Not the next best thing
Björköby residency — Blog #5
What is it that brings two people together and lights a spark? Entire books have been devoted to that very question. Often the characters in them come from opposite directions, and unexpectedly something between them is unearthed that takes them both by surprise, something at once refreshing and familiar, and it has them longing for more. But there is also difference and, inevitably, conflict (and that’s how it’s supposed to be, for a good story is nothing if not for conflict). By the end of the book the bond between the characters has either deepened or died.
Is it me, that I’m thinking almost automatically of a love story? Yes, it’s probably me. (Although almost every single love story in the history of literature does in fact follow this script.) Less up front in my mind, for a long time, were the stories about friendship. But every element in the scenario above is just as applicable to that kind of tale.
For centuries, Western literature has been putting romantic love, both of the happy ending and the doomed, disastrous kind, in a very bright spotlight, and I have to confess that for a long time, I considered friendship in a novel little more than a weak reflection of the better love story, a kind of close-but-no-cigar attempt, a tepid brew, its added value eluding me, or, in the case of children’s literature, an inevitable maneuver due to the characters’ tender age. Friendship, I used to think until very recently, somehow always remains the next best thing, the dress rehearsal for that one real, ultimate, form of human relationships, the love relationship.
Boy, was I wrong.
All my novels feature friendships. But all of them also focus at least as much, if not more, on the development of a romantic relationship. In one instance one unlikely friendship culminated into an even more unlikely love. I’m still fond of that book, and of the character development in it (even though not all reviewers agreed with me on that point).
But my next book is upsetting the pattern. For this story is about friendship. Not because the characters are children, or because it’s a book meant for readers of age ten and older. Not because I couldn’t come up with anything better, or for once didn’t feel like writing a young adult novel.
On the contrary, I have finally understood. Friendship is not the next best thing.
“To be able to work for a week and a half in a remote, quiet location is a blessing for any creative artist with a family and a busy schedule, but if, like us, you share a deep and rich collaboration, it’s truly a dream to be able to dive into the work together for a longer stretch of time, unhindered by the hubbub of the day. Jurgen and I are good friends, both nature lovers besides, so the thought of this residency does feel a little like coming home.”
That’s how I described it, in the motivation letter accompanying our portfolio, when we took the change to apply for the Björköby residency offererd by collective rights society deAuteurs. The residency we were certain not to be eligible for, yet are currently in the middle of… And yes, we have come home.
At the surreal moment when we learned that we were the lucky ones who got to go to Sweden, we had no clear idea of what we were going to work on. The publication date for STROOM had been set, but apart from that we were still very much in the dark. If possible, we wanted to work on a book or at least focus on a bigger project, but if worst came to worst there would be enough inspiration for a fair collection of Saplings.
Also completed was the short story Mendel’s Greenhouses, set in a gigantic complex of glass domes, filled to the brim with plants, flowers, trees, ponds and much, much more, a sprawl of greenhouses in which the entire World is stored. Here as well, text and image had been working together more closely than is common in the world of children’s literature. Jurgen and I had talked about my story, and had discussed the philosophical foundations for it, as well as the visual strata that might suit this content before he started to make any kind of drawing. And once he dove into the greenhouses, he didn’t want to leave anymore. In his artwork, he summoned what I had seen in my mind’s eye, and more.
Mendel was a gem, but it was a tiny gem, and it had a lot more potential. In this short little story, we had the kernel of a much bigger, more developed book. A real children’s novel, but with extraordinary illustrations as well, a book in which text and image worked together as equal partners in the story, and the result was more than the sum of its parts.
We contacted a number of publishers about this idea, and we were lucky to find one who was completely on our wavelength about what kind of book this could be. So the Björköby residency hasn’t only happened for real, and we are not simply enjoying the peace and quiet of our Swedish workspace for the better part of a fortnight, we are also fully engaged in a concrete project, a story we both believe in and a book that will be out next fall.
Location has played a very important role in all my novels. The Sant Pere de Rodes monastery in Geheugen van Steen, a historical novel about catharism, the red sandstone deserts of Arizona in Sequoia, whatever stories were unfolding, they were always strongly rooted in their settings. But in Mendel’s Greenhouses, unlike my other stories, I saw the world in which the story was to take place first, and only started thinking about characters at a later stage.
Naturally, a good story needs to be about the characters eventually. And fortunately, they presented themselves with great ease, the girl and the boy whom the reader meets in the greenhouses and gets to know in the course of the story. But in the short story their character development remained very skeletal. Now, in Björköby, the moment had come to change that. Now I had to start writing about their unusual friendship. For quite a while I was struggling with how I had to go about that. Until I suddenly realised: for some time now, I have come to know exactly how it feels.
‘Are you a pair? Also, uhm, in other ways than your creative collaboration?’
We have been asked the question a few times now, talking about our work, setting up an exhibition, or lately, during heart-warming conversations with fellow-writers and illustrators at the SmåBUS festival. It always gives me an unusual feeling to reply: ‘No, not at all. But Jurgen and I do have something special’, and the other party in the conversation then goes: ‘Yes, it shows.’
It remains hard to define ‘it’. But it’s very present, and during this residency it has only seeped deeper into our collaboration. We take turns cooking or do it together, we evenly split the cookies, the meat balls and the space on the couch — ‘fair is fair’ and ‘have you counted them?’ are some of the tongue-in-cheeck taglines of our stay here. One of us will climb the apple tree to get fresh fruit for breakfast, the other will cycle across narrow, wobbly docks during a storm.
We brainstorm about what might or might not be possible in this book, even over breakfast sometimes — a way better cure for grumpy morning tempers than the either watered down or way too strong coffee we end up making every time. Funny ideas Jurgen has or questions about the story that are very much to the point end up weaving themselves into my text in a very natural way. With sibling complacency we hang the laundry out to dry, while at the same time discussing and discovering the world(s) we are building together — where are their frontiers, how do they function on both a geological, astrophysical and philosophical level, and where do they break their banks and rise above their shores? How do you pour all kinds of emotions, information and humor into a single image? What do you show, what do you hide?
One day, Jurgen helps me through an acute bout of self-doubt, the next I get to watch as his wonderful artwork comes into existence, and can offer my feedback while the images are emerging from his hands onto the page and screen. An extraordinary connection is ‘what we have’, a friendship airborne on wings of creativity.
So that is why, I now understand at last, there are not only books about love stories, but also so many about friendship. For friendship truly is something very special. And when we read tales of friendship they way they are meant to be read, we soon find out, like we also do in real life, that the best and deepest kind of friendship is a form of love in its own right, perhaps even a better one, more purely focused on the character of the other person, and ungilded (or untroubled) by the whole festival of romantic and sexual attraction.
No, friendship is not the next best thing. I just needed a while to figure that out.
So now we are going to make and complete this special book of ours.
A book about a boy and a girl, about a friendship, and about worlds bursting their banks and rising beyond their shores.
