Where Do You Find Espnu

Atlantic rowing

Hello,

It is very rare that I am talking about my work as a novelist, but today I decided to make an exception. Because, while working on my novel, akin to that point to a kind of mythological punishment (Like "you will spend eternity to climb a boulder atop a cliff, tumbling and seen again), I read Camus you soon come to power one or two words ... and I read the other day that Camus had taken seven years, yes, seven years to write Plague . This does not mean you can not write a good novel in less time, it just has to see Chartreuse de Parme , as Stendhal would have ended a few weeks " in the euphoria, "said one of my teachers ... Anyway, I prefer to concentrate on Camus and his seven years, say that I can better relate to. Because after having spent nearly three years in total, to write Anchor Dream - including a year and a half of research - I wonder when I'm finished his little brother . Actually, the other day Plague , I came across a replica of Great, municipal employee who wrote a novel for years and is only the first sentence ... Asked if "it forward" and he replied:

"For years I've been working, obviously. Though in another sense, there is not much progress. "

Incidentally, note the humor of Camus, there is not that dead rats, dying and metaphors of Nazism in Plague in seven years he has had time to slip a lot more, and even laugh at it himself.

So there are writers that span the books in one record time, and others such as Donna Tartt, who released a book every ten years, and although it is very good, we say that at the end of his life, even if they live long (and I we wish), it will not be heavy, as bibliography. It is a little similar to me. I often wonder why we need each of my novels is like a voyage across the Atlantic in a rowing boat. When I hear about this kind of feat, I'm appreciative, I wonder why inflict it. Under the influence of what sweet madness, what masochism spend months alone (e) at sea, catching bedsores, fear of being devoured by a shark or drowned in the storm, eating rations for survival, undergoing all Potential snubs a nutshell, all this to prove what? We have the will to go after?

When I wrote the anchor of dreams, I immersed myself in big books about the lives of Newfoundland, I reread The Interpretation of Dreams , I often said that this book would be of interest and absolutely no one that I gave myself it hard to have three players with my mother. That it was interesting that, a story of kids who have nightmares, and seamen to Newfoundland in 1912? I asked myself several times a day why I persisted in writing this history, why all this research for a book that would probably never emerge. But I was driven by a kind of faith - very thin but tough - I compared to the little unsteady flame of a candle, and although it is always on the verge of extinction it forces you to continue the story. I do not know how to write more, but I discovered the story as it unfolds. The characters escape me as soon as they are, they'll put a spoke in the wheel, do as they head and take pleasure in the script to pieces I scaffold. At the stage where I am from my new novel, my characters have already cut into pieces my synopsis and here I am forced to rely on them for the rest of the story and rebuild according to their personal evolution. It's annoying, but because they express their independence that I love. Generally, I like my novel escapes my control, he drags me along paths that scare me or upset me. I love re-reading what I wrote, do not recognize me. My writing than my small limits, my daily mediocrity, it always goes a bit further. I see each novel as a sinuous path, a path of adventure and learning.

Whatever I write is no different. As Anchor Dream several times a day I wonder why go to all this trouble for a story. But I know, deep down, I do it for three reasons. First for me, selfishly, because it's me face my doubts, my limitations, the difficulty that the novel will become fruitful and that this experience make me rich. (Spiritually, at least!) Then, for readers, because I also write "with them", thinking about them, I'll offer them, and I wonder if this time they leave board or remain on the bank by saying no thank you, water is too cold. Finally, I do it for my ghosts. Because it I write for them all, I know they are there and all my research work is only there to make me quite receptive to hear them and let them incarnate. It is in writing Anchor Dream that I've discovered, my research seemed to have intended only to test hypotheses imaginary, which if proved plausible and consistent as I doubted: perhaps my characters had really existed, perhaps they had just used me to tell their story? ... Idea a bit frightening and fascinating at once. If there are several kinds
novelists, I belong to me "awakeners ghosts. "Maybe they are real ghosts, forgotten voices who seek healing by incarnating in a story. Maybe they are just part of me which I know nothing, that my feed characters. After all we write with the inexhaustible raw material of the unconscious, by getting itself innocence and perversity, all the color chart of human emotions. Maybe a mixture of both. They haunt me anyway and it is with happiness that I have put my words in their service. So no matter if I must, each day, hauling my boulder up the cliff.

not matter if I have the impression that it does advance not only I am like Don Quixote part fighting windmills, I have no shoulders to tell this story, these ghosts wrenching wake of another era. The small flame falters but is still on. And she gets impatient.

Soon I hope, I therefore propose a new novel that takes you to the late nineteenth century Paris, this time, instead of embarking on a world of men, I'll take you auscultate the psyche Women of a time not so old. I ask a little patience, because these ghosts then ask me a lot of energy and attention, but I will in to seven years to finish, do not worry. (The comparison with Camus that I may have unfavorable)

soon, next time we talk about literature!

Gaëlle Nohant