

    

Sarah raked the glowing embers in the fire box with the poker. She put some small logs onto the embers and the dry bark on the wood flared up with a hissing sound. She filled the teapot with boiling water from the tap at the side of the range and brought out the milk jug and the jar of sugar from the safe. 

 

‘I know that you are leaving,’ she said.

 

Hannalore took a gulp of hot tea that almost burnt her gullet. It had been a mistake to trust Juno. She did not understand the necessity for secrecy. The girl had no guile, no artifice and she trusted all adults implicitly.

 

Hannalore decided to bluff it out. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘For what it’s worth, I believe that you’re doing the right thing. I have worked out a plan. I’ve borrowed bed rolls and a pikau for you to take. But you must be careful. Winter time is dangerous in the bush.’

‘Thank you,’ said Hannalore. ‘But why are you taking such a risk?’

 

Sarah poured more tea into her cup. ‘I have not always been kind to you and Juno and I wish to make amends. You must leave as soon as possible. A man and a lady are coming from the orphanage when the weather clears to take Juno away.’ She went over to the sideboard and retrieved a stained manila envelope from the back of the cupboard. ‘Photographs,’ she said. ‘You will need to take them with you.’ She laid out three photographs on the table and placed the candle closer to Hannalore.

 

One photograph was of a shop window displaying men’s clothing. The second one was of a young woman dressed in a satin gown with an intricate pleated bodice and the last one was the same woman, a little older, holding a baby dressed in a sailor suit.

 

‘Eleanor,’ said Hannalore. ‘God help me, it’s Eleanor.’

‘And you, in the sailor suit, dressed as a boy.’

 

Hannalore could not take her eyes off the face of her young mother dressed in her satin finery. She was beautiful. The iridescent perfection of her skin glowed through the matt sepia surface with the lustre of pearls.    

 

Sarah complained of feeling faint. She fetched a pillow and propped herself up on the settle. Hannalore offered her another cup of tea. Sarah shook her head.

 

Someone knocked on the kitchen door. Hannalore ignored it at first. It was barely audible above the raging wind playing havoc with a flapping sheet of tin on the roof. The knocking became more insistent. Hannalore placed the photographs back into the manila envelope and hid it beneath her night shirt but before she could blow out the candle, the kitchen door opened.

 

It was Jimmy. He was dressed in dripping wet oilskins and leather boots. He stood in the doorway awkwardly with his sodden hat in his hands. 

 

‘Take off your boots and come close to the fire,’ said Sarah. ‘You’ll catch your death.’

‘It’s a filthy night outside,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should wait a little longer.’

 

Sarah said that she had just suffered one of her turns and that she must keep still for a few moments until the blood came back into her face. Hannalore asked him what he was doing here.

 

‘Enough,’ said Sarah, ‘let’s get down to business. Jimmy is part of my plan for your escape. He will take you and Juno to the edge of the bush before first light. He will show you how to follow the river to where you are headed. You are going to Piopio.’

‘Time for me to go and catch Prince and prepare the konaki,’ said Jimmy.

‘We should go and wake Juno soon,’ said Sarah. ‘I will help to pack her things.’ 

 

Hannalore waited until Jimmy had closed the kitchen door behind him before she removed the photographs from her night shirt. She took them out of the envelope and laid them out on the table. The young woman was looking down at the baby in the sailor suit with a look of utter adoration. The baby could not be, was not, an image of Hannalore when young. To be so loved and then abandoned made no sense.

 

Sarah looked shrunken and somehow diminished in the flickering candlelight. She offered Hannalore some waterproof wrapping to protect the photographs from the rain.

‘I should have given you these images a long time ago,’ she said, ‘but I was afraid that you would find them unsettling.’

 

Outside, the storm-driven rain roared like an inland tidal sea. Hannalore thought she heard Sarah whisper, please forgive me but it might have been the desperate sigh of a tree fern being uprooted from the sodden ground or some drowning animal fighting for a final gasp of air against the power of the storm.

 

Sarah stood up. ‘Come now,’ she said. ‘My head has settled. It’s time to leave.’

 

9

 

The konaki proved to be a problem right from the start. Jimmy said little but when he did he surprised her with the coarseness of his language. Some blankety-blank idiot had attached two small wheels to the back of the sledge and they kept getting caught in the low branches of the bush along the track. He rode slowly and cautiously, but every so often he had to dismount from Prince and chop at the vegetation caught in the wheels with his pig knife. He had to shout over the noise of the wind and the rain and the flailing trees. Another blankety-blank idiot had not put runners on the konaki and if he, Jimmy, ever met this person, he would tell him to go to the hot place.

 

By the time the dawn light appeared the rain had reduced to a dribble and the wind had died down to a mere whisper of its former self. Hannalore marvelled at Juno’s ability to sleep through the severe jolting of their transportation through the terrible night. But as soon as they stopped, Juno awoke. She sat encased in her blankets with her head scarf pulled down low over her forehead. 

 

Jimmy removed the horse from the shafts of the konaki. Juno slid down the front of the sledge onto the ground. She giggled.

 

Hannalore was annoyed. Jimmy could at least have lifted Juno out of the konaki before he released his horse. She could have hurt herself.

 

Jimmy tied on a canvas feedbag over Prince’s head. The horse snuffled and coughed into his oats. Jimmy said that he would light a fire to make tea and dry out their things. He took some shredded bark and small pieces of paper from his pikau. He fiddled about trying to make sparks with a stick of hardwood and a piece of whitey-wood but the dampness defeated him. 

 

Hannalore gave him one of her precious matches. He asked her where she had got it from but she would not tell him. Jimmy said it was a shame that Hannalore had never learned to ride a horse. He could have saddled up one for her and Juno and then they would not be at the mercy of this wretched konaki.

 

‘Do you know where we are?’ he asked.

 

She shook her head. The paper caught fire and she helped Jimmy to place small pieces of bark in a pyramid shape to feed the flames. Soon, the fire was well alight and when it had died down Jimmy made a flat area in the middle of the embers to make a nest for the billy. When the water boiled, he lifted the billy out of the fire and placed it on the ground. He removed the lid and threw in a handful of tea. He gave it a vigorous stir with his pig knife.

 

‘Now we must wait for it to steep,’ he said. ‘Nothing worser than rushed bush tea.’

 

‘I’m hungry,’ said Juno. Hannalore opened her pikau and unwrapped a brown paper parcel. Inside were two honey sandwiches, four slices of thick unbuttered bread and a small wheel of cheese. She offered a slice of bread to Jimmy. He shook his head and beckoned to Juno. ‘Got pork hocks in me saddlebag. Come over here and get some meat.’ 

 

Juno came closer to the fire. Hannalore felt uneasy, not at what Jimmy had said but the tone of his voice. He kept staring at Juno’s face as if he had never seen her before. He tipped up the billy and poured strong dark tea into chipped enamel mugs. Juno wolfed down the chunks of fatty meat and gristle that Jimmy hacked from one of the hocks. She wanted to know how the pig walked after someone took its legs away.

 

Jimmy laughed. ‘Oh aren’t you the funny one, a breath of fresh air you are.’

 

Hannalore’s unease deepened. She had known Jimmy since she came to the settlement with Juno and Eleanor. He was a few years older than her and had always seemed a quiet young man, respectful of his uncle Abraham and the other elders. He was gentle with the farm animals and, unlike some of the other men, never whipped his dog or kicked the house cows. 

 

Now, it seemed as if he was playing a different game. He had taken on an air of authority over them, an ownership. Hannalore wondered why he was helping them when he knew of the possible consequences of his action.

 

The bush was wet and dripping with moisture. The horse had dozed off with his feedbag still attached to his head. Jimmy put some more fuel on the fire.

‘Time is moving on,’ said Hannalore. ‘Perhaps we should resume our journey.’

‘Soon,’ said Jimmy. Then he told them a story of a boy and a girl who fell in love and who had run away from the settlement. They had become lost in the bush.  

‘Were they punished?’

‘They died of cold and hunger. But their ghosts live on in the bush. Listen, can you hear what they are doing?’

 

Hannalore saw a look of panic on Juno’s face at the mention of ghosts. ‘Come Juno,’ she said. ‘Help me pack up the food.’

 

Jimmy made a circle of his left index finger and thumb and jabbed his other index finger up and down inside the circle.

 

Hannalore hoped that Juno had not seen this sickening gesture. Jimmy jumped to his feet and said that he was not prepared to risk his horse by going any further. Those blankety-blank wheels on the konaki had to go. 

 

Hannalore was afraid. Without transport, she and Juno were in danger of becoming trapped here. There were entirely at Jimmy’s mercy. His behaviour was becoming more disquieting by the minute. She did not believe the story about the dead lovers. The women in the settlement would have known about it and told the story over and over again. Stories of love and loss were their favourite tales especially when the characters broke the rules and were punished for it by an ever vigilant God.  

 

Juno drained her mug. ‘Can’t read my tea leaves,’ she said. ‘Too many.’

‘Wait here,’ said Jimmy. ‘I need to go into the gulley below and cut some totara.’

‘What for?’ asked Hannalore.

‘Makeshift runners,’ said Jimmy. ‘Those wheels have to go.’

 

Hannalore took Juno’s mug and saw a tangle of dark brown tea leaves clinging to the sides. ‘Bunches of grapes,’ she said. ‘Luscious fruit and an important journey.’

‘I want the grapes now,’ said Juno. ‘Sweet in my mouth.’

Hannalore could hear Jimmy thrashing about below them and then the rhythmic chopping of his axe. ‘We have to go now,’ she whispered. ‘You fold the bed rolls and I’ll pack the pikau.’

Juno pushed out her lower lip. This was her signal that she did not want to do what Hannalore asked of her. 

‘We must leave here,’ said Hannalore.

Juno pushed her bottom lip out even further. 

 

The sound of chopping stopped. Hannalore, feeling more and more certain that they were in danger, told Juno that there were ghosts here, dangerous ones with little red eyes.

Juno sprang to her feet and followed Hannalore’s instructions to fold up the bed rolls. Hannalore grabbed a water bottle and a canvas ground sheet from the konaki. She untied the horse’s halter and smacked him lightly on the rump. Prince did not run away as she had planned. He stood there blinking at her in the morning light. She tried once more but again he just looked at her and blew air through his nostrils and stamped his white feathered feet up and down, up and down.

 

Hannalore and Juno walked away as quietly as they could. Hannalore turned for one last look at Prince and saw him toss his big head sideways, as if to say goodbye.

‘Are the red eyes gone?’ asked Juno.

‘We will soon be safe.’

‘Cross your heart?’

‘Da da da and hope to die.’

 

Fifth Week: 29^th November to 5^th December 2008

 

A busy week. Many phone calls from members of my extended family organising the holidays. I am staying put in spite of the warm weather, the time when New Zealand people head to the beach. My ancestors on my father’s side arrived here in 1840 and spent their Christmas days acting out the customs that they brought down from England. One would think that this practice is long gone. But no. Christmas down under is still linked to the images of snow and sledges and reindeer. This is reflected in the tree decorations and in Christmas cards and the wrapping paper. Then there’s the heavy food. We celebrate Christmas in the heat of mid-day, and resolutely chew our way through baked Christmas dinners and lumpy steamed puddings drowned in hot yellow custard and we drink sweet sherry and eat nasty little mince pies and then collapse into a coma or have a heart attack.

 

I remember trying to explain this phenomenon of misplaced cultural practice to a group of German writers in a seminar that I ran in Berlin four years ago. They fell about laughing when I told them that in New Zealand some people buy spray cans of fake snow to write Happy Christmas on their front windows.  

 

Just over a month has passed since I began to write this blog and I have re-discovered the wonderful effect of a deadline. I made a commitment to myself to post the next episode of my novella each Friday and this stops me falling into the “I’ll do some writing after I’ve done everything else first” syndrome. Another good thing is that I can get out of taking responsibility for some of the grosser aspects of Christmas by pleading time constraints.

 

I am searching for a title for Hannalore’s story. Although it will make little sense to my readers so far, I had thought of calling it The Black Stones of Hannalore. Early days yet. But any suggestions would be welcome. At this stage, I am almost sure that this novella will be the first of three set in the same landscape and with a time frame of over one hundred years. A journey from a raupo hut to cyberspace and Google Earth.

 

A highlight of the past week was the book launch of Hamilton writer Stephanie Hills’s first novel Argenta. (Scholastic, Auckland: 2008). Stephanie is a long time member of a writing group that I have been associated with for over ten years. We meet once a month and discuss current individual projects that we are involved in and generally discuss the act and art of writing in all its manifestations. We are all currently involved with writing projects and have all been published in one form or another.  This group works well for several reasons; there is no obligation to bring any work to be discussed. One can sit and listen month after month if that is what the writer needs at the time. Work is brought to the group to identify problems as outlined by the writer. For example, at our final meeting for the year, one of the writers brought a few pages of the novel she is working on for the group to critique. She was having a problem moving between the present and the past tense when using the first person pronoun (the ‘I’ voice) as the story teller. A lively debate ensued about the problems of moving from one tense to another and the different ‘voice’ that comes with each tense.

 

There are many of these informal writing groups around the country now. They serve a useful purpose in providing a place in the community where writers can gain experience from others and learn how to edit their own work. Anyone reading this who feels isolated as a writer should perhaps think about forming a group. An ideal number would be between six and eight members. And try to have writers from different genres if possible. Our group covers poetry, junior fiction, novels, short stories, memoir, film scripts and (last but not least) a horticultural writer specialising in roses.

 

Now back to the story of Hannalore. In the last episode, Hannalore was sentenced to a form of punishment sometimes referred to as ‘social death’. In today’s episode, Hannalore is released early due to the deterioration in Juno’s behaviour. Sarah gives Hannalore some disturbing news. Now read on…

 

Part Five:  

 

Six days before Hannalore’s period of interment was due to finish, Sarah came early with the plate of bread and honey. She looked exhausted. Her headscarf was loosely tied allowing strands of wispy grey hair to fall about her furrowed face and neck. She brought the news that Hannalore was to be released at once. She had held a meeting with the other women last night about Juno and this morning, the elders had given Hannalore permission to resume her normal life.

 

‘Is Juno ill?’

‘She has not spoken a word since you were sentenced. All she does is sit and rock and yesterday she began to bang her head against the kitchen door.’

‘I must go to her.’

‘Eat first, that was the instruction.’

 

Hannalore bolted down her bread. She barely noticed the cup of tea that Sarah had brought for her. She poured some water from her jug into the washbowl and threw handfuls of cold water over her face. She went to her shelf and unfolded her clothes and dressed with haste; woollen leggings, cotton camisole, long skirt, blouse, calico coverall.  

 

‘I tried to stop her,’ said Sarah, ‘but she would not listen to me.’

‘It only makes things worse to argue with her, you know that.’

 

Sarah’s face crumpled. Hannalore felt a moment of compassion for her. When Sarah had lost her son Harry two years ago in the influenza epidemic she had turned almost overnight into a frail old woman. Her flesh seemed to melt away and her bones became clearly visible beneath her skin. She had fallen back into the interior of her body as if she no longer had a right to live there.

 

Hannalore was not able to comfort her. It was all she could do to stay upright. Her legs had weakened since she had been forced to be idle. There was something else taking over her body; a growing feeling of resentment. She could feel it beginning to invade her blood and bones like a slow but insistent poison. Why was it that both she and Juno were being punished? What had she done? She had obeyed the rules of the community to the letter. She had saved a stranger from drowning. And now the others were asking for her help to pacify Juno.

 

‘I’m ready,’ said Hannalore.

‘Put on your headscarf,’ said Sarah. ‘Don’t make any more trouble for yourself.’

 

7

 

Juno was in the small room at the back of the meeting hut that was designated as a sick bay, a place where ill people could be segregated from the healthy workers. The two iron hospital beds were empty. A small white cupboard between the beds concealed a commode. A shelf holding a collection of medicines was attached to the wall. Bottles of zinc sulphate, quinine, aspirin and friar’s balsam stood in neat rows. Lumps of camphor sewn into muslin bags hanging from hooks above the shelf provided a pungent medicinal aroma to the spartan room. 

 

Juno was standing between the beds. Her brown eyes were small and deep like the glass eyes on a child’s soft toy. Her body quivered. She looked ready to run away at a moment’s notice.

 

‘I have brought Hannalore to you,’ said Sarah.

Juno did not respond.

‘Maybe it would be better if we went out into the bush,’ said Hannalore.

‘The wind has turned,’ said Sarah. ‘Heavy rain will soon be upon us.’

‘We could go to the kitchen and sit on the settle out of the way of the workers.’ 

‘No,’ said Sarah. ‘Juno has spoken bad words there and abused the food. Augusta said it’s enough to sour the milk.’

‘I could feed her,’ said Hannalore. ‘She will take sustenance from me.’

‘I shouldn’t be telling you this but there’s a move underway to get rid of her.’

 

Hannalore was shocked. She hoped that Juno had not heard what Sarah had said. Juno’s eyes still held that floating gaze, empty and unfocussed, as if she could not see what was right in front of her face but that did not mean that she could not hear. 

 

Sarah lowered her voice. ‘We can no longer afford to keep her. There is talk of sending her to an orphanage in town.’

 

Juno gave a strange cry and fell to the floor. Hannalore crouched down and held her in her arms. Juno began to bang her head against the wooden floor.

 

Thump! Thump! Thump!

 

Hannalore tried to hold Juno’s head upright but the child resisted her. Hannalore cried out to Sarah but the old woman had gone.

 

Thump! Thump! Thump!

 

Hannalore had never seen Juno like this before. She did not know what to do. All she could think of was to hum a tune. A ballad she had once heard swam up into her mind. She had forgotten the words so she sang the melody to the nonsense sounds of da da da… da da da…

 

Juno stopped banging her head. She garbled something to Hannalore about a terrible noise of coughing, a child gasping for breath. She could see other bad things too; a man’s back covered with black spots and a lady with blood running from her nose, down her front, all over her blouse.  

 

Hannalore sang da da da again to Juno. She stroked Juno’s cheeks and told her not to be afraid. ‘Pay no attention to those shades. Snap! Snap your fingers like I taught you to do, walk backwards around a circle, throw salt, anything to put them in their place.’

 

The room darkened, and soon the rain was pinging off the iron roof like gun shots. Juno asked for a candle. She smiled with delight when Hannalore opened the little cupboard between the beds and brought out the stub of a candle and a box of wax vestas from behind the commode. On the cover of the matchbox was a white swan. Inside the box were three matches. Hannalore gave one to Juno. She tried to light it by striking the match on the wooden door of the cupboard. Hannalore suggested she try it on the sole of her shoe. Juno gave a cry of joy when the match flared up.

 

‘Quickly,’ said Hannalore. ‘Let’s throw some light around.’

 

The candle stub hissed and burned. Juno asked if she could have another match to light with her shoe. Hannalore said no. There were just two left in the box.  They had to be saved for something more important. Juno asked if she could have the swan box when it was empty.

 

‘Of course,’ said Hannalore. ‘But first you have to be very brave.’

Juno nodded.

‘And you have to promise me that you can keep a really big secret.’

Juno nodded again.

‘We are going away, just you and me.’

Juno clapped her hands. ‘A holiday!’

‘Something like that,’ said Hannalore. ‘But no one else must find out.’

‘Can you sing the da da song again?’

‘Not now. ‘We are going to the kitchen to have something to eat.’     

 

She placed the box of swan vestas and a bottle of aspirin into her coverall pocket. She unhooked a camphor bag from the wall and hung it beneath Juno’s camisole to keep her safe from harm. The candle stub spluttered out. 

 

They came out of the sick bay. There was no one in the meeting room. They ran hand in hand to the kitchen porch that provided some shelter against the driving rain. Hannalore’s legs ached with the unaccustomed movement. She knew then that she must lie low for a few days in order to regain her strength for the journey ahead.  

 

Hannalore opened the kitchen door. Augusta was turning out a loaf onto a wire cooling rack. There was a delicious smell of hot bread.

 

Sarah was stirring a soup pot on the coal range. ‘Two drowned rats,’ she said.  

‘Sorry,’ said Hannalore.

‘Dripping all over my clean floor,’ said Augusta.

‘Sorry,’ repeated Hannalore.

‘You will be, if you don’t keep that wretched child under control.’

 

Sarah replaced the lid on the soup pot. She unwound the rope that held the clothesline securely in place and lowered it down from the roof. She plucked a threadbare towel from the pulley and helped Juno to dry her face and hair.

 

Augusta was knocking down the dough for the next batch of bread. She hit the dough with the side of her hand until it was almost flat then folded it up into smaller rectangles before knocking it down again. Thump! Thump! Thump!

 

The sound made Hannalore nervous.

 

Juno emerged from Sarah’s vigorous rubbing with the towel. Her cheeks were flushed with heat and her eyes glittered. ‘Not allowed to tell,’ she said. Augusta’s busy hands stopped in mid air above the dough.

 

‘It’s just an old tune without words,’ said Hannalore. ‘I told her to keep it a secret.’ 

‘Da da da,’ sang Juno.

 

Augusta resumed torturing her dough. Sarah shook out the damp towel and hung it back on the line. She placed two bowls on the table and filled them with potato and mutton broth. She took a serrated knife and hacked two slices from the hot loaf.

 

‘I need to make sandwiches for the men’s lunches from that,’ said Augusta. ‘Look how you’ve shredded it.’

 

Hannalore was hungry. She wolfed down the hot meaty soup, almost scalding her throat in the process. Juno ate more slowly, pausing now and then to repeat Augusta’s words you’ve shredded it, shredded it, shredded it… until Augusta threw her arms up into the air and walked out of the door saying that she’d had enough, it was more than a body could bear.

 

Sarah took over the bread making. She rolled some dough into thin strips and plaited them together to make a decoration for her loaves. Juno asked her if she could make a little loaf. Sarah gave her some dough, a rolling pin, and a tin with holes in the lid to dust the pastry board with flour. Juno soon became engrossed in her task.

 

‘Look at her,’ said Hannalore. ‘It takes so little to keep her happy. The orphanage would break her heart. And mine.’

‘We can’t carry a non-productive member no matter how much it grieves us.’

‘Juno is capable of doing domestic work if someone is there to guide her,

‘There is some resentment against her,’ said Sarah.

‘Why?’

‘For not dying in the flu epidemic when the normal ones did.’

 

Hannalore was shocked into silence. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Sarah if she felt like that over the loss of her son Harry. Sarah opened the oven door and turned the loaves so that the crusts would brown evenly. She mumbled something about having to accept God’s will, like it or not.

 

Juno had made a mess. The table and the floor were sprinkled with flour. The dough that she had tried to make into a plaited loaf was blackened from constant kneading with her grubby fingers. She asked if her little loaf could go into the oven after the big ones were cooked.

 

‘Of course,’ said Hannalore. ‘And then you can eat it while it’s hot.’

‘It’s filthy,’ said Sarah. ‘Fit only for the pig bucket.’

Hannalore placed her spoon carefully into her empty soup bowl. She managed to anchor her rage deep within her body.   

‘Pig bucket pig bucket,’ cried Juno.

‘No,’ said Hannalore. ‘We will smother the little loaf in melted butter and eat it together.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

 

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.