Anam Cara Works Its Magic

Just a quick post to announce...wait for it...the completion of the first draft of my new novel! I had hoped to finish it while I was here, and indeed it has happened. Like I've said, there is something about this place.

As it stands now, the novel has just over 76,000 words, plus a new title (I think). Of course, now starts the rereading, rewriting, sending out and getting back. In other words, the hard part. But at least the entire story is told and it didn't even take me nine years to tell it this time. Of course, it helps having this in your back garden for inspiration....

Hailing the Bus of Bozos

This is one of those looking back to look forward posts...
About 3 or 4 years ago I decided I desperately, DESPERATELY, needed to meet some other writer/artist-types. I had a wonderful family, marvellous friends, but I didn't know anyone who even came remotely close to doing what I did. There I was scribbling away in some closed off room, hardly ever believing I would ever get published and not at all understanding why I was doing all this anyway, and I had no one to discuss it with. That's when I started trawling around the internet to find a retreat, a place I could go and meet other people crazy in the same was as I was/am crazy. Well, "trawling" makes it sound a bit more dramatic than it really was. I had an idea that such a place existed in Ireland, so I googled "writer's retreat Ireland" and the first link on the list was Anam Cara. So I went.

Sue Booth-Forbes, the creative genius behind this amazing place, is not very demanding. The only thing she insists on is that you show her in some way that you have a project that you want to pursue and you are serious about spending your time pursuing it. I had a project....a novel which eventually became Tangled Roots. But my real unspoken goal was to meet other writers, which I did and continue to do every time I go. In two days, I head back up to West Cork for my sixth (?) visit. With any luck and a fair wind, I will finish the first draft of the Cambodia novel. But just as importantly, I'll meet more artists, more people who talk about process, more people who obsess about commas (ah...commas....).

But what amazes me, really, is now to roll the film forward and see what I have been doing these past few days in the lead-up to my next trip. On Saturday, I had lunch with four writers from the site "Bloggers With Book Deals." Debi Alper, Nicola Monaghan, Leigh Russell and Robin (forgive me for not getting your last name!!!). We sat for nearly two hours talking about writerly things, complaining about the state of the industry, reassuring each other and ourselves about the state of our creative output and the reasons why we continue in this crazy pursuit of ours. Today, I am having lunch with Vanessa Gebbie, the wonderful fiction writer who I first met at Anam Cara a few years ago. Tomorrow I'm having a drink with Nicky Schmidt, another writer who I have come to know via blogging and is here visiting from South Africa. Others will be joining us, too, though I'm not sure exactly who other than Debi -- who I've felt like I've known forever and will now be seeing twice in one week!

So what's the point? The point for me is that listening to my own needs and forcing myself out into the world was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I was petrified going to Anam Cara for the first time, petrified to talk to all these other people I was so very desperate to meet. But desperation can be a powerful impetus and now, a few short years later, my life is full of people "like" me. I am part of a real community. I am no longer alone. There's a lot of crazy shit going on in the publishing industry today, much of it scary and discouraging. But my friends and I are in the middle of it, we stand together and that's even more than I had ever dared hope for.

It's my birthday on Thursday, 28th May. I think I've already gotten my present.


PS Not sure of the internet access up there, so if you don't hear
from me for a week, you'll know where I am and that I'm happy!

Pain and Still Some Fury

It is very strange, actually more than strange, how sometimes what you are writing about actually happens in "real life." Life has been a bit eerie and frightening on this front for the past month or so.

For some reason I have hesitated to talk too much about my new novel here. I can't figure out why that is, unless it's some old superstition left over from my distant peasant past. But I've moved two generations beyond that now and I need to talk about something that is happening in today's world, and that also means talking about my new novel. The working title is "An Everywhere of Innocents," and it is set in the year 2007 in an orphanage in Phnom Penh, Cambodia which is run by a 60-year-old American woman. One day a young American backpacker shows up saying she wants to stay and help. The mystery of the book surrounds the questions who is this young woman, who is the older one, why are these Westerners there in the first place and what are they running away from? Those are the questions. But the big theme is murder -- who takes responsibility for it, who doesn't. Perhaps that theme seems obvious in the context of Cambodian history and the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge regime. But it spills over onto recent, and now current history in America, specifically the tragedy of campus shootings.

We all know about the terrible tragedies that have occurred over the past years on US high school and college campuses. For me, they always seemed far away in some part of the country I never went to, never knew much about. But over the past few weeks, killings have occurred on two college campuses that are very important to me -- one is my alma mater, the other is my husband's and the place where I am about to send Number 2 Son. And while this was happening, I was in the midst of writing about the long term effects being involved in such a shooting can have. The overlap is terrifying.

I often say that one reason why I write novels is so that I can work out the emotional impact of events that I hopefully then never have to really experience. As an American adult who has chosen to spend her life outside of America, and who is now about to send her flesh and blood back into that melting pot which often seems more like a cauldron, I look at the United States with a very critical eye. Yes, it is true that murders occur everywhere. I have spent my life living in cities. I know that danger lurks around every corner. I also know, from recent visits, that security on American campuses is very high, very well-considered. Campus administrations act responsibly and are generally doing everything they can. But I still feel as if there is blame to be passed on, and I place that blame squarely on the shoulders of a citizenry that believes it is more important to have the right to misinterpret a declaration written hundreds of years before than to ensure the safety of its children. Guns are too easily available in America. There is no excuse for the fact that just about anybody at anytime can go into any store and purchase such a weapon, a weapon which can then be turned on innocent children.

I am angry with my native country, and so far no amount of written words has quelled that anger. There aren't enough words in my pen to wash away the blood.

Guest Star

Yes, I know it's a shock to see me here two days in a row, but I had to let you all know that I am the guest star over at Nik's blog. There are questions answered, some silliness and even a competition. Check it out, why don't you....

Look! Our book covers are holding hands!

For Love of Libraries

I awoke on this very rainy Sunday morning wondering what the day might have in store for me. I did what I always do each morning - I looked outside and made my first decision (since it was pouring I decided not to go out for a run. Oh well...best laid plans etc). I put on my glasses and then picked up my blackberry to see what the world had been up to while I slept. I was greeted on this otherwise murky day by a most wonderful Facebook message. A Facebook friend, the poet Lyn Moir, wrote to tell me she had just finished reading Tangled Roots and loved it (phew). But she happened to mention that she had picked it up at the library, and I felt a funny, complicated little jolt.

One of the unfortunate side effects of having a book to sell is that you want to actually sell it -- either for the money or the Nielsen rating. And now for a confession -- last year while I was on my book tour, an older woman came up to me, asked me all about the book and said that she was really interested in reading it. When she then said she would go and take it out of her library I had a moment of irritation and had to control my eyes from rolling around to the back of my head. I do feel bad about that because public libraries are not only convenient, good local resources, they are important -- vitally important and, I believe, vital to the cultural vibrancy of any community. I remember learning about the origin of the public library when I was about 12 years old and in school in New York. In the States, most of the credit for creating a system of local institutions which are funded by the government and exist for the continuing education of the general population goes to none other than Benjamin Franklin. The importance of the fact that the history of this institution was actually a part of the curriculum in my local "public" school ("state" school to the Brits) was not lost on me, even then. One of the roles of any government is to to help ensure the literacy of its population, and a key to that is the continuing efficacy of its public libraries.

And so this morning when I read that my friend had taken Tangled Roots out of her local library I had a different reaction. I was snug in my bed on a rainy Sunday morning and not standing in the fiction department of a strange, far away Waterstones. So I was thrilled. Thank you, Lyn, and from across the generations and the ocean, thank you Benjamin Franklin.

Now, of course, all this reminds me of a song...

An Award? Moi?

I take it as a great compliment that the incredibly talented, Tania Hershman of The White Road and Other Stories, saw fit to give me "The Kreativ Blogger" award. Thanks, Tania! And so now I must list 7 things that I love....this ain't so easy. I know I'll spend the rest of the day (and night) thinking about all the other things I could have/should have mentioned. But here goes:

1. My "boys," namely my husband (otherwise known here as D), Number 1 Son and Number 2 Son
2. My parents and my sisters
3. My friends, all of them
4. My life as a writer (even when I hate it)
5. My violin, even when I only play it once a week at orchestra rehearsals (if then)
6. My house on the Vineyard
7. Traveling to places I've never been before

And now I must pass this on to 7 bloggers who are creative and who I love:
Vanessa Gebbie, DJ Kirkby, Susan Richardson, Elizabeth Baines, Debi Alper, Not Only in Thailand, and Baroque in Hackney.

American Women Novelists and the "GAN"

The headline over a surprisingly long article in Saturday's Guardian read:

The postwar literary landscape has been dominated by the male giants of
American letters. So where are all the women?

That was enough to get me going, which I suppose is the point of a headline. But as I read the article, written by Elaine Showalter, I realized she actually was arguing for the fact that many of America's great novelists have been women, and they still are. From Harriet Beecher Stowe to Tony Morrison, women have always staked their claim in America's literary world, usually using their own names and daring the mainly male-dominated publishing world to to ignore them. Their work has always been popular and often long-lasting -- think Louisa May Alcott. Think of Harper Lee.

The problem seems to arise with the discussion of the "holy grail" of American fiction, the so-called "Great American Novel (GAN)." Showalter quotes John Walsh as saying that,
this is the big one...a single work of perfect fiction that would encapsulate the
heart of the US, interpret its history through the light of a single, outstanding
conciousness, unite the private lives of the characters with the public drama of its politics."

Generally speaking, the literary establishment assumes that the GAN has and will lie firmly in the grasp of an American male writer. Moby Dick is the work most often cited. Others name The Great Gatsby. But for my money, the work that most closely fits Walsh's definition is Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. And as I already said, Lee was a woman.

None of this is surprising. Women do not necessarily write about subjects that their male counterparts in the "estabishment" regard as large or important, though many do. Woman often use depictions of family, homes and communities to express their vision of the world and the imperfect species that rules it. Many woman find more meaning in the details of human life than in the grand sweeping gestures. But again, not all. And I suppose it is this inexplicable need to generalize that has annoyed me the most. It's not the article that angered me. It's the fact that it needed to be written that I find infuriating.

Normally, I wouldn't feel the need to respond. If I read something that upsets me, I tend to complain about it to whichever family member is nearby and leave it at that. But I felt I had to say something. And for obvious reasons. I'm a writer. I'm a woman. I'm an American. And the fact that I live my life at a distance from America gives me a different sense of perspective. So what do I think? I think there's no such thing as "The Great American Novel," nor should there be. The GAN is just one more act of arrogance, another way for writers to make themelves look important, or even tortured. Dividing writers between male and female camps ultimately does their work and their readers a disservice. It simplifies something that does not need simplification. It sows dissent irresponsibly. And it is shortsighted. Writers write what they need to express when they need to express it, and how. The subject matter they choose today is not necessarily what they will choose tomorrow. Anyone who knows the work of Joyce Carol Oates or Jane Smiley would understand that.

I, for one, do not want to be compared to another writer unless the comparison is about something having to do with writing, ie style or theme or genre. My country, my sex, my religion has nothing to do with it, except as factors that have contributed to who I am, not as a woman, nor as an American, but as a person. I believe it is important to my craft that I have a fairly good grasp of the tradition I work within, ie the tradition of literature written in the English language. I do believe in the old adage about standing on the shoulders of giants. But my ego is not so large, nor are the egos of the women I know who write, that it needs to thrust me towards a goal of becoming an historic landmark. Producing the best work that I can, and then actually getting it published, is a lofty enough goal for this writer, as well it should be for any writer.

Noblesse Oblige

A couple of days ago, Absolute Vanilla wrote a post about having received this "Noblesse Oblige" award.

The blurb accompanying the blog says:

The recipient of this award is recognized for the following: 1) The Blogger manifests exemplary attitude, respecting the nuances that pervades amongst different cultures and beliefs. 2) The Blog contents inspire; strives to encourage, and offers solutions. 3) There is a clear purpose at the Blog; one that fosters a better understanding on Social, Political, Economic, the Arts, Culture, Sciences, and Beliefs. 4) The Blog is refreshing and creative. 5) The Blogger promotes friendship and positive thinking.

The Blogger who receives this award will need to perform the following steps: 1) Create a Post with a mention and link to the person who presented the Noblesse Oblige Award. 2) The Award Conditions must be displayed at the Post. 3) Write a short article about what the Blog has thus far achieved – preferably citing one or more older posts to support. 4) The Blogger must present the Noblesse Oblige Award in concurrence with the Award conditions. 5) Blogger must display the Award at any location at the Blog.

Ab Van doesn't name specific people to whom she gives awards. She just puts them out there for anyone to take up and then pass on. I like that, and I think I'll do the same here. To be honest, I didn't think that this award really applied to me. But Ab Van's blog ended with a picture of what I thought was a ladybird (lady bug to you Americans) and I have a rather secret thing about ladybirds (she then told me it wasn't actually a ladybird, just a beetle that looked like one, but it was too late. I was already hooked). So here I am, thinking about my blog.

Like many writers, this blog started out as a way to promote my work. But over the past year that has changed. Yes, I still promote my work as shamelessly and vigorously as I can. But that is now rarely the impetus for writing here. This blog gives me the only outlet I have to talk to like-minded people about my ideas and opinions about literature, the creative act, and living life as an "artist." I spent over fifty years having all these ideas and not really having anyone to share them with. Now suddenly, I'm part of a community full of funny, opinionated, worried, persistent, spiritual, openminded and openhearted people.

I don't know how much my blog has really helped with book sales. Maybe a little, but not enough to make one of the big houses stand up and take notice. And my list of blog followers has not grown by anything close to leaps and bounds. In that way my blogging life mimics my "real" life. It is small but intense. The connections may not be many, but they are strong. And as I start having more and more opportunities to meet my blogging friends out in the real world I realize that those friendships are as real as any I have made in any other sphere of my life.

So when I look back up to the criteria for this award I think, yes, that is what I try to do here, just like that is what the other blogs I read try to do over there. Yea, I'll take the award, and I'll pass it along to all of you. And as further inspiration, here is the "ladybird wannabe" from Ab Van's blog:
And here's one I found on google:
And here's the truth about me and ladybirds. I have a ladybird that shows up every now and then in my bathroom. I never know when she'll be there, but it has nothing to do with windows being open or closed or cracks in the wall. She just appears, and so I am convinced that she comes when I need her. She watches over me and listens to me and whenever I see her, I say hi. I wouldn't say out loud that I believe in reincarnation, but if I did I would say that this ladybird knew me and cared about me in a former life, and she still does now.

Go ahead. Call me crazy. But at least I'm honest about it. Noblesse oblige.

Get with the Program

It's all felt a little, well, strange lately.  Maybe it's the swine flu "pandemic."  Maybe it's the weather going from summer to winter and back again every few hours.  But I seem to find myself surrounded by lots of negative energy, lots of worrying about the future, especially when it comes to publishing and the state of that crazy industry that seems to decide the writer's fate.  I know that before I published anything, I spent a great deal of negative energy fearing that my work would never be published.  Now that I am published, I worry that I'll never be published again.  And I know I'm not the only one out there feeling this way.  So when I sat down to write my blog today all I could think to write was a giant Ugh.  

But then I decided to check out the TED website and see what I could come up with.  And once again, I was inspired, not necessarily to write something new, but -- and even more importantly -- just to keep going.  Take a look at this video which is actually a short compilation of several talks by Jay Walker, an entrepreneur and businessman, who spent a great deal of his money and a great deal of his time and passion creating the "Library of Human Imagination."  Watching this reminded me that the creative effort is important.  Our brains are meant to do more than just make money.  And even if we do make some, it's powerless to affect the world unless it is accompanied by a creative spark.  It is the pursuit of creativity that changes everything.  That's really why we writers, artists, musicians do what we do.  As Margaret Drabble said the other evening at the Society of Authors reception, "The credit crunch does not bother writers because we don't have jobs to lose.  We'll always write anyway." Recently, I've forgotten about my New Year's resolution to have faith.  Thankfully, there are people out there to remind me (and thanks to Sarah Salway for turning me on to this site in the first place).