Inside a writer’s process – Kate Grenville
Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River is based on the story of her convict great-great-great grandfather Solomon Wiseman. The town Wisemans Ferry on the Hawkesbury River in NSW was named for him and the ferry service he established.
In 1822, my convict great-great-great grandfather John Baker was assigned to farm work a few miles upstream from Wiseman’s property and commercial interests. John Baker and Mary Ann Hughes were married early in 1838, the year of Wiseman’s death. For years I’ve been collecting scraps of stories and records, hoping at some time to bring them to life in a useful way.
I’ve just read Kate Grenville’s account of writing the novel. Searching for the Secret River is an insight into her process, experiences, thoughts and inspirations that came at seemingly right times.
In the book, Grenville shares her ‘mantras about writing’.
Never have a blank page
Fix it up later
Don’t wait for time to write
Try anything, and if it doesn’t work, try something else.
While writing The Secret River, Grenville found answers everywhere, often when she wasn’t deliberately looking – from other authors such as Michael Ondaatje and E Annie Proulx, from conversations with neighbours and from visits to various people and places.
One of the major insights for me was how much of the material Kate Grenville collected was put aside (in her ‘Good Bits to Use Later’ folder) or let go entirely.
“I thought of the book that I was circling around, that I’d been trying so hard to control. [..] How presumptuous I’d been, thinking that this was my story alone, to pummel into shape as I saw fit, a story I understood enough to force into the form I wanted. [..] How could I know what kind of book this was going to be? My job wasn’t to take what I’d learned and squeeze it into the shape I thought it should have. Before it could be a book this was a story. That story was somehow part of all this…… I didn’t own that story. It had to be allowed to speak for itself. My job was to get out of its way.”
It’s time for me to cull what’s unnecessary material in my collection and get out of the way of the stories. Thank you Kate Grenville.
