I have been writing for a long time, but really, for no time. At least that’s what it feels like. This thing called writing is interesting – we all do it in some way or another. We are all storytellers in some form, whether it be through words, or images, or intense drunken bathroom yarns at 3am in the dirtiest club we could possibly find. We are all storytellers. I like to think of myself as a storyteller – but that I haven’t quite got there yet. Storytelling started when I was a child. My earliest memory is a story I wrote of me kissing a boy when I was 7, maybe 8. My Aunty Kirsty found it, and read it. I died. I cannot remember the details, I can remember the embarrassment. There may have been more to it, but I hope that story stays with her.
I have dabbled since, writing short stories and poems. On paper and google docs. In my head. These I have kept to myself because it’s safer that way. If you don’t send work out, it can’t get rejected. It’s a great theory, and truly, it works. It just doesn’t really get you anywhere. I remember doing a third year creative writing course as part of my BA, and the carrot was that some of our stories would be published in a book compiled of stories from our course – there were about 15 or so of us and about 15 or so stories were published. None of my stories made it though. I was heartbroken. Everything I wrote after that, nobody got to read. I am hesitant even now. Not because I don’t think it’s any good. I know it’s good – but I also know it isn’t perfect and there are lots of issues with it. The doubt isn’t based in whether i’m a writer or not; it’s whether I can finish, whether I can close.
So, my journey is a bit like James Cameron and Avatar (although without the grandeur or the fame and all that nonsense). Apparently it was postponed because the film world did not yet have the technology or the tools to see out the vision. Sometimes I sit down to write but I don’t have the language, the knowledge, or the tools to do what I want to do and the story languishes away, waiting.
At the first Te Papa Tupu workshop Victor Rodger challenged us to write a story from the six elements he provided, a task he had completed himself in his time. This story concept haunts me, it’s on the edge of my awareness taking shape. I have a character arc, a partial story arc, and a drive. It has become a side quest. Much like my life now needs to be. I joked I would have to shelve my husband and children, gently, lovingly even. That this story writing buzz would need to become the main quest, and my life, the side quest. There is no more time for sex, drugs and rock and roll. But that’s okay, at 38 one should really know better. I will need to put parenting on hold – just a little – and bring bedtimes forward, pre-make weekend lunches, bypass reading that second book.
Jokes.
There isn’t even a first book.
The kids will live, but like every mother has ever thought: will they remember this intentional neglect? This period of time when they are rushed to bed with the shortest kiss goodnight and barely a tuckup. I have to have hope they won’t. I have to have hope that they will remember it was temporary, that it was for something important, and sometimes that takes sacrifice.
Tonight (when it was indeed, tonight) I spent the night not writing. I have a section in my book where the parents of one of my characters dance to Aretha or Etta (I was thinking ‘At Last’) as I wanted to establish the magic of an evening spent watching Dad twirl mum around the lounge when you’re 6. But its 1961. A colleague and friend, whom I won’t name because I haven’t asked him permission, suggested that the music I have may not have been available on LP at that time. I had considered this, but my own research skills led to my inability to locate that kind of information – when were these records released in NZ? Where could you buy them? Were they for the everyday person, or was it rich people territory? So tonight I spent the night listening to 40’s – 60’s Black music artists. My night has been enriched by the voices of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday, trying to find the right songs for our character’s very first role models of loving relationships. The songs have to be right. Sometimes the quality of the writing lies in the quality of the research.
So Uncle Google, if you could, help a girl out here.
There’s some tangible life stuff you have to think about when writing. The image at the top is my indoor writing area. It’s kept clean-ish mostly, except daily when one of my four dependents dumps random things there to let me know they love me (cue side-eye). I can change the LED lighting to reflect the mood of what I’m writing. A writing spot is key. Mood is key. Ambi-once (yawn) is key.
- I wake up at 5.50. I hate it, but sometimes my body does it for me. I make a cup of tea because that is my oxygen. And actually it’s better for everyone because without it I become crabby.
- I write until about 7. Sometimes I run over, but then I have 20 minutes to shower, dress, make lunches, change a nappy, make bottles and get ready for work. So I try to stop before 7. Addendum:
- I have children who are 12 and very helpful on these mornings. Both have mastered the bottle and the nappy change. Thank God.
- I take my writing computer to work. When I have a thought, out it comes.
- When I get home I do some parenting and wifing, and then some more writing.
- I haven’t seen my granddaughter or my nephews in awhile and I miss them.
- I wish I could write all. day. long.
- I like writing that is breathless. Writing that causes you to still, that immobilises, your body responding before your mind. I like writing that creates a physiological reaction. Not the smut kind (although I’ll read it, obviously), but the kind that makes you think about your own life, your own relationships, your own something. I want you to feel some kind of way. I want you to take some kind of action. This is what I like. This is what I think I write.
- Fantasy is my favorite genre and I will fight anyone who has a bad thing to say about Eddings or Feist, even if it’s true.
- I like descriptive writing so much that I have been accused of being “too wordy” and I’ve been trying to break this since I was 17. I am still trying.
- My son is sleeping on my leg / next to me / all over me / while I write this. He is sick. It’s hard to type around the sleeping form of a 3 year old. But you have to find a way to
- I’m really really really bad at grammar. Run this piece through the X-ray, the screen will light up like a UV light at a cheap hotel.
It’s 9.42 and my husband is cooking a steak and egg that my body won’t digest because I’ll be going to sleep pretty quickly after I eat it. But I’ll be stoked to eat it, because he’s cooked it. Perhaps it will be the reason I stay up another hour to write about the magical nights spent in the lounge with mum and dad. You have to find reasons to push just that little more and write just that little bit longer.
Here’s to pushing just that little more.
