This week was strange. My writing didn’t flow earlier in the week. I was ready to leave the computer, walk to the top of a mountain and stay there. Somehow though the tangle of a chapter set in New Guinea in World War Two suddenly came to life. I am writing slowly what is for me a difficult chapter to write: war from a male perspective, it’s not easy. I guess writing never is. I lose myself in books and that is what I want my reader to do with my writing. I don’t usually share my WIP but this morning it came to me that I should.
It was still dark. She rose and went to the sash window and listened to the wind blowing behind the cracked glass. She’d not noticed the pane needed replacing when they moved in and now the landlord was away at the Front she couldn’t ask him to replace it. She opened the window carefully, the sharp night air flowed into the room. It was very still outside, and rather lovely, the full moon cast stripes of light across the pavement, power poles merged with the shadows. Across the street, a light switched on suddenly, followed by the sound of a dog barking. Mr Bacon emerged a few minutes later and rode off on his bicycle, speeding around the corner onto Royal Avenue, late for his job in the city fruit markets. Rose turned away and returned to the comfort of her feather mattress and pillow. It was cold even for July. She shivered and pulled the woolen blanket up round her chin. Sleepily she started to think about Dave, hoped he’d be home by the New Year. She would not think of Robert, she told herself. She closed her eyes. Halfway between wakefulness and sleep she rolled over, reached out and ran her fingers along the gilt edges of the Rossetti on her bedside table—all was right with the world—at least for tonight.
My novel is set in wartime Brisbane and Sydney and one chapter is set in Northern California. I particularly enjoyed researching the American chapter because the action takes place in a silvered wooden cabin near a river surrounded by pine forest. I hope my finished novel has a touch of magic about it.
On research
I wrote recently about research. I went to Brisbane with the intention of walking the city streets to get a feel of the city as it might have been in wartime. I saw the buildings and I walked the streets but found it hard to capture the past. I realise now it was because the city had changed so much in the last seventy years. I also did some research further away from the city. I walked with a friend to a place that embodied the past; it was all around me. This was a more rewarding experience. I found I could put myself in my protagonists place, enter the world as it was then, live the life, know thoughts and feelings. Know truth. I picked up a few pebbles and dust from a grave, they now sit on a small enamelled dish from Hydra on my writing desk. The siren song of another story is calling.
Have a good writing week, Elise x
what elise wrote 