Category: Writing and Life

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Writing for SEO or, Clickbait

When you started your web page or blog, did you ever think it would entail learning a new language? No? Well, welcome to the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) aka Clickbait. 

One thing is certain. If you want someone to read your web page or blog, you need to wrap your head around SEO, an evolving language determined by Google’s algorithms.

As a WordPress user, Yoast is my guide. It is a marvellous plugin. Great support, lots of lessons on offer but what a lot we have to learn. For me, though, it raises a slew of questions.

By way of background, let me oh-so-briefly introduce a few theories about the relationship between language and meaning. My approach may be ambiguous but, as always I write about my struggle to understand.

Language and Meaning

At university, theories about the relationship between language and meaning fascinated me. As an anthropologist, I explored different approaches for trying to understand the social and cultural worlds about which I read. The following three philosophers had an impact on me. 

In his work, The Savage Mind (1962) French structuralist, Claude Levi-Strauss undertook an extensive study of the world’s myths to argue that meaning derived from binary oppositions. His work allowed him to posit the then-groundbreaking idea that human minds (traditional and modern) are all the same. Although personal computers did not come to prominence until about 1975, we might contextualise his1960s and 1970s thinking in the emerging binary world of computerisation. 

Later in the 20thcentury, another French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, shifted away from trying to understand how words pointed to the world as symbols as many structuralists, including Levi-Strauss, did. He moved away from trying to establish meaning internal to an utterance as though language was a thing in itself. Derrida invited us to examine what is said or written as situated in contexts of power. He and fellow deconstructionists thus began to question and unravel the notion of absolute truth.

My favourite is the Russian philosopher, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin. Born in 1895, Bakhtin died in 1975 and his work came to prominence in the 1980s partly in company with the deconstructionist changes Derrida and his cohort wrought in social, cultural and literary theory. He, too, saw language not as signs pointing to the world but as an active constituent of the world.

As he says in his essay, ‘Discourse in the Novel’ (see The Dialogical Imagination) Bakhtin argued that ‘Form and content in discourse are one, once we understand that verbal discourse is a social phenomenon.’ In other words, we should not abstract language as discourse from action in context. Each utterance, be it spoken or in textual form must be understood as socially situated. Part of his legacy is the notion of Heteroglossia, meaning ”multilanguedness’. 

In Bakhtin’s terms, heteroglossia is a condition of social life. It means that each profession, class, culture, station, technical or creative endeavour has a unique language. We all think and speak within our particular social, cultural, professional or philosophical framework. 

Here’s the clincher 

If we accept that Bakhtin is right, writing for SEO requires us to learn a new language, one that skims off the top, regularises, routinises and makes the online world predictably bland. 

With its promise of success, writing for SEO seduces us into new ways of creating stripped back meaning. Taking the Derrida-deconstructionist position, SEO places us under the control of Google’s algorithms. Google, then, is in a position of power over what we say and how we say it online. If we stick to subtle or difficulty ideas to entertain audiences within our own hetreraglossic world, we be accused of using jargon and fade into oblivion. 

Can you imagine Levi-Strauss, Derrida, Bakhtin and all the other philosophers and thinkers we study at university constructing themselves for SEO? Yet, this is the world we live in, so we might as well give in. Don’t you think?

Help is mostly free

Fortunately, there are web pages like Learn Google Analytics, dedicated to helping you and you can download The Ultimate Google Analytics Glossary — 2019 Edition. I notice this not yet called a dictionary which would presuppose a new language, but it won’t be long because we are witnessing one emerge. Not code. A new language in our already heteraglossic world. 

We all know that code entered our lives when computing started, but now we can develop our web pages at the ‘front end’ where what you see is what you get. Still, we need this new SEO language with its keywords, focus keywords, tags, categories and other identifiers. How would we navigate the immeasurable internet otherwise? 

Yoast offers free keyword research training. The email offer says, ‘Enjoy optimising for the right keywords’. 

What to do?

Does the SEO effort to find readers, to find an audience, re-shape not only the way we use language but our minds? Does it lead to shallow thinking? Worse still, does it lead to mindless conformity? 

I struggle to reduce complex sentences and ideas to key phrases, short or long-tailed. It is undoubtedly an art unto itself as articulated in a recent WIX Content piece ‘Why SEO Is a Writer’s Best Friend‘. Here are the tips they offer – with my slick tongue-in-cheek critique in italics beside each.

            Give your audience what they want — invite agreement, not consideration

            Keep it simple, keep it direct — don’t stretch people

            Be fresh, and refresh! — no eternal wisdom required

In his course promo on Facebook, author and leadership consultant Mel H Abraham says seductively that people have had enough of how-to videos and posts. He urges us to get real: 

Think of the teachers you had growing up. Who were your favourites? Those who delivered the best information or those who were funny, the storytellers, the ones who truly cared about you?

Your content and message have to part of you, have to be an extension of who you are.

You need to show your audience that you connect with them and you align with their emotions, values, and identities. If you can’t connect with someone, no one is going to listen to you, let alone buy from you.

He may have a point, but can we avoid the imperatives of writing for SEO on our web pages? 

There is hope

We can just let our web page point to us. The ad, after all, is not necessarily the full product. 

Yes, SEO is creating a new sharp, short, shallow but uniform language. If you doubt, check out this, where Yoast describes how to write for SEO. In brief it says (with my meta comment beside in italics) —

Focus on your audience — not on the idea you are developing or creating

Write clear paragraphs — duh!

Write short sentences — keep it simple stupid

Limit difficult words — dumb it down to limit exploration and deeper thinking

Use transition words — in case nobody understands anything

Mix it up!— not vocab, just instead of ‘and’ or ‘too’, say ‘also’ or ‘moreover’

When it comes to power, you might compare the imperatives of this list to my being told by my supervisor at university that I should learn to ‘write like a man’. That’s the power of writing ‘for’ an audience’ rather than expressing what you mean or want to say from deep within yourself. It’s also worth noting that words have power in relation to status, position and authority and who has more than the Internet?

Still, we must live in the world as it is with the crazy, overwhelming universe of the internet. The worldwide web points to things we could never otherwise have discovered. It is a marvel, and it is OK for it to have its own language, one we can use to navigate it with confidence. We simply need to avoid seeing it as the thing to which it points, as any language does; the real world. 

In an Adelaide Festival Writers Week interview in 2019, Man Booker Prizewinning author, Ben Okri, reminded us of the importance of depth in communication. He says, ‘when we lose our deeper reading, we become easier to manipulate’. He was of course, talking about his latest novel, The Freedom Artist which Publishers, Harper Collins, promote ‘an impassioned plea for justice and a penetrating examination of how freedom is threatened in a post-truth society.’ Be mindful of that.

But, Give Yoast a Go.

I love Yoast. I get a lot from it and they offer plenty of freebies like this downloadable guide, WordPress SEO: the definitive guide for those who use WordPress.

A paid course with Yoast costs only $149 (probably US) or $199 with feedback. 

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Tips and Pitfalls in Fiction Research

How do you prepare to write? Do you start with the kernel of an idea then immerse yourself in information on your chosen topic, setting or period? Or, do you have a character with a story and fill in the gaps in your knowledge via Google? And, what is truth in fiction? Most of us need to undertake research to familiarise ourselves with other places and periods or, to find odd details.

How important are the facts in fiction?

In her article on the use and misuse of facts, Helen Benedict argues that ‘Research needs to be kept in check, like a hungry dog on a leash, lest it gobble (sic)your imagination and your story as well.’ 

Benedict is right. The aim in fiction is to achieve verity, not describe reality (which can be dreadfully dull). But anachronisms and errors in setting, character or dialogue jar with readers. So, research is a must.

Lindsey Woollard of Fairlight Fiction tells us that, ‘Fiction writing is a careful weaving of reality with imagination.’ He says, ‘You lure readers into your story with your imagination, but you make them stay with believable plots and characters.’ And, that requires research.

Truth and verity

To me, the success of a story is dependent on its characters. We read to root for them, learn from their stories, love them or hate them. Many writers focus more on plot, and a successful whodunnit approach certainly works. Whether our narrative is driven by character or plot to keep readers turning the page, it is always enhanced by well-researched detail. 

We can still make things up. In my book, On Gidgee Plains, I use a real street address for what I thought was a plausible building to be home to hippy university students in the 1960s. I created the internal space to suit my characters. Unless writing historical fiction, I think it’s ok to play at the edges in these ways. 

The ethics of truth-telling

If you include characters and stories related to people from another cultural or religious background, it is best to talk to someone or interview them and learn what you may and may not say. There are ethical implications to the way we use information. Take notes and be willing to show your drafts to the people you are writing about and be prepared to accommodate changes. 

As writers, we do not automatically have the right to speak for or on behalf of others, particularly when writing about Indigenous cultures. And, how lucky are we as writers to be able to achieve authenticity by doing research with people who really know. 

Facts are slippery 

Character’s lives, like our own, are complicated. What we experience at a personal level is not identical to the way others may perceive us. 

To give an example. When I lived in Sri Lanka doing postgraduate research, I experienced myself as a ‘powerless’ single mother of three on a low, student income. To those with whom I worked, I was a relatively affluent, hence powerful representative of an ‘advanced nation’ and its interests. So take care to include other perspectives even if that requires research.

The next step

Once you’ve got an idea of what sort of information you want and how to get it, you need to decide how you will organise it. A bit of mind-mapping can be useful for this. I’m a fan and long-term user of MindManager app by MindJet. 

There are many sites offering lists of tips for researching your novel. Writer’s Edit goes into some detail on where to look for information and includes good advice about organising your material. 

For years, I’ve used Scrivener developed by Literature and Latte and I back-up from that to DropBox so I can access my files on my desktop, laptop, iPhone and iPad. Scrivener works on both Mac and PC. It is inexpensive and is top of my list but there are also cloud-based apps like Microsoft OneNote and Evernote, both marvellous for organising and storing your research material. Excel spreadsheet is highly versatile if you don’t want to buy new software.

The medium you choose will depend on your needs. If you want help managing time and storylines in complex works, try Aeon Timeline. This app syncs with Scrivener and, like Scrivener, was specially designed for writers.

Takeaway

Tips

Pitfalls

Define the scope of your research before you start and systematically approach each area. Make a list and stick to it, though the list may change and grow.

While you can expand your scope, if you don’t give yourself defined limits, you may never get to write anything as there’s so much stuff out there.

 

Use your research to achieve verity.

 

Reality on the page is tedious.

 

Be accurate so that readers can suspend disbelief and get involved in the lives of your characters.

 

Avoid using your material to wrong ends, as in misrepresenting the customs and habits of others or using them as the backdrop to the hero.

 

Creating authentic characters is essential.

 

Don’t make the mistake of using today’s language for characters from other times and places.

Start now!

Make a list of what you need to find out, choose a way to organise your material, ideas, sources and resources and away you go. The art then is to be selective on the page.

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When Purposes Collide

As a writer or a poet, have you worked out why you write? Do you write for yourself or posterity? Or, do you have a specific audience in mind? What is it like for you, working back and forth from memory to page, from real life to the imagined worlds you create? 

This month, I planned to talk about memory and the senses, but the notion of creative imagination got in the way. I got stuck between the need to promote myself as a writer and wanting to say what I wanted to say. The breakthrough came when I confronted the fact that this web page and my posts come from different places, have different purposes and seek different readers.

As Shakespeare once told us — All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. (As You Like It, written in 1599 and still on bookshelves in all sorts of languages)

We are all players. But we are complex creatures with many parts and roles. From joking with mates on the footy field to talking to the doctor, from speaking to our children or partying with friends, our minds select from memory to suit the occasion to tell our stories. We all have a repertoire of well-rehearsed tales that we see clearly in our minds as though we are the star in our very own TV show. Together, such stories constitute our identity.

Stories are our way of saying, this is who I am.

Being a conglomerate of stories makes us all creative beings; meaning-making machines who derive identity from how we project ourselves. It is not so different when we write because our imagined stories build upon what we know although we direct that to different ends. Imagination allows us to create from memory when things are not available to our senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell.

Now, my overt purpose in creating a web page was to create a writerly presence for potential publishers; to create myself as a product. My hidden agenda was to post about my journey to becoming a poet and writer, to explore the struggles that got me here. To date, my posts have wrangled with these two purposes. Web page and posts tell two different stories, intended for two distinct audiences. A lesson, perhaps on being clear before we start.

My purpose on this site bifurcates and, as a result, I became tongue-tied today. I want to write as an emerging poet and writer from what I have learned in life, but if I try to do that wondering if potential publishers are looking over my shoulder, I will no doubt fail. I am proud of my achievements such as they are, but I also want to write posts for people who, like me, started from nowhere to encourage and, perhaps, entertain them.

I don’t think it matters that two things are going on here. Notably, the public persona aspects of the web page are static pages, posts are labile. As I’ve come to understand today, it’s like a mask and an interior. I suspect my posts may continue to struggle with the relationship between these two sides of me, the performer or player and the person who has experienced the things I write about.

I still want to work out how we work from memory to the page, from real life to imagined worlds but next month I’ll also add some notes on research and where that fits in.

For now, if you burn to write but have no idea where to start here are some questions to get you going. 

Try This —

Why do I feel I must write? 

We all feel things and know stuff so give your answer to this question a shape, a feeling, a reason to get started. You may discover your purpose.

Who is my intended audience? 

Do you write for yourself, for publication or, simply posterity – to give to your children or grandchildren? We usually know these things deep down. Your audience gives scope to content.

What do I want to say or write?

Content should match your audience. You may have a fictional story that’s inhabited your mind for years. You may want to talk about a difficult life or the life of someone you know. You may want to write family stories, plays, poetry, a novel, short stories or flash fiction. Identify what interests you. Write would impels, but always think of this in relation to an audience.

Where will you write?

To make a start, find a place for writing. It can be a small desk in a bedroom, a laptop in a coffee shop or the local library or community centre. Designating a writing space allows the project called writing to become real.

When will you make it happen?

Be realistic. If you have seven children and ageing parents to look after, your time will be limited. Find a time that can be yours, no matter whether it is half an hour or an hour a day, or three full days per week. It doesn’t matter. Commit to starting as you intend to continue. Making time for your writing says, this is what I do. Let it become me time, and spectacular results will ensue.

Remember —

Whether we talk about life events or our social achievements, we are creating, not reporting the truth. All we are doing is trying to find a story we can live with or create narratives for others, starting with what we know.

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Author Bios: Are you a person or an object?

Why don’t we tell it how it is in author bios on blogs and web pages? We are asked to strut our stuff, padded and polished till it shines in a process that disappears vital aspects of our lives. Why? Because the world wants to rank us, fit us into the dominant discourse of our disciplines and times. Such discourses create algorithms of and what’s in and what’s out and we willingly flatten our experience to promote ourselves in predetermined ways.

I discovered this the hard way when I was developing wattletales. 

One day, I presented a personal bio to a writing critique group. In the silence when I stopped reading, some members sat with mouths agape.  Braver souls spoke up in criticism. Too revealing was the word. A few kind souls felt sorry for me and suggested in sensible tones that I do it ‘the right way’.

One person was unequivocal in her view that nobody was interested in my personal life. And, there it was. The ghastly rejection of what I thought were the awesome, colourful, shameful and sorrowful episodes of my life that made me who I am. I was not allowed to use that. So, I conformed. The About section on this website is the result.  It hangs in cyberspace unread excluded by the divide and conquer algorithm of our times.

This unfortunate episode got me wondering whether people are so immured in hierarchies of power, fashion and their associated promotional jargon that they no longer think for themselves? This brings director Peter Weir’s wickedly insightful film, The Truman Show (1998) to mind. In it, Jim Carry stars as the hapless Truman Burbank who slowly realises that his whole life is broadcast 24/7 as a reality TV show. The corporation that shelters him in a glass bubble beams the minutiae of his daily life to millions without his consent. 

The Truman Show glorifies the personal and may seem to contradict my argument. Yet Truman tries to escape when he realises his personal life is not his, not private. There are resonances with Forrest Gump here. In both movies, there is a fascination by creators and audiences alike with the simple in a world of complexity and insecurity. Gump is adored because he is true to himself, he does not intellectualise. Truman was a happy soul until he started thinking for himself when he realised his life was not real as he thought it was. The movies fit a different algorithm that incites nostalgia for innocence lost.  

Recently, I found a promising article on ABC News online (4 January 2019), entitled “Five emerging Australian authors talk about writing their breakthrough novels.” In this piece, each author describes their journey to success, exposing personal difficulties, self-doubt, failures and all that human frailty stuff. It made me wonder if our failings and suffering only interest others after we become successful. 

I think of those marvellous actors and musicians who died young, alcoholics or drug addicts who are forgiven because of their legacy. Ordinary folk don’t get a look in. If you or your children or someone you love is an addict, it is more likely they’ll be denounced vilified or gaoled. So, success counts. Fame counts when it comes to personal lives being revealed. 

In mouse-ridden garrets, lofts and rooms around the world, struggling artists and writers are still alone with their creative urges. But, if you don’t hit the big time, you are just another failed derelict who doesn’t count in any algorithm of what’s deemed important in your time.

The corporate characters in The Truman Show argue that life inside the artificial bubble where Truman lives is not fake. It is real, they say, but controlled. Their justification for their hideous betrayal of trust is that the show (like the personality of Forrest Gump) comforts viewers. 

We need cautionary tales every now and then, as much as we do tales of heroism and overcoming the odds. But the hard fact is, the only way we can reap success writing about our personal experiences is when we write to help others. Better still, if you become famous, even your wickedness might become interesting.

There is hope. I prepared a submission for a publisher a little while back who, unlike others who want 200-word synopses and 10 pages of a novel they have no intention of reading asked me why I thought was I the right person to write the book I was submitting. I think they are on the right track.  

So, do you write about yourself as a person or an object? Try This —

Pay attention to your orientation to the page and follow your heart. Say what you really, really want to write in a bio. Then, turn it around and find all the awards, achievements and worldly successes or accolades you have had in your life and write it again. Which do you like best?

You can read more on a similar theme here.

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My Dad was a Racegoer

How can we use family history ethically in fiction? Do we have the right, the knowledge, or the relevant skill to portray others in our writing, without causing offence or being sued*?

I was a bit stuck on how to approach this topic, so I skived off and entered ‘wattletales’ into Google. I wanted to see if my site had any traction, which, I am delighted to say, it did. The only other entry I found was about a racehorse called Wattletale**. Wattletale ran nowhere in the one-mile, three-furlong High Weight Welter at Epsom in Mordialloc, Melbourne on 29 July 1908. I could have read that as predicting my failure as a blogger. But because my dad was a racegoer, I declared Google to be serendipitous. Like a game of chance, it showed me that it is time to fess up about how I exploited my father’s lifelong love of the gee-gees in my novel, On Gidgee Plains.

Photo by Melanie Shires

I begin with the question: is my father’s story mine to tell? What if I wanted to talk about my children, friends, or colleagues, can I do so without their consent? These are big, fraught issues. Last month, I spoke about the way my father’s voice inhabits me at times. My mother’s does too, but that comes naturally to me. Borrowing aspects and moments from their lives is different. It is a conscious choice. While I don’t write about my parents in the novel, I do borrow from their lives to develop fictional characters with greater authenticity to the story and its setting. 

Would they mind? I don’t believe they would. They are now long gone of course, but, the ethical issue remains. I still wonder whether I am justified in using details from their lives. But, all things considered, I allowed myself to do so because my father was born in 1910, my mother in 1919 and, as we approach 2019, I am 75. Our lives were both formed by and contribute to Australia’s history. What a resource.

So, I pinched facts, but my story is fiction. It is not a record but a creative work where character flaws and features — and modified events, spaces and places — can be used to achieve verity while drawing out universal themes. If you start with a truth, you can add imaginative insight and embellish to portray life in a fictional way that will resonate with and evoke emotion in your reader. No betrayal.

Try this:

Close your eyes and meditate for a minute or two on a moment of conflict between you and either your mother or father. Where were you? What was the issue? Dwell there for a little while. When you are ready, write the story from your own perspective. Then from your parent’s perspective. It is best to work with one of your parents because, unlike siblings and friends, they create us, fill our minds with their words, stories, and ideas before we have any idea who we are ourselves. We are filled by them.

Did you find your parent’s voice? How similar or different were the two versions of your story, yours, and theirs? Could you hear how you ventriloquized your parent? Could you use the situation in your fiction without betraying anyone?

Remember this:

Before you borrow from life, be honest. The aim should always be not to cause harm so ask yourself which of the following is true —

  • Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.
  • A few startling words on an unsuspecting body can threaten the integrity of the self.
  • The pen is mightier than the sword.

Always write with purpose. The lesson is that we must take care to consider others when we borrow from their lives for our own ends, even if they are strangers. Never over-reach to the point that someone sues you. 

*If you have any doubts about the legality of what you write – check out Lynne Spender’s Between the Lines available through the Australian Society of Authors or from the Australian National Library (online).

**If anyone checks this link, the column in Trove appears to list Wattlevale but, there is a corrections column alongside which confirms it was Wattletale in the welter. Wattlevale was heavier and is in an earlier race listed.

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The Author as Cipher*

Where are you in your stories? How do you situate yourself in your text? I am not talking about your narrator, but you, as an author. Do you cut yourself off from life and roam in your mind to create a fictional world on the page? If so, you are a zero cipher. Or, are you the code in your work; its secret cipher?

Poets declare that we can learn nothing about a poet from their poetry. They argue that a poem is a self-contained work of art, nothing autobiographical therein. While I won’t argue with that here, it is right to say that a poet’s work is intertextually linked and evaluated in the context of other works in the real world. It may become part of an aesthetic discourse that valorises and confers status. We cannot deny that humans orchestrate (authorise) truth value in public conversation about texts.

What interests me is the extent to which our orientation in and to the world affects how and what we write. How does reality enter fiction which, by definition, is imaginary? As writers, we are intelligent, social, emotional and physical beings inextricable from both the world we inhabit and our stories.

Imagination is the faculty of imagining. It allows us to form mental images of, and elaborate on, things that are not present to our senses. We know that, right? We make things up, interpret or infer, don’t we? My view is that if we lost touch with reality altogether in our work, madness might follow.

Had I started writing early in life, I may have believed myself to be creating stories out of thin air.  I now write from the ground up like the anthropologist that I am. It is also possible that I gravitated to anthropology because I had a natural inclination to that way of thinking. We are all different. Words are afloat about how writers can or should orient readers to their texts (tricks of the trade). Few explore our position as a cipher in a world of the real, and the really made up as Michael Taussig portrays it in Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (Routledge 1993)

Now the strange thing about this silly if not desperate place between the real and the really made-up is that it appears to be where most of us spend most of our time as epistemically correct, socially created and occasionally creative beings. We dissimulate. We act and have to act as if mischief were not afoot in the kingdom of the real.  

When you write (or re-read) a sex scene, do you become aroused? Do you write from direct experience, extrapolate from memory or make it all up? My question may be provocative, but it makes a point. We are creatures with bodies informed and supported by the mind. By nature, we are also social beings, and that raises the postmodern question: where do we sit in the social scheme? I raise this to point out that any notion of absolute truth let alone a pure aesthetic is problematic. Reality emerges in a constant flux of power and position. Where we are in life determines what we find interesting enough to write about (or read), and what we may believe to be virtuous, meritorious, true or beautiful.

A poem may not be biographical in the simple sense as poets argue, but I recently recognised that I speak with my father’s voice when I write Australiana poems. The little poem below, ‘Christmas is a Bugger’ started with outsider observation — me looking in. Nevertheless, it flowed unbidden from a deep part of me that ventriloquised someone born in 1910. We can never escape our embeddedness in time and place (check out the reference dates below!).

This poem will never enter the discourse of poetry as art. It lacks the qualities required to circulate in that aesthetic stratosphere. Words gain power by social status and the taste of the status-setters. Nevertheless, it is timely though, as the Silly Season advances.

Christmas is a Bugger

Dad and his cronies
bob their heads over bibs
in tune to carols
at the War Veterans’ Home
as nurses dance round wheelchairs
serving food, pills and kisses
in red and white-bobbled Santa caps.
 
The larrikin lost in the war
rises through glazed eyes
as faint memory
flickers in cheeky grins
and faces brighten over ill-fitting
mothballed best clothes.
 
Military issue cigarettes
are nowadays banned and dad’s
being weaned off Mogadon
by a new matron who warns
it'll kill you.
 
Silly bloody woman, he'd say.

In all my writing, I start with the raw materials of life: stuff I know, things I remember as well as things I’ve seen, heard about or experienced. I take those things as far I can push them, elaborate a bit and write until I run out of puff. Dates and details come later; research in reverse. Then I craft!

Questions to consider in understanding yourself as a writer —

  1. Where do you start: with a memory, an idea, image, experience, image or a simple word? Are you a cipher zero or the secret code in your writing?
  2. Do you write to explore the human condition? Or, do you want your texts to circulate as part of high-level public discourse as defined by Michel Foucault?
  3. Do you feel your work is art? Or can we discern a little of your life in your writing? See Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, (1988)
  4. How much is your writing affected by your belief system, social position or worldview?
* cipher – 
1. A zero, nought, nil. (an absence) 
2. A secret or disguised way of writing: a code. (recent)
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Attending to Ghosts

Do ghosts have an attachment to the human realm, or do we have an attachment to ghosts? I am not talking about cinematic ghosts that haunt dark spaces in white sheets. I mean those ghosts residing in secret thoughts: ghosts of the past, wisps of times when we slipped through the social net. Who among us has not experienced relationship breakdown, getting the sack or being broke and lonely? You may have become ill, caught up in a natural disaster or suffered violence. All leave a trace.

In Questions Over Coffee, I ask questions about moments that bring us to our knees. Those moments of abject vulnerability that force us to be real. Like ghosts, their scars linger long after a situation has changed. From time to time, we bring our ghosts out of the past to dust and polish until they shine with the power to remind us of loss or pain. Who would we be without them? They are as significant as departed loved ones whose emanations tap us on the shoulder and make us cry. Death, desertion, destitution and disaster shape us and yet we keep them out of sight and carry on. Try as we might, we cannot push them out of mind.

Shades of Memory

We need to attend to our ghosts. They are the shades in our memory. We need to create rituals or find spiritual ways of letting past moments and departed loved-ones rest. In the East, formal processes and religious beliefs surround spirits of the dead and ghosts of the past. Rituals celebrate the end of loss or facilitate coming to terms with it. In the West, we mask grief, sadness and the madness that comes from holding it all in. We attempt to supersede pain by hoping things will get better if we make a bucket list. But, does filling the future with wishes obliterate the past?

Optimism is not enough

The optimism of a bucket list is laudable, but there are pitfalls. Friends may have better lists, or you may not achieve your wishes. Life is unpredictable. From the travel photos that flood social media, I’ve come to think that doing anything for photo ops is akin to taking a selfie. Neither has meaning without the gaze of others. Taking selfies and ticking off bucket lists objectifies us, not only to others but to ourselves in an exhausting, hyperreal life of perpetual motion.

Attending to ghosts requires us to be still. It invites us to go within and drill down on what is real; to reflect with an open heart and learn who we truly are. Attending to ghosts — any moment that made us vulnerable — provides rich human content to write about. It inspires confidence in our writer’s voice.

Try This

  1. Close your eyes and bring one of your ghosts to mind. A moment or event you may never have shared or don’t like talking about even with close friends.
  2. Ask yourself — is it night or day, hot or cold? How old are you? Who else is there? What is happening? What do you see, smell, hear, taste or feel? What did you do?
  3. When you are ready, write until you run out of puff.

Be real. Be honest. Attending to ghosts like this is a magic trick.

NB You might also like to read about working with tragedy and despair.

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Realising Dreams Late in Life

Who among you dreams of being writer? No matter who you are or how old, now is the time to realise your aspiration. You are allowed.

As I tell my story, ask what yours looks like. Take notes. What holds you back?

My parents were publicans and we moved often. Books became my refuge; characters my companions. Sitting high in a mulberry-tree one day at the age of 13, I resolved to become a writer. I wanted to tell stories. But, I did not start writing until my late sixties.

At a recent poetry gig, someone asked me why it was that women who have had families and careers, suddenly decide they can write or become a poet late in life. The question perplexed me. The questioner was a man and he really wanted to understand. Like other men I know, he started writing very young, sometimes in secret or against the odds. It was an imperative.

As I pondered this question, I asked whether it was only women who attempt to realise their dreams late in life. We all have roles to fulfil: being a good girl and mother or a proper man and good father takes energy and time. And, like women, who are mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and lovers, men are fathers, sons, brothers, husbands and lovers.

If there is a difference between the genders, is it to do with how they manage their creative desires? Do the men I speak of, write in secret as a counterpoint to society’s expectations? Or, are men culturally conditioned to better attend to and satisfy their inner drives than women? I can’t answer those questions. All I can say is that I harboured my secret desire to become a novelist for the better part of my life but never acted upon it. As for poetry, a lucky break that saw my first poem published in 2007 gave me the courage to give it a try.

If I learned anything at school, it was that I would never amount to anything. Yet, deep down that message — compounded as it was by thoughtless words from bosses and husbands —drove me to prove my teachers wrong. It drove me to get into university by special entry (I left school at 15). It drove me to get a PhD which took me in directions I could not have imagined. Still, at university, my supervisor once said that he would have to teach me how to write like a man. So, womanly creativity was out of the question. For a while.

When I first retired, I floundered without all the identities I’d accrued: publican’s daughter, single mother, field researcher, anthropologist, lecturer. Being a Buddhist and anthropologist, I began to teach meditation and life writing, which helped me to turn myself inside out. I gave myself permission to be me.

And, there it is. I climbed back up the mulberry tree.

Did you take notes? If not, take some now.

Try This

  1. Can you identify key aspects of your life that may have prevented you from following your dreams earlier in life? I don’t mean wealth and time. Look for personal things.
  2. Are there ways in which the life you have led was necessary to bring you to this moment?
  3. And, what steps can you take today, to get started?

Remember, it costs nothing to write. If you are reading this, you already have a computer and Internet connection, but all you really need is a pen, paper and a tiny bit of courage to start talking on the page. We have all led amazing lives. If you don’t censor it, what you write may surprise you.

You’ll find another post with tips for a creative and productive old age here.