It’s never too late. And if you bristle at that old adage, allow me to try to change your mind. Meet Lona Manning. She has done something for the first time at the age of 60. It’s something she’d always wanted to do. Something that stirred her imagination as a child.
“When I was a little girl, I told everyone I was going to be a writer when I grew up,” says Lona. “I used to make up bedtime stories for my little sisters. But by college, I decided that I had no talent for writing fiction – how to describe scenery well, or how to move the action along in an imaginary world.”
Lona thinks that maybe it was the college creative writing course she took that is to blame. Oh, irony. Her subsequent work as an administrator for non-profits kept her writing skills sharp drafting newsletters, media releases, brochures, and the like, but the desire to write fiction had fizzled.
“Then I had the most extraordinary experience in the spring of 2016, when out of nowhere, the novel started writing itself in my head. At first, I ignored it. After all, I had plenty to do with preparing my lessons, teaching, marking exam papers and so on. I was in China (Lona teaches ESL). Why was I thinking about Regency England? But I have never felt so powerful an urge to write. So, I gave in to it and started writing,” she says.
Regency England, you ask? Why was a woman from Canada’s west coast thinking about England while she was in China? Good question. Like many, Lona is a Jane Austen fan. Fans of Jane Austen? You’ve got no idea. Thirty-six Austenesque books were published this past March alone. I know.
“I wasn’t even aware that there is now a huge market for Jane Austen Fan Fiction (JAFF), but it’s almost exclusively centred on the romantic aspects of the story, not on Austen’s language or her ironic wit or her social commentary. Also, almost all JAFF is based on variations of Pride & Prejudice. Romance readers are not interested in the tepid romance between Fanny and Edmund in Mansfield Park!”
Lona worked on her labour of love called A Contrary Wind over the summer and fall never doubting that she’d finish the book. And, unlike many writers, Lona felt none of those pangs of anxiety, wondering how her work would be received. It simply had to be written.
“Because of the way the project started (almost involuntarily), I hadn’t asked, ‘is there an audience for this book?’”
Even with Austen’s template, Lona felt as though she were starting from scratch. All her writing had been of the non-fiction variety and while there is an element of the creative there, it’s a patch of grass compared to the enormous landscape of fiction.
“For A Contrary Wind, I had the basic characters to work with, that’s true. I also added some new characters and tweaked the original characters a bit. Fanny Price is a widely disliked heroine and Mansfield Park is Jane Austen’s least popular novel. People see Fanny as wimpy, priggish and uninteresting. However, I think Mansfield Park is a brilliant, subtle novel – with, at its core, a heroine that people can’t relate to. Like most Jane Austen fans, I have read and re-read her novels over the years and found myself re-reading Mansfield Park the most often.”
It became a sort of game for Lona, imagining a character’s reaction to different circumstances. And with the game came a freedom, permission to create fiction.
“I was wondering at the back of my mind, what would make Fanny Price a little more interesting, more relatable to a modern audience? I was working on this question in my subconscious, I suppose, and then, as I said, the novel started writing itself. It was great fun asking myself, ‘What would this character do or say in this particular situation,’ and the characters would answer!” explains Lona.
Austen has secured her place in the canon of English Literature and is the subject of much academic analysis. She has sold millions of copies of her novels and has been translated into dozens of languages. Late consolation.
“She knew that she was a good writer, even if she was not a bestseller in her own lifetime. Her novels have endured, and her contemporaries have been forgotten. Have you ever heard of Coelebs in Search of a Wife?” asks Lona. Me neither. “It was a huge bestseller in Austen’s day. It’s very wooden and didactic. Jane Austen read it, and Mansfield Park was her response to that novel. But to her great disappointment, Mansfield Park got no reviews, no notice in the newspapers and magazines of the day!” Lona laments.
Lona wonders if perhaps it wasn’t a serendipitous meeting of time and place that was instrumental in the book’s conception and eventual delivery. A supportive spouse never hurts either.
“Well, back when I was 30, we didn’t have the internet for doing research – historical accuracy is very important to me and I love the internet – and self-publishing wasn’t much of an option. But as for my feelings about it, writing a novel is one of two things I’ve done – the other was quitting my job, going back to school to get an ESL teaching certificate, and going to teach in China – that have happily upended and changed my life. Unexpected experiences, new adventures. I’m so lucky to have been able to do both. And I think that I had a degree of freedom to do this because my husband has been so tolerant; he’s always been the chief breadwinner.”
With seasoning comes wisdom and with wisdom, poise and an ‘I’ll decide for myself, thank you’ attitude.
“I am also more confident at 60 about what I want to read and what I want to write, even if it doesn’t fit the mainstream. If I want to write in an 18th century style of language, that’s what I am going to do.”
Lona isn’t done with Jane just yet. She hopes to self-publish the sequel to A Contrary Wind this summer and is plotting out the third and final book of the Mansfield story in her head now. She has also written a story for an anthology about Austen’s ‘rakes and rogues’ characters and contributed another to a Quill Ink Press Publication about some of Austen’s female characters. It was released in June.
“I have met other writers on the internet and made new friends – and some fans!”
See, it’s never too late; Jane Austen found her greatest success posthumously.
You can find Lona’s first novel on amazon.ca
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