As I came up from the Bay, I thought about my novel and suddenly conceived it as my own Black Goya. I was grappling with a problem not likely shared by my fellow middle-aged women dogwalkers: \u201cMorning Charlotte! Why the long face?\u201d Well, the thing is, I\u2019ve frightened myself half to death. I\u2019ve written a novel about a character who was befriended, as a young person, by a sinister figure.<\/p>\n
It was a fictional idea that began to exert a psychological effect. As soon as I started writing the story, I was uneasy. The Black Monk was experimental in its structure, and I enjoyed the conceit that it was forming itself, in the way fiction really does, by percolating away in the subconscious, taking shape and presenting itself to the conscious mind.<\/p>\n
But it was also forming, fictionally, in another way: my character, a children\u2019s fiction writer, was emailing the manuscript to herself each day, and had the idea that someone was hacking in and approaching her in real life to affect its outcome.<\/p>\n
The book took on its own life, and it seemed as if there was something reckless in it. It felt as if art could become life.<\/p>\n
I described The Black Monk as a \u201cfictional confession\u201d, and I never stopped playing around with that idea. This situation \u2013 my uneasiness, my sense I was doing something odd and even reckless \u2013 continued as I finished it.<\/p>\n
The Black Monk by Charlotte Grimshaw is on sale March 3.<\/p>\n
I came up from the estuary with the dog covered in black mud, and I thought, I\u2019ve been in the grip of something strange. The Shadow, for God\u2019s sake? I feel as if I\u2019m ensnared in my own fictional trap.<\/p>\n
I remember lying in bed at night as a child, terrified. I was always afraid there would be an intruder. I generated fear by making up stories. Now, I\u2019d frightened myself again. I\u2019d invited the tiger in to tea. I feared some consequence.<\/p>\n
Guilt is a prison. I tried to help my brother, but I couldn\u2019t stop him. I didn\u2019t save him. When I visited him for the last time, I begged him to save himself. I am haunted by the last visit, by his suffering and pain. I stayed with him, but then I left him there. I always had to leave him there.<\/p>\n
Ever since, I\u2019ve been writing a story that seems, in the oddest way, to invite the reader to see that world of guilt. And I suddenly thought, as I walked out of the estuary, how strange it is to live with this sense of oppression.<\/p>\n
I wanted to paint guilt as black as it felt. I\u2019m just a novelist; I have never (not yet anyway) met the Devil. Perhaps it\u2019s true, we all have a Shadow. But this is what I wanted to express: I have met people who have the qualities that motivate the worst wielders of power.<\/p>\n
A novel is that strange blend: it\u2019s all invented and it draws on life experienced. Finishing it, I can walk away. The walls are gone, and that gives me joy.<\/p>\n
This is the power of fiction: if I can describe the prison bars, I can write the open door.<\/p>\n
The Black Monk by Charlotte Grimshaw is out on March 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As I came up from the Bay, I thought about my novel and suddenly conceived it as my…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1561,1558,7022,10748,39200,168893,168892,4510,1359,168891,25726,156,105687,33167,2109,168894,93386,71,168895,25886,305,1364,16718,13458,296,13840,168890,168896,117,111,139,8476,69,90,35731,15590,2730,423,106462,135021,31906,13744,65633,49027,1361,223,20110,13020,1316,6123,15146,377,64460],"class_list":{"0":"post-309895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bay","9":"tag-been","10":"tag-black","11":"tag-came","12":"tag-charlotte","13":"tag-coated","14":"tag-cursing","15":"tag-dark","16":"tag-described","17":"tag-distracted","18":"tag-dynamic","19":"tag-entertainment","20":"tag-estuary","21":"tag-expression","22":"tag-family","23":"tag-flanks","24":"tag-francisco","25":"tag-from","26":"tag-goyas","27":"tag-grimshaw","28":"tag-have","29":"tag-her","30":"tag-him","31":"tag-inspired","32":"tag-into","33":"tag-like","34":"tag-monk","35":"tag-monstrousness","36":"tag-new","37":"tag-new-zealand","38":"tag-newzealand","39":"tag-novel","40":"tag-nz","41":"tag-on","42":"tag-painter","43":"tag-paintings","44":"tag-personal","45":"tag-point","46":"tag-produced","47":"tag-pungent","48":"tag-seemed","49":"tag-shock","50":"tag-spanish","51":"tag-terrible","52":"tag-that","53":"tag-the","54":"tag-thought","55":"tag-version","56":"tag-when","57":"tag-while","58":"tag-works","59":"tag-world","60":"tag-writing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}