A couple of weeks ago the old girl's network of writers buzzed into Sackville and paid me a visit. I cannot capture in words how much I love these women, admire their work and am so thankful to have them in my life. I'm really fortunate to belong to a group like this. I am learning so much from them, it's overwhelming by times.
So the girls came to town and we headed off to a private room at the library to workshop. With just getting back from the Maritime Writers' Workshop and BnM deadlines looming over my head, I hadn't had time to finish the piece I wanted to show them so I had to dig into the files and find something else. On an impulse I chose a piece I'd written probably five or six years ago called Katt's Lives. It's not something I've shown to many people. Really, I've never known what it was. It's not like anything else I've written.
I wrote a complete first draft in a 45 minute flurry one afternoon. The words just spilled out of me, no punctuation at all, no paragraphing or spacing of any kind. My first draft was a perfectly rectangle block of typed text covering about two pages. And there was this rhythm in my head, this fast drum beat, that made me not want to punctuate . . . ever. It was like the piece needed to be blurted out in one big gush. Quite literally like I was vomiting the words onto the page. And once I got it out of me, I didn't want to see the damn thing again. It made me physically ill to look at it. So, I pushed it aside into a drawer and moved along to something else.
Took it out a few months later and wondered what the hell this thing was that I'd done, played a little bit with it, did some editing, added sentence structure and paragraphing . . . still, this was not a story. Every once in awhile I'd stumble across this piece and fiddle with it a bit more, wonder what had possessed me to write this crap down. Once I sent it out to a magazine known to publish beyond the norm with a purposely vague cover letter in hopes they would write back and tell me what this was. They did write back "parts of this are quite good, but overall the piece needs work." They didn't know what it was either.
So, I took out Katt's Lives, dusted it off, numbered the sections for clarity, and sent it off to my ladies, thinking if anyone could tell me what I was doing it would be them. And true to form, they didn't disappoint.
They immediately recognised that this did not sound like me, was not my normal style. They were puzzled by the distance between the reader and the character. Such interesting situations, tremendous drama that I had quickly panned over without ever once zooming in for a closer look. Opting to give a single telling sentence rather than show the situation. I was as confused by all this as they were, I couldn't figure out what was wrong, why I couldn't do anything with this, make something of it. Then someone mentioned "autobiographical" . . . though the story is sooo . . . she didn't really think it could be autobiographical . . . Flashbulbs popping over my head though. Aha! There is no fiction in Katt's Lives, it's totally me, all me all the time.
Revelation #1: If I'm not zooming in it's because I'm hitting close to home and afraid to go back into those memories and relive those emotions. But if I can go there and tap into that, cool things might happen, like with Kimberley in Three Thirty Three. Women really like that story. Men tend to hate it, at least the ones who have read it so far, and I think it's because it's so honest, it makes them really uncomfortable.
Revelation #2: Every time I've named a character with a K name, I've consciously or subconsciously been writing my most autobiographical stuff. Didn't do it on purpose, but that's what happened.
Revelation #3: Katt's Lives is an outline for a book . . . either a novel or the first part of my memoir . . . probably a novel, memoir is a sticky business, laying the names of the guilty out there for all to see doesn't seem like the most attractive option. And in fiction I get to have fun, change the way things really happened if I want.
I'm getting together again with my group sometime toward the end of this month. Looking forward to it immensely. So much to learn, so little time, I feel like I'm on the fast-track by having their help.
Mood: high spirits, optimistic once again
Drinking: Coffee with a splash of cream
Listening To: Aerosmith, Dream On
Hair: hanging loose, covering my right eye
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