Category: Inspirations

Finding it

PeterLeave a comment

What happens mostly when I’m working on something is that my mind goes ahead of me. While I’m working in the present, there’s a part of me looking towards what comes next. As I go about my daily business, riding the train, lying in a bath or preparing the night’s meal, that part is sorting through options and assessing the best way forward. It’s hardly conscious, though occasionally something will bob up in the middle of all this. And, generally, by the time I sit down again to work, whatever it is my mind has come up with will be there for me to draw upon.

It’s a comforting process. The blank page is never completely blank when there’s something ripe in your mind. It seems more valid than sitting down and telling myself to ‘be creative’. I think when you force it upon yourself, it comes out feeling forced on the page. I have faith in this subterranean process because – though I don’t understand it completely – it feels organic to what I’m doing. It is born, if that’s the word, from where I’m at, what’s come before, and where I want to get to. It knows better than I do.

There are times it doesn’t work like that. I had that situation yesterday. I’ve had a busy week and a lot to think about outside my writing. That part of my mind that might otherwise have been quietly working away at the story was occupied with more mundane demands. And so when I sat down to work, there was nothing to work with. I knew which way I wanted the story to go, but I didn’t have the words or the hooks to take me there.

I wrote something nonetheless. I knew the inspiration was missing, so I concentrated on pure narrative. A lot of writing is the things in between, so it wasn’t a wasted effort, and I knew it would come to me. And, always, it is better to write something than nothing.

I left it, and this time, part of my mind was on the job. I watched an interesting movie. I read from a book full of vivid prose and another that conjectured a clever storyline. I drank coffee, did housework, and walked the dog and throughout, I’m half aware that something is going on in the background, but I don’t push it. Let it bubble and seethe.

I came to the job today, and there it was. I didn’t have all the words, but I had the tenor of them. And there were fragments, images and snippets of prose that had come to the forefront. They meant little by themselves and little even in themselves – just small things, seemingly – but as I wrote, these were the fragments the story formed around. Somehow, they represented meaning. I knew them even if I couldn’t explain them.

I’m writing this now after having laid down about a thousand words this morning. I feel on a roll and will probably go with it again later this afternoon while it’s still full in me.

This, of course, is a very satisfying feeling, and I wanted to share it. This is what it feels like sometimes. Sometimes, it feels like a terrible chore. Sometimes, you doubt everything. But sometimes, it is like this, and all is forgiven.

And what were the fragments? I’ll share with you, though they’ll likely make no more sense to you than they will to me on any other day.

There was a phrase about the day remade.

And an image of the protagonist carefully laying his suit jacket on the back seat of his car.

And a snippet of dialogue that set me off on this pathway: “The colours were different, then.”

Stories from the night

PeterLeave a comment

I wrote a story yesterday. It wasn’t something I’d planned to do. The story wasn’t even in my mind until the hours before. And even when it was in my mind, I thought I would jot down no more than a few notes for it. Once I started, though, I couldn’t stop.

This story is an interesting case study in the creative process. As I said, I had no conception of the story until the early hours. In fact, I woke with this in my head in the middle of the night. I lay in bed in the dark, turning it over in my head. I let it lead me on, my conscious mind fleshing out the bones the subconscious had provided me with. It was a fair story, I thought, but how often have I thought that and reconsidered it come daylight? Even more so, how many stories have been lost because, from sleep to wakefulness, they have been forgotten?

I woke, and I remembered this. As I prepared for work, it was rolling around in my mind. It seemed a fair story still. And so, when I found a moment, I began to write it down.

What I’ve written is far from the finished product, but it’s complete. I dashed it out, not thinking too much over it, not spending the time I might typically giving it a veneer of polish. It was all story, and every bit of it heartfelt.

It’s fascinating in this case as this story has an apparent reference to my own story. It’s entirely fictional but draws on my experiences and feelings. Most of those experiences I have pushed to one side. The emotions I rarely dwell on. That’s the crux of it, though – I think. My conscious self has moved on, but these things remain real and relevant in some deep part of myself.

I don’t know if this could be called a dream, but it has much in common with dreams as I understand them. I’m one of those people who believes that dreams can reveal hidden truths. There’s an honesty to our subconscious because it is not subject to the whims and ego of the conscious mind. It does away with the nonsense that dictates we must be this person or must do that. Dreams may exaggerate and transfigure, but often, they present an underlying reality we are unwilling or unable to face in our conscious self.

I know that sounds like amateur pop psychology. You can take or leave it, but it’s true to my experience and observation. Most dreams have obscure meanings, if they have any meaning at all, even when remembered. Others, like last night, present truth in the form of a parable. Isn’t that what writing is about? It is for me.

I have a history that I won’t go into here. The story that came out of the night directly touches upon that. I’ve written it out now, but as I did, I wondered what it meant for me. It felt like a candid message from my soul. You may deny it, Peter, but these are the things that are important to you – these are the things you crave.

Not all stories come like that. If you gave me ten minutes to come up with a brand new story, I could probably pluck something from the air. That’s the exception, though. I don’t sit down and search for stories – they come to me. It’s rare they arrive as last night’s story did, but it’s indicative of the process nonetheless. The story yesterday was seemingly conceived and written within a 24-hour block, but I can guarantee the essential truth of it has been in me much longer than that, evolving and shaping itself into a tale that finally came out yesterday.

The next story is in me now, bubbling in the background, though as I type this, I’m oblivious to it. When it’s ripe, it will come out. It’s what’s in the pot that’s important.

Magical writing

PeterLeave a comment

There are many things in writing that appear pretty random but almost certainly aren’t. I’ve taken a stab at trying to figure out where stories come from, but I don’t really know. One day, they’re just there, though you can bet they’ve probably been a long time coming.

That’s how it was with the story I’m working on now. One day, I woke up, and it was in my head. It came pretty complete. I didn’t have all the details, but the frame was all there.

I remember I wandered into work pretty much like any other day. I got my coffee and mentioned it to my offsider. He looked at me, his head tilted, figuring out the story in his head as I told him of it. Then he nodded his head. “That’s a good story,” he said.

I was still working on my first book then, so I shoved the idea into the stories to write part of my brain.

Generally, when I have a novel like this in my head, I’ll have the beginning and the end and bits and pieces in between. I’ll know what the story is about and what I want to say, but there will be a lot of gaps in the storyline. It’s like planning a trip from Melbourne to Sydney and knowing you’ve got to go via Upper Kumbucta West or somesuch, but otherwise, you don’t know what route you’ll be taking until you’re in the car driving; what stops you’ll be making, and what’ll happen along the way.

I started writing this one about seven months ago. The first few chapters were clear, and I was happy to let them guide me the rest of the way. There’ve been times occasionally when I’ve felt uninspired and struggling. On one occasion, I had to return to a previous fork in the road and try the other way. Once or twice, I’ve felt so outside the story I felt like shoving it in the bottom drawer as well, come a better day. Naturally, there’ve been moments I’ve doubted the whole enterprise, including my skill as a writer. Who’re you kidding, Peter? You’re just a plodder, mate, get over it…

The thing is, with the sort of writing I do, while it’s important to have a good plot, it’s really about the ideas. I’m not motivated by seeing my name in lights or my book in every store. I’d love to make a fortune, but, yeah, nah, it’s the ideas I really want to explore. The story is the vehicle for that.

So it was with this story. I started with ideas – themes if you like – but they’re pretty general initially. While the plot was clear to me, many deeper, underlying themes only became evident as I began to write.

That’s the difference between being inside the story and outside it. Outside, you see the outline of what you figure is a cool idea, but once you get inside the story, it begins to take on its own life. You advance carefully, feeling your way. Many times, you retreat, knowing it’s not quite right. That’s when you sit in front of your screen looking blank while your mind goes a million miles an hour. You feel it, then. It’s heavy and complex, just like people are. While you search your mind – there’s a lot of sheer figuring things out – you can feel it in your gut, too, and your gut doesn’t lie.

You’re searching for truth, but the truth comes from the story, the text, and not anything you impose upon it. By now, the story has its own life. It’s your job to understand and to chart it. I know that sounds a bit of a toss, but that’s how it is. Quite often, I start off writing, thinking it’s about one thing before discovering there’s more to it than that, and my job is to listen well and get it right. There’s a different, more intimate truth you’re after – and there are multitudes in it.

Halfway through writing this, I had a small epiphany. In my spare time, I was reading of Homer, and specifically, of Achilles, the mighty Greek warrior. As I read, I began to discern reflections of my character’s journey in Achilles. It was a surprise, but it excited me too.

In the Iliad, Achilles is nearly invincible. By myth, he was held by the heel as an infant and dipped in a magical pool that made him immune to injury. As an adult, he becomes a proud, somewhat arrogant character, though capable of great complexity. Ultimately – beyond the pages of the Iliad, he will perish victim of his only flaw – an arrow to the heel left unprotected.

But what Achilles doesn’t perish? What if he lives on well after the sacking of Troy and the death of so many mighty? What if he passes into middle age, a warrior of legend but creaking and aching and grey now? His days of might have passed. He has defeated thousands in battle, but in middle age, he has settled into an existence where he wonders what it all means. Looking back, he knows it was real, but it feels distant now as if then he was a different man. It is this he must reconcile.

That’s what my story is, in a way, though inadvertent. It’s modernised, and instead of being a warrior, the protagonist is a once great sportsman.

I’m not far off finishing this novel, though there will likely be a couple of rewrites before I’m happy. The point is I started with an idea, which still holds true, but as I’ve gone along, I’ve found unexpected complexity in it. It’s like the act of writing reveals truths that were always there but hidden from the eye.

In itself, that’s not surprising. Like I say, to write is to go on a journey. What surprises me every time is that I learn from my own words. I sit back and read what I have written and wonder where it came from. There’s depth and knowledge and even a kind of wisdom, or so it appears – and I wonder if I am that man. It feels almost like a form of automatic writing, but I know the effort that has gone into producing it – there’s nothing automatic about it. But it is magical.

I don’t know what it’s like for other writers – I can only ever speak for myself. I know the satisfaction of having written something pretty good and look forward to the day when it is more generally acclaimed. That’s pretty conventional, I think. No one would be surprised at that. But there’s a deeply personal aspect that is just as satisfying, if not more so.

Writing is a form of self-discovery. You go into the depths of yourself and, from the darkness inside, drag up nuggets of truth you didn’t know existed. And while it looks good on the page, you can’t help but reflect on what it says about you. The meaning of us, I suspect, is more profound and complex than we understand. We get few opportunities to see more deeply within, but in writing, I catch a glimpse of that self inside me, both mysterious and somehow holy.

That’s as good as any reason to write that I can think of.

First words

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I’m trying to remember the day I sat down and began writing my first novel. You’d think it would be something you’d remember, like your first kiss or your first day in a real job. But then maybe it’s me. I can’t remember the first time I had sex, let alone my first kiss – as for work, well, that’s a mystery. Likewise, the day I sat before the screen and wrote the first words – I got zilch.

What I can remember is about twenty years ago when the idea for the storyline first popped into my head. I wasn’t looking for an idea, but there it was, and I knew it was good right from the start. There were times in the years after I made juvenile attempts to write the book, all for naught. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready until a day somewhere around four years ago when I decided to get serious and write it. And I did.

It took a long time to write that first book. I had an imagination, and I was okay with words, but putting them together as a novel was a different challenge altogether. Basically, I learned on the job, but I kept going. After I finished the third draft, I figured I had to let go of it and let people read it. Anyone who’s ever written seriously knows how spooky that is.

The good news was that it was well received. I got told I was a great writer, told that it was a fascinating story, told I should go out and get it published, I’d make a mint! Whoa, guys, I said modestly, secretly delighted. Just knowing it wasn’t a total disaster was reason for relief, but I wasn’t buying the superlatives. I knew it was good enough, and I knew it wasn’t great. The response gratified me, but I knew there was a lot of work still to be done. Maybe I was on the right path.

What was more surprising was that many of my readers associated the story with my recent experiences. I’d endured challenging times, and they thought they could read it in my words. Except – as I explained to them – I thought this up years ago, way before any idea that I would suffer such angst. On the surface, it seemed a strange coincidence.

It’s not as simple as that, though. I don’t remember how I thought up the plot in the first place, but figure it was informed by my experience of film noir. I love those old movies. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been more attracted to the flawed anti-hero than the pristine hero, who is generally dull.

I like the darkness of these tales. There’s a complexity to the protagonists. They’re not perfect, but they’re real. Often, they’re stubborn, unwilling to accept what’s been dished up to them, and more aware than everyone else. There’s definitely an existential appeal to these characters, which isn’t for everyone but very definitely was for me.

Oftentimes, these characters are doomed, and the story about their struggle to defy that fate. In a way, that was my story – about a man who sets out on a path not knowing where it would lead him but finding an unexpected opportunity for redemption along the way. And that was the story I thought up then.

When I finally wrote it, it was from today’s perspective, not twenty years ago. In the years between experience had shifted my perspective in general, but recent experience had directly informed the character development and the writing. The book I came to write was different from the book I would have written then, and though I couldn’t see it, there was truth in my friends’ belief that it was my story.

All that was about two years ago: I wrote another draft after their response (I’ve become much more efficient since), and it sits in the bottom drawer of my desk (actually my hard drive), waiting for its final revision. There, it’ll stay until I’m ready to go back to it. I think it’s pretty good, but it can be better. I can’t make it better until I get some distance from it. When you’re writing, you live the story. I imagine it’s a bit like method acting. You’re in the characters and the story and lose all ability to see from the outside.

That’s why I’ve put it aside. I wanted it to settle in me. I hoped I might even forget it a little. At the end of that time, I want to come at it and read it objectively. It’s been sitting in my bottom drawer for the last year and a bit, and I reckon there’s been enough distance for me to come at it clearly. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since, but I haven’t forced anything. I’ve let the thoughts come to me. Right now, that means when I sit down to write the final version, it will be pretty different from what’s there now. It will be more intimate and compact. I’ll simplify it. It will more closely align with the classic film noirs, a personal journey the protagonist must endure and ultimately surmount. That’s the idea.

What’s it about? People ask me, and generally, I tell them it’s a bit of a combo between True Detective and Heart of Darkness. But I can see a bit of Out of the Past in it, too.

I won’t get to it until I finish the book I’m writing now (more on this next post), maybe 2-3 months from now. I’ll be ready, though and looking forward to it.

Why this story?

PeterLeave a comment

Why do you write what you write? I often wonder that. It’s not so much where the stories come from, more: why these stories? Why do I write stories of this kind and someone else something completely different?

It can only be how you’re made, how you think and see, how you interact with the world about you. Whatever you write today was likely born many years ago and shaped by experience in the time since. What you write is a product of who you are, and the person you are has been a long time in the making.

We share that in common all of us, whether we write or not. We’re subject to the forces of nature and random chance. Domestic imperatives dictate many of our choices, and capricious personality much of the rest. It’s different for everyone, but everyone has a perspective that evolves with time and experience, whether conscious or not. We take on a bias. We learn, or perhaps we don’t. We see through a subjective lens, and from that, we form attitude – and maybe even philosophy. We each become our own distinct character.

Not all of us write about it, though. It occurs to only very few. I can only speak for myself, but curiosity motivates me to write. I want to explore character. I want to travel back from effect to see the cause, complex and shrouded in mystery it so often is. I don’t pretend to understand, but the act of writing – for me – is a means towards understanding. I write, and often afterwards, I’m surprised at what I’ve written. I’ve written things with more insight than I was aware of as if the act of writing dragged it up from some hidden place in me.

But why the things I write? The answer to that is always personal, which the writing seeks to expose. Once more, there’s a distance between what I know and who my true self is. What I write comes from that true self, up from the depths, uninterpreted. The person who writes of it is like an observer trying to make sense of it. I’m like a witness looking in through a window, trying to untangle what my eyes can see.

It’s imagination that makes a story of that. Experience, that inner, actual being, presents a sense of something you seek to explore through the means of fiction. It’s understanding you seek, and you search for it in deconstructing it into the form of a story.

That’s the process, more or less, or at least the best I can figure it. Why these stories? I don’t know exactly, except that they come from inside me, and it’s my job as a writer to decode them.

To be clear, I do this for myself because I want to understand. It may be different for other writers, but for me, it’s personal. These are mysteries I want to engage in. I feel them in me every day, something rich and sometimes bewildering – but vibrant too, as if it has a pulse and is true. I’m grateful to be the man I am.

My kind of writing

PeterLeave a comment

Go to the local library, and there’s a book on every subject. For every book, there’s an author. Scan across the bookshelves, and you’ll find thousands of books, each one different from the one before. Each book has a mind behind it, a history and perspective, passion and ambition. There’s a story behind each story.

Though I read books of every type, my writing is contained within a narrow band – fiction, literary. I read books that educate me, books that stir and excite, books that explain and elucidate, books that divert and entrance, every kind of book, but the only kind of book I want to write are those informed by the so-called human condition.

I think when you start out writing – as a young person anyway, as I was – it comes from a love of reading. Books are a great club, and you feel privileged to be a member. You read all the time, taken away to different times and places, with different voices whispering in your ear and different perspectives to share. You live it so richly that there comes a time when you think, I want to do that too.

I think I remember that moment in my journey, though it’s so cliched I’m almost embarrassed to relate it – but here goes.

One day at my local library, among four or five books I’d borrow every few weeks was a copy of The Essential Hemingway. I was about fifteen. I’d heard of Hemingway, naturally, but something had put me off him till that point – the cliche, perhaps. I knew I’d have to read him someday, so I finally plucked him off the shelf.

You can guess what happened after that. Like thousands upon thousands of people – men mostly, and often teenagers like me – I found myself transfixed by the seemingly simple but affecting prose.

As an adolescent boy, this was a period when I was particularly vulnerable to the robust language and attitude of someone like Hemingway. I didn’t know anything yet. I didn’t know who I was. Hemingway gave no sense to that but a feeling that was purely visceral. I could feel it in my stomach. I wanted to be as clear and true as he expressed.

Unfortunately, like thousands upon thousands of people, primarily men, I spent a good few years trying to emulate Hemingway’s style until I figured there was only one Hemingway and besides, I had my own way of thinking and my own words.

There comes a time when writing for its own sake is insufficient. You get older, you live more, you travel, you fall in and out of love, you suffer and you glory, you battle and you strive, and so on, as we all have. And somewhere in that, you feel as if you have something you want to say. Life takes shape in you; there’s an attitude, even perhaps some ramshackle philosophy; in any case, you feel it burgeoning in you. You must get it out.

But what is it? That’s the question. Indeed, that’s the journey – for me, at least. What the fuck is it? Writing is an exploration of that, a hypothesis. You seek to transmute some vague sense into words in the shape of a story. It’s a tryout. Is this what I’m trying to say? Is this what I know? What is this thing? And you try and try again, knowing you’ll never get all the way there, but you learn plenty by trying.

I was re-reading some Thomas Mann recently. He’s an author very different from Hemingway. He’s an author of the mind. An author of great sensitivity and insight. He’s one of those writers who make you look up from the page to ponder something you’ve just read. There is a kind of wisdom in such writers and often a terrible poignancy.

That’s the writer I want to be, though perhaps I need to be that man first. As much as anything, I want to do this for myself – and really, I am my own audience. I write to understand. It’s probably therapeutic, but at least it gives me an insight into the workings of human psychology.

Life goes much deeper than the simple routines we adhere to without thought, and each person much more mysterious than they generally allow. That’s what I want to write about, but through the lens of my own experience. I want to feel and know it and not let it slip by me. I want to articulate and remember it. Writing – for me – is a form of conscious living.

I’ll write next about the two novels I’ve written or am writing to explain this better. Suffice to say that my experience has led me to the kind of writing I do, though that doesn’t explain it all.

What’s the go?

PeterLeave a comment

The question is, why do I write? Where did that impulse arise? How? Why? I don’t think that’s something I can ever know for sure, and probably it’s not one thing that has led me down the path of writing, but rather a combination of things thrown into the pot together have made me the man I am – and the writer I’ve become.

One of my earliest memories is reading The Shaggy Dog Story. I was reputedly three going on four at the time, and that was the first book of thousands I’ve gone on to read. My mum encouraged me to read. She’d been a singer once and had a creative bent. I inherited her love for music and reading, which we would share in the years to come.

I had an Aunt who was likewise a great reader. I’d receive a parcel from her containing books every Christmas and birthday. I was a rugged, tree-climbing boy who played sport with my mates and rode my dragster around the neighbourhood, but none of that stopped me from becoming an avid reader. In these early days – between, say, six and nine – I read a lot of Enid Blyton, particularly the Famous Five series.

The other influence on my reading habits was my grandfather. He was a gentle, quiet man whose greatest pleasure was sitting down with a good book. As a boy, I can recall going to the MCG with him to watch a test match – and on many occasions, he would stop into a bookshop, from which he’d invariably leave with another couple of books to add to his collection.

He had bookshelves full of books on every topic ranging across genres: fiction, non-fiction, history, philosophy, poetry, and so on. As I got older, I would range across his shelves and pluck something out to read. Often, it would be an old paperback with yellowing, brittle pages that no one knew anything about.

You can say then that I was steeped in a culture of reading. I couldn’t imagine not reading, and pity those who never learnt the pleasure of it.

None of that makes me a writer, though it’s good preparation for it. When did I first set pen to paper? Why?

At school, occasionally, we would be given creative writing assignments. Perhaps because I had read so much, I found I had a vivid and original imagination. I found delight in coming up with these plots and in the reaction to them. Still, I had no thought then of ever making anything more of it.

That only came after I left school and then by accident. I’d travelled to Sydney from Melbourne and stayed with my aunt in a great apartment in Watsons Bay. The sun shone, the beach was nearby, there was an alluring woman I fell for, and life was laconic.

One day, I just started writing. I don’t know where the notion came from, but it was a story touching upon the second war – I’d been a military buff – and it had philosophical elements, probably quite pretentious. From there, I began to write erratically with months in between and one or two occasions, probably years. I did it, but I didn’t see it as a profession. In any case, I had found myself with a career wearing a white collar.

It’s different now. Probably for the last fifteen years, I’ve been convinced this is what I’m meant to do. That’s the thing: you can’t stop yourself from writing. The words pile up in you, demanding to be written. They gotta get out somehow. As I said in my opening post, there’s mystery and wonder in this because I can never really understand how it works that way or where the words come from. I’m grateful, though.

To answer the question I started with, you must be curious about everything to be a writer. You walk down the street, you get on the tram, you catch up with your friends – whatever it is – there’s a part of your mind always observing, always ticking over, always asking questions.

The answers to those questions aren’t always readily available, but that’s where imagination plays a part. Curiosity breeds imagination, I think, though it doesn’t always take. On top of that is life experience. Combined all – curiosity, imagination, experience – and you have the necessary elements for creativity, and you can begin weaving worlds in your mind.

That’s as good as I get to explaining this right now, but I’m happy to get your viewpoints on the subject.