This is a different kind of writing: I am going over a house I first started building 5 years ago, on the limited foundation of a 10 page sketch. As it has expanded with each draft it has grown in scope and complexity, but with flaws – usually sections I have papered over, to bridge a gap, to fill an area that I haven't fully researched because the books were slow coming, or which I needed to cover to meet a deadline. In time some of these were repaired – but others remain hidden under Gothic flights of prose or fascinating scenes, traps just weighting for my narrative to trip over or fall through and bring the whole structure down.
Now for the first time there is time to strip down and find them all, and it is fascinating and challenging.
For example – in the two most recent drafts my protagonist climbs into the mountains with partisans and makes maps. The question is raised – how is a 21 year old graphic designer able to make maps? And why are maps needed?
I look at this and have to be honest. She is making maps because I want her in the mountains, and I want her in the mountains because I have a terrific scene coming up where she makes love among the rocks with a partisan.
Do I go back and make her a mapmaker from the outset, give her an army background (daughter of a military surveyor perhaps?)? Do I weave images of maps into the visual texture of the entire film? Well, no, because that is not what this film is about. (The other film, about the shipwrecked boy who grew up to chart the Australian coast, and who was tattooed from shoulder to knee – now that film is about maps...)
Or do I strip right back, through all the wanna haves and quick fixes and wallpaper bodges that this mountain section of the script contains, and take the time to write it properly, even at the risk of losing my rocky sex scene.
Being here in the hills means I find have time to stop and rip and pull and let the fresh air in, and build a good structure, and only then start to find the right words to make it live. And that's a very new experience.
Cooking: Sloe gin. Found about 20 lbs of sloes (wild plums) in the hedgerows; I started picking on my own but the landlord got intrigued, then enthusiastic, and my two pounds turned into a vast haul in several sacks. They are all in the freezer at the bottom of hill, waiting for bottling. (Freezing breaks down the tough skins, which otherwise need pricking. 1 Lb of sloes, 4 oz of sugar, 1 pt of gin (or vodka – gin was traditionally the only clear spirit available in this country until the 2nd half of the 20th C) Bottle and shake every other day.
After 3 months the liquor is a rich purple, and the dry bitter sloes have worked an extraordinary alchemy to produce the richest, most flavoursome drink imaginable. It can be drunk at once, although it improves still further with keeping.
Reading: Ball of Fire by Antony Brett-James: rats, my copy is damaged, with pages missing just as the partisan leader, Ras Seyoum – a key figure in the film – is launching a wild attack on the Italian fortifications. I shall have to hike to the library and order another copy and hope that it arrives in good time. If not it will have to wait until I can get to the British Library in November.
Watching: The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Lovely storytelling.
No comments:
Post a Comment