On Stories and Writing Arnie Avery.

Walker, Sue

When I was growing up, I never dreamed I'd be an author. Ordinary people like me didn't write books. Authors were highly educated, sophisticated people, unlike any of those living in my little pocket of suburbia. The adults I knew worked hard, and their kids played barefoot in the street or rode bikes around the neighbourhood. I shared a room with my sister, keeping her awake at night while I wrote in my diary. Journaling was something I loved. It seemed natural for me to record my experiences on paper, without ever wondering where it might lead me.

I now recognise those years of diary writing as being a kind of apprenticeship. It taught me a lot about being a writer--like commitment, and how to draw from my own experiences, but most importantly, it taught me to be honest with my pen. It's easy to write from the heart when you're writing for yourself, when you think nobody will ever read what you've written. That's a lesson I try to remind myself of when I'm writing now. Forget about the reader, and be honest about my characters and what they're thinking and feeling. Never be afraid to tell the truth. The reader wants real characters with honest emotions, and that's often how my stories start--with a character that feels something, whether it's jealousy, or desire, or fear, or sorrow, or whatever. Then the story unfolds based on my understanding of how the character feels and reacts.

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That's the way things worked with Arnie Avery. It wasn't a story I planned to write. It evolved over a few years, after I was inspired by four kids and an elderly lady at the local pool. I've always been a bit of a people watcher, and those four kids fascinated me--one quiet, one a leader, one gregarious, and one a follower. I wanted to know their names and how they came to be at the pool, but mostly I wanted to know what they thought about each other. Somehow, the quiet boy became my protagonist. Perhaps because I found him the most interesting. I sympathised with him and wanted to know his story, his problems, his desires, so I brainstormed some potential challenges for a boy like him. What if I pitted him against the school bully? How would he react? Would he triumph? The more I wrote, the better I understood Arnie's character, then somewhere around the fourth draft I realised that he'd been hiding something. Arnie had a brother. From that point a new side of the story developed and it became deeper, and charged with real emotion.

When the finished book with Arnie's face on the cover landed in my letterbox, I sat down and read it from cover to cover. Only then did I notice how snippets of my own childhood had crept into the story. One scene from the book came straight from an experience I had as a ten year old. I was at the local pool with my brother and sister when a boy almost drowned. He fell in and sank to the bottom, but thankfully my brother dived in a saved him.

I still vividly remember that boy on the concrete beside the pool, coughing up a stomach full of water. I didn't plan to write about that event, but it was dredged from my memory during the writing of Arnie Avery. I'm always fascinated by the way the subconscious works to invent and tie the threads of a story together--and when that happens, it's magic.

Another incident that obviously made an impact on Arnie Avery, happened when I was about 13. My sister came home from school and told me that a girl wanted to fight me. Now, I wasn't the kind of girl who got into fights. I was extremely shy and very good at keeping out of trouble. I was confused and terrified, and those disturbing emotions are the same as those experienced by Arnie.

As writers, I think it's impossible to keep ourselves out of the story. Subconsciously, we reveal our unique perspectives and share who we are. In a way, I suspect we are all story-sharers. Some of us like to write about them, while others prefer talking about them. When I visit schools to speak to children about books and writing, the stories I tell often prompt the children to share their own. Kids love telling stories about themselves, and their family, and their pets, and their holidays. They tell them with an energy and honesty that's inspiring. Stories allow us to connect, to get to know each other, and to imagine ... and it's an honour to be able to share some of mine as an author. (Review N54 N3 p30)