Kathryn van Beek wears many hats.
She’s a short story writer and a playwright. She has written and illustrated children’s books about her cat Bruce, and has been a bassist and singer-songwriter in bands. Van Beek is also the person who, instead of posting a “rant on Facebook” decided to lobby MPs in Dunedin, where she lives and works, to change a law that has undoubtedly helped numerous families.
After experiencing miscarriage, van Beek built a case for New Zealand couples who suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth to receive three days of paid leave. Parliament unanimously passed the legislation amending the bereavement provisions in the Holidays Act.
Last year, Van Beek received the Robert Burns Fellowship, which aims to “promote and encourage” imaginative NZ literature, by providing recipients with an office and a salary for 12 months. She used the time to complete a coming-of-age-tale with a difference.
Rather than a physical book, The ManyEnding Story is a free, online “click-a-path” adventure story where readers become the main character. She’s an Ōtepoti Dunedin-based graphic designer and lizard enthusiast who’s just turned 31 and finding that “adulting” is more difficult than they imagined.
Kathryn van Beek, why did you make The ManyEnding Story?
I wrote it before I started as the Robert Burns Fellow. I can’t remember exactly when, but it was some time during the intense Covid years. I was studying - I’ve recently finished a doctorate in creative writing - and was learning about ergodic literature, in which the reader interacts with the story in some way.
One form of ergodic literature is the “secret path adventure story” that many of us read when we are kids. You are going along and have to make all these decisions, and even if you think you’re making the best possible decision, you can turn the page and find that you’re still falling into quicksand or being chased by a bear.
We like to have this idea that life is under our control, so if we do all the right things, life will turn out well for us. During Covid, it became evident that is not really true all the time. None of us did anything to deserve Covid. I thought the form – ergodic literature – would be good for exploring that idea.
There are 25 potential endings, and as with the children’s versions of these tales, readers might find themselves falling into quicksand or getting eaten by a shark. Or they might end up designing computer games in Toronto, falling under the spell of a Dunedin surgeon, or teaming up with a sexy detective to bust an international smuggling ring. Readers are trying to “level up” as an adult to collect “adult points”: a career, a partner, a kid, a home, and creative fulfilment. But the points system is a bit subversive. It might get players thinking about what their own definition of what a fulfilling life is.
So, how did you do it?
I wrote a short story first called No Happy Ending, which was in Takahē Magazine. I suppose the form also lent it itself to this idea I had been thinking about: choices relating to romantic partners and other big life choices. In the short story, the protagnoist chooses between two partners and there is a beautiful, happy ending that you can see - but there was actually no way to get to it. No matter what path you chose, you could only end up being heartbroken.
That short stuck with me and I felt that I wanted to extrapolate on it, so that’s where The ManyEnding Story came from. I managed to bring it to fruition during Covid. It was shortlisted for the Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize, but didn’t win. It became one of those things where I thought, “I’m never going to get a secret path adventure story published.”
Because I got the Robert Burns Fellowship, I had the opportunity to collaborate with a student, Jacob Cone, who is interested in games and game-writing.
And the technicalities?
Jacob knew about an online tool for telling interactive, and nonlinear, stories called Twine. So, I wrote The ManyEnding Story in a word document that was all hyperlinked and Jacob was able to put it into Twine.
If you build a story in Twine, you could do it all online in a program but, because I’d done it in Word, I actually had this A1 bit of paper where I had drawn out all the different pathways. I considered doing it myself, but I just thought I would probably spend a couple of weeks swearing and crying, and I just didn’t think that was the best use of the fellowship so I thought it would be much better to get Jacob to do it. He ended up with a squiggly spiderweb map of his own in the Twine system.
I worked with a local photographer as well, Kristina Simons, who took bespoke photos of all the dreamy Dunedin locations that are mentioned in the story. Jacob then imported Kristina’s photos.
Kristina and I had gone around Dunedin and neither of us is a brilliant driver, so we had some hair-raising experiences backing down narrow driveways by the sea so we could get the photos we wanted.
What did you learn by doing all this?
This might not answer the question, but I guess it’s like all those old secret path adventure stories where you can try to do exactly the right thing and you still end up with something terrible happening to you, or you can choose exactly the wrong thing and end up with something great happening to you. I thought that was more reflective of real life than a hero’s journey.
It’s because of you that in 2021, the Holidays Act was amended allowing for bereavement leave for miscarriage. How did that happen?
It happened through writing. Everyone is different, and my experience of miscarriage is that it wasn’t very nice. I felt a bit sad and wanted to take a couple of days off work, so I was looking at what the leave entitlements were in the Holidays Act.
I could see that it was very unclear about whether or not bereavement by miscarriage counted. I made some inquiries, and it turned out that people knew it was ambiguous. The advice was that you – the person who had had a miscarriage – should go to your employer and ask them if they thought it was okay for you to take bereavement leave.
I thought, “when you’re in that headspace, that’s the last sort of conversation you want to have.” Most employers are really good, but not all of them are and some people might not approve that request, which would be devastating on top of what you’re already going through. I thought, “surely this can be cleared up.”
I wrote to my local MPs, and then-Dunedin South MP Clare Curran got back to me, so I had a conversation with her. She advised me to make sure this wasn’t just a “me problem” but was affecting other people. I got statements of support from others, including organisations, and started a petition so I could go back to Clare with evidence that this was a law change that would be useful for others. She saw that it was and handed it over to MP Ginny Andersen who progressed it from there and it had cross-party support.
It really made me think that writing is so powerful. If I had written a rant on Facebook, then I doubt that change would have happened so I guess it’s just knowing how to formulate your thoughts and who to share them with that can really make a change.
The ManyEnding Story is free to play online at ManyEndingStory.nz.
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