Helping Harvey

Upcoming writer and book blogger A.J. Hawley (and I Am A Reader participant) interviews Clare Harvey about her experience of the project and the process of collaborative writing…

Alex Hawley: I've never interviewed somebody I’ve worked with directly before. It must be a bit different for you, as well, as you don’t very often get to interact directly with the public.

Clare Harvey: Writing is quite lonely. That's why quite often I work in cafes. We try and get out a bit. Before I got published, I used to run workshops with schools, and I also used to teach English learners and I do kind of miss that interaction. So that's why I'm a Reader was really nice, because it was getting to meet people being out there as well as doing the writing. So yeah, I think that's why I really enjoyed it, because it was sociable as well as creative.

Alex Hawley: How did you find out about it, because it's such a different idea, isn't it?

Clare Harvey: I just got approached by Inspire. They literally just got in touch with me and I bit their hands off because I was just in the process of applying to do my PhD and it sort of linked in with the kinds of things I'm going to be exploring in my PhD. So, I was really, really excited about it from the outset.

Alex Hawley: For me it was really strange, because for once not being the writer was a bit odd.

Clare Harvey: I was the writer, but I wasn't the author. You have to make that distinction between writer and author, because I would say that it was co-authored by the whole group, but I did the writing. It's like, someone coming up with an idea for a dress design and then giving it to the dressmaker to make it. I felt like the creation of it was a collaborative thing. It's not a story that I wouldn't necessarily have come up with myself. It definitely came from the group.

Alex Hawley: It’s quite interesting that you say that, because, of course, primarily, you're a historical writer and I think you are doing your PhD on that.

Clare Harvey: It's on it's on applying remix theory to creating historical fiction. So, it's a bit like remix the readings like sampling in music or colours in art where you take real bits and insert it into a new creation. Or upcycling in design, I suppose like on a programme like Money for Nothing, where they go to a skip and they say, Oh, look, someone's throwing out this old milk urn and then they take it to a workshop and turn it into a new barstool. The barstool has been repurposed and transformed, but it still retains something of the original milk urn about it. So, I'm just investigating whether I can do that with historical fiction by taking historical accounts and memoirs and rather than using them as inspiration, or a stepping off point, which is what most authors would do, use the actual words, use people's actual words when they were describing experiences that they lived through and, and seeing if that's possible, and if it's allowed legally, that kind of thing.

Alex Hawley: That sounds really interesting, because although I'm primarily a crime reviewer, one of the big things I really enjoy reading is historical crime, and I've just done the historical section of my crime genre book. There's a lot of elements to historical writing that make it so different to other genres. What did you find the hardest thing about historical writing?

Clare Harvey: The hardest thing about it is, I think, being true to the time. It's that accuracy versus authenticity thing. You want it to have the feel of the time and you have to make decisions about how accurate to be, and how much to include, and exclude. Because you don't want to give people a history lesson and you don't want to offend their sensibilities in any way. Back in the day, people would have used words and held attitudes that we would find offensive now. So, it's that balance of making something acceptable to a modern reader, but feel like it's situated in that time, without info dumping on them.

I just think there's a balancing act, because sometimes you read people who are starting off in historical fiction and they just want to tell you everything they know about that time, and they'll give you loads and loads of information about what's going on. That's because they're fascinated with the history of the area, as all historical fiction authors are, and all historical readers are, because you do read it in part to find out a bit about the time, don't you?

But you don't want a history lesson, you still want the human drama, as well. So, it's getting that balance between the history and the human drama, and not offending anyone, because back in World War Two days, people would have used the N word for example. We should never use it now, but if you're saying you're going to be historically accurate, you'd have people saying things like that and the terrible attitudes towards women and people of colour and gender fluidity and all kinds of stuff you couldn't have in a modern book. You still want to make it feel as if it's of its time. So, you're dancing along a bit of a tight rope.

Alex Hawley: Your process is different to other writers I spoke to with the way that you use your notebook in your writing process. How helpful was that when working with the group?

Clare Harvey: I think it was and that was why I love doing it. I took on the project, because it fed into what I was already doing. When I wasn't writing or working on a big project and I had that sort of time in between, I would do a thing where whatever book I was reading at that time, I would open it up at a page, and pick a few words at random, write them down in my notebook and then just keep writing for five minutes until I had a little bit of text. Just so that I was keeping my writing muscles working. Sometimes I turned it into flash fiction afterwards, but sometimes I would just do it so that I knew I could spark up my imagination whenever I wanted to. So that when I had to start a big project again, I wouldn't have that awful terror and think, well, what if I can't write anything nice, I think, Oh, well, it's just another let's just get started.

So doing that was just using words that other people gave me instead of words that I randomly picked from a book, and that's that is my practice. I write longhand as well, because I think that helps my subconscious come up with more stuff. I like drawing as well. It's a bit meditative pen on paper or pencil on paper. Maybe that just helps things come to the surface. I don't know, but it works.

I think I was the only one of the writers who approached it that way. I think Eve also had some of her readers doing some writing, which she incorporated. Afterwards, I thought, well, maybe I should have asked you guys if you wanted to write some stuff as well, but I wasn't sure because sometimes people can be terribly shy about that, can't they? So, I didn't, but maybe if I did it again, I'd ask people if they wanted to write little bits, and I could incorporate little bits of what other people wrote and do even more in a more of a remix way. I'd love to do it again, with another group. I don't know whether that will ever come about, but I was sort of hinting to people that I’d like to do this at another library. It was such fun.

Alex Hawley: It was really interesting, because to me, it was such a different process to work with people that read other genres, because there weren't many crime readers in the group despite the fact that Kirkby library has a crime reading group.

Clare Harvey: We had psychological thriller, literary fiction, and contemporary readers. It's interesting, isn't it? Because of the different approaches, because some people prefer stuff that's more character led, and some people prefer stuff to be plot lead, and people were coming at it from different angles, and different life stages as well. Because although we had nobody really young, there was quite a broad range of age groups, from people in their 20s to people in their 80s.

Alex Hawley: How did you find working with other genres that you weren't used to writing when it came to doing a short story and collating the ideas? What made you decide on the idea we came up with?

Clare Harvey: You all had a look at the little snippets I'd written and said, how they could be developed into something else, and everybody had different ideas. I think there was a sort of vote or a consensus that Helen had had this idea that had legs. So, it wasn't necessarily my decision to go with the hospital type scenario, but I think everybody recognised that she had an idea for a bit of a plot that could be developed.

Somebody had an idea, and I can't remember exactly what her idea for a story was, but it was something to do with overcoming victimhood, or grief, or there was a sense of redemption and I thought if I could marry that theme with that plot, then maybe we could do something with that. So, I just had a go. So, what came out, the plot wasn't necessarily my decision, or the direction wasn't necessarily my decision. I would say it came from the group.

Alex Hawley: There were twelve of us in the group and by the time you got round to writing it, that would have been stage four. When we came to do the editing in that hour long session, that was really complicated.

Clare Harvey: I knew it wasn't working and so it was nice to just hand it over to other people and say what do you think? And then just go back to it with other people's edits It was nice. I liked the whole process really.

Alex Hawley: Have you ever had to do editing that quickly? because normally, it's a slow process.

Clare Harvey: Sometimes. It depends on if you have a deadline to meet. If you have, then it sometimes has to be a quick process.

Alex Hawley: I'm not sure what the timescale was when the when they came to you with the idea and asked you to do it, but it seemed to be relatively quick, because we only met three times.

Clare Harvey: It was only a short story, so it was fine. I was talking to Jacob before the event and he said, he had to think about his for a really long time and do lots of research before he felt ready to write it. So, he sat on it a lot and let it compost, whereas I just got it out there, and then sent it back to you guys for editing. We just came at it a different way.

Alex Hawley: Given the different writers that were also involved in the project, which one did you enjoy more that you didn’t write?

Clare Harvey: I thought they were all brilliant. Humbled is a ridiculous word to use, I was really grateful to be part of that mix, because I think they're all really good writers. I think they're probably all better writers than me if I'm honest, so I was quite overawed to be part of the selection.

The stories were all really good, but the one that chimed most with me was from Joanne's group, Alice after Wonderland. I thought that there was something quite special that said something to me about mental health and our relationship with our parents. I thought that was a really interesting story. And I liked the lyricism of Jacob’s; I could really visualise Jacob’s story and it felt more like the opening chapter to a novel. I really wanted to know what happened to that woman next. With some of the stories I felt there was a completion there. Whereas Jacob’s was only a beginning, I guess. But I love the style of Jacob’s and the one that really chimed with me was from Joanne's group, but I thought they were all really really good. I really liked them.

Alex Hawley: They seem to be very different. I heard the sample and we had writers from all kinds of different platforms, because their backgrounds are so different.

Clare Harvey: I think some writers use it too. I think Eve said she had an idea for a story that she hadn't developed and so she went to the group and said, kind of how about we write this and so it was her idea that they then helped her develop. Whereas some people I think, came to it fresh and some people just developed obsessions that they already had. Stephan Collishaw has got a thing about writing about Eastern Europe. So, I think he just continued with that thread. And Jacob has a thing about the Horn of Africa and so I think he wanted to write a story that was set there. So, for some of them, they had something bubbling away at the back of their mind and this was an opportunity to develop it.

And then there were people like me. I definitely didn't have any idea of what I wanted to write. I didn’t want to write something about World War Two, which is what I normally write about. I didn't have any thoughts about where I wanted to take it before I began. I really wanted it open-ended; I really wanted it to be something that bubbled up from the group somehow or other. It was really quite scary because I had no idea; they gave us such a broad brief, they just said, oh, you know, we want you to talk to readers about their experience and writing and come up with a short story and that was it. That was the brief; it was just completely open ended. So, it was completely up to each writer to decide how they went about doing that.

I did say I'd quite like to do it in person if there is an in-person group because I prefer it to zoom and I was lucky that they let me do that because I think it's much easier to work collaboratively if you're in a room with people rather than online.

Alex Hawley: You asked the readers to pick their favourite line from a novel. What line would you have chosen?

Clare Harvey: I’m obsessed with Kate Atkinson and I think somebody chose a line from one of hers actually. So, I might choose something from Kate Atkinson's Life after Life because I think it's an amazing book and she's an amazing author and I'm completely in awe of her. Or I might go back to one of the books that sort of started me off as a reader which would be like Laura Ingalls Wilder or a children's book because those books initially sparked my joy in reading.

Alex Hawley: The inspiration for your first book was a close relation’s, own story.

Clare Harvey: It was my mother in law who had been in the ATS in World War Two, but she passed away long before I got together with my husband. So, I'd never met her and he didn't know anything about her service in wartime. I hadn’t any relatives left to ask and my father in law had remarried, and it wasn't a subject you could necessarily bring up because his second wife was always there. So, he didn't want to talk about the first wife.

I happened to be doing my creative writing Master's and I thought it would be nice to know what her story was, but as I can't actually find out I'm going to use the fact that I know she was in the army in World War Two. I know she was something to do with the guns in London, I know that she didn't really have any family. So, I'm gonna use those three things, to start off a story. So rather than trying to find out the truth and telling the truth into a story, I just had those three building blocks to set me off. I still don't know a huge amount of her wartime service. I think she was on the searchlights, not the guns and I think the reason she didn't have any family was because she'd been brought up in a children's home. But I found she'd gone straight from leaving the children's home to joining the armed forces. I found all these things out afterwards, after I'd written the story. Really, I didn't know a huge amount. I just thought, Oh, I didn't know there were women soldiers in World War Two.

Alex Hawley: It’s quite interesting that you mentioned that, because there was a children’s home in the story that we compiled as well. When it comes to people's past, and their childhood, you’re on your fifth book now and that's based on somewhere you used to live, I believe, isn't it?

Clare Harvey: I've written a book, which is partly based in Mauritius, which is where I lived as a child, but I don't know what's happening with that, at the moment, and then I've written another book, which is out on submission at the moment. I think it's gone to the Frankfurt Book Fair, I'm not sure, I leave all that to my agent. And that’s set in Zanzibar, which I visited in my 20s. So yeah, if you're brand new, you're always gonna bring in elements of stuff you know. It's inevitable that you bring some of yourself to what you write about, but it's also a pleasure to find out all the stuff that you don't know.