I heard Helen Garner on Radio National recently, speaking about writing her most recent novel The Spare Room. She described her difficulty in constructing the end of the novel, and referred to the 'small voice' within that told her that even though what she had written sounded good, it was utterly wrong.
Then she had a moment of revelation. She was washing or drying her hands after disconsolately going to the loo when it came to her that she could write the novel's ending as a flash forward. She began writing furiously and had nailed it in a couple of days, and then she lay on the floor and howled – she had been afraid to face up to describing the death that occurs at the end of the novel. Garner expressed wonder at the way in which some writers can keep ploughing on, ignoring the instinct that is telling them they're on the wrong track, until they end up throwing out '140 000 words'.
Hearing this was such affirmation to me of the pitfalls of creative writing. My creativity is like an elusive bird or butterfly that I can't catch. I start with a brilliant phrase or idea, begin writing and then it somehow disappears – as if a too-logical part of my brain has stepped in and blocked it or, more easily fixed, I've stopped following the idea and gone off on another tangent.
How easy it is to just keep writing at this point. And indeed, many guides to creativity advise just that. They talk about 'free writing' and insist that one should just keep going and not judge. But my creativity doesn't always flow in the right direction. I know when I've veered off, but I just don't know how to get back on track again.
Another thing Garner discussed was her habit of writing for an hour each day, practising getting down the tiny details of life, a skill that is a hallmark of her work. This is what I'm trying to do. But there's another difficulty here: how to stay true to one's own experience, and not adopt other voices and familiar tones, or echo popular discourses. It's so easy to avoid your own complicated, messy reality when it's not reflected in the culture. But the point is that no-one's is: not exactly, anyway. The rush to be like others can stop us examining the tiny revelations and puffball-like imaginings that make our brains and experiences unique.
This also holds for memoir. It's got nothing to do with writing talent and everything to do with sheer bravery, to dig down into the dirt and find the bulb of what was actually going on emotionally when recalling and describing any particular incident. What I've discovered is that the willingness to do this sometimes feels profoundly disobedient. In other words, parental injunctions about not feeling and thinking certain things have to be gently and persistently exposed and ignored. It's sometimes exhausting but the effect is exhilarating.
Compare these two pieces of writing about my discovery that I had inadvertently taken home a pencil after visiting my grandparents'. The first is an early version of the experience, which I wrote without thinking too much about the incident:
Sick with misery, I pondered my grandparents’ horror at the theft, their immediate loss of trust in me. I had disturbed the natural order of things and from now on they would regard me with disdain. I had no right to be in the car, no right to be going home to a normal dinner like a good child. My very future as a member of my family was suddenly doubtful.
I revised this text after letting myself relive the incident, and I think the result is stronger:
In that second of apprehension I fell through a kind of ontological trapdoor. God fled from the air: all the evil of the world came to rest in that truant pencil and my traitorous heart. For surely on some level I had meant to steal it? I had no right to be in the car, no right to be going home to a normal dinner like a good child. My very future as a member of my family, as a loved grandchild, was suddenly doubtful.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Living it up -- I think
On Sunday I went to a 70th birthday celebration for one of my aunties. It was held at Kooyong Tennis Club, where she's a member, in the prosperous Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. For half a day I was one of the privileged, eating barbecued chicken on a huge balcony with a timber pagoda hung over the long dining table, a pagoda that my sister told me was designed by architectural firm Six Degrees. The balcony overlooked acres of tranquil green tennis courts where prosperous middle-aged folk in their whites practised their serves and competed politely, the courts surrounded by dense parkland that rose up around them and obscured a view of the city centre.
It was one of those sunshin-y summer afternoons that last forever, champagne the colour of pale gold gently hissing in the long frosted glasses, the charcoal-y smells of the meat and the tasteful contrast of the green salads, the tall male cousins squinting and slouching in the sun in their wraparound sunglasses, tailored shirts and structured haircuts but still beer drinkers at heart, the cousins in frilly summer dresses and the aunties in their expensive finery, little girls in smock dresses ganging up and charging down the concrete steps to disappear into the courtside area where they would have to be retrieved for the happy birthday.
I was rich. I am rich. I do love my cousins. The last is not a trivial observation. When you've been clannishly close as children the separations that work, priorities and age differences create can result in giant resentments, simmering bitternesses and feelings of betrayal when you don't get invited to designer weddings for only 70 guests. One of these cousins disappeared to Canada and married a Canadian in a lush lakeside ceremony, and I was convinced I would never see him again. Yet there he was, larrikin-handsome, tall and laidback, with his old hugely pleased, welcoming grin. 'I've been married off!' he said. He shared some of his pains and worries and told us that he and his wife planned to eventually come back to Australia to live.
Everyone but me – I don't drink – was mildly sloshed by the end of the afternoon. They did not stagger about but their mouths did not work properly and their smiling eyes held a veiled, lackadaisical contentment. I envied them their temporary suspension from reality's hard edges but not their probable hangovers.
I am not rich. The rent is going up again, the second time in less than 18 months. More money for the owners that they won't know what to do with (they own the place outright and at least two other properties); less money for me to buy necessities. If there's logic in there I can't find it.
It was one of those sunshin-y summer afternoons that last forever, champagne the colour of pale gold gently hissing in the long frosted glasses, the charcoal-y smells of the meat and the tasteful contrast of the green salads, the tall male cousins squinting and slouching in the sun in their wraparound sunglasses, tailored shirts and structured haircuts but still beer drinkers at heart, the cousins in frilly summer dresses and the aunties in their expensive finery, little girls in smock dresses ganging up and charging down the concrete steps to disappear into the courtside area where they would have to be retrieved for the happy birthday.
I was rich. I am rich. I do love my cousins. The last is not a trivial observation. When you've been clannishly close as children the separations that work, priorities and age differences create can result in giant resentments, simmering bitternesses and feelings of betrayal when you don't get invited to designer weddings for only 70 guests. One of these cousins disappeared to Canada and married a Canadian in a lush lakeside ceremony, and I was convinced I would never see him again. Yet there he was, larrikin-handsome, tall and laidback, with his old hugely pleased, welcoming grin. 'I've been married off!' he said. He shared some of his pains and worries and told us that he and his wife planned to eventually come back to Australia to live.
Everyone but me – I don't drink – was mildly sloshed by the end of the afternoon. They did not stagger about but their mouths did not work properly and their smiling eyes held a veiled, lackadaisical contentment. I envied them their temporary suspension from reality's hard edges but not their probable hangovers.
I am not rich. The rent is going up again, the second time in less than 18 months. More money for the owners that they won't know what to do with (they own the place outright and at least two other properties); less money for me to buy necessities. If there's logic in there I can't find it.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Post Christmas
One of those days where I feel as if I haven't achieved enough. Yes, I had a list and it was good that everything got crossed off but the list had such choice items as 'Walk Jordan' and 'put script in'. Nothing very challenging. And I spent almost an hour browsing at Chadstone when I had determined to go only to Medicare to get my refund from the dermatology appointment. But I went to Target and ended up trying on a pair of pants for $18.80 – they were so huge they floated on me, but size 8 would have been perfect – and then I looked aimlessly through the bargain books at Borders.
I'm almost ready to challenge myself again. I've given myself a week off to recover from what was a kind of 'throat cold'. My throat has been hurting for weeks and finally the thing sputtered to life, causing helpless fits of repetitive coughing and a throat that felt like it contained a hard, angry red box whenever I swallowed. The cold's almost run its course but the sore throat gets worse at night, so much so that whenever I lie down the phlegm burns it and I can't sleep.
J has sauntered into my life. One minute I was uncertain, frightened, waiting outside Readings bookstore for this acerbic stranger to appear. We had 'hooked up', for want of a better term, on an 'adult' internet dating site. The next thing he was walking beside me apologising for being late and my first impression was that his chunky, olive face and body were solid, assimilable, and that there was no awkwardness of one person being taller. He is wrong in every way that matters – fashion sense, suburb sense, interest in books – but that makes it, somehow, possible.
And will it be? I have no idea. All I know is that it is the first relationship in living memory where I am using my intuition and not my rational mind. I'm taking it meeting by meeting. After the first time I assumed it would be a one-night stand. I left his place squinting in the hot midday Blackburn sunlight, totally enervated, appalled at his sleep-induced farts and rubbings, relieved to think I'd probably never see him again. 'See you round', he complained after my perfunctory lip smack. I motored away, up and down the Glen Waverley hills and into my blessedly solitary life.
But afterwards I felt as if I had abandoned him to all that was not easily solvable – his unemployment, his regret at moving, his own solitude. I had abandoned him and still my pelvis felt heavy with his body, my organs had plugged into his and still reverberated. I kept on remembering how he had been turned from me in the dim lit morning, the back of his head lodged deep in the pillow, his body doona-covered, his short dark hair all unmoving when he murmured 'I'm awake'. Such consciousness in the stillness, like something light and unknown watching me from an unseen vantage point.
I'm almost ready to challenge myself again. I've given myself a week off to recover from what was a kind of 'throat cold'. My throat has been hurting for weeks and finally the thing sputtered to life, causing helpless fits of repetitive coughing and a throat that felt like it contained a hard, angry red box whenever I swallowed. The cold's almost run its course but the sore throat gets worse at night, so much so that whenever I lie down the phlegm burns it and I can't sleep.
J has sauntered into my life. One minute I was uncertain, frightened, waiting outside Readings bookstore for this acerbic stranger to appear. We had 'hooked up', for want of a better term, on an 'adult' internet dating site. The next thing he was walking beside me apologising for being late and my first impression was that his chunky, olive face and body were solid, assimilable, and that there was no awkwardness of one person being taller. He is wrong in every way that matters – fashion sense, suburb sense, interest in books – but that makes it, somehow, possible.
And will it be? I have no idea. All I know is that it is the first relationship in living memory where I am using my intuition and not my rational mind. I'm taking it meeting by meeting. After the first time I assumed it would be a one-night stand. I left his place squinting in the hot midday Blackburn sunlight, totally enervated, appalled at his sleep-induced farts and rubbings, relieved to think I'd probably never see him again. 'See you round', he complained after my perfunctory lip smack. I motored away, up and down the Glen Waverley hills and into my blessedly solitary life.
But afterwards I felt as if I had abandoned him to all that was not easily solvable – his unemployment, his regret at moving, his own solitude. I had abandoned him and still my pelvis felt heavy with his body, my organs had plugged into his and still reverberated. I kept on remembering how he had been turned from me in the dim lit morning, the back of his head lodged deep in the pillow, his body doona-covered, his short dark hair all unmoving when he murmured 'I'm awake'. Such consciousness in the stillness, like something light and unknown watching me from an unseen vantage point.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)