Writing an angst-free journey of discovery
George Orwell described writing a novel as a “long exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.” Ernest Hemingway compared it to bleeding on your typewriter.
But you’ll get no such “suffering-for-your-art” claims from Calgary author Cecelia Frey about the craft. Even when writing a novel that she would eventually title The Long White Sickness, her process seems fairly angst-free.
“As I write, I constantly am making discoveries,” says Frey, in an interview from her Calgary home. “Starting the way I do, because I don’t have it all plotted and so on, it’s like going for a walk and you keep turning corners and every time your turn a corner there’s a wonderful discovery there. These discoveries are what keeps you going. If you have a really good day, then you feel really exhilarated because you’ve made all these discoveries and met all these wonderful people.”
Perhaps the sunny approach to writing is due to the 76-year-old having a relatively late start. She was over 30 before she began taking writing seriously, enlisting in a course at the University of Calgary in 1970 under the watchful eye of W.O. Mitchell. There was no time for angst.
That was where she says she learned a writing style she calls “free-fall,” a writing-without-a-net kind of approach where you compose without much forethought to structure and plot. “We were about 10 or 12 in a group and he had us all madly writing free-fall,” says Frey about Mitchell, who created classic pieces of Canadiana such as Who Has Seen the Wind and Jake and the Kid. And, as with all of her previous novels, short stories or poems, The Long White Sickness began with an image that Frey couldn’t shake. It was of someone skiing uphill along a precipice during a blizzard.
“What is this person doing skiing up a mountain in a blizzard?” says Frey. “Then I have to answer that question for myself. I get that image and get the characters out of the image and then I go with the characters. And it’s very true that they do have to tell you how it’s going to end. I’ve had to change endings just because the characters didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t within their character to act that way.”
This back-and-forth between characters eventually led to the complex, character-driven plot of The Long White Sickness, Frey’s fourth since her 1974 debut Breakaway.
The tale starts with our less-than-reliable narrator Constance, a frustrated, oft-married poet of a certain age, skiing “towards her death.” This is interrupted by an avalanche that appears to claim the life of a brilliant author named Harry Weinstein. Meanwhile, back at Con- stance’s condo in Calgary’s Eau Claire neighbourhood, one of her ex-husbands, Gully Jillson, is accused of murder. We are eventually introduced to a homicide detective named Sgt. Rock; Constance’s daughter Lara and musician partner Rowlf, who have both recently escaped a California religious cult; and a no-nonsense 84-year-old named Aunt Olive.
These characters all congregate for a plot about murder and sex that delves into classic themes of “chasing one’s muse” before heading off into a more surreal world of magic realism.
“A lot of characters go in and out of her life,” says Frey. “It really is a book of characters. It’s like some movies where the big characters make the movie what it is. I think that’s they way this novel works out, too. The people who arrive in her life really make up the plot. Through them you understand or get to know what her life has been like.”
As for tapping into the literary movement of magic realism, which stirs elements of the surreal into a realistic environment, Frey said she took a measured approach. “It sort of straddles the fence a little bit,” Frey says “I could have made it wilder, in a sense, just more surreal. I do want to communicate with my audience. There is a certain market for the surreal, but maybe it’s smaller. Not that I care that much about the marketing aspect of it. … So I toned it down a bit….”
But even if it does eventually take off into the surreal, it’s also grounded in a sense of place. Specifically, Alberta.
That’s been a hallmark for much of the work from Frey, who has also written five books of poetry and three short-story collections.
Breakaway was set on a farm in northern Alberta, which closely mirrored Frey’s own beginnings on a homestead near Whitecourt. Frey says she has always been interested in giving a literary voice to Alberta.
“Our literature on the prairies is pretty young,” says Frey. “We will explore more as we go and we have a lot of good writers exploring it. When I first started writing, if you didn’t set your novel in New York or London or something, well then forget it.”
Frey has played her own part in developing Alberta writing talent. Over the years, she has taught writing at the University of Calgary, Mount Royal, for the Calgary School Board and the Alexandra Centre. By while she may keep her fictional adventures close to home, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t stray from her comfort zone when writing.
Whether it be the magic realism of The Long White Sickness, or the murdermystery novel she is currently tinkering with, or the gothic overtones of her sophomore novel, The Prisoner of Cage Farm, Frey often likes to dabble in genres to test her chops as a writer.
For A Raw Mix of Carelessness and Longing, which revolved around Alberta’s indie music scene of the 1980s, Frey was inspired to learn how to play a Metallica tune on guitar for research.
But there are limits. While skiing in a blizzard is key to The Long White Sickness, Frey decided relying on memory was good enough research. “I don’t ski anymore but I still play the guitar,” Frey says with laugh. “But just at parties after I’ve had a few glasses of wine.”