What turns us into writers?
For all of us, the answer to that question is different. For me, the answer partly lies in my own nature, in a way of seeing the world; in a nurture filled with books and stories; but also in an unusual direction.
For the very year I was born, my French parents, who were then working as expatriates in Indonesia, bought their first house, with the help of my paternal grandmother Marie-Louise Masson. A few months later, as a sickly baby, I was left with her, for the sake of my health—and stayed with her till I was five years old and my parents took me with them to Australia.
La Nouvelle Terrebonne, as my parents named their French house (after my father’s wealthy French-Canadian ancestors’ manor at Terrebonne near Montreal in Quebec) was at the time a large, beautiful but damaged late-eighteenth house, with crumbling seventeenth century outbuildings, in a south-western French village called Empeaux.
It wasn’t common at the time for people to buy a country house so far out ‘in the sticks’ , as we say in Australia, especially when it was in such bad condition. Not only would the house need restoring from top to bottom, but there was massive work to do as well in its enormous overgrown garden, dotted with ancient trees including a rather sinister yew and a magnificent elm planted by one of the Sun King Louis XIV’s advisers, as well as fruit trees. (The garden was so big everyone called it ‘the park.’ )
Well, nothing daunted, my parents set to work, devoting a large part of their expatriate salaries to pay a succession of masons, tilers, electricians, plumbers, painters, carpenters and other local tradesmen. Slowly but surely, and with the help of much cash, the house turned from Cinderella in rags to beautiful princess admired by all. And it became our family base, our French base, to which we returned every two-three years, for two-three months.
We loved that house. In its warm, enchanted space, everything was extraordinary. The house was full of stories: some sad, like that of the heartbroken young man who’d hung himself in one of the bedrooms (haunted, it was nevertheless a beautiful room, and a great family favorite); some scary, like the well in the garden where a witch had been thrown, long ago; some touching, like that of the old gentleman who tapped at the front door once and told us how he’d spent his childhood in the house (I still dream about it, he said); some amazing, like that of the elm tree which because of its origin featured in the heritage of France (named a National Monument, it died, sadly, in the Dutch elm epidemic of the 1980’s).
The old wooden stairs creaked, the attic was spooky, the cellar smelled of the earth. In the storage antechambers that ran the length of each main room, there were lots of things to discover: the Indonesian baskets full of Balinese dance costumes in red and gold and green and gold, with their assorted jewellery made in gilded leather decorated with bits of glass; a huge oak wardrobe full of old fur coats, including one made of Canadian wolfskins; a wicker cradle with my aunt Geneviève’s lovely 1940’s doll in it, sporting a wig made of her own, blond childhood hair; and the big pottery and glass jars where in the winter goose and duck confit slept under layers of fat, for it was so cold in those unheated antechambers that they might as well have been fridges. In the ‘park’ we ran riot, screaming, running, climbing the fruit trees to gorge ourselves on cherries, greengages, figs..And sometimes we’d take our bikes and go off for hours exploring, in a freedom that we never had in our Sydney suburb.
As my mother still says, that house had a soul. The soul of a good fairy, despite the many terrible stories associated with it. It was a house that welcomed its people, which did them good, especially children. Grown up now, we regret it greatly—for our parents sold it in the late 1990’s—but nevertheless our memories are not bitter, but rather filled with the joy of having known so well a house which so enchanted our childhood.
And for myself, I know that not only did La Nouvelle Terrebonne greatly enrich my childhood memories, it has forever become a part of my imaginative DNA as a writer. For the gift of that good fairy house was to grant me the gift of storytelling: and that is a gift whose preciousness never fails, but only grows with time.
What sparked your imagination as a child? Did any piece of your past awaken the writer within?
About Sophie Masson
Born in Indonesia of French parents, and brought up in France and Australia, Sophie Masson is the multi-award-winning and internationally-published author of over 70 books, mainly for children and young adults. A bilingual French and English speaker, she has a PhD in creative practice and in 2019 received an AM award in the Order of Australia honours list for her services to literature.
Thank you, Sophie, for transporting us to that extraordinary home of your childhood. The phrase “I still dream about it,” made my breath catch. Can we ever leave the homes of our past? Especially when they are so rich in detail and in story. La Nouvelle Terrebonne is an entire library of novels in itself.
Sounds like a magical place, Sophie. I grew up in a nondescript American suburb and I was blessed with loving parents and lots of friends. What I remember most were the neighborhood games (whatever sport was in season) and good natured arguments over sports and music. And, of course, listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on my transistor radio. Thanks for sharing your memories.
Sophie-
Growing up I lived in a succession of wood-framed houses in suburban towns on the east coast of America.
All were new. When we moved in the dirt lawns were newly seeded, saplings held up by wires. The houses smelled of sheetrock and paint. We knew we were moving up in the world by the increasing number of bedrooms and garage space. I dreamed of living in a house with history, maybe one of those grand boulevard Tudor mansions of the 1920’s.
What I really wanted, though, was something a house didn’t hold: a sense of belonging, of security, of being okay. We moved around too much.
My sense of being anchored in family history came from my Great Uncle Robert’s hillside farm in the country around Reading, PA, an area later captured perfectly by John Updike in his memoirs. Uncle “Locker” and Aunt Margaret lived in a Revolutionary War era log cabin. It smelled of wood smoke and floor wax. I loved it. It was where I felt secure.
You’ve made me think about houses and their importance in stories, which comes as much from the emotional associations they have as from their smells.
Thanks, great post.
Enchanting post, Sophie. I had a tree in my backyard when I was a child and this tree, a choke-cherry tree, was twisted like an old pointy witch who spit hard black berries. I imaged this tree speaking to me about ghosts hiding among the leaves. At night, from my attic bedroom window, I’d watch the ghosts glow. Thus began my love of supernatural and stories in my mind.
I was just thinking about this topic, and the origins of my love of the Arts & Crafts architectural style. My father had a wealthy friend who lent us his family’s cottage in Northern Michigan every summer. Built in the 1890’s, it was very much rooted in the past, with exposed and unpainted timbers inside, and a spacious open-air porch. There was no television, no neighborhood kids, but oh how we loved being there, and anticipated the trip up each year. My love of reading was born there, and the house is a part of my memory of some of my favorite stories.
I think Don’s right about smell. The house smelled of the hearth and the nearby cedars. And I’ll add sound. There was a rock-lined brook in front of the house, piped from the stream behind into the bay out front. The babbling of the stream and the lapping of the waves on the shore became the backdrop to our reading sessions and lulled us to sleep each night. I still find peace in the sound of water.
I loved the place so much, it inspired many of the elements of the Arts & Crafts bungalow we built and live in today. Wonderful post, Sophie. Thanks for reminding me how the memories of that house fit into my writing journey.
I agree with CG, Sophie. It sounds like a magical place. The memories you hold could surely inspire you to write some really cool scenes in a story.
Thanks for the post.
Patti
What a great, evocative post — that house sounds amazing.
I grew up in the middle of a big city (Toronto, no Rob Ford jokes, please) and for 3 years in a suburb of Brisbane, and they each had great scope for imagination.
In Brisbane, we lived on the end of a cul-de-sac, across the street from the Brisbane River. There were no houses between us and the river because of erosion and flooding. There were no houses behind us, just a stream and scrub and eventually a sports field. Lots of room for exploring and make-believe. I used to sit in a sand pit and scratch on the “walls” as if I were a cave dweller. (My brother tried to jump the sand pit on his bike.)
But in the big city, I’d go off on my own to places where I could make up stories about what I’d see — cemeteries, any sidewalk anywhere in the city. Or I’d sit on my windowsill (it was not designed to be sat on, so this was a romantic act, not a comfortable one) and put myself in the books I read.
Looking back, I think the uniting factor was my inclination to use my imagination — wherever I was — to add story to whatever was ready-to-hand. In all honestly, this was highly influence by Anne of Green Gables, who did this, also, and she was my hero :-) Thanks for such a great question, Sophie!
My past and creative story writing plots lie in the Middle East. I lived in that part of the world for over 20 years and did not imagine how much I had soaked up the culture, thinking and life style until I started using it in writing my first novel (still in progress). It is an area of the world that has mystic, adventure and full of many compassionate and generous people. My stories, I hope, will convey some of that.
Sophie, thank you for this well-written tribute to an enchanting estate.
What inspired my childhood imagination? Does it awaken my writer within?
To answer…
One day, when I was young, my grandpa said, “You know, Lyndi, there’s an old woman who lives up in the mountains in Iceland?” My eyes grew larger and larger as he continued. “When children are bad she steals them and—“
“Oli, stop scaring her,” my grandma said, charging forth to rescue me.
I’m not sure how many spooky tales my grandma saved me from but she didn’t save me from the old woman who lived in the mountains. That woman haunted me for over forty years—lying in wait, until one fateful day at six o’clock in the morning. She sprang at me.
“Write my story!” she demanded.
And, having no choose, I held the pen as it flew across the page. Later that day I brought the story with me to my writing group. My fellow writers’ guiding words and trained eyes helped me further develop the story transforming it into a short story I titled ‘Something Good to Eat’.
‘Something Good to Eat’ was published in the Icelandic Connection magazine.
I was the only girl with four brothers, and we moved a lot, so books were my best friends – my way to go anywhere and also to stay in one place — I was always fascinated by people who stayed in one town their entire lives, and who cultivated friendships for years and years and years! I learned this first through books, and then as I grew older, through seeing the larger world.
This did affect my writing in so many ways.
Good question… I’d have loved to live in a house like that!
I think what sparked my imagination as a child was every story I heard or read, and those stories made me want to come up with my own. I made up stories around my own life as well, and lived in those stories.
If I had to choose a place, it would be the forest. I grew up near Rotterdam (The Netherlands), in a village surrounded by industrial estates, dykes and windy “polders”, and a trip to the forest for me was like going to fairy-tale land. It’s still my favorite place to be, and a huge, wild forest plays an important part in my first novel, so much so that it has almost become a character.
What a wonderful house and park to grow up in, Sophie. It reminds me a little bit of Madeleine L’Engle and Crosswicks. We moved around a lot and during our poorest time in India, lived in a garage for a little while. It used to get electrified during the monsoons so that if we wanted to play records, we’d have to endure a jolt of electricity. It was there my mother killed a giant tarantula. Everything was a great big adventure … Now all these experiences somehow make their way into the stories I write, stories about people on the margins of society.
What a beautiful post, Sophie. When I was a young girl, we lived in a house where the former residents were avid gardeners. I have fond memories of the first purple crocus blooming in a side border, the smell of muscadines on a trellis, and a little pine forest planted in the back quarter of the yard.
Just beyond the fence was an old apple tree under-planted with lots of old-fashioned daffodils (the kind with amazing fragrance). I’d lie among the daffodils each spring–daydreaming and breathing in the wonderful scent. To this day, that is the smell of spring.
What a lovely post. You make that home come alive. :)
In Alaska when I was a kid (seven-ish), my family used to live across the street from a park that looked out over Cook Inlet. The sides of the park were framed with little woods, patches of trees that separated the park from other peoples homes. I remember running through those woods and believing them huge, giant forests almost filled with wonders and strange creatures.
As kids we once stumbled upon a tree house — just a platform, really — that sat perched at what seemed to be the tippy top of a tree, which we were never brave enough to climb. But we imagined the kind of strange, brave person who would live there.
Another time we discovered a cement slab (probably something industrial) hidden in the trees. It became the framework for an invisible house in which we pretended to live. It became a stage upon which we pranced and gave our bows. It became the home of an evil man who kidnapped good children and hid them away. It became so many things.
This little wood inspired a story I began to write a couple of years ago, called “The Witch of the Little Wood.” In that story, a girl discovers the the trees across the street hide something deeper and darker. The short story grew into a novella, which is now part one of an unfinished novel that I plan to finish eventually.
You always have such a sense of optimism and affection when you write about setting, Sophie. I find that a very attractive quality.
To a large extent, my imaginative DNA took shape outdoors, whether it was in the hubbub of a close neighborhood with small bungalows and intimate neighbors, or the mountains and lakes of my parents’ childhood homes, which we visited most summers. The mountains and neighborhood have found their way into my writing. The lake hasn’t yet.
Thank you all so much for all these wonderful responses–lots of beautiful stories in themselves! Memory-places are so important in the creation of a writer, the nurturing of imagination–and it’s been just great to read all your accounts of how these things shaped you–and how your imagination shaped them as well.