My creative heroes are people most of you would have never heard of. I’m not inspired by brilliant work. I am inspired by ordinary people pulling their finger out, overcoming obstacles and fear and getting on with it.
Sure, I love many great writers, comics and thinkers – Stephen Fry, Judith Lucy, Christos Tsiolkas, Christopher Hitchens, Magda Szubanski, Tina Fey, David Marr, Dorothy Parker and Clive James. I love them, but they are not my heroes. I have no idea what their creative processes are or what struggles they’ve had. I can’t simply look at a finished product I consider brilliant and feel that the person who produced it is my hero. The work may have been quite simple for them. They may have had a lot of support and resources. It could be they find writing, thinking and creativity easy and constantly satisfying. They may have taken no risks. There may have been no fear or discomfort involved at all. I doubt it, but I can’t know for sure.
My heroes are people who have tried hard and kept going despite – or perhaps because of – adversity. They are not necessarily people who have published anything. My seventeen-year-old dyslexic son has almost finished the first draft of his first manuscript, which may never be published. He plugs away at it alone in his room. Is he one of my writing heroes? Perhaps, but don’t tell him I said that.
Sometimes when I am staring at a blank page, I think, ‘What would Louise Fox write? John Herouvim? Jacquelin Perske? Daniel Burt? Bill Hicks?’ They are my heroes. Some of those people you may have heard of, some you won’t have. They are my heroes because they get out of their comfort zone and stay there. They are my heroes because just when they think they have gone too far, they go further. They are my heroes because their lives and work have not always been easy. They were not born into a creative dynasty, yet they honed their craft, kept going and were motivated by truth and art. Not money, fame or celebrity.
You may already have your own heroes, or you may discover them as you write. Chances are they won’t be found in the places you expect.
I want to tell you about a few heroes. These heroes are ordinary people, unremarkable in many ways – but remarkable because they got stuff done.
Bear and Blackie had known each other for years. Bear often talked about the brilliant murals Blackie had created, cartoons he’d drawn or how gifted he was in working with wood (he built a replica life-sized Tardis with a bar in it, known affectionately as ‘The Bardis’). Bear always said, ‘I wish Blackie would get on Facebook. He’s such a good writer.’ Blackie did, and he and I became Facebook friends. I read his posts and there was undeniably something there: a clear strong voice, astute observational skills, a great sense of humour and natural storytelling ability.
At the time, Blackie was a funeral director in Frankston, and a single dad with a four-year-old son on the autism spectrum. So he was basically povo, always busy and spending much of his life parenting a child with higher needs than your average little tacker. I offered Blackie forty hours of writing mentoring – ten blocks of four hours – over twelve months. We met at a cafe halfway between our places (at Chadstone, believe it or not). He had an idea for a story – a few characters and a vague idea of a plot, with no ending or structure. Every month or so, we would meet and throw ideas around.
Between our sessions, Blackie would send me text messages that were about 1000 words long, always at ten or eleven at night: they were slabs of the story he was working on. Why did he text me these chunks of writing? Ah, because he didn’t own a computer. He would get home from work, put his son to bed, pour himself a Jack Daniels and Coke and write on his phone. It wasn’t even a very new one, from memory. An old Nokia, I think.
We kept working together and he kept sending me texts. I would paste them into a document and file it away. After about ten months, one night before we were due to meet up, I collated everything he had written chronologically and formatted it for him. I texted Blackie to ask what title he had settled on.
‘Say It Ain’t So’ he texted back.
The next day he turned up at my place. I surprised him with a computer I’d sourced for him, a few books I wanted him to read – and his manuscript: double-spaced, with page numbers and with his name and the title on the front.
‘Guess what, Blackie? I ran a word count. You’ve written a 30,000-word novella!’
Yep. Blackie – a single dad with a full-time job and no computer – had written a 30,000-word novella on his phone in less than a year. In chunks of 500 to 1000 words at a time.
If I had started out by saying to Blackie, ‘Hey, how about you write a 30,000-word novella on your phone at night, after you have put your little bloke to sleep, and get it to me in ten months time’, he would have told me to go fuck myself.
I have since gifted him a manuscript assessment and he is incorporating the suggestions.
What can you learn from Blackie’s story? Don’t tell me you don’t have the time or the space in your brain or the money or the correct office or technology. If Blackie can do it – and he is lazy and not that talented (love you, Blackie!) – so can you. Or you can find an excuse. The choice is yours.
A little postscript: I often tell Blackie’s story in my classes. One day when I was teaching in Perth, I started telling the story and one of my students, Emma, got really excited and said, ‘We know Blackie! We talk about him all the time at home.’
‘Cool,’ I said, and asked how they knew him.
‘We just know him from your Facebook posts.’
Emma went on to explain that her ten-year-old daughter, Bella, was epileptic as well as having processing and executive function challenges. Bella found some parts of life quite tricky and daunting. To equip her to deal with any scary or challenging things she might face without her parents present to steady her, they often gave her little mantras of self-talk. One of the things Bella says to herself when she is trying to push through the scary fog of daunting is ‘Blackie wrote a book on his phone’.
Oh my! I had something in my eye when I heard that. Something in both eyes. As you could imagine, I could not wait to tell Blackie. When I did, he too had something in his eye, and said, ‘Well, that’s just the best thing ever. It doesn’t get better than that. I’m going to do her a painting.’
I was going to be in Perth again in a few months, so he got cracking. I got some pictures of Bella from her mum, Emma, and found out she loved her dog, shells and the beach. Blackie made a gorgeous painting that I took over to Perth on the plane. I met up with Emma and Bella and gave Bella the painting. She was thrilled to bits. She whispered into my ear, ‘I have something for Blackie.’ It was a beautiful picture of a blackbird in a nest. ‘And Dev,’ she said, ‘Can you give Blackie a message from me?’
‘Sure.’
‘Can you tell him I am writing a book about him and me …’
Gulp, tears, heart exploding.
Blackie got Bella’s picture framed. It has pride of place in his lounge room. The painting Blackie did for Bella hangs over her bed. They are yet to meet, but they will one day.
Things are up and down for Bella. She has many appointments with medical professionals, lots of hospital visits and weekly therapy of many kinds. Emma says:
This year Bella learnt to ride a bike a 4th time, but her brain forgot how to get out of the car, brush her teeth and where her room was. It’s year 4 so its also been the year where it’s ok to laugh at her for singing a bit louder than everyone else or push her when she forgets to run in a relay. And then we get told she needs more fun and so there are plays and exhibitions and surfing but what she likes best is writing and art – and so we do that anywhere and everywhere. For me there are moments, in the car and the shower and in the life of the darkest night I’ve asked ‘please please let her feel extraordinary, let her feel loved and valued and let them all see beyond the tests …’
But sometimes, when Emma least expects it, Bella turns to her and says ‘Blackie wrote a book on his phone’. It must be working, because Bella just won her third writing award, in the children’s category of the Redgum Book Club’s National Young Writers’ Award. In accepting the prize, Bella said, ‘Writing makes my heart sing.’
Julia Watson was one of my first Gunnas. At the start of every Gunnas class, I get them to chat to their neighbour and then introduce them to the rest of the class. That morning, Julia was the last to be introduced. The woman sitting next to her said, ‘This is Julia, she’s studying at TAFE, works part-time, has four daughters under ten, the youngest has Down’s syndrome and she’s just been diagnosed with third-stage bowel cancer.’ Gulp. Julia was a vivacious, down-to-earth, enthusiastic woman who I loved immediately. Her goal for the day was to write about something other than cancer; she wrote a fabulous piece about having a mother with mental illness.
The months passed and Julia’s health went up and down, but she kept writing. Through good news and bad news, great news, and the worst news. We encouraged her to set up a blog, which she called Five Fairies and a Fella. She had columns published by Essential Baby and developed a huge following. She was sick as a dog, raising four daughters and dealing with the emotional landscape of a terminal illness, but she kept writing. Busy, in pain, exhausted, overwhelmed: nevertheless, Julia kept writing. And of course she got better and better at it. When ‘wellness guru’ Belle Gibson was uncovered as having never had cancer, as she’d claimed, Julia was asked to comment and the article she wrote as a result went viral.
Julia saw I was running a self-publishing masterclass and told me she was keen to turn her blog into a book but didn’t know if she would have the time or energy to do so. She was dying, there was no doubt about that. I offered to help and we formed a group called Project Jules. We started fast-tracking her book to get it out as soon as we could. Working outside a publishing house meant we were quick and nimble, unconstrained by bureaucracy. It was fun. We were pumped and focused. We were publishing mavericks. Then, in one of those instances of ‘How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans,’ Black Inc. offered her a publishing contract. They understood time was of the essence and were prepared to get Julia’s book out quickly.
A book! Julia was going be an author – which had always been one of her dreams. She made those dreams come true. The book was a testament to her writing and her persistence. All through the hardest times, she had kept writing. She didn’t wait for the perfect time, perfect place or perfect conditions. She wrote from her bed on her laptop in the moments between looking after the kids. Despite pain, fear, mess and interruptions, she wrote. And bit by bit she got better, bit by bit she created a blog that ended up the backbone of her book. Julia is a perfect example of being a completionist, not a perfectionist.
We were all delighted for her. She signed her publishing contract in May 2015 and I launched the book on 1 September that year.
I was so thrilled that Julia was going to have a book out. It was such an achievement. I was on the ride with her and got the vicarious thrill of finishing a large-format project. I hadn’t written a book for years. Being swept up with her project made me long for my own. Which is how I ended up writing this book. I realised that I didn’t really want to perform anymore: I wanted to write a few books and teach people everything I knew. I’ve said everything I need to. I no longer want my creative process observed. I want to write useful books. Books that help people and books that explain what I think to myself. So if you like this book, you can probably thank Julia.
Have you heard of the book The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly? It was written by Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief of French Elle magazine. Bauby suffered a massive stroke, was in a coma for twenty days and ended up with locked-in syndrome. He was totally paralysed and could only communicate by blinking his left eye. That’s how he wrote the book. By blinking his left eye. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write. Over ten months he wrote – blinked – for four hours a day.
Two days after the book was published, Bauby died of pneumonia.
Imagine that. You are so determined to express yourself and get your story out that even though the only way you could do it was by blinking your left eye you did it. I think about Bauby’s determination and triumph over adversity most days. He wrote like he really understood life has a use-by date. It’s not a never-ending supply but a ration we have no say in the length of. I hate the word ‘inspiring’ but how else can you describe this story?
I share a lot of quotes in this book and in my Gunnas Masterclasses. I want people to know the experience of writing and the emotions and obstacles it throws up are universal across gender, genre, class and era. I want you to read a quote you like and write it down as a mantra to use when you’re struggling. Or perhaps look the person up and discover a new writer or thinker.
But you don’t have to rely on famous figures. Find heroes in each other. Look around you. They’re there. Chipping away. Sitting in a pile of washing while the kids are asleep. Waking early and getting twenty minutes of writing done while they drink their coffee. Scribbling in the train on their way home from work. Typing into their phone in the waiting room. Getting 200 words done before they go to sleep.
My writing partner, Dan, has this mate he told me about. Whenever this guy has a tricky decision to make – Should he commit career suicide and tell his arsehole boss to go fuck himself? Should he text that manic pixie dream girl who got away? Should he call his father out on his misogyny? – he asks himself one simple question: ‘How would the audience like this to end?’
So I ask you, my darling frustrated writer who is reading this book because you are stuck, because you want to write, write more, write better, write differently: how would you like this to end?
How would you, as the audience, watching you, as the hero of your own story, like things to turn out? What is the climax and the conclusion to your creative journey? What’s the story? What are the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the triumphs and the failures? Where are the setbacks, the unexpected assistance, the inspiration, the pieces of the puzzle, the crooked lid for the crooked pot?
Do you want to be in the same place this time next year? In ten years? On your deathbed? If you are reading this, I am fairly certain the answer is no.
Be the example you wish you could see.
Write the book you want to read. Be another hero in this chapter.