On writing and self

The lovely people at Queensland Writers Centre contacted me to ask if I’d write a post to go on their blog tour.

They set me some questions about writing and here are my answers…

Where do your words come from?

I was about to be flippant and say, ‘from my brain, of course!’ and then I started to think about it. I think they come from my unconscious. I’m unable to write creatively to a plan. Lots of good writers do, but I’m clearly missing the necessary gene for it. I try to follow an outline and, within the first paragraph, I’ve veered wildly off course. The only way I can write is to put the words down and follow where they take me.

Essays and non-fiction pieces are different. They can be plotted and worked out analytically. But my creative writing is as loose as finger painting. I only know the story I’m writing once I’ve written it. Sometimes it’s frustrating, wondering where on earth I’m going with something. Sometimes I worry that I’m heading the wrong way and wasting precious writing time.

When I do reach the end and am able to say, ‘Ah! So that’s what it’s about’, there are often big chunks that don’t belong and that have to be cut. But I’m happy to do this. I don’t ever think of them as being discarded. They’re waiting for me to write the piece they do belong in. Which is a nicely fuzzy concept. Chances are I’ll never use them, but at least I don’t feel as if I’m murdering my darlings. Instead, they’re wrapped in cottonwool, waiting for the play or story that’s right for them.

Where did you grow up and where do you live now?

I was born and grew up in South Africa before moving to England at 10. We came to Australia when I was 15 and I now live in the leafy hills of Toowong, on the outskirts of Brisbane. Moving so much as a child – 7 schools and at least 13 different homes and towns – made me desperate to put down roots as an adult. I’ve never felt I belong anywhere, which can be liberating but also lonely.

What’s the first sentence/line of your latest work?

I pushed open the door and the cheery hello fell from my lips. It cracked into a hundred pieces as it hit the floor. It was never going to bounce. Moods change in a heartbeat, faster than words can be said.

(I was going to use the first line from my latest play, but it starts with a stage direction, which is a bit dull!)

What piece of writing do you wish you had written?

I find several new ones to add to the list every year.

Tim Winton Cloudstreet and pretty much all his books
Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex
Janette Turner Hospital Due Preparations for the Plague
Barbara Kinsolver The Poisonwood Bible
Sue Woolfe The Secret Cure
Cormac McCarthy The Road
Pers Petterson Out Stealing Horses
and on and on and on it goes…

What are you currently working towards?

I’m on the second draft of my new play, The Kerensky Project, and I’m playing around with ideas for a memoir/biography, which will also be a play but may be prose as well. The first line earlier is from this experimenting.

Complete this sentence…

The future of the book is…Exciting. It may change shape and form and not be the physical book we hold in our hands now, but people will always want stories. They’re part of our identity. And reading is the most intimate and personal way of engaging with a story. From the writer’s brain, straight to yours.

This post is part of the Queensland Writers Centre blog tour, happening October to December 2009. To follow the tour, visit Queensland Writers Centre’s blog The Empty Page.

One foot in the grave

- thankfully not. But that’s the first thing I thought last week when I was diagnosed with Graves Disease. What an unfortunate name for an illness. It sounds horribly terminal when, in fact, it responds well to treatment. It’s a disease related to the thyroid.

The diagnosis shocked me but also made sense of the many symptoms plaguing me for the last couple of months. What I found really disturbing though was that I’d never heard of Graves, when it is incredibly common. In America, apparently, two women in every hundred suffer from it. This isn’t rare, so why hadn’t I heard of it? Why did I brush off all my symptoms without alarm bells ringing?

I’m including my symptoms here so that other people who may be suffering as I was might stumble on them and take themselves off for a blood test.

My symptoms

• Insomnia – for two months I slept no more than three hours a night, frequently not at all.
• Racing heart – one of the reasons I couldn’t sleep was because my heart was beating so fast. It turned out my resting heart rate was 126 and walking the five minutes it took to get from the bus stop to work brought it up to 220.
• Impervious to cold – I normally have the coldest hands and feet. In previous winters I’d be bundled up in all my clothes and sleeping with a hot water bottle. This winter I kicked the blankets off and bared my skin to the night air. When I couldn’t sleep and got up at night to write, I didn’t even put on a dressing gown or slippers. Our house drops down to about 5 degrees Celsius on winter nights.
• Red, starey eyes – my eyes were so red and sore that I saw two doctors for them. One gave me drops for allergic eyes, the other thought it was conjunctivitis. I thought it was the lack of sleep.
• Shaking hands – I attributed this to lack of sleep and the constant feeling of anxiety I was experiencing.
• Trouble swallowing – I frequently choked on bread and it took about ten swallows to get some mouthfuls of food down.
• Swollen neck – to be honest I didn’t even notice this. The only time it troubled me was when I put on a polo-neck top and thought I was going to suffocate.
• Manic behaviour – not being able to stop for more than a few minutes at a time. Constantly on the go, writing, re-writing and researching. My family was worried by this, but I thought I was being highly efficient and productive.
• Increased appetite – I was constantly starving and eating, but didn’t put on any weight.

Put them all together, as I’ve just done, and it’s ridiculous that I didn’t take myself to the doctor earlier. My only excuse is that so many of the symptoms seemed to be related to the lack of sleep and the pressure I was under with work, a PhD and play deadlines.

The good news with Hyperthyroidism and Graves Disease, is that it is treatable. If the medications don’t work then taking the thyroid out can fix things up. The bad news is that it can mean a life time of medication. But that’s not so bad. It’s certainly not the end of the world.

I’m concerned that, as we get the medication right, I might be dopey, sleepy, uninspired, uncreative and fat. Putting on weight doesn’t worry me nearly as much as losing my mental sharpness. Hmm – shouldn’t that be acuity? Is it starting already?

By going public with this disease, instead of hiding it as if it’s something shameful, I hope to find other people who’ve suffered from thyroid problems and who can reassure me with how easy it is to treat. I also hope that what I’ve described might help someone else make an early diagnosis. As I’ve discovered, a simple blood test reveals thyroid over-function or under-function.

Photos of Lyall

When I arrived home from South Africa, there was a parcel waiting for me. A parcel of photos of Lyall.

Many thanks to Annie who took most of these, kept them safely and then gave them to me. This is Lyall as I remember him from the first time I met him at Hwange Game Reserve in the mid 1970s.

Lots of writing – but not here

I’ve been back from Africa for almost two months and haven’t managed a single post about the experience.

Several reasons for this. One is that I came back to looming deadlines for the PhD. I had a literature review and draft prospectus both due within a couple of weeks of my return. As soon as I’d finished these I went straight into creative developments for two of my plays (Rosie Little and The Kerensky Project).

It’s been a wonderfully creative and inspiring last month – but this blog has suffered.

Another factor in not writing here is that I write a blog for work. Each week I write a new post on theatre in Brisbane for a Performing Arts blog on ourbrisbane.com. My latest post describes a recent playwriting experience and talks about the benefits and otherwise of feedback early in the creative process.

But I will write about South Africa and talk about where I’m at with my research into Lyall’s life soon. I promise.

Lyall

It’s only five days until I go to South Africa to try to piece together some of my uncle’s earlier years … it’s immensely exciting but I’m also very nervous about what I will and won’t find.

I’ve set up a page on this blog dedicated to Lyall and I’m hoping it will help some other people who knew him to find me …

At the pyramids for my 18th birthday

The above photo of Lyall and me was taken on my 18th birthday when he took me to Egypt to celebrate. That’s a whole story on its own and I may share it here one day.

When I come back from South Africe, I hope that I’ll have new photos and information to add to the ‘Lyall Watson’ page. That’s the plan at any rate. Let’s see how it all unfolds.

New start

Today was my first day back at Uni – at UQ this time, to do a PhD.

I know, it’s not so long ago that I was panicking about having too many things on my plate, but the PhD is different. I see it as part salvation. And that’s because it gives me bona fide credentials to be doing the research I’m already doing. I’m not just being nosy or voyeuristic after all.

My plan is three-pronged:

1. I want to write a biography of Lyall Watson, my uncle
2. I will write a play about my relationship with Lyall and my quest to find the truth behind the myth
3. I will write a critical essay on the nature of truth and its slippery contours, which change depending on where you’re standing

The three parts will all fit together and form my PhD submission and will hopefully be capable of living on outside of academia.

At least that’s my intention while I’m here at the outset of my research process. I’m sure that things will shift and change as I uncover more and as I start writing.

I feel so blessed – I adored my uncle and the short times I spent with him over the years were magical. And I have the confidence of some of the women he loved and who loved him. These women – both family and friends – have entrusted me with their stories of the man they loved, and their stories paint a very different picture from the one in the family album. Lyall isn’t a hazy image in a distant photograph anymore. He’s coming towards me in vivid colour.

I know there will be tears. There have already been so many. I spent the last week with my cousin who I hadn’t seen since we were children. She had so many stories of Lyall to share with me. She knew him so much better than me. And she gave me her memories and her letters so that I can add them to mine and make a better record.

I feel pressure to make good use of the knowledge that’s been shared with me – but it’s a good pressure. Here, at the outset, it all feels doable and wonderfully exciting. I’d be trying to trace Lyall’s life whether or not I was doing the PhD. It’s something I feel compelled to do. And now I’ll be doing it with institutional support, with skilled writers to guide me along the way and with deadlines to keep me on track.

I’m very excited.

If you’ve stumbled on this blogpost and you knew Lyall and would like to share your memories, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me by leaving a comment or by emailing katherinelw [at] iprimus.com.au

Ennui

I’m not sure if that’s the right title for this post but it’s a word that sounds like how I’m feeling. I’m not bored, no way near being bored, but I feel listless. My energy has disappeared behind a filmy curtain. I can make out its outline but I can’t see it clearly and I can’t seem to summon it.

There’s a part of my brain that’s fascinated by this. That tries to work out the connections to find out where my will and drive and passion have gone. I think they’re all in limbo. In limbo. That feels right. Perhaps that should have been the title for this post.

This between state that has me in its clutches can be blamed on many things …

• I’m waiting to hear if I’m accepted into Uni to do my PhD
• I’ve submitted the second stage of the commission for Rosie Little and am waiting for the creative development before I write anymore
• the new play The Kerensky Project beckons but I don’t want to start writing it just yet
• I’m waiting to start work on Tinder with a director – slated for March (starting work is such a misleading statement. Tinder has already taken years and more than 20 drafts!)
• I’m planning a trip to South Africa with the family – and each step takes longer than I anticipated

I’m sure there’s more I could add – but that should give some indication of the work that lies ahead and on top of me. I thought when I finished the last draft of Rosie Little and submitted it that I’d be free to start the next project. I didn’t expect this great lassitude to overwhelm me. I feel lazy and depressed because I’m not writing.

So what’s the answer? Pick yourself up, Katherine, and start writing again. Stop moping about. Get on with the next thing.

Some days it’s harder to drag myself up by the bootstraps than others…

Soul searching

It’s been a while since I’ve written for this blog, but it’s stayed firmly in my mind. A combination of migraines, stress and planning a family trip have kept me away from the actual writing of it.

The trip is to South Africa. To my roots and my uncle’s. To show my children where part of their heritage lies. There’s a wonderful festive reason for the journey – a wedding – and I saw it as a brilliant opportunity to do a little bit of research and compiling of facts about Lyall’s life. But then I came to the stressful part, (well, one of them – another was trying to find the money, but that’s another story) being denied access to family archives in South Africa.

This has led me to do a lot of soul searching and has reminded me of the recent interest in Nabokov’s writing. Apparently he’d written a first preliminary draft of a novel, not even a draft really – more like ideas and rough scene outlines written on library cards and when he knew he was dying he asked that it be destroyed. He didn’t want anyone to see the messy half-formed ideas that start a novel. He wanted to leave the world with his finished works, the ones he was happy with. But his son (apologies if I’ve got facts wrong here – I’m relying on my memory of articles read about a year ago, if you’re interested in the case I advise you to look it up rather than trusting my memory!) couldn’t bear to destroy them and so put them in a safe. Scholars and fans of Nabokov’s begged the son not to destroy the notes. They were literary gold – showing the workings of a great mind and  giving insight to his writing process. Others said ‘Respect your father’s dying wishes. Burn them!’ To the best of my knowledge they haven’t been destroyed yet, but neither have they been donated to a library, which is what many of the scholars wanted. (I quickly googled the case and it appears that they’ve been offered for publication. What a strange twist. Publishing an un-finished rough draft seems far worse than selling it to a museum or library where its rough draft status would be be respected.)

It was a debate that I followed with interest. On the one hand, surely we should all have the right to say what we want to have happen with our possessions when we die. On the other hand, if you don’t ever want someone to see something, surely you’d destroy it yourself? Why leave it intact and then ask someone else to destroy it? I can imagine how hard it would be to destroy your own work, even when it’s in a rough, first draft format. But not destroying it and asking someone else to do so, seems to me to be leaving a window open for its salvation.

When you write great literary works and become a public figure (no matter how reluctantly) then you must recognise that the world hungers for more of your words and for more knowledge of how you work. You become more than just yourself, you become part of public consciousness. Your life is fodder for biographies and theses. If you recognise this and choose to leave behind something that you profess not to want the world to see, then you are being a little disingenious. It seems to me that what you do want the world to see it, but you want it seen with the caveat that this isn’t your best example of work, that you never wanted it seen. That way, if it’s found wanting, people will excuse you with the fact that you’d begged for it to be destroyed. And, if they think it’s brilliant, then it will further cement your career.

It’s easy for me to say this. I am busy justifying the fact that I’m trying to chronicle the life of someone who was very private. Lyall had a public persona but he hid his real self far behind it. I’m aware of boundaries that I could be overstepping. But I’m continuing to step over them. You see, I believe that a life well lived should be a life celebrated.

Uri Geller

One of the leads I’m chasing in finding out more about my uncle’s life is Uri Geller. Legend has it that it was my uncle who discovered Uri and brought him to England. Certainly Lyall was on stage with him in his first television broadcast in the UK and the transcripts I’ve read say that Lyall’s watch stopped and the hands started bending.

So today I emailed Uri Geller introducing myself and I was amazed to receive an email straight back from him, giving me his contact details so that we can have a chat.

I need to work out some questions … no, forget that, I need a dictaphone so that I can remember everything that’s said! Uri pointed me to a tribute he wrote to Lyall on his website (just scroll down past the Princess Margaret stuff!).

Life is pretty amazing. One of my main reasons for setting up this site was because I wanted people who were looking for information on Lyall to be able to contact me. It’s already working better than I imagined. The connections are amazing.

Second draft submitted

Crack open the champagne! The second draft of Rosie Little has been submitted three days before deadline. (In reality, it’s actually the sixth draft, but when it comes to step commissions it’s considered a second draft.)

I feel a bit all over the place – nervous about how it will be received and relieved that I can relax and stop worrying about the deadline.

My big question is how do you ever know something’s finished? Every time I read something I’ve written I can find phrases to improve and sentences to rewrite. When do you stop doing this? When is enough enough? When can you say it’s done?

If you’re a writer and you have a secret formula for knowing when a book/story/play is finished, I’d love to hear it. If you look at the 30+ drafts of Tinder I’ve written you can tell that I desperately need this advice.

Thanks and feel free to pop open a bottle of sparkling in your house and have a cyber toast.