Changing Tracks
Paeony 2008We arrived in Spain with a battered silver trunk and two dreams - one of us wanted to fly, the other one wanted to write. The pilot's road was obvious - over the next couple of years he'd be taught to fly bigger and more complicated planes. Mine was less clear. I had the first draft of the first book. According to the first agent it was 'almost there'. I was at a loss about which bit 'wasn't there'. In retrospect it may have had something to do with it being over 200,000 words long. If you had told me six months previously that I would end up in an isolated villa in the middle of orange groves teaching myself to write with only howling dogs and a hoopoe for company I wouldn't have believed you.
Over the next couple of years we made a home and a life there. The pilot was happy up in the sky, my writing improved and people started publishing it. The book went through several drafts. Our first baby arrived and for the first time in my life I knew exactly who I was and that I was where I was supposed to be - looking back that contented cocoon of time is very precious. It's not often in life anything feels that certain. The pure unadulterated love you feel for your child is like nothing else - it blew me away, maybe you're the same? It was the year Norah Jones' first album swept up every award going, and whenever I hear her music it brings back this time when everything seemed possible. When writers and artists are told at the moment that people aren't taking risks on newcomers, it's good to remember the success stories like Jones and Mayer in today's clip. A few years ago no one had heard of them. Creative industries thrive on creativity - they need new blood. Times like these people rely on classics, sure things - but eventually fresh shoots, fresh voices push through. It's life - change, transformation, movement.
Back in Spain we had no idea of the uphill struggle ahead of us - post 9/11 no one was recruiting pilots so as mine gained his hours I was the one to go back to work. Writing went on the back burner. It's still a struggle but I'm not giving up - I'm taking stock and moving forward. Ten years in to writing 'seriously' I have one book edited and being submitted ('All the Lovely Ruined Things'), a second book complete (no idea if it's any good), and a third book at first draft stage. I know ALRT so well it's almost like an alternate reality - after working so hard on it for so long it has to be published, and I'll do whatever it takes to make it the best it can be. I love the characters and their story as it is, but always figured it would be edited and rewritten again, so we'll see. In the meantime I'm very excited about the new fourth book - even the pilot said he'd want to read the new story so I must be on to something ...
As several of us have taken up the six week challenge, I was thinking this week about all the things that stop us achieving our goals, the negative traits in ourselves and the excuses we make. Then there are the big external things beyond your control - like recessions, publishing trends, the way life blindsides you. You can't fight these things. All you can do is take care of the things within you and within your control, and be ready when your chance comes. Hopefully that's what we are all doing with our six week countdown to summer.
As much as deciding what you can do, it's about deciding how to react to the things you can't do anything about. I heard an interview with John O'Sullivan recently about the Bali bombings. He's a poet, artist and also happens to run a few of the most luxurious hotels on the island. He said the islanders' response to terrorism was not blame but to search for understanding. The Balinese believe their island is heaven (you can see why), and they wanted to know why someone had attacked paradise. In the same week I read about the brilliant and beautiful actress Natasha McElhone who was celebrating the birth of her third child. Tragically her young husband died early in her pregnancy - her tribute to him is one of the most moving things I have read.
How do you make sense of things like this? Life is beautiful, and painful, joyful, messy and sad. Perhaps you can't make sense of it sometimes, there are things beyond your control, but as writers and artists we have a tremendous arsenal at our disposal to fight back. Only we can decide how events are going to affect us. It's our vocation to process life and create something new from it. Hopefully, it will be something fresh and something that speaks at a universal level. Our reactions are our own. As another John (O'Donohue) said: 'We always have the freedom to choose differently'.
TODAY'S PROMPT: I hope everyone's had a good week - for those of us working towards our six week goals why don't we check in on our progress in the comments? Choosing to change tracks - to work towards any new goal takes guts and determination. Just the decision to do something new or try something you've always wanted to has an amazing knock on effect in your life - maybe you've noticed that this week? Checking in with yourself - taking stock of your values, priorities and goals is a valuable exercise to do on a regular basis. I've been so focused on getting published, getting settled here (things beyond my control that frankly haven't worked out - yet), that until recently I lost track of myself. One of the most valuable exercises I came across was Este's idea of Descansos, and maybe you'd find it useful to try this too. All over Spain you'd see little roadside markers - 'descansos', tributes to someone's loss. She recommended you take a big sheet of paper and draw a timeline of your life along a line. Mark with 'descansos' along the years all the little losses, and the large deaths, the great events of your life. What have you forgotten? What have you forgiven? Which roads did you take and which didn't you travel on? In remembering and blessing your losses you can lay them to rest once and for all - forgive, forget and move on. To this I'd suggest you also mark your successes - the great moments of your life when you got it right. Celebrate your victories alongside your losses - there are lessons to learn from both, and as a writer these 'big' moments are the powerhouses of your work. The things that mark us make us unique. But what's done is done. What matters is where you are now and that empty timeline stretching ahead of you full of possibility and hope. Why not draw a line and give yourself a big blank page - a fresh start? Which choices are you going to make today?
