I have now finished
Clara’s Story. It is running at
103,000 words. All my novels seem to come
out at that length these days – until the publisher’s editor’s had their say. I’ve
edited it eighteen times, including giving it a final copy edit. I made myself concentrate
on the words one sentence at a time and stopped myself worrying about anything else
at this stage. I suddenly saw the text in a new light. Was this the way my
readers were going to experience it?
Clara's Story
This biographical novel tells the story of Clara Lehrs and is the prequel to my book "The House on Schellberg Street". We follow Clara's life from 1918 to 1942 with some flashbacks into her childhood and the early days of her marriage. There is no good outcome for Clara, and yet.... On this blog I'll also be telling the story of how the novel progresses and is researched.
Monday, 29 September 2014
Saturday, 22 February 2014
Would you like to meet her?
Clara is certainly
being wheeled out now. She also appears in The House on Schellberg Street and that is coming out on 11 April.
On 17 April, I’ll
be reading from both The House on
Schellberg Street and Clara’s Story,
along with my two very good friends and talented writers, Sarah Dobbs and
Debz-Hobbs-Wyatt, who will also read from their work, at the beautiful
International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester.
We’re holding an
event called Women’s Writing. We’ll be talking a little about our writing and
reading some excerpts. Then we’ll also read from a project we’re working on
together. We’ll also discuss what writing within the framework of Higher
Education is like, whether studying at university helped our journeys as
writers and what our relationship to the academy is like now and whether that
helps or hinders our writing process. And we’ll do a Q and A session.
Sunday, 16 February 2014
Aftermath
Last Thursday I
attended a special viewing of this exhibition at the John Rylands Library,
Deansgate Manchester. I felt my work on Clara Lehrs is very connected with this
because:
·
She experiences
the Great War.
·
Letters
are involved and letters are what inspired the whole Schellberg Cycle
·
Part of
the exhibition is about a creative response to war, as is the Schellberg Cycle.
·
Here a
voice is given to people who no longer have a voice and that is what my project
does for Clara and several other people.
In addition I was particularly pleased to go along to this as Fine Art students
from the University of Salford, where I also work, have been involved in the
project.
Saturday, 8 February 2014
Is she taking over?
I found myself the other day considering a situation at work
and asking myself what Clara would do – and then decided to take that very same
action.
Does this mean Clara and I are alike?
Or am I doing as all good writers advise and writing what I
know?
Sunday, 2 February 2014
Getting it right for the readers
I’ve put the novel away for a short while. This has partly
been enforced because I’ve had edits to do for The House on Schellberg Street and a heap of marking as part of the
day job. Actually, though, this has been somewhat of an advantage. It’s given
me some distance. Also, some of the issues that have cropped up there are also relevant
here.
Who is the reader?
I’m concentrating now on getting this right for the specific
readers. For this particular text the reader is quite difficult to define.
·
Is it someone who has read The House on Schellberg Street? Possibly, though that is a arguably
a text for younger teen girls. Certainly, younger teens could read Clara’s Story if they’ve read The House on Schellberg Street.
·
Is it for a Transita reader? This is quite likely
– except sadly, Transita no longer exists. This may be because middle aged
women don’t like reading about middle-aged women. Possibly nobody does. Clara
is right at the end of middle-age when her story really begins.
·
Is it for history-lovers? Or more precisely herstory-lovers?
Almost certainly. It is after all, a biography, though written using fiction
techniques. Her story has to be told, sad as it is, because she was such an
extraordinary woman.
In the end, I guess, it’s just a matter of making it as
engaging as I can. Thankfully, she is becoming more real. That has to be good.
The Schellberg Cycle
Working with an editor on The House on Schellberg Street has made me realise that I do in
fact have another books to write. So, my sabbatical has led to a collection of five
texts. I’d like to name this The
Schellberg Cycle. The books can actually be read in any order. Three are
for younger readers and two for adults though as long as someone has started with
something for the right age, all others can be read. So we have:
·
The House on Schellberg Street
·
Clara’s Story
·
The BDM girl ( working title only)
·
The Woman Who Nearly Shot Hitler
·
The Class Letter
Quite exciting, really.
Monday, 20 January 2014
Surviving in the camp
Clara did not
spend long in Theriesenstadt. Just under a month in fact. But I’ve been very
concerned about getting the detail about that stay right. We always assume it
to have been a more benign place than many other camps and indeed at the time
that Clara was there it was more of a transit camp than anything else though it
also provided cheap labour for a country at war.
We have little idea
of what it was actually like for her in the camp. And in my story-line I’ve included
some fictitious characters – a pregnant mother who gives birth in the camp and her
little daughter. I’ve borrowed a businessman who carried on running his
business from within the camp. This man really existed and he was able to influence
his captors. Here, I’ve used his influence to spare the lives of Clara’s friends
and her two children.
But was Theriesenstadt
all that benign actually? Probably not at the time that Clara was there. It
wasn’t a death camp – a gas chamber was added much later. Neither was it the “holiday
camp” fabricated for the Red Cross, nor were there yet football matches or an orchestra.
Compared with Clara’s former upper middle class lift it would be pretty
miserable there. Am I getting that across?
I’m currently
reading Primo Levi’s If This is a Man /The Truce where we have a detailed picture of what Auschwitz was like
towards the end of World War II. People had ways of surviving. Levi was enterprising
and sold flints he “stole” from his work place and “sold” them for bread. Clara
doesn’t survive but by being such a nice person sets everything up for her friends
to survive. She is so good to everyone that she brings out the best in them.
Levi writes about
Auschwitz, which we all believe to be possibly the worst of the death camps. I
think I’ve made Theriesenstadt as gruesome. Clara’s family believed for years
that she was transported to Auschwitz. We have recently found out, in fact,
that it was Treblinka.
It’s likely that she
and all the other old people in that transport would have been shot on arrival.
They would probably not have known what was happening or not until the last
moment. This was actually a quicker death than being gassed which at that time
took on average twenty minutes. We don’t see that particular scene in my
version of Clara’s story. In the epilogue the two children are now quite grown
up and help with archiving of information about the Rexingen Jews. At that
point they believe that she went to Auschwitz. Only in the notes at the end,
and here, do I reveal that where she actually she went.
Sunday, 12 January 2014
Edit 2 underway
Looking better now
I’m thankful that what worried me when I read the text through
the first time has largely been dealt with. It does seem convincing now and I believe
the reader will develop an interest in and an empathy for main character Clara.
The World War I scenes now work better though even in this second read through
I’ve noticed some places that need developing a little more.
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