February 14, 2020

NOTES ON A WRITING LIFE | 8

Dear All,

“Somebody asked me, not for the first time, if I felt in control of my characters or whether they ever ran away with the story and surprised me with what they did and said. I used to find this idea rather fanciful – characters like wild children or runaways, plunging off into their own directions in spite of the author’s attempts at control.”

Last week I was invited to read and discuss my novel Without Her at the Monroe County Library in Key West. The very lively and enthusiastic audience came up with some interesting questions. It’s always stimulating to try to answer questions ‘on the hoof’ and sometimes they stay with you afterwards, reverberating in your mind. Somebody asked me, not for the first time, if I felt in control of my characters or whether they ever ran away with the story and surprised me with what they did and said. I used to find this idea rather fanciful – characters like wild children or runaways, plunging off into their own directions in spite of the author’s attempts at control. But the truth is, I said, that I’ve recently been aware of this happening. In my ‘fallow’ period of a couple of months of convalescence, I had decided that there was no real need to write anything, I could give myself time to read, watch movies and serials streamed off Netflix, do nothing much that required any effort. But one day, I found myself thinking about the people in Without Her, those characters on whom I’d lavished so much time and attention. I found their voices ringing in my head, as if they had decided they had to get in touch with me. No, I said, I’m done with you, go away. But they persisted. We’re still here, they seemed to be saying. We need to tell you things. You need to pay attention.

By this time you may be thinking that I’d gone doolally as the Scots say, or maybe was on too many drugs. But I began to listen. And then I began to write. And they began to tell me their continuing stories, and what became of them, and I followed along.

There’s a Henry Green novel in which the last sentence reads “The next day they went on very much as before.” But, needless to say, he did not write about that next day. I knew that just such a next day would not do, it would bore readers to death. No, they had to go on, I gathered, very much not the same as before. A big change had taken place in their world, and I wanted very much, suddenly, to chart it and discover what followed it – very much as I want to find out what will happen to us all in these uncertain times.

When I was young, a child beginning to write stories, I would begin with my characters, lining them all up like dolls and describing them in detail. They usually consisted of two groups of people, two families who lived next door to each other, one poor and virtuous, the other rich and snobbish. The snobbish ones had the ponies that the poor and virtuous longed for. That was about as far as I ever got. I wanted somehow to deliver the ponies to the poor and virtuous children – but how to achieve this? The characters tended to stand there, and do nothing. I would have given a lot, in those far-off days, to have them try to move, speak and act on their own.

Now, I can’t tell what will become of this apparent desire of fictitious characters to go on with their invented lives. Is this what is behind all serials, all sequels? Behind Sherlock Holmes and Elena Ferrante’s novels and even Little Women, to name a random few? Is this the effect of my disappointment when I got to the end of the last episodes of Inspector Vivaldi, and Call My Agent, recently? Do we all want characters to continue, to go on talking to us until they simply cannot anymore? Do we all want continuity?

I don’t know where these musings will take me. But I’m running after my characters now like a paparazzo with a camera and a recording machine, until they tell me where they want to go – and until I get there too.

Happy writing, happy reading –

Affectionately, Ros