Kerry Hudson's Blog, page 17

A fragmented picture of Moscow

I would like to paint a picture of Moscow with its scattering of golden onion domed churches amid grey blocky monoliths. Grandmothers begging in slippers and pop-socks, smelling of urine, outside of cocktail bars where girls dance in thongs. £5 peaches and fast food servers with five gold upper teeth. Since I arrived I've walked and walked and smiled and smiled. Moscow is not a city of smilers. Honestly, I suspect that the rest of Russia may not be either. It does mean that when you receive a smile - my favourite being returned from an incredulous uniformed woman in her 60's whose job it is to monitor the security screens at my nearest Metro - it is (quite literally in the case of jacket potato server) golden. I would like to paint a picture but so far, during my 3 days here, I'm only just managing to gather pieces, I'm waiting to form them into a picture I can comprehend because I have never felt more like a stranger in a strange place.

One feels instantly outside in Russia. I felt less so in Vietnam perhaps because there was defined role for me - I was a da trang: white foreigner. Here I look so much like everyone else that I am asked directions by Russians visiting Moscow then met with either guffaws or baffled stares when I shake my head, bring an apologetic hand to my chest and say 'Engliski.' As I expected Russia is a puzzle to me and not an easy one to begin unpuzzling. I had forgotten the dislocation of being removed from the language but also how pleasing the isolation is that goes with that. How undemanding, liberating, it is to be alone in a country where no one requires anything of you and where, even if they did, you could not communicate anyway.

And the writing? The reason I am here sleeping in a dorm room with seven strangers, eating only pastry and potatoes for two days and walking the streets with my head exploding as I try to absorb everything from the shape of the paving stones to the print of a woman's blouse? Well, the first draft prognosis is….good. At least good for a shitty first draft that is. Obviously I would rather tar and feather myself than have it read by another living soul but me, myself reading it is bareable, the raw material is there.

  How do I know this? Because the story has shape, the characters have at least two dimensions and are sympathetic (even the ones that should be anything but) there are clear motivations and conflicts and with each page I care about what will happen. I wanted good, or at the very least, less painful things for my protagonists Dave and Alena. I have become a fairly robust self-critic so I can see all the (many, many) things that need to happen before another anyone can lay their eyes on it but I can also see the story is there, the foundations to build upon. 

  So now I need to establish a routine. I wrote my first novel Tony Hogan on a five month sabbatical in Vietnam, China, Cambodia. I lived in both Hanoi and Saigon for over a month, otherwise I was moving every few days, every few weeks. Each place required a different sort of routine. Part of the challenge of writing is adapting to changes in time, location, environment - staying productive and focussed and being able to sit down wherever and whenever, find whatever it is you need to write within and not let that be dictated by outside factors.  

The Moscow routine is thus: I wake and breakfast (I'm eating solely from local farmers markets as the prices, even for a London girl are hair-raising, £4 a coffee, £5 a peach). I go to a cafe around the corner which serves good cheap coffee (I suspect because it is attached to a lap dancing bar) and start gently, very gently, redrafting the already written first draft of Thirst - transporting myself back to the summer streets of Hackney. After lunch, I take myself on a long walk, getting the metro to a random station and then walking, walking, walking - writing and taking pictures to use as prompts as I go. In the evening I write up scenes that might or might not end up in the novel weaving through what I have seen, heard, felt. Right now I am writing Dave's journey, trying to conjure his feelings, responses. I write longhand and hope that the fragments will glue somehow. I trust myself to write now and make it better later. That's the thing about redrafting, it's essential to trust you can make those fragments what you want them to be, that they will translate to the story you want to tell. It is an act of closing your eyes and jumping.

So now more gathering of those tiny, tiny details. Looking at everything, smiling at everyone, trusting that this un-scientific process will yield and adapting everything else to the case in hand: redrafting, gathering, writing. 
Next: Train journeys

Pre-departure: first drafts and custard creams

According to a little count-down icon on my phone it is 3 Days until I'll find myself in Moscow. Today is the first proper day of my ACE activity and so, as I faithfully promised when I made my grant application, this is the first of regular twice weekly blogs about Russia, researching, edits and generally whatever else takes my Magpie-like fancy. There will be pictures too (lots), and a few short films of me doing that 'um' thing I do when asked questions.

So, in between learning the Russian alphabet (I've learned 23 letters of 33 and yes, I can see the necessity of learning those other 10), making around 27 trips to Superdrug and buying dehydrated food (which explains the photo above I hope) for the trains, I've been doing lots of Russian reading.

Worryingly, both Paul Theroux (The Great Railway Bazaar) and Jonathan Dimbleby (Russia) were in the grips of a deep depression when they wrote their travelogues about Russia. Both relate the extreme difficulties in their personal lives (Theroux in his subsequent book 'Ghost Train to the Eastern Star' and Dimbleby, with real humility, in his introduction) that influenced their response to Russia and its people – Theroux barging through Moscow shouting 'Monkey!' at the Muscovites and Dimbleby downing morose vodkas in a nightclub called 'The Ice Breaker' desperately homesick. 

I may have the opposite problem. I am so disbelieving of the good fortune that has befallen me that I'm calling it 'glass floor syndrome.' I'm afraid to tread too heavily or step in the wrong direction should all that has happened in the last year suddenly shatter underneath me. Basically, as I get ready to depart for Russia I am happy - the sort of happy that can be alarming. Not to worry though, that alarming happiness bubble should be burst soon enough as the time has come to re-read my first draft of Thirst.

No one likes reading their first drafts do they? I'm particularly nervous about it because I've been working on my edits for my first novel, Tony Hogan, for the last few months. I feel removed from the world I created, distant from Dave and Alena, their desires and frustrations, but that, of course, is the point of revisiting. Over the next few days as I read my first draft (moan, weep, threaten to delete it, eat whole packets of Custard Creams and then go back for the next chapter) I'll try to remember that first drafts are usually shitty. Remember that, as a very good teacher used to say, about life, not writing, 'The trick is rooting out the rubies in the shit and then being grateful for them.'

Despite my fear, I want to reestablish myself in the world of Thirst - a Hackney I know, but which is somewhat unlike the one outside my front door, and a Russia that I can only imagine at the moment. Reading that first draft is the key to going off to Russia fully prepared, with Dave and Alena perching on each shoulder – devil, angel and patron saints to the lost both of them. And so, with several packs of Custard Creams, treading lightly and remembering all first drafts are shitty, off I go.

Next post: Moscow

The Project

As part of my Arts Council England grants for the arts application I submitted a proposal and gave the project the catchy title, 'Research and 'time to write' for the novel Thirst.' Basically it is broken into two parts, both essential to completing Thirst, but different aspects of writing a novel. Research is about gathering the core materials to 'build' a novel - keeping my mind, ears, and eyes open to everything around me, my consciousness absorbing as much as it can because I won't know until I come to write what is valuable. It usually isn't what I think it will be. 

'Time to write' is, in the case of Thirst, time to redraft. I've already written almost the entire first draft so this will involve taking what I have learned from my research and weaving it through what is already there. If that means unpicking all the stitches of the first draft then so be it. I'll have two months full-time concentrated time to do this. 

The Project: 

One month in Russia to research Thirst
Two months on my return to redraft and edit

I should tell you a little about Thirst but it is tricky. First because I don't want to give the story away - it is a proper story and not knowing how it unfurls will be part of what will make it what it is. Second, because I know it is likely to change, not too much, but enough. 

So what can I tell you? I can tell you this: Thirst is a real love story, in that it is also a lust story and a story about need. It's a novel of journeys; Alena who travels from Eastern Russia to London full of the shiny, breakable optimism of youth and Dave, travelling the same route in the opposite direction years later, without any of that, but moving all the same. 

My research will take me from Moscow to South Eastern Russia. Through Siberia and five time zones, from huge ostentatious wealth in Moscow to grinding and perilous poverty in rural Siberia. I will be there absorbing it all, those fleeting, peripheral, seemingly nothing details that, when you least expect it, turn out to be a point of clarity or a moment of truth that makes a scene. I want to do interviews with a view to inserting parts of them verbatim into the text but I need the smallest of details too.

I want to explore not just the physical landscape of Russia but also the emotional landscape of a country that has been through so much. Russia seems to be ever-changing but in certain rural regions remains as it has for centuries. It is a big job, I have one month. One month to watch, listen, absorb and write. It will make the biggest difference in the world to Thirst and it can't be said enough that this opportunity is something I'm hugely grateful for.

I fly out on the 16th June - just 18 days from now. In the meantime I am scheduling my time, reading, learning Cyrillic and going to see Cockney bus drivers about Russian tourist visas. My time in London feels like limbo. I am already partially there in my mind, trying to unscramble the thoughts and motivations of Dave and Alena. As part of my grant requirements I'll be posting regularly about this process: the gathering and ordering that defines research and editing. 

18 days now. Just 18 days. 

Good, good news: Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England

Well, here it is. I'm over the moon to say I've been awarded a National Lottery funded Arts Council England grant for development of my second novel Thirst.

I'll tell all about what form the development project will take and, of course, a little more about Thirst itself in due course. For now this is a public expression of gratitude to the National Lottery and Arts Council England for their support, endorsement and a grant that will make a huge difference to my career and my second novel. I am bloody elated.

More to come…

I had some author pictures taken for London Book Fair and...

I had some author pictures taken for London Book Fair and 'future uses'. One of them looks like this. It was taken at the Grand Union Canal. Some others were taken at a Pie Shop and a Laundrette. It was my sort of day. There are a few more at the other place

Photograph by Nick Tucker Photography

Give Peace A Chance.: What's Happening in Egypt Explained. (UPDATED)

Give Peace A Chance.: What's Happening in Egypt Explained. (UPDATED):

promotingpeace:

The basics: Egypt is a large, mostly Arab, mostly Muslim country. At around 80 million people, it has the largest population in the Middle East and the third-largest in Africa. Most of Egypt is in North Africa, although the part of the country that borders Israel, the Sinai peninsula, is in Asia….

ampersands:operationfailure:Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall,...

ampersands:

operationfailure:

Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, and Bette Grable

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

Subtitle: How to be awesome.

nevver:Flappers and Philosophers

nevver:

Flappers and Philosophers

On my first reduced hour day to work on The Other Project....

….I mainly ate Hummus. Bugger. 

Sunday lovely Sunday

6 Music jug cocktail//Homemade marmalade//first sight of the sunshine//Toni Morrison thoughts//cold light//little boys commandeering the cake table//Ivory Coast chatter//Clissold Park roll-overs//Hackney Reservoir//Castle rock climbing//Cheese on toast with one tangerine//Dalston//Rio//The Arbor//coffee & blueberry cake//Room//Fish pie//writing//writing//writing//tumblr//just a few more pages//ta-ta. 

Picture (of actress playing Andrea Dunbar) by Susanna Wyatt