Imagination, Leashed and Unleashed

By Celia Jeffries

My novel Blue Desert began as the story of an older woman looking back at a life she had kept secret, the life she had once lived in the Sahara. I had no trouble ‘tuning in’ to the voice of this character and following as the writing took me into a different time and place.

If, as Joan Didion does, we write to find out what we’re thinking, I was enjoying writing to find out what this character was doing. Alice George, the main character in Blue Desert, was young, impetuous, and eager for life. On the page I followed her from 1910 England, to Morocco, and then into the Sahara. 

When I described this journey to one of the first publishers who showed interest, his eyes widened and he said “Oh, you’re writing from imagination.” I was puzzled. Wasn’t all fiction from the imagination? Apparently not. Most fiction is grounded in ‘write what you know.’

I knew a fair bit of British history and literature, and had always been drawn to the la Belle Epoque (the artistically vibrant years before WW1, usually referred as 1880-1914). But the Sahara? My character was taking me there, but I hadn’t a clue about that expanse of sand—I did not even know it was larger than the continental United States. And I had no idea that a tribe known as the Tuareg lived there.

I began reading my way into the Sahara by way of historians (Herodotus, Douglas Porch, Barbara Tuchman), novelists (Paul Bowles, Isabelle Eberhardt, Edith Wharton), and nonfiction writers (Marq DeVilliers, Jeremy Keenan, William Langewiesche). My character Alice was riding a camel, she was part of a caravan, she was lost in a medina. I stayed in imagination throughout a first and second draft. Then I knew had to move into the reality of the world I was creating on the page. I needed to know the sounds, the smells, the flavors of the world I was writing about. I had to go to the source.

I signed up for an ‘adventure tour’ in Morocco that included a five-day camel trek through the Sahara. Although I did not want to make the trip alone, I ended up boarding Air Maroc by myself. Okay, I thought, if I’m afraid of this, imagine how my character felt? Imagination met reality when the tour left Marrakesch and I realized there was an entire mountain range between my character and the desert.

Two days later I climbed on the back of a camel and was thrust forward, backward and straight into the sky before I could catch my breath. Somehow I had imagined the animal correctly, but riding it had to be experienced to be believed (or written). The desert was as peaceful and beautiful as I had imagined, despite the dust storm that raged through at one point. But it was the medina that upended my narrative arc. Even our seasoned tour guide hired a local guide to take us in. “You don’t go in there alone,” she said. “You may never come out.”

Life intervened on my return to the states, and I put the manuscript aside while I served two years in the Peace Corps, where I was posted to Botswana. An unexpected opportunity. It wasn’t the Sahara, but it was Africa, and a desert community to which I had to adapt.

When I finally returned to the novel, my character decided to wander around London. I had been to London a few times and had loved walking the city. I posted a large map above my desk and noted the places Alice moved through. Then came an opportunity to visit a friend at the University of London. I set out to walk the route Alice took through the city. By the time my phone app clocked twenty miles, I realized another major revision was necessary. This route wasn’t going to work, no matter how strong a character Alice was.

Although I did not time travel to 1910, I did follow my character into her story, managed to research her world, experienced what I could, and let imagination loose on the rest. I wrote what I came to know.     

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BIO: 

A New England native, Celia Jeffries’ work has appeared in numerous newspapers, literary magazines, and anthologies. She teaches writing workshops at Pioneer Valley Writers Workshop. Learn more at www.celiajeffries.com. 

Book link: https://www.rootstockpublishing.com/rootstock-books/blue-desert 

BLUE DESERT

Can Alice face her demons and open her heart more fully to the life she once lived in the Sahara—a life she has hidden from her husband and herself? Blue Desert is a story of exile, family secrets, and the power of love.

Alice George is a headstrong young British woman who finds herself living among the Tuareg, a tribe of nomadic warriors. While the outside world faces the catastrophe of World War I, the Tuareg continue to crisscross the Sahara as a matrilineal society in which the men are veiled and the women hold property—a world in which anything can happen. It is a world well suited to eighteen-year-old Alice, who discovers a life she could never live in corseted England.

In 1917, Alice returns home to a world completely alien to the one she left in the Sahara. Her silence about that life is finally broken sixty years later when she receives a telegram announcing Abu has died in the desert. “Who is Abu?” her husband asks. “My lover,” she replies. Thus, begins a weeklong journey of revelation as Alice lays bare her secrets.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing