As I’m sure you have picked up, I am into applauding effort rather than excellence. I am also not into fetishising the printed word – newspapers, magazines and books – as the only way to tell a story. The written word is not the only legitimate form of storytelling. And it never has been. I suggest we’ve all been a bit sucked in by the patriarchy here. Podcasts, YouTube clips, street art, pop music and stand-up are just as valid vehicles for storytelling as the printed word. In many cases, they are much better vehicles for particular stories. You have to choose the right frame for the picture and the right mode for the discourse.
But perhaps it’s not surprising that we see this kind of insistence on one form being ‘better’ than another. Literacy has always been used to enforce class distinctions and preserve privilege, encouraging in-group loyalty and out-group hostility. The educated elite have access to power, decision-making, money and leisure. They support those like them and ostracise those outside their circles to protect their privilege. It’s not privilege if everyone has it. Think about it: historically, women, the poor, and non-Caucasians have been purposely excluded from or disadvantaged in the education system. They were often not permitted to go to school – or not for long – meaning fewer of them learnt to read or write, let alone got published. In the case of women, education was seen as a waste as they would end up having babies, keeping house, and basically being slaves and incubators for the patriarchy.
Catholic priests used to say Mass in Latin so no-one could understand them. Back in the 1200s, a guy translated the Bible into English so everyone could read it. You know what the authorities did? They burnt him alive. Why? To control him. To set an example. To discourage others from educating themselves and spreading knowledge. ‘Good grief, if the peasants are educated they’ll start questioning the rules, instructions and dogma spouted by the clergy – and then what? A revolution! We can’t be having that.’
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
You’ll still find religious people who say, ‘You atheists don’t understand the Bible.’ Uh, yes we do – that’s why we’re atheists.
Today, elitist obfuscation remains in fields such as academia. Academia encourages people to make information as impenetrable as possible. My sister has a PhD. She has written an honours thesis, a masters thesis and a PhD thesis. Every time she gave me a thesis to read I would get one page through and I would stop and say, ‘Surely there must be a simpler way of putting it than this?’ Unnecessary complexity is deception. So much fabulous information gets weighed down by jargon, gobbledygook and terminology only understood by people educated in that particular field. When my sister was doing her PhD, I carried around a scrap of paper in my pocket to explain what it was she was writing about. On one side was the explanation for people ‘with knowledge in the area’, on the other was the explanation for randoms.
A few years ago, I worked at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Ideas and Writing a few times. It was great fun. My job was helping people turn their PhDs into English. The joke was they were already written in English – but they were difficult for most of us to read and impossible for almost anyone to understand. PhD candidates would pull me aside and tell me they would love to have a website, start a blog, write a book ‘for the intelligent layperson’ or submit an opinion piece to a newspaper. But they told me if they did so they would jeopardise their academic career and prospects, because it would be seen as ‘dumbing down’ their field. I spoke to many of these candidates and it became very clear that within academia anything seen as making their research or information accessible was considered not just ‘dumbing down’, but actually joining the opposing team. It was viewed as betrayal. This is what I mean by in-group loyalty, out-group hostility. The academics who depended on and were invested in the hierarchy of academia actively discouraged and undermined many attempts by people from ‘their tribe’ to make their writing accessible and available to the masses. The thinking was: ‘Goodness, if anyone can understand these concepts, then we’re not special. We’re not superior. We can’t have that.’
Thankfully, attitudes are changing. The democratisation of information as a result of the internet means those addicted to jargon are being forced to remove unnecessary complexity in the name of accessibility. The fabulous Plain English movement is growing at an encouraging rate across many traditionally jargon-heavy fields, such as law, science and medicine. The movement aims to simplify the way we communicate, remove unnecessary complexity and make ideas and information as accessible as possible. The Plain English movement has many questioning why the complexity was there in the first place. It’s clear: to stop the unwashed masses from accessing information. Information is power, and power is privilege.
A great example of the way thinking around knowledge is changing is the Three Minute Thesis, an exercise developed by the University of Queensland. Students have to describe their thesis in three minutes, using just one slide, to an audience of randoms – laypeople who have no knowledge of their field. It’s a fabulous initiative. The Three Minute Thesis is also valuable for the students: it helps them understand their topic on a whole other level. It’s a bit like an elevator pitch.
If you haven’t heard of it before, an elevator pitch is what you would say if you only had a few minutes in an elevator to pitch and explain your project, idea or service to a potentially interested customer, producer or publisher. You cut to the chase. The most famous elevator pitch is the pitching of the movie Alien as ‘Jaws in space’. Elevator pitches are a great way to simplify your idea – so is writing a review of the project you are working on or a blurb for your book. By distilling your project down to a few words, you clarify to yourself and others exactly what it is.
Bright Club and TED Talks are other examples of paring down ideas to their basics and stripping away unnecessary detail and complexity. I’m sure you have all seen TED Talks: short talks on fascinating topics by amazing people. Bright Club is scientists doing stand-up on their specialty area. It’s entertaining, fascinating and often hilarious to watch these presentations, but I think the real winners are the presenters. They stand in front of an audience and interact with their material in a whole new way and get to see it in a completely different light.
I’m so excited by the growing accessibility of ideas. As consumers, we can digest information, education and entertainment however and whenever we want, and it’s transformative for writers. Writers are no longer bound by how writing ‘should’ be done or what form it ‘should’ take. Writers no longer have to handwrite or typewrite their work, and they are not limited to books, newspapers, theatre, television or film as their final products. On their smartphone, someone could type and edit Facebook posts, then develop them into a blog, which they then self-publish as a book, which gets picked up by a producer and turned into a web series. Isn’t that terrific?
Education, entertainment and information has for so long been controlled by the Pale, Male and Stale. These masters of the universe, gatekeepers of information and captains of industry have decided who says what, where and how. Only certain people have been allowed to say certain things at certain times in certain ways. And the printed book has been considered the only legitimate form of writing. The attitude is: ‘Oh, you call yourself a writer, hmm? How many books have you published? How many books have you read? How many books do you own?’
Certain types of writing are elevated over others. ‘Oh, she’s not a real writer, she’s just a blogger,’ people say. ‘Oh that’s not literature, that’s just chick lit.’ Some people don’t view listening to audiobooks as a legitimate form of reading. ‘But you didn’t really read the book,’ they say. Er, what? Who cares about the means – the words came out of the writer and the story was conveyed to my brain. Science fiction, erotica, biography, romance, horror, self-help, poetry, crime, romance, mystery, children’s books, travel, adventure, textbooks, fantasy … let’s drop all the judgements. Repeat after me: it’s all just words, sentences and stories. All these terms are about defining and labelling certain forms of writers and writing, promoting some and demoting others.
Genres have their place – don’t get me wrong. They can be helpful when you are describing what you’ve written to others, and they also give you a set of norms, structures and expectations that you can choose to embrace or reject. Knowing what genre you are writing in is not important or necessary, but it can be helpful. Although you don’t have to read voraciously to be a writer, many people find reading other authors in the same genre inspiring and encouraging. Inspiring when the work is good and encouraging when the work is average (because it makes you think ‘I could do that!’). So genres can be very helpful, but they can also be limiting.
But formats? Hooley dooley! Nothing limits people like formats. Being hellbent that what you’re writing is one form when it’s really another can be very damaging – maybe you think it’s a book when it’s actually a YouTube series, a mural when it is actually postcards, or a song when it’s actually a poem.
In 2010 I did a one-woman show in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, called ‘God Is Bullshit’. It grew from conversations I’d had, that I turned into opinion articles for the Age and radio interviews, and finally a stand-up comedy show. The show later morphed into pieces for the opening and after-dinner entertainment at various Global Atheist Conventions, and finally I turned it into a short film that I produced, wrote, presented and crowdfunded, called Catherine Deveny’s Atheist Alphabet. This project shows how something can morph from format to format. The important thing is to just get the words down, and take it from there.
There can be an upside to the romanticisation of certain forms. Writing a ‘real book’ may be the motivation someone needs to get the story down. Then they can change the format. But it’s important to remain open to that.
Genre cringe is rampant. Small-minded people consider certain genres ‘unworthy’, ‘pedestrian’ or ‘coarse’. It is common for some Gunnas to be embarrassed about the genres they are writing in. Certain genres are more stigmatised than others. People often visibly cringe when they tell me they are writing a memoir, a children’s book, erotica or sci-fi. As if some genres are somehow more worthy than others! Not true. Whatever you’re writing, be it a PhD, poetry, a fantasy for young adults or a ‘how to’ book for unicycle riders, it’s all simply words, sentences and stories. You have to tell your story, find your voice, finish it and do the next thing.
When I was writing my novel The Happiness Show I used to be a bit apologetic about it. People would say, ‘Tell us about the book you’re writing.’ I’d squirm and say, ‘It’s nothing really. It’s just a love story.’ I couldn’t believe how self-effacing I was being. Why was I ashamed of writing a love story? So many of our stories are about love, family and relationships. But this embarrassment is very common. There’s a bit in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love where she finds herself talking to a psychiatrist who specialises in counselling victims of torture. Gilbert is banging on about some bloke and suddenly becomes self-conscious. She says something like, ‘Oh god, you must think I’m a totally shallow airhead. Here you are helping people who have escaped from torture and here I am blabbing about some boy I like.’ The psychiatrist tells her not to worry – that these people who she deals with who have escaped unimaginable horrors sit down in her office and open with ‘There was this girl’ or ‘There was this guy’.
Many articles have been written about how when a woman writes about relationships or family it’s just ‘chick lit’, ‘fluffy stuff’ and autobiographical but when men do, it’s elevated to literature and the writers are applauded for being sensitive and deep. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about men almost exclusively for decades, yet as soon as she wrote Eat, Pray, Love, she was suddenly referred to as a ‘chick lit’ author. ‘Back in my twenties, people used to say that I wrote like a man, which I took as a compliment. And now, I’m often referred to as a chick lit writer which I … I’m not even completely certain I know what that means except that I’m pretty certain it is never intended as a compliment, you know. And I … think it’s strange. I think it’s curious, this whole idea of, like, gender-based writing.’
‘Chick lit’ is a relatively new genre term. It is used to describe fiction written by a woman. When a woman writes about family, relationships and/or the issues of being a woman, it is often disparagingly labelled ‘chick lit’. To undermine women. A similar book written by a man about family, relationships and/or the issues of being a woman will be given awards and praised for being raw, brave literary fiction. Female authors wised up pretty fast to this double standard and many continue to expose it wherever possible. I know of many female authors labelled ‘chick lit writers’. I know of no male authors labelled ‘chick lit writers’. I know no authors who label themselves a ‘chick lit writer’.
Here’s an excerpt from a paper by Carol-Anne Croker. I’m with her.
Women authors are accepted as valued (marketable) contributors to genre fiction and they … even subvert the tropes associated with these genres, thus we have a long established practice of narratives featuring female forensic investigators and private eyes, and female warriors in sci-fi and fantasy. Yet the women writing in the genre ‘chick lit.’ are dismissed by the literary elite as ‘not real authors’ churning out contemporary versions of the ‘bodice ripper’ … the phenomenon dubbed ‘chick lit’ is actually the mobilisation of a backlash against the destruction of, and criticism directed towards the male literary hegemony.
Of course, The Happiness Show is much more than a love story. Love stories always are. Patron of the arts and humanitarian Julian Burnside, who agreed to launch the book, described it as literary fiction: an exploration of class and modern Australia that questions the relevance of contemporary marriage. There you go: I just thought it was a love story.
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The education system’s obsession with rote learning, spelling, times tables and ‘staying inside the lines’ has been a huge waste of our brainpower and educational time. And a massive obstacle to creativity and innovation.
It’s appalling that our education system expects students to handwrite to express themselves when they can do it far more efficiently and effectively on keyboards. Australian kids are still doing exams by hand, when countries like Denmark have been running exams on computers for over twenty years. This insistence on handwriting is holding us back. We only ever wrote by hand because we had to. Being able to handwrite well is no indicator of intelligence or class, and handwriting is used less and less often these days – we use it for signing names, addressing envelopes and writing cards – that’s about it. 99.9% of people who need to write anything longer than a paragraph will choose to write with a keyboard. Not only that, but people would prefer to read typed text than handwriting. I strongly support the move to stop teaching cursive, or joined-up, handwriting. When kids can form the letters and have mastered the basics of spelling they should move on to keyboards. They can learn spelling and grammar on computer, and fine motor skills can be taught through many different means, such as craft, music, puzzles and construction skills.
This doesn’t mean we’re stopping people handwriting – in the same way no-one is stopping people hand washing all their clothes or cooking all their food in a wood oven after fetching water from a well. Until recently we had no choice. We have a choice now, and it’s time to move on. Being a writer is not about having perfect handwriting and spelling. It’s about expressing ideas, creativity, innovation and rational thought. Pretty soon, in the next ten years, not only will people not be handwriting, but they’ll use voice recognition to write. Wait until the purists hear about that! They’ll be up in arms. ‘But that’s not real writing. Where’s the spelling? Where’s the cursive script? What’s happening to my world? How will I be able to judge people and feel superior if people are just speaking their ideas? If people with ideas and stories aren’t blocked by people like me telling them they are not doing it right, what will become of the world?’
Education has traditionally been a place of discrimination and shibboleths. A place that has elevated some subjects, ways of learning and particular skills and abilities and ignored or actively discouraged others. Not too long ago, children were punished for writing with their left hand and left-handed children were forced to use their right. I have had so many people come to my Gunnas courses who left school early because their handwriting or spelling was poor and they were told they would never get anywhere. They were made to feel ashamed of their spelling and writing. It scarred them and discouraged them. We have been denied so many voices, stories and opinions because of the way in which the education system labelled these people.
People moan about ‘kids these days’ and literacy. But kids these days are spending far more time reading and writing than children ever have before. I am very excited about our future. Kids are so innovative, compassionate and curious. The democratisation of information and access to computers, speech synthesisers and so on has made it a much more level playing field. We are hearing more diverse voices and ideas in many more varied forms.
The people who cling to the importance of handwriting, spelling, grammar, times tables and memorisation are very threatened by this new world. How can they rule the trivia nights and impress the masses with their ability to memorise, not to understand, adapt, and innovate or interpret, when everyone in the room has Google in their pocket? Perfect handwriting, a photographic memory and excellent spelling is all they have. Wow. So I see you are good at following rules and not taking risks. No, I won’t be congratulating you for that.
From about the age of sixteen, I started to move in different circles and began to come across wealthy people who absolutely fetishised creativity in the most revolting way. They could buy or inherit privilege and entitlement. But they could not acquire creativity. They attempted to do so by befriending suburban misfits like myself. ‘I’m not creative but I have befriended this creative waif from the ghetto.’ It was very ‘My best friends are gay’ – attempting to gain credibility by embracing the coolest minority. Creativity itself has cultural value. Don’t underestimate the social capital of creativity.
I got my first professional writing job when I was twenty-three, writing jokes on the television show Tonight Live with Steve Vizard. On my first day, I was writing with John Herouvim, brilliant comedian and ex-teacher, who was twenty years older than me. It was my turn to type as we worked. I said, ‘Excuse my spelling. I’m shit at spelling.’ There was a beat and then John said, very slowly and deliberately, ‘Do not be confused by the idea that people who cannot spell cannot write. It’s wrong. I never want to hear you apologise for your spelling ever again.’
I remember walking to church one day when I was maybe ten years old and talking with my mum about spelling and grammar. Being a school teacher, Mum was pretty straight up and down with that stuff, but I remember her telling me about e.e. cummings, Lewis Carol, Edward Lear and Shakespeare making up words, breaking the rules and basically having a maverick approach towards spelling and grammar. Mum explained that you had to know the rules first and then you could break them. There’s always a catch.
Mum was wrong. You do not need to know the rules before you can break them. You just need to write. Write. Write. Write. You will find your voice, your song and your story. I promise.
For me, a dyslexic who loved writing, that conversation with Mum, while we walked to church, created a tiny crack and let some golden light shine in. I remember thinking that perhaps there was a world beyond the rules and regulations, beyond the ‘done thing’ and the ‘proper procedure’.
Every time I have walked through that barbed wire, I have found it’s a mirage. I am now the tour guide of the Land of Yes You Can, the planet Who Gives A Fuck? and the Republic of Failing While Daring Greatly.
In November 2014 I got a message from my sister, Helen. She told me that a piece of mine was being used in the Year 12 English exam. I assumed she had made a mistake because no-one had told me anything about it. But then the messages started coming thick and fast, and people sent me photos. Sure enough, the foreword I had written for a book – which probably had a circulation of 3000, tops – had been used in the HSC English exam in New South Wales and Queensland.
Why am I telling you this? Because I almost failed Year 12 English. I got 51%. Would anyone predict that someone who got 51% on their Year 12 English exam would become a writer? Is that a mark hopeful young writers would aspire to? Would publishers pounce on someone who got such a mark, seeing a talented young writer in the making?
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
Get past the artificial constructs of who’s allowed to write, about what and how. It’s all bullshit.
Time spent writing is never wasted. Ever. What you write will be amazing, it will inform the next thing you are writing, or it will get that thing out of the front position in the Vending Machine of Creativity so you can get to the thing behind it.