FIREBORN

Magdalena Ball is author of The Art of Assessment and Quark Soup.  She runs the popular Compulsive Reader website at www.compulsivereader.com .  Her short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in many printed anthologies and journals and have won several awards.  Sleep Before Evening is her debut novel.

 Tell us a little something about yourself Magdalena.  Where do you hail from? Have you traveled much?

I?m a New Yorker by birth but I now live in Australia.  So yes, I?ve traveled a fair amount.  I lived in the US until I was about 21 or so and then went off to England to do a post-graduate degree at Oxford.  There I met my husband and, after a brief return to the US, we migrated to Australia where we?ve been ever since.  We?ve now got roots in the Australian soil (and three children with Aussie accents) so traveling isn?t that easy anymore, but I still have a fondness for Europe, and family in the US, so traveling is definitely on the horizon once the kids are a little older if I?m not completely broke by then!  I might be at the Virginia Festival of the Book next March, hopefully with family in tow.
 

I understand you have a husband, three children, and at least one part time job.  I have trouble getting my cat to let me write.  How do you fend off interruptions?

I don?t really fend off the interruptions.  I just work with them.  You kind of have to get used to working in conditions that are often chaotic.  A Zen like ability to keep calm and keep writing even while dinner is burning, the kids are fighting, the boss wants his measures, and hubby is due home from the office in 10 minutes and the house looks like twin cyclones just passed through, really helps.  If that fails, a fair amount of screaming helps release the pressure! Honestly, you just have to a) commit to doing a little each day and b) accept that you will never get a quiet house or a big block of time to write in, so you just have to get to it quickly ? here, now and whatever else is going on.  A clear idea of what writing I want to accomplish each day helps me focus and go directly to it without wasting time.   If all else fails, I?ll make use of the chaos to write a poem about chaos.  When my kids are fighting a lot, I?ll put fighting kids into a scene I?m writing.  Writers have a definite edge!

Where did you get the title for your book Sleep Before Evening?  And, who is M,D,O,G from your dedication page?

Sleep Before Evening is from a line out of Walter Pater?s The Renaissance written in 1873.  The full line, which sums up the theme of the book, is: ?Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening.? It?s about creating secular meaning in our lives by recognizing the beauty in each moment, in those we love, or even in the most mundane details of our existence ? about keeping that sense of wonder which is the crucible of art.

M is Martin, my dear husband.  D is Dominic, my first born son ? now 10.  O is Oliver my second son ? who is 8 next week.  G is Genevieve, my daughter who is 4.  I suspect I?ll be dedicating everything I write to them as they form the nucleus of my life and are the main source of my inspiration.


What do you think is the most important thing for a new writer learn?  Do you think these things are best learned on the job, or not?

Writing is like any craft in that you have to learn mainly by doing. That is an answer to both questions ? it?s probably the most important thing for a new writer to learn.  You can certainly learn by reading, by exploring others work, by attending classes, conferences and workshops.  But all of those are adjunct activities.  Without working at it by ?doing? or by writing, it?s all theoretical.  We all have a voice but it only becomes polished and beautiful with use.  Otherwise inspiration is meaningless and all the advice and lessons in the world are wasted.  So the key lesson is that in order to become a good writer you have to write, every day if possible.  The ability to write well isn?t handed down to us by a bountiful, detached muse.  It comes, like any other talent, by working hard at your craft, writing badly, copiously, and frequently, until you begin to develop a skill; an ear; a capability and a confidence. 


You have so many wonderful reviews and they all praise your writing style.  You have a beautiful, almost musical style.  How do you do that?

Thank you!  I have a tendency to think and write in metaphor, even when it isn?t entirely appropriate.  Poetry is certainly my most natural medium, so the style is simply one which comes naturally to me.  What?s harder for me is to work against that in structuring, plotting, ensuring that cause and effect follow in the world around my character, not just within my character ? to pull those submerged voices into a world that works.  But I am a poet first I think, and hence my prose style tends to be rich in imagery and fairly poetic.  
 

Your book really illustrates/illuminates the artist mentality.  You seem pretty well versed in both visual and audio art forms.  Do you dabble in other arts yourself?

I dabble, badly, in music and art, but really as a very minor kind of hobby.  My sons both play music though and Dominic, my older boy, is a gifted pianist.  I drew on what he was doing for some of the music sections, and in fact, he was practicing Dvorak?s Largo while I was writing, so I just used it (?Dom, what notes did you just play??).  But there was an awful lot of research that I had to do for this book!  I spent a lot of time visiting galleries, sometimes scribbling furiously while staring at a painting to try and capture the visual image in words (a good exercise which I recommend to other writers).  I spent a lot of time listening to music and trying to translate that sound ? holding my fingers a certain way over the piano and watching them move.  And my family is filled with artistic people ? my aunt is a painter.  My uncle is a composer.  My parents are both musicians. I have writers, musicians and artists throughout the family (Don Katz, who now runs Audible, actually wrote a book, Home Fires, about my mother?s side of the family).  I was able to draw on that artistic vein, and where I still got it wrong (and I sometimes did, in early drafts), was given lots of advice on correcting things.  My mom was my best proofreader and editor ? she was fantastic (correcting my appalling American accents too ? it has been 20 years since I?ve lived in the US!).  
 

Do you have a favorite scene in Sleep Before Evening? Why or why not?

Being something of a romantic, I like the first time Miles and Marianne meet under the arch at Washington Square Park ? the fleeing from The Figaro and the trip to the Statue of Liberty (helps me deal with my homesickness too!).  But maybe the most important scene is when Marianne takes the phone call from Miles in the last chapter, and then composes her piece.  I think it synthesizes much of what went on before. Also the paragraph that follows, about Wittgenstein.   

Would you like to post a teaser from Sleep Before Evening (a few paragraphs) to give the readers a taste of what to expect?

 Sure, I?ll give you an exclusive.  This hasn?t been posted anywhere, nor have I read it publicly. 

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?The music book?s paper was thicker than the Chinese diary Eric had given her as a child, but she felt the same connection with the young self that once wrote in the Chinese book.

          Marianne sketched notes on the staff, testing them on the piano and then returning to the book to write them out. The motion was almost effortless, her head full of the loss of Grandpa, Julia?s red plaits, the hunger she still felt for drugs, Miles and their trip to the Statue of Liberty, to the Planetarium, and her father, writing and playing and writing again until her shoulders and arms ached and the music score paper was full of black dots, circles and lines; a secret code that her mother wouldn?t be able to crack. The music book was a diary that allowed her to skip the commas and conjunctions that undermined her attempts to explain how she felt and went straight to the heart of sensation.

          Her grandfather used to quote Wittgenstein to her: ?Describe the aroma of coffee. Why can?t it be done? Do we lack the words? And for what are words lacking?? He was trying to improve her English. ?What can be said, can be said with clarity: What can?t be said, must remain unsaid. The language defines the limit, beyond that limit is nonsense.?

          But Eric was wrong. She leaned back on the piano, her fingers stained  with ink. Wittgenstein was wrong too. Emotions and feelings couldn?t always be expressed in words but they could be expressed with a clarity of  

their own in other ways.

          She had always thought of herself as cerebral. A left brain thinker, like Eric, struggling with her linguistic limits and unable to say what she felt. Playing the first movement of her piece, she felt herself moving beyond the limits of her language. She was creating meaning where words couldn?t go. She banged her hand against the piano, whispering: ?yes.?

          Then she closed the cover, laid her head on the piano, closed her eyes and slept dreamlessly.? (313, 314)

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Do you have any new projects in the works?

          Always.  I?m writing a full length poetry book which I?ve provisionally titled Impact Enigma.  I?m also working on my next novel Black Cow, which is about a tree-change, set in Australia this time.  Then Evie?s Song ? a novel about my grandmother set in the Catskill Mountains of NY State during World War II (that?s an ambitious book with 3 points of view and 3 time frames).  Then probably Goethe?s Daughters, about Goethe?s favourite grandson who traveled to NZ, met a Maori priestess named Puhiwahine, fell in love and spent the rest of his days as a NZ farmer.  It?s a true story and I just found out, with great delight, that my son?s friends mother is his great great great great granddaughter.  The story has never been told and I might just do it as nonfiction if she lets me, as it?s quite a story.  There will probably be a few poetry books between the other novels as well ? just for a break.  I do try to keep open to serendipity though, so if some tremendously exciting project looms on the horizon, everything might change as I make way for it.