This Writing Life

I'd really like your comments on this one.

I had an interesting conversation with one of my students tonight. Tonight was Week 4 of the 5 week course, the week we talk about structure and plotting—not my favourite week, but it went really well tonight. Must remember what I did for next time!

Anyway, in the course of discussing resolutions and endings and when do you know the story has ended. (This last point was raised by one of the students who teaches Year 3 and it's something he pushes his kids to think about when they're writing. "Is it really The End?", he asks them, pointing out that Lucy's still stuck up the tree... It was great having him in the class tonight!) We talked about the need to fulfil the promise set up at the beginning of the novel, and knowing that, unless your character dies at the end, there's presumably more "story" for them to live. So how do you know when to finish?

We also had questions about the role of prologues and epilogues, and I spoke about how I rather wished EM Forster hadn't told us what happened to his characters after the end of A Room With a View (I think this must have been added to later editions, given it was published in 1908 and I recall the epilogue said George fought in WWI... anyone know?).

We talked about how too much information in the way of an epilogue
(referencing the last Harry Potter book, where JK expounded on what
everyone's future fate was), which can interfere with the readers own
engagement with the characters, their own idea of what might happen to
them, who they might (for example) marry. In the course of this discussion, I made reference to JK Rowling announcing to the world that Dumbledore was gay. (This was met with a loud exclamation from the Year 3 teacher who hadn't heard this news!)

After the class, one of the students stayed back because he wanted to explore the idea of the writer's responsibility to the reader a bit further. He explained that he'd always thought the writer's first responsibility was to themselves and their story, but that the discussion in class tonight had him thinking about the writers' responsibility to the reader. He cited the example of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy, which he'd read as a child, and the betrayal he felt when he read Tehanu, Le Guin's revisiting (from, if I understand it correctly, a feminist perspective). It was as if she were re-writing the world and more importantly, the characters, he said, and he felt, as I said, betrayed.

I explained my understanding that the novel was an attempt by Le Guin to address the gender questions that vexed her about the original Earthsea books, and curiously, he'd picked up on this. He said he recalled thinking, even as a child, that this was a world that was "really down on women", but nevertheless he formed an attachment to the characters and felt that the retelling in Tehanu had turned characters he had a "relationship" with into something weak and puny. That he appreciated her impulse to address those gender issues, but thought maybe she should have done it in a completely new fictional world.

I reckon he had a point. There is an implicit contract between writer and reader, and my student was arguing that maybe this needs to be respected above the writer's own "rights" to their story and characters. I told him that many writers argue that once the book goes out into the world, they don't own it anymore. He liked that idea.

Then we went on to talk about whether or not writers are always the best judges of their own work, and the role of the editor and so it went. I really appreciated that he was so geared up by all these ideas that he wanted to hang back and discuss them. I didn't even mind missing the start of The Gruen Transfer!

Sometimes, even when it's the class you feel the least confident about, you end up feeling you did a pretty good job after all.

The second is to the westword blog, which I set up last year to document the Western Sydney Young People's Literature project (my day job). I was not a very good westword blogger, but I am resolved to be a better and more regular blogger this year, both here at Misrule and at westword. I started off today by posting links to a range of articles that I hope teachers and librarians will find of interest—as much as a place to document the project's development, I want it to become a resource and information hub. So today is a good start. Let's hope I keep it up!