Getting some perspective

What's underneath?

My first uni assignment for this year is done. Not quite dusted yet as it involves a five minute presentation, which I can still spend time sweating over. I chose to write about first person point of view so I could explore the challenges I will have with my travel memoir. The critical aspects are the reliability of the character and the limitations this puts on how the story can be told. 

An ‘I’ character invites us into their unique way of seeing the world, but readers have to work harder to understand what the character is telling and hiding, or not revealing for the moment. From a writing angle using first person means that I will need to use devices such as memories, flashbacks or diary notes to cover some of the background. Creating scenes with conversations and actions will help flesh out the limited view.

Another angle

First person makes it easier to identify with one character, to wear and walk in their shoes. So I have been trying on the shoes of people in my life and trying to see the world from their perspective. This small exercise has triggered a series of sympathetic incidents in my world. It has allowed me to step back from my view, recognise the uniqueness of where I and others stand, as well as to feel for others in their situations.

First picks

At one of the seminars the lecturer recommended keeping a reading journal – a notebook of whatever degree of fanciness you choose - where you keep track of your responses to what you are reading and can record all the books you want to read in the future. After much mulling and wandering around the stationary stores, I decided that I wanted something a bit special. I am now the happy owner of a turquoise A5 moleskin plain page reading journal. I am going to use this to help me see more in what I am reading, more of the technique behind the story. 

More decorations

A quick check-in, how is my creative resolution going? What have I been up to lately? This weekend I have been making Easter decorations – similar to the Christmas ones with felt shapes glued onto ribbons which are draped on the furnishings. I found cookie cutters of a chick, an egg, a rabbit and a duck to use as templates. I also bought a pattern and some wool to start a small project for the newest member of our family, a baby boy called Jack – a son for my sister. I have been to two sessions at the French Film Festival, with a couple more next weekend. I still have intentions to develop the snippets we write in class, hang the curtains, make Easter buns, finish the winter scarf, paint the kitchen stools, fix a skirt hem. Sigh, so many fun things to do and not enough time!

Carving out time and space

Year of the Monkey

I am never quite ready to make resolutions at the start of the year. I need mulling time; which is often hard to find in the tumult of festive activities. But when Lunar New Year arrives a month or so later I am usually feeling much more sorted. And this has proved to be the case again. My percolated resolution is that every weekend should involve some creative activity. As usual, my definition includes anything and everything – trying my hand at a complicated recipe, planting a herb box, sanding back the paint on a chair or visiting an art gallery. I don’t want to set myself up to fail. So using the last few weeks as a test, have I passed? There has been lots of knitting for a newly arrived baby, batches of lime curd and plum syrup, pastry trials, exhibition outings and plenty of photography. Not a bad start! Can I keep going? Do I want to? Absolutely, it is a wonderful excuse to put on my maker’s hat and have some fun. I am keen to make a dotty blouse for work, hang the curtains, find some healthy lunch recipes and knit a wintry scarf.

Recommended reading

My writing will get a bit of a kick along too now that uni has started back. This semester is fiction, which I have never really written before, but which I rather think I am going to enjoy. There is so much freedom to let go and just write what comes, it is one big experiment. The set novel text is The Eye of the Sheep by Sophie Laguna, which is fabulous. The story is told through the eyes of Jimmy, a strange kid in a messy family situation. His voice is strong, clear and unique. The ebbs and flows of tension had me climbing into bed early each night, keen to keep turning the pages. Every week we also read one piece from The Best Australian Short Stories 2015.

Writing every day

As well as reading, each class involves writing a few short paragraphs, sharing with others and getting their feedback. At the end of the semester I will have more than a dozen snippets. And if I do the same exercise myself at home each week then I will double my chances of finding an idea, a voice, a character, a theme that I can develop into a more substantive piece. My first in class piece was about grief and the second about an accident. My extra practices have yielded scenes about being trapped and waiting.

Homemade mini quiches

Being creative gives me an excuse to slow down and become absorbed, losing track of my surroundings, of time, of myself. I am an introvert; I need quiet time to recover from my interactions with the world. My creative practice helps me function in my daily life. When I don’t have a project underway life seems so much harder and not half as much fun. It is not so much a treat, as a necessity.

Practice always

Summer fun

I haven’t been turning up at my desk often enough lately – not the work desk, that has its own rhythms and strictures. I mean the home desk, my creative world. I have lost the habit. What can I blame it on - change of job, the festive season, summer days – all of the above or none of the above? No doubt the answer lies somewhere in between, and really it doesn’t matter. The point is to break out, strike out in the direction I want to go. There are reasons, and there will always be reasons and musing on them doesn’t change the situation.

A quiet mind

But other shifts that I have been trying to make have flowered. Several months ago I signed up to a mind/body studio. I pay a weekly fee and can go to as many classes as I like. After a rocky start I am averaging two classes a week – one pilates and one yoga. I’d like to get it up to three but sometimes there just isn’t enough time or inclination. The change which is less easy to articulate is that I am not fighting with myself half so much to get there. It is like having set the benchmark, and having had a bit of practice at meeting it, and missing it, I am settling into it.

A new park

The job change has also meant a route change for my walk to work. I am now walking all the way – not walking to the Vic market and jumping on the free tram for the rest of the journey. My new route means I don’t have to traverse the city at all. I skirt round the edges of a park, walk through the university grounds, along fashionable streets to another park and then arrive at my building. A gentle stroll of 4km, done five mornings a week is good for me and easy unintentional exercise.

Growing time

All this body work is good for my mental health. The walking helps warm up my mind in the morning. I can’t be doing anything else, just looking at the world around me and moving leaves me with space to think. In the evenings the yoga/pilates helps clear my head. I have to focus on what the instructor is saying and then try and arrange my limbs and core into the required position – always remembering to breathe.

Light in the dark

The challenge still remains how to get all this lovely clarity and creativity to my desk. I know that when I do sit down something has to happen, because that’s what happens at work. But it doesn’t happen in isolation. At work there are a lot of external drivers – expectations, plans, requests. At my home desk this is not the case, in my own room I have to set these parameters myself. I need a plan. A plan with sufficient detail that I feel I am not starting with a blank page - a plan that will lead me to the next milestone, a sense of what the milestones are and a sketch of where the milestones will lead. Interestingly this is usually how my blog posts come about. I have an idea, I make an outline of what I want to cover and a few days later I come back and do a longer write up. The drafting doesn’t take much time or thinking because the basic concepts and structure are already there. So I guess I already have my answer – and some practice at using it!

The bigger picture

Spiced cookies

Dealing with the writing rejection nudged me back towards other forms of creativity. I feel like I have gotten back in touch with myself as a maker. I have been reminded of the breadth of my creativity. Yes I write, but I also take photos, bake, sew, cook, decorate, knit and garden. I need a bit of it all these things to feel whole and happy. They feed different aspects of my creative soul.

On theme

For Halloween I cooked up a storm – a savoury pumpkin salad, a sunset fruit salad and orange and purple jellies for the kids. My nieces drew faces on yellow peppers and I carved out jagged faces. We put tea lights inside and wow, so pretty Thank you to Mr Google for the suggestion! I helped with the zombie face painting.

Felt creations

For Christmas it all started with the cookie cutters. First I baked spices shortbread bells and trees. Then I went back for angels, reindeer and stars to use as templates for felt shapes to stick onto Santa sacks with a friend’s kids. I glued the leftover shapes onto some ribbons and hung them on my bookshelves. I decorated my tree – a small rosemary bush with ribbons and small silver bells.

Following a creative path

I have been reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. I have been heartened by the advice to do it because you enjoy it, do it because you need to do it and don’t do it because you are worried about success. The effort brings its own rewards, the old adage of enjoying the journey not focusing on the destination. All I need to do is keep faith with my creative self and just do it.

I am creative and I need to get back to the central business of making things – not worrying about the selling, spruiking or success of my efforts. It is the process of making which gives me delight – being absorbed in colors, the fall of light, the smell of a cake baking, the texture of fabrics and wool, getting my ideas down on paper – it is all coming from the same well.

With lemon mayonaise

And all this can only be good for my writing. As Maya Angelou said “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” So rather than dismissing my recent foray into baking and decorating as procrastination I want to welcome it with open arms because it is all creativity and that is what I am about. Turning up is still the most important thing – whether it is on the page, in the kitchen or at Lincraft – nothing will get done if I don’t turn up.

Will it prove to be a distraction from the main game of writing? Who knows, does it matter? Right now it is helping me get back on track, if it persists perhaps. But maybe I should just relax and accept the journey I am on and have some faith – faith in the path, faith in myself. I know it will be interesting and that it will be somewhere different from where I am today. That’s enough…

Full circle

Final touches

I feel like I have come round to the beginning again on my Hardcopy journey. The final session was in Canberra a few weeks ago, and I wasn’t there. I hadn’t made the cut and yes it still hurts, but there are some hidden jewels. I booked another course for that same weekend, Traditional French Pastry, because I wanted to be absorbed in something of my own – not longing to be somewhere else, doing something else.

And I got to eat the results!

And it worked in so many wonderful ways. I mixed ingredients, I kneaded dough and I rolled pastry. I made croissants, brioches and puff pastry treats. I relaxed into a world that I don’t visit very often anymore. The smell of yeasty dough brought back clear memories of making bread with my mum as a kid. I know how to knead and roll – long forgotten skills. I now have the strength and I thoroughly enjoyed the physicality of it all.

Three types of brioche

What started out as a diversion has brought so much more. It has reawakened my sense of smell, taste and touch – all the senses which are not involved in telling or hearing stories. Is it an antidote or a complement to my writing then? I’m actually not going to worry about categorising it, it is what it is. It is still creative living and is satisfying a whole different part of my creative soul.

Pausing for a moment

As for my writing, at some point the penny dropped and I realised that with or without my inclusion in the final Hardcopy session I would still be in the same position I am now – in possession of a partly written manuscript. Yes I would have received more feedback on my writing style and my proposal – some of which may well have been conflicting given the feedback from the others who were there. But I still wouldn’t have a whole manuscript. I would still be sitting here wondering how to construct the next scene, revising my pitch and trying to find time to write.

Obstacle, challenge, opportunity...

Instead I have been dealing with this bump in the road, this blow to my confidence, this crisis of commitment, this loss of motivation. I have learnt more from being rejected than I could have done by being successful. Of course I want the book to be a success, but it can’t be a success until it is written. I need to write my book and then worry about everything else.

No one is going to publish an unknown author on the basis of a pitch. I need a full manuscript before the book and I will be taken seriously. I am not a social media phenomenon nor am I famous – so no immediate audience there. I am neither a journalist nor an academic – so no relevant track record to rely on. So I need to sell my project – not the idea of it and not my capacity to do it. I need to have the project ready to go. And that’s where I imagine I would be if I had attended the final session – essentially in the same place that I am now.

Coming up for air

Dark waters?

I haven’t been able to breathe for a while. I was holding my breath and waiting. Now the wait is over, well at least as far as the Hardcopy program is concerned. I didn’t make the next round. I am disappointed. I thought my proposal had merit and that my writing was strong. My confidence has taken a knock. I questioned my commitment and wondered whether I had been wasting my time. I have lost my motivation and excitement about the book.

Striking images

So I took a break from the desk to absorb this news. I filled my writing time with other things. I visited a friend’s farm and helped out with marking the lambs. I stayed with a couple of friends at the beach, played cards and chatted. I went to two house-warmings. I had a couple of lunches and walks with my family. I visited an exhibition, a new library, the plant conservatory and a couple of markets. I sought solace in the visual world, taking photos of these small events and posting them on my Instagram account – my ‘just for fun’ social media platform. I avoided the written word.

Cook books galore

Now it is time to get back to it. I’m not sure how I feel about getting back to the book, but I do have a new blog idea to explore which I am very excited about. I want to write about food, cooking and eating. I know it is a crowded space out there and I don’t have one particular angle to push. I want to write about the whole food journey – about growing, storing, transporting, preparing, eating and sharing it. Whether starting a new project is a wise decision will yet be revealed. It could be an unhelpful diversion or it could give me a gentle push back to my writing habits.

Back to your desk!

Part of me figures that as long as I am writing something it is all good experience. Right now the book feels like a heavy obligation, a stark contrast to the fun of developing a new idea. I figure that turning up at the desk is half the battle. Once I am here then something has to happen. At the very least a couple of bills will get paid and I’ll do some stream of consciousness writing to check in with how I am feeling. In reality perhaps it is that simple, just getting back to the basics of sitting here and typing away, at least til I can get my focus back again.

New networks

The other part of picking myself up and dusting myself off is of course reaching out to people. Writing is a solitary activity, but unsurprisingly weathering the ups and downs is not. I am very grateful to the friends and family who support me and encourage me to keep going. Without them it would be a much lonelier road. I am slowly developing a network of other emerging writers. There is the fun of going to writing events together, the challenge of giving and receiving feedback on each others' work and the comfort of sharing the journey with others who are in the same boat.

The art of workshopping

Work in progress

Giving feedback is quite a tricky business. Writers get very attached to their work. Some people are impatient with hearing the good stuff and just want to get to suggestions for improvement. Others seem to only want to hear praise for their efforts. I find it quite difficult to provide feedback in a vacuum. I feel that I need to know the person a bit better before I can judge how to most usefully offer my thoughts. And I need to know their writing in order to appreciate where they are coming from and what they are trying to achieve. In the classroom where you hear a piece for the first time and you have limited time to respond I find it challenging to actively participate. There is always someone who is quicker off the mark and more confident about putting their comments out there.

Under maintenance

I prefer to work one on one or in small groups. I did meet up with Helen and we had a very constructive conversation about our respective pieces. I felt like a real writer, arranging to get feedback from a potential reader and a fellow writer, very mature. Of course it was also good fun. We met in a pub and had beers and chips to help with our very serious deliberations.

When I got back to the piece a couple of days later I felt invigorated. I had some new ideas for where I could go. I clearly needed to work on the transitions between ideas. There is a bit of jumping to the next subject without much lead in or signposting for the reader. It was also a great opportunity to talk about the piece more broadly. Helen posed a very simple question to me ‘What’s the story?’ I had written just over 3,000 words and yet I stumbled over my answer to this. It seems I had spent my words on telling bits of the story, painting pictures of what had happened but I didn’t have a clear understanding of what the point was. And so there was some fundamental information missing – the stuff I was still dancing around, the words not on the page, the thoughts I hadn’t yet nailed. And so back to the draft I went.

Leaving things out

In contrast, after the workshop with the Melbourne based Hardcopy participants I found myself cutting material from my draft. The feedback I received was about tightening up what was on the page, making sure it all served a purpose. I had included too much reflection on the action and needed to stay more firmly in the present tense, more effectively keeping the reader beside me rather than behind a glass partition. An awful lot is revealed when someone reads your piece out loud. Clunky wording and sentences are stumbled over. I also discovered there were paragraphs and ideas that were simply in the wrong spot.

Let it wash over you

My own ability to take on board feedback has been honed through years of writing for work, with managers reviewing my briefs, reports, submissions, and articles and almost always finding something to comment on. I have been on the receiving end of some poorly delivered feedback at work but most people exercise some degree of sensitivity. But I am curious about whether there is a difference with more personal writing? When I am closer to the piece is it harder to hear the criticism, does it hurt more? And my early conclusion is not really. I care about all my writing. What makes the biggest difference is how the feedback is given – with or without concern for how the receiver will feel. I still have more to learn about the art of workshopping, and hopefully there will be lots of opportunities to do so.