The writer — A short story by Des Molloy

Valerie Staples had long aspired to be a writer.  She had always felt that she had a way with words.  As a subject, English was always her favourite at school, leading her through her tertiary education’s years to a Masters of Arts majoring in it.  Subsequently. life unfolded well for her, with an easy pathway through marriage, motherhood and meaningful employment.  The years were kind to her, and it didn’t really surprise anyone including herself, that she passed through the ranks, and ultimately acquired her dream job as Head Librarian in a small rural town.  Her three children grew, and flew, their own stories to be had.  Her life-partner Dennis was taken from them in an industrial accident, leaving her initially bereft and a little aimless, albeit more financially stable than they had ever managed whilst he was alive.  Val always said that she’d swap the pay-out in a thrice, for the warmth of her man on a winter’s night.  The sorrow however slowly eased, and the beaming persona slowly returned.

The final nudge to outing herself as a writer came with the cutting-back of the library’s services.  From being open six days a week, the council had revised this to three days — Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  In her role as a librarian she had regular contact with the NZ Society of Authors and in recent times this had become an even closer relationship when her assistant Beryl Harrington had ascended to the committee of the Top of the South Branch.  This meant local meetings and brain-storming sessions.  Val liked to think that she had a lot of the attributes of a writer.  She was disciplined, she was organised, she was good at research.  Most importantly, she now had her dedicated writing eyrie.  This was a new log-cabin-style ‘She’ shed up her garden path a bit, with views out over the river.  This was fully kitted-out for the purpose.  She had two sizeable monitors and an ergo-dynamically curved keyboard. There were book cases and a four-drawer filing cabinet.  Not big enough for a full meeting of the writing group, there was a coffee table and a couple of chairs and a two-seater sofa, so intimate gatherings could be, and were had. She bought a ‘cloud’ and all her writing inputs were saved as files in folders true to the Dewey Decimal Classification System.

She didn’t go into writing ‘half-arsed’ as her eldest daughter was fond of saying.  Her muses were Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Stephen King and Elizabeth George, all of whom were opinionated and very public with their advice.  She had the dedicated, sacrosanct space, and she now had the clear times for her new craft.  Whilst Stephen King advocated for an output of 2,000 words a day, Val aimed for 1,000 words, three-days-a-week.  It was Hemmingway who said ‘You have to stare at the blank page every day and write. Develop a habit of writing every day. Set yourself writing goals. Schedule your writing time. Show up!’  So, show up she did, laughing that she was a half-time writer because every other day took her back to the library.  She also embraced what Hemmingway said about not pumping yourself dry. ‘Leave a little for the next day.  Know when to stop.  Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out.’  Early on in her new obsession she would get on a roll and write late into the night.  Learning new wisdoms from literary legends empowered her.

She loved describing and developing a character.  She felt she was good at this and these characters became almost like invisible, but familiar friends.  Val felt assured by the advice of Inspector Lynley’s creator Elizabeth George, that characters dictate the story.  ‘Create detailed character prompt sheets that include age, childhood, best friends, hobbies, and how they react under extreme stress.’  One of her favourite characters was a middle-aged, soft and gentle man who wore plaid shirts irrespective of the season. Val had researched plaid and found it to be the pattern, not the material, so could be a woollen flannel for the winter, a brushed-cotton for the shoulder seasons and a lightweight cotton for the summer … all plaid.  Brian, as this character was named, had a shiny bald pate and in profile, his outline was in some ways like a peanut in its shell … which of course is actually two peanuts.  His soft body ‘cinched-in’ by a belt, which held up his grey twill trousers, created this illusion.  Brian had a permanent half-smile on his lips, giving him a happy countenance despite being a bit of a loner.  In addition, his eyes seemed to twinkle when he spoke.  Val loved him to bits … and his little dog.  She just didn’t know what to do with him.  So he lived in his folder awaiting being called into action.

There was also a feisty young woman who without much of a stretch, could have been Val’s middle daughter.  Wiry and ‘hyper’, her hair colour changed almost with the wind.  Usually hues seen only in flower gardens topped her pale visage. Lilac, buttercup, lavender, violet, rose red all had their turn in being the decorative highlight of her slight figure.  ‘Urban chic’ was the anathema to this Juliette, who was determined to present as ‘rural tacky’ as possible.  Juliette also didn’t fit into a story, so similarly to Brian, was parked away on the cloud.

It wasn’t the characters that challenged Val.  They were all easily embraced ‘props’ for the writing.  She saw them as colleagues, working with her to create the magic that she sought.  She’d read about creating a storyline … but didn’t quite understand the whole process.  To be quite honest, she was daunted by the action of creating prose.  Stephen King shouted at her from the wings “Ditch the adverbs … especially after ‘he said, she said’.”

“Well, what about if she did say it ‘seductively’ — or he said ‘firmly’?  I don’t get it.”  She also worried about adjectives.  She had a Masters in English, yet didn’t fully follow Mark Twain’s adamancy regarding them.  “When in doubt, strike it out!”  Many was the night when Val slipped away into somnolence, worrying how she would describe something without adjectives or adverbs.  Was she overthinking it all?

Meanwhile, her cast list grew and grew.  There were young’uns, and the aged and infirm.  There were ‘cliques’ and covens … all filed perfectly in her cloud.  Each had a folder containing all the research and information relating to it, and the vital docx. file with the text.  She liked to keep the balance of the genders equal, and similarly the spread of ages.  In her ordered fashion, she kept a spreadsheet giving an overview of gender, age, attributes and possible purpose.  She often stared at this list at the end of the day and tried to imagine a story entwining a few of them.  This was her challenge.  Sadly, they stood alone, almost mocking her.  They were just people.  They were content, but what was the story?

Her local writing group, would from time to time ‘spill their guts’ and tell all.  Val had for many months avoided sharing more than just a character outline.  The first crack in her veneer of competence, showed up when Beryl commented that her latest character was so obviously a library regular and “What is the story that she is featuring in?”  Val had a library full of books to crib ideas from, but remained mute when faced with Beryl’s simple question.  She’d considered car crashes, bank robberies, unmasking of sinister spies, returning evil twins … to no avail.  Lots of inappropriate relationships had been looked at, but always she felt a loyalty to her ‘people’.  She liked her characters to be moral and worthy citizens.  She couldn’t bear any of them to turn out as scumbags.  She wondered if deep down, the almost-forgotten teachings of the Catholic church still remained with her, and like the omnipotent one, she created in the image of herself only.  She didn’t like the flawed.

The small group of earnest women … and Val had always wondered why there were no men attendees … all looked at her expectantly. She knew that due to her position as the town’s literary leader, it was expected that she’d been brewing up something epic in her bespoke writing cave.  They all knew that she put in the ‘hard yards’, sticking rigidly to a regime of tailored output.  They knew also that she was the clever one, the one who advised them all regarding style and substance.  Her skill had never been in question.

The silence was interminable, and a little embarrassing as Val’s eyes welled up for all to see.  Clearly she was experiencing an anxiety attack.

“I’m a fraud … I can’t even write a Janet and John book.”

There was a continued silence before Maggie from up the top of the valley said “Hey, we love your people, and if Nicci French can be two people … we can be too.  We’ve got the stories, you’ve got the characters.  This is a new beginning!”

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A Lady Writing by Johannes Vermeer, 1665-6