Tell Me a Story

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of hosting an event at the Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts discussing writing with three other authors: Tim Ayliffe, Ashley Kalagian-Blunt and Miles Franklin winner Shankari Chandran. As an added bonus, Australian national treasure, author of Schindler’s Ark, and all round good guy, Tom Kenneally, was also there to introduce us.

At one point I mentioned that though I have done more profitable things in my time, none have been as rewarding as writing. This was one of those events that made me grateful to have the opportunity to write and spend time thinking about writing and books with audiences and other authors.

Leading up to the event, I was a little conflicted about doing it, and realised that this confliction was linked to a general creative malaise that I have been experiencing lately. Part of it is attributable to going back to full time work, the nature of which leaves a lot less time in my days and weeks to do nothing other than think and reflect, crucial parts of any creative practice. But a large part of my malaise is attributable to what is happening in the wider world, outside the walls of my writing room.

So this week, I wanted to share with you my short opening statement that I made yesterday at the Sydney Mechanics’ School of Art. I share it on the off chance that it may offer a modicum of solace for anybody out there feeling something similar.

“Author Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book Big Magic, suggests that when writing, (or creating anything really), we must hold two opposing thoughts in our head simultaneously. The first is that what we are working on is the most important thing that we can be doing. If we do not think this, we will never find the drive or the commitment to finish our work. We will discard it for something “more important”.

But at the same time, we must also hold in our heads the thought that what we are doing is completely useless. If we don’t, then we become too attached to the work, unable to let it go, to finish it, to release it into the world to be criticised or loved, rejected or accepted.

Of late, with the amount of death and destruction and suffering that is occurring in the Ukraine, in Palestine, where so many people have had their lives and their stories extinguished, when so many people will never have a chance to tell their stories, it is very easy to hold that second thought in our heads, to believe that what we are doing is completely useless.

It is much harder to hold in our minds the thought that what we are doing is important, or could ever have any importance at all. How could it when held up against the events now taking place?

But history tells us, against all logic, against all reason, that it is in the darkest times that stories are most needed. They are connection, they are resistance, they are the embryo of memory and they are hope when there is no reason left to hope.

As hard as it is to do so, as futile as it seems right now, as writers, as readers, as humans we have a duty to not look away, to keep on going, to bear witness, to write and to speak. To do anything but nothing.

So we gather here today to discuss both the useless and the important, but we do so acknowledging the deep pain and suffering that is happening in the world.”