Happy New Year!

A quick scan of the Internet tells me that 2013 is the Year of the Water Snake (lucky for some, especially the Canadians, it seems!), the Year of the Stem Cell (some great things on the horizon there, with scientists cautiously optimistic), and, for Hollywood, the Year of the Film Sequel (producers also cautiously optimistic).

For me it will be yet another year of finding my feet (right down below my knees) and for surviving the weather.

I'm hoping for great things for the Book Length Project Group - yes, the name is a bit of a mouthful but in its defence, was only ever meant to be temporary until someone could come up with something better.  Nothing yet.

What's in a name anyway? We're lucky to have some excellent writers in the group, and a goodly amount of collective wisdom that will guide us through the joys of hard work ahead, as we spit-polish the manuscripts currently in development.

My predictions for 2013, channelled directly through my crystal ball:

• There will be exciting news regarding members' publications, accompanied by critical acclaim and popular success, spreading across the group like wildflowers after a good rain
• New friendships will be formed and transformative insights gained
• Some of us will become irritating groupies of famous writers travelling to the Perth Writers Festival from far-off lands
• I see inspirational overseas travel for some, resulting in renewed vigour, energy and creativity
• There will be pleasant dinners, morning teas, semi-boozy lunches for those who wish to indulge
• Someone may think about contemplating the possibility of an alternative name for the group, maybe
• Someone will get a radical new hairdo
• On the down side, as in 2012, housework will tend to suffer

Have a happy and safe New Year and I hope to see you in 2013.

Iris

Advice: The Problem with Advice

Gateway to the partially known

Fictional work is not for offering advice. It is to tell a story or explore something, or I'm not quite sure what. My advice to myself is to use it as a diving board. Don't think too much. Jump right in. Swan dive or belly flop. The experience can be transcendent, unpleasant, indifferent, but the exercise is still good for my health.

Writing to offer advice in a work of fiction? I don't think so. There is too much searching in the dark, too much contrivance, and too much intentional ambiguity, too much playing Devil's advocate. Too much uncertainty about the nature of social expectations and individual sensibilities. In any act of explorative communication, meaning slips around. It changes all the time.

In fiction, this slippage of meaning between writer and reader is a good thing. It creates the space for a story to develop beyond the page. Readers bring unique understanding, assumptions, and emotional profile to a story so that certain aspects of a story loom large, while others recede. The story adjusts itself to the reader, for better or worse.  At its best the work stimulates debate. At its worst, silence. Writer and reader are partners in the process of meaning-making.

Where does advice belong? If it belongs anywhere in writing, it seems that it belongs in the realm of Self Help. The contract between writer and reader is clear - the writer wants to give advice and the book-buyer is seeking advice (although possibly for somebody else - we don't often feel that we are in need of instruction on how to live our own lives. I wonder how many self-help books are bought as presents? I might be wrong.) And when it comes to instructing others on the how-tos or the rights and wrongs of something or other, how a person should help themself, flexibility of meaning is usually unintentional.

Giving advice carries with it an assumption regarding certain beliefs that the other person might have, and also carries the assumption that the advisor knows more than the advisee. Sometimes this is justified. Sometimes not. Regardless, a status discrepancy is established. The advisor assumes superior knowledge on a particular matter, and this circumscribes the relationship.  Advice can be respectful, as provided by the advisor to an American President (Sorry, I can't think of a stereotypical English, or Australian, Prime Minister, without thinking Yes Minister). Commonly, advice is proffered within a symbolic adult to child relationship, teacher to student, parent to offspring. To be an advisor is to assume a temporary position of power. The upside for the receiver of wisdom in this relationship is that, if the advice is wrong, he or she is not entirely responsible.

Some of us have an automatic aversion to advice. I know I do. I have an aversion to both giving and receiving. At this point I can't help thinking of Shaun Micallef's 'Wisdom of the Elders.' I'm the elder, in case you're wondering.

So in the spirit of 'playing opposites,' I have proffered some rambling advice here. For the uninitiated, playing opposites is a technique employed in performance rehearsals to help an actor discover hidden things about the character he or she is playing. An angry monologue is delivered with great self control and gentleness, for example; a loving speech with underlying irritability, or disdain. Something there for all of us, I think.

A final word of advice: It's worth remembering when reading or writing a work of fiction - you don't always get what you expect. And a good thing too!

Merry Christmas

Love, peace and happiness this Christmas

So these are ours; faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is Love.
-Corinthians 13:13

"If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace."
Thich Nhat Hanh

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities. ~Jean Houston

“Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind. Buddha

“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” Mother Teresa

First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.

Thomas a Kempis (1380 - 1471)

 

 

The Prophet Muhammad (s) said: “Do not turn away a poor man…even if all you can give is half a date. If you love the poor and bring them near you…God will bring you near Him on the Day of Resurrection.”
——— Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1376.

Peace is not in money, estate, bungalows and possessions. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul. Swami Sivananda

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller

“Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are.”
—Hafsat Abiola

 

Peace

With the many sad events reported in the News, and coming up to the Christmas season, it's good to be reminded of the value of peace, and to take heart.

A book on my Christmas list is Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.  The publication was released in 2011, but is likely to have a long shelf-life. In this book Pinker traces the the history of humans and apparently brings considerable evidence to bear on his main thesis that we are living in the most peaceful time in human history. It appears that, overall, the trend for violence is down, down, down! Things are not perfect, but we are heading in the right direction.

The implication is that now, more than ever before, we should be able to cooperate and use our collective wisdom to address the challenges ahead.

Lisa Appignanesi provides a short, but good, review of the book on the link provided.

Good blog site for writers

In a comment on one of my earlier posts, Glen Hunting mentioned a site called This Itch of Writing.  The site is kept up by Emma Darwin, a novelist and short story writer. It is a good looking site that offers great suggestions for improving writing. Over done, over written and over here is one of the blogs worth checking out on the site.  Thanks Glen!

Review - Trisha Kotai-Ewers "Listen to the talk of Us: People with Dementia Speak Out"

I wrote the following review of Trisha Kotai-Ewers' book Listen to the Talk of Us: People with Dementia Speak Out in 2009 for the FAWWA Newsletter. As I mentioned this beautiful book in an earlier blog, I have included a copy of the review here for those who might be interested in purchasing the book.


Published by Alzheimer’s Australia WA Ltd

$19.95 plus $5.00 postage.

Available Alzheimer’s Assn  (+61 8 9388 2800); or FAWWA.

For anyone the gradual decline of a loved-one’s capacity to communicate is confronting, to say the least. But for a writer and self-confessed wordsmith, witnessing such changes in the vibrant persona of a much-loved mother, must be doubly charged.

Writer and Acting President of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (W.A.), Trisha Kotai-Ewers saw her own mother gradually lose expressive language along with other changes that occur with dementia. In such circumstances a person might be forgiven for minimising contact with the places and situations likely to remind her of her mother’s illness. But Ms Kotai-Ewers takes another path, embracing the insights that the experience has given her as she works as Writer in Residence with people who have dementia, talking with them and recording their words.

She does this, not over the period of six months or a year as might be expected, but over many years. And she undertakes the work in such a respectful and ethical manner that the process of forming often profound relationships with the people who tell their stories, figures as a compelling underlying theme in itself. The author has been very careful to gain permission to record the words, from the people with dementia as well as their families, has done the recording in an overt manner, and has checked back with them once the words have been written down.

As might be expected from a person who has spent her life writing, the book is beautifully expressed, something that is not always evident in the non-fiction genre. This makes it ‘a good read’ even for those for whom the subject matter might not initially hold interest. But beyond this, it raises some of the big questions that concern us all – what it is to be a person, what is left when our words and understanding of conventional reality desert us and the place that meaning holds in our life.

The text does not pretend to provide definitive answers, but invites engagement in the questions themselves through reading and re-reading the words of those who are confronting them on a daily basis. The words are accurately recorded and set out in poetic form to encourage the reader to interpret them as one might do with poetry, understanding that much of the meaning lies beneath the surface of the words, in the subtext, and through metaphor.

Beyond the words themselves, Ms Kotai-Ewers contextualizes what has been spoken with her subjective impressions of the emotional intention of the speaker, shown to her through those critical non-verbal aspects of communication that cannot be conveyed through words alone. This depth of communication is made possible because of the close connections that the author has formed with the speakers. Underlying these close connections is time, mutual love and respect between the author and storyteller, and above all a willingness to listen.

This book is a must-read for anyone working with people affected by dementia, or for those directly impacted. It is accessible, carefully written and well-researched. But above all, it is written with genuine empathy in the deepest sense of that word, for its subjects.

 Reviewed by Iris Lavell

First published Fellowship News Feb 2009List

Brainpickings - a good website



One of our members has sent me a link on the brainpickings website. The site has a lot of good information for writers. And not just for writers. Regular folks too!

I've looked at it a couple of times and found something worth reading both times. The other day there was a comprehensive article on book illustration. There is another blog that summarises some of the research around optimism, and a letter from Amelia Earhart  to her fiance on the eve of their marriage, laying down the conditions of the union (posted on December 11).

Worth checking out. I'd be interested to know what you think.

http://www.brainpickings.org/