Scorched Earth - Fortnight #4 of the Burns

Waves, The Catlins

One: Status report (textual/confessional)

How do I feel about my novel after four weeks of solid work (and a good 18 months of sitting on the first 7,000 words and all the research that went into getting that far)?

Well, I'm not glad you asked, but I'll try and answer anyway. I feel pleased to be where I am (actually working on it! Go the Burns!), but the novel itself, the 30-odd pages it comprises right now, it feels flabby. That's okay, I guess. I can put it on the treadmill once the first draft is done and I know what's really important. But I have to get to the end (the first end of many).

One problem is I think this flabbiness might be part of what I'm going for, in this first section at least. The risk of doing a book about people who make art (in this case: film) that you expect the reader to take seriously, and also bringing in historical and religious aspects, is that it gets very po-faced, very quickly. So my protagonist is actually a bit of a fuck-up, and we meet him in the midst of this moment in his life that feels more like a Judd Apatow movie than something slicker and smarter. And Apatow's stuff is all pretty flabby. It must be part of the formula. The way recipes require a certain amount of fat for flavour. But I'm still figuring out how this works on the page within my particular concoction.

Forest walk back from Curio Bay

The other problem is I feel as if everything I read or watch is somehow talking to me, talking to the novel, and needs, needs, to find its way onto the page. (Look out for my March Consumption Diary toward the end of the week if you want to read between the lines a little further).

It’s not a new experience. Call it extreme narcissim or first draft solipsism. It's happened before and it'll happen again. I know it passes. I

The task is to:
a) resist the urges in the first instance
b) expunge the extraneous material that makes it through the first line of defense in my daily read-throughs
c) expunge the persistent extraneous elements in intensive edit of 1^st draft 
d) repeat c) for 2^nd draft, rinse and repeat until deadline has passed and you throw up your hands and say, I’m done.

Knowing this, I’m able to keep perspective. 

I’m able to be genuinely happy with making my manuscript grow by 1,000 words a day for a string of days, even if I know the net remnants of that week may be far far smaller when the book is finished. 

Or, shock horror, that this thing about a bit of Apatovian flab being necessary is a massive error of judgement and the first 30 pages wind up on the cutting room floor.

Oh well. It’s part of the process.

Truth is, I love editing the most. It’s easy to see the book getting better, hour by hour. But you gotta have something to edit. And gosh, weeks like the one before the Catlins will get you there (see part 3 below).

And the Catlins trip was work related, too...

Two: Catlins teaser

Hector's dolphin inside a wave at Porpoise Bay

Three: Status Report (numerical)

Total words: 8,702 (novel 7,450; blog 1,092; poetry 141)

* Week 1: 6992 (with an average of 1,180 on the novel Monday to Friday)
* Week 2: 1,710 total.

Why the massive drop-off?

On Saturday of Week 1 we headed down to a house in Waikawa in the Catlins, and got back in Dunedin late on Tuesday, by which time me and my son were starting to feel sick. Wednesday we both were write-offs. I improved, but stayed home Thursday and Friday as Caio was still not up to going back to daycare (double ear infection, fever, general clinginess, a touch of conjuctivitis... y'know how it is).

Four: But the Catlins!

The view of Porpoise Bay from the Curio Bay campground

Looking at Curio Bay and it's petrified forest (partially submerged) from the campground

My son learnt to photo-bomb at Cathedral Caves, bless him

Five: Birds and Boatmen

Apart from seeing the Hector's dolphins cosying up to swimmers at Porpoise Bay, the other notable wildlife sighting was my first Tomtit (actually, multiple) on the 30 minute walk (perfect for with the kids at Waipohatu. I didn't take photos as I had Caio on my shoulders and my camera was in my backpack both times, but I'm sure there'll be other encounters with the South Island's version of the robin over the next 10 months, so you'll live.

Also of note, the Waikawa Museum, with it's trove of family photos and trinkets. All its signs and captions are handwritten - which is both charming and somehow depressing, as if this history is less permanent, less valued, will have a shorter shelf life. I dunno. There was a sign saying don't take photos (not sure I understand the motivation), but I had to take a snap of this father and son (Captain Wybrow and his son David) and the wooden grave marker for Wybrow's wife Temuka (Temuc according to the engraving).

There's lots I could write about these things, and one day I might.

Six: Interlude

Sitting and writing means I eat a lot. I must have some kind of oral fixation. Maybe it’s like ACHOO syndrome, where sudden increase in brightness makes me sneeze. Maybe making shit up makes me hungry?

Maybe I should try gum.

Seven: But was it research for the current novel?

Yes! My trip to the Catlins was fruitful. I'd been casting around, trying to come up with an idea for a low budget NZ film my main character could have made that kinda kickstarted his career, got him on the festival circuit, before it all goes pear-shaped.

I'd had this image of a Western set in the Kaimanawa Ranges, a kind of adaptation of Nigel Cox's Cowboy Dog, but there was a film that was actually made like this (Good for Nothing, filmed in NZ though purporting to be the US) a couple of years ago, so I felt I needed to come up with something else.

So I did. Hoorah.

What's the idea? I can't tell you. But the (imaginary) film is called Curio Bay, at least for now.

Eight: Dunedin institutions

I went to Forsyth Barr stadium for the first time Friday before last. It was for a Warriors game, rather than the Highlanders, because I'm dumb enough to actually support the Warriors. What a bunch of schmucks. But an interesting stadium and an interesting crowd.

This Friday, I'm off to see Nadia Reid at the Port Chalmers Town Hall, which should be cool on many levels.

Edwin Fox Maritime Museum, a rave.

This past weekend M. and I attended a wedding in Blenheim, which involved my first trip south on the ferry since 2000. Both the crossing to Picton on Friday and the return voyage on Sunday were incredibly smooth, but both took place under the cover of darkness, which was a great shame. I’m sure the sounds looked amazing.

The highlight of our weekend in Marlborough was a visit to the Edwin Fox Maritime Museum in Picton.

As regular visitors to This Fluid Thrill will know, my current work in progress, aka THE NOVEL, has nautical and historical elements, so the chance to see the world’s ninth oldest ship seemed like a good way to kill some time before catching a ride to Blenheim.

But the Edwin Fox, built 1853 in Calcutta, is more than just the world’s ninth oldest ship as this placard from the outside of the museum announces:

The Edwin Fox: the oldest merchant ship in the world, the last surviving East Indiaman, the oldest ship that brought immigrants to NZ or convicts to Australia and the best $10 you can spend in Picton.

The museum has a decent display upstairs that covers the ship’s construction and various working lives as a transporter of cargo/convicts/immigrants, as a hulk used by a freezing works, its near ruin and its subsequent preservation.

But the real star of the show is the Edwin Fox herself. You can walk on a section of the ‘tween decks (which is a bit misleading as there’s little of the main deck left, so it feels like you’re above decks), inside the cargo hold (the inside of the hull from bow to stern) and around the entire ship. As it is in dry dock, you get to see the ship in a way that is impossible if it is in water.

The 'tween decks, looking aft

Some ship geek inspecting the cargo hold.

From the keel of the Edwin Fox

Walking on and around the Edwin Fox brought home the scale of such ships – both their massive size and weight, the amount of teak, pig iron and muntz, and how small it must have seemed when making a hundred day passage from Europe to New Zealand as an immigrant.

Even M., who has very little interest in this sort of thing, enjoyed the experience immensely.

On a personal note, my one disappointment was that the Edwin Fox, despite being the most expensive ship built in Calcutta at that point (or so one of the displays claimed), only had a billet head rather than a full-on figurehead. But that’s just coz I have a thing for figureheads. To the credit of the museum and the Preservation Society, the original carved billet head is on display in the museum.

Edwin Fox Billet Head

I should also say I am a great fan of the fact little has been done to restore the ship. This is not to say a great amount of time, money and effort has gone into its preservation, and that a great deal more will be required to continue to preserve her, but the experience is so much the greater to observe how time and the elements have treated this vessel.

To refurbish her would surely be the end for the original ship and beginning of a full-scale replica (you can see where I might fall on the question of the ship of Theseus, can’t you?). Give me relics or give me death!

Stanchion eroded by the tides while the Edwin Fox was grounded.

A side of the Edwin Fox showing remnants of copper plating and the ship's teak construction with both metal and wooden trenails.

The Edwin Fox Maritime Museum is well worth the $10 entry fee and a great way to spend a couple of hours at the beginning or end of your South Island getaway. It is a pearler of a regional museum offering something of regional and international importance, without any unnecessary buff and bluster.