Hi everyone! Today I decided to give Carolina and Lisa the day off to go and explore...
Instead, I'd like to talk to you about my writing process. Or, in my case, a bit of a "lack of a process" when I write.
Here I write about the creative process of Carolina and Loveandpizza.it (with some samples of other chapters!!!)
I guess some of you will identify yourselves, and others, more disciplined, will probably have a lot to teach me! Please leave your comments...
Thanks!!!
Dani.
How I write - a critical reflection
(MA dissertation in English and Creative Writing)
Inspired by a year living in
Naples, Italy, I decided to write a novel. I had never done a writing course
before, except for writing classes in secondary school, where we were ‘trained’
to write 30-line essays in order to pass the exam to go to university. These
essays had a set format and we were given set phrases to use at the beginning,
to compare opinions, to conclude etc. Once you were ‘well trained’, you could
write your essay on any topic they asked you to – unless you were a totally
opinionless person or only liked to read comic books.
When I decided to embark
on the adventure of the MA course, I only had one thing in mind: ‘Now I’ll
write that novel.’ Well, after nearly two years, I must confess that I couldn’t
have been more wrong. I found out that my writing (or my way of doing it, I
should say) would have to be dissected and thoroughly analysed. I found out
that I would have to use countless theories to explain why I did this and/or
how I did that, when all I wanted to do was just
write. I am a storyteller, after all. I had never liked to read deep and
complex things and discuss them, and the first time I ever tried to write a story
thinking about techniques, I couldn’t go through half of it. For me, writing is experience, writing is feeling. It’s like
dancing: you need to feel the music; just marking the time and doing rehearsed steps
is not enough; unless you are writing a secondary school essay. Nevertheless, I just decided
to learn everything I could, disagree with everyone I could and get on with it.
Having
said that, I wrote my dissertation in an attempt to recount my journey through the
discovery and (re-)making of myself as a writer, as well as to critique different
research methods and techniques learned through the course. I also claimed the right to call my main character a flâneuse – after all she goes through during the whole space of the novel,
she’s not just a wanderer around the city streets anymore; she has absorbed the
city.
The (hard) craft of a first
novel
A
thousand years ago we had about 30 000 [words], now English has 500 000 and the
figure is rising daily. They belong to the nation, are listed in dictionaries
and each one of us has a usable store or word-hord, as the Anglo-Saxons called
vocabulary, of about 15 000. This is 3 per cent of the total in The Oxford English Dictionary and only
half the number used by Shakespeare. (Singleton, J and Sutton, G, 2000, p.41)
Well, after this quote, I see myself ready to give up writing;
writing in English, I mean. English is not my first language, therefore I
believe it is impossible for me to actually have a ‘usable store of about 15
000’ words. However, it is odd to notice that I find it more comfortable to write in
English than in my mother-tongue, Portuguese. Sometimes, I feel like I lack
Portuguese vocabulary for certain types of writing more than English
vocabulary. Luckily, I tend to like to keep it simple.
I really enjoyed the way I gradually discovered the writing
techniques I use to create my stories. I had always considered myself an
'intuitive, impulsive' writer. Obviously, I had no idea what happened
'backstage'. Based on the course bibliography, I started to shape my stories,
shyly at first, but trying to use some of the ‘techniques’ mentioned in the
readings and present in the short stories I was reading. For example, for my
first short story of the MA course, ‘Deaf, mute, blind’ (now first chapter of
the novel.) I
started writing it hoping it one day could become a novel. Apparently, I used
one of the ideas mentioned in Burroway’s Writing
Fiction (2011) about revenge: ‘An
injustice has been done, and you are powerless to do anything about it. But
you’re not really, because you’re a writer. ... Cast the outcome to suit
yourself. Punish whomever you choose.’ (Burroway,
2011, p.12). Another author who mentions this is Jane Wenham-Jones (2007), who
says: ‘This can be therapeutic too and great fun. ‘Don’t get mad – get your pen
out’.’ (Wenham-Jones, 2007, p.101)
Another
characteristic present in my writing is experience. I usually write about
things that happen to me and around me. Although Burroway (2011) says we have
to be careful when using autobiography: ‘Probably all good fiction is
‘autobiographical’ in some way, but the awful or hilarious or tragic thing you
went through may offer as many problems as possibilities when you start to turn
it into fiction.’ (Burroway, 2011, p.8), I feel that it works for me most of
the time.
Singleton
(2000,) completes this thought when she unveils the meaning of writing about
self. According to her, writers who use autobiography have to create dialogues,
rearrange things and use a lot of different narrative strategies in the stories
in order to ‘explain (away?), rationalise, excuse, justify and disguise the
truth.’ (Singleton, 2000, p.100). For her, fictionalising a story about self is
a way of being able to use one’s own life and experiences without censoring oneself.
One example of
this tactic used in my own writing explains the fact that the main character of
the stories, Carolina, has a massive crush on a pizzaiolo while she’s living
and working in Napoli. Actually, it’s
not just a crush, they fall in love. I lived in Napoli; there was a pizzaiolo;
he always stared at me. The fact that I ‘transformed’ him in this
handsome/mysterious/gentleman-like character was so I could give Carolina
exactly what she needed after a horrible man having broken up with her. Actually,
the horrible man and the breaking up did happen to the woman who inspired this
story, therefore, the need for more tweaks to auto/biographic situations. Evans
(2005) explains this in a perfect way: ‘Auto/biography is, in a sense, the most individual of
literary genres; its very existence is premised on the belief in the particularity
of the individual. (…) many authors of autobiography are motivated by nothing
except self-justification, an emotion that may reveal itself in either greater
of lesser simplicity.’ (Evans, 2005, p.34)
The part of
the story that says:
‘Lisa never wanted to go get the pizzas, but Carolina thought the pizzas from that
place were too good for her to argue, so she usually went to get them herself …
He was in his late twenties, tall, had dark and messy hair, quite a big nose
and beautiful lips. Something like an ‘Italian Heathcliff’. That’s how she used
to call him. He had a deep voice and sometimes stared too much for her liking.
But somehow he was kind of attractive, and that made her want to go get the
pizzas.’
…could have been easily
told like this:
‘Her
husband never wanted to go get the pizzas, but Daniela though the pizzas from
that place were too good for her to argue, so she usually went to get them
herself… He was in his late twenties, tall, had dark and messy hair, quite a
big nose and beautiful lips. Something like an ‘Italian Heathcliff’. That’s how
she used to call him. He had a deep voice and sometimes stared too much for her
liking. But somehow he was kind of attractive, and that made her want to go get
the pizzas.’
Here,
according to Evans (2005), self-justification is the main thing. It actually
means: he was cute, but I (the writer, who has actually been in this situation)
am too embarrassed to say that because I am a married woman and married women
not supposed to have crushes on other men.
Evans (2005) also
states that the second feature of the ‘method’ of auto/biography is ‘... the
recognition of the boundaries of the work.’
She talks about the many ‘silences’ within auto/biography: ‘...what is
not said, what cannot be said, and what we can say does show how authors of
auto/biography can easily cast either themselves or their subjects into the
rigid roles of hero/heroine and villain. Once these identities are set, it is
difficult for individuals to escape them.’ (Evans, 2005, p.43)
I have to
agree with her once again, since the roles of the hero/heroine and villain of
my stories / novel were all based on myself and/or on real subjects, all known to
me to some extent.
As one of the
subjects I use when writing is my own life and/or experience, I couldn’t agree
more with her statements. My main motive
to use my life as a ‘research method’ for my writing is not only to actually
bring out (or self-justify?) some aspects of my personality in a way which I
will not be so exposed (I do not need to show my writing to anyone if I do not
want to), but also to find out about myself and to become a better person. Using
auto/biography as a research method, one becomes a ‘detective’, searching deep
inside oneself or others around him, as well as the environment, for clues and
stories to write about.
Bearing
in mind that I used some of my own experiences while living in Naples to write
these stories (and the other novel chapters), Evans’ article is one of the one
I’ve related to most of the time while writing.
...one of the most important aspects of
researching for an auto/biography is the establishment of the relationship between
author, subject and culture. ... We are not simply observers of a society, or
collectors of information about another person, we carry some of the values and
the ideas of some parts of the society we inhabit. Once we recognise this, the
author of auto/biography becomes the ‘hidden object’ of the study. (Evans,
2005, p.42)
Just to conclude this part on the use of auto/biography in
my writing process, I have to cite Carver (1990, p.17) when he says that 'the best art has its reference point in
real life.' The idea of the stories / novel is to tell tales of Naples
and its peculiar inhabitants and legends, seen through an outsider’s eyes, who
is trying to find out who she really is and where she comes from. And
once again, the writing process is continued with the use of the writer’s own
experiences and personality traits – or of someone known to him/her.
Another research
method which interested me was ethnography. Before studying this method, I
believed ethnography was a research method which meant ‘a qualitative research
strategy that relies primarily on participant observation and concerns itself
in its most general sense with the study and interpretation of cultural
behaviour’. (van Maanem 1995, cited in Alsop, 2005, p.111) However, I was not
totally correct on that, because I thought that one could use ethnography in any field, not only ‘... traditionally a
distant land of whose people and way of life little was known...’(Hammersley
and Atkinson 1983, cited in Alsop, 2005, p.111)
I always thought that
ethnography was the study of any
people or community, therefore I have to agree that ‘The ethnographer is both
storyteller and scientist.’ (Fetterman, 1998, cited in Alsop, 2005, p.112). This
is one of the strengths I find in this method, and it is one of the two ways in
which an ethnographer intervenes in the researched world: in conveying his
research results in written narrative. Being an observer and a writer, the
writing process is made even more real and not invented, since ‘... in all
parts of the research process, the ethnographer is part of the research and not
merely a neutral, impartial observer. (Fetterman, 1998, cited in Alsop, 2005, pp.
112-113)
One example of how
real it can become and how the research involves the researcher is in Janice
Radway’s (1997) account of one of her ethnographic studies:
…this project became as much my story as it was theirs; I
place myself within the tale as a character inhabiting the same world occupied
by the people and institutions I was trying to understand. What I try to
provide... is a sense of the process through which I came to recognize that the
impingement of my own history on my present activity had everything to do with
what I saw and could begin to say about it. (Radway, 1997, cited in Alsop,
2005, pp.113-114)
While writing the stories / novel, another
use of ethnography for me is related to travel writing. Travel writing is
something I usually do and it has proven invaluable to the final product of the
MA. People-watching and being in constant ‘participant observation’ (Radway,
1997, cited in Alsop, 2005, p.118), I embraced my life in Naples as an ‘utopian
ethnographer’, and ‘greeted enthusiastically by the members of the
community...’ I wished ‘... to observe and to be welcomed in the fold.’ (Radway,
1997, cited in Alsop, 2005, p.117).
During
that period, I started writing ‘seriously’ for the first time. The atmosphere
of that city, the chaos and secrets that were behind those palaces walls needed
to become a story. I began to build my characters based on people I met while
living there (although I already had my heroine, who is based on my youngest
sister), and started asking my students about things my characters were likely
to do or say, or places they were likely to go in certain situations. The
particular behaviour of a Neapolitan; the incomprehensible dialect that they
make sure they use, especially when they don’t want you to understand what they
are talking about; the mafia conspiracies that one can feel in the air of the
Quartieri Spagnoli, where I lived… I also returned to Naples before finalising
my dissertation. The need to refresh the memories and, again, wander around
the city streets provided me with some
more clues on how to improve my main character and inspired another chapter – The Bones Church. All these were part of
my ethnographic study in Naples; one I wish to continue one day and use to
finally complete my first novel.
Another
author who inspired my work, Luciano De Crescenzo, with the simple, peculiar
voice and anecdotes in his Thus Spake
Bellavista (1989), has helped set
the mood for Carolina’s adventures and stories, as well as given me more
insight into the Napolitan people’s behaviour and supporting me in my
characterisation.
As
for the characters, the stories depict funny characters and their way of living
life (the art of il dolce far niente, for
instance, meaning the art of ‘the sweetness of doing nothing’) and dealing with everyday problems.
Naples has been chosen for its chaos, as well as liveliness. The former is what
Carolina's life is like now; the latter is what she is trying to recover. This
specific aspect of the stories took shape during the Walking in the city module. She goes to Naples to ‘run away from
home’ and ends up ‘finding home’. In the middle of the chaos she’s living,
she’s able to find the spirit and energy she needs to carry on living her life
the way she believes is right. Trying to use psychogeography, I have been using
photos and maps along the chapters to give meaning to the characters’ feelings
and conflicts.
To improve my characters and the flow of the
stories, I needed to improve my style, and Burroway's chapter on
'Characterization' (Burroway, 2011) was perfect to help me with my dialogues,
since this was one particular thing I
never considered to be one of my strengths. I like to tell stories, but
when it comes to letting the characters talk for themselves, I have always been
insecure. So, I decided to refer back to the text and go through the
punctuation marks, quotation marks, italics, etc. On her section on 'Format and
Style' (Burroway, 2011, p.87) I learned about the 'invisibility' of punctuation
and dialogue tags such as said,
replied, thought, etc and how it can make the dialogue/text
'cleaner' of unnecessary words and how to place them in the correct place to
create the effect I want on the reader.
When Carolina
and Fabrizio have the first conversation at the pizzeria, I was a little more comfortable with the dialogue, trying to make
it sound more natural. I ‘knew’ that Carolina really hated the fact that he was
talking to her for various reasons (she was very shy, she couldn’t speak
Italian very well, he used to stare at her all the time, which made her feel
really uncomfortable). However, Carolina was also enjoying the fact that they
were talking (she had a secret crush on him).
‘So, Carolina, what are you doing here in
Napoli?’
‘I teach.’
‘You teach?’
‘Mm-mm.’
‘What do you teach?’
‘I teach English.’
‘Inglese? Da vero? I can
speak un po’ di inglese.’ He looked at her, as if thinking. ‘And I know a great
story about an English teacher.’
‘Ah... Ok,’ she smiled. He was good, she
thought.
‘Don’t you want to know it?’ he insisted.
‘Hummmm... ok.’ She was sure he'd tell her
anyway. She laughed in her head.
‘Well, once upon a time, there was this
beautiful English teacher from Brasile.’
‘Yes...
and?’
‘And she was like a principessa...’
‘Haha...’
However, when
it came to their ‘first date’, I struggled with whether to add more dialogue to
it or not. Reading Burroway’s section ‘Economy in Dialogue' (Burroway, 2011, p.75)
I came across the 'tentative rule': ‘There is a tentative rule that pertains to
all fiction dialogue. It must do more than one thing at a time or it is too
inert for the purpose of fiction. This may sound harsh, but I consider it an
essential discipline.’ I'm not sure where my dialogues convey more than one
thing at a time, so I tend to keep them short and simple. At Carolina and
Fabrizio’s first date part in A Napolitan
Kiss, this is exactly what happens. Their dialogue serves to inform the
reader of some facts about Naples and that’s also how Carolina falls in love
with Fabrizio.
Fabrizio loved to tell stories about his land
and people.
‘Yes, isn’t it incredible? The land around
the volcano is so fertile, and that’s what most of the people who live around
there live off. The volcanic ashes soil is excellent for the production of wine
grapes, vegetables, orange and
lemon trees, herbs, flowers and the area has become a major tomato growing
region. I don’t think they are afraid. Well, they might be, but the need
to make a living is more important, I guess. Also, they feel safe, because
tranquil times can last for around 2,000 years.’
‘So, it could definitely happen again, then?’
(***)
‘And why
did you come to Napoli?’
‘Ok. Now, what about that story?’
‘Ok, ok. Dio mio,
Carolina, como sei impatient.’ He put the beer
bottle to the side. ‘Where was I?’
‘Once upon a time, there was this beautiful
English teacher from Brasile, who was like a principessa...’
‘Ah, ok. I remember now. So, she was like a
principessa. She really liked pizza margherita and she went to the pizzeria at
least twice a week...’
Carolina looked at him, ready to start
laughing.
Fabrizio made a stop sign with his hand and
continued.
‘Then, one day she realized she was falling
in love with the pizzaiolo...’
‘Fabrizio...’
‘Nah! Aspeta,’ he put his hand in front of
her. ‘...so, one day she realized she was falling in love with the pizzaiolo.
She wanted to see him more and more. So she went to the pizzeria every day. In
the end, she got as fat as a whale! Hahahaha.’
Carolina couldn't believe his cheek and
slapped him on the arm.
‘Grosse!’ She made an angry face, pouted and
crossed her arms in front of her chest. ‘Ok, I’ll never go to the pizzeria
again. Ever.’
What I
tried to do with these dialogues, now that I started to use them much more and
better was to give them autonomy to express themselves. Carolina and Fabrizio
are the soul of this story, so the best thing to do was ‘not to race through it
quickly with an end in mind.’ (Burroway, 2011, p.85)
The third topic of discussion in my dissertation was the
depiction of the main character (Carolina) as a female flâneuse. Firstly, let
me introduce some facts about the flâneur and the flâneuse.
Goethe was one of the founders of the concept of the
flâneur, along with another philosopher, Rousseau. In his book An Italian Journey (1962) he describes
Naples as a Paradise. Charles Baudelaire described the flâneur simplistically
as a gentleman who strolls the city streets, and therefore, participating in
city life, but only as a spectator. According to Baudelaire ‘The flâneur was an
idle stroller with an inquisitive mind and an aesthetic eye, a mixture of the
watchful detective, the aesthetic dandy and the gaping consumer… a solitary
character…read the city as a book… but in a distanced superior way.’ (van
Godsendthoven, 2005, cited in van Nes et
al, 2009, 122:1)
According to Friedberg (1993), ‘the department store may
have been… the flâneur’s last coup, but it was the flâneuse’s first.’
(Friedberg, 1993, cited in van Nes et al,
2009, 122:2)
van Nes et al (2009) also mentions that the
flâneuse is marked, if using Friedberg’s concept, as a consumer (a ‘badaud’).
While the flâneuse has as characteristic a distance between her and the city,
the ‘badaud’ experiences the city as a place to consume.
As the role of
women changes in the society, the flâneuse starts to distinguish herself by
becoming more independent. ‘At the beginning of the 20th century…’
she is no longer ‘…objectified by men and patriarchic institutes.’ (van Nes et all, 2009, 122:3)
Janet Wolf (985) claims that the flâneuse cannot exist, because
she cannot wander aimlessly around town. I totally disagree and also with
Deborah Parsons when she says that the flâneuse does exist, but in a different
form than the flâneur.
A very strong theme present in the stories / novel is Carolina’s
need for freedom, which is one of the features of the flâneuse. Carolina’s love
for strolling around the city and feeling a part of it, feeling so comfortable
to the point of considering it ‘home’, definitely classifies her as a
flâneuse. Carolina is a female flâneur
and she doesn’t go around looking at shops. She walks around looking for life,
for excitement, as a voyeur. She does it for herself. She wants to learn as
much as she can. She wants to be part of the city. Carolina is a wanderer and she uses the
streets as corridors, not a destination. According to van Nes et al (2009), ‘for the flâneuse
liveliness is one of the conditions to stroll around’. Again, we have the use of auto/biography
here. I am in love with Naples. I, too, went back to
Naples on my own for the second time and wandered around the
city streets, trying to experience Carolina’s freedom. I am a flâneuse and what I tried to do with Carolina is to create
her to allow me to have this freedom all the time.
Another
point is the comparison between the female flâneur to the male flâneur in the
sense that the female flâneur’s role, as well as the male’s, is one of
understanding, participating and depicting the city and its people. They are
both participants in the city life and objective spectators.
Carolina
experiences the city through her stories, which come to life as a result of her
wandering about the narrow and busy streets of Naples. As the stories are
created, the reader can perceive that she starts to claim an active role, not
only as a flâneur, but also in her life. She starts to get to know herself; she
starts to develop/(re)discover her own personality. This is the role that the
city and its people play in this flâneuse’s life; one of enlightment, of
understanding the ‘macho’ mentality of the Italian men and with that
understanding her own surroundings as she grows up.
It’s in
the streets of Naples, with its tales of Camorra, and free violence that
Carolina will find the freedom she once craved. It’s walking the dangerous
streets of the Quartieri Spagnoli
without fear (for being an outsider and not having a greater understanding of
what really happens there or about so many people who have been killed there)
that Carolina finds her freedom; and her home.
Finally, my aim with this (wannabe) novel is to entertain and educate, depicting a few good historical pieces of information about Naples, and also the people who live there. More importantly, it's been the process of a useless 'fight' against the compulsive writer in me and the discovery that I am also a flâneuse, even if it's my own concept of what a flâneuse is supposed to be. I strongly defend the position of the flâneuse as a woman in love with the freedom of walking around the streets of the city - any city, or even a village, or the countryside - in search of herself, and having in mind all important things in life, none of them related to shopping.
How about you??? What's your writing process like? Do you use any methods, fixed schedule...?
P.S. If you'd like to see the bibliography used to write this, just let me know in a comment. :)
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