Following The Clues - Research And Reflection

As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me:  grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall. 

Virginia Woolf

When I began this blog sixteen months ago, I was just about to start work on a new novel. The blog was intended to map this journey I was undertaking in my writing and to begin with it did. However, life got in the way as it so often does and a different but parallel journey began to unfold with its own plot line, turning points and character arc. My life underwent one upheaval after another, and I found myself on a roller coaster of change. During this time I stopped work on the novel but despite this the blog found its own voice, always linking back to story and the creative process yet drawing from experience and the philosophies of esoteric traditions to explore revelations of self and individual growth.  

Now that the dust has settled I find myself in a very different place, physically, psychologically and spiritually. I have worked through a backlog of projects and been awarded a literature grant to assist with the writing of this new novel, Falling Between Worlds, so I can no longer avoid it. Indeed, as Virginia Woolf describes so beautifully above, this novel has ‘grown heavy in my mind; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall’. Yet now that I am here I am afraid all over again. What if it has become overripe, has already fallen and now lies rotting on the ground, irretrievable? What if I have grown out of this novel in some way? Alternatively, what if I have not yet grown into it? I am suddenly overwhelmed with all the potential novels I might write. Ideas flicker in and out of my mind, different approaches, styles, points of view. . . Then again perhaps I am following the wrong path altogether and there is another novel out there waiting for me to stumble over it and bring it to life.

Filled with all these doubts, I have sat in front of my five thousand words and read them over and over, seeing the faults (only the faults), even seeing where I might go next, but the words are not coming. I can’t continue exactly where I left off because I am not the same person I was sixteen months ago. It is always dangerous to stop and start a project like this because it becomes stale and we lose the magic and excitement of telling a story that is in part telling itself. I’m trying to find my way back in. I have been through my journal, marking all my old ideas, quotes, research notes, anything that might lead me back to my story. But I am detached from these ideas now.  Before I left Tasmania, as part of my field research I visited the forest protest site that will feature in the early part of Falling Between Worlds. Welcomed by the protesters, I was given the opportunity to see how it worked and to imbibe the atmosphere of the camp and the old growth forest surrounding it. An arsonist has since burnt down this encampment, though I imagine it will be rebuilt because these protesters are patient and committed in a way that is a joy to see. In the upheaval of the past year, this visit to the Upper Florentine Valley has become a distant memory and I have almost forgotten the intense stillness of the forest, the rich smells of damp hummus. . . Perhaps given time I can sit with the memory of it, re-inhabiting the experience and weaving it into my story. But I’m not yet still enough to sit with my memories, quietly waiting for a breakthrough.

I wanted to sit down at my computer and just start writing where I had left off but that has proven impossible. The commitment isn’t there yet and the words I need are missing. Somehow I have to find a way to step through my fear and immerse myself in the story again, reacquainting myself with the characters and their needs. To do this, I must engage in more research. In Story, Robert McKee wrote that ‘research not only wins the war on cliché, it’s the key to victory over fear and its cousin, depression.’ Research, enables us to find our way out of writer’s block and into our stories, helping us to establish a convincing setting, characters and plot. However, research is not an alternative to the creative process, a way of avoiding an engagement with the story. Ideally we fuse fact based research with our imaginations and our memories, drawing on what we know and what might be. This new knowledge allows us to step into the shoes of our characters and understand how they will respond to the story in which they are situated. As McKee wrote, ‘creation and investigation go back and forth, making demands on each other, pushing and pulling this way or that until the story shakes itself out, complete and alive.’

At its best, research will feed the story and the story will guide the research, a symbiotic process that is quite magical. At its worst, research will halt the creative process indefinitely, or take over the story; in the process squeezing it dry and leaving it wooden and formulaic. Nearly every story needs some factual research in order to construct convincing settings, characters and plot but the skill is in finding the right balance. When I was immersed in writing Gathering Storm I suddenly came to an abrupt halt and could go no further. Realising that in order to know my protagonist, Storm, I had to learn more about the Romany world from which she was descended, I reluctantly began researching Romany customs, history, language. . . making notes from books and the internet. Then just as suddenly the writing began again and my characters were enriched by my new knowledge, the information feeding into and motivating their actions, ultimately helping me to create a story that was convincing on many levels. During the writing of Flight, I also came to an abrupt halt just as I was introducing a major character in the story. He needed to talk but I couldn’t hear him. In this case factual research was no use; instead I had to stop and consider who this character was and imagine what motivated him. In the end I discovered a good deal about his past, simply by asking him questions. In listening to his answers I also discovered how he talked and once again I found a way forward. Remembering these examples of blocks and solutions reminds me that I have solved these problems in the past so it is likely that I will do so again with Falling Between Worlds. With that knowledge I can feel the fear receding.

Agatha Christie once said that ‘the best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.’ The same goes for ironing, knitting, swimming (none of which I can do), walking. . . or anything that occupies our bodies and yet is relatively mindless, leaving us free and open for inspiration and mental planning. For me it is walking that provides insights into my writing. As Robert Macfarlane writes in The Old Ways, ‘the compact between writing and walking is almost as old as literature – a walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells.’ When I am writing, walking helps me to find my way through the maze of potential pathways in my stories. It helps me to understand what I am writing, to solve problems and to make links between theme and plot, or plot and character development or motifs and theme.

What I am just beginning to understand is that I am trying too hard to reengage with Falling Between Worlds. Instead I need to slow down and read, muse, dream, make notes and walk, all the activities that in my new and busier lifestyle, I had begun to see as self-indulgent, as non-work rather than as research. I had almost forgotten that everything in life feeds us. We aren’t machines that can crank out stories on demand. If we don’t allow ourselves the time to meander and meditate, to read and to ponder, it won’t be possible to create anything that is not simply mechanical. So, I will slow my racing thoughts and begin listening once again to my intuition. And I will amble along the maze of pathways in this beautiful Welsh countryside, climbing over stiles and marching through the clinging mud, savouring the scent of gorse and sheep manure and wild garlic, as I follow the clues that will lead me back to my novel.  

Copyright (c) 2013 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Stepping Into The Future

'Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.'

Anaïs Nin, Diary, 1969

This is a shorter post than usual because I'm on the move, or at least I'm about to be. Good news is that my publisher has lifted the geographical restrictions from my new novel, Flight, so if you are outside of Australia or New Zealand, you can now buy the ebook through Amazon. Unfortunately these restrictions haven't yet been lifted on my earlier novel, Gathering Storm, so that might still be difficult to obtain.

Over the past week or two I've begun packing my study into boxes, sorting my books and notes into three categories: those I no longer need, those I want but can be parted with for a few years, and those that I will need with me in Wales. This last category will take three months to reach me, and as I pack them away I feel more and more bereft, cut off from the knowledge within their pages and afraid that there isn't enough knowledge within me to draw on in their place. I've become reliant on the knowledge of others, subsumed into the academic way of thinking that demands arguments are supported by the weight of history not personal experience. Now, or at least for a few months, I will need to draw on my own reserves. Perhaps this will be good for me. But nevertheless I feel a surge of trepidation as I tape up the last of the boxes and wait for the removal company to collect them.

I look around my empty writing room. I have written novels here, completed my PhD, written numerous blog posts and essays. . . This space and I have got along together, understood each others needs and over time become an effective writing team. But now the comfortable writing space that I have constructed over a number of years is gone. The atmosphere has changed beyond recognition. Noises bounce around the bare walls; it feels colder, less friendly, a room that awaits a new occupant, a new stage in its history. Perhaps I will come back to it one day, perhaps not. Either way, for the next few months I will be writing in strange places: motel rooms, airports, planes, trains, the homes of friends and relatives, a caravan . . . Until I find a new home, I will have to make do, be less precious about shutting the door to the rest of the world, less precious about my writing rituals, and instead carry my creativity with me, drawing on it as and when I get the opportunity. I think back to all the excuses I've used in the past for not writing (see Writing Space and Time) no space (physical or mental), no time, no focus, no confidence. . . all of the excuses inspired by fear: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of confronting what is inside me that needs to be written, fear of writing what I have confronted inside myself. . . I have forced myself to overcome so many fears, rarely understanding their source, only recognising the danger of the paralysis they create.

All this time spent cocooned inside my writing room has meant a good deal of looking inwards, numerous terrifying and exhilarating descents into the psyche to dig up the shadows within. No doubt there will be many more of these descents because life was never intended to be static. And who would want it that way? But for now it feels as if I am suddenly being turned inside out. Forced to emerge blinking into the light. A butterfly? Perhaps not, but transformed nevertheless. And ready to live well in the world. Now I will write wherever I find myself, drawing on that reserve of strength and confidence which we all carry within ourselves. There will always be fear but this time, instead of overcoming it, I will take its hand and together we will step into the future.

Posts on Writer's Block:

Sticking Points

Coming Unstuck

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Writing Space and Time

'Stay at your table and listen. Don't even listen, just wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked.'

Franz Kafka

Last week I wrote about the helplessness that can overcome the creative process. Overcoming the helplessness meant also facing the other factors that had held me back. The major one, or so I thought, was time or more precisely, the lack of it. I had been complaining for weeks that I had no time for my own creativity, that the needs of others always came first: family, friends, students, work. . . My 'To Do' lists were getting longer and longer; each day ended with fewer jobs crossed off and my novel even further out of reach.

'The only thing stopping you, is you,' said my husband, fed up with my complaints. Irritated at his lack of sympathy, I went back to my 'To Do' lists and studied them to see what chores I could drop, looking for a way to prioritise my time. Then I noticed what I had been doing all along. Each day's list contained notes on meetings, housework, places I had to drive my children, marking . . Of course I always included, 'write my novel', however that particular one was at the end of each list. In a sense I'd been punishing myself, setting impossible standards - if I couldn't complete each day's work then I had no chance of getting to my novel. My solution had been to work harder and harder in order to create a space for writing but of course that left me exhausted, which is not a good place to create from. So last week I turned the list upside down. Each day the first thing to go on my list is 'write my novel'. At first I gave myself an hour from 8-9am, then I extended it to 10am. In those two hours I lock myself up in my study, away from the phone and the internet and out of view of the dirty dishes and washing basket. One or two hours a day doesn't seem much but it's possible to achieve a lot in that time, sometimes words on paper and sometimes simply a mental space for the novel to grow.

Then I realised that time wasn't the issue in my writing life, not really. I had written my way through busier periods, such as when my children were very small and I would get up at four in the morning just so I could have some space to create and of course to keep my sanity because that's one of the many blessings writing gives me - in our family a writing mother is a much nicer person than a non writing mother! So if time wasn't the issue, I began to wonder what was. I pondered this for a while and came to the conclusion that it was a lack of legitimacy around the act of writing itself. Even after I've had two novels published I still feel as if I'm sneaking something forbidden when I write. Partly it's a money issue. If my writing fully supported my family then perhaps I wouldn't feel this concern. Partly it's fear too. I worry that this next novel will struggle to find a publisher and I'll have to go through the whole heartbreaking process again. And I worry too about the discoveries I will make about myself on this next writing journey because from past experience I know that this is not always a comfortable process. But more than any of this I think the reason for my reluctance to settle down with this next book is a belief that I don't deserve the joy that comes with writing.

As an adopted child, illegitimacy is a word I am most familiar with, having heard it many times in the context of my own childhood. However, more importantly it is the feeling behind the word that has crept into my life and in part formed who I am. A sense of being undeserving that permeates the way I relate to myself and to others. That stops me from doing what is best for me. We all grapple with our own demons and having taught creative writing for many years I have heard all sorts of excuses for not writing, some of them more authentic than others. There are times when it isn't possible to write but for the most part the only person who is stopping us is ourselves. If we have a story to tell then I believe it is imperative that we find a way to tell it and if the way we choose is through writing then we probably have to carve a space in our lives to make this possible.

Students often ask me about my own writing routine in the hope that it will help them to find their own. But our routines have to grow around our circumstances and our natures. Some people write daily, others only once a week, some in the evenings others in the mornings. We don't need an office to work from or the latest computer, but we do need to make a regular space for our writing and commit to it in the face of life's distractions, many of which are self created. It's not easy to ask our friends and family to help provide this space and they won't always be supportive as sometimes creativity can be perceived as a threat by those closest to us. We live in a society where success is measured by externals and without the justification of a publishing contract it's hard to maintain confidence in our writing. But the hardest part of the commitment we need to make to our writing is to look closely at our distractions, peeling back the layers and discovering why we make them in the first place. Perhaps the blame doesn't lie in our circumstances or in those closest to us. Perhaps it lies squarely at our own feet.

The stories we tell help us to see the limitations in our own lives and to overcome them. But in a sense it is the commitment we make to telling our stories that is most important because although many of us might at times describe writing as torture, it is really a form of self-nurture. We have to love ourselves in order to create. And by that I don't mean an egotistical loving; I mean a forgiveness of ourselves, an acceptance of who we are and what has formed us. It is only through this acceptance that we can move on.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Coming Unstuck

'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.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Sticking Points

'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.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/