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From: PleaseCain@aol.com
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Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} Interviewing Oosh on "Pavlova" - 2/4
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 09:10:59 -0400
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(Copyright 2002 pleasecain@aol.com; excerpts from "Pavlova's Bitches"
Copyright 2001 Oosh.)
An Interview With Oosh on "Pavlova's Bitches" -- Part 2
In the back row, Clark and Penrose clap lazily. Penrose is delighted to have
the opportunity to talk to her best friend. Since Clark made her revelation,
the uncomfortable sense of something unshared has somehow created an
awkwardness between them. And truth to tell, Penrose has been feeling a
little jealous of Shipman, who appears to have dropped Carter and now seems
to be monopolizing her friend's attentions. Clark is sitting stiffly, as if
on the defensive. She does not turn to look at Penrose.
Penrose sidles closer. She takes a deep breath.
"Sarah . . . I found out."
"Found out?" Clark half-turns, but does not look her in the eye.
"Yes. I found out why people . . . you know . . . do it."
Clark looks down. She smiles. She takes Penrose's hand gently in hers. She
turns now.
"You don't need to feel any woman pains, do you?"
"No," breathes Penrose. A little anxiety comes into her face. "You don't
think it's harmful, do you?"
"Of course not! What about Walmsley?"
"Walmsley?" To Penrose, and to everyone else for that matter, Walmsley is a
paragon of youthful health and vivacity.
Clark turns to watch the game, but moves her mouth close to her friend's ear,
speaking low. "Benson told Shipman that Milady Walmsley's been doing it for
years and years."
"O Sarah!" breathes Penrose, dazzled. "Even Walmsley!"
"Yes, dear. Especially Walmsley."
Clark squeezes Penrose's hand gently, and feels an answering pressure. They
turn to watch the game.
"You know, Sarah," says Penrose confidentially after a while, "Shipman did it
twice last night. One right after the other."
"Twice? Hee! Hee!"
"But she's such an idiot, Sarah! She made such a noise. She's going to get
caught one of these days, and then she'll be for it!"
"Oh look, here she comes now. I do hope she wins."
"It looks like Denning's won."
"Pooh! Who cares about Denning?" They applaud anyway. Denning is jubilant,
wreathed in happiness.
"Look, she's jumping up and down! She seems so full of energy today. It must
be the electricity."
Despite losing the toss, Shipman is soon serving. If Denning was swift and
elegant, Shipman is formidable: her forehand strong, her backhand assured,
her returns frequently unanswerable. Before long, she is leading 10-2. It
appears that this will be a short match.
"Isn't she magnificent, Vicky!" cries Clark, bouncing on the bench in her
enthusiasm. She does not notice that when Shipman looks up, it is to Lucy
Carter, alone as always at the end of the bench, nervously wringing her
handkerchief to and fro in her lap, biting her lip with those funny, crooked
teeth of hers. And then Shipman's eyes glitter, and she delivers another
smooth, devastating service.
"Well, whatever she was doing, it obviously didn't tire her out," says
Penrose.
"Of course not, silly! Oh! Lovely shot!" Clark bounces and claps.
"But don't you think perhaps she's doing it rather too much? Even her marks
are suffering. Hadn't you noticed?"
"Her marks? Pooh! They're good enough. Anyway, it's done no harm to my
marks!"
"But it's distracting her, Sarah. She must be thinking about it all the
time."
"About what? Oh! Bravo! Fifteen-four!"
"Well, don't you find it . . . rather distracting? I'm worried that it's
going to affect my marks."
"Oh honestly, Penrose, what rubbish! Why should it?"
"Well . . . I don't know. Perhaps it's true what they say. Maybe it saps
one's energy."
"Nonsense! Look how much energy Shipman has! Oh! What a return! Did you see
that?"
"Perhaps it's the effect of the electricity."
Q: You wrote PB in the present tense, which often can be obtrusive, and yet I
lost myself in your story, because the present tense vested a familiarity to
these women of long ago: a mindset that might seem quaint to modern
sensibilities, instead becomes understandable and sympathetic. Did other
considerations weigh in your choosing the present tense?
O: To me, the prose tastes of my own saliva. I wanted it to be neutral and
flavourless. I found that using the past tense somehow obtruded, particularly
with dialogue. Perhaps using the present tense helps me to be closer to what
is happening, more involved. I have been greatly helped by reading Doris
Lessing, whose prose style has very much impressed me. I think of the tenses
as an Indian musician might think of ragas, each one conveying a special
mood. For me, the present and the perfect are like the major keys, brighter
and more vivid than the aorist and the leaden pluperfect. And I did want to
bring the period alive and make it present. I wasn't seeking any period
flavour or nostalgia.
You make me very happy when you say that the use of the present tense
lessened the distance between yourself and the characters. That was exactly
what I wanted. I actually find it very difficult to present dialogue in the
past tense. (My parody of "The Princess and the Pea" began in the past tense,
but as soon as the dialogue got going I found myself obliged to move into the
present.) Ultimately, I'm trying not to get in the way of my characters and
what they think and say. For better or worse, this is my way of doing it.
Q: Did you research background, story or language? Where did you acquire your
ear for Victorian language?
O: I didn't research the language. Victorian English was not so very
different from our own. Of course, I have read much literature of that
period, and as well as the delightful novels of Anthony Trollope. I suppose I
should mention Sarah Waters, who brings alive the England of the 19th century
as vividly as any writer.
I did have to do some research into dress. Surprisingly little is known about
what women wore under their multiple layers in those days. It turns out that
there is a very good reason for that: you can't learn very much about
nothing!
Although I did a very little research into early discoveries about
electricity, I was deliberately frivolous when it came to the science. One
very earnest physicist wrote to me chastising me for totally misunderstanding
the scientific method. I shamelessly perverted the cause of science for my
own selfish ends, and if this is a good place to say that I'm sorry, then I
suppose I'd better come clean and say that I'm not.
Q: Did you plot or outline the novel before writing?
O: Yes, I did. The bizarre numbering of the sections shows how my plan went
somewhat awry. I must put this down to my inexperience. I simply didn't know
how long each part of the story would take to tell. The original outline
covered everything except the Shipman/Carter subplot, and that demanded a
fuller treatment than I had foreseen.
Q: How many drafts did you write? Are you the type of writer who edits as she
composes, or do you concentrate on getting a first draft on paper and worry
about editing later?
O: "Pavlova" as it now stands is the first draft, to be honest. That said, I
have been back over it and agonized over it a good deal. I don't write
smoothly. I worry about things for ages before I can bring myself to write
them, but when I do, I tend to go very fast--so fast that some quite amazing
mistakes appear. (After one of these outbursts, I might find questions
without question marks, missing quotes, even phonetic misspellings.)
Sometimes the result of this very fast writing is so good that I don't want
to touch it. More often, it needs a lot of careful tinkering afterwards. So I
tend to go back and revise whenever I come to a natural break. In general,
there's a great deal more thinking time than writing time.
Q: Did you have an editor or proofreader? You did a great job in presenting a
clean manuscript.
O: Hecate insisted that I should enlist Denny W. as a proofreader for this
project. I had never used a proofreader before, and to be honest I was very
slightly put out at first. However, having once had Denny go over Part I, I
recognized how short-sighted I had been. I cannot overstate the value of
Denny's criticisms. Since "Pavlova," I've run almost everything I've written
past Denny, and have always had reason to be grateful.
And a close friend, MT, not only spotted a good many mistypes, but came up
with wonderful insights that have done a good deal to deepen and intensify
the resulting work. As a stumbling novice, I owe a great deal to her. I don't
think any amateur writer can get enough criticism.
Q: You created and animated a number of vibrant characters, primary and
secondary. I think you would consider Paulson, Carter, Shipman and Walmsley
your main people. Were they defined as they were to represent particular
types or classes, trends in thought, serve particular roles, etc.? Simply,
how did they come to be? Are they by any chance based on real people, or a
historical group or incident?
O: I'm glad that you found the characters came to life. They weren't based on
anyone I knew, although I suppose that the personality of Miss Paulson was
loosely based upon an imaginary conflation of Elizabeth Garrett and perhaps
Marie Curie. And Hecate really created Carry Walmsley. To a large extent,
they took life on the page. I certainly had clear and distinct ideas of the
characters in my mind, although I drew them quite sparingly. Miss Paulson is
earnest, idealistic and dedicated; Carry Walmsley is self-confident, wilful
and slightly manipulative; Shipman is mischievous and cunning, but also
honest--I thought of her as being the strongest character, mainly because of
her honesty and her sense of humour. And then Carter is troubled, bitter but
somehow determined to make something of herself, to distance herself from the
taint of failure that has clouded her childhood.
Some readers like to see really stark contrasts between the characters. One
university professor wrote to lecture me about this. He felt my characters
were all much too similar, much too easily confused. Not only that, but they
didn't develop and change as they should. The episodes of the story could be
read in any order, he told me, so feeble was the plot. Well, I like to think
I can take criticism, but I couldn't help feeling that we were on different
wavelengths. Apparently he was a professor of Administration. I'm sure that I
would make a hopeless administrator.
Q: Do any of your characters especially resonate with you, whom you carry
with you now, months after the writing? Are there secondary characters you
feel strongly about?
O: Yes, and I think in particular Lucy Carter is close to me. But the same is
true of most of them: I feel far more for any of them than I have been able
to convey in the story. I would love to have made more of Joanna, Lucy's
mother. And I have a soft spot for Miller, too.
Q: I enjoyed your Miller character, too! She started as a little mouse, who
became funnier over the course.
O: The lovely thing about Miller is that she's just as dangerous as Shipman,
and just as radical in her own quiet way. I think even her "Queensland"
metaphor betrays a certain degree of knowledge that can only be gained at
first hand.
Q: I wonder, do you become so attached to certain characters that you are
tempted to reprise them in other adventures? I don't generally read series of
books, but I would be happy to see follow-up stories based on a few of these
characters.
O: I suppose this would be possible; but these possibilities can be exploited
in so many other ways. From my perspective, I have a new set of characters
pleading for me to give them life. I have taken Miller, Shipman, Carter and
Walmsley, I have lifted them into the air and watched them soar away. There
are others, closeted in boxes in my mind, who are pleading with me to define
them, flesh them out, free them, release them. I am a midwife, not a mother.
Q: I would disagree with the criticism that your characters remain static. In
fact, I would suspect that during the long course of writing, your characters
might sabotage a good bit of your outlining preparations. Were there many
surprises from your young ladies, where they deviated from your original
outline once they began stretching their legs?
O: Yes, my characters did sabotage my original outline, and most effectively,
thank you! But they didn't exactly surprise me. Rather, they made the
original outline seem irrelevant or trivial, so that I felt deeply ashamed of
trying to impose it on them. And I think that this is a significant fact
about my inexperience, rather than about them or me.
Shipman and Carter never surprised me. They came to me as a pair destined for
one another, complete in themselves. The problem was that my original outline
was more about Paulson and Walmsley. Shipman and Carter completely snatched
the plot away. It's not hard to see why: Miss Paulson is an important figure,
a driver of the story, and bearer of much of its symbolic force. But she's
not especially interesting in herself: she's a representative of many worthy
women of that time--and particularly, as I've said, a prefiguration of
Elizabeth Garrett or Marie Curie. But drama requires a less saintly heroine,
and a less totally desirable object than the delectable Carry. While these
two characters are important to the plot, and help bear much of its message,
they never had the dramatic potential offered by Shipman and Carter.
If I were to give a proper account of my struggle with the original outline,
it might be this: that I originally envisioned it as a comedy both of ideas
and of people. I was aiming at a satirical piece that would make a serious
point through gentle comedy. The point of conflict was that I needed to make
it real and believable. That necessitated real people, driven by real
ideals--people whom the reader would want to take seriously. My original
outline had been drawn around stereotypes; but stereotypes would not be able
to give the comedy of ideas the impact that it needed. And so reality
impinged: the comedy of ideas was perhaps the true driving force, and the one
thing that survived intact. The people that I needed to sustain that comedy
commanded my respect, wavering as they did between fallibility, weakness,
cruelty and true heroism.
Q: When did you first conceptualize the book? Were you carrying parts of it
in your mind in the years preceding the project? When did you begin writing?
How long was the writing? When did you publish it?
O: The first germ of the idea can be pinpointed at 4 May 2000, in an e-mail I
wrote to Hecate. The only element that I had been gestating for any length of
time was the history of the vibrator, in "The Technology of Orgasm" by Rachel
P. Maines. The rest of it came together fairly quickly in the course of
correspondence; we had an agreed outline in early June, and by the 23rd I was
apologizing for the length of time it was taking me to get started on writing
the first scene. I was blocked straight away--rather typically, I now see.
But once I did get started, in early July, I moved on quite rapidly. The
first part was substantially complete within about two days, and I was
already started on Part II within a week. Part I went to Denny for
proofreading in about mid-August. Part III was done by mid-September, at
which point I received Part I back from Denny and posted it almost
immediately. From then on, each part was posted when the next was complete,
until the work was concluded almost exactly a year after I started, on 6 June
2001.
Q: Did you have any specific objectives in mind when you first came to the
decision that, yes, these thoughts of mine now merit the effort and
time-commitment of a novel-length treatment?
O: I didn't think of "Pavlova" as a novel-length work until very recently,
when one of my readers sent me a copy rendered for printing with Acrobat.
Until then, I thought of it as an overgrown short story. While I had a
reasonably good feel for the overall structure, I had no point of reference
to judge its scale. (Even a paragraph can seem enormous when you're close
enough to it!)
Q: How long is PB (in word-count or pages--I really have no idea)?
O: I've never looked before, but according to one old program I have, the
word-count comes out at 125,389. Given the various bits of titling and
prologue, let's say about 125,000 words. It seems to work out at around 400
pages.
Q: I never would have guessed that length, it made for such effortless
reading.
O: That makes me very glad.
Q: Is this your lengthiest work?
O: That's an easy one! Yes!
Q: Did the novel represent your total output for that year?
O: No. Occasionally I broke off to write short stories, and in the Pavlova
year there were four: "The Three Billie Girls Gruff" and "Confused, Norway"
were pure lightheartedness, and represented perhaps a relief from the strain
of the longer work; "Wrestling" was a true story; and "Alassin" was specially
for the asstr-mirror.org anniversary. In addition, I see to my amazement that I
produced thirteen poems, some of which are my very best work.
Q: You published this serially on the newsgroups, correct? I have heard that
such series or serials attract wide readership.
O: That's right--and simultaneously on my website. I decided to post the
parts serially for just the reason that you mention: Hecate suggested that it
might attract more feedback if I did.
Q: Did you garner more feedback that way, than your short stories normally
do?
O: Comparing the level of feedback to what I have received for other works,
I'd say that serial publishing is not a good idea for me. I don't plan to
repeat the experiment. In general, my impression is that posting on
alt.sex.stories.moderated garners more feedback than posting on one's
website.
Q: Reading about your experience of writing a serial, I wonder how the
masters like Dickens or Stephen Crane prepared their stories, whether they
outlined the entire plot before publishing even the first segment. Had you
looked into that, while writing your own?
O: I haven't. I was mindful of it, and full of admiration for people who can
write under such pressure.
Q: Are you planning or writing another novel?
O: Yes, I am. Unfortunately, I am writing a novel that means so very much to
me that I'd almost rather hand a synopsis to a decent writer and ask her to
write it for me. But I have had this amazing responsibility thrust upon me,
and I have to try to communicate it, first of all. And in order to do that, I
have to write it, even if I write it badly. However, it will be far more
organized than PB. Structure is very important in a novel: it's not just a
question of having a framework for such a vast undertaking. The reader
deserves and will respond to something that is carefully shaped. Whereas in a
saga, things happen and keep happening, in a novel it is good if the things
that happen have some sort of shape. I'm not referring here to the infantile
instant-plot architectures that I've seen touted, such as
hope/frustration/resolution. Admittedly, though predictable, they have their
charm. But I am interested in a structure where every detail underscores or
antagonizes every other detail.
Q: How will you do another novel differently? Do you write differently now,
after you've completed PB?
O: I've partly answered this question. But I have some useful advice for
myself, having written PB. I wrote PB in instalments, and posted it serially.
As each instalment went out, I found myself increasingly constrained by what
I'd already posted. I think that if I had written the whole thing, and been
able to go back and change earlier episodes, I would have produced a better
work. That said, PB is what it is--I managed to find a solution to most of
the problems--and now I'd rather get on with the next thing.
If I am ever to post a large-scale work again, I need to understand the
mainspring of the plot. Not my preconceived ideas, but the principle that
gives birth to the next scene. And this, for me, is the emotional life of the
characters. Unless I can see that connecting thread running through the story
from first to last, I must not post one episode.
Q: Do you have any particular advice to would-be novelists on how to write or
construct a better book?
O: I suppose this is rather like asking a sick person about how doctors could
improve. I certainly don't feel as if I am in a position to advise other
writers, when I am struggling so very much myself. But I hope that my advice
to myself may give other writers a helping hand: we need to know what is the
mechanism that makes things happen. We can describe the cogs whirring, and
how they intermesh, but in the end, the main thing is the spring that makes
the whole thing turn. What is the spring? What are the causal links that make
this happen, and then that? What are the motives, desires and intentions that
take us from one situation to the next?
Q: Are there any areas of the novel with which you feel you did a good job,
technically or otherwise, that you look at now with some satisfaction?
O: I've re-read it a couple of times, mainly because I tend to feel that it's
grossly imperfect. It certainly has its flaws, but there are some areas where
I feel I have succeeded as well as I could hope. It was hard to write the ten
laboratory scenes without becoming tedious, and quite a challenge to convey
the charged atmosphere of a group of excited young women bent on mischief.
Nothing is perfect, and I wouldn't want to deny that some pruning might be in
order, but I feel that if I have failed, at least I haven't failed
spectacularly. Technically, I liked the first battledore match. And in
general, I feel that the dialogues flow pretty well. I also think that the
few points of symmetry and reflection work well for the story: the two scenes
in which Lucy looks down from a window, the two anonymous notes, the two
rumours--they help to bind it together and give it shape. In fact, the
dramatic shape of "Pavlova" is perhaps its best feature. If anyone ever made
a film of "Pavlova," I think I'd probably buy a ticket and go and see it.
(And probably cry my eyes out!)
Continued in Part 3 --
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