Another of my favourite books on the writing process is The Writing Life by Annie Dillard, a small and passionate guide to the terrain of a writer’s world.
Annie Dillard has written eleven books, including the memoir of her parents, An American Childhood; the Northwest pioneer epic The Living; and the nonfiction narrative Pilgrim at Tinker Creek winner of the 1975 Pullizer Prize. A gregarious recluse, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
What can a man who meets you at the station and offers to carry your backpack mean to a woman traveling the world alone?
I was scared, like anyone who has no sense of direction. The journey was a series of stops and starts. Whether to use the Eurail pass or post it back home and ask the kids to get me a refund. Giovanni appeared one European winter, thick padded jacket, woolen beanie, scarf and gloves, tall and imposing, I’ll carry your bag.
I was small, the backpack the length of my spine, the zip-off bag on one shoulder, the daypack positioned in front like a nine-month baby bump. That evening, as we climbed the steps of the Corniche – the wind bitter across the Mediterranean, the metal stairs covered with slippery ice, the railing melting beneath my hand. Soon it would become my railway platform, my steps, and Giovanni my landlord.
We walked there in the crisp night air. My own place. It didn’t cost much. No-one yet knew I was here. I could ask Giovanni if I needed any help. I knew my children would be pleased I had a base. I didn’t want them to worry. It was the thing I wanted the most secretly, studying maps, absorbing travel books. To be safe, a desire whispered to the moon that moved behind my shoulder at night. If you guide me to a safe haven I promise to be happy. And the moon listened. I did my best.
The winter sky closed down and the spring began its flowering. I took photos and painted and rang the children every week. Watch your money, don’t talk to strangers, be careful walking at night – you know the drill. The pebbly beach, the weekend markets, it was all there for the exploring. A glimpse of the sea between terracotta roofs – a vision in turquoise. The cobbled streets could show which way to follow – and none of them wrong. A room at the top of the stairs – till June I stayed reading the English books Giovanni had left in the bookcase, shopping for food, telling my kids and friends they should come for a visit.
Where had the months gone? Almost two years on the road. Summer approached. The rents would go up and the tourists arrive. Time to move on. I could only take with me what I could carry on my back. A Jewish gypsy they said. One more step into the unknown. Pack up, give away what I couldn’t manage, but keep the palette knife and miniature easel. There was stuff happening back home. The boys were grown and earning a living. Their sister turned twenty-one. People were reinventing themselves all over the place then coming back home. A thousand train rides later, my mother nearly eighty. I won’t be around much longer, she cried.
His was a helping hand in a world that says, but what are you doing there? What are you doing?
First published in Quadrant
Copyright © Libby Sommer 2016
I highly recommend this book a friend from London gave me many years ago at the beginning of my writing journey.
‘A reissue of a classic work published in 1934 on writing and the creative process, Becoming a Writer recaptures the excitement of Dorothea Brande’s creative writing classroom of the 1920s. Decades before brain research “discovered” the role of the right and left brain in all human endeavor, Dorothea Brande was teaching students how to see again, how to hold their minds still, how to call forth the inner writer.’ – Amazon
‘Refreshingly slim, beautifully written and deliciously elegant, Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer remains evergreen decades after it was first written. Brande believed passionately that although people have varying amounts of talent, anyone can write. It’s just a question of finding the “writer’s magic”–a degree of which is in us all. She also insists that writing can be both taught and learned. So she is enraged by the pessimistic authors of so many writing books who rejoice in trying to put off the aspiring writer by constantly stressing how difficult it all is.
With close reference to the great writers of her day–Wolfe, Forster, Wharton and so on–Brande gives practical but inspirational advice about finding the right time of day to write and being very self disciplined about it–“You have decided to write at four o’clock, and at four o’clock you must write.” She’s strong on confidence building and there’s a lot about cheating your unconscious which will constantly try to stop you writing by coming up with excuses. Then there are exercises to help you get into the right frame of mind and to build up writing stamina. She also shows how to harness the unconscious, how to fall into the “artistic coma,” then how to re-emerge and be your own critic.
This is Dorothea Brande’s legacy to all those who have ever wanted to express their ideas in written form. A sound, practical, inspirational and charming approach to writing, it fulfills on finding “the writer’s magic.”‘ – John Gardner
May Ling steps across the skipping rope. I’m waiting for her with her baby brother, outside the school hall, but she hasn’t seen me yet. Every Thursday when she finishes her Hip Hop class I hang about with the other mothers and grandmothers and carers. It’s a routine I enjoy—walking up here with the baby in the stroller and then chatting with May Ling as we walk home. Continue reading
The day is softening into night, my desk in shadow as the sun moves behind the building. Birds hover in the trees as the wind blows across the surface of the sea. It’s hard to know which way to go. Every day I fear that I can’t do it. So I’m watching as it gets dark.
Tonight I’m thinking about the saddest bits. Thinking, for example, that the night was alight with thunder. Lightening cracked the sky. Just a flash and then darkness again.
That I loved him, and sometimes he loved me too. Continue reading
Here is an important writing tip: ground your writing in a sense of place, whether landscape or cityscape.
How often have you heard someone say of a book they loved: ‘I felt like I was there.’
Even if you relocate the poodle tied to a fake-cane chair, the sound of a game of tennis, the table of older men after their regular Sunday match at the café overlooking the tennis courts at Cooper Park that you drank a lemongrass and ginger tea at in Sydney into a café in a story in another state and time, the story will have originality and believability. ‘But that café was in Sydney, I can’t transport it to Adelaide.’ But you can. You can have flexibility with specific detail. The mind is able to transport details, but using actual places that you experienced will give your writing authenticity and truthfulness. It grounds your work in place, giving life and vitality to your writing, rather than a whole lot of exposition that floats in the air.
If you don’t create evocative settings, your characters seem to have their conversations in vacuums or in some beige nowhere-in-particular. – Jerome Stern
Creation of the physical world is as important to your story as action and dialogue. If your readers can be made to see the hand-knitted socks or the row of vitamins on the kitchen benchtop, the scene becomes alive. Readers pay attention. Touch, sound, taste, and smell make readers feel as if their own feet are warm under the cold sheets.
‘Place situates the story in your reader’s mind. Fiction that seems to happen in no particular place often seems not to take place at all.’ – Jerome Stern
Header Image: Creative Commons
Libby Sommer, Author 