Why write? Why e-publish? Why blog?

                                        Why indeed?

Disclaimer: I do not credit myself with any great talent, particular inspiration or brilliance. I simply feel the need to write. Writing adds another dimension to life. Exploring and developing ideas for a story is stimulating. Creating new worlds, or one's own version of familiar worlds, is extremely satisfying.  And I love telling a story. I write stories that I would have liked to read as a child and young person. And that is almost enough.

An 'ulterior motive', in the more serious narrations, is an intellectual one: to examine how knowledge has been transmitted over the centuries, particularly through language and writing, how skills we now take for granted, in the past were unknown to most and secret to a few. Whether this exploration is imagined or factual is not really the point; the former can stand for the latter in a novel.

As a child, like many children, I scribbled stories without endings, little plays and of course read voraciously. After many years of dreaming about writing, without producing anything but essays for school and university, in the early 1980s an outlet presented itself through a commission for a story from an Australian educational publisher. The tale I wrote, called The Bluemoon Fantastics, for six to eight year olds, was published in 1982, relatively easily, thanks to a contact. 

This first small success taught me how much an unknown writer needs to compromise. Some of my vocabulary was deemed too sophisticated for the age group I was writing for, whereas I believed - and still do - that children need to be exposed to interesting language where possible, to stimulate and encourage them verbally. Words are exciting and I have never believed in dumbing-down. Of course at the time I accepted the edits: pragmatism plays its part.

Subsequently I settled in Italy with my husband, started a family and soon began teaching English to children through play/craft/song/story-telling. This led to the idea of a book describing this method, which I boldly presented at the Bologna Book Fair in the late 80s. My lobbying was successful and L'Inglese Con Te, complete with activity sheets and cassette, was published in 1988.

The early years of family life afforded some time (I was pretty determined and was lucky enough to have an au pair helping me), but later, writing was set aside as work and family demanded full-time attention. So it was not until the new century that I found myself with sufficient time and mental space to start work on what had been a long-researched and pondered project. This was to be a fictional representation of some of the ideas argued in Robert Graves's The White Goddess which I intended as a story for young adults. The idea of a matriarchal society in bronze-age Britain was the foundation stone of the tale.

The memory of committing these early ideas to my first computer is precious. I recall sitting, in the August heat, at the ping-pong table in my mother-in-law's home in Naples, feeling excited and delighted that I was finally starting on a project I had dreamt about for years. And maybe because the time was right, maybe because I had already done so much research and thinking about it, the story seemed to come out rather effortlessly.

Not that it was easy to complete. Once back in the routine of city life, caught up in the demands of work and family, I had literally to carve out two or three hours per day for myself. In the mornings I insisted on not being interrupted by my co-workers; not even by the telephone. In those years there was no email to distract, nor even the mobile phone, since I refused to own one for a long time. 

Again, I was lucky: I had a place to write, a desk, a computer, two or three hours just for me; a job which allowed me this freedom; an understanding and encouraging family. For a year I was terribly disciplined (and tough with those around me). I believe it was that year of work which broke down whatever inhibitions or obstacles I had accumulated over the long period of writerly inactivity.

For it was strange. As a student I had written constantly and found it easy enough. But after almost twenty years of raising children, teaching children and living in a foreign country I found I was rusty - very rusty. It took some time to find, not a voice, not a style, but just a way of writing that satisfied me. Words didn't come easily, I found I was repetitive, confused, flat. Dictionary and Thesaurus were my aids and as the story grew I found a way.

Many writers aim to complete a certain number of pages per day; others instead sit down and write - or not, as inspiration takes them - but work for a pre-established time. The latter was certainly the more congenial for me. I had no time-frame to stick with, no deadline but my own desire to create a story complete with beginning, middle and end.

Thirteen years later I published this first story for young adults as an e-book downloadable for e-readers, or to be read on the computer or, were anyone that keen, to be printed as a pdf. The title is Evin of the Trees.

Why did it take so long? 

Mostly because, since the year 2000 I worked on other stories and published, as an e-book, one which reached completion sooner: The Dove of Montségur is a novel for young adults set during the repression of the Cathars in medieval France. 

I have also completed three lighthearted stories set in a mythical eighteenth century while a humorous story set in 1960s Australia is a work in progress - all these are written for six to ten year olds. The former are awaiting illustrations. And now the sequel to The Dove of Montségur is almost completed. Its title is Dante's Gift. Finally, there are new ideas in the pipeline including another historical novel, this time taking place in Elizabethan England, and  bedtime stories for very small children.

Although I sent the synopsis of Evin of the Trees, which in those days was just in a hard copy version, to some British literary agents, (the days of directly approaching a publisher having passed), I was immediately discouraged by the lack of interest. If I couldn't even find an agent, what hope was there of ever finding a publisher? 

Discouraged but not dissuaded, I continued to write, realizing that the most important thing to me was completing those stories with their beginnings, middles and ends. I also radically redrafted Evin of the Trees, my first work and first love as it were, reducing it from 126,000 words to about 92,000. A lot of detail in there interested me enormously, but would probably not interest  others.

Encouraged by family, I thought to try again with a US literary agency. This time I would submit one of the humorous tales set in a fantasy eighteenth century. This might appeal more, I believed. Again, no luck, even though there was a tenuous contact involved.

It is not inconceivable that I am a rotten writer; my stories are tedious or badly written; their subject matter is inappropriate for children; my style is antiquated; I cannot draw characters; my plots are flimsy. All these doubts have assailed me. It could also be that I haven't tried hard enough to sell them.

But when I am feeling more confident I conclude that, above all, I do not write for the times. I write for myself; what I like may not coincide with what publishers (or agents) are looking for these days. My style can be quite literary, vaguely erudite, even the humorous stories don't pull verbal punches and employ a slightly ironic, deliberately quaint style. 

Someone remarked that I ought to try writing a version of The Hunger Games which are so popular. I couldn't think of anything worse or more alien. Pragmatic I may be, but not to the point of selling my soul!

 

So I resign myself to self-publishing, not because I have ambitions to sell my stories, (although that would be fun, because it would mean that someone wanted to read them), but because publishing is the final act; it is closing one work before starting another; it is feeling, yes, that is done, that is achieved, now we move on.

Why the blog? 

Because it's a novel way of recording one's own thoughts and ideas. Because one hopes someone else might be interested in a writer's motives, thoughts about writing in general and my writing in particular. And because it seems only logical, given the extraordinary communicative tools now at our disposal, to complement publication with discussion and possibly exchange.