On Writing

Ever since I was young I have wanted to use words to explain my world and the way I feel in it. I, like many others, had thought the world of the writer to be a sacred place, filled with mists and coffee, situated high up in the mountains away from the concerns of ‘ordinary’ people. And naïve as it may seem, that’s how I thought I had to be living in order to have that life which I so long for. I have moved several times since I left my husband. I have searched for the most beautiful of places. High up in the mountains with coffee shops and mists and valleys and hippies and wonderful vistas...but still I only wrote in my journals; disjointed bits of my life, hopes and dreams for the future; the future I didn’t realize I had to build with what I had to hand.

I moved once again, to South Australia. I immediately started working for a large retail firm as a manager, which was the job I had been doing, unhappily, in Queensland. And this is where this tale begins...

I have started to stop telling myself lovely arty stories of what a writer’s life looks like and I have started to just write. Sometimes what I write is really bad. And sometimes I say something utterly beautiful. I left my job. Oh, the fear! Now I’m poor. Yet I have become rich in other ways. I listen to music. I watch TV. I have a laptop now which is a so much better writing tool for me than to write longhand. My brain moves too fast for pen and paper. My journal, in contrast, demands a beautiful pen and a gorgeous book. I sit in the living room on the couch next to our huge picture windows and look outside at this new world I find myself in. Not mountainous, no mists; it’s dry and arid and the only vista is of the stolidly working class, tattooed men toiling on their cars or motorbikes in the front yard across the road. Yet I write and write. I have waited so long to do this and now this is my chance to do it. I must take this opportunity to do what my heart cries for.

Now that I have made the decision to simply write and not wait for the stage to be set as ‘writer’s garret in the mountains complete with steaming mug of rainforest blend coffee’ I need to start thinking about what it is I actually want to say. What is my voice? If I was to use my journals as a guide, I think my voice would be complaining about something. Not exactly what I want to present to the world. I know I have something to say. I know I have a lot to offer but I don’t know where to start. “Start where you are” is the advice in a lot of the books I have read and that’s what I’m doing here. However, the road feels as though it has run out. From this point on I might simply be ambling about waffling on about nothing in particular.

This is where Writer’s Groups are so useful. Having a group as a ‘destination’ once a month and an exercise to complete can help you to write. But is that even something you can build on? Not in my experience, at least not thus far.

So I have to continue along alone. I hope eventually I get something good out of all the writing I am doing. I keep going though because it has been my desire for so long. I’ll keep reading all of the helpful books I can find, I’ll keep reading what I think is similar stuff to what I write and see where they do things well...I’ll keep dreaming so that the dreams are always fresh. I enjoy coming to the laptop every day to see what I put down in writing. It’s often as much a surprise to me as anything could be. I try not to have anything firm in my mind when I start and I try to just let the words flow out. And I then come back, often days later, to revise or even add to what I have said. It’s such a relaxing thing to do. Such a pleasure. Such a relief. I’m still very uncertain about my talents but through having this outlet maybe, just maybe, I will step closer to my dream.