Reasons to Write and Cause to Celebrate
by Diana Jenkins
Many of you will know by now that long-time Varuna Alumna Charlotte Wood recently took out the 2016 Stella Prize for her celebrated fifth novel, The Natural Way of Things.
I doubt nearly so many of you realise that it’s only thanks to Charlotte’s tireless efforts that the Alumni News/Monthly Feature even exists, and it’s a direct result of Charlotte’s involvement that, for better or ill, I’ve been producing these interviews and features for you ever since Charlotte handed over the reins. I owe her a great debt of thanks for this role and other things as well, some of which I’ve been reflecting upon since reading Charlotte’s, er, stellar acceptance speech.
Ever since The Natural Way of Things went shooting off into the stratosphere, I’ve been carefully correcting anyone who’s referred to Charlotte as my friend while discussing her success with me. I’ve done this because I very particularly don’t want to make any undue claim on her as she launches into literary superstardom – is there anything worse than a stubborn sheep-dag you just can’t shake? No. There is not. Nonetheless, I have to stop doing it, because I’ve realised it’s both stupid and wrong. While we’re not personal friends in a conventional sense (eg. we’ve never been in each other’s homes and we don’t socialise together), I certainly have no desire to disavow the association, so I’d like to set the record straight by outing myself as a sort-of-pen-pal-half-friend-half-unofficial-mentee and raging fan of the woman.
I admire many things about Charlotte Wood, some of which are evinced by her speech, a commanding address I know many writers here and abroad shall study, quote and cherish. You’ll find the speech reproduced in its entirety here, but for now I call your attention to Charlotte’s ‘5 Reasons to Write.’ She says she compiled this list on a dark day, when all in the writing felt lost and/or meaningless. Though I would never wish such a day on anyone, I do accept as given that all writers have them – at least every writer I’ve ever known or read about – thus these five pillars of Charlotte’s personal creativity speak to something universal: the molten core of what writing is and why it matters so much to us:
Reasons to write:
To make something beautiful. Beauty does not have to mean prettiness, but can emerge from the scope of one’s imagination, the precision of one’s words, the steadiness and honesty of one’s gaze.
To make something truthful. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’
To make use of what you have and who you are. Even a limited talent brings an obligation to explore it, develop it, exercise it, be grateful for it.
To make, at all. To create is to defy emptiness. It is generous, it affirms. To make is to add to the world, not subtract from it. It enlarges, does not diminish.
Because as Iris Murdoch said, paying attention is a moral act. To write truthfully is to honour the luck and the intricate detail of being alive.
I have been the recipient of Charlotte’s wisdom, good sense and generosity too many times to name. I think the above extract from her speech makes that case very ably for me, but there are a couple of other standout examples I’d like to share with you, because they were lessons that forever changed my outlook on writing and being a writer. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had Charlotte’s influence acting upon me just as I began to really focus my creative energies on fiction. What a lucky break (especially in the absence of others!).
The first monumental change was freeing myself of any notion of competing with other writers. I still enter competitions, because deadlines motivate me, but I don’t attach any meaning or value to the idea that I’m pitted against other writers, and I haven’t done for a very long time. I just square up to myself these days. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a competitive person by nature, but countless rejections helped cure me of that, and so did Charlotte Wood. Here’s how:
Another writer’s success has nothing whatsoever to do with your own writing: that’s the gist of an email I received from Charlotte one day, years ago now, no doubt in response to evil-minded blather of mine about some new failure to get anywhere, even as my writer friends had the gall to go on being awarded, published, signed to agents and so on. And she’s right. No good ever came of believing my writing was competing with anyone else’s. It wasn’t. It never was and it never will be. I know this to be true. Each writer’s work stands alone; neither its merits nor its shortcomings ever implicate anything outside of itself.
Gladly share everything you know. Anyone who regularly reads these features knows I’m an open book when it comes to recounting my stunning lack of success with fiction writing, but it’s mainly because Charlotte’s example taught me the value of passing on everything I learn along the way, be it good, bad or putrid. The main thing is being as transparent and helpful as humanly possible.
Here comes another categorical, a priori truth: there is no downside to giving your 100% support to other writers. It’s always a good thing to do – and it feels great, into the bargain. Much better than harbouring toxic, envious thoughts, which are so pointless and consume so much energy and which won’t ever change a single thing (except perhaps where one sits on the Tedious-Dinner-Guest-O-Meter). Whereas actively throwing your weight behind the idea that we’re all in this together, well, that turns out to be a lovely, productive way to expend one’s energy and I’m all for it. Carry on, you good, dear people, carry on.
Seek and consider feedback carefully. In my eagerness (many would say desperation) to find someone, anyone, willing to work with me (not publish me, you understand, but work with me to get the manuscript into a publishable state), my manuscript went out of my hands much, much too soon. I can’t point to a specific email or pearl of wisdom from Charlotte here, but her modest and considered habits as a writer left a profound impression on me as I grappled with that tidal wave of hope, fear, arrogance and insecurity that greets most writers upon completion of their first major project. It’s the ‘Fuck, I’m good/Kill me now,’ paradigm – I’m sure you’re familiar with it.
The point is, I learned not to be quite so eager to get it out there, and not to be quite so free with passing it around. It’s a little like realising speeding is reckless and dangerous only once you’ve miraculously survived your teens. Most fully-fledged adults are careful, conscientious drivers – and if you think about it, so are most fully-fledged writers.
One thing it’s easy to forget is that people always want your writing to be good – no one agrees to read a manuscript secretly hoping it’s going to be atrocious. One can assume, therefore, that constructive criticism is almost always given in good faith. You do have to back yourself in order to keep going, but after my first two rejections, when an agent and publisher passed at much the same time, I didn’t blindly push on. I didn’t think, ‘What would they know?’ and respond to their reservations by sending out the manuscript to everyone listed in The Australian Writer’s Marketplace. Because the truth is, they know plenty, so I retreated, taking my very badly flawed manuscript with me. Which is just as it should be, frankly.
Charlotte and others gently suggested that perhaps I should put it aside for a while and start something else, which I eventually did. That lengthy break away from a troubled project was so important. Not only was it unhealthy and unhelpful to keep hacking away at it, it was also blocking any chance of moving on to something new and less fraught. Plus, by the time I narrowed my eyes enough that I could bear quickly glancing its way again, I had the kind of revelation that’s only possible from a distance: I had not written a novel after all. I had written a YA novel: a whole different kettle of fish. One that required – you guessed it – significant rewriting.
When I started this particular project, I was still eligible to enter The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, Australia’s most prestigious annual award for an unpublished manuscript by an author under 35. Now I’m old enough that a well-meaning friend suggested to me only days ago that perhaps I’ll be “one of those late-discovered authors.” Thanks for that. Better yet, maybe I won’t! But you know what? Last month, after ten years, I had a win: the publishers at UQP chose that same manuscript for a Varuna PIP Fellowship. It’s really the nicest kind of win, because it was both thanks to Varuna, but based on a blind read, meaning the judges did not know the manuscript was mine. When I got the email late one night, telling me it had been selected, I just howled and howled and howled.
Things haven’t gone to plan, it’s true, but I really don’t care anymore. I write for a living. I write for and from my heart. I can’t do nor ask for one single thing more from my creative life than everything I am already attempting. I won’t ever look back and wonder, because I’ll always do this. For as long as I live, you’ll find me here: trying to get better, endeavouring to learn from the best, but needing to read and write on regardless. I am completely absorbed by these two fundamental drives of mine, they challenge and sustain me, and in those moments when my focus is so total that the world around me slows and sometimes stills, there I find my bliss.
Charlotte’s fifth point, with thanks to Iris Murdoch, resonates with special force for me. Writing truthfully while alive is far superior to the alternative: not writing at all while being dead. June 1, 2003, my 14-year-old niece was the victim of a murder-suicide carried out by her stepfather. What we learned in the aftermath was every bit as nightmarish as the worst of the worst night terrors. But later, much later, when I could begin to think of her sunny nature and gigantic grin without my mind hurtling into abject darkness, I realised I owed it to her, because I was alive and she was not, to live out my luck with everything I’ve got to give.
So yes, I have a tendency to over-invest, then I agonise about it, but I hope Charlotte won’t mind anything I’ve said. She knows me well enough to know I’m permanently set on ‘Compulsive Disclosure.’ Years ago, she also gave me the greatest compliment I could have ever hoped for, right in the middle of delivering a brutally honest assessment of my manuscript that was full of hard truths about its systemic problems. These words bring me unimaginable comfort when nothing is working and they always shall:
I do think you are a real writer.
Thank you, Charlotte. Thanks for everything, most especially for inviting us, your readers, to come with you each time you ‘climb right inside your own dark wormhole of fascination and stay there.’