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A tweet, quote and moment of inspiration by Lin-Manuel. 

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1. In response to: What is writing and why do I write?

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1. In response to: What is writing and why do I write?

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I was instantly struck by the simplicity and matter-of-factness held in this quote when I first heard it on a podcast, it now lives in prime position above my desk. To make my favorite thing is the dream.

Why write?

Like the persona in Lorrie Moore's, 'How to Become a Writer,'
I also attempted to silence my desire to write. In a similar fashion to the psychology applicant, I applied for medicine and told myself I would be a doctor because doctors are important - they matter.

Whilst some see my withdrawal from medical school as a failure, fo me, it is a brave leap towards what I believe to be my purpose, to write. Writing matters because we simply need stories. Storytelling is how we relate and learn. Imagining a world without stories is imagining a world without humanity, we are all storytellers! I just hope to be one of the lucky few that earn a living through storytelling.

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‘This bay is named after me, Watkins Bay.’

‘Who is the bay really named after?’

‘Me!!.’

‘But really?’

‘Oh I don’t know..’

‘Rob, you’ve never asked?.’

The silence implies a no and we keep walking.

Once home, a brief search reveals it was re-named for an early, English settler, John Watkins, who was celebrated for his successful fishing business, buying land, and donating it to the public as a park.

Hmmm, let’s try that again.

The bay was renamed for a man who fished in unsurrendered waters, bought unceded land, and operated a business in a stolen country.

After a few clicks and scrolls, I find it, the bay’s name.

Bullarto N’yoweenth (Plenty of Sun). Bullarto N’yoweenth was a gathering place, especially for women. There are records held spanning thousand of years recording annual visits to this area and yet I could only find Bullarto N’yoweenthon mentioned in a trail walk guide, obscured under multiple pages and links.

it is challenging to fully understand my appropriate role as a settler but my purpose here is to learn, decolonise my language, become more informed, and tell stories with respect to their full history and context.

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An Illustration of orphaned Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire picking through the remains of the burned family home from Bad Beginnings, by Lemony Snicket. 

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3. Bad Beginnings, Irresistible Invitations 

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3. Bad Beginnings, Irresistible Invitations 

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"If you are interested in happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.” Bad Beginnings, Lemony Snicket

The use of the second person allows the author to step out of the page, shake your hand, and give this warning: This book does not end happily.  Depending on the temperament of the reader this warning may be considered an invitation. For a book targeted towards children aged 10 and up, the author cleverly recognizes an often underappreciated capacity for decision-making among children and as the introduction continues to further discourage the innocent reader, like a 'Do not touch' sign, this only draws them further in, increasing curiosity. I remember reading this for the first time in grade four thinking I was handed a challenge, can you handle it? A series of unfortunate events... they're on.

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I Sarah solemnly swear to expand my reading selection, break the bounds of my comfortable reading zone, and upon the completion of this semester have read two books outside of my current contemporary, heavily non-fiction, predominately white-authored, prose-dominated, book selection as I become 'the kind of [reader] that makes [me] a writer' - Prof Julienne van Loon.

As such, I have thoughtfully chosen the Noble Prize winner, Annie Ernaux's l'autre fille (The Other Girl), and Songlines: Power and Promise by Lynne Kelly and Margo to begin the demolition of my biases. These choices will be closely followed by a dive into some fiction, experimental works, and classic literature - all overwhelmingly lacking from the shelf.

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Alongside my learning in this course is a parallel process of unlearning. Unlearning what the school system has outlined as "the rules"...the rights and wrongs of creative writing. As well as, unlearning my own preconceived ideas of how I should or shouldn’t write. I am serious about creative writing, serious enough to dedicate the next three years to it, so how do I write seriously?

This week’s dive into exegetical theories on methodology and method invited me to begin thinking (seriously) about how I write. In Oliver Shaw’s, ekphrastic approach to writing through his ‘collaboration between locality and the self’ and Antonio Point’s chapter from the A to Z of Creative Writing Methods, 'Staying in the middle,’ wherein she correlates the practice of yoga to the practice of writing’, I began to realise there is no 'right' way to write.

It seems that the methods in service of methodology can and should be varied from writer to writer and even within one's own practice. Perhaps to become a serious writer I need to protect the silly and the surprising so as to not stifle my spirit as Julienne van Loon emphasised, I need to play.

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Week 6: Story as 'A Management of tension through time', Peta Murray

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Week 6: Story as 'A Management of tension through time', Peta Murray

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The idea of managing tension is one of the most succinct and helpful ways I have heard storytelling being described. Another quote that stood out to me this week was:

'The yearning is the thing that generates what we call the plot because elements of the plot come from blocked or challenged attempts to fulfill that yearning but while that yearning is unrelieved we have a story.’ Robert Butler

Reflecting on the creation of yearning in my work particularly in regards to my longer-term project, the musical, is another helpful idea I have taken from this week into my creative writing practice.

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This week, I gleaned exciting new ideas from, How to write effective conversations, Chapter One: Definitions.

In the past technical terms such as soliloquy, foil, and aside held no meaning now I can recognise them. I see myself referring to this manual often in the future.

The use of dialogue to explain dialogue was incredibly engaging and made theory apparent by exemplifying how effective conversations are constructed on the page. I noticed there was very little use of the expected he/she/they said and the words between dialogue were more often used in relation to the movement of the characters emotionally or physically within the space. In the Pomodoro task to write a 200-word story from 50 words,  I spent some time experimenting with soliloquy for the first time, it was challenging trying something new. I look forward to experimenting with dialogue throughout the semester.

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In the arranging of the five words exercise, I decided that the 'best' ordering of the five words were Ghostly, bright, fulsom, fresh, and nascent. More importantly, I sequenced these words based on my considerations for:

Rhythm

The imagery I saw in 'ghostly bright'

The decision to end on nascent due to its meaning of future potential, perhaps the potential for either ghostly brightness (a dull brightness) or something fulsome and fresh (flattering and fresh)

In a somewhat nebulous task, I found surprising insight into my own voice or rather the micro choices and considerations that lend to my unique personality on the page.

Observing Shelia Hetty's piece written in an alphabetised, listing, style with a focus on banal everyday day activities, gave rise to new ideas around what a text could possibly look like. I look forward to experimenting with my own voice over as I progress throughout the course.

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Sarah and Rob's adventure to sunny Sorrento. (image shared with permission)

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9. A Detour from weekly content to Sunny Sorrento's Writing Festival

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9. A Detour from weekly content to Sunny Sorrento's Writing Festival

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This is the first writing festival I have attended and I questioned whether it would even be 'worth it'. Rob, a physics graduate, was also unsure if it was the best way to spend his Saturday.

Our hesitations only grew when we were 'the youngest people they had seen all weekend,' but how we were surprised by the rich discussions and inspiring, generous, knowledge shared by the panelists that left us in humbled, awe.

Below is a snippet of the quotes, thoughts and questions discussed on the drive home.

- 'A technological change can change history, the way we live and the expectation of what life is about.' Barry Jones

- humanities, science and art are not separate ideas, there is under tapped protentional in the intersections between these fields.

- ‘The past is only the present in different underwear’ and 'some stories are historical, some are contemporary. some are both' - Tom Keneally

- 'Something being labelled as a "feminist historic novel" because it has a strong female character is almost sad.' Sarah Schmitt

- What would you do? What would you see? What would you say? Ponder on the questions that we can relate to by simply being human.

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Image and caption from ABC website, 'Alexis Wright discusses her latest novel, Praiseworthy, and the first in the Fakes and Fraud', (link below) 

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10.  Debunking Culture, 'Fakes and Frauds', ACMI excursion and Elaborating on Method

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10.  Debunking Culture, 'Fakes and Frauds', ACMI excursion and Elaborating on Method

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Alexis Wright's episode on Fakes and frauds contrasted with her own work and that of other creatives such as Peta Murray's methods forming her master's project, ‘Things that fall over, an (anti-)musical of a novel inside a reading of a play, with footnotes, and oratorio-as-coda.’  and the stunning works on display at ACMI (as reported by my peers able to attend), all highlight the perhaps dangerous place an artist may find themselves in if they prioritise and value the finished product over the process of their creative work. I wonder how much of John Hughes's plagiarism was born out of his intense desire to 'make something great' in a limited time frame.

In a similar fashion, Dr Sreedhevi Iyer warned us against popularised ideas surrounding Culture that does not consider that 'People move all the time' and 'People everywhere behave similarly in community,'. With these considerations culture and the ideas surrounding must be flexible and everchanging.

As I become a scholar of creative writing, I'm growing my awareness of such ideas to develop an original and ethical writing practice.

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11. In response to: How has the reading pledge activity influenced your latest writing and what other influences can you now discern in your own work? 

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11. In response to: How has the reading pledge activity influenced your latest writing and what other influences can you now discern in your own work? 

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The reading pledge itself, due to my current incompletion of the task has not influenced my latest writing, however, the writing event wherein I attended the Sorrento festival has had a huge influence on how I think about writing specifically in relation to my interest area of historical fiction. It also challenged my ideas of academic culture as the Sorrento writing festival was overwhelming an older demographic. When I didn't look like the people around me, I immediately assumed the information would be irrelevant, however, it could not have been more relevant and I felt at home among other writers and reading enthusiasts despite a distinctive difference in appearance, perhaps being less concerned about appearing as a writer and actually practicing writing is one the greatest takeaways I have taken from this semester.

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Screenshot taken from Peta Murray's week 12 lecture, What is Craft? 

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12. Nostalgic recollections of the semester and realisation of objectives

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12. Nostalgic recollections of the semester and realisation of objectives

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Writing this I feel quite 'emosh', that my time in the society of anxious perfectionists is coming to a close. As the weeks flew by, I feel I have moved away from being a student at a university to being a writer in a community.

Early in the course, we were encouraged to come in with something from our childhood we had written. We were overall reluctant to share and guarded with our stories now flashing forward to our show and tell we shared anecdotes, our making processes, and showed insight into our creative work. In our show and tell we acted in accordance with the student charter that has helped guide the formation of our creative community over the semester. Reflecting on the objectives in the above image, I feel prepared and look anticipatorily forward to the crafting to come.