I’ve always loved to write and had a great imagination. I remember once, I was in high school, I entered a short story competition for the Brazilian Cosmopolitan magazine. It was such a long time ago that I had to ask a guy who worked with my dad to type it in a typewriter, and I had to send it by post! It was a bit of a saucy story, so even though I was embarrassed as heck, there was no other way. It was better than asking my father to do it, right? There was a limited number of words I could use, and I had to condense my fantastic imagination in a sheet of A4 paper, font size 14. I have no idea what happened to the story - I didn’t keep a copy, duh! -, but I still remember some of it, and maybe one day I’ll try to reproduce it.
With Loveandpizza.it, it was a whole different game. It was MY story, I was literally living inside the story and could write as many words as I wanted to. Besides, there was so much going on around me, so many things and places to explore! Easy peasy, I thought. Well, not really. The “easy peasy” story to write took me over FIVE years to finish, and another competition, the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I’ll tell you about it another time.
Before I did my Masters, I was “playing” writer-to be. I wrote when I wanted, when inspiration struck… I lacked discipline, organisation and well, I wasn’t in Napoli anymore. That’s when I decided that I needed to do something, or Loveandpizza.it, Carolina, Lisa, Luca and Fabrizio would never see the outside of my laptop hard drive! Armed with my short stories (have you read them? I’ve got them “hidden” hereand my best smile, off I went to meet the one who would become my tutor, at Cardiff Met Uni. That September I joined the course, and oh dear, didn't I get way more than what I’d bargained for…
(below, there are some excerpts from my MA dissertation)
For one of my first assignments, I read the following, from The Creative Writing Handbook:
A thousand years ago we had about 30 000 [words], now English has 500 000 and the figure is rising daily. They belong to the nation, are listed in dictionaries and each one of us has a usable store or word-hord, as the Anglo-Saxons called vocabulary, of about 15 000. This is 3 percent of the total in The Oxford English Dictionary and only half the number used by Shakespeare. (Singleton, J and Sutton, G, 2000, p.41)
Well, after this quote, I saw myself ready to give up writing; writing in English, I mean. English is not my first language, therefore I believe it is impossible for me to actually have a ‘usable store of about 15 000’ words. However, it is odd to notice that I find it easier to write in English than in my mother-tongue, Portuguese.So, as a good and respectable soldier (and cheeky that I am) , I marched on - and carried on writing.
I really enjoyed the way I gradually discovered the writing techniques I used to craft Loveandpizza.it . I had always considered myself an 'intuitive, impulsive' writer.
Obviously, I had no idea what happened 'backstage'. Based on the MA course bibliography, I started to shape my story, shyly at first, but trying to use some of the ‘techniques’ mentioned in the readings and present in the short stories I was reading. And I was surprised how fun it was!
While writing the novel, I also used some techniques of travel writing, which proved invaluable to the completion of the novel. People-watching and being in constant ‘participant observation’ (Radway, 1997, cited in Alsop, 2005, p.118), I embraced my life in Naples as an ‘utopian ethnographer’, and ‘greeted enthusiastically by the members of the community...’ I wished ‘... to observe and to be welcomed in the fold.’ (Radway, 1997, cited in Alsop, 2005, p.117).
During that period, I started writing ‘seriously’ for the first time. The atmosphere of that city, the chaos and secrets that were behind those palaces walls were begging to become a story. I began to build my characters based on people I met while living there (although I already had my heroine, who is based on my youngest Sister, like I told you here, and started asking my students about things my characters were likely to do or say, or places they were likely to go in certain situations. The particular behaviour of a Neapolitan; the incomprehensible dialect that they make sure they use, especially when they don’t want you to understand what they are talking about; the mafia conspiracies that one can feel in the air of the Quartieri Spagnoli, where I lived…
Another author who inspired my work, Luciano De Crescenzo, with the simple, peculiar voice and anecdotes in his Thus Spake Bellavista/Così parlò Bellavista (1989), helped set the mood for Carolina’s adventures and stories, as well as gave me more insight into the Napolitan people’s behaviour and supporting me in my characterisation.
To improve my characters and the flow of the story, I needed to improve my style, and Burroway's chapter on 'Characterization' (Burroway, 2011) was perfect to help me with my dialogues, since this was one particular thing I’d never considered to be one of my strengths. I like to tell stories, but when it comes to letting the characters talk for themselves, I used to be quite insecure. So, I decided to refer back to the text and go through the punctuation marks, quotation marks, italics, etc. On her section on 'Format and Style' (Burroway, 2011, p.87) I learned about the 'invisibility' of punctuation and dialogue tags such as said, replied, thought, etc and how it can make the dialogue/text 'cleaner' of unnecessary words and how to place them in the correct place to create the effect I want on the reader. One example is when CaroIina and Fabrizio have the first conversation at the pizzeria, ‘I’ was a little more comfortable with the dialogue, trying to make it sound more natural. I ‘knew’ that Carolina really hated the fact that he was talking to her for various reasons (she was very shy, she couldn’t speak Italian very well, he used to stare at her all the time, which made her feel really uncomfortable). However, Carolina was also enjoying the fact that they were talking because she had a secret crush on him.
All this talk of creating the characters is super cool, but don’t you think that it was always smooth sailing… There were quite a few times when I just couldn’t write because I hated my characters! Honestly, at one point I stopped and skipped a part, just so I could introduce a new character that I already loved, even though they had only been mentioned a couple of times, and not even in a good way. But I knew that this character was so awesome and wanted to bring them to life as soon as possible!
While writing Loveandpizza.it (to be more precise, while I was finishing my dissertation) I lost my mother. It was a shock and it knocked my confidence over. I did my best to reach the minimum that was required of me to graduate and get my MA diploma. And then the novel went back to the darkness of my laptop hard drive.
In 2015 I found out about NaNoWriMo and decided that it was time to finally finish writing Loveandpizza.it. It was a whole month (November) to write 50,000 words! And I finally did it! Finished the bugger! Haha. Obviously that I needed to edit it, but at least I’d finally managed to write the words “The End” and all my characters lived happily ever after!
And I leave with you the thank yous I wrote in the book, because I definitely wouldn’t have been able to finish without all these people:
This long journey to write my first novel would have been impossible without the help of some wonderful people: the love of my life, Craig Arthur, for his loving support, for providing the ‘bonuses’ and cwtches when things got tough, and who needed to be convinced that no, I had not fallen in love with a pizzaiolo when we lived in Napoli! I love you pra sempre. My father, Nelson Pesconi, for always encouraging me never to stop studying. My ‘wings’ – my sisters: Cintia, for being the inspiration to the heroine of this adventure and for joining me on a sisters’ exploration of Napoli; and Isabela, for always asking: ‘Can you send me the rest of the story?’ ‘Have you finished yet?’. Tina Carignani, from DND – Discover Napoli Destinations, for suggestions on romantic and posh places Luca could take Carolina. Pip Watkins, for always being at the reach of a Facebook post during the initial phase of the novel. My beta readers: Isa, Camilinha, Annelise, Suse and Craig, for your honest, unbiased critique and suggestions. Camila, I loved reading your story of how you read Loveandpizza.it! Jesus Vera Vera, for such a cute book cover, Marco Pasini, new Italian friend and culinary/language consultant in the last phase of the novel. Grazie mille! (I’m looking forward to your cookbook!). To my bosses in Napoli: you are in my list of ‘best people in the world’. To some of my Neapolitan students, who are now my friends, and who let me borrow their names and personality to give life to my characters. You know who you are: I carry you in my heart. Thank you to Napoli, la bella citta that stole a piece of my heart!
Finally, a million thanks to all the people who will buy this book and read it non-stop. Beware of side effects, as Camila writes in her foreword!
And of course, the update: my huge thanks to the amazing Farah Serra, for translating this project into my mother tongue! Grazie mille, dear!
And of course, the foreword, which I love soooooo much!
~ by Camila Flávia Brandão ~
The first time Daniela told me about the plot of this book, I thought: this is my dream adventure... this character has the boldness that I would like to have!
That is why it was a privilege for me to delight myself with this lovely story about Carolina. I dove into the mysterious universe of Mount Vesuvius; I had a memorable weekend at Capri Island; good laughs with Lisa’s hilarious comments and I relished the sunset with a great company... but you must know - this book causes side effects.
The most immediate was a desperate search for Italian music to go with my reading, and I found myself stopping everything to look for a song by Umberto Tozzi. Then, as I lived through the chapters, I started to thank everyone for everything with “grazie mille”, which led to a serious investigation into Italian courses and a reminder to my husband about our plan to research our Italian ancestors. All of this tempered with breaks to prepare a cappuccino in the kitchen, even though it was not breakfast time. Who cares? Fabri could not see it anyway...
However the most intense side effect was the desire for pizza. All I really wanted was to put my hands in the dough, literally. Life is so much better after a Margherita pizza, trust me!
What left the biggest impact on me was the realisation when I had finish reading that there is just a bit of Carolina in each one of us. We relate to this character who messes up sometimes, who feels so much fear, who does unbelievably contradictory things, but more than anything, tries to be happy... just like any one of us girls.
Yes, you will order pizza, you will miss the train stop while reading the sweet words of Fabri, you will look for Italian courses, you will start to look for flight tickets on sale to Naples, you will want cappuccinos at inappropriate times... because Daniela’s writing is so delicate, charming and amusing that it makes us dream.
I am glad you are also about to embark on this journey. ‘Loveandpizza.it’ will fascinate you and at the end of the reading, it will make you feel that you couldn’t get enough of it.
Enjoy your reading!
I hope you enjoyed it. I think you are now ready to meet the characters, right? How about starting with Carolina? Click on the image below!
