Writing

Have You Ever Experienced The “Numen”?

The reason people choose atheism rather than belief or agnosticism, may simply be that professed atheists have not experienced, at least in this lifetime, the “numen” (adj. “numinous”). See meaning below.

Numinous ( /ˈnjuːmɪnəs/) is a concept derived from the Latin “numen” meaning “arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring”.
numinosum, numinous, numinosity (Wikipedia)

The terms were popularized by the German theologian Rudolf Otto in his influential 1917 German book Das Heilige, which appeared in English as The Idea of the Holy in 1923. (Wikipedia). For Otto, the numinous forms the universal, basis of all world religions: “From the very beginning religion is experienced as the Mysterium, of what breaks forth from the depths of our life, of the feeling of the “supersensual”.

He uses words like “shudder,” “stupor,” “astonishment,” and “blank wonder” to describe this sensation. This universal religious “moment” is primarily an experience of feeling, whereas theology is above all an exercise of thinking and reflection.

Jung had experienced the numinous many times in his life. Freud had, apparently, not. It isn’t a question of supremacy; it’s more just a fact of life. There are those that have and those who have not. Both Freud and Jung were esteemed in life and so they are, also, in death. Their paths and legacies were different, but linked, and equally grandiose.

Jung’s individuation project was to make the numinous content as conscious as possible, to sublimate and integrate it, and to bring it into relationship with other quite different aspects of the Self, thereby making it relative, not superior, to more worldly gifts and aspects of the self.

It seems to me, that experiencing the numinous, is a precursor to a belief or knowledge of “God” in the broadest sense, as distinct from religious practices, based on ritual and dogma. Those who possess artistic or imaginative temperaments are more likely to be drawn to an awareness of the numinous. The French Romantic writer, Stendhal, is renowned for having fainted before exceptional works of art, giving rise to the term “Stendhal Syndrome.”

Carl Jung had such gifts to an extraordinary degree. His accounts of firsthand numinous experiences appear in several of his writings — Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (1962) and above all in the famous Red Book (2009).

A belief in an afterlife is common. Many of us sense the existence of the numinous, without believing there’s a God up high on a cloud directing things down here on earth. One might even use the term “God” to describe the “great unknown”, or the mystery of it all. Words at our disposal are often limited. For Jung, the numinous and its relationship with an afterlife, was based on hints rather than facts or notions.

Life experiences had suggested to Carl Jung, the existence of mysteries unable to be explained by science, and hinted at in poetic or lyrical works of the imagination. However, he saw himself as a scientist first and foremost. He feared ridicule from other scientists at the time, if he professed a belief or knowledge of the afterlife. The Red Book, in which he spoke of his explorations into the unconscious mind, was published posthumously in the 1990s, because of this fear of ridicule.

More and more people today seem to be on the pathway of exploring this subject, and in bringing some sort of bridge between science and what Jung and others called the mysterium tremendum.

April 27, 2022 0 comment

Memoir Writing

In Search of a Voice

My writing started out as therapy for a polarised — to be explained later on — childhood. My own background had been stamped indelibly by my not having had a voice within the extended family I was born into. Others in my family had gorged themselves on yackety-yak, thereby filling the void left by my poor little mute tongue….

I wasn’t born without a tongue, so why couldn’t I waggle it?

She’s just shy, they said. There was no ear to lambaste in retort; clever rhetoric evaded my still larynx.

As soon as adolescence got off to its self-loathing, sex obsessed start, I naturally turned to psychology for answers. My elder brother had claimed for himself the super intelligence niche; the second brother was our cowboy clown; my little sisters were clever and pretty. I continued to hide my light under a bushel, which I thought had something to do with native flora; I shared a love of nature with my funny brother Donny.

I’d begun to read Gothic novels about spooks and mysteries, like Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and others. Mum chided me for terrorising myself at night, but I persisted. My scorpionic temperament was pulling me into dark places. But it was the elder James brother, William, one of the early brand of modern psychologists, whom I would ultimately emulate in my search for a raison d’être. Freud, Carl Jung and Fritz Perl also became friendly mentors.

There were many circumferences, I learned, but only one centre. I needed to explore the netherlands of the psyche in my search for self.

Out of the blue, having escaped my family home, a miracle occurred: I started to talk. But friends in the outside world blocked their ears to the tales of woe that poured forth. They couldn’t empathise with my “Experiences of an Empath en Famille “. In any case, they all came from diametrically opposed, maybe just as difficult, perhaps even more so, backgrounds.

I was on my own, like a snail carrying a tightly curled shell of horrors on its back.

Eventually, I would seek professional help, find someone who would listen to me. At a price. The obvious answer was, for now, to write about it.

Starting out from this point of view, my writing naturally lent itself to autobiographical-type genres. I did courses on Life Story Writing, on Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction, all of which helped me a little with grammar, style and structure, if nothing else.

Another problem with writing about the past, is that it can turn out to be as boring as possum piss on a picnic. All those I’s, me’s and my’s can sound a tad narcissistic. Okay, I own up to possessing, like all around me, a dash of self-loving, but it boils down to a question of aesthetics and degree.

Like Sisyphus, I found myself on my own, once again. Researching creative non-fiction and memoir; practising writing it.

Full-time studies, teaching, getting married and having children, these put writing on the back-burner. Of course, all of that is excuses. If I’d really wanted to, and had faced my fears of failure early on, who knows….

I had been trying to get my novel ready for publication, on and off, for quite a while. The writing had improved greatly over time, but the goal of finding an agent or a publisher had remained elusive. Recently, I had come to the realisation that what I needed was a good editor. This was what my writers group buddies were doing. Another failed move on my part. In retrospect, how do you find that peculiar beast — a good editor?

My first attempts to create a readable structure that fitted in with the needs of publishing houses were a dismal failure. Later on I completed a degree in Professional Writing at university and I learnt about narrative structure and creative features, point of view, dialogue and voice. Through feedback sessions in student groups, my writing improved bit by bit. Some of my teachers and tutors were well established writers, and gave me invaluable insights into the craft.

However, I came to realise one day, just as I was about to send in my memoir to an agent, that I might not want my family and self exposed in this way.

So I set about turning the memoir into fiction. There were already some fictional elements, but I wanted to fictionalise the work even more. And to include, in line with creative non-fiction dictums, credible dialogue; this, I found, difficult to do within a memoir.

Turning the memoir into fiction meant that it became a different beast: a hybrid structure, retaining parts of the memoir, with more fictional pieces; these did not always fit in, unfortunately, with the events and actions of the storyline. I was on my own, once again.

According to one editor, the writing was good, but it lacked a consistent point of view and a solid plot line. So this is where I was at: going back to the drawing board to re-fashion the whole mess, and to recreate an authentic narrative out of the ashes. This meant changing setting, disguising characters, omitting the more obvious and sometimes boring ‘real bits’ behind the story, and creating natural sounding dialogue.

And finding an authentic voice.

What I discovered was that, in writing a fictional work based on my background, the story had been transformed into a very different narrative. In my case, it became a similar, yet polarised version of the real story. In psychological terms, this would have been viewed by, say Freud or by Carl Jung, as a sort of ‘sublimation’ of the author’s narrative.

What I didn’t know at the time, was that a ‘manuscript assessor’, who just looks at a few pages and a synopsis, and chats with you, would be much more valuable and less costly for me, than a full-blown editor. I was only just up to the second draft and still had no idea where I was going with this work. I was lucky enough to find a good one. I was on my way….

Now I’m back to exploring creative memoir writing, like the author of In Cold Blood. That was a doozy…

Where will I end up? Fiction? Memoir? Public speaking? Who knows?

February 19, 2022 0 comment

Short Story Writing

A Famous Couple

Carl and Emma: A Love Story

Dearest, I was telling our grandson, Andreas, just the other day, how he possesses the feeling function more strongly than I. He had just espied, while on our walk, a darling dead chaffinch on the ground, and was kneeling over its poor lifeless body.

The words, Nothing truly dies that escaped my mouth, seemed to come from another’s voice, perhaps that of the dead bird itself.

When we returned home, you were there waiting for us with your old man’s rheumy eyes, teary from nostalgic reveries, no doubt. I thought How wonderful this togetherness, this Liebe, after all this time.

You often told the story of seeing me on the stairs at Olberg, my second family house, when I was a mere teenager. My words, as I turned towards you, struck you as prophetic, and you knew at that moment that I would be your wife.

But it wasn’t always a bed of roses, as you well know, my dear one. During the early years, I rarely spoke to anyone, apart from my sister and my dear mama, about the state of my marriage. But in more mature years, it sometimes helped, if not myself, at least my analysands, if I talked openly about my own marital sufferings.

My comments, usually triggered by passionate exchanges, always arrived at the same point: There were three occasions when I tried to divorce my husband.

Sometimes the remarks had a ricochet effect, being passed on one time with delight to that great founder himself, Herr Professor Freud. He used to call me “the solver of riddles”.

I was cognisant of the split looming on the horizon between you two; well before either of you were willing to acknowledge it.

Oh, how I would come to miss our intimacies, his fatherly attentions, my transferences. Our exchange of letters, if you care once more to read them, says it all. My sense of solitude was complete after the final break. We regretted it, all three, and mourned in our own unique ways. So geht das Destin.

Those words I spoke concerning my marriage, were often followed by a shocked silence.

Nothing much matters now, in any case. As you yourself never fail to suggest, we might even say that I won out in the end, by clutching onto the string, like Ariadne in the labyrinth, finding my way to this haven of peace.

§§§

Divorce was never an option. Was it, therefore, by a dark Fate that I was placed in such a cruel predicament by the one I loved? The intervention of what you called your “second personality” deemed it so. Whenever I mentioned the possibility of a separation, your reaction was to fall ill or have a near-death accident.

I always gave in and administered therapeutic assistance until you recovered. How could I do otherwise? I loved you, you loved me, and there were five more of us before very long.

Having grown up in the Haus zum Rosengarten, in a mansion with a rose garden, on the banks of the Rhine River in Schaffhausen, my childhood, unlike yours, had been idyllic. I was ever cognisant of this fact and never lorded it over you. In 1903, after the grand spectacle of our wedding, you took me to a small flat in the Burgholzli Lunatic Asylum, where catatonic schizophrenics and hysteric patients wandered freely in the grounds. I was never bored, you made me laugh and learn. It was the early years of psychoanalysis. I found it fascinating.

The first three years of our marriage were idyllic. The births of our first two daughters, Agathe and Gretli, only added to the bliss.

Signs of angst arose during the days, nay weeks, leading up to that prophetic meeting between the two of you.

Waves of dread stirred within my breast, then and recently, a knowingness that I might have to leave you soon.

I had been growling about the time you spent on your work. Why did you need so many patients when I was supporting you with my inheritance? Actually, it was one particular patient, the Russian Spielrein, whose attachment to you would come to worry me most; as it turned out, Herr Freud, too, calling it “transference”. Yes, I acknowledge I was jealous; of the attentions women poured on you, and annoyed at your endless flirtations. Shocked, too, at my own dark emotions, about which I had been ignorant up until that time.

My outpourings of jealous rage frightened me, as well as you; but you were able to absent yourself, faithful always to your beloved body of work.

§§§

It is 1911 and I am seated, in my imagination, among all the luminaries, male and female. I feel blessed indeed, especially being here with you, my dearest Carl, as part of The Weimar Congress. I feel you leaning towards me, your breath on my hair, as if protecting me from reservations about my own self worth.

Later on you proclaim: ‘You have proven yourself as successful a psychoanalyst as I myself, and you will be known by future generations, to have been part of the establishment of this new field of psychoanalysis.’

‘It is all due to your efforts, my dear man,’ I reply, ‘by initiating me into this field of study and practice from the beginning of our relationship. For this I will be eternally grateful.’

Nor do I feel less worthy than any of the other women, neither those youthful ones to my right, the prudish looking Antonia Woolf, nor the more mature women, seated here alongside me. Herr Professor Freud, that elegant man, has spoken kindly of my accomplishments. For this photo shoot, he takes centre stage, standing tall with the aid of a stool, and rightly so: A giant among men, on whose shoulders future generations of great men will stand.

And then I wake up and you are no longer here. Or is it I who have died and this is all a dream?

§§§

Many will ask how I could go on living with a man who left me with the full responsibility for rearing the family, while he spent time with another woman, invited her into the household. I will tell them of my small victories, like the one during your earliest transgressions with the Russian Spielrein, whom I have long ago forgiven. She was, after all, just one of the many female psychiatrists and analysands who threw themselves unwittingly, perhaps, at my husband. After the fourth child, Marianne, I’d had enough. That is when I at last gained the upper hand in our disputes over my rights as a wife, and you heard my pleas. I was ready to leave, you begged me to stay. You promptly fell into bed with a dreadful migraine and a high temperature that left you shaking and out of control.

Like a dutiful wife, I then cared for you and nursed you back to health. Do you still remember all of this, my dearest one?

You were, yes, I avow it, handsome and charismatic, with your Teutonic good looks and vibrant personality. You are that, still, for me. How could I not forgive them all, seeing that I could not stop myself from succumbing to your charms.

Mind you, it was not love at first sight on my part. You told me that you knew, on catching a first glimpse of me as a teenager on the staircase of our house in Olberg, that I would be your wife. ‘I am Emma Rauschenberg,’ I said, in reply to your timorous query, and then the maid had come and ushered you into the salon where Mama awaited you.

And so it was that I, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy industrialist, in 1899 fell in love with a penniless Irrenarzt, doctor of the insane. It was the talk of the town at the time: an attractive young woman engaged to this lowly man without finances, and lacking professional or social status. In the beginning, I saw only your arrogant side, your bulldozer personality and peasant-like manners. I rebuffed your first endeavors, which only made you more persuasive in your courtship of me.

The more I became acquainted with the gargantuan man that you were, and your equally giant personality, the more I delighted in your attentions and was enthralled by your vast intelligence. Mama, it would seem, had found me an harmonious match. I was soon betrothed. You shared your learning freely with me, satisfying that side of me that aspired to greater knowledge, denied me by my gender and by convention.

If Father had had his way, I would now be the wife of that truly conventional man he had chosen for me, son of his business colleague. My future pathway would have been laid out before me, one of bourgeoisie and of boredom. How fortunate was I to have been chosen, instead, by an unconventional suitor, who cared not for rigid rules of behaviour and comportment, and who encouraged me to learn and to better myself. How I adored that in you. I was only seventeen, and you, several years my senior. Was it Fate that had deemed it so? I was besotted and surrendered to my destiny.

It wasn’t long before you, Carl, good-looking and famous, and a virgin like myself when we married, fell under the spell of female admiration. It took me years to realise that your personality masked a dark interior, fostered by an isolated childhood and sexual abuse you’d suffered as a boy. It would take me even longer to appreciate your personal depths and transformations, yea, that some would say were merely psychotic manifestations.

§§§

My sister, urged on by her husband, took it upon herself to rebuke me: ‘How can you allow yourself,’ she said, ‘to be dishonoured in this way by your husband?’ I was always mute, with nothing to say, in my defence. This was typical of my introverted sensation type. You always said that “still waters run deep” in reference to my personality. Pressed further by Marguerite, who charged me with bringing shame upon my family, I became more and more reserved and unwilling to associate with anyone outside the family.

Around the time of the birth of our first child, Agathe, I asked you to consider a move. You stood there glowering, peasant feet planted firmly apart on the ground: ‘No, no and no,’ you shouted, ‘my work at the Bulgholzli must take precedence.’

I was only just beginning to see this hidden side of you.

Papa died and I gave birth to Gretli. It was now my turn to shout and scream.

‘I want out of this marriage, I will not live here with a growing family. You keep me pregnant like a peasant woman, and you like it thus.’

‘Darling,’ you said, stunned into obeissance by my unlikely tirade, ‘just give me a little time, and we shall move. I’ll build a castle fit for a queen, you will see.’

We talked about our impending visit to meet the illustrious Freud in Vienna, and how I would be feted and welcomed into this new field of psychoanalysis by one and all.

§§§

Remember, dear one, you and I, seated on plush velvet underneath chandeliers, as we waited for your Herr Professor Freud, in the bar of the Grand Hotel near the famous Ringstrasse. You two had organized everything, so that nothing would interfere with this coming-together of two great minds, both intent on furthering the new science of psychoanalysis. We may have looked, to the outsider, like any young couple in love. Yes, we may have seemed happy together. Oh, how appearances can be mistaken!

You, my dear husband, had insisted on bringing along your assistant, Ludwig, from the Burgholzli Asylum, to act as chaperone and to guide me around the city. How I’d growled about that, too…. but I could not blame the impressive man I’d married, for taking control of every aspect of the event, so well equipped were to pursue your ambitions in the exciting field opening up before you.

As we walked along cobbled stones towards the apartment, you towering over your shorter yet dapper Dear Sigmund Freud, you talked loudly as you were wont to do.

We joined his family of nine around the luncheon table. You dominated, once again, while the family listened with interest and admiration, Sigmund, sucking on his pipe. You, only interested in discussing psychoanalysis, was unaware of your lack of etiquette in not bringing the children and women into the conversation.

I left with my chaperone soon after the meal. Museums, especially the natural history one, beckoned me. How I would have loved to share these trips to the opera and to the theatre, or even to relax in the opulence of the Grand Hotel, with my beloved consort by my side.\

That first night, you did not return to the hotel until late in the morning, having talked non-stop for thirteen hours straight with your newfound colleague in his rooms.

It was well known among the cohort that the unconscious was the key to everything, and the key to the unconscious was the dream.

But when Doktor Freud talked about ideas on sexual abuse being the cause of neuroses in later life, you, Carl, begged to differ. Working closely with the insane, you had discovered for yourself that sexuality and abuse were not the only variances at play in mental illness.

Despite this, you realised soon enough, that he, the wiser and older man, saw in you his legitimate heir. And you pulled back. For a time…

§§§

It was around the birth of our last child in 1914, that Toni Woolf inserted herself into our lives. If it was humiliating for me, this ménage à trois was hardly fulfilling for her. You claimed it was foretold by a luminous dream of a white dove that turned into a golden-haired girl who put her arms around your neck. You set off with Toni for a “vacation” in Ravenna shortly after Helene’s birth. Of course, I was unhappy when you invited her into the household; I excluded her from all meal times with the family. Yet she became your “other wife”, and “the other woman”, in relation to me, your legal wife.

Yes, I tolerated it; I could no longer risk another pregnancy; like all mistresses, she tried to persuade you to divorce me; but nothing could come between us in the end.

Her sudden death after the relationship had waned, left the two of us in total shock, and as close as ever a couple could be thereafter.

I see her now as your beacon of light during those dangerous voyages along the River Styx. Yes, she served as a source of insight for you, while delving into the underworld. And I nurtured our brood of five, relieved that childbirth years were behind me now. Was this a great sacrifice on my part, or an example of what you call

Why did I not succeed in divorcing you? one well may ask. I begged God and prayed for delivery from my shame.

Yet you enabled me, it must be remembered, to eventually grow and become an analyst in my own right. It was quite something for the time.

§§§

None of it matters now that I am old. I have fulfilled the journey that I began with you, my husband, by my side. I have said this many times to you, my dearest love: We have arrived at this companionable state together. Love changed us both, as you never fail to point out, and Ours was a different kind of love.

Although our children refused to do so, I forgave the other who tried to come between us. Toni Woolf and I became friends in the end. It was I who attended her funeral, yourself being poorly at the time. She provided something that I could not offer you, n’est-ce pas? We can talk freely, and without rancour, about these subjects now. That is one of the benefits of growing old, my darling companion. The need for lust, for giving birth, for travel, even for your beloved active imagination, all is dead and gone, leaving only peace and serenity in its wake.

Still, last words are a thing of note, and those final ones from your dear mouth have brought me great pleasure, as they did so at the time of their being spoken.

Now I hear you tell Andreas to ask me not to visit him again. He’s having nightmares. I say to the child, I must return no more, though I shall mourn the times we spend together on our walks. I am, as my Lord has said, without a body, and you are of flesh and blood.

Nor can you join us, dear my Lord. You have unfinished work to do, but we are dead. How blessed I am to have paved the way for you.

I sense that I am talking directly to you, my darling Carl. Or are these words the ramblings to herself of an old woman, the one that I had become? I felt then that my time was nigh, yet I am young again. Ignore my words if they unsettle you, my dearest love.

Last words are indeed to be remembered, and I am eternally grateful for the ones you spake that day.

You said she’d been your perfume but that I was your Queen.

When you are ready, good my liege, you shall find your way home.

I await you here, meine Liebe, my dearest love.

February 10, 2022 0 comment

Writing

Voice and Truth in Fiction

A little on point of view first…

Point of view refers to who sees the action within a story or novel. You can have multiple points of view, so long as each shift from one character to another is adequately marked, by way of punctuation; for example by starting a new paragraph, or a new segment, for a change in point of view. Traditional novels of the nineteenth century were often recounted by an omnipotent narrator, one who saw everything, knew all that was going on and oversaw the voice or voices of the novel in an explicit way. Individual characters’ voices were portrayed mainly via dialogue. This was true of the Russian novels (e.g. The Idiot by Dostoyevsky), often resulting in large works that had a wide focus: social, temporal and spatial, united by the voice of the narrator.

It is not always easy to explain the concept of Voice, and there is a great deal of confusion surrounding this concept. The omnipotent narrator is a dying breed today, and most writers are able to call upon different voices for different creative purposes. In more recent times, the person who tells the story, the narrator, is linked to the question of voice in an often implicit way. It is, perhaps, better to give examples of this. See Below.

A little bit of psychology…

I’d just completed an online course with Writing NSW, the wonderful organisation for writers situated at Callan Park in western Sydney. Did you know that, according to “voice guru” Lee Kofman — our fantastic teacher for the course — an important part of getting voice right is linked to self knowledge and being sensitive to others’ personalities.

A summary of what I learnt in the course:

We are all made up of many personality parts.
Our narrators and characters need, also, to be multifaceted, not one or two dimensional.
The eccentric or “different” parts of characters and narrators are often the most interesting for the reader.
“Nice” characters, and other stereotypes, are untruthful and boring.
Exercises and lists of psychological features based on yourself, can be a springboard into creating interesting characters.
When we write, we naturally express parts of ourselves, and this will flow over into writing fiction.
We must validate the eccentric or “different” aspects of ourselves, in order to be able to do so for our characters.

A Speaking Voice as a Metaphor for Voice in Writing

How To Create An Authentic Voice?

This aspect was achieved through students attempting a series of exercises based on creating characters and expressing feelings, without being “untruthful”or overly simplistic. In the struggle to find an appropriate or interesting way to describe a situation or a character lies the source of finding your voice as a writer of fiction. This can be best illustrated through giving examples of truthful or unique voices in literature.

Examples of An Authentic Voice

One good example of a perfect use of Voice, is by Tim Winton in his novel That Eye The Sky. He writes in the first person, vividly depicting the voice of an eleven year old hero, Ort Flack. In doing so, he uses a lot of grammatically incorrect sentences and sentence fragments, just as in dialogue, suggesting the young person’s voice, while at the same time being careful not to overdo the technique:

I don’t sleep that good. Never have. Even when I was little and Mum or Dad put me to bed, I’d lie awake until they’d gone to bed themselves—longer even. It’s lonely in the middle of the night with just you and the sky and the noises of the forest. There’s no one to talk to except that big sky. Sometimes I talk to it. Sounds funny, but I do. Ever since they brought me home from the hospital the time I was so sick, I haven’t slept good….Dad won’t sleep much good when he gets better, that’s for sure. Still, he’s not much of a sleeper anyway. (Penguin, 1986, p.13 )

Grammatical correctness is thus sacrificed, from time to time, for the sake of the voice: “Tegwyn and me are walking.” (p.31); “Mum makes herself a second cup, and me too; makes you feel real grown up, two cups. She looks like she’s gonna say something for a sec…and says nothing. She smiles.” (p.91)

Winton combines several techniques for portraying voice. One of these is his use of colloquial language and special vocabulary, including slang, and another is his use of short abrupt sentences interspersed with longer ones. In this way he manages to produce Ort’s voice, without overdoing any one strategy all of the time.

Another example of an effective use of Voice that I came across recently is in a short story “Dying, Laughing” by Susan Johnson, a writer who had recently returned to live in Brisbane after ten years in London. The story about a young Aussie mother is told in the third person. Kylie is totally out of her depth in disciplining her two young boys; and yet she comes across as a strongly rebellious personality, fighting depression, angry but also capable of nurturing; all shown by way of the narrator’s voice, impersonating someone like Kylie. The story contains aspects of satire, irony, humour and blackness interwoven and held together by the tell-tale voice. As in Winton’s story, the writer intersperses sentence fragments with longer sentences, and uses slang and colloquialisms to add humour and colour:

Children wanted everything! All the time, all at once! If she’d realised what a child was, before she’d accidentally made one, she would have run a mile… Bloody Nixon, born whinger, crying when he came out, starting as he meant to go on. Nixon her first born, skinny and long as a rabbit, crying on the roof. … On the floor, where he usually laid himself, full-length in front of the fridge, to be exact, his mouth open so that you could see the black pit leading into his gullet. Sometimes she wondered what she could stuff in there to stop the sound: honey? Lollies? Her fist? He had the largest pair of tonsils she had ever seen: two fat glistening nubs of flesh decorating either side of his throat, two undulating, pulsing, alien attachments that fascinated her… She knew she didn’t know much about anything, not really, so now she thought about it she wasn’t even sure they were tonsils. (Susan Johnson, GriffithReview32, p.59)

December 22, 2021 0 comment

Writing

How To Find A Voice For Your Novel

The Voice that Comes to You…or Not

Mystery is part of the writing process, and for some writers there are those thrilling moments when a voice “just comes” and takes them along with it. In fact, however, most of us must create narrators and characters through considering craft, especially point of view and voice. And these are essential components when it comes to revision.

Strategies for Finding Your Voice

One possible method for finding an appropriate voice for a work that you are planning to write, is to imagine you are telling the story to someone whom you know will “get it”. This could be a friend, a colleague, or even a relative. Read the story aloud, as if you are recounting it to your buddy. This is building on the “heard” aspect of voice, which is an especially powerful and telling one. Record the story aloud, at least after you have a first draft. Play it back as you walk or relax at home.

At some stage, you will need to show the work to another person to read. An editor will want to know whether you want a line edit or a developmental edit done. Perhaps, you might choose, instead, to employ a beta reader to look at it for overall flow and structure. This need not be someone you know, or it could be the buddy you imagined telling your story to.

Childhood Memories as a Starting Point

Memories of nature that surrounded me as a child, growing up outside a small country town, are what give flavour and rhythm to my writing. Meditating on the sight, colours, smells and sounds of that time assist me in finding a vibrant voice.

Another method is to research what have been the instigating factors in other writers’ lives. For example, Ann Patchett writes about her time growing up in California at a place called Paradise. The only literature in the house were comic books, especially Peanuts. Through Snoopy, she learnt a lot about the writing life, its rewards and its failures. It taught her a lot about her future life as a writer and the rejection slips and disappointments, as well as the glories. Think about the books and mentors in your past life.

Other Writers’ Voices

Read books by writers that you like, and think about their voice and try to describe it.

A good example of a strong narrative voice is of Jeannette Walls’s use of voice in the opening pages of her creative nonfiction memoir The Glass Castle. Walls starts her story off with the statement: “I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.” The action is seen through the eyes of her adult narrator. It is important to remember that the narrator and the writer are not one and the same. When the memoir focuses on the child character, the narrator remains the same as the persona in the beginning, it’s just the character that changes.

November 22, 2021 0 comment

Novel Writing Writing

Write about what you know … 3 authors who recently did just that!

Three colleagues who assisted me in getting my writing off the ground, have just published new works: Dina Davis with A Dangerous Daughter (Cilento Publishing), who avoided lockdown and actually had a book launch in Darwin recently; Helene Grover missed out by a hair’s breadth to publicly launch her memoir, Sometimes the Music (Cilento Publishing), before lockown intervened; and Geraldine Star, who has just published her debut novel, Shee-Oak on Amazon.

A DANGEROUS DAUGHTER is a brave and inspirational story about healing from a mysterious mental illness set in Australia in the 1950s. Ivy, a teenager from an immigrant Jewish family, is on the cusp of adulthood, struggling to survive undiagnosed anorexia nervosa. After failed and sometimes brutal attempts of medicos to trial a cure, Ivy’s family sends her away to relatives in Perth, where hope becomes possible for Ivy through psychoanalysis. Drawing on true events from the author’s life, A Dangerous Daughter will resonate with people of all ages and cultures who have endured the shame and blame of this misunderstood disorder.

“Through deftly combining her life experience with fiction in A Dangerous Daughter, Dina Davis provides a window into the much-misunderstood eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, and the complications that surround it.”

“Dina Davis’s courage in creating this book will be a gift to many.” Dr Dianne Moses, Physician

Helene Grover’s SOMETIMES THE MUSIC is another bravely honest narrative; in places poignant, funny, adventurous, and, in turn, expressing a certain vulnerability. Sometimes the Music presents the captivating lives of Helene Grover and Serge Ermoll, two dynamic individuals, children of migrants from Paris and Shanghai, who land separately in Australia, where they ultimately find each other, and the music of Rock’n Roll and jazz, which bonds them together through difficult times. Helene says: “Some people plan their life. I fell into my action packed one.”

Geoff Kluke – Australian Jazz Legend, writes: I loved Helene’s book and you will too. Couldn’t put it down. She brings to life so many of those fabulous Jazz Legends and Characters many of whom are sadly no longer with us. The stories are so fascinating and entertaining. It brought a smile to my face to be reacquainted with many of them once more.

These two authors have been part of writers’ groups for many years, the most recent one, linked to their current publishing success, being Randwick Writers’ Group, convened by Dina Davis. They have both been supported and published by Cilento Publishing, recommended by this author for all publishing and layout needs.

And then there’s Geraldine Star, also linked to Randwick Writers’ Group and others, who has taken the courageous step to self publish with Amazon, becoming an Indy author with her debut novel, Shee-Oak (Star Monde Australia). The lovely cover and layout are by Green Avenue Design, part of Cilento Publishing.

SHEE-OAK by Geraldine Star is a modern drama and testimony to the power of a stranger to undertake a troubled journey through alcohol, pills and romance to help transform a difficult young woman’s life.

A twist of fate on a rural back road begins an intergenerational story, in which vivid Aussie characters jump off the page with their personal battles, goals and changed hearts and lives. This is an authentic Australian story and voice with outback locations in which the dust and nature gets under your skin as you read.

Two women share a volatile adventure across the drought-stricken rural Hay Plain to Adelaide for a music festival. The transformative lure of pills, alcohol and romance drives them on with the possibility of a veritable explosion and tragic ending looming on the horizon for the women, ominous throughout.

I would recommend these 3 works for enjoyable/interesting reading during lockdown. And look out for future publications by them!

July 15, 2021 2 comments

Mythos Writing

Revisiting Persephone in the Underworld

My Links to the Myth

I have for a long while been drawn to the archetype of Persephone, who must descend into the underworld for half the year. My connection is linked to a long-term personal wish and desire for growth and change through psychological means. Personal attraction to an archetype is like an urgent calling, something that really speaks to you and urges you to investigate it further. There is also a possibility of extending this to a social context.

I previously wrote about this myth in relation to global warming and environmental degradation. See the previous post on my site at: http://anneskyvington.com.au/the-myth-of-persephone-and-demeter/
Now we have been rocked by a global epidemic that we have come to know as Covid19, a virus almost certainly transferred to humans from animals. Misinformation leading to increased fear among people, including the explosion of conspiracy theories, has added to the problems of finding solutions. If we are to progress as a species and as social beings, we must learn to work together as a global community.

This latest shock, represents a Persephone in the Underworld occurrence on a global scale. We are all in these dark times together, and we therefore need to look for solutions together.

The overarching symbol of the underworld is ‘the unknown’. Because it is hidden from view and unseen, it is a realm to be feared. However, one can learn to accept the reality of the underworld, just as Persephone has had to do. And by so doing, one can gain in fortitude and endurance.

The Story

Out of a crack in the earth, four black horses appear. Driving a chariot, Hades kidnaps Persephone who is picking flowers in a meadow, takes her against her will, down into the subterranean depths of the underworld. The earth closes up again, and all that is left above ground is the flowers that Persephone was collecting for her mother. She is to be married to Death, the consort of the King of the underworld. The black horses that draw Hades and the chariot represent intelligence, but, in this case, dying consciousness.

Demeter is finally able to recover her daughter, but not before Hades persuades his wife to taste of the forbidden fruit — that will ensure that she stays underground for half the year, representing the seasons of autumn and winter.

The relationship between Persephone and Demeter is basic to the whole myth. Persephone is the golden, naiive child of her mother, Demeter. She lives and plays in the apparent safety of the fields and sunlight provided her by Demeter, Queen of the horizontal world above ground. Demeter imagines that her daughter is safe from harm, happily picking flowers in the sunshine with friends and animals above ground.

The Role of Demeter

Demeter, whose domain is ‘cornucopian’ consciousness — the life of the fields and vegetation — is at first bereft, shocked and saddened over her daughter’s abduction. She then reacts with anger and inflicts famine on the earth above ground, instead of wisely seeking counsel about what to do in order to find her daughter and bring her back.

As goddess of grains and harvest, Demeter lives on the surface of things, unaware of the dark lurking out of sight; she is therefore lacking wholeness. Jung wrote that you can either have goodness or wholeness, not both together. In other words, experiencing the dark is part of becoming whole.

On a deeper level, however, the rape of Persephone represents for Demeter, a jolting of consciousness. This enables her to access, eventually, deeper levels of herself in order to grow.

The Transformative Meanings of the Myth

Demeter must learn that it cannot be always spring. She starts a relentless search for her daughter, but she remains depressed and angry; these negative emotions cause her surface domain to be depleted. If Persephone receives a shock at her abduction and kidnapping, Demeter is jolted out of her complacency, out of her superficiality. It’s a painful but necessary psychic shift that takes place within her. She experiences loss for the first time, and a new order, a new narrative, is born out of her despair and suffering.

Destruction is often the right hand of creation and creativity.

Can you see how this myth is relevant to our response to the pandemic as a community, both local and global?

The Rape of Persephone: C. Schwartz 1573

June 10, 2021 1 comment

Short Story Writing

The Night of the Barricades

I open my eyes onto a strange world into which I’ve stumbled as if by chance. All is new and filled with an alien radiance, muted colours, greys yet beautiful. Hippies are twanging their guitars along the Seine. Flower sellers and precious bookstall owners hawk their wares along the promenades above. The ancient cobblestones conceal the holographs of those trapped forever in bloodstained revolutions. Seduced at every turn. I think that this must be my spiritual home, on the opposite side of the earth to my birth place.

The Frenchman I met while travelling across the Channel offered me the use of his apartment for two weeks. Why not? I thought. My tourist’s trip through the Mediterranean countries can wait. Generous and eccentric to a fault, these French — opposite story to what I’d been told! I find his street in a Michelin Guide book I bought at the Gare du Nord: rue Servandoni, in the sixth arrondissement. One change and out at the metro station near the Seine.

It’s a steep climb up a creaking staircase to the small flat overlooking a courtyard at the back of the building.

February 15, 2021 0 comment

Novel Writing Writing

How I Created My Debut Novel

The Story of the Novel

Those in the know say Write about what you know. This could be my parents’ love story, with the boring bits left out.

My story takes place in a raw and natural setting called Karrana, where a stunningly attractive young woman is ready to break out of her universe and demand more from life. She’s clever and, like a bright chrysalis, just knows that she deserves more — like the cows know when it’s time to come home for milking. She meets the love of her life, or is it her polar opposite (?), at a victory dance. This novel takes place in an Australian country setting at the end of the Second World War in the Pacific. She falls pregnant in a moment of raw passion and rebellion. This throws her back into the very environment she is trying to break free from. This is a women’s story, so it’s about love, nature, pregnancies, child nurturing and dissatisfaction. And for those men who would understand and appreciate these themes. An accident to her first ‘golden child’ sends the young woman into a spin — a bit like a depression — followed by something akin to enlightenment, wherein passion leads her into a forbidden liaison with a sophisticated, refugee doctor in Sydney.

I won’t tell you the ending, but suffice it to say that it’s a bit complicated.

How I Wrote the First Draft

I wrote it chapter by chapter over a period of 18 months in 2013 – 2014, meeting in a group of four every fortnight, Randwick Writers, convened by Dina Davis. My first mistake was to engage an editor to do a structural edit when I had written the first draft. It was not ready to be assessed at this stage. After this, I put the manuscript away for some time and concentrated on blogging. I was also attending a larger writers’ group, and focusing on memoir writing. Later on, I worked some more on the story, while attending the Waverley Writers at the local library.

The Question of Structure

I had discovered that one of the hardest things about writing a novel is accessing knowledge and skills to do with structuring a longer work. That is, with the overall storytelling aspect. It begs the question of how to hold the whole novel in your sights, in order to appreciate or critique the structure and add significant bits and sacrifice others that might be scaffolding or padding.

Writers’ groups, unless there are novelists within who are aware of textuality, cannot usually help you with this aspect. Participants often focus on the smaller aspects to do with punctuation, words and grammar, all at the level of the sentence or the chapter.

It’s even harder to remember previous scenes or chapters of your colleagues’ novel manuscripts in a group. And, if you are writing a modern work, you need to consider recent changes that have taken place in this art form.

The Bigger Picture

I thought for a long while that it’s all about understanding Voice, Viewpoint, Point of View, Scenes and other issues, such as pace and narrative arc. And about writing a segment or a chapter from go to woe, that is, from the beginning to the end. But, after getting a grasp on such elements, and finishing the first draft, I was still searching for that elusive missing link, that was how to discover the overarching theme or rationale? for the novel I was writing. This became my next quest.

A Manuscript Assessment

A talented manuscript assessor at Writing New South Wales, requested, for a moderate sum, a couple of chapters of my manuscript, together with a synopsis, and then offered an hour-long Q&A session, where we worked together, asking and answering questions. That was what got me over the hump towards completion. After that, I knew where I was coming from and where I was headed. This was important for structural cohesion of the whole work; it enabled a final culling—and/or perfecting—of relevant motifs and metaphors. Within a relatively short period of time, I felt ready to publish the novel, so that it all hangs together. The missing link for myself, was knowing the right questions in relation to overall novelistic structure, to discover the ‘meaning’ of the work. After all, the novel is about many things, but this needs to be distilled into one or two sentences. Of course, if you plan the novel beforehand, you may not need this process, but there will be other different issues to confront.

Creating a Logline

I came across Jeff Lyons through Reedsy. Jeff is an expert in the art of storytelling. He states that you need a ‘logline’, which is a summary or premise, in one or two sentences, even before you start to write your novel. Of course, most people, and I am one of them, don’t work in this way. However, I have found that it is important to be able to do this, at some stage during the creative process. According to Lyons, the logline should include 7 parts: (i) a mention of the World of the novel (ii) the main Protagonist (iii) the Problem faced (iv) the Goal or Challenge for the protagonist (v) the personalised Opponent (vi) Choices or Decisions (vii) the Action taken by the protagonist.

The Logline or Premise of Karrana

In post-World War Two Australia, Bridie, a spirited young woman brought up on a dairy farm, surrounded by beauty and rawness, seeks romance and ultimate fulfilment. She hopes her choice of a mate, who she meets at the Karrana Victory Dance, will lead to a different future than that her mother, and, later on, her husband, want to keep her cosseted in. Her passionate nature, aided by fateful irony, deems that she demands more from life than nature alone; a family accident takes a hand in ensuring this.

July 4, 2020 0 comment

Publishing Writing

Randwick Writers’ Group: Sharing Writing Skills

A book about writing groups

Joining a writing group is very popular these days, at least in Anglo speaking countries. There are many different types of writing groups, just as there are various types of writers. Some writers simply wish to record memories for their family, children and friends to read. Writing correctly and clearly will be a main push for them. Others want to hone their skills towards the goal of writing a short story, or a longer genre, such as a novel or a modern memoir. They will need different skills, for example, knowledge of how to structure a particular genre.

I have been a member of three writing groups over the years, and most participants, when asked, expressed a wish to be published. One of the groups I was a part of was Randwick Writers Group, which has recently published a book that showcases work from six members in search of writing excellence. Each of the six participants found that being part of this group brought their writing up to a new level.

This book is unique in that it has followed members from the initial phase of setting up the group, until this point, five years later, when three members have published novels, and the rest are on the point of doing so.

If you would like to find out more about the workings of writing groups, this book is what you are looking for. As well as informational content, it also showcases the writings of the authors. It can be purchased through the publisher, Ginninderra Press or through online book stores, such as Amazon and other online bookstores. Enjoy!

Click on this link to have a peep inside the online digital version of the book.

https://www.book2look.com/book/TPULpSvFiE&bibletformat=epub

Purchase the digital book at Amazon Australia

May 7, 2020 0 comment