Second chances and winning second place! Sandra Jensen shares the journey so far for Seagull Pie
I wait for a little ‘nudge’ of sorts
Sandra Jensen
With a fascinating array of life experiences behind her, Sandra Jensen started placing her fiction in publications only in 2008. Since then, her writing bio has grown to a staggering length: over 40 short stories published, winning or placing in dozens of prizes, and numerous grants and scholarships. She won second place in the First Pages Prize 2019 with Seagull Pie - then a memoir, now autobiographical novel.
Sandra, thanks for sitting down to talk about your first pages tips. How do you approach your first pages?
Start typing, absolutely. Overall, I’m a pantser rather than a plotter. That being said, I have certainly learned the drawbacks of the pantsing approach, so once I’m further along in the work I try to do a little of both. With a first draft, and especially the first pages, the more I ’think’ about what I’m going to write, the less likely it is I’ll produce something that’s going to have legs, or that will keep me engaged. I was taught an approach to writing called Freefall, which essentially guides a writer to connect with the emotional truth of whatever it is that they are writing, and in this way the story is allowed to unfold naturally, sometimes quite magically.
Is this the same approach you took with Seagull Pie in particular?
Originally I conceived of Seagull Pie as a memoir about a crazy few years I spent as a teenager in Donegal, Ireland, so I did have a fairly clear idea of the span of the story and most of the main characters. But very early on it became clear that what I was writing would most probably be called fictionalised memoir, or autobiographical fiction.
But to answer your question about the first pages: I sit down and take a moment. I breathe. I stare into space. I wait for a little ‘nudge’ of sorts, an image, a line of dialogue, perhaps. A smell, even. Something that tugs at me. I put my fingers on the keyboard and write down whatever it is that has arisen. Those first few words will generally shape the entire work, and in the case of Seagull Pie, those first few words were spoken by the main character, 13 year old Samantha. Samantha's voice was so strong, so particular, it propelled me as a writer forward, and propelled the story forward, the entirety of which is told by her.
Those first few words certainly grabbed the reading jury’s attention:
“Glencolumbkille. How do you even say that?”
What are the main differences for you in writing memoir versus fiction, and which do you prefer?
I think I’ve only written one entirely fictional story! In some ways I wonder if any piece of fiction is wholly fictional, and if any memoir is wholly ‘factual’.
To me, both fiction and memoir are works of imagination. We are imagining a world, a time, even if it is what we remember as being what ‘actually happened.’
Sharon Butala, in her keynote speech at the Narrative Matters Conference in 2004 said:
"In writing what the world will call autobiography, I am torn between facts and history and the truth of the imagination, and it is to the latter, finally, in terms of my personal history, that I lean.”
I should add that I do prefer to read memoirs that read like fiction!
A factor for me is I have a truly terrible memory, possibly due to having M.E. for 25 years, possibly due to traumatic events in my childhood, I don’t know. This, combined with having experienced those and other extraordinary events, means when I sit down to write I am sabotaged by memories, but poorly remembered ones. I do, however, remember how I felt, and it is from this place I write, diving (with my imagination) into the emotional truth of the character or moment in time.
How about as a reader, what draws you in the most about others' first pages?
I do love to be thrown into the middle of a scene! But not at the expense of voice or language. If you have all three, I’m yours. I suppose mostly I want to feel an immediate, emotional connection, and this generally comes through voice. I certainly don’t need likeable characters, but I want to feel ‘inside’ them, if that makes any sense. I have read novels you could say are ‘well written’, but it feels to me that the writer is hovering over the story rather than writing from within it, and so I too feel a disconnect. I’m reading “about" what is going on, rather than entering fully into a world.
Can you think of a 'forever first page'? An opening of a book that’s stuck with you?
Oh gosh. So many. Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian perhaps. But I do remember reading the first pages of Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, the first of hers I’d read. My spine quite literally straightened. This, this was something new. Something I wanted. I’m talking as a writer here! And it’s not that I wanted to write like her, her style is so utterly different to mine. I can’t even put my finger on it! But I wanted to press that book into my body.
Here is the first, extraordinary line, throwing the reader right into action, darkness and mystery all at once:
When Kitty Finch took her hand off the steering wheel and told him she loved him, he no longer knew if she was threatening him or having a conversation.
A little more mainstream perhaps, is Lily King’s Euphoria, a wonderful novel I read this year. Here are the first few lines:
As they were leaving the Mumbanyo, someone threw something at them. It bobbed a few yards from the stern of the canoe. A pale brown thing.
"Another dead baby," Fen said.
He had broken her glasses by then, so she didn’t know if he was joking.
How can you not want to keep reading?
Lesser known (quite unjustly) is Anna Mackmin’s Devoured, a voice-driven story of a young girl living in a commune in Norfolk in the 70s, the first lines are electric:
Here you come. Bike ride with your beloved. Ms Jessica Dog. Irish setter, persuasive ears, shocking fleas, extraordinary pulling power.
Those really are electric first lines. Sandra, are you working on a new project and if so, how are you handling your new first pages?
I’m still working on Seagull Pie. I only finished the first draft at the beginning of 2020 - a truly shitty first draft actually. I spent the rest of the year trying to pull it together, and right now I’m working with The Literary Consultancy to make sure it will be ready to send to agents.
The novel has already garnered quite a bit of notice, but I spent seven years on another novel which is currently in a drawer, and I don’t want the same fate to happen to Seagull Pie. The initial manuscript assessment from The Literary Consultancy is exceptionally positive, my main goal right now is to shorten. It’s going to be wonderful to have another set of eyes on what can and can’t go, I’m so close to the story it’s hard for me to be sure. I’m very excited!
Winning second prize in the 2019 First Pages Prize was not only a fantastic boost to my morale as a writer, but a critical step in the life of Seagull Pie. I had in fact put it in a drawer for nearly four years.
Shortly after starting the novel in 2015, my mother died. I had about a chapter written, but I couldn’t continue. She, or a version of her, is one of the main characters in the story. On a whim I dug out my chapter and entered it into the First Pages Prize.
And the rest is history, as they say. Winning second prize made me realise it was time to continue. That I must continue. The first place winner, Sara Johnson Allen, told me about a writing retreat she co-ran in France, starting in a matter of weeks. It had one space free. I took it, and returned to Seagull Pie. I have so much to thank the Prize for!
What can I say? Enter! The deadline is on the 21st so check those drawers of yours, perhaps there’s something you put there that is yearning to be given a second chance? Or perhaps you are working on something you’d like to enter but feel unsure. For me, entering competitions is always worth it, even if I don’t place. It encourages me to look at my writing with a different eye, the eye of a reader. It encourages me to polish and edit, and sadly it’s true: most of writing is about editing. Sad for me, because I do love the rush of writing a first draft, the rush writing those first pages!
You can find out more about me and my work from my website: https://www.sandrajensen.net. I’m on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SandraAJensen (but I have to add my life on Twitter occurs in fits and starts!).
Sandra, thank you for this fascinating glimpse into your process - and learnings along the way. It’s been an inspiring journey so far for Seagull Pie and we can’t wait to see your novels on bookshelves and in the spotlight. Readers, follow Sandra Jensen on her links above, and click on Prize 2021 to enter your first pages.