The End of a Story

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.     

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.       

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.  

Getting it all out there

Getting the sister novel out

Exciting times.  Well actually, it’s sister novel, The House on Schellberg Street, that has been accepted. So far, I’ve had some encouraging noises form the main editor. The nitty-gritty is yet to come.

Now, though, I’m working on all sorts of things – getting the web site up and running, thinking about a launch, approaching people who might sell it and getting a few school visits organised.

Links

Somehow, Clara’s Story becomes part and parcel of this.

As do the two blogs – this and the one about The House on Schellberg Street.

School visits and workshops  

I’m particularly interested in doing school visits and talks about these two slightly different Holocaust stories. I’m also preparing an interactive workshop about The House on Schellberg Street and as soon as Clara’s Story is ready, there’ll be one about that also.

Lecture on Representing the Holocaust  

I’m also busily preparing a couple of lectures for a course I’ll be teaching on at the University of Salford next year. I’ll be dealing with how I did my research and the ethical issues I’ve had to face in dealing with this material. The content for just one lecture and seminar might make a substantial part of a secondary book to go with this material. Rather like this blog now has almost 11,000 words.      

Meanwhile the editing continues

I’m almost at the end of the first rewrite. Literally just one scene to go, albeit a rather tricky one. Then I’ll be on to Edit 2.    

Interested in finding out more about a school visit? Contact me here.        

Edit 1

This is proving to be quite discouraging. I’m finding so many faults with it. Yet it highlights some important issues about drafting and editing.

General structure

It’s not quite hanging together yet. I’ve found a couple of spots where I need to add in extra scenes. I don’t feel that we’re getting as close to Clara as we might. It’s partly because her story spans such a long time. That has to stay. It’s partly because it’s a biography and though it focuses mainly on the last twenty-four years of her life some earlier scenes are crucial. That structure has to stay. I must use other means of making it more immediate.

The best type of historical resources

We don’t have very much information about Clara at all, even though there is a wealth of material about the Holocaust generally. So, I’ve had to dig deep into what’s available. All of it is fascinating. Only some of it is useful.

DNA of a Story

I’ve now finished the first draft of the story and I’m part way through reading it and seeing if the structure works. The final chapter is a bit of an epilogue. I don’t want to give any spoilers here but I’ll simply say that it involves two characters that Clara knew when she was in Theriesenstadt.

As soon as I’d finished it I realised that it in effect contains the whole story, yet reading it first wouldn’t really be a spoiler for the whole book.

It is the blueprint for the story, or if you like, the DNA of the whole novel.

Balancing fact and imagination

I continue with Clara’s experiences in Theriesenstadt. I’ve had to find out some more details:

·         What would happen if a child was born

·         How women coped with menstruation and post-partum bleeding

·         Whether roll-call was as strict there as at other camps

·         What they might have eaten

·         What sort of work they would do

Remembering Theriesenstadt

When I wrote The House on Schellberg Street I did quite a lot of research about Theriesenstadt. Some details stand out:

• It was a model concentration camp and was spruced up to fool the Red Cross.
• It was considered by many to be a ghetto rather than a camp.
• It arranged football matches.
• It had an orchestra. (But so did Auschwitz!)
• It housed many creative practitioners and much art work and music came out of it.
• It wasn’t essentially a death camp  

I’ve now had to revisit some of the research and there are a few less savoury details emerging.   

·         It also provided “striped pyjamas”.

·         Inmates slept in crowded conditions just like in other concentration camps.

·         Heads were shaved.

·         It was a transit camp – many, such as Clara, were held there for a short while before being transported again to the death camps.

·         A gas chamber was installed there towards the end of World War II.

And then we have Clara in the middle of it all, not really knowing what to make of it.

Clara for me has become very much a vehicle for asking how and why.

Already as I write these rather demanding scenes I’ve had her and a companion resist escaping when they have a chance as they are transported.  They have no money and they are in a foreign country where they don’t speak the language, at a time when they don’t know exactly how terrible the place is that they’re going to.

Later she asks herself why they don’t try to overcome the guards. There are so many more of them than there are guards. Then she looks into the cold blue eyes of one of the soldiers and realises that at any given moment it is only one guard and one Jew; the guard is the stronger.

I have, I believe, just three more chapters to write to get to the end of the story, though I may also slot two extra earlier ones in.