Voice of the Mist is the novel that Abigail Simpson began when she was six years old. It took eighteen years to finish. Perhaps an explanation is in order...
The Thing about Voice of the Mist
by Abigail Simpson
The thing about Voice of the Mist is I was six years old when I began to write it. I’d never thought about writing before, but then my nana gave me a notebook. It was a very ordinary notebook, but, unlike the exercise books I used at school, it had a hard cover. That made all the difference.
Books with hard covers, my six-year-old brain thought, are for Very Special Stories. So I sat down and I wrote a Very Special Story - with a Carefully Drawn Front Cover and Everything. The story was called Sarah and Anne. (It was supposed to be Sarah and Annie, but on my Carefully Drawn Front Cover I’d accidentally missed out the ‘i’ and no, Mum, I couldn’t just squeeze one in - that would ruin it!)
It wasn’t a novel. It was simply a piece of meandering prose about the daily lives of a girl and her favourite doll, who could talk. (I’d recently seen Toy Story.) It was finished when I reached the last page of the notebook. Nevertheless, it was a masterpiece. I presented it to my mum and, without thinking about it, went to the local stationer’s and bought a second notebook.
Soon I was staying up long into the night, hastily flicking my bedside light off whenever I heard my parents’ footsteps on the stairs, filling notebook after notebook with the adventures of Sarah and Anne. I didn’t especially mean to. I just had a story in my head that wouldn’t stop and needed exorcising.
As the years went by, my stories - well, one continuous story, really - took on the influences of what I was reading. It had the children-from-our-world-entering-a-magical-world element of Narnia, the fantastic castle of Harry Potter, the enchanted forest of Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree... It was also part-diary: the mundane things that happened to me/Sarah at school side-by-side with the fantasy. But something was about to happen to me that wasn’t so mundane.
When I was nine years old, my parents told me we were leaving England: we were moving to New Zealand. My world was shattered. Within a year, we were living in a small, rural town south of Auckland, and I was heartbroken. I was lonely. I was bored.
Boredom was the thing, really. I was sitting around one day - no friends to hang out with - and I thought to myself, What can I do? Well I’d obviously found writing enjoyable enough. Why not do that? But PROPERLY this time. I’d write a novel. A proper novel. How hard could it be? It was just to pass the time; it’d be finished by Christmas.
Books with hard covers, my six-year-old brain thought, are for Very Special Stories. So I sat down and I wrote a Very Special Story - with a Carefully Drawn Front Cover and Everything. The story was called Sarah and Anne. (It was supposed to be Sarah and Annie, but on my Carefully Drawn Front Cover I’d accidentally missed out the ‘i’ and no, Mum, I couldn’t just squeeze one in - that would ruin it!)
It wasn’t a novel. It was simply a piece of meandering prose about the daily lives of a girl and her favourite doll, who could talk. (I’d recently seen Toy Story.) It was finished when I reached the last page of the notebook. Nevertheless, it was a masterpiece. I presented it to my mum and, without thinking about it, went to the local stationer’s and bought a second notebook.
Soon I was staying up long into the night, hastily flicking my bedside light off whenever I heard my parents’ footsteps on the stairs, filling notebook after notebook with the adventures of Sarah and Anne. I didn’t especially mean to. I just had a story in my head that wouldn’t stop and needed exorcising.
As the years went by, my stories - well, one continuous story, really - took on the influences of what I was reading. It had the children-from-our-world-entering-a-magical-world element of Narnia, the fantastic castle of Harry Potter, the enchanted forest of Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree... It was also part-diary: the mundane things that happened to me/Sarah at school side-by-side with the fantasy. But something was about to happen to me that wasn’t so mundane.
When I was nine years old, my parents told me we were leaving England: we were moving to New Zealand. My world was shattered. Within a year, we were living in a small, rural town south of Auckland, and I was heartbroken. I was lonely. I was bored.
Boredom was the thing, really. I was sitting around one day - no friends to hang out with - and I thought to myself, What can I do? Well I’d obviously found writing enjoyable enough. Why not do that? But PROPERLY this time. I’d write a novel. A proper novel. How hard could it be? It was just to pass the time; it’d be finished by Christmas.
But a novel about what? Try as I might, I couldn’t think of anything. Then I felt a little tug on the back of the T-shirt of my mind.
“I’m still here,” Anne said.
“Yes, but you’re a doll,” I told her. “I’m too old for stories about talking toys now. They’re stupid.”
“But I’m not a toy,” she said. “None of us are. We’re shape-shifting magical folk. And we’re here to protect you.”
“From what?” I asked... and the novel was born.
Despite the fantasy elements, it was still largely autobiographical. Sarah was an English girl whose family had moved to a small town in New Zealand. Although her father’s reason for shifting the family had been rather different to mine. Sarah’s route to school was my route to school. The things that happened to her at school were inspired by the things that happened to me at school.
That was the first version of Voice of the Mist. I finished it when I was twelve.
And people enjoyed it. I don’t just mean the various adults who were obliged to tell me it was wonderful; I mean people in my class. And my sister. My sister adored it so much she did a school project on it! I couldn’t believe it. One of my parents’ friends, who was a teacher, read it to her students.
Now I knew I could write there was no stopping me. My made-up world grew and grew in my mind. The story started to get out of control. I finished the first sequel when I was fourteen.
The problem was, now I was fourteen, the stuff I’d written when I was twelve seemed atrocious. Embarrassed, I went back through the first novel, making improvements. By the time I’d finished that, the second novel seemed atrocious, so I set about improving that, and carried on until I’d added another sequel. And, by the time I’d finished that, I was sixteen, and the stuff I’d written when I was fourteen seemed atrocious, so... yeah.
On it went. Writing isn’t the best passion to have when it comes to self-esteem, but by now I had no choice. Writing was no longer merely a hobby: it was my life.
As I grew older, the story grew darker. Less naïve. I didn’t choose where it went. It ran ahead of me, dragging me in the dirt behind it, scraped by and buffeted by self-criticism, but unable to stop. By the time I reached university, I was going insane. I needed to finish, I knew. To at least finalise the first novel. Instead I nearly gave up entirely.
I won’t go into this here, but I suffered from depression throughout my university years. Before this, whenever I was anxious I could rely on writing to offer an escape. When I was in my third year, however, it got so bad that not even my writing was safe. Writing actually made me more miserable because I was convinced I was rubbish at it and I’d wasted my life.
Anyway, I got help for that and I decided, as far as my novel was concerned, to heroically admit defeat. I couldn’t afford to spend any more of my life on it. I had to try something fresh.
So, for about six months after uni was over, I actually believed I was done. I tried to write a new novel, but I couldn’t get passionate about it. Then I realised I’d spent sixteen years living in the world of my first novel - I couldn’t let that go to waste. I had to finish it, even if no publisher would ever be interested in it. I had to finish it for myself so I could move on with my life, for better or for worse.
Okay, then. One last push.
“I’m still here,” Anne said.
“Yes, but you’re a doll,” I told her. “I’m too old for stories about talking toys now. They’re stupid.”
“But I’m not a toy,” she said. “None of us are. We’re shape-shifting magical folk. And we’re here to protect you.”
“From what?” I asked... and the novel was born.
Despite the fantasy elements, it was still largely autobiographical. Sarah was an English girl whose family had moved to a small town in New Zealand. Although her father’s reason for shifting the family had been rather different to mine. Sarah’s route to school was my route to school. The things that happened to her at school were inspired by the things that happened to me at school.
That was the first version of Voice of the Mist. I finished it when I was twelve.
And people enjoyed it. I don’t just mean the various adults who were obliged to tell me it was wonderful; I mean people in my class. And my sister. My sister adored it so much she did a school project on it! I couldn’t believe it. One of my parents’ friends, who was a teacher, read it to her students.
Now I knew I could write there was no stopping me. My made-up world grew and grew in my mind. The story started to get out of control. I finished the first sequel when I was fourteen.
The problem was, now I was fourteen, the stuff I’d written when I was twelve seemed atrocious. Embarrassed, I went back through the first novel, making improvements. By the time I’d finished that, the second novel seemed atrocious, so I set about improving that, and carried on until I’d added another sequel. And, by the time I’d finished that, I was sixteen, and the stuff I’d written when I was fourteen seemed atrocious, so... yeah.
On it went. Writing isn’t the best passion to have when it comes to self-esteem, but by now I had no choice. Writing was no longer merely a hobby: it was my life.
As I grew older, the story grew darker. Less naïve. I didn’t choose where it went. It ran ahead of me, dragging me in the dirt behind it, scraped by and buffeted by self-criticism, but unable to stop. By the time I reached university, I was going insane. I needed to finish, I knew. To at least finalise the first novel. Instead I nearly gave up entirely.
I won’t go into this here, but I suffered from depression throughout my university years. Before this, whenever I was anxious I could rely on writing to offer an escape. When I was in my third year, however, it got so bad that not even my writing was safe. Writing actually made me more miserable because I was convinced I was rubbish at it and I’d wasted my life.
Anyway, I got help for that and I decided, as far as my novel was concerned, to heroically admit defeat. I couldn’t afford to spend any more of my life on it. I had to try something fresh.
So, for about six months after uni was over, I actually believed I was done. I tried to write a new novel, but I couldn’t get passionate about it. Then I realised I’d spent sixteen years living in the world of my first novel - I couldn’t let that go to waste. I had to finish it, even if no publisher would ever be interested in it. I had to finish it for myself so I could move on with my life, for better or for worse.
Okay, then. One last push.
Voice of the Mist is the result.
What with life and everything, it took me another two years. I’m twenty-four now. Ridiculous, isn’t it? But it’s done. It’s done. It’s FINALLY DONE!
And I know what you’re thinking. If this novel’s been re-written so many times, haven’t I simply ruined the original story? Trust me, I haven’t. I was very aware of the danger of doing this, even back when I was fourteen, and, throughout it all, I was careful to keep the original ideas; the original spirit - even an astonishing number of the original sentences.
That’s what makes it special, I think. The book is about a twelve-year-old girl. It was written by a twelve-year-old girl. Everything the character thinks, says and feels is utterly authentic. (Having said that, Sarah is not me. I’m more like Anne.) As I got older, I began to scoff at some of the things that Sarah thought were important, as, I suspect, many older readers of this book will. I resisted the urge to change them, however.
The feelings of children and teenagers are NO LESS VALID than the feelings of adults. As we grow up, we tend to forget this and we mustn’t. I dearly hope that adults can read Voice of the Mist and appreciate it without dismissing it. Even though it’s a fantasy, its realism is, at times, touching. (This is why I was reluctant to change the language the twelve-year-olds use. Twelve-year-olds swear. They do. And some of the twelve-year-olds at my school did things that would get Voice of the Mist banned, but the story’s not about that.)
Voice of the Mist is, essentially, a fairytale. There are elements that you’ll think are unoriginal - and they are - and there are elements that you’ll think were thought of by a kid - and they were. Many of the unoriginal elements, however, were not consciously incorporated. The story as it is now is practically unchanged from when I slowly made it up between the ages of six and twelve. I wasn’t even aware that certain things I could be seen as copying from existed. Certain story elements bleed into your subconscious from popular culture, and they obviously have done for thousands of years.
Hopefully, though, you’ll think my story is original enough. I think it is. On a good day, I really enjoy it. On a bad day... well on a bad day I have to wrench myself back from the precipice of all those anxiety attacks that plagued my university days. But I’m a writer. I’ll have to learn to deal with that.
What with life and everything, it took me another two years. I’m twenty-four now. Ridiculous, isn’t it? But it’s done. It’s done. It’s FINALLY DONE!
And I know what you’re thinking. If this novel’s been re-written so many times, haven’t I simply ruined the original story? Trust me, I haven’t. I was very aware of the danger of doing this, even back when I was fourteen, and, throughout it all, I was careful to keep the original ideas; the original spirit - even an astonishing number of the original sentences.
That’s what makes it special, I think. The book is about a twelve-year-old girl. It was written by a twelve-year-old girl. Everything the character thinks, says and feels is utterly authentic. (Having said that, Sarah is not me. I’m more like Anne.) As I got older, I began to scoff at some of the things that Sarah thought were important, as, I suspect, many older readers of this book will. I resisted the urge to change them, however.
The feelings of children and teenagers are NO LESS VALID than the feelings of adults. As we grow up, we tend to forget this and we mustn’t. I dearly hope that adults can read Voice of the Mist and appreciate it without dismissing it. Even though it’s a fantasy, its realism is, at times, touching. (This is why I was reluctant to change the language the twelve-year-olds use. Twelve-year-olds swear. They do. And some of the twelve-year-olds at my school did things that would get Voice of the Mist banned, but the story’s not about that.)
Voice of the Mist is, essentially, a fairytale. There are elements that you’ll think are unoriginal - and they are - and there are elements that you’ll think were thought of by a kid - and they were. Many of the unoriginal elements, however, were not consciously incorporated. The story as it is now is practically unchanged from when I slowly made it up between the ages of six and twelve. I wasn’t even aware that certain things I could be seen as copying from existed. Certain story elements bleed into your subconscious from popular culture, and they obviously have done for thousands of years.
Hopefully, though, you’ll think my story is original enough. I think it is. On a good day, I really enjoy it. On a bad day... well on a bad day I have to wrench myself back from the precipice of all those anxiety attacks that plagued my university days. But I’m a writer. I’ll have to learn to deal with that.
October, 2015
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