On character with Sorrow and Bliss author Meg Mason

Meg Mason began her career at the Financial Times and The Times of London. Her work has since appeared in The Sunday Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sunday Telegraph. She has written humour for The New Yorker and Sunday STYLE, monthly columns for GQ and InsideOut and is now a regular contributor to Vogue, ELLE, Stellar and marie claire. Her first book, a memoir of motherhood, Say It Again in a Nice Voice (HarperCollins) was published in 2012. Her second, a novel, You Be Mother (HarperCollins) was published in August 2017. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two daughters.

Today, Meg is on the blog to tell us about how she approached writing Martha, the central character in her latest novel, Sorrow and Bliss. Read on …

Meg Mason

Deciding to sit down and making myself stay there when the thought of standing up first occurs five minutes later are my only conscious skills as an author. After that, I cannot say what I actually do and if, at the end of those hours, I have described a setting, advanced a plot or developed a character, I have no idea how I might have done it.

But when I hear another author say, ‘it all sort of … comes out’, ‘the story unfolds on its own’ and, most of all, ‘the character just appeared’ I feel like kicking them in the shins. Because it does not come out on its own, every word had to be chosen one by one. A story has to come out. Even if it is autobiographical, it didn’t thinly-veil itself. And a character might have just-appeared to you but she won’t just appear to us. For that, we needed her funny way of doing up her handbag, her allergic rhinitis and litany of past lovers, all of which you gave her. And got from somewhere, found a way to work in without us noticing that work was being done, and honed until those aspects of her were so true and so essentially her, we are not going to believe you when you tell us you made the whole lot up.

When I really think about it – and so you do not kick me in the shins – here is how Martha, the protagonist of Sorrow and Bliss, appeared to me and what I did to make her appear on the page, I hope so convincingly that every reader assumes that she is me with a different name.

That is, of course, where I started – with me. Most authors begin with themselves, elements of their autobiography, perhaps less so with each book because they’re better, braver or because they’ve used most of it up. I gave Martha my age, a previous job, my marital status and my introversion. But then, to produce the story, I made it all worse – her job less fulfilling, forty more terrifying, her marriage in straits and her introversion more strenuous – requiring her to do things I haven’t, make choices I wouldn’t, say things I couldn’t and so she has ceased to be me.

Establishing her, as early and clearly as I could, meant writing the first real scene of the book over and over and over again, dozens of times in the course of a year, until every fundamental aspect of her was present in it and none were directly said.

The scene is her fortieth birthday party, which her husband Patrick throws for her even though she asks him not to because looking at her life as it is then, she sees nothing to celebrate. The guests are all his friends and for much of the night, Martha is an ambulant bathroom, crying.

Probably, to start with, it was just a normal bathroom. But one day, it would have occurred to me that an ambulant bathroom more specific and specificity does so much lifting when it comes to character. And if it is that particular kind, Martha has actively chosen it and choices do much of the rest – now she is either the kind of person who doesn’t care if someone might actually need it or because, if you’re not intending to come out, you’d want the extra space.

When, at one point in the party, Martha realises that Patrick is about to make a speech, she crosses the room and tells him to put away his palm cards. It is an awful thing to do and Martha is often cruel. But I didn’t intend her to be. I didn’t actually realise she was mean until it was pointed out by so many readers. I only set out to make her unhappy but unhappiness can make us mean and so, in that way, Martha began to acquire traits on her own, becoming less me with each.

Once a character is fundamentally there, it becomes about the detail – metaphorically speaking, the handbag and a particular way of doing it up – the tiny things that make them real and interesting. The things that, in Martha’s case, make her ultimately more than me.

Some of them are collected – things I have seen and heard, read or remembered. They are elements of an anecdote, fragments of eavesdropped conversation, strangers’ mannerisms, anything from anywhere that I have found funny or sad or memorable, the tinier the better. Every writer does that too – collects things – but I do not think it’s a personal quality that Makes You Know You’re a Writer. If you just start writing, everything starts to look like something. And once your eye is in, you can see things that aren’t there. Whatever else your character needs you are able to invent, sometimes out of nowhere, sometimes from a kernel of daily life.

Once, I needed to show the compassion that counters Martha’s occasional cruelty and had just, that morning, walked past an optometrist. And so, Martha’s optometrist falls off his stool during her eye test, and because she is so sorry for him, she begins to read the letters wrongly on purpose, coming out with glasses she does not need, which remain forever in the bag, in her glovebox.

Combined, the pillars of a character’s personality, the problems they create and choices they necessitate, all the specificity and detail are what makes the story, which does – I am sorry to say – seem to unfold on its own once the character is there. If you want to write or you are trying to, it will unfold for you too and all you really need to do, to begin with, is apply the conscious skill of sitting down, and not standing up.

—Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason (HarperCollins Australia) is out on the 2nd of September.

Sorrow and Bliss

Limited Signed Copies Available!

by Meg Mason

This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going.

Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it. By the time Martha finds out what is wrong...

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