A Quote by Deborah Harkness
Once upon a time, about 10 years ago, I thought maybe I could write a mystery series about a midwife in Elizabethan England. I had an elaborately convoluted title and an elaborately convoluted plotline, and at that point I got stupendously bored.
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I'm 58 years old. I got married for the first time - it's about time, right? Growing up as a gay woman, you just don't ever think about that, and then I thought, about 10 years ago, 'You know, I think within 10 years gay marriage will be legal.' And here we are, 10 years later, making it legal.
I had thought up the title, 'The Good Luck of Right Now,' several years ago. I had no idea what it meant or what the book would be about but I thought, 'Someday I'm going to write a book with that title.'
"There is no analysis here," the most brutal of them wrote. Now I wonder if my papers lacked critical thought, or if it was really more about my inability/refusal to write in the convoluted style that they wanted me to. I remember the initial shock upon reading my peers' papers. I seriously could not understand them, and I couldn't understand why the writing had to be so unclear in order to be considered smart.
I did a series in Britain years ago called 'Skins,' and I remember my little sister telling me that I had a Wikipedia page that was talking about me. But then it got deleted because on Wikipedia anyone can write stuff, right? So I think that it got sabotaged. But this is years ago, so it got taken down. I don't think it exists anymore.
You get to a point in life where it suddenly occurs to you that you don't need all the things you once thought you did--that it's really, well, convoluted. My life feels overblown sometimes, and I don't want it to be. I want it to be streamlined. So I'm living a much more unscripted life now than I have in a long time.
I've never been invited to do an exhibition or do a talk in England, except once, about 10 years ago. I've given talks all across Canada, many in the United States, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan - but not England.
Many years ago I had two small children, and I wanted to be able to be home when they got home from school. And I didn't like the direction journalism was taking. I thought if I could write books, I could work at home and have the best of both worlds. I wrote my first mystery while still working full time, and it didn't sell, but the next one did sell, so I quit my job for the world of fiction. Scary, but I've never regretted it for a single day.
I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall of man, they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now they talk about the survival of the fittest: they think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion, they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean.
Time elaborately thrown away.
In a long story like 'Weathercraft,' it becomes kind of convoluted. It can become perhaps difficult to remember what led up to whatever point you're at. I worried a little bit about people being able to keep the shape of the story in their heads while they were reading it, and not wonder how they got wherever they were.
I can remember how I sang - a little more nasal-y back then. Listening to those old recordings is like seeing a photograph of yourself from 10 years ago. You're wearing what you thought looked cool at the time. You had your hair styled the particular way you thought looked cool. It's an accurate depiction of who you were and what you looked and sounded like at that point in your life. It doesn't necessarily mean that it aged in a way that it feels as cool or sounds as good to you, or says what you thought it said, 10 years later. That's just the nature of growing older.
When I did 'Babe' I wanted to talk about animal rights without going through some convoluted justifications about using animal products.
I almost write to formula, because there's a historical beginning, then the plots get convoluted.
But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.
In medical school, you're taught to write in this convoluted, Latinate way. I knew the vocabulary as well as anyone, but I would write kidney instead of nephric. I insisted on using English.
My creative process isn't a long one, so I could have started a song 10 years ago and then finish it 10 years later. It's all just about pushing around words and melodies, for me. The material is kind of shape-shifting.
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