‘Alison Ferguson’s Home Visit is a slick horror story, cleverly disguised by the banal language of bureaucracy…’
Or so say the judges of the 2019 Newcastle Short Story Awards in their introduction to the anthology put out by the Hunter Writers Centre. My story is titled, ‘Home Visit’, and it was awarded one of the ‘Local Awards’ for the Hunter area. Very excited about it all – by the sound of the comment, all those years of working in bureaucratic institutions paid off!
My ‘sci-fi-lite’ novel, Grey Nomad, was shortlisted on 29 April for the inaugural 2019 Fantastic Prize (Brio Books) – one of only six shortlisted out of 80 entries. (See my post from 25 February this year for a snapshot of what it’s about!)
This time last year, the NSW Department of Family and Community Services (in concert with the Fellowship of Australian Writers, NSW) had declared ‘positive ageing‘ to be the theme for their 2018 Seniors Card Short Story Competition. As a FAWNSW member and a card-carrying Senior, I gave it a shot, and the following story made the ‘Top 100’ list and went into their 2018 anthology (available in hard copy from NSW local libraries, or you can download it in pdf from here).
The Upside of Funerals (a short story)
Ignoring Mitch’s quick flinch, Sarah pressed her powdered cheek against his. ‘So sad it’s taken an occasion such as this to see you again.’
It was nice to see that my old friends had stayed true to their roots. Sarah’s makeup had always been immaculate, even in those days of kaftans and sandals. Back then, Mitch’s diatribes on the bullshit pretensions of the socially mobile had been legendary. Today, however, he merely smiled thinly, restraining himself.
They stood in the rose garden of the crematorium grounds, looking at the other mourners as they assembled. Each of the new arrivals tried to disguise their shock as each recognised another here and there, through the veil of years masking their old friends’ faces. There wasn’t to be a funeral ceremony but, after scattering the ashes, there would be a wake in the pub nearby. Later, there’d be plenty of time for them to catch up. Now, greetings were shared guiltily, as if it were disrespectful given the occasion.
Mitch looked like he’d been uncertain what to wear for a non-funeral. Being middle-aged hadn’t stopped him from wearing jeans, but he’d selected his black ones and thrown on a dark brown leather jacket. It looked like the same one I’d clutched as his pillion passenger along icy winter roads when we were young and foolish. I never expected Mitch to make it past twenty, yet there he was, blinking in the sunlight, as if surprised to find himself still here.
Sarah’s ex-husband was wearing a sharp suit, the backs of his trouser legs shiny with wear. Paul had been her high-school sweetheart and their romance survived their university years, only to falter with the arrival of children. By the look of his suit, Paul had come out the worst from their divorce settlement.
It was forty or more years since I’d seen any of them. There was Jack, with his new partner. The thin brittle wife I’d known had been replaced years before. The drunken intimacy of a night best forgotten lay between us. And there was Geoff, his bulk looming even larger, shuffling about, his characteristic gait now age-appropriate. And Lauren, affecting imperturbability as always, intoned the eulogy that I didn’t want to hear. At least Cathy seemed to be enjoying herself. She surveyed the small group, her ice-sharp eyes noting all and her lips curling back with knowing appreciation of the absurdity of it all.
Mitch opened the tightly-sealed urn and tipped it through the thorns onto the petalled rose bed.
The smell was disconcertingly redolent of a barbeque. It made me think of that time we’d piled into the Kombie and headed out to the farmhouse of a friend of someone who none of us knew. We’d sat through the night drinking cheap flagon wine and smoking weed till dawn greyed the magic of the night into ash.
Here, surrounded by manicured lawns, there was something in the way they stood together, thinking about our fragile short lives that made sense of the daily struggle. The sound of soft guitar filtered amongst us. Mitch had tied his hair back, and begun to pick out sad notes on his acoustic guitar. It was good to hear his music again.
When he stopped, there were the sounds of throats being cleared and noses blown.
‘Coming to the pub?’ Paul asked Sarah.
She looked grateful to be asked.
‘You look like you could do with a drop of something,’ Geoff said, giving Lauren a bear hug.
He was probably avoiding commenting on her eulogy but she looked like the embrace was enough.
I watched them begin to leave, some headed to the pub, others back to their busy lives.
My ashes settled into the earth.
They, each a fragment of a once-shared friendship, were now scattering again into the air, swirling together for a moment in configurations of goodbyes, as if reluctant yet pleased in the end to leave.
I could not follow, but it had been good to see them all for one last time.
They each hoped to see one another again, yet not on an occasion such as this.
THE END
_____________
Hope you liked it! And if you’re feeling inspired to write then, the Department of Family and Community Services has recently announced the 2019 theme: ‘Love your Life’. They’re a relentlessly cheerful bunch, aren’t they?)
See https://fawnsw.org.au/seniors-card-short-story-competition-2019/ for further information: Closing date 22 May, 2019.
This is where I come clean. Last month, I posted a minor rant about my growing irritation with quirky protagonists who achieve the astonishing feat of being both older and yet still having the potential of a character arc. My thoughts were, I confess, prompted by my own world-building for a sci-fi-lite novella I was developing through November. (I was participating in NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month for the second time.)
Here’s the synopsis of my work-in-progress.
Grey Nomad
Alien spaceships from the planet Liser have landed in every major country on Earth. Joyce convinces her staid husband to divert from their annual caravan holiday itinerary to brave the queues of tourists to see the spaceship in Canberra. Unexpectedly, the Liseran spaceship does an emergency take-off to evade imminent attack by spaceships of their long-standing enemy, the Thulians. Joyce and JT, an avid trekkie, are the only tourists left on board with the human security team in a spaceship filled with angry aliens hurtling toward a space war.
Surviving an alien war won’t just demand that Joyce master telepathy, it will also call upon all her experience from her years with the Country Women’s Association.
My own journey in writing this piece is proving to be a lot of fun and, so far, Joyce is neither quirky nor quaint—but she does have dodgy knees.
I blame book clubs. If you belong to a library-run book club, you may have noticed a predilection for your reading list to comprise novels with older protagonists. The age range for ‘older’ can be anything from 50 to 80 or more, which is frightening from wherever you are standing on the timeline. These characters are considered remarkable by the miracle of being both older and yet interested and active participants in the world around them. The protagonists are (pick as many as apply):
And, almost universally,
This is not to say that such books don’t make an entertaining read. They are a pleasant way to spend an effortless afternoon. Amongst my fellow book club members, the consensus ratings of these books were 3/5. Such books are usually well-written and well-edited to achieve that magic page turning quality. However, it’s the underlying characterisation of age that strikes me as open to question.
Here’s a summary of 2018’s teeth-gritting reading, including their publishers’ blurbs (in no particular order):
Hester and Harriet by Hilary Spiers (2015, Allen & Unwin) – genre mystery/’domestic fiction’
‘Hold on to your tea cups – you’re about to fall head over heels for Hester and Harriet, whose quiet and ordered Christmas celebrations are turned upside down with the arrival of their runaway teenage nephew and a young refugee woman and her baby.’
It wasn’t until I was about half-way into this book that I realised the ‘elderly’ sisters were in their early 60s.
The Fence by Meredith Jaffe (2016, Macmillan)
‘Gwen Hill has lived on Green Valley Avenue all her adult life. Here she brought her babies home, nurtured her garden and shared life’s ups and downs with her best friend and neighbour, Babs. So when Babs dies and the house next door is sold, Gwen wonders how the new family will settle into the quiet life of this cosy community. …Soon the neighbours are in an escalating battle that becomes about more than just council approvals, and boundaries aren’t the only things at stake.’
Jaffe teeters between a savage and insightful recognition of the realities of ageing (for example, the care of a dementing husband) and satirical farce as events compound as the older characters behave in increasingly irrational ways.
Lost & Found by Brooke Davis (2015, Hachette)
‘At seven years old, Millie Bird realises that everything is dying around her. She wasn’t to know that after she had recorded twenty-seven assorted creatures in her Book of Dead Things her dad would be a Dead Thing, too. Agatha Pantha is eighty-two and has not left her house since her husband died. She sits behind her front window, hidden by the curtains and ivy, and shouts at passers-by, roaring her anger at complete strangers. Until the day Agatha spies a young girl across the street. Karl the Touch Typist is eighty-seven when his son kisses him on the cheek before leaving him at the nursing home. As he watches his son leave, Karl has a moment of clarity. He escapes the home and takes off in search of something different. Three lost people needing to be found. But they don’t know it yet. Millie, Agatha and Karl are about to break the rules and discover what living is all about.’
This book distinguishes itself from the others by attempting to embrace the sexuality of the older person. However, when Agatha and Karl fall to their knees and make passionate love in the sandy desert, our book club members were unanimous in shrieking: not on the ground!!
The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree by Susan Wittig Albert (2010, Berkley)
‘The good old ladies of Darling, Alabama, are determined to keep their town beautiful. The Darling Dahlias garden club is off to a good start until rumors of trouble at a bank, an escaped convict, and a ghost digging around their tree surface. If anyone can get to the root of these mysteries, it’s the Darling Dahlias.’
Be warned – it’s a series.
This tendency to view older people as ‘cute’ or ‘dear things’ is the reverse side to the more serious ageist coin where older people are absent, invisible, or fragile/disabled/unwell/burdensome. There has been academic scholarship and debate exploring the perpetuation of ageist stereotypes in literature that is highly relevant to the dark side of this issue. I’d suggest that the lighter side is potentially just as damaging.
Looking at the novels I have endured this year in my book club, I have developed a maxim:
“The younger the author, the quainter the older protagonist.”
The portrayal of older protagonists by older authors is strikingly different. For example, this year we also read 86-year-old John Le Carré’s brilliant return to the world of Smiley and Guillam, ‘A Legacy of Spies (2018, Penguin).
Peter Guillam may be getting hard-of-hearing and he’s not above exploiting perceptions of failing aged memory, but he remains as sharp as his mentor.
If I’m fortunate enough to live as long as Le Carré, I’d love to read the novels that quaint-ifiers write in twenty or more years’ time and see if their characterisation of their protagonists has changed.
Like many aspiring writers, I’ve been busily entering my writing into competitions over the last couple of years. There are pros and cons, of course, with some arguing that it’s a good way to build your reputation as a writer (if you win) and to develop your skills (even if you don’t). While I agree with both these arguments, for me there are even more practical reasons to enter.
The focus of a particular competition allows me to minimise the distractions of another idea or another story. Such distractions look much easier to write at the very same moment that the work in-hand starts getting harder. With the competition in sight, I can tell myself ‘later’.
There’s nothing like a deadline to make you finish something. Inevitably, I can see ways to improve what I’ve written in the minutes, hours, days after submitting it.However, then I console myself with the thought that just means it’ll be available for revision on another occasion.
And, drum roll . . .
In 2017, I submitted work to two local competitions without success. But in 2018, I ramped up my productivity and submitted to five national competitions and one international competition.
One of these, the Seniors Card Short Story Competition, doesn’t declare a winner, but they do publish the top 100 in book—and in 2018,my story ‘The Upside of Funerals’ made it into the book. As a government-sponsored competition, they make a lovely fuss so, with the other senior writers, I got to have lunch at NSW Parliament House in Sydney, listen to speeches and have my hand shaken with our local MP. The book, Seniors’ Stories Volume 4, will be available in hard copy in libraries through NSW and online.
I also made it onto the Shortlist for the Scarlet Stiletto Awards for 2018. This is an exceptionally entertaining competition run by Sisters In Crime, to encourage and promote women crime writers. They also hosted a stellar Awards night in Melbourne at the Thornbury Theatre at which I received a ‘Special Commendation’ certificate for my story ‘Fragments of Meaning’. The nine top Award winners’ stories are available in ebook, ‘Scarlet Stiletto: The Tenth Cut’, from Clandestine Press.
It was a great way to finish the year and an inspiration to start thinking about what ‘crimes’ I can commit to paper next year!
The issues around structure are anathema for some writers and an obsession for others. I’ve written in this blog before (March, 2017) about how people who write ‘by the seat of their pants’ (pantsers) often see structure as a straitjacket, constraining the flow of ideas and creative development. People who prepare detailed plot outlines and character arcs (planners) see structure as a way to corral and harness their stampeding ideas. However, planners can find that the exhaustive world-building and development of character background stories can take years (I’m looking at you, George R.R. Martin) and run the risk of the creative spark fizzling out before they pen their first paragraph. On the other hand, for pantsers, the upside of understanding structure is that it can provide an invaluable diagnostic tool when revising that first unwieldy draft.
By nature, I’m a planner but I treasure those moments of flow when the story and the characters take over and write themselves. However, most of all, I love revising (yes, strange, I know). That hankering to revise is often what motivates me to push past my writer’s blocks since, without text, there’s no diagnostic problem-solving. When getting that first draft out, one of my frustrations is that my default structure is ‘And then … and then … and then’, which makes for dull reading. To try move past this, I’ve been reading a range of books about writing structure that are often recommended by other writers.
The following books are interesting and inspiring, so I’ve given a brief snapshot review of each of them.
Brooks, L. (2011). Story engineering. Writers’ Digest Books.
The central messages in this book relate to what Brooks describes as the ‘Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling’.
Interestingly, Brooks suggests that there is no particular order in which you might work on each aspect of the story. However, when it comes to structure, knowing something about each of the other aspects helps ‘engineer’ your way through each pivotal plot point and the key stages of set-up, response, attack and resolution.
Larry Brooks is a successful author who is very experienced in running masterclasses on writing. He also hosts a useful website http://storyfix.com/ which is full of information and resources. ‘Story Engineering’ is very accessible. The experience of reading each chapter is like doing a mini-workshop. As I read, my mind was flooded with ideas about work-in-progress. For a taster, you might enjoy a video interview with him that is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGq84WOQfqM
McKee, R. (2010). Story: Style, structure, substance, and the principles of screenwriting. Harper Collins.
McKee’s book first came out in 1997 and is quoted by just about all the other authors who followed him into this topic. The information and ideas have a wide application beyond screenplay writing. There is an extended interview with McKee on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_s8wIOMAU0 .
Pierre, D.B.C. (2016). Release the bats: Writing your way out of it. Faber & Faber.
Punchy and inspiring, Pierre urges us to ‘write in a fever, rewrite in a cardigan‘. Pierre is a highly successful satirical novelist (Man Booker prize winner). His book is more memoir than a writing manual, but his incisive wit skewers many of the myths about writing. In essence, this book is a call to action—just write! There is a serious (though lengthy) interview with him on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYt-KCLtnU4 , and some lighter moments at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtqNwhMlcG4 .
Truby, J. (2008). The anatomy of story: 22 steps to becoming a master storyteller. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Truby’s book is, paradoxically, formulaic as well as subversive. Truby is, like Brooks (above), an experienced workshop provider and so the book leads you through 22 specific steps to developing your story. However, at the same time, Truby explodes the idea of the traditional three-act structure and explores multiple examples from film and literature to show how master storytellers exploit or defy traditional story structures to surprise and intrigue. Truby emphasises how structure is intrinsically driven by the themes and characters.
The book is very easy to read and highly entertaining because of the frequent use of familiar examples. I found myself mapping out ways that I could radically alter the way I had conceptualised my work-in-progress as I read it. For a short taster, see the YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5-9cOZps44 .
Yorke, J. (2014). Into the woods: How stories work and why we tell them. Penguin.
John Yorke has a wealth of experience in British television (BBC) and writes insightfully about how structure works and why it warrants study beyond the ‘how to’ approach. Like Truby (above), he integrates examples from many familiar stories from literature, television and film into his discussion of what works and why. Yorke provides a fascinating analysis of the Russian-doll nature of story structure. Within the overarching story structure, there is a nested structure of each act, and within each act there is a structure within each scene, and within each scene there is a micro-structure. In particular, there is a mirroring of scenes between the first and last acts that brings the story to a satisfying resolution. One of the examples he provides of this will be familiar to those who enjoyed the film, Strictly Ballroom.
(from Yorke, 2014, ch.10)
First Act
Scott dances his own steps selfishly.
He refuses to dance with Fran.
He chooses to dance with Fran.
(other intervening Acts)
Last Act
He chooses to dance with Fran.
He dances with Fran.
He dances with Fran to the rhythm of his own heart.
To get an idea of the depth and gentle humour of his approach, you might be interested to listen to the 45-minute seminar available at https://vimeo.com/70034237 . For a short taster, see YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUNJ9OAbdk
Whether writing structure is a helpful tool to identify where our stories flag or whether it informs our first jottings in a story outline, it is of some comfort that others have struggled before us. At the same time, perhaps it is salutary to consider Yorke’s warning (Introduction):
‘Is this therefore the magic key to storytelling? Such hubris requires caution — the compulsion to order, to explain, to catalogue, is also the tendency of the train-spotter. In denying the rich variety and extraordinary multifaceted nature of narrative, one risks becoming no better than Casaubon, the desiccated husk from Middlemarch, who turned his back on life while seeking to explain it. It’s all too tempting to reduce wonder to a scientific formula and unweave the rainbow.’ Yorke, 2014
I’ve been going through a writing lull, so that means that I’ve been making the most of my subscription to Audible. Here’s a brief review my latest find.
‘Treasure Island’ by Robert Louis Stevenson, An Audible Original Drama, adapted by Marty Ross. Length 6 hrs and 26 mins. Performance release date: 17-08-2017 Publisher: Audible Studios
I’d tried reading ‘Treasure Island’ as a child, of course, but never got past the first few chapters. With my writer’s hat on, I can see now why I struggled. The story initially came out in serial form in 1882, so perhaps that explains the long first six chapters to finally get into the heart of the story to set sail for Treasure Island. Even though this dramatised version is an adaptation, I was well and truly over the rum-swilling Billy Bones by the time we heard the sound of Blind Pew’s stick approaching with the doom-laden ‘black spot’. However, this time I stuck with it, largely held by the broad accents of Catherine Tate as Jim’s mother. Her talents alerted me to the usefulness of minor characters in providing humorous commentary on the dramatic action. Another favourite minor character, old Tom Redruth—faithful retainer to the foolish Squire Trelawney—provided a similar commentary on his master in this version.
Despite my failure to finish the book in my youth, the rest of the story was familiar through movies and television. However, none of those versions had illuminated the central theme of the story. Typically, the story is told as a coming-of-age journey for Jim who sails as cabin boy on the Hispaniola commissioned by Squire Trelawny, to find the treasure on the map uncovered by Jim and Dr Livesey (played by another very recognisable actor, Philip Glenister). However, just as pivotally, the story unpicks the threads of greed through the portrayal of both the pirates and the more socially-condoned actions of the characters who represent the higher classes (the Squire and the Doctor).
Throughout this audio adaptation by Marty Ross, it is this social commentary that is emphasised. It is, of course, very much a 21st century ‘reading’ of the text, but I think it gives the story an intensity that illuminates why Jim’s allegiances shift so often by suggesting something beyond simple adolescent uncertainty or gullibility. In this version, the character of Long John Silver is not only frighteningly charismatic in his machiavellian strategies but also the sower of doubt in Jim’s understanding of right and wrong. For example, it is Silver who points out to Jim that the castaway Ben Gunn won’t receive a fair share of the treasure despite finding it and safeguarding it from others because the Squire and the Doctor will take it from him, under the guise of paternalistic benevolence. By the end of the tale, through his relationship with Silver and his experiences, Jim’s moral compass flickers with questing indeterminacy—he has become his own man.
Added note: A version of this appeared in the June newsletter for members of my writing group: Lake Macquarie branch, Fellowship of Australian Writers, NSW.
For those of us interested in Australian colonial history, the Australian National Library’s online Trove collection provides an easy way to avoid getting on with the job of actually writing. I found the following little gem under the column heading of ‘Sundries’ on page 3 of The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842) for Thursday 31st March 1825.
FEMALE COURTSHIP.
Two or three looks when your swain wants a kiss,
Two or three noes when he bids you say “yes,”
Two or three, smiles when you utter the “no,”
Two or three frowns if he offers to go,
Two or three laughs when astray for small chat,
Two or three tears tho’ you can’t tell for what,
Two or three letters when your vows are begun,
Two or three quarrels before you are done,
Two or three dances to make you jocose,
Two or three hours in a corner sit close,
Two or three starts when he bids you elope,
Two or three glances to intimate hope,
Two or three pauses before you are won,
Two or three swoonings to let him press on,
Two or three sighs when you’ve wasted your tears,
Two or three hums when the chaplain appears,
Two or three squeezes when the hand’s given away,
Two or three coughs, when you come, to “obey,”
Two or three lasses may have by these rhymes,
Two or three little ones,—two or three times.
I particularly liked the ‘coughs’ in relation to the marriage vows. The blue-stockings of the late 1700s were clearly having an effect.
This poem may well have been familiar with the paper’s readers. With a little more foraging about online, I found it on page 52 of ‘The Humourist’s Miscellany: Containing original and select articles in poetry, on mirth, humour, wit, gaiety, and entertainment’ which was published in London by Crosby and Letterman in 1801.
Diversion done, it’s time to get back to it. Or, perhaps I could work on a title suitable for the 1800s?
I am busily writing historical fiction but reading an alarming amount of science fiction/fantasy. However, it strikes me that they share many issues related to the notion of ‘genre’.
The complexities of written genres provide fiery debate among critics and readers alike. The greatest heat is generated by those who pit literary fiction against ‘genre fiction’—no prizes for guessing which holds the greater cachet. Literary fiction is typified by the depth of its thematic concerns (e.g., loss, love, humanity) and the quality of the writing style. In contrast, genre fiction is marked by its content matter (e.g., scientific possibilities, historical events, espionage, crime) and the writing structure associated with each sub-genre (e.g., first person narration for hard-boiled detective fiction). Of course, within every type of writing there are opportunities for the writer to subvert the genre (e.g., fun ‘mashups’ such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, as well as more serious works such as Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). Of course, the reason that it is possible to play with genre in this way depends crucially on the assumptions around the structures of types of novels.
Even in the recent obituaries for the redoubtable Ursula Le Guin I was surprised to see that the authors felt they had to defend her literary standing against the slur of being labelled as science fiction/fantasy. Le Guin herself argued against the dichotomy, calling instead for the recognition of the literary merit of any work, regardless of genre. One of the obituaries alerted me to her essay—the delightfully titled, ‘From Elfland to Poughkeepsie’ (1973), which I tracked down in a collection, The Language of the Night (Berkley, 1979).
In this essay, she writes, ‘Let us consider Elfland as a great national park, a vast and beautiful place where a person goes by himself, on foot, to get in touch with reality in a special, private, profound fashion. But what happens when it is considered merely as a place to “get away to”?’
Le Guin throws down the gauntlet to genre writers to share the ambitions of the writers of literary fiction—i.e., to not only engage readers but also open them to opportunities to transform their understanding of themselves and others. The fundamental themes of such works, she suggests, involve shifting focus from ‘daydream’ to ‘dream’ through exploring the far reaches of the society’s shared unconscious workings. The acceptance of genre and cross-genre writing is greater today, perhaps in part because of her own brilliant demonstration of literary fantasy in books such as The Left Hand of Darkness (1969).
Le Guin raises another issue which, I think, is less sustainable. She argues that the journalistic style that is often employed within the ‘Poughkeepsie style of fantasy’ is inappropriate as, in its objective stance, it fails to evoke the depth of imaginative writing needed for fantasy. She is not arguing against clear writing—for example, she holds Tolkien up as a writer of plain, yet evocative, English—but rather she suggests that adopting a journalistic style is ‘a refusal to admit what you’re in for when you set off with only an ax and a box of matches into Elfland’. Surely a similar argument can be put in relation to styles of writing as she puts for the themes—that the demarcation lines between genres need not limit the choices of the writer about what they are saying and how they say it?
Perhaps questions of genre all boil down to the comments made by currently acclaimed author of Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell:
‘It’s convenient to have a science fiction and fantasy section, it’s convenient to have a mainstream literary fiction section, but these should only be guides, they shouldn’t be demarcated territories where one type of reader belongs and another type of reader does not.’ (The Guardian, 2015)
So, from this practical viewpoint, the genre of a novel may be roughly where you’re most likely to look for it on the shelves of a bookshop.
