“I now thought of myself as living the life of a writer. . . ”
” . . I had been aware of a subtle shifting of my life into a world of fiction where I spread before me everything I saw and heard, people I met in buses, streets, railway stations, and where I lived, choosing from the displayed treasure fragments and moments that combined to make a shape of a novel or poem or story. Nothing was without its use. I had learned how to be a citizen of the Mirror City . . . The self must be the container of the treasures of Mirror City, the envoy as it were, and when the time comes to arrange and lift those treasures for shaping into words, the self must be the worker, the bearer of the burden, the chooser, placer and polisher. Putting it all down as it happens is not fiction, there must be the journey by oneself.”
Janet Frame: The Envoy from Mirror City: The Women’s Press
