Sofie Laguna on the voice that led her to The Underworld

One afternoon, early in 2020, I was sitting on the bench of a huge school gym while my son took part in a ‘Skills and Drills session’ for basketball. I’d brought my notebook. While a hundred kids shot hoops, dribbled and passed balls, defended and ran, and leapt and shouted, I wrote. The harder the balls pounded the floorboards the faster I scribbled. The Underworld, my upcoming novel, began with the voice of a woman. She was livid. Articulate, academic, funny and troubled. The woman told of childhood pain, boarding school, academic success, love, betrayal . . . The voice exploded onto the page; I could hardly keep up. I took my son home, knuckles aching.

The next day, my son now safely at school, I opened the pages of my notebook. That day I learned that Martha Mullins, the name of this female newcomer, was obsessed with Greco-Roman mythology, specifically, the mythology of the underworld. For Martha it was a place of refuge. An escape. Its study could become a way of life. Martha was eccentric, regardless of her conventional background. She would be a Classical scholar excelling in a male-dominated institution. She liked women. Only women.

This new character had introduced herself with such energy, I suspected she was the beginning of a longer work. Like the red thread that Ariadne gave Theseus to lead him from the labyrinth, in the famous classical myth, Theseus and the Minotaur, Martha’s voice would be my guide. My way through. I only had to keep hold and her voice would lead me out of danger. And, in the end, it did. Sometimes the thread weakened, narrowing, becoming difficult to see. Other times there it was, brightly, boldly reassuring. I just had to trust and keep going. And there was much joy along the way. Much energy and excitement, particularly once the work of the first draft was complete. Then I could loosen my hold, and just fly. 

Journal #1

27th May 2022

All I can do then, is follow what George Saunders advises. I shall just go a sentence at a time. To find my way through. 

I need to establish the tension at home. Judith siding with Babs. Bab's increasing influence. Father's withdrawal. That relationship. Father's absence. She could easily see something else under the porchlight. Or not at all. I mean I do love it. Uncertainty. 

What is wrong between them? She'll never know. 

So I will get to the university. Back again.

So the father is a lawyer. 

Which MM and I thought less interesting.

Then at the university, it's going well. 

Tell that story. 

The underworld wasn't of the world in that ordinary way. 

It was transcendent.

She was a dry old woman of twenty five. 

There was the entrance, a portal. 

Simply down a small stepladder and into a tub of water.

Eyes to the moon. 

How exquisite. 

All this time. 

All this waiting. 

Here all along.