Burn down the school ...
"Burn down the school. Save the books, perhaps, but get the teacher to tell you the real secrets: what does he read and write as a guilty pleasure? Guilty pleasure is what writing is all about. It is about attractions: words you can't resist using to describe things too interesting to pass up. And forget lofty motives."
That's what Julia Cameron has to say about getting started on writing in her book, The Right to Write. Its not the wisest passage in that first chapter, but it spoke to me because my fiction writer was trapped in the journalist's clothes for so long.
I've not been this excited about a book, or a writing exercise, in forever. She had liberated me, blasted away all the crap to help me rediscover the joy of writing. Not the hard slog, not the ego trip, not the commercial exercise. Just writing for the fun of it.
Anybody who bothers reading my entries is going to be inundated with quotes and writing exercises from the book for the next few weeks, as my LJ is going to be my primary outlet. Each section of the book has a writing exercise (or thinking exercise) at the end, and I will be completing many of them online.
So here goes with number one ...
The first chapter is simply called Begin. I'm supposed to take three sheets of A4 and describe how and what you are feeling right now. "Begin where you are, physically, emotionally and pyschologically ... write about anything and everything that crosses your mind."
***
I'm sitting here at the computer, the desk half tidy for once, and out of the edge of my eye I can see the patio (swept) and the kitchen (also swept). Its so rare for me to do any housework in the morning, I'm quite proud of myself today. Usually my 9am break (Sofia sleeping, Annika watching Play School) is just whiled away online, checking the news, LJ, the Weightwatchers site etc.) Today I actually got of my arse and loaded the dishwasher, put it on, swept the floor, hung out the washing, and then ate breakfast. Housework takes so little effort and it infuriates me that usually I am just too lazy to do it. (I'm not allowed to use the delete key here, but what I really meant to say was not to belittle the effort involved, but to comment on how much can actually be achieved in a short time if I bother to move myself to do it.)
That's one of my chief character failings. Just not bothering. Its bizarre, because I've always believed that all you need to get ahead in this world is being bothered, being that little bit dynamic or proactive. As such, you grab the opportunities others can't be bothered to. In my professional life, that was my ethos, my guiding rule, and I ALWAYS lived by it. In my personal life, I have more difficulty with it.
Perhaps its because I'm new at this personal life thing. For a long time, my life was my work, and work gobbled up everything I had. I'm not sure there was a me outside of my work. Journalism is like that; its an interesting thing to do, and appeals on so many levels, that it sucks you in. When you mix in a little bit of power and responsbility, suckers like me are in heaven. Because (in magazines) you are producing something concrete, something very tangible at the end of every month, it becomes very personal. When somebody exclaims over a good cover, its personal because you chose the image and wrote the coverlines, guided the designer. If they say they really liked a certain article, its personal because you dreamed up the concept, invited that author to contribute, edited it so it made sense. If someone decides to subscribe, its because they like what you, as the Editor, are doing. My ego adored that job.
I worked in journalism from the time I left school in 1988, aged 17, until I left my job in England in April 2005 to come back to Australia and be a stay-at-home-mum. That's nearly 20 years worth, and I'd never really considered doing anything else, not since I first made editor (1995, I think it was).
Being at home, with the luxury to think, has been so good for me. I had three months after we arrived in Australia, before Annika was born, to do a lot of thinking and experimenting. (Especially once the 3am kickfest arrived and I'd never get back to sleep.) I started writing for myself for the first time. I hadn't written fiction since I was a young teenager, and while I had read a lot of fanfiction, I had never been moved to write it.
I got the idea for my first fic, The Bargain, during a long weekend in the camper van while we were still in England. It was so cold that day - February in Cornwall! - and the wind was just about blowing us over, so I had no need to get out of my sleeping bag. I'd just bought the movies (X-men 1 and 2) on DVD, and watched them back to back. My brain started spinning a long, involved what-if scenario, and since I'd been watching on the laptop, I thought I may as well jot a few bits down. I ended up writing the prologue, which I really liked.
It was June, heavily pregnant with Annika, on the other side of the world, before I started on chapter one. And posted it pretty much straight away. I liked it myself, but was really surprised how much other people liked it, so I thought I better keep writing. So the fanfic writing bug bit me.
I've a lot to be thankful for to fanfic. I haven't written a huge amount - my time was limited pretty much for the word go, except for that very first 10-part series - but everything I've written has taught me something about my own writing, my weaknesses, my indulgences etc. I think my best piece is October 19, because it has some elegance to the language, and was actually well thought out.
This is supposed to be about where I am now, but instead I'm recapping where I've been. I'll get there. Where I've been is so crucial to where I am now. Without the confidence to write, and the exercise I've had through fanfic, I would never believe in the reality of myself as a writer. There's a big gulf between a writer and a journalist: your using the same tools, but with a completely different set of rules. Everything that's good in journalism is bad in fiction, and vice versa. But rhythm, wordchoice, flow etc; those things are constants, I guess. But the spark you need for fiction, the purity of an idea that gets developed and developed and more developed, like an extended dream; that's nowhere to be found in journalism, even in feature writing, which is the most literary of the journalistic arts.
And it turns out, I'm quite good at this storytelling business. My overactive imagination has served me well. So now, I'm in a place where I want to make a living from it. I was feeling frustrated, because for the first time in many years, I have lots of time to think, which fuels the desire to write. But writing time seemed hard to find. I would look for a block of time in which absolutely no interruptions could be expected, and wait for inspiration to strike. But this book has shown me I was going about things the wrong way. I need to write regularly, amidst the babble of my life. So these exercises are important, teaching me to do that.
When I sat down to write this, Annika was pretending to nap, but that lasted a half hour or so. An hour later, Sofia woke up. But instead of abandoning this piece, I've done what I had to, and written around everything else going on. Sofia is going to scream to be fed soon, but until then, I'm writing. I've stopped to make myself some lunch (roasted vegetables and wholewheat pasta, just mixed together with some parmesan cheese and pinenuts. How proud of myself am I!) and Annika has had some of that, tried to brush the patio doors with her toothbrush, written all over herself with texta, pranced around on the sofa with a dirty nappy, and fought me all the way when I changed that dirty nappy. But I still came back to write!
The freedom to put down whatever comes is absolutely dizzying. There's no wracking my brain for what comes next, no hesitation about whether or not it sounds right. It's me, unedited, and apparently my first novel needs more of that, in first draft at least.
Time to stop now. I have a novel to write.