Writing week 03

Getting out of the house.

Monday

I was still sick on this day, and managed some morning notes, but nothing else happened except for lying in a heap. The only thing for it was to read a bunch of Mary Ruefle. But after a while even this was too much. Sometimes a person’s writing can be so good that it feels like being stuck all over with pins.

Not being able to do much made for a hopeless day. There was a writing workshop years ago where I was asked, about a story I’d written, ‘Why is this character so orphaned from the world?’ All she was doing was staring at household objects and having memories and running her hands over textured wallpaper, and once over a smooth stone that she thought ‘felt like the back of a whale’. There was no way she had ever felt the back of a whale. The advice was to get her out of the house. So I put her in a car. I remember the struggle of getting her in that car. Was her mother driving? Then the slow, painful describing of the streets as they went by. Even though the protagonist was moving, and the story with it, their movement was so effortful that there was a sense of the world pulling at the car, like zombies with outstretched hands trying desperately to stop it going anywhere. Outside, an old man putting out his rubbish (always, an old man putting out his rubbish). It was raining. All brick paths broken, all paint peeling, all house fronts covered in weeds. I thought it was a sign of good writing to note the savagery of time’s passing. I think I sent my character to a retirement village and back to the safety of a room full of people who could barely speak.

Tuesday

Today I was glad that yesterday was over. I was still sick but it was finally starting to go away. That’s a nice feeling in sickness – when you’re not well, but you’re just well enough to start thinking clearly again. But not so clearly that you can fathom everything.

I began to peck away at my work again, and I started thinking about a time, well over 20 years ago, when I worked at the bookshop Dymocks. This is when it used to be on the corner of Lambton Quay and Willis Street. My best friend Morgan worked there on the weekends, and she’d got me this job. In the beginning, I worked on Sundays and Mondays. I think a lot about the women who I used to work with on Mondays. The women on Mondays were older than me. I would’ve been 19, 20, and perhaps they were in their 40s or 50s, working Monday to Friday. I liked these women, but I was also so afraid of them.

What was it I was afraid of? Their expertise and their knowledge, their fantastic competence. Their withering looks when I buggered something up. Their worldliness, the ease with which they moved around the shop, finding things, understanding everything quickly. They knew how to talk to people – how to be properly courteous, which wasn’t the same as politeness but was a way of being generous and attentive, of seeing the person. I had none of these things. It was Patty, I’ll call her, who I was the most afraid of. On Mondays I often worked with Patty at the front counter. Customers would come in who knew Patty, and it was clear that she was well-loved. But I could barely speak to Patty, was always dropping things and making a mess of changing the till roll and not knowing what the customer was asking for, and I felt Patty’s disapproval. I remember trying to read P.J. Wodehouse, as I had a notion that Patty liked Wodehouse, or at least had read him and had opinions. When I mentioned Wodehouse to her, haltingly, maybe waving Right Ho, Jeeves at her, she said, ‘What? I haven’t read that.’ I have never tried to read Wodehouse again.

There was a day when a new boy came to work. He was a couple of years younger than me and so he seemed impossibly young, a high-schooler. He was put on the front counter with Patty, so I decided to go to the back counter. After a few minutes, Patty came storming up the ramp. ‘I will not work with that mutant!’ she cried.

Again, what was it I was afraid of? It was the way Patty made her feelings known.

(There was also a terrible day when I squashed one of my colleagues in the automatic doors while he rearranged a window display. My task was to alert him to customers approaching, to let him know that I would be activating the door and that he needed to get out of the way. Being afraid to make a noise, I failed to alert him of a customer, and simply activated the door, crushing him. ‘What is wrong with you?’ he shouted.

There are certain things in our lives that we are supposed to be able to laugh about, but I will never ever be able to laugh about this.)

They were grown-ups, at Dymocks. But maybe all I’m describing is the process of learning a job. With that learning came a feeling of being more a part of the place, helped along by drinking heavily with some of my other colleagues, and my fear of the older women began to ease off a little. I remember Patty hand-selling The Da Vinci Code to someone, though I don’t think we referred to it as ‘hand-selling’ back then. It was just recommending. ‘This,’ she said, holding the book tenderly, ‘is absolutely brilliant.’ I think of the sweetness of that recommendation, in that time. I even miss the reaction I had, which was to feel urged to read The Da Vinci Code too, rather than to have any sour, knee-jerk reaction of, But that book’s trash!

And then Dymocks too became a safe, warm place I was afraid to leave. Again, I had to strike out, and again the striking out was a horror, and took a couple of tries.

I am thinking of this now because as I try to write a bit more, I realise that in some way I am always thinking about these older, knowledgeable, brilliant, frightening women, of wanting to please them and connect with them.

Wednesday

Progress was halting today. So let’s talk about notes of encouragement.

Every so often I order some electrolyte tablets or sports gels from this place Sportfuel. Included in every parcel is a note of encouragement. The note of encouragement is for sports, and clearly it’s company-mandated, but I can’t help reading it as a note of encouragement specifically to me in my life.

Each of the notes shown above is beautiful to me, but my favourite is Caleb’s punctuationless ‘Own it Ashleigh’, which I believe would be said in a dark whisper. The other part of this is the names. The names are like the names of people I found intimidating at high school, but here they are, wishing me well in sunny, uncomplicated ways. I’m always amazed at how little it takes – what a snail the brain is – for a day to suddenly sit up at a jauntier angle.

I wasn’t in the audience at the Ockham NZ Book Awards ceremony this year, held in Auckland, but I was so happy when people who I hoped would win prizes win prizes, and especially, especially, Tina Makereti, Nafanua Purcell Kersel and Ingrid Horrocks.

Thursday

Today I put aside my main project, which is about driving and flying. I started writing and rewriting some other things. I wrote in a loud cafe and then in the library. I found myself really attacking a piece, and then another. One of the pieces was called ‘Pinecones’. Another was called ‘The System’. In the afternoon I looked at these pieces again with a cooler eye. It almost didn’t matter that neither worked. I’d felt a sort of glee, like a craziness, when writing them.

Friday

Jerry making his way up the hill, to our interview.

Last week I experienced a surge of courage so I arranged an interview with another driving instructor. The interview was for today. I woke up this morning and regretted everything. Couldn’t I write this thing without interviewing anyone? Nevertheless, we went for a drive on the motorway and made our way up to Porirua. I changed lanes and swooped around roundabouts while yelping my questions about fear and a life in driving instruction. There was one moment when my instructor was describing why, exactly, it can be easy to accidentally cross over into a wrong lane when you’re going through certain roundabouts, and as he was explaining this, we were going around a roundabout, and his description of difficult roundabouts merged with my experience of going around this roundabout in particular. I had a sensation of both rolling around inside a large circular object and having large circular objects coming at me. This moment went on and on and on. Then the explanation ended and I was rolled out of the churn and miraculously onto the correct motorway. ‘Yes! You’ve done it! Yes!’ shouted my instructor. I felt no relief.

In the afternoon I ended up going to the after-hours medical clinic and trying to make sense of the transcription of the morning’s interview while in the waiting room. After weeks of illness my heart had started feeling funny, and all of sudden it really did feel funny – it feels like there’s a high-heeled shoe in a bucket of ice in my chest. Was it all because of the roundabout? Of course, my heart turned out to be completely fine and I just needed a load of painkillers.

On a writing day, I think the ideal number of things to need to do, outside of writing, is one. One thing. There was a time when I thought the ideal number of things was zero, but I think having just one thing, a smallish contained thing, can be useful and energising. Two things, however, is a disaster, and can destroy a writing day, as it did this one.