The Strange Case of the Disappearing Twin.
What crafting a crime novel told me about myself.
Back with the final part… If you missed the first part, click here: https://goo.gl/Fu8BYR
In 2012, circumstances allowed me to think about fulfilling a long-held ambition, to publish a novel. I suddenly had the time and some financial security, and I gave myself permission to be ‘the monster’ Tóibín has so accurately described.
I knew my 2004 novel was un-publishable, it had a scanty plot and less structure. But it was a starting point. I then took a very pragmatic decision. In the re-crafting, I would use the crime mystery genre. This genre gave me a structure to work towards, it is one I know well as I have loved reading crime fiction since I was in my teens. Plus crime fiction is a fast-selling genre and framing my novel within it would make it more straight forward to market.
I was off, and worked relatively quickly as I already had the setting, most of the characters and bits of the story. I was able to publish The Art of the Imperfect at the end of 2014. It took me a while to notice Clare was missing and that this has meaning for me and my writing doppelgänger.
In the ten years between 2004 and 2014, I was also coming to an understanding of how the therapeutic impact of creative writing goes far beyond the catharsis of free writing. Pennebaker had identified three aspects which, when present, would increase the efficacy of his expressive writing. These are: if a feeling was named and expressed; if there was an alteration of perspective, especially a movement away from using ‘I’ to using ‘you’ or ‘she’ or ‘he’ or ‘they’; and if a narrative, a coherent story, begins to emerge.
Even in the writing of my 2004 novel, I had begun to use my skills as a creative writer to embark on this process. Hannah’s (my) story of depression was told in the third person; I was giving Hannah’s (my) experience a name; and I made an almost lucid narrative from something which, at the time, had felt like pure madness. Now I wanted to offer the story to a readership, I knew crafting would be even more essential.
I am not the only author to have understood the therapy in sculpting a novel. When Jackie Kay was asked how she got through her difficult encounter with her birth father (as described in her novel Red Dust Road, Picador, 2011) she replied, ‘By writing. … By finding some way of crafting an experience, constructing a structure to create a door to let other people in so they can walk into your experience and call it theirs and in the business of doing this in itself gives you somewhere to go with it. It’s almost like telling a story back to yourself. Often the more traumatised we are, the more we’ll tell the story or else we’ll be completely silent. Writing is one of the ways of expressing the inexpressible.’ (Kay, 2016.)
Tóibín explains his task in writing his recent novel Nora Webster (Penguin, 2015), of working out the truth of what had happened when his father died. ‘You’re pulling this out of yourself. This is sometimes very difficult material.’ But ‘it’s an anchor, in a way, all this pleasure [I experience] would mean nothing if this pain, if this working out the pain wasn’t there and I wasn’t writing and I wasn’t doing it.’ (Tóibín, 2016.)
I was attempting to work through my own pain and find my own truth by fashioning a novel I thought others might want to read. And I was doing it in the crime genre. Which could seem an odd choice, if it were not for Val McDermid suggesting it is the best for exploring current issues. She has described how she has, ‘Walked the fine line between making things up and staying real.’ And, for her, ‘The very act of imagining has been a powerful way of accessing the truth.’ (McDermid, 2016.)
In the re-writing, the crafting, the working through, Hannah lost her twin. I didn’t deliberately expel her, she just wasn’t there anymore. Hannah remains a fragmented character, but the spectral disallowed side of her no longer has to be embodied by a twin which exists beyond Hannah’s every-day consciousness. Hannah has become more integrated.
* * *
‘Integration’ could be seen to be a therapeutic, a healing, intention (Erskine et al., 1999; DeYoung, 2003; Finlay, 2016). This can describe many processes, but the one I am leaning towards here, is the bringing together and acceptance of the many sides of who we are. This could include exploring: past experiences which we would choose to ignore or forget; emotions or thoughts which have been long designated as undesirable; how we interact with others and how we fit within societal mores; the extent to which we can find meaning within our lives. The intention of this effort would be to ‘facilitate a sense of wholeness in a person’s being and functioning, at intrapsychic, mind-body, relational, societal and transpersonal levels. We strive to enable our clients to gain insight into their experience and to have a sense of feeling “at home” with self, at peace with others. There are of course limits to the extent to which any of us can be deemed “whole”, but integration remains the driving spirit of our project – particularly with longer-term work.’ (Finlay, 2016, p120.)
My copyeditor noted that in my novel I cycled between using herself and her self/selves. It made perfect sense to me. Our view of the ‘self’ has depended on what era we live in and what part of the world. In Western philosophy, in the seventeenth century, René Descartes gave a ‘self’ centrality. He stressed the autonomy of a first person which was essentially – philosophically and psychologically – a single entity. This notion that there is an authentic core self runs through some therapeutic traditions, for example the classic person-centred approach of American psychologist Carl Rogers. However, there are other concepts of self which allow, for instance, for different selves to be available depending on social context, or for the self to be in a constant process of creation and becoming (Finlay, 2016, p7). I favour this latter view and this is palpable in my writing.
I came to realise, the disappearance of Clare was not only due to me choosing (unconsciously) to craft Hannah as a more integrated character. It was also a sign that I was moving towards a personal integration, what I experience as my many selves were fitting more comfortably together. Furthermore, the writer in me, the double which had previously been shy, and vague, was increasingly formed, increasingly integral to me. This was a process powered by the work of writing and crafting. By doing, I am becoming. And by reflecting back, noticing what is changing in my writing, I am learning more about myself.
* * *
It was not enough for me to write a novel, I also wanted to seek a readership. I decided to publish. It seems to me that there is a merry dance between writer and reader, which, in the best of circumstances, is nourishing for both. As a reader, I know the pleasure and, sometimes, the very profound effect, of having found a story or a poem which touches me and pushes me to think or grasp at a new perspective. As a writer, the connection with the reader could be seen as the final act in a very long and laborious play. Tóibín says that the completion of his novel Nora Webster, which took ten years, allowed him to, at last, find some kind of closure on the death of his father. ‘One Saturday in September 2013 I finished the book. I knew that while I had perhaps opened up this world for readers, I had closed it for myself. I would, I imagined, not come back to it again.’ (Tóibín, 2016b.)
The reader plays a role of witness. Having our story, our experiences, our selves witnessed can in itself be transformative (Finlay, 2016, p37). Psychologist, John Bowlby stated that, in order for us to grow into well-adjusted adults, we need to have a secure base set down in childhood. This is achieved through a loving care-giver effectively communicating to the child that their emotions are acknowledged and understood and it is safe to feel what they are feeling (Bowlby, 1988.). Any deficit in the secure base can be replenished (though often with difficulty) by later empathic relationships. Publishing is a poor substitute for a loving early care-giver’s acceptance. It is not the business of publishers, literary agents and readers to shore-up a crumbling secure base. However, I recognise it is, at least partly, what I am seeking from publication. And I do not believe I am the only writer to do so.
I have noticed within me the tension between wanting to be seen and wanting to hide. Pride competes with shame at each publication date. I want the recognition and yet I fear it. ‘Exposure now means exposure of one’s inherent defectiveness as a human being. To be seen is to be seen as irreparably and unspeakably bad.’ (Kaufman, 1992, p75.)
After the novel launch, I feel sapped, worn-down, de-motivated. As Alan Garner describes it: ‘I had to be totally incapacitated in order to build the energy, to fill the reservoir, that would be needed. The analogy with an enforced hibernation fitted. If I could live with this self-loathing, and see it as a signal to let the waters rise, it could remain a necessary, though unpleasant, part of a positive and creative process. As long as that thought stayed, I could endure. (Garner, 1997, p. 212.)
Like Garner, I walk a lot, out in the rugged landscape of North Yorkshire, feeling the arctic blast into my face. Unlike Garner, I am still writing, though I am back to free writing, ploughing up what’s lurking underneath the now of the mind. And the cycle begins again.
* * *
The assembly, which had formed the perfect tableau of a country house party set in the 1920s, is becoming restless. They had gathered together for a resolution. The detectives have failed to give them one. There is a disconsolate voice calling for chilled champagne. Another suggesting the phonograph be cranked up to play some dance music. Yet another proposes a game of cribbage. The gale can be heard howling outside. Its lament grows stronger, the door of the room crashes open, and a woman enters, apparently delivered on the tip of the storm’s tongue.
It is Harriet Vane (NB*). She is wearing a cloche hat the colour of a good port wine. Her dark eyes under its rim reflect the embers of the fire. She has on a tweed coat threaded with scarlet and gold, her legs are clad in peacock-blue stockings, her feet shod in sturdy brown brogues. Her shoes show evidence of the walk she has taken along the muddy drive. ‘I tried to phone,’ she says crossly. Though, of course, the telephone lines were the first victim of the inclement weather, rendering the isolated estate more cut-off.
Wimsey rushes forward saying Harriet must change into dry clothes, have something to eat, to be given a warming drink. She waves him away, accepting only a glass of whisky which she takes down in one gulp. She moderates her tone (it doesn’t do to alienate your audience at the moment of denouement): ‘I can solve the mystery of the disappearing twin.’
‘Can you Miss?’ mocks the wag supposedly from high society in London, whose accent is as appropriated as his dinner suit.
‘How can you, when these renown detectives can’t?’ asks the dowager. The jewellery flashing on her clawed fingers and sagging neck is glass and paste, bought secretly to replace the family heirlooms long gone to the auction.
‘I can,’ says Harriet firmly. ‘Because I am a writer.’
* creation of Dorothy L Sayers.
References
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Tóibín, C. (2016.) Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 8th January. Interviewer: Kirsty Young. Producer: Christine Pawlowsky
Tóibín, C. (2016b.) ‘How I wrote Nora Webster’, The Guardian, 22nd January.
