Write On The Fringes

Dr Dub at last!

2012-02-26T21:52:00.000-08:00

'Knowledge is learning something new every day. Wisdom is letting go of something every day.'

Zen Proverb

It has taken six years, some of full-time study and some part-time, along with a few stops and starts and a transfer from one university to another, but finally I have completed my PhD. I've received my examiners reports (glowing), made the few minor amendments required from one examiner and submitted it once again. That's it. I'm done. The graduation ceremony isn't for six months but I'm not going to wait for that. Dr Dub it is! And I'm rightly proud of it.

So why undertake a PhD or an MA or any other course that involves writing? Firstly, there's the title – Dr Dub has quite a ring to it. However there are plenty of other reasons for doing a PhD, one of which is the potential for finding a well paid and secure job in a university, something which most writers only dream of. Another reason to study in this way is to find a space in which to write, with a framework and a discipline that is imposed from the outside in the form of supervisors and deadlines. This is why I did my MA in Writing a number of years ago in the UK. I began it when my first child was six months old and finished it two years later when my second child was six months old. I have little memory of those two years of sleepless nights, part time work in London, classes in Sheffield, morning sickness and deadlines. However, aside from a certificate bestowing me with the honour of an MA, what emerged from these two years was a novel. And that is another reason for doing study in this area – it's fruitful. You can't just start a project, stop it and start another. You have to see it through! In an educational institution there is also guidance and constructive criticism that helps us to find a way through the bleak patches. This guidance comes from the teachers but also from fellow students, all those other people who are mad enough to want to write. There's the potential for friendships too, based on common interests, feedback and support through all those difficult times when you want to give up and when the support is not coming from elsewhere.

Some people say that writing can't be taught, that these courses are simply fleecing students. I disagree. The art of writing can only be found through learning the craft and in many cases this needs to be taught. Quite a few years ago when I did my BA, I majored in creative writing and loved it. I made long lasting friendships and learned a lot of useful theory but the emphasis in the University I attended was on experimental writing and I found there was a subtle pressure to conform. I left with a BA and no idea how to construct a story or create convincing characters. It was only when I joined the MA program at Sheffield Hallam University, that I learned about technique, something which then allowed me to find my voice as a writer, identify the stories I had to tell and tell them with some measure of success.

For me the PhD was different than my previous courses because I didn't do it in order to learn how to write fiction. In fact, initially my interest in story and its inherent structure, led me to begin a purely theoretical PhD, called Story: Mapping the Journey to Self. I channelled my research into this, whilst trying to write a novel 'on the side'. However, what began as a simple desire to understand the structure, origins and purpose of story, became much more: an attempt to understand the essence of creativity, the dual functions of memory and imagination and the complex nature of truth. My interests grew and I struggled to keep within the confines of my initial plans for the thesis.

Work on my thesis was interrupted when my novel, Gathering Storm was accepted by Penguin and I began the process of editing. It was interrupted again during the excitement of publication. Then unexpectedly for a third time it was interrupted when I found my interest shifting to my new novel and realised that the research I had been doing for my thesis was reappearing in Flight. It felt like an alchemical process, as I unconsciously transmuted theory into fiction. Through story I was exploring themes such as: the power of words; the nature of story and its patterns; patterns of human behaviour; the journey of the soul, illustrated in Flight through shamanic initiation; the role of memory and imagination in creativity; and the legacy of memory, through personal experience, ancestral inheritance and through the repeating patterns of past lives.

Speaking publicly about Gathering Storm helped me to realise that my own writing was a cathartic process for me. I had been unconsciously weaving my memories, and the themes that were pertinent in my life, into fictional stories. The process of transformation I was exploring in my thesis was playing out, both in my fiction and in my life. I became intrigued by the process. Could I weave these ideas in without detracting from the story? Could I illustrate these ideas through the journey of the major characters rather than through exposition? To do this I had to digest the theory, rather than reiterate it, trusting instead that it would somehow transmute into fiction. When my interest in this process did not wane I realised that I was writing a different thesis and changed my theoretical PhD to a more practice led one.

So was it worth doing a PhD? Yes, very much so, and I'm pleased now that I worked with both fiction and theory, exploring the way in which the two work together. What I found most precious in doing my PhD was the space it provided me, in which to think, to discover my true interests and the direction I want to take my research in the future. What has emerged from this space is a novel and a supporting theoretical document that are both deeply enriched by my research, practical experience and personal reflection. From studying the work of others and fusing it with my own experience and ideas, I have been able to find that 'something new' which is the aim of the PhD. Instead of an end, this feels like a beginning, a passport to follow my interests and become a specialist in my field. Story!

Who Do We Write For?

2012-02-20T17:42:00.000-08:00

'What I represent every time I set out to achieve something, is myself.'

Maya Angelou

In previous posts I've pondered on why we write and what our responsibilities are as writers. Now I want to explore who it is we write for, something which is clearly linked with our reasons for writing. Often when we do a creative writing class we are asked to consider who we write for, an exercise I have always struggled with but one that is nevertheless useful. An acquaintance of mine who is a non fiction writer friend says he can only find the right tone and style for a particular book by choosing a person he is writing for and imagining it as a conversation. However, in most cases we are less specific, perhaps writing for women, or children, young adults, or readers of a particular genre.

Asking ourselves who we write for can help us to usefully consider our market and perhaps choose a genre in which to write, if that suits our need. We may then have to adapt our style to that readership, in the process considering our use of language and the concepts we wish to explore. Even more importantly though (to me anyway), is that asking who we write for helps us to identify what is limiting us as writers. If we write for our critics then we will be writing to please. If we write for our mothers then most likely we will be leaving out much that we need to explore, or conversely we might be writing simply to shock. If we write only for our publishers then we run the risk of losing our voice and purpose. Writing for a specific genre too, runs the risk of boxing us into a category that we can subsequently find it difficult to escape from. We might become boxed into a genre, a style, even a theme and one day find ourselves with nothing left to say because we are no longer growing. Paradoxically though, we may instead find that the limitations of a particular genre give us more freedom to explore, allowing our imaginations to work within the relative safety of its boundaries. And of course, if we love a particular genre then it follows that we will enjoy working within it to create our own stories.

I would like to say that I write for myself, that I follow my heart. And in a sense I do, because I write what I feel needs saying. I don't imagine a reader; if I did I would find myself tongue tied. I don't imagine a story because I expect it to unfold as I write. I don't even imagine a genre because I'm not sure I could stay within its boundaries. However, even when we write for ourselves our perspective is limited, by our ideology, our history, our culture, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. . . In the end, perhaps all we can do is as Aldous Huxley suggested when he wrote: 'Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always at bottom, to be more themselves.'

Considering who we are writing for can also help us to explore further the reasons we write at all. I had to write Flight. It was a deep need that demanded resolution. It was also a responsibility – to tell a story I felt needed telling. In its writing I tried not to think of readers or publishers, and instead concentrated on uncovering the story I had to tell. Because Flight is my story and I had to live much of it. It is difficult to say how much of the novel is true in the factual sense of the word. Like Fern, I was born in Adelaide and adopted by a religious couple. There are, however other true events in the story that are not so easily identified as fact. Describing how she writes, Isabel Allende said, 'in the slow silent process of writing I enter a different state of consciousness in which sometimes I can draw back a veil and see the invisible. The writing of Flight was just this, a stepping through the veils and a drawing together of my own numinous experiences. I wrote down the visions that came to me unexpectedly, the glimpses of a past beyond the boundaries of my own life and the dreams which spoke to me symbolically. And in the process something coherent formed from them in the shape of a story and one that refers back to a long tradition of storytelling that explores the journey of the soul and our initiations into the mysteries of life.

The themes in Flight are broad but the novel was written for me, to help me understand the threads of my life and to make sense of all that was happening to me. It was also written for anyone who has suffered a loss of meaning in their lives, anyone who is questioning the limitations of the physical world and who is courageous enough to take the journey to self. It is my way of reaching out to others and sharing something I feel is important. So far the novel has been called a work of literature, a commercial thriller, a young adult novel, a fantasy novel, a romance, a spiritual novel and a memoir. I sincerely hope it embraces all of these categories while defying the limitations of any one of them.

Moving On

2012-02-12T17:51:00.000-08:00

'Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.'

Eckhart Tolle

My new novel has been launched, school holidays are almost over and now it's time to move on, to once again seek a sense of steadiness, and to find a way of settling back into routine and fill the sudden empty space that has appeared in my life. But there's a winding down that needs to happen first, a letting go and a reconnecting with life. Launching a book into the world is not as straight forward as most people might imagine. Yes, there's the pure joy of completion, the celebration of all that has made this moment possible, but underlying that is the lingering fear of how the book will be received and a strange grief associated with its release. Publishing a book is akin to sending a grown child out into the world. There are many mixed emotions: reluctance, pride, sadness, fear, relief and joy. So inevitably the period of time around publication is an emotional roller coaster.

It's also difficult to mark the exact moment of publication. Is it the letter of acceptance from a publisher, the signing of a contract, the receipt of an advance? Is it the completion of a final edit and the knowledge that it's no longer possible to change a single word? Is it the first sight of the book cover design, or the moment we first hold the book in our hands, feeling the strange sensation that it is no longer ours? Or then again, is it the special moment we see the book in the shops, actually there, stocked and visible to the rest of the world? Does it lie in that terrible waiting time when we wonder how our book is being received and if there will be any reviews or interviews? Or is it when we invite our friends to celebrate and help us to launch our book into the world? I think it's all of these moments, each of which carries significant and often complicated emotions.

For me the letter of acceptance represents the purest, least complicated of these stages. It is pure joy. This is the moment that a great burden lifts from my shoulders and it's also the moment that holds the greatest potential, because for the briefest of times the book can and might be anything; doubt, worry and disappointment have not found their way in to sully the purity of possibility. The book launch is more complicated because unless you are one of those very few authors whose books are published with great hype and publicity, there is already the fear that your book might be overlooked, that it might fall between the cracks and miss its narrow window of opportunity. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, the book launch is an important ritual. It is symbolic. A chance to give a blessing and a parting kiss to a book, and of course it's an opportunity to celebrate, before re-immersing oneself into the solitary world of the next book. But most importantly of all it is a chance to gather friends and well wishers, to fill a space with good will and to launch a book that carries that same good will with it out into the world.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes about being published and the upheaval, confusion and disappointments it inevitably brings for most of us. The anxious waiting for something to happen, for reviews, interviews, invitations and royalties. The hope that this time it will be different, that this time the publisher will invest their money and time in creating hype around the book. But the most interesting story Lamott tells is what she learned when one of her books did do well and she found herself caught up in all the attention. Seeking peace but unable to come back down from the excitement, she asked advice from a priest, who told her. 'The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts. . . but the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.'

Flight has not been published with hype but it has been launched with an enormous amount of good will and that means more than bells and ribbons. No doubt there will be reviews and so far there have been a couple of interviews. I don't know what the reviews will be like. Gathering Storm received many, mostly glowing reviews but Flight is different. It isn't a safe book, or one that can be easily categorised. One of the reasons why I have found it so difficult to find publishers is because my writing has always bridged the commercial and the literary, so is not easy to market. I can only trust that Flight will build its readership and I hope it will do so by finding its way into the hearts and minds of its readers. I can offer support, speak for it when I am invited, but essentially, like a grown child, it is on its own now. For as Kahlil Gibran wrote in his poem, On Children

'You children are not your children,

they are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. . .

. . . You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.'

All I can do now is give Flight my blessings and let it go. And the secret of doing this successfully is to immerse myself deeply into another project. The sequel! Already I can feel it seeking my attention, tantalising me once more with the prospect of the unknown. . .

Looking Back

2012-02-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

'Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs.'

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

It strikes me as strange that in the week that my second novel is published I'm musing on the long and decidedly bumpy road to this point, so bumpy in fact that my husband suggested I must have done something awful in a past life to gather so much bad karma. To be fair, there were many pieces of good fortune along the way to lure me on: grants, residencies, the publication of short stories and non fiction pieces. But always the novel eluded me. It took me twelve years to find a publisher for my first novel (actually my second) and in that time and even since then, I have come to know the tone and tenor of every form of rejection, from the blank silence that is never filled so you wait each day for a response, not even knowing if your manuscript has been received, to the glowing personal phone call - 'This is an extraordinary novel, perfect in every sense, but I'm afraid I can't publish it. . .' In between these extremes are a vast array of styles: the blank 'with compliments' slip; the pre-written standard note; and the hand written personalised note, its words scrutinised over and over for any subtext. Aside from the waiting and the silences, the worst for me was the one that began – 'Do not despair. . .'

My first novel, Nowhere Man (still unpublished) found me an agent and a ream of rejections. Most publishers loved it or admired it (or so they said) but no one would publish it on the grounds that it was terribly bleak and would only work as a second novel. I set to work on a new novel and Gathering Storm was finally completed at a time when memoir was at the height of fashion and fiction was at its lowest point in history. Consequently, although it was appropriate for a first novel, all it received were flattering and often elaborate rejection letters. In the end, despite their tone or their word count, rejection letters are still rejections.

Some time before Gathering Storm found a publisher, my eldest daughter gave me a magnet that says in big bold letters, NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP. It still sits on my filing cabinet in my study and over the years has proved to be a most useful piece of advice. Ironically though, despite the fridge magnet admonishing me to 'never give up', it was only when I made the decision to 'give up', that my novel was published. For some time I had felt a growing tension between my need to find more work, my family and my own writing. Perhaps I was simply discovering the truth behind the old adage, 'two's company, three's a crowd'. Something had to give. Rejections are not easy to stomach at the best of times and despite the fact that I felt writing was my path in life, I also felt that I simply couldn't take any more rejections. I felt beaten down by them and bitter that the beauty of the creative process was being overwhelmed by the ugly realities of a market driven world. It was also hard for my husband and children to watch my frustration and frequent despair. All this was compounded by the fact that my agent ran out of publishers to send my novel to and set it aside.

Much to their astonishment, I announced to my family that I was giving up writing. With that decision came a sense of letting go as I took my attention away from rejections and simply accepted where I found myself. Not long after that the little miracles began. First, a creative writing student of mine who was gifted with a strong intuitive ability, unexpectedly announced that my novel (called at that time Lucky Road) had not found a publisher because I needed to change its title. I took little notice of this, but that evening mentioned it to my husband, who immediately suggested, Gathering Storm. I will never forget the feeling of rightness that came over me when I heard that title. The next day a friend mentioned to me that a new publisher had joined Penguin. I emailed my agent to suggest that we try one more time, and within weeks I had an enthusiastic offer of publication and importantly, a passport to keep writing.

Gathering Storm was reasonably successful; it sold well, gained critical acclaim and was published in translation in the Netherlands. On that basis, I simply assumed that publishing the next novel would be straight forward. I was wrong. Flight was too different from my previous novel and didn't fit with the direction in which my publisher wanted me to go. It was rejected and I found myself floundering once again. It's always harder to go through something a second time, particularly when it is unexpected. I battled with myself. Should I write what was expected of me or should I follow my heart? This was a particularly difficult decision at the time, with a building global economic crisis and a publishing industry in flux. In the end I had no choice, my heart won but it meant another bombardment of rejection slips and the onset of a deep-rooted weariness that came close to stopping me from writing again. It was a publisher at HarperCollins who finally rescued me and for that I will be eternally grateful. There is nothing more special than when someone really 'gets' your novel, and she 'got' Flight. She was patient too, waiting as I honed the novel to its final form and trusting that I would do it well. The journey since then has been smooth but I won't make the mistake again of assuming that it will always be this way. The wheel of fortune turns and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

So what have I learned from this? Paradoxically, I have learned not to give up but also to let go. And I have learned that above and beyond outcomes, the importance of writing lies in the process itself, something that is difficult to remember when writing and the need for an income become entwined as mine has for some time. During those years of rejections I edited and assessed other people's manuscripts, mentored a good number of people and taught many creative writing workshops and courses. I still do. It has been a great privilege to teach and to work with aspiring writers. In that time I have been constantly touched by people's faith in me. I have learned a lot about myself and about the creative process, which no doubt has informed my own work and made me a better and more courageous writer. I have learned patience, how to savor the journey of writing and not reach out impatiently for the destination. And hopefully I have helped some writers to find their voices. Looking back over these years I see that though I often felt in limbo, actually there was good reason for fate to unfold in this way. Now, given the opportunity, I wouldn't change anything. Perhaps that's the greatest lesson of all.

A Book Excerpt From Flight – Part Two

2012-02-02T16:50:00.000-08:00

The Way of Love is

not a subtle argument.

The door there

is devastation.

Bird's make great sky-circles

of their freedom.

How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,

they're given wings.

Rumi, (translated by Coleman Barks), The Essential Rumi

As promised, here is the second part of the prologue to Flight. For anyone who hasn't read the opening of the prologue, have a look at the previous post first. And for anyone who is new to this site, as my novel is published this week I am being self indulgent and posting a couple of book extracts instead of my normal posts. If you want to see what I generally discuss in this blog, have a look at some of the earlier posts.

My apologies to those readers who are not based in Australia or New Zealand and who would like to read Flight. It seems that there will be some restrictions on its distribution for a few months yet. There are a number of online Australian booksellers who may send print editions to international customers: such as Dymocks, Fishpond, Borders, Boomerang Books and Booktopia.

Flight - Prologue (Part 2)

He was biding his time. My father wasn't an evil man but he had already done wrong, and this deed had set in motion others. Then it was only a matter of time, as the prophecy ate away at him, turning him into its slave. Perhaps the seeds of madness had already been planted deep in his heart, in this life or another. Or perhaps they were sown later; I am not sure, for it is hard to see the beginnings of things.

People always say that children can't remember. That babies have no language and therefore no memories. That an abandoned baby can't be traumatised. They are wrong. There are many ways of knowing. The memories we carry in our consciousness are not the only ones. There are others, ones we can't relate in words, and yet their scar tissue builds up so that we live every day of our lives in reaction to them. I have learned first hand that we carry memory in our cells. Unresolved trauma acts like a cancer, scarring, mutating, warping our cells until they become sick. Remembering is implicit in the decision to enter the labyrinth, to look inside ourselves, at our wounds and our carefully buried strengths. It's there in the patterns we identify in our lives. And there too in the truths we discover and recognise as having always known. I know these things because I have looked deeply into myself and seen what needed seeing.

I was born in Adelaide on January 2^nd 1989. From the beginning, life for me was a serious matter of survival, but it was also something I did not relish at all. There is a contradiction in this, I know, and one that tugged me this way and that, making me strong, yet fearful; determined, yet too ready to give up. A contradiction that for many years trapped me in a half-life, a twilight world of muted colours. A prison I didn't even know I was in until I made my escape.

I entered this world wearing my mother's blood and carrying the marks of my father's fist on my back. Within minutes of my birth an ambulance arrived, its siren sending my heart thumping too fast all over again. There were danger signals everywhere and I could no longer distinguish between what was safe and what was not. But I was a tiny baby, born a month early, and the hands of those men were gentle as they carried me to the relative safety of the hospital.

He tried one more time, in the hospital ward, his large hand grabbing me by the leg and swinging me up and out of the plastic crib and head first into the wall. One swing, but he hadn't built up momentum yet. My mother's loyalties were torn, but for that one crucial moment the hormones swilling through her body put her on my side. She screamed. Just once, but there was a tone in it, enough to bring people running. Before the next swing a nurse appeared in the doorway and, reading the madness in my father's eyes, pressed the alarm.

Already a master of disguise, my father recovered quickly, cradling me in his arms, uttering comforting baby noises while I stared mutely up into his eyes, my heart thudding.

'I slipped,' he told the nurse. 'I almost dropped her. My God, they're so fragile.' Then, as a nurse took her from him, 'She's alright, isn't she?'

Uncertain now, the nurse looked at my mother lying there in the crisp white hospital bed, wearing a white hospital gown because there'd been no time to pack, sobbing, milk leaking from her nipples.

My mother looked at each of us in turn, seeing the threat in my father's eyes, the bewildered fear in mine and the question in the nurse's. Then, stony-faced, she turned away from us all. She had made a decision. 'It was an accident,' she said. 'He slipped.'

But she did sign the adoption forms. To keep me safe.

Then she wrapped me tightly in a white blanket, placed me back in the plastic see-through hospital-issue crib and wheeled me into a room full of other howling cribs, setting me loose into a sea of indifference with no anchor and no oars, with only the sun, the moon and the stars to navigate by, and no lessons to help me decipher them.

On my original birth certificate there is a blank space next to Father. My mother's name is listed as Joan Childe. My name is listed as Erica. On my second birth certificate my father's name is listed as Richard Parsons, my mother's as Grace Parsons My adopted parents called me Fernanda after an evangelical missionary they favoured at the time. I called myself Fern. More than anything I wanted to fly. But in order to fly, one must first be willing to fall.

This is the story of my journey, following the clues back through the twists and turns that made me into what I was, searching for the moments of definition: the overheard sentence, the intention in another's eyes, a boy seducing a girl, a fist, a beating and a mother turning away. I had to go deep into the underworld and enter the labyrinth, with no guarantee of return, seeking the threads that I could weave into a rope thick enough to haul me out again.

In this story there are those gifted and cursed with the power of prophecy. There's a young man haunted by the past and an old man haunted by the future. There is death and corruption and injustice. There is love and passion and hatred, all carried across lifetimes. Occasionally there is compassion. But more often, as in real life, there is fear.

I am there too. Haunted and hollow. An outline, waiting to be filled in. Poised trembling before the entrance to the labyrinth. A shadow of the self I should have been. A shadow of who I am now as I sit here looking for a beginning when there isn't one, when there never is, because life is simply not neat, and one story hardly ever ends before another begins. Instead they span time and space, reaching back into a past that extends beyond our first breath and into a future that extends beyond our last, through a multitude of lives and tied only by the threads of souls and their patterns.

In the absence of a clear beginning I will draw an artificial line through time and begin on that stiflingly hot afternoon, in the attic room of a run-down terrace in the inner suburbs of Sydney. . .

A Book Excerpt from Flight

2012-01-30T15:45:00.000-08:00

'In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world irrupted into this transitory one.'

Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

As my new novel is published this week, I'm too unsettled to write a 'proper' post, so have decided to be self-indulgent and post the prologue to Flight. It's a long piece, so I've divided it in two and will post the second part later this week. No doubt by next week I will have settled back into a routine and will be able to focus my thoughts once again. For anyone in Australia and New Zealand who wants to read Flight, it is available as of today in bookshops. For international readers, I'm disappointed to say that I haven't yet found international publishers for Flight, but I believe (depending on geographical copyright restrictions) that you can get it as an ebook from Amazon or Bookdepository. I hope you enjoy the prologue.

Flight - Prologue (Part 1)

I came early, slithering into the outside world and into safety, or so I hoped. But this was to be the first of many hopes, all dashed against the brutally sharp edges of reality. As in all great myths, my birth was accompanied by a prophecy. I, it seemed, would be the death of my father. How this was to come about no one could say. But the prophecy was there, it escaped from the mouth of Simple Simon, the old gardener at the Botanic Gardens in Adelaide where my mother often went to sit in her lunch hour.

On this particular day she was waiting to meet my father. He was late and the pregnant girl felt a persistent nagging worry. There was something big hovering around the edges of things, a sense that life had woken up that morning slightly askew. Nothing she could put her finger on, but it was enough to make her nervous. And then there were the contradictions: worry that he would come, worry that he wouldn't. Fear and love tugging her between them until all she could feel was a tearing anxiety. You see, my father was a strong willed man, older than her, but still too young he said, to be tied down like this. He would have walked away but he was snared by his desire for my mother. She was beautiful and fragile and needy, easy to bully but also detached in a way that he could never put a finger on. This detachment was what kept him there, waiting, wanting her to surrender completely.

It was summer but there was an unexpected chill in the air. The wind was a fresh south easterly, not the usual hot northerly that stirred up dust and discomforts, and the sky was clear enough to make everyone's heart lift. Even my mother's, the seventeen-year-old girl with the rounded belly who sat on a bench chewing a deviled-egg sandwich and watching Simon methodically plant a row of violets, a flurry of chattering birds surrounding him.

When a magpie greedily pecked Simon's finger, perhaps thinking it a fat juicy worm, my mother forgot her troubles for a moment and laughed. Simon looked up, directly at her, and her laughter quickly turned into a shudder. Where one eye should have been there was a socket, dark and deep. One eye looking out, the other inwards – perhaps this was the secret of his second sight. Or then again, it might have been the snakebite all those years ago which left him hovering between life and death for weeks on end. When he finally woke he knew things other people didn't, but he had forgotten how to live in this world. No one knew how old Simple Simon was or how long he'd been working in the Botanic Gardens. He was a fixture, like the giant oak under which my mother sat.

Simon stood up straight, wincing as he stretched, one hand massaging the small of his back, the other leaning on his spade. 'Ah,' he said, shaking his head. 'That one will be the death of her father.' Wincing again at the creaking in his swollen joints, he walked over to my mother and poked his finger into her tight belly. 'Mark my words, the death of him.' While she sat staring at him, open-mouthed, he went back to his planting, still shaking his head, but with a gleam in his eye.

At that moment I moved. Well, bounced really. Did a somersault in a small space, causing my mother to double over in pain and think her time had come. It hadn't. I wasn't going anywhere. Safety, I thought, lay in the warm fluids that contained me. And I didn't want to kill anyone, especially my own father, even though I wasn't exactly fond of him. There'd been words already, white knuckles and fists, sending me curling up into a tighter self-protective ball. My father didn't love me. Even then I knew that. And he didn't love my mother. Like me, she stood between him and his plans. He wanted only to conquer her, in the same way he planned to conquer the world. You see, my father had big ideas swirling inside his head. Even then he loved power more than people. Even then he would let nothing stand in his way.

My mother loved my father but for all the wrong reasons. Love, hate and fear were all bound up together for her. She was young and weak and couldn't distinguish between these things. She wanted me and she didn't. She was afraid. It's not unusual. And Simon's prophecy had filled her throat with the burning need to tell. So when my father arrived a few minutes later, she laughed a kind of brittle nervous laugh and repeated what Simon had said. It was a big mistake, because more than anything my father wanted to live. He was a rational man, or so he claimed, but underneath that rationality lay a deep-rooted superstition. Underneath everything, he knew the power of shadow.

At first he tried to laugh it off but my mother could see the discomfort in his eyes and the tension in his fingers, already bunching up into fists.

'You should have got rid of it,' he hissed. 'I told you.' Then he hit my mother hard in the belly, the shock and pain spreading through her thin skin and into me.

At that moment I decided it was safer out than in. I fled, bursting the bag that contained me, sending the warm liquid pouring down my mother's legs, soaking her pants and forming a puddle on the ground under where she sat, her heart beating in terror from the attack, her breath coming in quick panting bursts. Her fear spread quickly into me. In a panic I bounced my head again and again, pushing at her uterus, sending out waves of contractions. She ran, out of the gardens and onto the footpath, winding her way through other pedestrians, doubling over with the pain as another contraction hit, then running again, away from him, away from the agony that was me and that was tearing her neatly down the middle.

It was lunch hour in the city and there were lots of people about. She could see the concern in their eyes but her terror didn't allow her to respond. Like a panicked horse she bolted, not noticing where she was. It took a Don't Walk sign to bring her to her senses. Perhaps it was some instinct for survival, or the need to protect me. Perhaps it was fate, for the prophecy had been written in the stars and spoken aloud by Simple Simon, setting it in motion. Or perhaps someone reached out their hand and grabbed her arm or dress, yanking her to a halt. It could have been any of these things that made her stop, only a half-second away from the truck that muscled across the intersection, dangerously close to the kerb, making everyone step back and brushing the wind through her hair just as my head burst free of the birth canal, only to find itself imprisoned in her underpants as she slid, moaning, to the ground, hands reaching out to support her. And all the time my father stood back in the crowd, watching me emerge and wanting to stamp the life out of me but unable to come forward. Yet.. . '

(to be continued)

Coming Unstuck

2012-01-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

'Creativity needs freedom – freedom from the mind, freedom from knowledge, freedom from prejudices.'

Osho, Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within

In the previous post I explored the obstacles that prevent us from accessing or making full use of our creativity but there are also factors that help us to reengage with the flow of life and hence with creativity. In The Way of Story, Catherine Ann Jones defines the creative act as an 'act of liberation, the defeat of habit by originality', something which is echoed below in Osho's four keys to creativity:

Become a child again - A child sees the world in a special way. For a child everything has significance and wonder. Having children was a gift for me in many ways, one of which was the opportunity it brought to see the world once again through the fresh eyes of a child, something I explore in Passing Time, a non-fiction short story.

Be ready to learn - We need to let go of beliefs that stop us from learning more about the world and instead try to step outside of conditioning and ideology and trust in our own experience as a guide. In Osho's words, we must keep learning but never become knowledgeable.

Find Nirvana in the Ordinary - Look for the mystery and the magic in the every day world, then every form of work becomes a meditation from the heart.

Be a dreamer - Imagination is a vital part of creativity so we need to unleash it. Imagination is like the trickster gods of old. It is a liberating force, cutting through what has been established, making strange what is normal, allowing us to step into the shoes of another, to break free of what we know and to fly.

These four keys link closely to playfulness, something which many writers find difficult to access in the writing process and many of us find difficult to embrace in our lives. In archetypal terms perhaps we need to make friends once again with the wild child within ourselves, fearless and playful, intrigued by life and most importantly, not squashed by formula and conditioning. It's not an easy thing to do this because from early childhood onwards we are told the right and the wrong way of doing things, which is useful in some circumstances, but it can also make us close off our potential. At the age of nine my son was told by his teacher that his stories were wrong and so were his drawings. Over and again she made him redo them the 'right way' until he began to think himself stupid and became so anxious and depressed he was unable to go to school. It took us a year to convince him that his way was the right way, the way of discovery and creativity; a year to induce him to write and draw again, and a year for him to be ready to return to a school environment.

As Picasso said, 'every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up'. These days rote learning is valued more than creative thought. Formula more than imagination. We are taught to repeat and reproduce and in so doing we quickly lose our freshness of vision. We are told that this is the wrong way and that is the right way. We tell ourselves: 'I can't write' . . 'I'm no good at drawing' . . . 'My voice is terrible'. . . creating stories of dysfunction within our lives, stories that have often been triggered by people in authority: parents, older siblings, teachers, employers, religious leaders. . . I have heard the same story from many students over many years and I have carried my own stories with me too, allowing them to solidify into fact and become part of my identity. These are themes I have explored in Flight, as the protagonist, Fern, finds herself forced to rewrite her own life, gathering up the parts of herself that have been lost and rescinding those promises she has made that have weakened her.

As I see it, one part of the solution is to rediscover our playfulness, stop worrying about the consequences and realise that creativity is not an intellectual exercise. As Jung wrote, 'the creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity'. Creativity is about stepping over a line and taking risks. All my life I have had a sense of that line and the need to step over it, knowing that if I did I would be moving beyond my limitations and hence be capable of anything. After many years I've finally approached it and occasionally I get a glimpse of what it might be like on the other side. I'm beginning to unravel those stories that don't serve me, peel away the scar tissue from wounds that I didn't even know existed and in the process discover something more fundamental; an essential self that is not disfigured by experience.

Sticking Points

2012-01-16T17:12:00.000-08:00

'Nature gives everybody energy which is creative. It becomes destructive only when it is obstructed, when no natural flow is allowed.'

Osho, Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within

Sometimes it seems that as soon as we start a creative project, circumstances and duty step in to bring it to an abrupt halt. Perhaps it is an elaborate avoidance technique, designed to stop us from facing the possibility of failure. A version of writer's block. Or perhaps it is simply because life gets in the way and a project must be put aside for a time. It isn't always easy to distinguish between the two, and either way, it is sometimes difficult to return to a project at a later date. We fill up our days until there is no space left for it, putting everything else first and not giving our creativity the value it deserves.

Like good food and exercise, creativity is fundamental to our health. We should find the time to value and nurture it, not place it at the bottom of our 'to do' lists. In his book Creativity, the author, Osho, lists five obstacles to creativity which he has written an entire book on and I shall attempt to summarise in a few lines and perhaps expand on in later posts:

Self-Consciousness - Osho calls self-consciousness a disease, describing it as a blocked, frozen state, a state of self that takes in but doesn't give out. 'A nonsurrendering attitude.' Whereas consciousness is free of ego, has no boundaries and is abundantly alive. Perhaps the state of self-consciousness relates to our wounded selves and the way to overcome it is to let go of resistance and tune into our unconscious selves.

Perfectionism - in order to find our way back to our creativity we only have to lower our standards and keep lowering them, until eventually the flow resumes. Perfectionism is dangerous because if we seek it we never arrive. And if by chance we did reach it then we would most likely be afraid to ever set out on the journey again. Osho associates perfectionism with ego, describing a paradox 'the real creator knows that he has not created anything. Existence has worked through him.'

Intellect – Creativity comes from the heart, not from the head. There are times when we use the head; possibly during our research, though even then we follow a strange intuitive sense that takes use to just the right places. We also use the head in the editing process. But in the writing process we write from the heart, drawing perhaps from memory but transforming it with imagination.

Belief - Many of the beliefs we hold, limit our imagination because beliefs tend to be carved in stone, rigid and unmoving. When we create we are drawing from our own experience and experience is ever changing. In the process we need to be open, not closed, seeking universal truths not rigid mind beliefs.

The Fame Game - the need for fame and monetary success acts as a hindrance to creativity, a block to the free flow of the imagination. We write what we think we should write not what we need to write for ourselves. And instead of immersing ourselves in the trials and joys of writing, we wish away the process for the end product. If fame and money comes (and they rarely do), then that's great but it shouldn't be the only factor that determines our desire to write or we will only be capable of composing, not truly creating, a distinction that Osho makes emphatically in his book.

These are obstacles which cause writer's block, though it's important to remember that they have an effect on all of our creative endeavors and by that I mean every part of our lives. More often than not, the obstacles that stop our creativity are self-generated internal ones like those that Osho lists. Sometimes though, the factor that stop us from writing are external ones, such as working long hours or school holidays or even tragedy. Sometimes we find ourselves in a kind of Catch-22 situation, becoming depressed or ill because our creativity is blocked and unable to access our creativity because we are depressed or ill. Grief has a way of stopping us in our tracks, though it can be a healing process to write our way through it as Isabel Allende did when she wrote Paula while her daughter was lying in a coma and eventually died; and Joan Aitken too, when she wrote A Year of Magical Thinking after her husband died suddenly and her daughter fell severely ill. However, there are times when we have to let go of a project and allow a space in our lives for healing or simply living, knowing that we can come back to it later, when we are ready. I agree with Catherine Ann Jones who writes in The Way of Story, that 'so-called writer's block is not a malady to be remedied but rather an opportunity to go deeper'.

For the time being I have been turned away from writing my new novel by the desire to spend time with my children during their holidays, a deadline to write a film script, the need to read my husband's first novel manuscript, a science thriller called The God Equation (there's a plug!) and my building excitement as Flight approaches its publication date. The trick is to let go of the writing of my novel without resentment and remember to apply that creativity to every activity in my daily life.

Writing Our Own Paths

2012-01-09T16:47:00.001-08:00

'Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.'

Osho, Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within

It is a wonderful thing to start a novel. Despite the trepidation, there is the extraordinary feeling that comes when we set out on a journey. Having left home but not yet arrived, we inhabit the 'space in between', the no man's land in which anything and everything can happen. I have begun this new novel; felt the excitement of slipping into the creative process, not quite losing myself yet, but already surprised by the material that has arisen from my unconscious and formed into words on the page – well four pages to be exact. Not much, but just enough to know that there is more to come, patiently awaiting my attention. Once again I find myself being seduced by the mystery of the creative process.

Speaking on a panel of writers I once mentioned the word creativity, only to find another writer dismissing the word as a cliché. Of course any word can become a cliché with overuse and with misuse, but there's a danger that the inherent value of that word will then become derided. It would be a great shame if we began to deride the idea of creativity. Osho writes in his book, Creativity, that 'any activity can be creative, it is you who brings that quality to the activity'. Is it then possible to write a book or paint a picture uncreatively? According to Osho, it is. 'Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things.'

I looked up the term creativity and on answers.com found it defined as 'an ability to produce something new through imaginative skill, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form. The term generally refers to a richness of ideas and originality of thinking. Psychological studies of highly creative people have shown that they have a strong interest in apparent disorder, contradiction, and imbalance, which seem to be perceived as challenges. Such individuals may possess an exceptionally deep, broad and flexible awareness of themselves. . .'

In order to truly create, in order to do more than copy what is already known, then perhaps we need to free ourselves from conditioning and from the collective psychology. Paradoxically, I think one of the keys to freeing ourselves in this way, lies in story. Analytic psychologist, Juliet Sharman-Burke calls myth, fairy tales and folklore 'the original self-help psychology', while Jungian analyst and cantadora (storyteller) Clarissa Pinkola Estes, describes stories as medicine. 'They have such power,’ she says. 'The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories'. Stories help us to remember, to transform and to release our wounds, and in doing so, we are able to become truly individual, forging our own path through life.

At one level story is purely entertainment. On another level it can be a form of propaganda that reinforces the social order and prevailing attitudes, thus keeping people unquestioningly obedient to a social system and sometimes a religious system too. Stories can be read politically, interpreted differently according to their context and the numerous filters through which they are received. We can respond to stories from many points of view: take a Marxist perspective, give a feminist reading, psychoanalytic, realist, structuralist, and post structuralist, all of which are necessary and illuminating ways of reading narratives and understanding the culture in which we live, but cannot lay exclusive claim to the whole truth.

While our stories entertain, and provide us with ways of thinking about how to live within our society, on a third level they also provide us with maps that allow us to develop as individuals (more on this in a later post). Mythologist, Joseph Campbell, wrote extensively about this third level within story and this is the level which I explore in my novel, Flight. Although stories can and do encourage us to conform, paradoxically they are also subversive, in that the very structure of story is a map of the process of becoming oneself, a state in which the individual may live freely within society. As Osho writes, 'Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.'

Rewriting The Future

2012-01-02T20:28:00.000-08:00

'The world is changing and the time has come to let go of the old ways, the ones that ensure the repetitions of history. Peace is a gentle thing that can no longer be fought for. Instead it will enter our hearts and spread from there like the ripples of a pebble dropped into a pond.'

Rosie Dub, Flight

I love the new year. There's a freshness to it, a tantalising sense of opportunity and new beginnings. This is a perfect time to publish one novel and begin another. Today, as I sat down to begin my new novel, Between Worlds, a box full of copies of Flight were delivered. It was a precious moment to finally hold this novel in my hand. Like the new year, it feels like both an ending and a beginning; the book symbolises the end of my long journey of writing, as well as the beginning of its own journey, into the hearts and minds of readers.

As I start work on Between Worlds which, like Flight, is set in the present, I find myself pausing to wonder about where humanity is heading. We've reached 2012 and many people are falling into fear over Mayan predictions of the end of the world. I have no doubt that this is a time of change – we can see it in the Arab uprisings, the global economic downturns, the changes in our climate, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. . . The old structures are crumbling and the old powers are clinging onto the ruins, trying to ignore the fact that the people are now able to see through their ruses and will no longer accept inequity and abuses of power as a natural part of society. There is plenty of fuel for pessimism and fear but there is also plenty of fuel for optimism and hope. Each moment we have a choice to focus on one or the other, to see our glass as half empty or half full.

I'm turning fifty in a few days, so it is a natural time of reflection for me on the transitions of life and the inevitability of change. I know that I'm privileged to live in a relatively wealthy and stable society, though there's nothing to say that this will remain the case in years to come. I feel optimistic about the future of humanity and hope that I will be able to contribute in a positive way to creating a new way of living. Inevitably though, it is the younger generations who will bring about change and this is how it always is and how it should be, as is illustrated in the current upheavals around the world, the cycles that govern nature, and many of the greatest heroic myths. In The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, Otto Rank identified a common pattern of events in the life of heroes. The hero is usually a child of distinguished or powerful parents, and a prophecy usually accompanies his or her birth, warning that the child will cause the death of the father. Sometimes the father attempts to kill the baby, always to no avail. The baby is then put in a box and set adrift in the water before being saved by animals or people of low birth and brought up by them, unaware of his/her origins. At some point the hero must go on a quest in search of his/her origins and make retribution for the father's unnatural desire to halt change. It is necessary for the child to step into the father's shoes in adulthood, or on a cultural scale, for a new king to step into the shoes of the old king. When this potential is denied by the father then the cycles of life have been denied and stagnation sets in. It is the child's role to force change.

What astounds me is the integrity of today's young people, the extraordinary and mature way they are peacefully, but with determination, planting the seeds of change. From the crumbling ruins of the old structures is arising an amazing movement. No longer are secrets able to be kept hidden, no longer are lies upheld. Greed, inequity and corruption are being exposed. Eventually power will be something that can only be used with integrity, not kept for its own sake. I don't imagine it will be a smooth transition – change rarely is - but it will most certainly be interesting, which reminds me of the old curse – 'may you live in interesting times'.

The events that are happening in our contemporary world and the mythic theme of cyclic change are both deeply rooted in Flight, which begins with a prophecy concerning the protagonist, Fern: 'That one will be the death of her father. . . mark my words, the death of him'. This sets in motion a series of events which, as in myth, will inevitably lead Fern to her fate and hopefully to greater self-knowledge. Now, as I work on the sequel to Flight, I'm asking myself what the catalyst is that will force change by creating conflict and dramatic movement. But more importantly I need to know why there is a need for a catalyst. And of course the answer is that stagnation has set in. Fern has become too comfortable, she has failed to understand that transformation is a perpetual and vital process, not a product. As soon as the idea of self becomes crystalised, it must be transformed in some way, and if this transformation does not occur voluntarily, then it must be forced.

As with story, life is about change. So often we forget the cycles of nature, the waxing and waning of the moon, the course of the seasons, and the circular nature of our lives. Instead we cling to what we know, resisting the natural transitions in life, from child to teenager, to adult, to elder. Or more simply, we resist stepping from the known to the unknown. The wheel of fortune turns and we expend our energy on finding ways to stop it. Story is a reminder that change is natural, it helps us to link our lives back to nature and to understand that change is an intricate part of living. It also helps us to remember that life is a journey, which suggests movement, not stasis. By accepting the path of change, we develop. Like the seasons, stories remind us that life is cyclic, that change is inevitable. Whether or not we accept it, embedded in story lies the invitation to adventure, to journey, to evolve as humans - it's up to us.

Writing Rituals

2011-12-26T21:04:00.000-08:00

'Rituals demarcate sacred spaces and times. They set our actions apart from the normal course of everyday life. They help us to slow down and focus, to be mindful of what we are doing.'

Jill Jepson, Writing as a Sacred Path

The days between Christmas and New Year are strange ones, almost outside of time, as if the clock has paused and the days stood still. Yet throughout this year time has been flying faster and faster, the pace of life becoming unbearable for many, with simmering anxieties turning into outright panic. But now with this sudden halt, it is difficult to know how to relax. I feel listless and lethargic, with a hint of anxiety, as if there is something I need to be doing but I don't know what. Behind this anxiety there is a welcome sense of peace and completion. It is the end of one year and the beginning of the next, a time of closures and a time of new beginnings, a time to reflect on the past and form resolutions for the future. A time outside of time in which to contemplate. In ancient Celtic culture the calendar revolved around the solstices and equinoxes, 360 days in total, leaving five days of festivity around these punctuation points in which to celebrate and revere the cycles of nature.

The end of one year and the beginning of the next is also a good time to clear out our spaces, whether they be physical, mental or emotional: and this is what I am doing. A few weeks ago I wrote that I was 'still walking around the fringes of my new novel, testing its boundaries and understanding its depths'. This has changed. Now I am walking around the physical space of my writing life, making room and clearing debris. I'm also seeking a way of carving a time to write during those crucial and daunting first weeks of a novel when it is easy to be frightened away from the task, to lose concentration and to lose faith. In the past year I have been caught up with editing my novel Flight, which will be published in a month, and my PhD exegesis. Aside from the posts on this recent blog, I have written very little. During this time my writing study has gradually filled with junk and now needs to be purged, so I put on old clothes and begin carrying out boxes, an ironing board, my son's saxophone, a shopping trolley, an eski and the picnic basket. I return them to their rightful places, find a garbage bag and fill it with unwanted papers, then sort through my books, making space on my shelves. I wipe down the blinds, dust the surfaces and vacuum the floor. It takes all day but it's an important ritual, a reclamation of my space and a statement that I am about to begin.

In our contemporary and secular society we have become uncomfortable with rituals, associating them with religion or with primitive peoples. The few rituals that are left have become (for many) hollow, empty customs that we connect with only superficially. Yet rituals can be positive markers of passing time, ways of connecting with each other, with the cycles of life and with the numinous. Now that I am ready to begin my novel I want a ritual, something to mark the movement from one thing to another, to say yes, you've started, you are now writing a novel. The act of writing is in itself a form of ritual. As Jill Jepson explains in Writing as a Sacred Path, 'sitting down to write requires us to still our bodies and minds and shift our attention away from the activity going on around us. Setting up small rituals is an important way to segue into your writing, to honor your sacred work and to bolster your courage.' Rituals helps us to train our mind to recognise the signs and slip more easily into a writing state, almost a self-hypnosis.

Each writer will find their own ritual/s. Isabelle Allende begins writing each book on a particular day - January 8^th, I believe. In this way she makes a date with the creative process. Maya Angelou writes in a hotel room away from her house. She takes everything off the walls and leaves a Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible and a deck of playing cards on the bed. I'm not so specific and find it hard to pin a starting point to a day, or at least to a date that I will keep, but over the years I have become more astute at reading and interpreting my own behaviour as I circle closer to a date with my writing. At first I distract myself by cleaning the entire house, catching up with old friends, answering long forgotten emails. . . until slowly I box myself in a corner. That's when I turn my attention to my writing room, which I spring clean as I have been doing this week. Once the room is ready and I have removed any traces of other work, I burn some essential oils, ask the muses for inspiration and a safe journey, make a cup of tea and sit at my computer, hoping that this is ritual enough and wondering if there isn't something more powerful, some invocation that will set the words flowing. Then I begin typing. If I'm lucky the magic comes, shifting me into a waking dreamlike state. My tea cools. Hours pass without my knowledge and I am excited by the words on the page. If I'm not so lucky, I struggle; forcing words into awkward sentences and sentences into jolty paragraphs. I drink my tea, check the clock, stare aimlessly out the window, then eventually finish with relief. Either way, I have begun.

Giving and Receiving

2011-12-18T17:57:00.000-08:00

'Unless the work is the realization of the artist's gift and unless we, the audience, can feel the gift it carries, there is no art'.

Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.

I believe that one of the greatest lessons in life is to learn how to accept a gift with grace and gratitude because in that acceptance lies the true art of giving. To deflect or deny a blessing, a compliment, a teaching, an act of kindness or a material gift, is to deny the giver and to deny yourself. It blocks the free flow of energy that is giving and receiving. Lewis Hyde wrote a wonderful book called, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, in which he explores the value of creativity and the idea that a gift must keep moving, though not necessarily in the same form. When I was a student in Sydney and found myself struggling financially, a friend gave me $200 to help me pay an essential bill. I was embarrassed and grateful, and told her that I would pay her back as soon as I could. 'No,' she said, 'I don't want the money back but perhaps one day you could do the same for someone else.' I found this profoundly moving. Instead of a debt she gave me a lesson in living and an opportunity to become a giver myself, not necessarily financially because we do not all have abundance in this area, but in whatever way I could. Since then I have tried to give to others, both through the cultivation of everyday compassion and through the telling of stories.

A few years ago in an interview with Boekenkrant in the Netherlands, I was asked if writers are special. I replied that 'we all tell stories. Stories are everywhere: in books, the cinema, television and the internet; passed around campfires; and swapped over coffee. . . . A writer consciously sets out to create stories but writers are not extraordinary. The stories they write are a gift, to them and to their readers. It is the responsibility of the writer to be true to themselves and to that which inspires them. Otherwise, I believe the only prerequisites for a writer are a love of language, a need to express themselves, self discipline and a fresh way of looking at the world. Everything else is technique and can be learned.'

There is an art and a craft of writing. In the craft of it lies the technical skills, the tools we need to produce a successful story or poem. Learning the craft is not always easy but it is fundamental because it enables expression. In the art of writing lies the gift. This gift is not ours to keep but rather to use as best we can, to hand on to others, for as Hyde writes, 'there is a sense that our gifts are not fully ours until they have been given away'. Recently I have been asking myself what it means to be a writer, and in an abrupt turn around a few days ago, I realised that I am not so much a writer as someone who seeks larger truths and that for me writing is a medium through which to express what needs expression and to seek what needs to be uncovered. Writing is a way of holding a mirror up to myself and in learning how to see myself, to then offer others the gift of seeing themselves. I have been blessed with an ability with language and bestowed with the gift of storytelling, so for me writing is my means of expression. What I have understood is that what is expressed is far more important than the medium through which it is expressed. Reaching out to help someone who is hurt, creating a business, singing a song or dancing a dance . . . these are mediums for creative expression. It is up to us what we express through them. Perhaps that is where our responsibility lies. A gift is a responsibility and it must be used. Hyde writes that, 'once a gift has stirred within us it is up to us to develop it. There is a reciprocal labor in the maturation of a talent. The gift will continue to discharge its energy so long as we attend to it in return.' In short, we must use it or lose it.

When we write we are inspired, a term that refers to a divine influence and to a drawing in of breath. When we are inspired we are breathing in the spirit of the gods. I am not a member of any religion but I do have a strong sense that the universe is a far deeper and more mysterious place than modern science would allow. My own experiences of the numinous are personal and profound, reinforcing this sense of mystery and creating a certainty that there is a deep connection between all of life. I have no doubt that writing is a gift that brings with it a responsibility. We must cultivate this gift and respect it. We must develop our understanding of the craft of writing to the best of our ability and be open to receiving the inspiration that turns our gift into art. In the acknowledgment section of my novels I am always moved to thank the giver. Once again I do so, with humility and a deep gratitude.

Have a joy filled Christmas.

Banishing The Fear

2011-12-11T16:33:00.000-08:00

'We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path: and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; and where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; and where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.'

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

There's no doubt about it, I'm afraid to begin my new novel. This happens to me every time I am about to launch into a new project. Perhaps it happens to everyone, I don't know, but I do know that the thought of sitting down and committing words to paper sends my stomach into somersaults and my heart rate soaring. Perhaps it is a simple fear of failure, the fear that this time I will have nothing to say, or no proper means to say it. The fear that my muse/s will abandon me, that inspiration will dry up and I will be left with empty words. Or perhaps it is a reluctance to mark the page because each mark is a choice and each choice closes off other choices, so as a new story begins to expand, paradoxically its potential begins to contract. Perhaps it's a fear of the commitment, which once taken will absorb much of my life for a period of time, turning me into a distant figure to my family and friends. I know from past experience that I will once again become immersed in the world of my story and the characters who inhabit it, and begin to resent any intrusions into that world. However, my reluctance to begin doesn't just relate to the time it will take to write this novel, or the immersion in another realm that is inevitable; it's also the journey itself that frightens me, with its peaks and troughs, because although this novel is a work of fiction it is filtered through me. In order to write it I will once again be forced to venture deep into the underworld in order to face my demons and bring them out into the light.

In Negotiating with the Dead, Margaret Atwood states that she believes all writing 'of the narrative kind. . . is motivated by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld, and to bring something or someone back from the dead.' As I see it, the underworld represents our unconscious selves and the journey to it, a delving into what is long buried. Writing a story for me is a way of reclaiming the pieces of myself, of my soul, that have been lost, either given away or stolen. It is a way of gathering myself back together again - of making myself whole.

These journeys into the underworld are an initiation of sorts, into a deeper form of perception, a new esoteric understanding of the deeper laws of the universe. In Shapeshifters, writer, storyteller and healer, Luisah Teish describes a personal life changing experience: 'When I talk about the me that I was before that experience, I find myself saying, “she,” a third person. I understand that it's my personal history. It's not like a slate was wiped clean, but everything that plagued me before has been turned into compost out of which the new me was growing.'

Whatever their genre or medium, many contemporary stories mirror heroic myths, both in their structure and in the elements that make up their plots. Each story involves a character leaving the safety and stasis of their ordinary world and being plunged into a new and dangerous world, one in which they don't know the rules and where they must undergo a series of adventures. The second stage of the journey involves accepting change, stepping into the abyss with no idea what lies ahead. Like birds we must be willing to fall in order to fly. Risks are taken, and if successful there is a reward of some kind. The final stage involves returning to the 'ordinary world', understanding and integrating the reward and using it as is appropriate. A new status quo is reached and the protagonist has changed in some way.

When I complete a novel, in a sense I have become a new person, as have my characters. According to Christopher Vogler, in The Writer's Journey, 'The Hero's Journey and the Writer's Journey are one and the same. Anyone setting out to write a story soon encounters all the tests, trials, ordeals, joys and rewards of the Hero's journey. . . Writing is an often perilous journey inward to probe the depths of one's soul and bring back the Elixir of experience. ' The act of writing changes the writer. To write a story is to descend into the underworld with only a few clues and no guarantee of a way back out again. It's a dangerous process, exhausting and filled with apprehension, but it's also a magical journey. This is what I must remember as I embark on my new novel, because although it is natural to feel fear, it's not okay to allow ourselves to be limited by it. And if I'm honest with myself, this fear I'm feeling is mixed with a delicious anticipation. . . It is time to begin.

What Are Writers For?

2011-12-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

'Great art and literature give a sense of patterns, of laws operating beyond conventional thought.'

Jonathan Black, The Secret History,

Sometimes, in those down moments when the letterbox is full of bills, the children need new school uniforms and birthdays are imminent, I begin to question my choices in life. Not just why I write, but also what writers are for. As writers, are we responsible for what we write? Does that responsibility extend beyond ourselves to our readers? And does the content of our stories help in some way to shape the world in which we live, for better or for worse? These are, of course, loaded questions and difficult to answer clearly as there are numerous internal and external pressures on writers. Internally there are can be self imposed constraints, such as fear of failure (more on that in a later post) and sometimes limitations generated by a need to learn more of the craft behind storytelling. Externally, the state of our finances, as well as publishing trends and deadlines can at times play too great a role in the choices we make as writers.

In the wake of Roland Barthes theory of the 'death of the author', some claim it is no longer the author who is responsible for a novel. Instead it is the reader who must claim responsibility for the material he or she reads. It is the reader who, in a sense, creates the story. Certainly each reader does bring a unique personal, cultural and historical context to a story, which means in a sense that the reader 'completes' the story and enriches it with their own interpretation. However, in my mind anyway, there is no doubt that the writer still plays a major role in the construction of stories and I believe that in taking on the role of writer we also take on a responsibility to society, meaning that whatever our intention, our stories do help to shape the world in which we live. I believe too, that as readers, as viewers and simply as individuals, the choices we make in our lives and the stories we tell ourselves also have an effect on the world around us. The question then becomes – What sort of world do we wish to shape?

I am frequently shocked by just how damaged our world is, not only physically, but socially too. Much of our media celebrates violence and cynicism, anger and betrayal. A premium is placed on ugliness, and stories that 'tell it how it is' receive accolades from critics. When I began writing Flight, I too was telling it how it is, depicting a dysfunctional character in a dysfunctional and disintegrating society. The world I created for Fern was a weary one, pessimistic and dark. However, as the story progressed and Fern discovered the existence of a metaphysical world, a note of optimism began to creep in and I found myself tending more towards telling it 'how it might be'. There are risks involved in this: the risk of putting one's head in the sand in order to hide from the truth; and the risk of being ridiculed, because words such as love, heart, empathy, compassion and soul, are so often labelled sentimental and derided in our society. And yet it is in the journey of the soul, in learning how to love and in discovering the capacity for compassion, that Fern remembers her self and in so doing, finds truth. Fern's journey is both actual and metaphorical. It is a journey into her self, plumbing the depths of her memory and retrieving what has been lost in order to become whole. It is a journey of remembering. A journey to truth. And ultimately to a vital and connected life.

Almost inevitably, fiction writers live on the fringes of society. In part it's for financial reasons, as so few writers actually find a publisher. Mostly though, the fringes represent a position from which to view the world, a position that is at once privileged and lonely. I believe it is our role as writers to do more than merely reflect the societies in which we live. Instead we need to question them, as well as attempt to break free of the constraints placed upon us by constructed truths which emphasise differences rather than commonality. We need to step outside the structures we take for granted, to 'see through' society, to be willing to turn our minds upside down and inside out in the quest for understanding. Our role is to question, document and sometimes even to foresee, and in the process, to create powerful and entertaining stories that are guides to life. Living stories that help us to evolve as human beings.

In her conclusion to A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong writes that 'a novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see the world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest. If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythical lore, our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight into our lost and damaged world.'

Perhaps these are grandiose claims but I would like to think there are moments when as writers we reach out beyond ourselves and beyond the restrictions of language and culture and context, using story and metaphor and symbol to express what cannot be expressed merely through language. We cast spells with words, breaking through cultural programming and questioning the very basis of our lives. And in so doing, perhaps we make the world a slightly better place.

Discovering our Themes

2011-11-27T21:34:00.000-08:00

'Theme is not the same as plot. It is a broader term. The theme illustrates whatever universal idea the story puts forward, while plot has to do, instead with the literal events that occur in the characters lives'.

Laurie Henry, Fiction Dictionary

I've been trying to understand the themes I'll be working with in this new novel, tentatively titled Between Worlds. Theme is a fundamental part of story. In a sense it's the central idea, a point the writer wishes to make. It generally explores human nature in some way, perhaps the relationship between mothers and daughters or between humanity and nature. Perhaps the legacy of injustice or the power of forgiveness. Sometimes moral statements, proverbs such as 'crime does not pay' or 'honesty is the best policy'. And often dualistic elements such as good versus evil or madness versus sanity. With theme we search the depths of our stories, exploring the endless shades of grey between the black and whites of life.

Theme helps to give a story a satisfying shape, depth and purpose. It communicates a kind of truth about the way human beings act and think or feel, in a way that is sometimes universal, reaching beyond difference to what is essential within all of us. Of course, theme is closely linked to human emotion, and the themes we choose, either consciously or unconsciously, are generally linked to issues or passions within our own lives. If we distinguish (as I do) between factual and emotional truths, then it is theme that sometimes makes a work of fiction more 'true' than a memoir (more on this in a future post).

Often a theme is only found in retrospect, when examining a completed story. Sometimes it is found during the process of writing and sometimes it can be the seed of an idea from which a story grows. When we are looking for our themes we can sometimes find them in the title of a story or in its opening pages, and nearly always in the inner journey of our main character/s. What they learn (if anything), suffer or experience is key to the theme.

In Dear Writer, Carmel Bird, speaks of the importance of writing about what we care about. This of course doesn't mean that we have to write solemn, politically correct stories. It means that we need to write about what moves us. Sometimes we need to find out what that is by asking ourselves what themes resonate with us. What makes me angry? What can't I bear? What do I love? What do I believe in? What makes me laugh? In the answers to these questions lies a novel, or in my case, two novels and the seeds of a third.

Like many writers, I explore similar themes in all my work, though there has been a clear development of these themes in my writing to date. I imagine this will continue as my writing develops and as I evolve as an individual. My novel, Gathering Storm is a work of fiction, but many of its themes are ones that are close to my own heart. Storm is haunted by the secrets and lies that fill her childhood as well as events that occurred well before her birth. In Gathering Storm, I explored identity and dislocation in a personal sense, through family history and genetic inheritance, but also from a broader cultural perspective, in relation to nationhood and citizenship. Gathering Storm is very much about place and belonging. It also explores the nature of truth, the power of lies and the damage they leave in their wake. But probably, most importantly, it's about identifying and breaking free of negative patterns by turning around and facing the monsters in ones life and taking the journey from anger to forgiveness and compassion.

Flight, is also about belonging and identity and like Gathering Storm, it documents the journey to become oneself and live ones life in relation to that, instead of through the wounds that can be inherited from ones ancestors, from ones culture, and created through the experience of living. In it, I again set out to explore memory in a personal way: pre-verbal memory, as well as those memories which remain hidden in the unconscious. But this time I have taken it even further, venturing into the realms of mysticism by exploring the idea of carrying memory from past lives, wounds that inhabit the deepest parts of ourselves and cause us to shut down. Two stories are woven through this novel, the title itself reflecting a double meaning, one of running away from something, the other of ascension. The outer journey is the one described in the synopsis and a metaphor for the inner journey towards self and the healing of old wounds.

In many ways Flight is about innocence, exploring the archetype of the victim. In contrast, Between Worlds will be about guilt, about facing the monstrous within oneself. It will be at once a metaphysical thriller and a celebration of the magic of everyday living. And its developing themes will once again reflect my own, sometimes hazardous journey through life.

Finding Our Stories

2011-11-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

'You are your stories. You are the product of all the stories you have heard and lived – and of many that you have never heard. They have shaped how you see yourself, the world, and your place in it.'

Daniel Taylor, Tell Me A Story

Since ancient times we have told stories. We sit around camp fires watching the flickering flames and exchanging tales, or curl up in bed with our books, or gather in front of a screen. We read newspapers, listen to the radio and browse the internet. We make up stories for our children, or meet friends for coffee and swap anecdotes. When we sit down at the dinner table and talk to our family, we construct stories from the events of the day, shaping our ideas into a satisfying structure with a beginning, middle and end, creating a narrative flow, an atmosphere, tensions, hooks and characters.

Stories are a natural part of us, deeply embedded in our psyche yet sometimes people tell me they have no stories to tell. For many years I had this same concern. I could write polished prose passages but I couldn't shape a story. I couldn't make characters move or events happen, I couldn't find endings, and more importantly, I couldn't find beginnings. I used to envy people who had real stories to tell, who grew up in families steeped in story, families whose lives had crossed continents, whose houses were filled with music and books and whose meals were accompanied by passionate conversation. My childhood was empty of these things. I was an adopted child, growing up in bland suburb with a family who were strict Baptists. Rabidly anti-iconic they rejected the exciting imaginative elements of religion and simply kept the rules, creating a regimented and sterile environment – without artworks, or music (aside from hymns), or dance, or even books. . .

When I discovered the library, books became both my escape from life and my way of exploring the world and myself. Then later, when I wanted to craft my own stories, I realised that the only stories I knew were from books. Where, I wondered, could I find stories in a bland suburban family like mine? But over time I began to realise that even bland suburbia was full of stories. I was full of stories. I just had to learn how to access them and to stop assuming they weren't interesting enough to share. In the end I discovered that it wasn't a lack of stories that was paralysing me, it was that there were too many stories to choose from.

'How to choose your story then?' asks Catherine Anne Jones in The Way of Story. 'Simple. Choose the one you feel emotionally connected with.' More often than not the stories we write are drawn from our own lives. These are the stories that are written with our hearts not our heads. Even when the plot is fictional, the themes are usually our own and hence we have an emotional connection with them. The short stories I have written have usually been about defining moments in my life, such as Impotence, a fiction story about the abrupt end of a childhood and the complex nature of a child's love for his mother. Or they're about small moments that symbolise something more universal, such as my non-fiction story, Passing Time which was inspired by my youngest child slipping into bed with me on a cold winter's morning and discussing the universe and time. My novels and the story or stories they contain are a blend of fiction and non-fiction, my memories handed over to a fictional character whose journey is to resolve them and/or to seek the universal within them. Sometimes these memories are replayed in my stories and sometimes they are transformed, reemerging as themes that mark and guide the lives of my characters.

We go inwards to find our stories, delving into the unconscious to find what has long been hidden; using our memory to rediscover it and our imagination to transform it. To write a story is to descend into the underworld or step into the labyrinth, with only a few clues and no guarantee of a way back out again. It is to step beyond our limitation, embarking on a journey with no known destination and often no ticket. These journeys are not always comfortable but they're generally rewarding. And in the process we feel truly alive.

The Seeds of an Idea

2011-11-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

'Stories pretty much make themselves. The job of a writer is to give them a place to grow.'

Stephen King, On Writing

It's early days yet and aside from a few notes, I haven't yet put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. I'm still walking around the fringes of my new novel, testing its boundaries and understanding its depths. It isn't plot I'm exploring, it's theme, because for me theme and character are the backbone on which the plot will be built. I need to know what my story is really about. What exploration I will be making this time around. And all the time that I'm musing and reading, making notes and dreaming, something is forming. I receive flickers of story elements, tantalising hints that I hope will eventually become a novel.

Flannery O'Connor spoke of writing 'as an act of discovery' and for me that is certainly the case. People write in different ways, according to their character and preference. Some write haphazardly with no story in mind, then cut and paste, creating links between sections until a story emerges. Some plan everything before sitting down to actually write a story, mapping out chapters and scenes, character traits and biographies. Others plan very little and simply trust the process.

There are dangers and rewards in each of these approaches. Too much knowledge of a story can set the boundaries so tightly its natural growth becomes restricted. Too little and the story might never be found.

For me writing is an act of faith. Not in God but in the creative process. This is where the magic lies. A story will come and I must allow it. I don't plan before I write, instead I start with an image that haunts me and a theme or two, then see what emerges. When I wrote Gathering Storm I had an image in my head of a small child abandoned on the Stuart Highway. It became the central point in the story which grew around it, a hidden memory which needed to be unmasked.

When I began the writing of Flight I did not know what it would be about and wasn't certain if it would become a novel or even a story. I did have a title and I knew that the story would somehow revolve around the double meaning inherent in the word flight; one of running away from something, the other of ascension. Aside from this, the only clue I had was an image of a young woman called Fern (meaning wing in old English), who had locked herself in her bedroom, an attic in a terrace house in inner city Sydney.

Stephen King describes writing as an archaeological dig, a process of rediscovery, which suggests that the story is there all along, just waiting for its fragments to be found and pieced back together. Perhaps stories inhabit the vast realms of a collective unconscious and it is our imaginations that must take the necessary journeys, in order to discover them. In Writing as a Sacred Path, Jill Jepson describes it as 'a realm of myth, memory, imagery, trope, and dream'. It is here that we 'find' our story. In the writing of Flight, giving my imagination permission to enter this realm was an act of faith in the creative process, and like most acts of faith it was sometimes fraught with doubt. I had already written over 70,000 words before I dared describe Flight as a novel. Despite the doubt, it was an exciting process, filled with dangers and punctuated with miracles. From a single word and an image, a novel grew, slowly and mysteriously, and it is the mystery of that process, along with the pure joy that it brings, that draws me back to story again and again.

Why Write?

2011-11-13T22:46:00.000-08:00

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows? Ernest Hemingway

Each time I am about to embark on a new novel, I find myself considering my reasons for writing. It helps me to reaffirm my motivations at a time when I'm struggling with the idea of committing to a new project. It also reminds me that writing is my path in life and it's futile resisting it.

There are other reasons for considering why we wish to write. It helps us to discover the kind of writing we want to do, the themes we wish to work with and even if writing is for us. If your reason for writing is publication and celebrity status, if you don't love reading, if you don't feel irresistibly drawn to express yourself in this form, then perhaps writing is not for you. Fewer than 1% of writers get published and of these, very few have financial success. If you don't mind not being able to afford a dentist or a new car, not having annual holidays or sick pay. If you don't mind having no guarantees of success and putting up with friends and relatives dismissing your writing; the raised eyebrows and the hopeful questions – 'Not published yet?' If you can enjoy the process and not wish it away by hankering after the finished product. If you can weather hundreds of rejection slips and put aside your ego long enough to stomach criticism, then writing might be for you.

'To record the world as it is. . . To satisfy my desire for revenge. . . To produce order out of chaos. . . To defend the human spirit and human integrity and honour. . . To make money so my children could have shoes. . . To make money so I could sneer at those who formerly sneered at me. . . To justify my failures in school. . . To thwart my parents. . . To make myself appear more interesting than I actually was. . .Because an angel dictated to me. . .To amuse and please the reader . . . Because I was possessed. . . To subvert the Establishment. . . To celebrate life in all its complexity'. . . These are just a few of the motivations for writing that Margaret Atwood compiled in her book, Negotiating With the Dead.

Atwood came to the conclusion that it is fruitless to search for common motives, while George Orwell came up with his own motivations in his wonderful essay, Why I Write. 'Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living.' Orwell goes on to say that 'all writers are vain, selfish and lazy and at the bottom of their motives lies a mystery'.

I would like to say that I write because I love it, and I do. I love stories. I love the process of writing. The act of faith it entails. The magic of it. And its mystery. In writing stories, in the forming of sentences and plots it's possible to rediscover magic, to cast spells with words and to bewitch our readers. I love both the art and the craft of writing. I love the fact that learning the craft is a lifelong apprenticeship, that there are always challenges and there is always something more to learn. And I am hugely grateful that I have something to say and a medium through which to say it.

However, sometimes my relationship with writing is a love/hate one. The process of writing can be an uncomfortable one, very frustrating at times but also incredibly rewarding. There are good days and bad days, sometimes good months and bad months. In the end I write because I need to. A need that one of my favourite authors, Franz Kafka expressed in a letter to his friend, Max Brod, 'A non writing writer is a monster inviting madness. . . the existence of the writer is truly dependent on his desk and if he wants to keep madness at bay he must never go far from his desk, he must hold on to it with his teeth.'

There are times when I question myself and my writing, times when it crawls along at an excruciatingly slow pace and times when I can't write at all. In order to deal with the ups and downs of writing I have had to understand my own rhythms and begin to respect them. Sometimes I walk away from the desk for days at a time but now I know that I will eventually return and the words will flow again.

In the Beginning

2011-11-08T16:09:00.001-08:00

The heralding of a new novel begins with a feeling. A new book is coming; far off yet, but I know it's there. This is a beautiful sensation, something akin to the way a woman feels knowing there is a new life growing inside her. There's a satisfaction associated with it, as well as a great sense of mystery. It's a succumbing to a power and a process that is beyond oneself. The enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa reminds me of this sense; an inner knowing, a looking within. This is what happens when the seed of a novel begins to grow. After that there is an inevitability to the process, in that it is growing towards something and instinctively knows its own way. But of course there are many factors that will help or hinder it on its journey. As a writer, I must gently nurture the tiny seed of an idea until that moment when it struggles out of the darkness seeking the sun.

During this nurturing time, nothing has yet been written but there are flashes of images in my mind, unformulated ideas that hover in the background awaiting their moment. Then there's the synchronicity; a series of clues I must trust and follow in order to find my story: a plot point here, a character trait there, some background research, a theme or simply a glimmer of understanding about what I am writing and why I must write it. . . . The clues appear random and yet they're linked in some way. I pick up a second hand book at a market stall, then another in a book shop, while at a dinner party someone mentions a subject that leads me in a new direction. . . I am being led through a maze of ideas.