On the last Wednesday of the month, my writing group and I sit down and dedicate a portion of our weekly gathering to goal setting. Our ambition ranges from writing 15,000 words to finding joy in writing again to submitting a memoir piece for publication. But this month, my goal was much less lofty. Inspired by the wisdom of the late Carol Shields, I vowed to rebel against some of the structure I’d put in place as a guidepost. April would be a month to play.
“A life does not have an underlying theme, yet we seem to believe a novel must. A life does not build slowly but steadily to a climax. A life is rarely restricted to three main characters. In life, a new character may enter the scheme in the final pages, but in fiction we have declared this an offence against esthetic order. And so, ungainly or overweight stories fall out of the narrative record (snip); they’re too bulgy for theory, too untidy for analysis.”
Elspeet en Omstreken The Netherlands... my inspiration for Lady Astrid's Manor House
For the past ten months or so I’ve been working on a WWII novel, (oh dear! That’s sobering. Draft one isn’t even close to complete!) and, while I’m happy with the plot, the voice of each character isn’t always coming across the way I’d hoped. For example, there’s Lady Astrid, an aristocrat whose castle has been requisitioned by the occupiers. Here’s a snippet of her life on the page in third person. She’s gone out to the forest with a gun hoping to do some clandestine target practice when…
In that moment, she noticed Philomena pulling away from the tree trunk, her velvet ears drawn back. Something was moving in the brush. Astrid’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness but she couldn’t make out what was approaching. She wished she’d kept one last bullet.
“Hello?” A baritone voice called out to her from the shadows. The accent wasn’t German or Dutch.
“Who’s there?”
“Thank heavens – have you brought the clothes?” A young man stepped into the clearing.
He couldn’t have been more than twenty, Astrid decided.
“I wasn’t expecting such elegance, but I’m glad to see the women are also in training. Everyone together against the Huns, eh?”
Astrid’s English wasn’t strong at the best of times, and the man in front of her had such a heavy accent, she could only make out about half of what he was saying. His eyes were so eager she was almost sorry to have to disappoint him.
She untied Philomena quickly and shook her head.
“I’m not the person you were hoping for.”
The man ran towards her. “Please ma’am, I’ve been out here for three days. I’ve hidden the parachute, I just need to get out of this uniform.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” Astrid said. Go home, she told herself. This isn’t your problem.
In one swift movement, she mounted the horse and was off.
When she’d put about fifty paces between them, she thought of Hans. What if he were ever stuck in such a bind? She slowed to a canter and pulled back on the reins. Before she could change her mind, she yanked off her husband’s grey cable knit sweater with the leather buttons. Turning Philomena around, she approached the airman.
“Put this on. I know someone who might be able to help you, but don’t venture into the village on your own, it’s too dangerous.”
“Thank-you, ma’am. I knew you’d turn around. That’s why I didn’t swallow this yet. I’m saving it for a real emergency.” He dangled a small canister with a single pill in front of his face.
Astrid raised her eyebrows.
He slipped it back into his pocket. Then he reached up and handed her the beat-up biscuit tin.
“You almost had it on the last round.” He said with a smile. “You know what your problem is?”
Astrid shrugged. She wasn’t born a marksman?
“You’re trying to hit a can of biscuits. Use your imagination. Defend yourself against the enemy, woman!”
A more than half a year writing this character in this way, I experimented with first person. In this scene Lady Astrid has gone on a trip to De Hague to meet Gertrud Seyss-Inquart and attend a ball at Clingendael. I was inspired to write about a real historical figure in the same way that Barbara Kingsolver wrote about Frida and Diego Rivera in “The Lacuna.” Obviously I’m taking pretty huge liberties here. (The Seyss-Inquarts didn’t like big parties.) I learned about Gertrud Seyss-Inquart in the course of my research of the occupation of the Netherlands, and was particularly inspired by the tidbits included in Kristen Den Hartog & Tracy Kasaboski's book “The Occupied Garden.” (Which I highly recommend.) See if you feel like you know Astrid better in first person…
For once no witty reply came from Schueller. I felt compelled to rescue him from this horrid man. Before I could change my mind, I pulled him towards the dance floor.
“Please excuse us, the waltzes are my favourite,” I tried for a coy smile but it may have come across as a grimace. Kurt tells me I hide my emotions poorly.
Dancing with a short man is not unlike sitting through a medical examination. He tried his best to turn his head to the side, but his cheek grazed my chest each time we’d pivot at the edges of the dance floor. Still, he knew the steps and his arms were strong enough to guide us along with confidence.
“Your uncle…”
“…is brutish. I know. But brutes can be useful.”
“Useful?” I wanted less association with the Nazis, not more.
“Astrid. They’re coming to Gelderland.”
“Who?”
“The SS is going to establish a training school near Rheden. My uncle told me this morning.”
My mind was racing. Why should I care where the Germans set up their training grounds? Schueller stopped dancing. He led me towards a banquette and we sat down. Now I could look him in the eye again. But I didn’t like what I saw.
“Not Roezenkasteel.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“There’s no room,” I protested.
“The servants quarters, the stables, the cottages. They’ll make room. Feldmejier, he’s the Dutch guy from Assen in charge of the whole operation, he knows the area and has already consulted with the Kommandant.”
“Well they haven’t consulted with me.”
I didn’t like the way Kurt looked at me then. The look he gave me was the pitying gaze one gives to a child whose toy has broken beyond repair. The Kommandant hadn’t consulted with me because the charade was over. Roezenkasteel belonged to me in my imagination alone. Unless I fought a little harder to keep what was mine.
“What’s going through that mind of yours?” Schueller asked.
“There have been so many reports of sabotage in Gelderland. I wonder why they would try to build something in an area where there is so much unrest.”
“Astrid, be careful.”
I took a deep breath. I pictured the guns we’d wrapped up in newspaper in the cottages. Closing my eyes, I thought of Philomena and everything that had been taken.
“You,” I whispered, “are warning the wrong person.”
I found this tourism advertisement in a folder of drafts of Stuart McLean's story "Holland".
Meanwhile, when not goofing around with matters of “she” versus “I”, we (my writing group & I) took a field trip this month to the McMaster Archives. It was so much fun to feel like a student once again! I’m now the proud owner of a researcher card from the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, and all of this is because I really miss Stuart McLean, and wanted to hear his voice again.
When Stuart McLean, of Vinyl Café fame, passed away in 2017 he left all of his manuscript drafts and personal memorabilia to McMaster University. An archivist spent nine months sorting through the eighty-six boxes of personal correspondence and early drafts of his writing and shaped it into easy to find research fonds. And so it was that I was able to spend a morning reading early drafts of my favourite McLean stories (“Holland”, “Rock of Ages” and “The Jock Strap”) and delighting in their raw genesis. My inner geek was fully satiated to find that Stuart’s editor made the kinds of suggestions my writing group makes weekly.
“This is not an ending”
“I need some emotion here”
“This is so over the top”
“You’ve mentioned her age three times, is that necessary?”
I love seeing the process between editor (Meg Masters) and author that resulted in such a perfect ending to a beloved story about mothers and sons.
My eyes grew fatigued at all the handwritten letters. I used to be a prolific old fashioned stamp and envelope correspondent, but the saturation of typed text has made my brain lazy. Of the personal letters in the archives, I was delighted to read all the celebrated Canadians who had turned down requests to appear on the radio for projects Stuart was working on, because they felt they needed time for their own writing. (Timothy Findlay, Elizabeth Hay.) I was also humbled to see that many now famous Canadian writers had solicited Stuart for book blurbs or reviews. I have no idea if he responded positively or not, but I was encouraged to know that even Canada’s greats needed a hand up once upon a time.
Finally, the weirdest part about playing in the archives was the discovery of Mendelson Joe. I read a lot of his correspondence because it was so bizarre and funny and also often written in a sharpie with big loopy (readable) exclamations. I vowed to Google him when I got home. You can, too. His portraits of famous Canadians tell you everything you need to know about his political views.
From the basement at McMaster, my month of play led me to the upper floors of a downtown hotel in a freak April ice storm. Grit Lit, Hamilton’s readers and writer’s festival, was something I was looking forward to, as I had signed up for a Master Class with Newfoundland novelist Kathleen Winters. The class was called “Found in the Body”. I assumed– based on a visceral scene I remember from the novel “Annabelle”– that we would learn how to write scenes about bodies. Ha! I should know by now that authors do not give “how to” workshops. The class was a philosophical lecture on getting outside, taking a walk and allowing ideas to penetrate one's body. She spoke of the need to leave things (plots, characters, arcs) to chance, the importance of losing control. Kathleen Winters believes the less one knows (about the first draft), the better. This was interesting to me, as my friends who are debut authors must submit outlines to their editors. Winters’ advice is that the first draft only needs real, raw emotion. I confess this was a terrifying revelation, as my current first draft possesses a lot of action, and sometimes an embarrassing lack of emotion. My LAKS say to me, “Lena, you just killed a man. Why is no one crying?” (I have no idea. I ran out of time to write "they wept"?)
The ice has melted and the tulips are out in the garden. The direction my character’s voices will take remains a mystery to me, but draft two, the first surgery, will remedy some of that. So take a deep breath, readers, writers. Get outside and play. That's where I'm headed. I need to figure out why no one is crying over the man, or, bring him back to life, or maybe... reconsider Carol Shields' words and determine whether or not I care if I've offended the aesthetic order after all.