Demolition of house and book

Yesterday while I was in the writing workshop, the contractor was demolishing the old house on the land where Veronica's House will be built. Amazing how different a piece of land can look after demolition of whatever structure was on it. In parallel, I'm sure the first draft of my novel Lily will look and feel different from what it is now (and has been since 1998) when I demolish it and build something else.

Lily is what I am attempting to rework in this workshop. I had written it over two or three days in 1998 when I was living in Woodbrook. I had woken up one morning consumed by the sudden impulse to write out what was streaming through my head. Perhaps it had come from a vivid dream, because everything was so markedly visual. I hurriedly started writing out the images I was seeing and did nothing else for two or three days and nights (except bathe and maybe drink water). It was like taking dictation from a boss who spoke rapidly and didn't let me go for coffee breaks. I had never been (and have never been since then) so consumed by any creative process. The visual descriptions were beginning to tell a story from the perspective of a camera. I didn't have a computer or a laptop then, so I had to borrow a friend's laptop, to enable me to keep up with the speed at which everything was coming. I didn't intend for it to be a book, but before I knew it, that's what I had. But it didn't feel like a 'book book'. It was a visual, moody, atmospheric piece which somehow had a particular rhythm, like a long piece of music using words as notes. (As I had been writing it I was also hearing the music, which is the reason why I went and got a loan and bought my keyboard Haniel).

A comment the writing tutor put at the end of the extract I had submitted (we had to submit 5 pages prior to being selected for the workshop): You use language here well. Your sentences sing. I think however you need to give your reader more clues, to follow your narrative line.

What she is saying is right and reflects what I always felt about Lily. The musical/lyrical aspects are the dominant parts. They are what swept me along. A narrative line is there, but all over the place and needing 'orchestration'. Literally, like a dream that I woke up from and tried to explain in concrete terms. It is also the 'vomit' she spoke about - what comes out first and needs to be reworked many times before becoming the publishable novel. So saying, I think it is very interesting vomit, with wonderful colours, textures and shapes ... but (again, as she told us) can we eat it right now?

Writing workshops

Last night when I got home there was an e-mail saying I've been accepted into the Cropper Foundation's Residential workshop for Caribbean writers. It will take place over 3 weeks in July up in the coastal area of Balandra. It will be a whole new experience. I've never been to a writing workshop in my life and now suddenly in 2008 I'm in two.

Yesterday I had to be in Port-of-Spain for a function starting at 8 a.m. ... so left home at 5:30 a.m. to avoid getting stuck in traffic (which starts piling up from 6:00). Got into town by 6:30 and had all that time to kill ... so sat in my car and tried to do my writing homework for this Saturday's session. Somehow it just wasn't happening ...

Once I start to think about something (especially something creative) and deliberately apply structure or effort to it, it just doesn't seem to flow that easily (if at all). I'm not a structured person when it comes to creativity. I'm good at what our workshop tutor refers to as 'the vomit' - the first thing that comes out. It's the cleaning up process (where the vomit becomes something that others can eat) that I need to consciously work at.

E. Hemingway

Saturday gone, we went to our first session of the writing workshop (fiction). Our tutor is here from the States and will be with us for 3 hours every Saturday for the next 8 weeks. In that time, at points during the week, we will each also have 2 one-on-one sessions with her. It is a class of 18 people (16 female, 2 male) - inclusive of Andreamuse and my friend Carolyn.

Homework is a lot of reading from prescribed texts ("Read it as a writer, not a reader") ... and of course some writing. I must admit, I'm not much of a reader. This needs to change ... "if you are going to write novels" (as one girl in the class pointed out to me). Unless a book really grabs me during the first page, continuing is an effort or, at best, a determined choice. My sister Vanessa, on the other hand, consumes books like a rabid animal.

Nevertheless, I did the homework on Sunday. Just the reading part ... not yet the 'write notes about it' part or the 'write a page describing a character or a setting'.

This week, until Wednesday, I will be in a training workshop (video related). Thursday and Friday will be busy with other things ... but I will make the time somewhere within those days to work on my prose, especially if I am to meet my date with destiny ... 2013 (by which time I am basking in the afterglow of my run away best selling novel-soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture).

Once when I was in Paris, I went into a quaint bar with my friend/traveling companion/Cambridge housemate, Harriet. We sat at the dark wooden bar on tall wooden stools and ordered whatever we were drinking. At one point Harriet said to me: "Look down, E." When I looked down I saw a name engraved in brass, screwed into the wood of the bar before me: Ernest Hemingway. I was sitting in 'his' seat.

Not that I want to be like Hemingway, but it was an interesting symbol.