What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began writing my “noir” crime novel “The Big Farewell” roundabout August 2020 and finished it in early April 2021. Being mostly in “lockdown” at that stage in the Covid pandemic here in the U.K. meant that I was able to focus and complete a book in a much shorter time than normal. It’s usually more like eighteen months to two years.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? I did my writing on my PC stationed in front of the doors leading out to my roof terrace in the living room of my one-bedroom apartment. I live on the top floor of a Victorian building on the suburban fringes of Greater London.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I’m not one of those who sets himself the task of writing so many words or for so many hours a day. My brain doesn’t work that way. I’ve been told that I have a “cinematic” style and that’s the way my creative juices flow. I write “scene” by “scene”. I wait for the next scene to percolate which can take hours or days. And then it comes out on the page virtually fully formed. So, I don’t always write every day; and depending on the length and complexity of the scene I’m on I may only write for an hour or two in the day, or all day. I often make notes on a notepad but do the actual writing on my PC. I occasionally have music on while I’m writing, something in period to get me in the mood, in the case of “The Big Farewell” Jazz from the 1920’s. I do, however, have my “props”: a scale model of the car that my hero drives, a Stutz Black Hawk Boat-Tail Speedster; a period Private Detective badge; and a set of deactivated firearms of the period (see photo). I’m not much of a tea or coffee drinker and normally just drink water while I write.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
(Chapter 10: pp. 150-157 of the paperback version of “The Big Farewell”)
Midnight.
“Hey…?”
I rolled over in bed and reached out; she wasn’t there. But I could hear her voice. Muffled, shouting.
“Stop it! Stop it!”
I fell out of bed and ran to the bathroom.
“Please! Stop it…!”
Naked, she was standing with her hands gripping the rim of the wash basin. Lunging forward to slam her forehead into the mirror.
The glass gave way, cracks radiating from the point of impact like a spider’s web.
I stood stunned for a moment, then grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back out of range. She tried to push forward; I was surprised by her strength and only just managed to stop her.
She was gasping. Her wild-eyed reflection was demented, splintered by the fractured glass.
There was an angry red scrape on her pale forehead. Her face was soaked with tears. Strings of mucus dangled from her nostrils.
“Blow,” I said gently, folding a wadded tissue around her nose.
She stared with glazed eyes. I wiped her nose for her and tidied her face with cotton balls and warm water.
“Come on….”
There was glass on the tiled floor.
“Watch your feet.”
I locked the bathroom door behind us. She came with me quietly as I walked her into the bedroom and sat her on the edge of the bed. She was shivering; I wrapped a towel robe around her.
She sat with slumped shoulders, looking numb. I went to the kitchenette and came back as fast as I could with a mug of hot sweet tea.
“Here, drink this.”
We sat side by side while she sipped it, not speaking. She only drank about half of it before handing the cup back to me.
“Enough?”
She looked exhausted.
I took her bare feet and swung her legs up carefully onto the bed. She was still wearing the robe. I supported her as she lay down on her back, her eyes looking past me at the ceiling.
I covered her with the blankets and eased in beside her.
“Sleep tight….”
As I awoke, a grey dawn was creeping into the bedroom.
She was fast asleep next to me, breathing evenly. Her face looked peaceful and the mark on her forehead had faded. She wasn’t wearing the robe.
I got up and dismantled the broken mirror, picking up the pieces with a dustpan and brush.
“I’m sorry….”
She was leaning on the doorframe, wearing one of my shirts. It was huge on her, down to her knees.
“It suits you,” I said cheerfully.
She tried to smile for me, but I could see that it was hard.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, as we ate breakfast.
“Stop what?” I replied.
I had to know.
She poked at the scrambled eggs with her fork.
“The voices,” she said. “In my head.”
She hesitated.
“The monsters that live in the walls.”
Her voice was hollow, soulless.
“Telling me that I’m bad, that I deserve it. That it’s all my fault.”
She was terribly fragile. Defeated and sad.
“Well,” I said. “No one’s paying me a hundred bucks an hour for my opinion….”
She lifted her head and stared at me with empty eyes.
“But you’re not!” I told her. “You don’t! And it ain’t!”
That raised a tiny smile.
“So, next time, tell ‘em to stick it where the sun don’t shine!”
The smile grew warmer. She put down her fork and patted my hand.
“Yes, Professor.”
After breakfast, I suggested we go for a walk.
“Let’s get some fresh air. It’ll do you good.”
It would do me good too. The atmosphere was still tense in the apartment. I opened some windows.
“That’s right,” she said. “Let it out.”
It happened to be a Sunday and the streets were almost empty.
Turning up the white fur collar, she looked at the sky.
“I think it’s going to rain later.”
There was so much I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how. She was very pale and washed out.
Just around the corner there was a church. We could hear the hymn faintly. I saw her eyes narrow, glittering fiercely.
“I hate God!”
She turned abruptly and walked on. I had to jump to catch up with her.
Beyond the church was a small municipal playground. Some hardy children, well wrapped up, were on the slides and swings, or just running in circles, playing aeroplane, as kids do.
“They don’t know,” she said. “How dangerous life is!”
I touched her arm, but she didn’t notice. Then she turned her face towards me and smiled fondly.
“Leave me,” she said softly. “I want to watch them for a while.”
That was the start of the mood swings. They were like those kids in the playground, going higher and higher.
It was as if she knew what I was reading. Although we never talked about it.
She could be sunshine in the morning and tears in the afternoon. Or the other way around. She became like a deck of cards; a red card, a black card, then two red cards…. Never knowing which card was going to be dealt next.
All I could do was to be me. And be rock steady, when she was shouting at her voices and bouncing off the walls.
I learned to see it coming. When it got so bad that she wanted to drive the voices out of her head by pounding them into the walls. I’d wrap her in my arms and steer her away.
Sometimes, I’d find her sitting on the floor, banging the back of her head against the wall. I’d sit down beside her and put my palm behind her head, to soften the blow. She’d look at me and frown, then keep on butting my hand till she got fed up with it.
I’d watch her when she was pleading with her voices, when she was arguing with them and shouting at them, in case she made a dash for the wall. Eventually, it would stop, when she ran out of energy.
Then she’d be spent, exhausted. I’d put her to bed.
I found her in the kitchenette with a knife.
“Uh-oh….”
She’d made two parallel cuts across her forearm.
She held up her bleeding wounds to show me. With a challenging expression that demanded: “Do I shock you?”
My voice mild, I held out my hand.
“C’mon, give….”
Solemnly, she placed the handle of the knife on my palm.
“Thank you.”
Without comment, I took her to the bathroom. Where I washed the cuts and bandaged them. They were only superficial.
I was learning something new every day.
I stumbled on her adding to a secret stash of sharp things, some sewing needles, two of my safety-razor blades.
She resisted stubbornly when I tried to confiscate it. Not violently; she just stood her ground in front of me, her face determined. Saying nothing, until I backed down.
“It doesn’t mean that I’ll do it,” she said to me later. “I just need to have them.”
She took to carrying a small, sharp pair of scissors with her everywhere in her purse or a pocket. She’d sometimes walk around the apartment with it in her hand.
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she explained. “I just need to know I have it.”
And now, when she undressed at night, I could see the old scars on her body, fine and precise, spaced evenly. Very faint, but when the light was right, I could just make them out.
I had a buddy in the war, Jim; his name was Miller, so we called him “Dusty”. After the war ended, I visited him a few times, where they had him locked away.
Once, his pyjama jacket fell open and I was shocked to see the scars across his chest. A doctor tried to explain it to me.
“It might be self-hatred. Or a need to make his emotional pain real. One theory is that it’s a means of asserting control….”
At the time, I didn’t get it. I kept seeing him singing dirty songs with a “mademoiselle” on his knee. Or grinning at me through the rain of mud and debris as the shells came down, a cigar clamped between his teeth.
When I went back the next time, they told me he’d hanged himself.
One night, I woke abruptly. To see her sitting bolt upright beside me, her eyes fixed on the foot of the bed.
I switched on the bedside lamp. She didn’t blink, just sat and stared.
“The monsters?”, I asked.
She nodded stiffly. I put an arm around her. Her body was rigid, shoulders tensed.
“What are they saying?”
“Nothing,” she whispered.
I squeezed her gently, drawing her tighter to me.
“Maybe my face confuses them,” I suggested. “Maybe they think I’m one of them.”
She furrowed her brow, frowning.
“They’re scared of you.”
I glared at the end of the bed.
“They damn well oughta be!”
She leaned across me and turned off the light. But we stayed sitting up like that for some time, in the dark with my arm around her.
Next morning at breakfast, I caught her looking sideways at me.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Nothing you can do or say is going to drive me away.”
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? This episode depicts my hero’s revelation of just how damaged my heroine is, and his response to it. It was inspired by shared experiences with a special friend. I met her in 2012 on a mental ward, where I spent several months with a diagnosis of Severe Anxiety and Depression, and we’ve been friends ever since. The best description I can come up with, of the emotions that I felt when writing this passage, is “great love”. And gratitude, because knowing her has made me a better person, just as my hero finds a kind of redemption through his encounter with my heroine.
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Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. No, as far as I recall, there were no significant deletions from this passage. Bar the usual tinkering and polishing. After a “scene” has percolated in my brain it almost always goes straight onto the page pretty much as I want it. As for a marked-up rough draft, there isn’t one I’m afraid. It goes straight from my head onto the screen, in the Word document manuscript. Or I may have written it out in a notepad beforehand, but that gets thrown away as soon as the text is onscreen. So, there are no “rough drafts” of my books.
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http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html