The Hague Online's 'Writer in Residence' Jo Parfitt is musing about . . .

The magic of the pen

Many of you will know that I have just finished writing a novel. Sunshine Soup will be published in September and will, of course, be launched in The Hague. If any of you have already written fiction you will know the magical and mysterious way that the characters we create can sometimes take on a life of their own and do some surprising things.

I love to cook, but tend not to do so much of it these days, despite having written two cookbooks in the past. Sure, I love to do it, but not more than writing so I confine myself to about an hour a day in the kitchen. Tops.

But Maya, she’s my protagonist, loves to cook. It is what keeps her sane and provides the only constant in her new life overseas, in Dubai. I lost myself in her character and allowed her to have a wonderful time in the kitchen, creating dish upon dish, flour flying everywhere as she cooks several things at once.

I finished the story and realized that Maya had actually created some fabulous food and so I decided to add the recipes to the end of my novel. So, this weekend I found myself following in the footsteps of someone I had created out of my own imagination and testing her recipes. For 48 hours I became Maya. And do you know, I loved it!

Of course, you could argue that Maya is me and that I allowed her to live out my fantasies on the page. It was natural that I would love doing what she did too. But I also created characters who did screenprinting, ran a charity to help women, were complementary therapists and ran book clubs – all things I do not do myself, but maybe I would like to.

That is the magic of writing. If you give yourself up to your characters and let them do what seems right for them they can lead you into some amazing places. Follow them. Watch what they do and there, buried in your subconscious, I am sure you will find clues to the things you too would love to do someday.

If you have tried speedwriting or writing Morning Pages as Julia Cameron calls the ten minutes of free writing she recommends we do every morning in her book The Artist’s Way, then you will already know the wonders that emerge when you allow yourself to just write. So, I urge you too, to just write, create a character and see what she or he does.

If you would like to have a go at speedwriting then you will be excited to hear that my Writers Circle and I are running a Speedwriting Slam at Quirky Lunchroom on Tasmanstraat on October 16th. What’s more we are doing our best to write there on Wednesday mornings. Just to write and see where it leads us. Why not making Wednesdays your writing day too? I’ll be there on 27th July for sure, so why not join me from 10-12am?
 

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