Cathleen Holst

My search for a place

By: V.R. Christensen

Did I ever really need one? Perhaps not. Perhaps I always had one, and living a quiet uneventful life was really all I ever needed. But there is something within us, don’t you find, that wants to get out, to make a shout out to the world, to make our place, however small.

I cannot explain it, but I always felt I was born in the wrong time and place. When I was a child, I had a recurring dream that God came to talk to me and told me this was all a joke, it wasn’t real. Of course that was just a silly dream. But sometimes I wonder. I write Historical Fiction, and I honestly spend so much time, writing, editing, researching that world, that when I come up for air the here and now of reality seems foreign, strange, and downright uninviting.

Do I wish I wore a corset, could have my marriage arranged for a fortune and have my legal rights stripped of me as I became my husband’s property? Er...no. But there are certainly times when I feel like it would be nice to live where people still had nice manners, where they looked their best every day, where you could take a walk in the countryside and not be accosted by engine exhaust, air breaks and litter.

But that raises an interesting point, doesn’t it? Writing is not purely escapism. At least it isn’t for me. It’s an opportunity for me to explore my reality in contrast to an altered one, one I create—sort of. Writing Historical Fiction, one must be very careful to stay close to the rules and setting created by documented history, and yet it does provide the opportunity to explore one’s life in a safe environment. It’s controlled, after all. So, let’s say, my family, or perhaps my guardians, have arranged my marriage, and the guy is a creep—or he’s not—I know for myself it’s all going to be ok, because I’m in control (for the most part) of the story. But it allows me to examine my own feelings about this sense of powerlessness, this sense of exploitation and victimisation. Don’t we sometimes feel that way? Don’t women, especially, feel that way? So my characters reactions sometimes teach me a great deal about myself.

On the other hand, if I work very hard, and do the very best that I can, and when, at last, I have my finished ‘masterpiece’ and have thrust it upon the unwary and waiting world...and then, when people start reading it!...well, what an opportunity I have had to influence (I hope for the better) my reading public. Have I inspired someone? Helped them to live with their pain? To move past it? Every now and then the answer is yes, and then, all this hard work, the blood, sweat and tears of trial and failure and past rejection are suddenly very much worth it.

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