Category: Diary of a Novel

My intention to keep a diary of a novel while working on my new book, I’m afraid, has been neglected. I don’t feel too guilty about that since, meantime, I have been working on the novel itself and am happy to report, am making good progress.

Yesterday, I woke late and drove to the river, knowing I would have missed my kayaking friends who paddle upstream on Tuesdays. Contrary to Bom advice, the conditions for paddling were perfect and I decided to go downstream by myself. The only other craft I saw was the Rottnest ferry and, as usual, being on the water sent me into an ataraxic state. Who needs meditation, when you can walk or swim or paddle? As often happens, the characters in my book found me and, together we went down a few more numbat holes, solved some problems, and cooked up a few more.

It always fascinates me how the writing mind works when the body has been given a physical activity other than sitting at the desk in front of the computer. Perhaps, also, while walking on the beach or paddling on the river I am free of the increasing number of distractions that invade our world today. I’m not tempted to look at my emails, or Facebook, or go and get a coffee. The vacuum cleaner and the floor mop can cheerfully be ignored.

However, instead of being on the river, as nourishing as that is, I really need to return to the south west, where my book is set. I need to find a forest, a quite forest track to lead me into my ataraxic space, fed by the beauty and the humming energy of nature. It will be the start of Makaruru, the Noongar season of fertility. It will be cold, perhaps wet, but I feel the need to drench myself in every season in order to give integrity to my tale.  

 

One of the conventions when writing a novel is that there should be conflict. The conflict is usually between the main characters. The cliché is conflict between a man and a woman. After the conflict, they make up and live happily ever after. OK, don’t fret, there will be conflict between the man and the woman. I’m not sure that they will make up and live happily ever after. You will have to wait and see.

However, my story is set in the forests of a south-western Australian timber town, between the 1970s and 2022, so the obvious conflict for me is the one between the conservation movement and many of the locals who depended on the timber industry for work. The classic novel, Working with Bullocks, by Katherine Suzanna Pritchard describes the timber industry in the early days. The forests were vast, and the forest giants were fell by axes and hand-held cross-cut saws. However, before long the unique ecosystems were devoured with greater speed and efficiency, with the help of machines and technology.

 From a young age, I was part of the conservation movement but I only became seriously involved when we started clear-felling our ancient karri forests to turn the trees into woodchips, sent to Japan, to be made into paper. This is the same Japan, if I remember rightly that had declared over 70% of their sacred forests untouchable. What about our sacred forests?

So, this is my conundrum. My fictional family are part of a rural timber community that they love. Do I make at least one of them sympathise with the so-called greenies. One of my main characters is a greenie of sorts. He is an environmental scientist specialising in mycology. Certainly, room for a juicy bit of conflict there. But what of my protagonist. She’s a local from way back. That could prove more complicated.

When researching the conservation movement, I came across this short article that brought back many memories about the history of the conservation movement.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-16/the-decades-long-fight-to-save-wa-old-growth-native-forest/100822968?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web

 

I eventually located the old farm. I wanted to make it the home of the main character in my new book. I thought I remembered where it was but I couldn’t find it. I must have driven past several times. The crossroads of my memory had altered and there was no farm house to be seen. It had been half-swallowed by bushes and was slowly being strangled by vines and brambles. They formed a thorny barrier as I tried to enter the remains of the driveway that had led to the back door. I gave up and walked around to the other road but here a fence joined forces with thick scrub to guard any entrance. Just one more try, I thought, aware that I was trespassing. If I could just see whether the building had survived enough to stoke my memory, I would seek permission from the new owners to explore further. If it had succumbed completely to time, I would have to leave and be satisfied with the frail nostalgia of my childhood.

            I walked back around to what, I am almost certain used to be right way in but the road seemed to have been re-routed and I saw the old side road was now a driveway. Past where the back gate used to be, I picked my way through more scrub. Memories loomed, of my cousin and I hanging bunches of rabbit carcasses from the gatepost for the Diamond truck to pick up. Here the bushes thinned out and I could walk into what used to be the orchard. Several senile fruit trees with lichen-covered trunks still stood. My heart leapt. I recognized the huge loquat tree that, as children, we had loved to climb. Its robust branches still reached for the sky in a profusion of healthy green. It stood beside the large concrete water tank that I knew was close to the house. Thinking a machete would have come in handy, determined I pulled aside some of the vines and crawled, sometimes on my belly, tunnelling through the brambles. At last, I emerged dishevelled but whole, born anew into the world of my childhood. Tears welled as I was greeted by the pink profusion of a large camelia bush. My aunty had planted that bush, a rare extravagance in a place where plants were meant to feed hungry mouths. Almost giddy with hope and joy I looked through the grimy windows and saw into the large lounge room that filled the centre of the house.

            Ok, I thought, you really are trespassing. I needed to find the new owners and seek permission to explore further.

A beautiful calm morning on the river this morning. Warm, under cloudy skies I paddled into the forests of the book I am writing. While I was down south, I met a man called Ted. Ted works with the environment in the north of the state, but he has 100 acres of land in the south-west that he intends to restore to its original state using different methods including weed control. It was on Ted’s land that I saw several very large trees with a thick white trunks and far-reaching branches. Ted told me they were karri trees.

How could that be? All the karri trees I had known had smooth white trunks that reach to the sky before sprouting branches.        

‘These are very old ones that have escaped the forester’s axe. Perhaps they had a burl or were not straight enough.’ He pointed to a burl. ‘The foresters would not have wanted a tree with a growth like that.’

 So, the growth saved the tree, I thought to myself, immediately spying a metaphor to use in my story. ‘But why is it not tall and straight like the rest of the karri trees?’

‘That tells how ancient it is,’ replied Ted and I hear a sadness exhaled with his breath. ‘Before white settlement, the indigenous people managed the land, farming some of it to grow yams and grains. They planted between the trees using frequent cool burns to help them. The bush was a place that animals and people could move through, and the karri trees could spread their branches. It was only after white settlement when whole forests were felled and fire set to the debris that the regrowth came back so thick and impenetrable that when the karri trees germinated with abundance from the ash, they had to push themselves towards the sky to catch the light.’

I am fascinated. I feel so ignorant, and again am reminded that Indigenous history has all but been erased.  I need to know more and wonder if some of what I am learning will find its way into my new book.

 

I have started a new novel.

I’m not sure how it started. Several wants were gnawing at me. I wanted to write a book like Barbara Kingsolver. Her characters are believable, her plots interesting with surprises thrown in but the best thing is the way she weaves many of her novels around a deep concern for the environment. In Flight Behaviour, published in 2012, her fictional story reveals the consequences of climate change on a small rural community and on the iconic Monarch butterfly.

My second want came after hearing a news report about the deadly 2019-2020 bushfires in NSW. The fires had burnt with such ferocity that the heat had baked the earth deep down, killing the underground ecosystems. One of the most important of these were the underground fungi that have a vital symbiotic relationship with trees and other plants. To my surprise I heard that about 250 native truffles have been identified but scientist think there could be as many as 1500.  The entire health of forests depends on the intimate relationship between truffles, trees and animals but we never hear about them. They are hidden.

My third want evolved from the truffles. I wanted to set the story in the south-west timber country in WA where still survives my first home in Western Australia. These days the old farm house has almost been reclaimed by the bush. I wished I’d had a machete when I returned to explore it.

My fourth want is to use the hiddenness of fungi as a metaphor for my characters.

Now all I have to do is find out what my characters want.