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Research and the craft of creative writing

Lewis Hamilton and all the weird things that happened when I finished my novel

Beyond the Thickets and The Trees will be the first novel-length manuscript that I’ve ever really finished – as in, finished, finished. Since the age of 28, I’ve written two novels that I’ve given up on, was too confused by, or not confident enough in. My first novel embarassingly titled Hacker Girl, is a dystopian tech novel set in London. The second book, The Strange Adventures of Jupiter Black, is an ensemble cast of high school teenagers who discover their town’s water supply is suppressing their superpowers. These books have sat drafted, usually around 90 per cent, and I’ve simply slowly drifted and slinked away from them. I’ve been too frozen by my own creative process to reach the finish line, and stumped by what to do next.

Reaching the final page

But now, I’ve come to the final page of Beyond the Thickets and The Trees, which I hope will be my debut novel. I wanted to talk openly about what the end process has been like for me because – shit got weird. Like real weird. Already the creative process is nebulous and confusing (like where do my ideas come from?) and I’ve been very thankful for my spontaneous way of working. I just floor it and something has always happened.

But that’s not how I finished my novel.

And the way that I have found my way through the murk of this book has been revealing, unusual, and bizarre. I had always assumed the way I had to finish my novel was the exact same way I started – relying on spontaneous creativity to get me through.

My books all start the same way

At the onset, I will get vivid bursts of a scene with fully-formed characters, so I can start writing from a blank page immediately. The energy from this burst is so powerful that it sustains me to the mid-point of a narrative: my characters have come to life, backstories written, settings created, and the story world pops out of my brain of its own accord. I’m often chasing it.

The opening line of the story is the most important thing I write. It is unmovable. And unchangeable. Then, at the middle stage, there’s a slow burn. Ideas build on eachother, they overlap, and many come to me at night. I keep a notepad by my pillow and scribble down all of the things that pop into my brain right before it wants to shut-off. The next morning I get the fun exercise of deciphering my illegible notes.

But the end?

I’ve never made it to the final lap before.

I had no clue something strange was about to happen.

Vivid and symbolic dreams

In the spring of 2024, I was pushing myself hard to finish the book by the end of the year. And around that time, I began having vivid dreams that centered around a prominent figure. Each dream was a variation of the same scenario. If this is a safe space, I’ll tell you about the scenarios and the dreams, their meaning (as I interpreted it), and why I think this happened to me.

I don’t know if I should be embarrassed by these dreams or not but – this was my subconscious talking, and she had a lot to tell me.

My large format acrylic painting titled Dripping Girl which I painted in 2002 at the age of 19.

In the dream scenario, I am always making a large format piece of art, and it is either a painting, a glass sculpture, or metal items to feature in glass sculptures, such as daggers or swords, and the production of my art puts me on a path of meeting Lewis Hamilton, a British Formula 1 driver. Many of these dreams take place at a glass studio in Venice, Italy—a place I have visited, but they have also taken place in other European cities, and the Canadian ski resort of Revelstoke, BC.

The dream always involves us discussing, viewing or interpreting the art pieces I have made, which are fully-formed, complete with titles and descriptions. In real-life, I can recall each ‘dream world’ piece with total clarity, and have envisioned over twenty pieces—which I have kept a list of in my Notes App.

I warned you this was gonna get weird.

My subconscious has even created poetry about these ‘dream world’ art pieces, some of which I have transcribed in real life including the poem, On a Champagne Day.

At first I thought, okay maybe the algorithm is serving me up too much F1 content, but the dreams have nothing to do with car racing. But they do have everything to do with race.

An anti-racist crime novel?

The Coutt’s Border Blockade from Feb. 2, 2022 (Source: CBC)

I didn’t immediately connect my dreams to the subject-matter in my novel, but as I reached the final chapter and looked back at the story, I wondered something. Was Beyond the Thickets and the Trees an anti-racist crime novel? The villain, both explicit and implicit, is the monstrous resurgence of white supremacy in Canada. It is something that appears in characters, settings, and liminal spaces throughout the narrative. Over the past few years, I have seen the ominous and unsettling manifestation of how white supremacy operates in Canada, both hidden and in plain view. I’ve witnessed how easily it festers, gets justified and goes unaddressed. My novel doesn’t lean on the labour of a Black, Indigenous, or person of colour to explain racism to white people (and why it’s bad). Instead, I take charge, and through the narrative, I give readers a front row seat to a secretive and grotesque show. One that ends by confronting exactly what everyone can see, but many have chosen to ignore.

There has always been an underlying expectation that good little girls, like me, ought to adhere to being a silent sentinel for white supremacy, because it thrives when it’s uninterrupted and left to do its business. But I vastly prefer knocking out its teeth.

Taking on daggers

I knew from the start that I wanted to explore the ugly manifestation of white supremacy, themes of anti-racism, along with sexism and discrimination. But, I still didn’t understand the appearance of Lewis Hamilton and his connection to these vivid art pieces in my dreams. So, I did something unconventional and I asked ChatGPT (Can A.I. do dream analysis? Time to find out) – And this is what it said.

“The focus on creating art inspired by racial abuse suggests a profound empathy and desire to advocate for justice and awareness. From a young age, Hamilton encountered racial abuse and discrimination, both in his personal life and within the racing community. He has spoken about being the only person of colour at racing events, facing racial slurs, and experiencing systemic biases that made his journey more challenging. Hamilton has often been a lone advocate for diversity within Formula One, facing resistance when pushing for inclusivity.” – ChatGPT

Oof. Something hit me. Hamilton had been silently taking on daggers for over twenty years, doing his “talking on the track” – possibly terrified of doing it into a microphone. Speaking out as a young driver meant risking sponsorships, his job, his dream. Behind the scenes, he was advocating for change within a systemic hellscape that he couldn’t always see, but he could sure as hell feel. It conjured the same energy and emotions that kicked off my story in the first place. Injustice. Trauma. Fear. The very small shards of abuse he was willing to share publicly felt beyond bullying to me, they sounded like cruelty.

I sat with these feelings, and noticed that ChatGPT had served me up a YouTube video from 2023, featuring Hamilton on a podcast with Jay Sheddy. At first I thought, oh god, this thing is an hour long. But, I was still trying to understand the symbolic role Hamilton was playing. Was it simply that I was getting inspiration from a professional athlete or pop culture figure? That seemed too simple.

 

Is there closure at the end? or just a new beginning?

While intermittently watching Hamilton’s interview, I created the final scenes, wrote the last words of dialogue, and typed out the final phrase in the novel. It took me several days, not only to finish watching the interview (I paused many times) but also to squeeze out whatever I had in me, to shape the ending of the story. At the same time, I wrote a much longer journal entry on how I connected significantly and seriously, with the stories Hamilton was willing to share.

The novel was done.

But it was not the ending I had first anticipated.

It was something more raw, more intentional and metaphorical than the straight-forward end plot I had once drafted. Was there a bigger symbolic meaning behind Hamilton’s appearance in these dreams? Were his life experiences tangling with my own, and contributing to how the novel finally concluded? What else was the dream world demanding I make? I can’t be certain.

Hamilton’s restrained stories, cautious speech, and guarded emotions are warranted. But, I’m in a different situation, and it’s important that I tackle my own fears, and speak into that microphone. When I get that pang of doubt, I always ask myself: “What’s on the other side of fear? Freedom.”

My early childhood was spent in a low-income housing block, with a single parent, and very few girls my age. I was often in the minority group, a white kid surrounded by new immigrant families and neighbours who were making Canada their new home. I never found the discrimination and pain that Hamilton describes in his childhood council estate, my community was full of kindness, tolerance and generosity. And we were all in alliance against our common enemy — the building fire alarm.

I would spend two decades confronting my fears to build my confidence and believe in a different future for myself. Over the years, I would alternate from taking massive risks, to taking very few. I have already sacrificed a lot to pursue a dream of being a writer. Other blog posts will tell you about how hard I fought for scholarships and funding. Some people in my life took it personally that I dared to rise above my station and chase a higher education – a Master’s and a PhD at a prestigious university overseas. Such dreams never find their way into those draughty housing blocks on the stark Canadian landscape.

But I said, fuck it.

At this moment, there is no way of knowing if this novel will get published. I hope it does.

Because when I read it, I hear my voice saying all the things I want to say. I see all those hidden details where I’ve expressed how I’ve long felt. I am not the protagonist in the story – that is far from the truth and much too simple. I am the whole world of the novel. I’m every dish in the sink, every mug of tea that’s gone cold, and every bleak and snowy highway ahead.

I’ve put everything of myself in those pages. There’s nothing else for me to do.

 

 

(https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-alberta-diagolon-paul-rouleau-1.6751945)

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