Girl with Moxie

Only one sleep until we storm the island to make cinematic history. Or at least 7 minutes of it.

I am beginning to feel nervous about the whole thing, partly because it is madness to try and put together a short film in 48 hours and partly because of the media attention our team is getting.

Today some of the crew were photographed by the Dom Post and we will be followed by a Close Up Crew during our shoot. It doesn’t half put the pressure on (as if there wasn’t already) to produce a good film.

Because of the prospect of me being photographed/filmed (writer, usually behind the scenes eh!) I have allowed myself one vanity today. I had my eyebrows threaded (which meant I was told off by the lady who did them since I last had it done in November) which is probably the most groomed I’ll be all weekend. I can’t be bothered with much make up at the best of times, let alone when I’ve had no sleep (probably an argument for me to wear make up actually…)

There is something deep inside me that says “Don’t try too hard to look good.” I suspect it is because I spent my formative years in flannel and Docs (Grunge baby yeah!) so never got that girly girl thing down pat. It just smacks of effort! And then you have to keep reapplying and reapplying. Perhaps goths and their watered down progeny aren’t so nihilistic after all - constant reapplication of ruby red lipstick is surely an act of hope.

A head torch was also purchased today for my adventure. I think I chose it because of its name - Moxie. How cool is that?

“No, I can’t help you it is too dark and I am not brave enough…Wait! I have found my Moxie and I shall be with you forthwith.” (In a British accent, preferably in a WW2 movie)

Now I can have both hand free for writing and drinking!

The shop assistant asked me if I was happy with the colour of the torch and I said to him:

“It’s fine, doesn’t matter anyway it’ll be dark and I won’t see it.”

He threw his hands up in the air, exclaimed “yes” and for a split second I thought he may even kiss me. Apparently most people do care about the colour of their torches and sleeping bags, and complain about the selection. It is dark people! No one can see your torch or sleeping bag, and if they did would they care?

Maybe camping people are more matchy-matchy then I thought…

Good lord! Does that mean I have to make an effort in the wilderness too?

I thought it would be the one refuge for my frizzy hair and spotty skin!

I guess not when you have a camera crew following you; and ,judging by the programming choices of television networks, who doesn’t these days?

Stayed tuned for more episodes of The Complicated Life - Island “action”

(If I can blog on the Island I’ll keep you updated, if not see you next week!)

The paranoid borer with OCD

Cameron said to me:

“When we finally move out of this place our landlord is going to think this place has borer.”

Borer who chomp holes in a precise line and/or grid fashion.

I think I must be a visual person, needing to see all my papers on my wall to make sense of them. Or perhaps I am a physical person needing to walk through my timeline ( I am so western, it runs left to right as well…)

I am constructing a time line for Kiwiana Charlatan to explain the new world order - my assignment from last week’s playwrights’ studio. I am gathering speeches from Parliament, photocopies of Acts, articles from newspapers and magazines and line them up along my wall.

The scary thing is how easily my mind has fallen into seeing patterns and correlations. How easily a conspiracy theory can be formed, and how if you base it in just enough fact it might well be believed.

I have held off doing this exercise for a good reason. I am a dystopia junkie. I am guessing it will come as no surprise to you that I was a strange youth. I became somewhat obsessed with the idea that there would be some sort of terrible calamity and we would have to fight to survive. Not surprising if you live on the shore of an active volcano (Lake Taupo and who was I kidding? If that thing blows up there ain’t no survivors baby) and consume dystopian fantasies. My favourite was is Brave New World, which I read every year. (Logan’s Run is also a favourite but also somewhat troubling. By the end of it Logan knows and we know that destroying the city is a good thing to do, but the poor people who live there and who emerge at the dam to see their first old man (Peter Ustinov) are probably going to feel a little hard done by. Where are they going to live? None of them know how to look after themselves…)

I was afraid I’d get a little carried away and so far I have gathered quite a bit of information, but so far (touch wood) I haven’t started to believe it…yet.

As part of my research I’m re-reading Broken October, a novel written in the 70’s about the distant future. 1985.

I love that. I first read 1984 at least ten years after the fact (so I am one of the young uns that know who Big Brother really is, not just some lame reality show). There is a certain feeling of triumph that you have made it past the date and the world is pretty much the same. (But is anyone else still waiting for their rocket pack and flying car?)

So I am somewhat hesitant to actually nail down a date that my play is set. I don’t want it to become an anachronism, but at the same time I think it need some sort of anchor in real time to make it believable. I know 2008 is when the “trouble” starts but how far away is the world of my play from that date; because you could always argue that any point in history was the catalyst for some terrible event. But for the German defeat in WW1 and their subsequent financial woes would Hitler have risen to power? Can you go further back? ( I can’t remember anything further back. The extent of my memory of fifth form history stops there. Feel free to dig further).

So I guess I’ll just start and see where it ends up. It would be good to have it my mind at least and I can make the call whether or not I reveal it to the audience later.

Rubber band syndrome

Most of the time I seem to live in my head, and because of this I am always a little surprised, maybe even a little affronted when my body gets sick.

It is very odd to think of myself as two discrete units, I know, but it often feels that way.

My mind is a little bit arrogant, very egocentric (after all isn’t that what a mind is?) and thinks that it can plan to do things that are unrealistic. I may have a fever and can’t think straight but my mind is saying “I have writing to do, get up and get me to the computer!”. Mind hates to realise that it relies on body to do its bidding.

This year I resolved to be kinder to myself when I was sick, to allow myself to recover instead of pushing through the sickness and ending up being run down for the entire year.

The problem for me is the follow through.

I woke up on Monday feeling very sick. Because I get up early to write, I usually have a good couple of hours ( before I can ring anyone at work) to torture myself with my traditional “Am I really sick? Or just tired?” ritual.

My mind just doesn’t trust what my body says (possibly because mind is a little judgmental about body’s hedonistic tendencies. The eating, the drinking, the sleeping.)

Ah, but body will have its revenge because it can easily play tricks on mind.

Wednesday was a busy day for me. The morning was spent babysitting my nephew, then off to work and then a couple of hours at the Playwrights’ studio. Tiredness and sickness conspired with body to create a reaction to the feedback at the studio that was totally unexpected.

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a delicate flower when it comes to feedback. I do not feel as if it a personal attack, and if it is I can usually side-step it. Also the feedback I received was fair and certainly not harsh - I have received far worse and laughed it off.

But on Wednesday night I felt really low. Into my mind despair slunk and pulled out all the slights and disappointments. The rejections, the failures, the time I was talking to a woman and I mentioned how I seemed to have more success as a fiction writer than I have done as a playwright and she said “We’re not always good at the thing we choose to be.”

I thought of myself as a rubber band, each criticism I get is a pull - when I’m new I spring back into shape; but eventually I will be pulled out of shape until on day I’ll just snap.

Then I thought that maybe I was a wrist under a rubber band of criticism. The first few pings are not so bad, a little sore but pain soon forgotten. But applied again and again, and the skin becomes raw, the flesh becomes bruised and perhaps you draw blood.

The thought that I should give up the struggle and just go back and get my profs certificate and actually use my law degree. I would have a lot more money…

That thought is like a circuit breaker in my mind. Alt, Ctrl, delete. Programme not responding. End programme? Restart computer. I got over myself.

Then mind was free to start planning the assignments I was given at the studio, and by the next morning I was happy to have a direction and my mind was happy to give my body a few more days off to recover.

Because next week we’ve got a lot of writing to do.

Don’t, don’t you want me…

I just got an email from the good folk at NZ Book month to inform me that, alas, my story didn’t make it through to the finals this year. Which is pretty much what they said last year, and the year before…

Last year I was feeling particularly morose about the rejection and complained (OK whined) to my husband about it. Cam is a pretty straight-forward guy, handy to have around to remind me that my feet need to be anchored to Planet Earth, at least part of the time. Last year he listened patiently to my rant woes and said:

“Well, let’s go back to your rent-free, historical writers-in-residence put on the heater that we don’t have to pay for and you can have a moan there.”

My complaints burnt up during re-entry to the atmosphere.

Last Friday I watched Human Instinct ( I love Robert Winston’s series - evolutionary psychology! Hell yeah! I like looking at humans and how our behaviours are influenced by ancient survival strategies. Sometimes I’ll even look at how people behave and ask “If that was a  wild human would they have survived?” Does that make me a Darwinian groupie/geek?). The episode was about the will to win, and as we are the descendants of those that fought and won on the African Savannah we have the competitive spirit hardwired into us. What was interesting is that although success is felt throughout the body and is very intense at the time, it is forgotten quite quickly - so that we will strive to succeed again. Failure, however, is remembered so that we might avoid the same behaviour that lead to it (I mentioned this to friend on Saturday who said “Oh god! Does that mean when we die and our life flashes before our eyes that we see all our failures and embarrassments?”).

Why then do I keep writing? Rejection is part of being a writer and sometimes it is very bitter indeed; especially when you’ve put your soul into a piece.  It has gotten easier as I have become more experienced, for one simple reason.

You can’t please everyone.

Rachael King wrote a very interesting post on this earlier in the year when the Prize in Modern Letters was awarded. A different judge would have meant a different outcome. Some people loved my play, some people hated it. Cat people vs Dog people (can anyone else see a B-Grade horror in that?).

Just wait until next year Six Pack!

Graphology 101

This week I completed the outline and scene breakdown for Kiwiana Charlatan in preparation for next week’s Playwrights’ studio. What’s surprised me the most is how tiring it has been to switch between two projects - my novel and the new play. I honestly thought I would be able to say “OK brain, we’re working on the play/the novel today; access those files and let’s go, go!!” So reality is not quite like that…

Partly my delusion was fueled by the number of projects that I did last year - a draft of a novel, drafts of two plays, a screenplay, a short film script and two short story drafts…suffice to say I was busy. What my brain has glazed over in the intervening months is the fact that I had blocked discrete time for each project - I wasn’t doing two major projects at the same time.

So after that set up, the following may seem as if I’m making an excuse. I’m not, the thought coincidently entered my head and seems to be a good solution to the “too many projects are taxing my brain” dilemma.

This week I thought that I’d stop writing my novel.

What?! I hear you say, stop the novel? Are you mad? It is no where near finished, you have commitments to fulfill and a new mentor to meet…I know, I know; but I am going somewhere with this.

Shall I explain my thought a little further?

A couple of years ago I won an award for a short film script in the E Tuhi Maori writing awards (now called Pikihuia).  Huia publishers asked if I had thought about writing a novel…

This is the part that writers are not going to believe. Most of the other writers I know have an idea for a novel, if not a complete draft tucked away in a drawer somewhere. I am, as usual, contrary to everyone else - I did not have a handy manuscript tucked away somewhere ( that I could whip out cooking show style “here’s one I prepared earlier”) nor did I have an idea. But I thought I’d be up for a challenge.

So in a way I feel like I’ve been playing catch up. My first draft was spent trying to find a story in the vague idea I had about an old woman who bought cards for random people, and a young woman who is unable to find her passion for life. The kind of stuff that swirls around your head for a month, or a year, or a decade before you even start writing. The second draft felt more like a first draft.

To keep up with my schedule, I did the bare minimum in research regarding the graphology in the book. A wee problem for a novel called The Graphologist’s Apprentice doncha think? So instead of diving headlong into a third draft I thought it might be prudent to do some research now.

Of course I had the option to do it earlier, but I’m kind of glad I held off. One of the things I was worried about was “Moby Dick” syndrome. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to dis an American classic. Well, maybe a little bit. Moby Dick is an intimidating book, and a lot of the pages are taken up with description of whaling. It doesn’t really advance the story, nor make the reader feel more empathetic towards Ahab’s obsession. It is the stuff that was cut when it was adapted for the silver screen. It seems to me as if Melville couldn’t part with the research that he had done. I certainly didn’t want to fall into that trap, having clunky bits that were more about showing off what I found out than advancing the story.

So that’s my plan. Research graphology enough to write parts of Mae’s manuscript, but not too much that I begin to stray from the story.

It’s not writing, but it’s not not writing.

*COMING UP* In my bid to forgo sleeping all together, I’ve agreed to be part of a team for the 48 hour film festival. The team is called “The Goat Embryo Project” and we’re going to be filming on Matiu/Somes Island. Maybe if I time the generator windows correctly I’ll be able to blog there, but if not I’ll give a wrap up at the end of the project.

Niceties

I read this post on Sound of Butterflies last week and umm-ed and ah-ed about submitting a comment, mainly because it would have started “In my novel…” and I really don’t want to be one of those people…

So is it better that I talk about it here?

I’m not sure that there is such thing as a truly “nice” character. There is always something a little sinister about a character that is only “nice” (watch a Tim Burton movie, or think about the Stepford Wives. Nice=creepy). I don’t trust people who are nice in novels/movies; there is some twist or something below the surface. Either there is something wrong with me, or perhaps it is because it is human to be flawed.

The strange thing is that I had been thinking about this issue myself. The stranger thing is that Rachael and I seem to think about the same things at the same time quite frequently. Very strange indeed.

Since I re-read my novel I’ve been thinking about cutting a couple of characters, A1 and A2 aka the Ana Twins. Why do I need to cut them? They are caricatures for one, but mainly because I wrote them in to feel better about Alice.

Alice popped into my head pretty much as she is now; a people pleaser, a cat person, obsessed with self -help, and overweight. In the novel I describe Alice in terms of food. The first image I had of Alice was of a disaster haircut:

It reminded January of vegemite and crackers…[she would press] them so hard that worms of buttery vegemite would ooze out of the cracker’s holes to be licked off with her small pink tongue.

Alice’s head looked like vegemite worms, yellow mixed with black and a few that were muddy brown, curls of butter turning greasy in the sun.

Someone had pressed her head too hard.

January is a bitch to Alice; and somewhere along the way I got scared. I got scared because no matter how much I deny it, people are going to assume that January is semi-autobiographical. She lives in the same city (laziness - I didn’t have to do any research), she is around the same age…

I got scared because I thought people would think that I thought the same way that January does. So I invented the Ana twins, because if January is mean to them too then it isn’t about the weight. It’s about the way women treat and judge each other. That is something that I’d like to explore: the roles that women are cast as “the doormat” and “the bitch”. But I think I can be a little more subtle in my approach.

It is not a case for making January “nicer” - it is true to her character to push Alice away. Alice is my only “nice” character and for most of the time she is treated badly. I think it might be time for a little steel behind her smile. I’d like her to stand up to January (how would January react to that!) and to be proud of who she is (which again would probably mystify poor old January who is so unsure of who she is that she has changed her identity).

What would happen if suddenly their roles in their relationship are reversed?  Would Alice, given the chance be a bitch to January? Is nice a defining characteristic, or a strategy of play?

What would make January a nice girl?

Wakeful

The novel is on hiatus while I work on my homework for the playwrights’ studio. Conveniently, it also means that I can wait for my new mentor to finish reading my novel before my red pen can start to massacre the thing. Time to reflect, time to percolate…

I have found it more difficult than I thought to switch between the two. In my mind I had thought of it like I would be an artist working on another canvas whilst waiting for the paint to dry on another. But of course an artist working this way is probably working on an exhibition, a series of paintings that relate to each other. Is it because of this laboured metaphor that I have been searching for similarities between my pieces?

Last year, when I was looking for a model for Mae I read the autobiography of Nancy Wake.  Nancy’s life and the way that she wrote about it influenced how I wrote Mae’s chapters; I think I decided to write her chapters in first person because of reading that autobiography.  I loved Nancy’s straight forward language, the way she describes the amazing things she did during WW2 so humbly, her independence at a time when I imagined women were meek. Nancy certainly was not, and neither is Mae.

I began re-reading the autobiography again this week, as a way to keep the novel in my mind as I work on something else. It struck me that Mary, a character in my play, also had similarities to the venerated Ms. Wake, when I read this:

I resolved there and then that if I ever had the chance I would do anything, however big or small, stupid or dangerous, to try and make things more difficult for their rotten party.

Nancy Wake, The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo Called The White Mouse, Pan Macmillian, Sydney, 1997, pg 4

Mary, a Maori “radical” lives in the country. New Zealand is in the midst of a civil “war” (probably more like “Civil unrest”. We here in Aotearoa tend to be a little understated). Mary’s protest? Not plotting to bomb Parliament or kill anyone for Maori sovereignty. Mary plants trees, reclaiming her land millimetre by millimetre. In the world she inhabits just being would be a form of protest - her existence a thumb at the nose to the state. Which is probably less a distopian fantasy and more a bleak reality to Maori at times.

The homework is to strip the story back to a scene outline and to think about the hero’s journey. In doing this I’ve had to ask myself what is the story that I’m trying to tell? Why do I need to tell it now?

The idea first came to me during the season of  I Ain’t Nothing But… The character of Zeke walked into my head with little more than his name and cowboy boots ( which sounds like the start of a porn - what I mean is that I didn’t have a story for him yet). But I was trying to finish the first draft of my novel so it had to sit in the back of my mind.

Then early last year, I wrote the first 10 or so pages in a frenzy and took it along to a writing group. I showed it to Hone and he said “I don’t know where you’re going with this.” to which I replied, “Neither do I.” Again, the novel stepped in and those pages were filed away.

Then the raids at Ruatoki happened. Of course I was shocked as many people were, but there was a little part of me that kicked myself for not completing the play before it become tainted with the “political”. It was not until I submitted an extract for Burn this CD that I realised that the reason why I had begun to write it in the first place was “political”.  That I wanted to talk about land and who has the right to stand here, and the suspicion that is created if we don’t talk about it.

I had thought that Zeke was my hero (he’s a cowboy, they’re always heroes right?) but now I think it is really Mary. There is tension between them naturally as mother and son, but there is also tension in how they view their roles in life. Mary assumed that Zeke would carry on her work, Zeke wanted to be free of the responsibility of his history - he wanted to make a life for himself. This has separated them before my play starts, now I just have to figure a way to bring them together.

Their relationship is similar to that of Mae and January. January changed her name to be free of the past, to create a new life for herself. Mae sees the value of home and the past.

So if I strip everything away, the settings, the gimmicks, the MacGuffins, the characters - what am I really writing about?

Responsibilty.

Duty.

Love.

Identity.

Just another canvas in the series…

Simplify and Specify

People with scissors are different from those people without. Aside from the obvious fact that they possess said cutting implement and those without do not.

People with scissors are careful, measured people.

Measure twice, cut once coined by a possessor of scissors I’d suspect.

People with scissors would never run with them, that warning is reserved for those Without; who by some sort of trickery have acquired a pair of scissors from a With and, giddy with the thrill, cannot contain themselves.

If a Without asks to borrow a pair of scissors (because they wouldn’t need to if they had scissors would they?) they may be surprised at the barrage of questions they must answer before a pair is lent.

What are you using it for? Paper? Fabric?

How heavy is the material? Are you cutting denim or chiffon?

Because there is not one pair of scissors that can do all of those things. Each pair is specialised, reserved for that purpose. Paper scissors, fabric scissors, scissors for hair, scissors for threads, nail scissors.

People with scissors are focused on details, the specifics of the project.

They know what to cut.

They think about the cuts they make.

They are plagued by the potential a thing holds before it is cut and enthralled by the possibility of what it may become once it is cut.

This year, I think my mantra will be “Simplify and Specify.” Both my novel and my play have overly long and complicated set ups. There are parts that are vague simply because I haven’t made up my mind, or worse, because there is a hole in my research.

I’ve been itching to cut since re-reading my novel. Characters, chapters if they don’t serve the story they’ve got to go. I’m always nervous when I get this itch. Usually these are the bits that are charming, that made me fall in love with writing the damn thing in the first place. They are usually my best jokes, the elegant phrase but eventually I have to face up to the fact that they don’t advance the story, that they are a sort of boast on my part - “Woo! Look at how clever I am!”

On the other hand, I don’t want to be too hasty cutting things that grate when I may be better to fix them instead.

So I’ve given myself time to think, writing out each chapter on a card so I can muck around with my structure without actually mucking around with my structure (I need to make my magnet board!). Time to try on the changes, see how they fit.

So a few things have had a stay from the executioner…for now.

I have been thinking about the details that make a character as well. Is January an optimist or a pessimist? At first glance I thought she’d be a pessimist, but if she lives her life on credit surely that would make her an optimist.

Is January a cat person? She is surrounded by decidedly cat people - first up Alice who shows her devotion for her cat by having his picture printed on a special mug; and then Mae who shares her cottage with her cat, Cat. If January is not fond of cats (unthinkable from my point of view I usually add time to my journeys in case a cat crosses my path and I need to stop for a chat and a pat) then I can show her emotional change towards Mae and Alice by the way she treats their cats…

I have a horror story about a pair of scissors I had sharpened about ten years ago. It was when I was just beginning to amass my sewing stash, so the scissors in question were my only pair of scissors forcing me to use them on both heavy and light fabrics and *gasp!* the dreaded paper. Needless to say, they were a little blunt. I took them into a sharpening place and the man “sharpened” them - by grinding the wrong side of the blade. They could barely close let alone cut. They couldn’t run through tissue without tearing. I took them back and someone else sharpened them back to their previously dull condition and they have been relegated to paper ever since.

Is there a moral? Probably not. I would hazard a guess that he was a non-scissor person (or perhaps sharpening is not his vocation…) because if he had paid attention to detail he would have seen that the blades needed to be ground the other way. He would have thought about it, he would have taken care.

Perhaps I should hang those scissors up to remind me of that day - that carelessness can make something worse than where it started.

The joy of yoga is…

…fifteen pairs of syncronised legs cycling.

And mine facing the wrong direction.

Playwrights’ Studio Session 1

Hello, my name’s Whiti and I’m a playwright. I’ve been dabbling with dialogue since I was a kid and have only recently got into the mis-en-scene…

I’ve just arrived home from the first session of the Playwrights’ Studio at Playmarket; 5 playwrights (including yours truly) and a dramaturg/mentor, David Geary, working on scripts over the next 6 months.

I was nervous about going, meeting new people and putting your work out there can be a bit scary. I know, I know, I talk about the same stuff on this blog but there is a difference between me writing this down on the lappy and actually talking to someone face to face. I truly believe I am more interesting on paper - after all that’s why I became a writer, if I could speak with confidence maybe I would have become a…huh, well what do you know. Perhaps I don’t express myself well in writing either!

So I had that kind of jittery feeling all day, which makes me quiet or giggly. I also arrived really early, which I seem to do when I’m nervous (So if I ever arrive late for something you’ve organised it just means I love ya, honest!) But all went well, I’ve come home with a mild headache, (the kind I get when I’ve been a bit over stimulated or have eaten too much sugar) and a head full of ideas.

We’ll be meeting once a month for the next 6 months, each of us working on our scripts. Mine is an incomplete first draft of Kiwiana Charlatan, a play about a Maori Cowboy who comes back to a New Zealand that has sunk into civil war. I have been wanting to write it since 2006, but the work on the novel took precedence last year. So when the opportunity to apply for this studio came along out went this draft to Playmarket, warts and all (even though last year I swore I had had my fill of workshops, no more talking about writing! I shall go out and just do it…)

I had kind of let myself go with this draft. Usually I have a clear idea of a story and will spend time plotting and outlining. This time I had a few images and characters and thought that I’d just go for it.

I’m not sure if all writers do this, but I am certainly guilty of it. There’s a hole in your story. You know it’s there, it’s glaringly obvious to the point that it mocks you. But you think, “I’ll write around it, no one will even notice it”. Then you give it to someone else and they’ll inevitably say “What about that hole on page 5? Whaddya going to do about that?”For some reason I always feel caught out, like I believed that they wouldn’t see it. That they’d be dazzled by the other cool stuff. Like gags and explosions…

So I got called on my lack of structure, which is fair enough. Which was expected since as I was writing I was thinking “I have no idea where this is going but it sure is a fun ride!”.

By next month I need to have a scene outline done, which means I need to make decisions about my characters that I just didn’t do while I was hanging on for dear life on the back of this draft.

David said something that was equally thrilling and terrifying and that is that he has thrown out 80 odd pages of work, kept the last 20 pages and started the play from that point - started his play from the “end”. It is kind of exciting. I’ve decided not to read the draft I have done and instead let myself find new ways of telling the story. I may even do two or three different approaches to see what fits best. Maybe I’ll throw out the beginning…

That’s the reason I’ve decided not to read the draft. There are some things that I feel wedded to. Partly because some of the scenes have been recorded on Burn This CD so it is “out there” in a way, and partly because there are some sexy, exciting things ( not actual sex, not yet anyway! I mean cool set pieces like explosions and flashbacks).

So busy, busy months ahead. I already have the itch to tinker with the structure of the novel too!