Beryl Fletcher

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.   

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

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