Writing

The Night of the Barricades

I open my eyes onto a strange world into which I’ve stumbled as if by chance. All is new and filled with an alien radiance, muted colours, greys yet beautiful. Hippies are twanging their guitars along the Seine. Flower sellers and precious bookstall owners hawk their wares along the promenades above. The ancient cobblestones conceal the holographs of those trapped forever in bloodstained revolutions. Seduced at every turn. I think that this must be my spiritual home, on the opposite side of the earth to my birth place.

The Frenchman I meet while travelling across the Channel offers me the use of his apartment for two weeks. Why not? I thought. My tourist’s trip through the Mediterranean countries can wait. Generous and eccentric to a fault, these French — opposite story to what I’ve been told! I find his street in a Michelin Guide book I bought at the Gare du Nord: rue Servandoni, in the sixth arrondissement. One change and out at the metro station near the Seine.

It’s a steep climb up a creaking staircase to the small flat overlooking a courtyard at the back of the building.

Once in the flat, I’m a child released in a magic castle, running to each window and feasting on the Mary Poppins-like scene of rooftop spires and toy-street-scapes at all cardinal points. I’m inside a foreign country in miniature: its smells and furnishings, reflect an exotic old-world charm.

Alain has said to use what I want from the kitchen. The cans of food in the pantry, all are new to me. Chestnut jam, a thick, sweet, strange-tasting substance. Something called cassoulet in a tin. Brands that I’ve never heard of nor seen in the shops back home. I’m touching, prodding at everything. I’m swooning from the newness of it all. I’m a child in a toy shop, like the children in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Jam has coated my mouth that feels like the bottom of a bird cage. I want to brush my teeth, but discover too late that the white-tubed stuff is shaving cream.

I can’t wait to get downstairs once again and wander around the maze of streets and districts, as I once did around the farm as a small child. On the southern side of the street is the immense Luxembourg Gardens. Walking through them I’m still marvelling at the feeling of being in a dream from which I might awake at any moment. Further on I come to the Boulevard Saint Michel. Crowds of fine-featured French walk or sit in bars and in cafés; African and Arabic-looking student types mingle, laughing and talking gaily. Moroccan restaurants are everywhere.

poem-rimbaud-on-wall-paris — A Symbolist Poem by Arthur Rimbaud

I’m in the bustle of the Latin Quarter. I sit in a Moroccan restaurant and order a couscous dish. Sumptuous, unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before. I’m free as a bird and wash the food down with cheap red wine. I look out at the sophisticated, fashionably dressed women. I compare their slight frames and neat coiffures to my ample curves and unschooled locks of long brown hair.

Following the rim of the Jardin back the way I’ve come, I’m able to make my way home to the flat without too much trouble.

For many days I wander, love-struck by difference and by beauty along the streets with their ancient, graceful buildings and perfectly manicured gardens in the classic style. As if in a dream I float up and down the escaliers, past the concierge, and out into the streets, then back inside.

To improve my French I recount over and over the story of my life, where I come from, where I’ve lived, and about my family. They always ask what my father does. How to translate ‘grazier’? Fermier? Propriétaire de ranche?

Through a chance encounter, I find a cheap room that once was servants’ quarters at the back of a doctor’s gracious residence. I live here for a while and sense the ghosts from a thousand years around me as I lie in the dark before sleep overtakes me each night. There’s a shared ‘water cabinet’ that I squat over as I used to do when nature called while mustering cattle in the bush. My savings begin to dwindle, I grow tense with anxiety and find a part-time job cleaning rooms in a hotel not far from my lodgings. I wonder about the lives of the single men whose rooms I clean, but whom I never see; only their musk-like scents I inhale.

One night I feel a dark presence invading my tiny room at the top of the fire escape stairs. It’s time, once again, to move on.

Walking back from Irma La Douce early one evening, as twilight caresses me in its dreamlike tones, I find myself taking on the character from the film. Swaying hips, I become Irma and sway along the boulevard, green stockings highlighting shapely legs underneath a tight-fitting woollen dress. Then I am being followed, and feel a rush of fear mixed with elation that makes me quicken my pace.

He starts to quicken his pace too. The man will catch up with me and know where I live. I imagine allowing him to follow me upstairs to my tiny room. He kisses me on the lips. Undresses me: ‘Vous-êtes la vedette américaine, Shirley Maclaine?’ An Anglo-Saxon body attracts attention here if you allow it to, contrasting with the delicate, petite lines of the French women all around me.

Fate intervenes and takes the decision out of my hands. There’s a fracas going on up ahead on the boulevard Saint Michel that throws me into history, like Stendhal’s Fabrice caught up in The Battle of Waterloo in La Chartreuse de Parme. (Not nearly so romantic sounding as The Charterhouse of Parma).

I soon find myself in the midst of a revolution, young people, students, tearing up paving stones and setting cars alight.

Tear gas is thick in the air and some of the students are crying uncontrollably. There’s talk of the military being brought in by De Gaulle and blood in the streets.

La Sorbonne in May 68, in *Le Monde* newspaper, photo by Bruno Barbey

The police start to move towards the Sorbonne, on the opposite side of the street. Pictures of Marx, Lenin, and Mao decorate the old pillars surrounding the front square. Red and black flags hang alongside the Vietcong flag. Trotsky, Castro and Che Guevara pictures are plastered on walls alongside slogans such as ‘Everything is Possible’ and ‘It is Forbidden to Forbid.’

I’m afraid I’ll be arrested and deported. I slink back towards the apartment blocks and stand inside a doorway. Residents are hanging out of windows. They shower debris on the police and spray soothing water over the students to minimise the effect of the chlorine gas grenades.

A young man with scraggy red hair jumps up on a wall in front of the Sorbonne and cried out to the students to carry on.

‘Qui est-ce?’ I ask a young woman standing smoking Gitanes next to me.

‘On l’appelle Danny le Rouge; c’est l’un des leaders.’

I understand immediately that he is the leader of the student rebellion. And this is how I meet Ellie, who’s unafraid of being sent back to Germany. She’s handing out lemon-soaked handkerchiefs smeared with bicarbonate of soda for around the eyes, as well as leaflets on how to protect oneself against tear gas. Ellie is the antithesis of every stereotype I’ve heard about Germans: short with thick dark hair, cerulean blue eyes and pure white skin. She’s a student at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and works part-time as an artist’s model.

At that moment the police move into the Sorbonne and arrest the red-haired man. Students start pulling up paving stones from the streets and hurling them at the police. Then others join in. The police are flailing their batons, demonstrators fall to the ground, police clubbing them, blood streaming from their faces as they lie on the pavement. The youths throw stones, and kick gas grenades at the police, who protect their faces with masks that look like fencing ones.

‘What we are afraid: le Géneral de Gaulle will set the army on to us,’ whispers Ellie who is pale yet determined.

The students have made bonfires like the cracker night ones back home, only from cars and anything they can lay their hands on, and set them alight. I start to join in, already in too deep, terror and elation mixing in equal measure. I’ve met a sort of soul mate in Ellie, and a potential flat mate. ‘Meet me tomorrow in the Père Lachaise Cemetery,’ she says in between her revolutionary duties. ‘We will talk then.’ I feel like I’ve come home.

But for now … it’s the night of the barricades.

February 15, 2021 0 comment

Novel Writing Writing

How I Created My Debut Novel

The Story of the Novel

Those in the know say Write about what you know. This could be my parents’ love story, with the boring bits left out.

My story takes place in a raw and natural setting called Karrana, where a stunningly attractive young woman is ready to break out of her universe and demand more from life. She’s clever and, like a bright chrysalis, just knows that she deserves more — like the cows know when it’s time to come home for milking. She meets the love of her life, or is it her polar opposite (?), at a victory dance. This novel takes place in an Australian country setting at the end of the Second World War in the Pacific. She falls pregnant in a moment of raw passion and rebellion. This throws her back into the very environment she is trying to break free from. This is a women’s story, so it’s about love, nature, pregnancies, child nurturing and dissatisfaction. And for those men who would understand and appreciate these themes. An accident to her first ‘golden child’ sends the young woman into a spin — a bit like a depression — followed by something akin to enlightenment, wherein passion leads her into a forbidden liaison with a sophisticated, refugee doctor in Sydney.

I won’t tell you the ending, but suffice it to say that it’s a bit complicated.

How I Wrote the First Draft

I wrote it chapter by chapter over a period of 18 months in 2013 – 2014, meeting in a group of four every fortnight, Randwick Writers, convened by Dina Davis. My first mistake was to engage an editor to do a structural edit when I had written the first draft. It was not ready to be assessed at this stage. After this, I put the manuscript away for some time and concentrated on blogging. I was also attending a larger writers’ group, and focusing on memoir writing. Later on, I worked some more on the story, while attending the Waverley Writers at the local library.

The Question of Structure

I had discovered that one of the hardest things about writing a novel is accessing knowledge and skills to do with structuring a longer work. That is, with the overall storytelling aspect. It begs the question of how to hold the whole novel in your sights, in order to appreciate or critique the structure and add significant bits and sacrifice others that might be scaffolding or padding.

Writers’ groups, unless there are novelists within who are aware of textuality, cannot usually help you with this aspect. Participants often focus on the smaller aspects to do with punctuation, words and grammar, all at the level of the sentence or the chapter.

It’s even harder to remember previous scenes or chapters of your colleagues’ novel manuscripts in a group. And, if you are writing a modern work, you need to consider recent changes that have taken place in this art form.

The Bigger Picture

I thought for a long while that it’s all about understanding Voice, Viewpoint, Point of View, Scenes and other issues, such as pace and narrative arc. And about writing a segment or a chapter from go to woe, that is, from the beginning to the end. But, after getting a grasp on such elements, and finishing the first draft, I was still searching for that elusive missing link, that was how to discover the overarching theme or rationale? for the novel I was writing. This became my next quest.

A Manuscript Assessment

A talented manuscript assessor at Writing New South Wales, requested, for a moderate sum, a couple of chapters of my manuscript, together with a synopsis, and then offered an hour-long Q&A session, where we worked together, asking and answering questions. That was what got me over the hump towards completion. After that, I knew where I was coming from and where I was headed. This was important for structural cohesion of the whole work; it enabled a final culling—and/or perfecting—of relevant motifs and metaphors. Within a relatively short period of time, I felt ready to publish the novel, so that it all hangs together. The missing link for myself, was knowing the right questions in relation to overall novelistic structure, to discover the ‘meaning’ of the work. After all, the novel is about many things, but this needs to be distilled into one or two sentences. Of course, if you plan the novel beforehand, you may not need this process, but there will be other different issues to confront.

Creating a Logline

I came across Jeff Lyons through Reedsy. Jeff is an expert in the art of storytelling. He states that you need a ‘logline’, which is a summary or premise, in one or two sentences, even before you start to write your novel. Of course, most people, and I am one of them, don’t work in this way. However, I have found that it is important to be able to do this, at some stage during the creative process. According to Lyons, the logline should include 7 parts: (i) a mention of the World of the novel (ii) the main Protagonist (iii) the Problem faced (iv) the Goal or Challenge for the protagonist (v) the personalised Opponent (vi) Choices or Decisions (vii) the Action taken by the protagonist.

The Logline or Premise of Karrana

In post-World War Two Australia, Bridie, a spirited young woman brought up on a dairy farm, surrounded by beauty and rawness, seeks romance and ultimate fulfilment. She hopes her choice of a mate, who she meets at the Karrana Victory Dance, will lead to a different future than that her mother, and, later on, her husband, want to keep her cosseted in. Her passionate nature, aided by fateful irony, deems that she demands more from life than nature alone; a family accident takes a hand in ensuring this.

July 4, 2020 0 comment

Writing

Randwick Writers’ Group: Sharing Writing Skills

A book about writing groups

Joining a writing group is very popular these days, at least in Anglo speaking countries. There are many different types of writing groups, just as there are various types of writers. Some writers simply wish to record memories for their family, children and friends to read. Writing correctly and clearly will be a main push for them. Others want to hone their skills towards the goal of writing a short story, or a longer genre, such as a novel or a modern memoir. They will need different skills, for example, knowledge of how to structure a particular genre.

I have been a member of three writing groups over the years, and most participants, when asked, expressed a wish to be published. One of the groups I was a part of was Randwick Writers Group, which has recently published a book that showcases work from six members in search of writing excellence. Each of the six participants found that being part of this group brought their writing up to a new level.

This book is unique in that it has followed members from the initial phase of setting up the group, until this point, five years later, when three members have published novels, and the rest are on the point of doing so.

If you would like to find out more about the workings of writing groups, this book is what you are looking for. As well as informational content, it also showcases the writings of the authors. It can be purchased through the publisher, Ginninderra Press or through online book stores, such as Amazon and other online bookstores. Enjoy!

Click on this link to have a peep inside the online digital version of the book.

https://www.book2look.com/book/TPULpSvFiE&bibletformat=epub

Purchase the digital book at Amazon Australia

May 7, 2020 0 comment

Book Reviews Writing

Discovering Karrana

Writing a Novel

Writing a novel has been one of the most exciting and difficult activities I have ever undertaken. It’s something akin to giving birth and bringing up a child; not quite…. You have never done this before, and there is no foolproof manual on how to be successful at it. I don’t believe anyone just knows how to write a novel. Much of it is trial and error. There’s a degree of theory involved, which might include studying the masters, and, it goes without saying, reading modern writers, too. That is, if you want to be a modern author.

Karrana: An Interview

Following is a Q and A interview carried out at the Book Launch of Karrana by a friend, G, and answered by myself, that reflects much about the structure of the novel.

G 1: In reading your book I was struck by the lusciousness of the novel, both the physical and the emotional aspects of life on the north coast after WW2.

If I start with the physical, the Australian bush with its lilting birds and the fiery orange boldness of the trumpet vines is an integral part of the story.

As a writer what did you draw from to create such vivid bush scenes?

A: As a little girl I was free to roam in nature, where I became a part of it — its rhythms, its colours. That vine covered an old barn on Grandma Walker’s farm, opposite our rented house on the Gwydir Highway, drawing sightseers in vehicles to stop and gawk from their car windows in winter and in spring. I felt lucky to be part of this environment.

It was even brighter to a child’s eye; magical, like the multicoloured iridescent feathers of rosellas; and I rolled, competing with hovering bees, in pure white-and-green clover, so abundant and fragrant on the farm; and then riding our horses surrounded by gum trees out in Dad’s bush paddock, a nutty, gorse-like perfume in the air; the silence, broken only by the sound of a kookaburra or water gurgling in pristine creeks, or a wallaby scuttling away.

Much of the flora and fauna on the farm was non-native, like the vine, but well-suited to our sub-tropical climate.

G2: Bridie the young woman “with tossing dark hair that cascaded around her shoulders like Vivien Leigh or one of the other Hollywood stars” as one of the main characters has big dreams and they don’t always coincide with reality. This story is her chance to shine.

How did you get Bridie to take her place in the world?

A: I showed her through the prism of the post-War years, with Australia on the brink of huge changes. As a butterfly-like creature cocooned in a narrow universe, Bridie’s narcissism is put to good use in attracting a mate. She is getting ready, like the nation, to break out and demand more from life than the one her family has allowed her. The question the novel sets up is: Will she be victorious in finding fulfilment, in re-gaining a missed education, or will it be a question of ‘fools rush in’? (ii) If Bridie really existed, I think she’d be a composite of several women from my childhood, both in flesh and on the big screen or in magazines.

G3: In the novel there is a delicious sense of dramatic irony between the two main characters, Bridie and Will.

What characteristics did you set up to test and re-energise their relationship?

A: I’m glad you recognised that. I think a note of irony runs throughout the novel, from the beginning with the sexual symbols of frogs and spiders on the path to the lavatory, to the forced wedding and sexual fulfilment.

Fiery passion causes both to act impulsively in the beginning. However, Bridie learns too late what Will’s plans are. They don’t discuss their differences, assuming that love will win out in the end. It is inevitable that conflict ensues.

G4: There is an interplay of mystery throughout the novel, the unknown lights in the bush; Richard, their son’s accident; the other man Bridie reached out to.

What were you trying to achieve with this interplay of mystery?

A: Well, I’ve always been interested in the interplay of light and dark motifs in fiction, as well as in life. Seasons play a large part in the structure of the novel: Starting out in the spring of rebirth and renewal, and continuing through seasonal fluctuations to a return. Bad things are sometimes presaged by dark imagery, such as blackbirds; awakenings and positives by light motifs. I’ve for long empathised with the underdogs in history, the Jewish people during the War, as well as the Aboriginal Bundjalung tribes of the north coastal region before the English settlers arrived. They are linked to the light motifs in nature.

What was I trying to achieve? Just that, the mystery of Nature, and the mystery within nature. A sense of light and of darker forces at work, beneath the surface of things. Within people, too, of ignorance versus enlightenment that comes through education and progress.

G5: The historical placement of this novel is just after WW2 and Bridie and Will, the two main characters, meet at a Victory dance. In developing the story, you had to go back in time and undertake a certain amount of research.

What did you uncover in your research that helped to drive the novel forward?

A: I researched war songs such as Bless Em All, and Don’t Sit under the Apple and the foxtrots and pride of Erins and waltzes, played at country dances of the time; other songs and movies expressed the blossoming love between Bridie and Will, such as the one my Dad sang to Mum ‘I’ll Take You Home again, Kathleen”.

Great changes were taking place, especially in the cities after the War. I Imagined Bridie hearing American accents and seeing soldiers with war injuries in Sydney. Learning about the new role of women in the War effort is also touched on. I discovered that ignorance and stigma existed at the time. Can you imagine how she must have felt when she heard from a Jewish refugee about the truth of the Holocaust? I made this part of Bridie’s experiential education, learning about it from the doctor. And then I tried to imagine the horror of a mother receiving a telegram announcing the death of a loved one; often delivered on bicycle or on horseback in the country.

G6: In conclusion what were the highlights of writing this novel?

A: It was great being able to draw on childhood and my own life experiences, and to utilise my early outpourings of emotion, a healing component in writing memoir pieces, and then this novel.

I was part of a small, tight-knit writers’ group, Randwick Writers, during which I was able to develop the first draft of the novel; meeting once a fortnight over more than a year. Encouragement from colleagues in the larger group, Waverley Writers, at the Library in Bondi Junction, also played a huge part in giving me the confidence to move forward with the novel and to finish it. Learning how to upload documents to Amazon and Ingram Spark (print-on-demand facility) have also been part of the journey towards publication and distribution. And now, educating myself on the notion of discoverability, which I am still working on.

January 2, 2020 0 comment

Writing

What I learnt from writing a novel…

Before You Start…

I don’t believe anyone just knows how to write a modern novel. There are theoretical questions before you even put pen to paper that a wannabe author needs to consider. Otherwise, you may end up with a hodgepodge of outpourings that no-one is tempted to spend the time reading. Perhaps, as they practise the skill, writers begin to be able to repeat the novel writing activity more and more easily. The following are some of the questions that you will need to answer to begin with.

What Genre is it?

One of the first things you need to know before you start to write a longer work is what genre you’re writing in. Otherwise, it’s likely you’ll never finish it, never feel satisfied with it, nor ever get it published. I’d begun my writing journey by pouring my heart out, about my life, about everything. This was a therapeutic exercise, if nothing else. Then I discovered that I didn’t really know what genre, if any, I was writing in.

Memoir or Autobiography?

Was it fiction, memoir or autobiography—or aspects of each? I’d come to realise that autobiography was usually written by famous people about their whole lives. Mine was closer to memoir, as it dealt with real events and real characters from my family, but with a restricted focus.

How to Write a Memoir

Through research I discovered that a memoir is a more modern genre than an autobiography. Furthermore…

(1 ) A memoir is only part of a life and has a certain focus. (2) It is written utilising creative writing devices, such as characterisation, scenes and events, dialogue, emotive language, and metaphor etc. (3) It has a structure and a dynamism that invite the reader to continue reading it. (4) A memoir is on average 50-60,000 words, that is, shorter than an average novel, (70,000 words) but usually longer than a novella (20-30,000 words). Autobiographies are often much longer, since they involve a lot of ‘telling’, that is, detailing of events in a logical sequence, and may contain photos as well.

Problems with Memoir Writing

There’s an innate problem with writing about your life, and that is that your relatives might not want to be shown up, warts and all, in a publication. Clive James got around that issue by using humour to recreate his childhood narrative, which is part of an autobiography, Unreliable Memoirshttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/398913.Unreliable_Memoirs

Benefits of Writing Fiction

When I turned to fiction, I found I could draw on family events and characters, while transforming them into something ‘other’, yet still ‘true’. To distance myself slightly from the events, I employed a subtly ironic tone, and a narrator who is inside, yet outside, at the same time.

After writing up the first draft of my story, and gaining insight from members of a small writing group made up of writers working on novels, I found myself on my own. No one was able to tell me, even experienced authors and editors, how to shape my work into this most enigmatic of objects—a novel.

Constraints of Writers’ Groups

Writers in groups tend to share short segments of their novels with colleagues. The best feedback one can offer in such a situation is grammatical corrections, or, perhaps, comments on the style of the writing. Positive or negative feedback rarely touches on ‘the big picture’ (of structure, voice, timing, and overall viewpoint), which is the most important and difficult domain of the novelist.

Short Story Writing

Creating a novel proved different from writing a short story, which I’d practised and blogged about here. Being a lot longer, at least eighty thousand words, a novel is more difficult to structure than a shorter genre. After researching novel writing, online and in books, I went back to the drawing board and tried different methods for transforming content (chapters, scenes, segments) into something readable by others.

Looking at the Whole

How do you hold an overview of the whole novel in your mind? This is essential, before you can tie ends together, deleting boring parts, or adding in the motifs, imagery and metaphors that act as signposts for the reader to enjoy the flow of the narrative. This is part of the question of narrative drive. Each chapter and part of the novel must lead logically or thematically on to the next part, for the reader to remain interested—driven!—to read until the end. As a writer, you will have to find your own method for holding the work ‘in the hand of your mind’, so to speak.

The method that I chose was, towards the second half of the process, to lay the chapters out on the kitchen table, from chapter one through to chapter forty, considering themes, arcs and overall ‘meaning’, after having discussed the latter with an narrative expert during a question-and-answer session.

December 27, 2019 0 comment