JAVS Spring 2022

belonged to. I was good enough at the flute, reaching and passing Grade 8, which is the highest mainstream exam that British musicians take. I got there through grit and determination and some, but not much, innate ability. (I am the child of a tone-deaf mother and a professional musician father, and I fall somewhere in-between). But because so many teens play the flute, and so few of them are required in an orchestra, you must be more than good enough to progress through the ranks and move up to the next orchestra. I never really had any delusions about my status in the pecking order, and certainly none about making it professionally, but I did daydream about being better, and I envied my oboist colleagues, much rarer and more prized, and quicker to rise to the more prestigious positions. Perhaps all of that subconsciously went into my creating Clara with her ambitions and talent; all my novels have contained an element of wish fulfilment, and it’s not impossible that I channelled some of my own teenage longing and frustration into her. But up to that point, all my novels had also featured characters who represented some version of me, and I wanted to make Clara completely different. From what I knew of her voice and attitude, she already was—not least because she is an American teenager growing up in California with liberal parents in 2016, and my own adolescence was a very sheltered one in a small town in England, way back in the 1990s (a time when, as Clara puts it, “dinosaurs roamed the earth”). Something of her personality reminded me of a friend of mine, so I leaned into that. I spent Preptober learning all I could about my friend’s— and Clara’s—Myers Briggs type. I’ve always been very interested in that kind of personality typing, though I know it’s disputed and not without its flaws. I’ve found it extremely helpful for building characters—to understand their motivation and behaviour, as well as how they relate to others around them. I’ve also been very interested in the Enneagram, which is essentially another personality typing system that is useful for writing, in particular because it focusses on a person’s core fear and core motivation—and those are key to building three-dimensional characters.

Clara is an Enneagram Three, sometimes knows as The Achiever. The core desire and need of a Three is to be accepted and affirmed, and they seek this by setting and meeting ambitious goals they hope will be praised by the people around them. Like many writers, artists, and musicians, I am an Enneagram Four; I value beauty and emotion, want others to see me as special, and seek to express my uniqueness through creativity. And hard as I might have tried to make Clara different from me, some of this came through in her own personality. Perhaps that’s inevitable as I am her author; perhaps it’s also because many Enneagram Threes do, in fact, have some Four characteristics. But I have another theory, too: that the viola itself is the Enneagram Four of the orchestra. A little bit different, a little bit misunderstood, perhaps even a little bit undervalued. It became the perfect instrument for me to write about as an Enneagram Four myself. A little while ago, I came across this quote by violist Christina Ebersohl in Shoutout Colorado which seems to confirm my theory. (I have emphasised phrases that bring to mind the Four.) The viola is the bridge between the violin and the cello, residing in a warm and impassioned world, with music that ranges from the highly technical of a violinist to the deeply soulful of the cellist. The viola is the only instrument that does not have a standard size, and therefore, are all just a little extra unique and special . And, the viola was also a hidden player for hundreds of years , finally finding its way to the spotlight as a solo instrument in the last 100 years. As an Enneagram Four, I am particularly excited that now that Girl, Unstrung is out in the world, it seems to be resonating with violists, who are excited to find a character who reflects them and their own experiences, when they have so rarely seen that in fiction. I’m delighted to be providing a story for people, who, like me, may feel special and different in ways that are not always comfortable, even as they value their own uniqueness. In so many ways, the viola breaks the mould of the tradition and ventures its own path .

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 2022

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