Like a lot of things, it's all about the preparation. So much to write but how to order it all...
Fiction is one thing. You can make it up. Tiresome detail is never allowed to dominate. However hard we try for it to be gutsy or 'real', fiction to some extent comes sanitised.
On the other hand, biography, and particularly auto-biography, is stuffed full of detail and if not grubby, then at best chaotic. To tell a story well someone or something needs to impose some order on the chaos. And then there is the dance with truth... sticking to the facts should not be confused with the truth... They are not the same.
So the first task for me is defining a structure - a sweater - to head up the thoughts and divisions in the first story, 2 SWEATERS & SOME PIES. This is in play. Breaking up the biographical detail of a family dating from 1830 and putting those people, dates and things into a framework based around a sweater. It could be a quilt, a deck of cards, the ingredients for a meal. Anything to carve up the information into smaller more manageable pieces...
The second task for me is to wait for the voice for the second story, THE PAYSCALE OF THE DOVE. To do that I sometimes try out all sorts of different voices, by writing. More often than not the voice comes to me when I am doing something else. Eventually I will hear it and then it will speak through me, often at great speed. IN THE SMOKE OF THE SAGEBRUSH was written almost in one sitting. FIESTA LATINA took only a week. But each of these books was a long time, even years, in the brewing...
This blog is part of the process that is being shared with you...
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
...if you are a child that was left behind...
It's true. All we have is our story...
Mine is about recovering an identity. When I was two and a half, first my father left me behind, and then my mother. With a new family and a new name I went to live in a new country. Recovering my identity, which included my name, my nationality and my ethnic origin, has been a struggle, an adventure, a delight, and, now that I am approaching sixty, is, it seems, at last, almost a triumph...
In doing this I have observed something. Where once I was in a rare position of having been left behind by middle class educated parents following their dreams, I am now among the elders of a growing tribe...
A novelist and a cook by profession, it is hardly surprising therefore that I am beginning to gather together all the ingredients to write two new books that tackle this theme. I am lucky indeed that my publisher is interested in them since they are quite a departure from novel writing...
2 SWEATERS & SOME PIES is the history of my family and in a way is a repatriation, since they were lost to me. THE PAYSCALE OF THE DOVE charts a life from sunny California to war torn Britain, meetings with royalty, celebrity and the most humble...but is fundamentally about acquiring an essential skill set...
I intend to use this blog to discuss the progress of these books, from the practical issues of gathering together the photos, the census information and the stories, to the internal process of trawling through the emotional wreckage and finding it is far from a spiritual wasteland.
My hope is, by making this process transparent, others will feel inspired to find their way to reflect their story, creating something of value for them, for their families and for others.
Mine is about recovering an identity. When I was two and a half, first my father left me behind, and then my mother. With a new family and a new name I went to live in a new country. Recovering my identity, which included my name, my nationality and my ethnic origin, has been a struggle, an adventure, a delight, and, now that I am approaching sixty, is, it seems, at last, almost a triumph...
In doing this I have observed something. Where once I was in a rare position of having been left behind by middle class educated parents following their dreams, I am now among the elders of a growing tribe...
A novelist and a cook by profession, it is hardly surprising therefore that I am beginning to gather together all the ingredients to write two new books that tackle this theme. I am lucky indeed that my publisher is interested in them since they are quite a departure from novel writing...
2 SWEATERS & SOME PIES is the history of my family and in a way is a repatriation, since they were lost to me. THE PAYSCALE OF THE DOVE charts a life from sunny California to war torn Britain, meetings with royalty, celebrity and the most humble...but is fundamentally about acquiring an essential skill set...
I intend to use this blog to discuss the progress of these books, from the practical issues of gathering together the photos, the census information and the stories, to the internal process of trawling through the emotional wreckage and finding it is far from a spiritual wasteland.
My hope is, by making this process transparent, others will feel inspired to find their way to reflect their story, creating something of value for them, for their families and for others.
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