Litfest

This is the first in a series of conversations, reviews and introductions to writers coming to the festival in October.

First up with a conversation between Sarah Hymas, of Flax, and Kate Pullinger about her new novel, The Mistress of Nothing.

Kate: I found writing this book tremendously difficult to write and, in fact, it took me nearly 14 years, and I had to abandon it several times in order to write different books. I once spent a year working on it and at the end of the year had one page. For me there were multiple problems. Lucie Duff Gordon was a writer, and so I found it very hard to figure out what to do about her ‘voice’ in the book; I did too much research, and if there’s one thing I don’t like about historical novels it is their tendency to show off the writer’s research; Egypt is full of cliches in the western imagination and the idea of Victorian women aristocrats abroad is also very cliche-ridden territory and I wanted to do all I could do avoid charges of ‘orientalism’. I wasn’t at all apprehensive but I found it very very hard to find the right way to tell the story and wrote many versions of the novel that simply didn’t work very well. It was only at quite a late date in the process – after a decade or so! – when I decided to put the book entirely into Sally’s voice, that it really began to finally work as a novel. Earlier drafts had Omar and Lucie’s points of view, as well as the third person. When I teach writing I go on and on about the importance of figuring out point of view from early on in the process, and with this book point of view caused me as many problems as it can to an absolute beginner (and it’s my seventh novel!).

So, fresh from our weeks away, Cath Nichols, Andy Darby and myself came back together wondering what ideas and practicalities we had produced so far for Cath’s poem, The Price of Legs. It boiled down to a sheet of plastic, or more accurately three plastic sheets: small, medium and large. This was no Goldilocks.

Cath had rewritten sections of the poem, partly in response to what we had discussed earlier, and partly because when you read a poem or hear it being read over and over again the lines you kind of tolerated become insanely ugly. So rerecording the entire piece seemed like a good place to start our refamiliarisation.

We became engrossed in a discussion about narrator and narrative. The piece has both strands. We had touched on this briefly before but it seemed that now was the time to make some stronger, rational decisions. Confidently we selected passages to be recorded, to be learnt and others to be read. My concern from the hugely enjoyable session 3 with Penny was that we were slipping in the realm of drama/movement rather than delivering live literature. These three delivery methods gave me more confidence.

But first to get to grips with the plastic sheeting. After three weeks did we still think this was a good idea? Cath went through previous sequences and improvised to a freshly recorded section. It was holding up. Especially with the refrains we’d selected before threaded through the movement.

Call me dog-with-a-bone but while I like the plastic: the sound, the visual, the fluidity of it; I still wanted to explore what it brought to the subject

Was there an implicit environmental relevance to the piece? We ran out of time in the morning to do this, but I hope we shall return to this conversation next time we meet.

I don’t want to hammer this theme into the production of Cath’s Little Mermaid update, but I think part of the responsibility of creating a piece, especially one made in collaboration, is to consider all echoes and references the work can throw up. Connotations cannot be underestimated. Whether or not this conversation becomes part of the piece is almost irrelevant at this stage: having the conversation will enrich the piece.

Enough.

The afternoon was spent exploring vocal delivery, particularly with the narrator’s sections. Andy and Cath came up with a fantastic effect for one of the sections: of Cath reading it on the in-breath, emphasising the loss of voice – haunting, effective and totally integrated. The only downside was that the other techniques needed (to my mind) to be as powerful as this. Sermonising was one they looked into – as Cath speaks directly to Han Anderson on his Christian morality. The other: intimacy – hmm, how do you increase the power of intimacy?

These are both elements we need to take through to our final day together, as well as looking at linking the passages and the pace – something we haven’t had time to review. Plus there are our original notions of audience to return to.

It’ll be a busy day.