Viewing entries tagged
identity

The "inspirational writer"

This week Rach and I attended a book launch for a dear friend of ours, John Woodhouse, whose book I had designed. It's an enormous art book, so the launch was also a one-night exhibition, with framed proofs of images from the book up on walls for purchase. A few hundred people attended - artists, collectors, models, restauranteurs, business owners, photographers, writers - the group was extraordinarily diverse.

As we mingled and flowed around the artworks, we would strike up conversations with strangers, sharing what we loved about a particular piece on the wall, or what we loved about John. Just as each artwork was born out of nothing, each of our conversations and connections were now doing the same thing. Nothing into something. I was loving the evening.

A half-hour into the event, I was being introduced to someone, and it went like this:

“Nathan is a writer - he writes inspirational words… He’s an inspirational writer. You write inspirational words too, don’t you? Beautiful. You two should talk..”

And we talked. My new friend quickly clarified that no, she’s not an “inspirational writer,” she just writes as honestly as she can, and she hasn’t even done that much lately. And I qualified myself too, explaining that I don’t even understand the term, but it didn’t sound as complimentary as I’m sure it was intended. “Inspirational” sounds like some kind of advertising angle, or self-help guru. Here, have a warm fuzzy to get you through your day.

Not that it matters, really. In writing, in art, in life, we all do things, and everyone else makes it mean something for themselves, and we have very little control over it.

Sometimes the things people conclude about us are complimentary, and we feel great about ourselves. Other times, it’s hard judgement, and we feel horrid. Either way, us humans seem to have this uncanny habit of subscribing to it.

We just go there, immediately.

“She said I was rude to her friends! What a bitch!”
“He called me fat! He’s so mean… but he’s right, I think.”
“They gave me an award! I. Am. Amazing!”
“I didn’t win the award! I'm so crap and talentless.”
“She told me I’m boring… I am so boring.”
“2000 likes! I am so popular!”
“Only 39 likes.. I am such a nobody."
"There's a comment on my feed about my face. Am I ugly?"

We take these tiny comments from others, and we blow them up, we call them truth, and we put so much head and heart space into them. We subscribe.

There is a character in episode five of BJ Novak’s wonderful new show, The Premise, who describes her Instagram commenters as truth-tellers. "They are objectively right” she declares, because they are distant and don’t know her, so can’t be subjective. And her own voice doesn’t matter, because she is too close to herself, so can’t be objective.

Obviously it’s pretty extreme to write off the opinions of anyone who actually knows us, and trust only in the opinions of strangers. But it’s equally extreme to only believe ourselves, our “inner voice” and ignore any praise or criticism from others: how would we ever grow?

So where do we land, then? If everyone is just doing their best to fill in the gaps of their understanding of each other, no-one is going to get it right. We’re all essentially playing Marco Polo in the dark, hoping someone will guide us towards our best selves.

There is a well-known phrase in storytelling, “show don’t tell,” that encourages the writer to let the character come to life through their ACTIONS, not through any words the writer might say about them. If the character is brave, for example, we don’t write “Emily was a brave woman.” Instead we place Emily in a situation that elicits a response, and when she acts bravely, the audience draws the insight of bravery for themselves. The words aren’t truth. The action is truth.

Extending the concept, if Emily were to SAY something like “I am so brave,” it would also not mean anything until she acts. If she says “I’m fun” or “I’m so boring” or “I am not rude” or even “I am inspirational,” none of the words really matter.

Once she acts, then the audience knows the truth. She has to SHOW, not TELL.

To combat all the words, the judgements, the criticisms, the praise, perhaps we could just turn down the volume, and NOT subscribe. Perhaps we can use all that energy that we would have used to reply, defend, share, amplify and put it towards DOING something. Just doing the things that resonate with who we want to be.

People can call me an “inspirational writer” and they can call me a “shallow romantic dreamer.” They can say I’m a super privileged white man, and they can say I’m too young and optimistic. They can even say I’m a bad father, while others tell me I’m dad-of-the-year. And then I can say even more things about myself, just to try and keep up with it all.

But the best thing I can do, and the only thing that can really make any impact, is this:

KNOW what I think is important in life.
DO things that support that.

For me, here’s what I think is important:

I think we are all built to witness - to interpret our world and each other. We are built to inspire, encourage, excite and inform each other.

So when somebody makes what I say or do MEAN something for them, even if it’s different to what I intended, I will try and be interested, instead of defensive. They've seen something I haven't, and it could be useful for me to hear it, without taking out a whole subscription to the idea.

Because I’m still learning about myself, it’s all just words anyway, and tomorrow I’ll be getting right back into the truth-doing.

Haben Girma

This week, Rach was speaking at a two-day online conference run by the incredible Mary Freer, called Compassion Revolution. Seth Godin was speaking too, but the really intriguing human that was sharing the stage with Rach was a woman named Haben Girma.

Haben is a deafblind woman of colour, the first deafblind person in history to graduate from Harvard Law School. She chats with presidents, advocates for greater human and disability rights, and is beautiful and funny and gracious. She delivered a keynote over zoom that got us all thinking deeply about our biases and identities and potential.

Incidentally, for those who, like Haben, are reading this post (yep, it’s possible) I am a tallish white male in my forties, currently folded into the back corner of a coffeeshop with a notebook and a laptop. I’m wearing a dark blue t-shirt that is splashed with white flowers that have pink edges. There are so many humans around me, but I can’t hear them, because I have headphones on, listening to “Games” by Bakermat. The music is joyful and melancholic, and feels like someone is shaking both your hands, but in time to your heartbeat, so that your whole body bounces in rhythm to your pulse.

Anyway, the morning after the conference, Rach and I are sitting in bed drinking coffee and she says simply, “my Instagram is ableist.”

I ask her what that even means, and she explains that without choosing to, without even thinking about it, she has built a collection of imagery and art that only those with sight can enjoy. There are videos whose auto-captions would barely make sense to someone without hearing who rely completely on captions.

“That’s hardly ableist, though.” I say, trying to defend her honour or something, “It’s not like you’re deliberately marginalising anyone.”

She stares into her cup, the steam backlit by the early sunlight. “But that’s the thing. It’s not deliberate, but it is ignorant. I’m being lazy, Nath, because I’m comfortable doing things the way I’ve always done them.”

“So it’s ignorant ableism, then?”

“Yeah, I think it is. By not even thinking about inclusion, we are by default EX-cluding people."

This is how we talk sometimes. Big concepts (at least big to me), just casually introduced at 5am before the caffeine has even kicked in. I try to keep up. “How can your Instagram be more inclusive then?”

And she comes alive. Descriptions for each of her artworks, captions that are accurate, commentary on the visuals of our white papers, multi-sensory experiences. And then I get excited too, and together we come up with all these ideas around experiential art exhibitions, better websites and identity descriptors, and other stuff that just feels powerful to talk about.

We talk about community, how it has always shined the brightest through service. Helping, lifting, sharing, encouraging, contributing, they’re all elemental traits that build humanity. Though all of us prefer comfort, as soon as we react to someone else’s need, we feel a sense of forward motion for humanity. Like we actually contributed to a meaningful story.

I know right now this is talk not action, but the talking helps remove the ignorance. It shines a torchlight in a corner that I forget to look at. Ignorant ableism is absolutely a thing I do. Along with ignorant racism, climatism, sexism, and every other big conversation. I just don’t know what I don’t know, and that’s a whole lot.

And, I don’t know what to do, all the time. What the right things are, the best way to act, etc. But I do know that I’m built for this: for learning, growing, serving, assisting. We’re all built for it. My challenge is to stay aware, and to not be fearful of the discomfort as I learn and grow. Because finding ways to lift each other up and value everyone equally is soul-edifying, it is life-giving, and it is absolutely human.

Learn more about Haben, and buy her memoir, at www.habengirma.com

More about Compassion Revolution: www.compassionrevolution.care

One year

A year ago, Rach and I got married. In a beautiful mess of laughter and tears and kisses, we put rings on fingers, made vows and commitments, and danced through the night. It was a powerful day, a chapter shift, a line-in-the-sand for us. A rebirth.

Today we are in a little cabin on Prevelly beach, a few hours south of Perth. This campsite is special to us now - we tented here for our honeymoon, and are back for our anniversary. It's 5:30 in the morning, and Rach is still asleep. The walls of the cabin are kind of magical - they seem solid, but they let in every bit of the chill from outside, so I'm already awake. Rach of course is completely content in a 5-degree climate, but I can't feel my toes.

There is a pigeon somewhere outside, who has been releasing a slow and rhythmic chant solidly for the last hour, like a priestly mantra, covering the campsite in a resonant blessing: "whooot... whooot... whooot..." There are finches at the window, back for more breadcrumbs, and I can just hear the distant crash of the tide on rocks.

If I'm honest, it's not just my frozen toes that are keeping me awake. I'm thinking too much. And there is some fear, too. It's been a year since we married, five years all up since we even met. We stripped away all our security and careers and started a whole new life together, and it's been mind-bogglingly amazing. And impossibly hard. We started with love, a love that immediately sunk deep into our cores, and has held us together through all the things.

But in these early hours, I sometimes wonder if love is enough. This is a world of hustle and progress, where we have to make real-life grown-up decisions every day. We have to work and provide for our family, and do all the responsible life things. Am I being naive to make "love" my life's priority?

The pigeon continues to whoot, and I carefully roll myself out of bed. My toes are mutinous, avoiding the cold floorboards so that I am waddling on my heels and the sides of my feet. I penguin my way across to my shoes and pull them on, barely keeping my balance, then step out into the morning.

It's cold outside, but no colder than inside, thanks to our magical cabin walls. On this day a year ago it was not as cold, but I remember Rach and I watching the sky all day, watching the clouds gather closer and darker over our outdoor ceremony space. We would look up to the sky, and then look at each other, and then one of us would remind the other "hey, I love you," and we would agree that no, the clouds won't break our day, and that yes, we would totally do our first dance in the rain.

It did rain in the end, but later on when everyone was inside. And we did dance in the rain, just a bit, before running for cover.

The beach is only a couple of minutes walk from the cabin, not enough to actually warm up, so I find myself too soon stationary again, standing at the shoreline with arms wrapped around arms like an octopus in a straight jacket, my eyes on the horizon. I can't hear the pigeon's blessing anymore, just the ocean's soft applause, and the fizz of the tide soaking into the sand at my feet.

I stare into the horizon, a blinding white that splits the blues of ocean and sky, and send my questions across the waters:

"Have I made the right choices for my wife and kids?"
"Am I being responsible enough?"
"Am I putting too much faith in love?"
"Am I a good husband?"

In the bright silence, I wonder if there even are answers for such questions. I close my eyes and slow my breathing and try and listen anyway.

I hear the fizz of the tide. A seagull cawing overhead. The slap and crash of waves on rocks.

I hear Rach, a year ago today, reading her vows to me. She declares her security is in our love. She says she is so proud of the way we forge our lives together. She tells me I am her home, and it is a joy to build it together. She says we are a shiny mess of potential, and that we live our lives in uncertainty, and that is what allows such an exaltation of our spirits.

I hear the ocean's applause.

--

Rach finds me a little later on the front porch of our cabin. The sunlight is stronger now, but I am still wrapped in a blanket. Her toes seem completely content out here in the chill. She nuzzles her face into my neck, and then peers over to the notebook on my lap. I've copied out a page from Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet", and she smiles in recognition as she reads:

You have been told also that life is darkness...
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself,
and to one another, and to God.

Subplots

When I think of my life, I mostly see stories. The past, with its memories and experiences. The future, all hopes and dreams. And the present, where I try and direct my story so that I get things I want in life. Basically.

This isn’t a new revelation or anything, and we all do it. It’s fundamentally human to arrange our lives into stories, and it’s how we end up connecting with other humans: we share our experiences and we listen to others’ share theirs. I'll ask you about love, and you might start with something intellectual, but you’ll end up referencing a personal experience.

If I ask about shame, it would be the same thing. Or laughter, or God, or book reading, trees, swimming pools, fresh bread, sleep, Sonic the Hedgehog.. No matter what the subject is, you and I will both head to the library in our heads and find the book that connects to the topic, and we’ll share it.

I have friends who are amazing at accessing the right book at the right moment. For any subject or topic, they can just grab the relevant book off their mental shelf and share their story. They are some of the most entertaining humans I know.

I tend to meander through my library. I’m not quick to grab the obvious book, because for me there isn’t one. There are ten. You say “swimming pool” and I reach for the books about "gasping for air," “summer nights,” “whirlpools with neighbours,” "skinny dipping in Los Angeles" and "favourite kitchen designs."

And the older we get, the more stories gather in our mental bookshelves. Stories and opinions and insights and memories. We have galaxies in us.

But here's where it falls apart. As magical as our brains are at cataloguing all this data, it's still a bloody big bookshelf. And, if we're honest with ourselves, our cataloguing system is a complete mess. With every new experience, we toss another book onto the pile. It's easy to start looking at our lives as an eclectic mix of disconnected experiences.

For my story coaching clients, our greatest challenge is almost always this one: to craft meaningful plot lines out of all the random experiences and ideas of life. Without curating and arranging the stories, the whole thing becomes noise.

I have a dear friend who recently shared with me how much of her life feels like noise. She said she has been working on so many subplots in her life that she can't even find a central plot anymore. She had invested her life into the side-hustle of her children, for example, and suddenly realised she had lost her self in the process.

Kids are a big one, but it’s not only the “children” subplot that can take us over. We give so much time to our work, our hobbies, our partner, our responsibilities, our health, our studies, that it’s no surprise we lose our hold on a “central plot” for our lives. In fact, for many of us, we would struggle to even be able to define a Central Plot. We may have had aspirations at one time in our lives, but now we're just living in subplots, filling the gaps with smaller stories.

I'm not saying that living a life of subplots is bad. In storytelling, subplots exist to add dimension to our narrative, and to our identity. They keep our life stories interesting, they allow us to learn more about stuff and things. Subplots are awesome.

Except, when we lose control of them. Except when we forget they are SUB plots and start thinking they are our EVERYTHING plot.

What I mean is this: in a great story, every subplot will serve the overarching Central Plot. Ideally, a subplot would push us along the path of our Central Plot, with great pieces of conflict and challenges and choices to make. A really good subplot can even launch us into our Central Plot, and get our greatest life stories happening.

But, there must be a relationship between the plots to hold the story together. If the audience cannot find a unity between the subplots and the Central Plot, then it disengages, and the plots split into confusion. I've felt this way so often over the years. The confusion of disconnected plot lines.

I think we are called to BE someone. Not just DO a whole lot of disconnected subplots, but to BE someone. We are each valuable and powerful souls, journeying through this life growing into ourselves, daily becoming. Who we are, as individuals, matters to the world. Who we want to become, matters.

My own Central Plot is (of course) a work in progress, but I know that I am heading towards a greater capacity to love, and to receive love. To write, and create in a way that pulls humanity towards freedom and hope. To support, listen and empower others. To dive deep into story philosophy and then share the bits that matter when the time is right. To be a joyful wide-eyed soul in the world. All of that.

And there are subplots that push me along that path, that add meaning to my days. But there are also subplots that distract me, that split my story into confusion. Each time I discover one, I have to seek help, try to rewrite or remove it.

I know this is a strange post. You're probably trying to decide if it goes on the "self help" shelf or in the "confusing musings" corner. Wherever it lands in your library, I hope it can be helpful when the confusion arises, as a reminder that the things that matter to you, actually do matter.

Tsunamis and shakti mats

A few years ago, Rach ordered a shakti mat online. She described it as a modern-day bed of nails, and was very excited about it’s arrival. I wasn’t so sure. Not because the science isn’t solid, because it is - distributed weight means less downward force means less pain - but because, at a very basic, carnal level, I don’t ever want to step, sit, or lie down on sharp pointy things. It’s just not comfortable for me to even think about.

As a kid, I stepped on a tack once. It was right under the arch of my bare foot, so it didn’t go all the way in before the pain registered, but it was enough to elicit a substantial squeal, a bucketload of tears, and a vow to never go barefoot ever again for the rest of my life. So I felt like my wariness of sharp things was at least a bit justifiable.

I remember when it arrived - a thousand tiny spikes hand stitched into what looked like a rolled-up doormat - and Rach was so excited. She danced downstairs, rolled out the mat, and promptly lay barebacked on the spikes. Her eyes went wide, and a she emitted a little gasp, but she didn’t get up. I started thinking about where the ambulance would park to most effectively collect her.

But ten minutes later, she was still on the mat, describing sensations of warmth, healing, physical restoration. I asked her if she knew where she was, and how many fingers I was holding up, but she assured me she wasn't delirious. This is just what happens with a shakti mat, she said.

Short story long, I tried it too, and yep, these mats are amazing. Because the pressure is distributed across all the tiny spikes, there’s enough pain to increase blood flow to the area, but not enough to actually break the skin and make a mess. It’s like Rach said - there’s a healing going on - something powerful and regenerative.

I think storytellers understand the power of a shakti mat. Not to heal their bodies while they write or anything like that, but in the way they distribute conflict.

In a really well-written story, the conflict is never singular. Storytellers know that if their story has only one level of conflict, then, like stepping barefoot on a single tack, it elicits too much pain for the protagonist to think about anything else. The story becomes one-dimensional: how do I find immediate relief from this pain? It's hard to hold the attention of the audience if that's all that's going on. But when the conflict is distributed across multiple levels, the story becomes richer, the protagonist draws deeper insights, and the audience is held for longer.

Take a story about a great tsunami that floods New York City, for example. Our singular conflict resides in the physical environment, and if that is the only conflict level the writer stays on, we’ll end up with a cliche action adventure full of disaster after disaster, and a cast of thousands either making it, or not making it, and an audience who may even start rooting for the wave instead of the people.

It's entertainment, but it's not meaningful. It kills the time, but there aren't really any lasting insights.

Distributing the conflict, however, would allow the writer to explore relationships, emotions, mental weakness, political failings, societal ironies, etc. This is how we connect, after all: we don't draw insights from the tsunami itself, it is how others respond to the tsunami that matters to us.

How did she manage to smile after THAT happened?
What did they do to keep their relationship so strong while THAT was going on?
Where did she find her strength in THAT moment? What made him do THAT? Why would she say THAT? How would I have dealt with that situation?

So, even in an epic tsunami movie, the writer could tell a simpler tale, perhaps with a cast of just three, and by exploring multiple levels of conflict, actually keep the audience engaged the whole way through, and come away from the story with their own insights into some of those topics.

And that's really the goal of storytelling: to hold the audience's attention, and to move the audience's hearts and minds.

But this post isn't about disaster films, or even about writing. It's about living.

I think at the core of it all, we just don’t give conflict the respect it deserves. When any discomfort comes our way, we immediately try and resolve it, remove it, avoid it. We hate discomfort. We get angry at the injustice, we feel terrified of the pain, we feel embarrassed, ashamed, abused, hurt, astonished, enraged, weak, destroyed. We feel bullied, controlled, manipulated, lost, desperate. All the things. So we put all our efforts into this one question:

"How do I find immediate relief from this pain?"

Which is an absolutely legitimate response to discomfort. In story and in life, a character will always seek to return to comfort when presented with conflict. It’s how we are wired, it’s automatic, genetic, natural.

The great tension of life and story, though, is that conflict is the vehicle that moves a character forward in their story. It’s the only way to make a character move.

Without discomfort, or conflict, a book's lead character would just stay on the couch binge-watching Netflix for twelve chapters and then the book will end, and and it won’t matter how it ends, because nobody is still reading it anyway. They’re using it to hold open a back door, or they’re scrunching the pages to get their fire started in winter.

Writers know this truth: We need conflict in our stories, in order to grow, change or move.

Which brings me back to the shakti mat, and the single tack.

If anyone steps on a single tack, and it jams itself full length into their heel, there is no space for insight, growth, or wise reflection on the discomfort. You just get that sucker out of there. The pain is intense, and the demand for relief is urgent. Nobody should "embrace" that sort of conflict.

But the pain from many tiny tacks, with all their points distributed, is not the same. The pain exists, but it is not as intense, it doesn't have the same immediacy. It allows for nuance, and healing, and learning, and change.

A writer’s challenge is to distribute the conflict. And our challenge, in living our real life stories, is to help spread that conflict out. To consider all the small pain points in our lives as pieces of our identity, artefacts of meaning. Before they get too big and sharp and urgent, we have the opportunity to work with the pain, to learn about ourselves, to choose our responses.

The pain points are there anyway, so we may as well acknowledge them all, roll out the mat of tiny spikes, and see what can be restored and healed.

On uniqueness and identity

I discovered this in a notebook from a few years ago, and after all the conversations Rach and I have had this week I think it must relevant somehow… If you’re not feeling very unique this week, then read on..

--

Yesterday evening I found my ten-year-old, Jeremy, flopped on his bed, tears rolling down his face, eyebrows all furrowed and eyes kind of furious.

Two minutes before that, he was happily working through his Harry Potter Lego castle, generally joyful and chatty.

This huge crash in emotions was triggered by one little experience: Shasta, his younger brother, asked him for help with a new drawing app on his iPad. It was an app that Jeremy himself found just a few days earlier. He loves to draw, and wanted to create some new styles and comics, so researched the right tools, and eventually found this one.

Jeremy was so excited about this new tool, and had been studiously learning how to draw things. He had just started his first comic panel.

And then, disaster hit.

His brother got excited and inspired by what he was doing, and asked if he, too, could have the app. I saw no problem in it, and said yes, and all of a sudden Jeremy’s energy dropped a little.

Twenty minutes later, Shasta is asking for help, holding up a screen already filled with drawings and colour and comics that look as good, if not better, that Jeremy’s own work.

I can imagine what happened next in Jem’s mind, because we still do this as adults:

First, a sharp feeling of injustice, that someone just stole the “thing” that makes us, us. Then, jealousy - this other human is producing really good work. And they seem to be doing it with more ease than we ever did. And lastly, resignation - that compounding sense of “what’s the point, now?”

And, what is the point? Someone else can do what I’m trying to do, and it seems better, and they make it look easier. So, why bother anymore?

It’s pretty disappointing. All of a sudden, the desire to create dries up, the feeling of uniqueness and individuality crumbles to dust, and we are left with frustration, jealousy and often anger at that other “better” person.

So, I'm sitting on the edge of the bed, watching this little face leak angry tears down hot cheeks, and I ask “is this because of Shasta and that app?”

Jeremy’s gaze is locked on a spot on the wall, but fresh tears appear on his lashes. He nods, and says, “Shasta didn’t even care about drawing until I got the app. He just did it because I’m doing it!”

“Does it matter?” I reply. “That he has the same app as you? You guys produce very different work, so no one would compare and say one is better than the other?”

“But it was MY thing. And now he’s doing it too!”

And there it was: “It’s my thing.”

—

Comparison breaks us, and I hate it. I’m sure it wasn’t meant to, but over thousands of years of us humans relating to each other, we have managed to turn comparison into something dark. Now when we see a difference in another, instead of applauding the diversity, we make a judgement of better and worse.

And ownership diminishes us. It tells us that we are what we own. It makes us believe that our uniqueness comes from the tools or titles or toys we hold, instead of the vast galaxy of resource that exists in our physical, emotional and spiritual being.

Who you are is found in the totality of your being. Everywhere you’ve been, everything you love. Everything you believe. All that you allow to waterfall through your heart and onwards into others. As far as unique and beautiful humans go, you’re freaking untouchable.

And you know what the great irony is? I KNOW this about Jeremy, but he’s going to spend the next decade slowly believing it for himself. So every time he turns to me with defeat in his eyes, I’ll tell him again, “you are beautiful and unique, little one. Do your thing, stay open, relax, it’s ok. Keep the channel open."

__

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

- Martha Graham

On the road: Gnaraloo Station

Last week I joined a couple of friends for a drive up the coast to Gnaraloo Station. From Perth, Gnaraloo is a thousand kilometres away.

I had a seat in the back, pressed up against sleeping bags, wetsuits, and something that smelled like banana bread. For the two hours before the sun rose, I watched suburban porchlights streak past, all tungsten yellow, then the city lights, giant bug-zappers of brilliant white, then the northern fringe cities with their pale blues and intermittent fuel-station-golds. And then, nothing. Just a comfortable darkness, visited occasionally by a passing car or a stray streetlight.

Nick drove the entire way. For twelve hours he chatted and laughed and shared his stories and listened to ours. Ian is almost twenty years older than me, and engages with others as if we know the secrets of the ages, and just need the time to get it out in words.

My focus drifted from conversations within the car to conversations with the horizon. For hours it was dirt-red, then a splash of canola yellow, forest green, granite and limestone, then back to dirt. It was quite beautiful, an entire palette comfortable with her loneliness.

Gnaraloo is in the middle of nothing. It really is. It's a sheep station, but I barely saw any sheep. Wild goats, though, they were everywhere. They looked down on us with their proud beards and funny tails, like they owned the place, like they were running the show. A people-farm, run by the goats. The locals of Gnaraloo don't dissuade this idea at all: they are wild and earthy and distant, their language is the land and the ocean. People come here for only three things: to surf, to fish and to feel free.

A few mornings in, I asked Ian why he's here. Why it matters to drive all this way, peel yourself into a wetsuit, and take your board out into the hyperthermic waters to ride a few waves. He had just returned from the ocean, and was crunching through an apple, watching Nick finish up his last wave. I got out and leaned on the car with him, and squinted into the glare. Me with my notebook, Ian with his apple.

"Why do you do this?" I asked him.
"Because it's who I am," he replied, then paused, "but only as long as I'm actually doing it."
He talks like this a lot.
"You don't feel like a surfer unless you're surfing?" I ventured.
"No, I still feel like a surfer, for sure. But that identity requires some action, you know? The longer I don't surf, the more I become a person who used to surf, not a person who actually surfs."
I looked at him and blinked twice, and he took another bite of apple.
"It's about identity," he continued, "by doing this stuff, I'm revisiting my identity, empowering it somehow."
"Empowering it?
"Yeah, I'm empowering myself, my belief in myself. It's one thing to become who you want to be in life, but a whole other challenge to stay there. Over time we can start to question ourselves and our abilities, and we can start to doubt ourselves."
"And our identities can lose their way."
"Exactly. Our identities get blurry. And the only way I know to return to clarity is to act. To do something today that reminds me of who I am."
"And who are you today?"
He laughed. "I am a person who surfs!"

Nick appeared on the path just then, and we headed back to the homestead for breakfast.

-

In storytelling, there is always a tension between a character's aspiration and their reality. There is a version of themselves they WANT to be, or that they THINK they are, and then, there is who they REALLY are. It's a gold mine for writers, exploring those gaps, revealing to the protagonist their reality and pushing them off the cliffs that will grow and transform them.

A character can be amazing, but think they are nothing special. Or they can have some serious flaws, but think they are just perfect. In the end, what they, or others, say about themselves doesn't matter half as much as what they do. Like Ian observed: identity needs action.

After that conversation with Ian, I had to ask myself the same question: "Why am I here? Why did I travel a thousand kilometres to a surfing station when I don't surf or fish?" It was an identity question.

While Ian and Nick were revisiting and strengthening their identities as "people who surf", I found myself revisiting childhood memories. Hours of wandering in white-bright sand dunes, playing with shells, drawing in red dirt, watching the shadows from stones stretch out across my bare toes. Being at peace with the nothingness of those places.

By joining Nick and Ian for the trip, I became what I always thought I was, but perhaps hadn't acted on for a while:

A person who seeks wonder and beauty over comfort or progress.

It just took a few thousands kilometres to remind me it was true.

Nook

I recently attended a writer's club in the city. An eclectic group of authors, screenwriters and creatives spend ten or twenty minutes at a time writing things based on a prompt. The focus this week was on past memories, childhood moments, that sort of thing. The idea is that the prompt triggers certain words, that draw out certain memories, that remind us of forgotten experiences, that we can use to discover more about ourselves. It's a kind of narrative therapy, as well as a creative writing exercise.

For me, this exercise was a reminder of how I synthesise my thoughts and ideas. It's embarrassing to admit, but I honestly feel like my head is perpetually empty. A clean slate, or a holding space. Until I speak a word, or write a sentence, my mind is entirely blank. When I form the words, my brain then catches up - it's quite backwards to how I imagine most humans think.

I've gotten used to it over time, but it's still scary: To do or be anything in life, I have to somehow trust that my emptiness is fullness, and then I have to speak myself into being.

Anyway, below is a piece I wrote in the writer's club. You might see a progression from "empty headspace" to "childhood memory" to "what really matters to me."

(The prompt was "cosy nook" incidentally, and we had twenty minutes.)

----

I like freedom. I do. Wide open spaces, and open skies, and all of that. But they are not my favourite places. What I love more than anything are smaller spaces. Snuggle spaces. Cosy nooks. When I’m in the wide open, my mind reaches for the ceiling, it stretches to the edges of sight. I take in as much as I can reach, and it’s hard to process it all. Writing in a field is not easy for me.

No, what I love are loft spaces. One desk and a rainy window. A rug, a heater, a chair and some whisky. Constriction of the physical space, so that my mind can relax, strip down to it’s togs, and dive into the deep well of internal space.

When I was a kid, we moved houses a lot. I didn’t think it was anything unusual, but eventually I learned that no, most families had more than one Christmas in the same house. Most kids had treasures, and stuff from years ago, whereas we always arrived at a new house a box or two lighter. It was the moving company that lost the box, Dad would say.

But here’s the thing. As far as childhood memories go, my most fondest ones involve those cardboard boxes. When we were getting close to moving day, we would have rooms piles high with boxes, pushed up against the walls and the windows, three or four high. I would get lost in the beige cities of the spare bedroom, spend hours snuggled in a corner, the towering boxes on my left, and the window to the garden on my right.

I don’t ever remember the garden though. I never saw outside the glass. My world was two feet wide and as deep as my 10-year-old body, and it was wonderful. I had books to read, a cat to pat, and nothingness to stare at. It was the late afternoon light that really got me. Everything just glowed, and I would focus my attention on a space three inches in from the window, on the fine cloud of haze, dust and cat hair that spun in lazy golden circles. It was eternal time in that space.

No, writing in a field is not easy for me. I would need to build a barn.

The aspirational identity of your book

One of the games we play in the Story Coaching framework is that of aspirational identities.

It's not a new concept, asking ourselves who we aspire to become in life, or considering who our customers want to be and how we can sell them something that helps them get there. It's advertising 101.

For now I'll leave the aspiration of self to the gurus like Tony Robbins, and the aspirations of customers to Don Draper and his Mad Men advertising team. What I'm interested in is the aspirational identity of your book. Who does your book want to be when it grows up? Or if you are a speaker, what does your keynote or your talk aspire to become? We are spending time with the entity that will deliver your idea.

Exercises like this are important for two reasons. First, it helps to actually paint a picture of the greatest version of your work. When I was a kid, I heard a story about how Scotty Pippin, epic US basketball legend, would start each practice session by standing at the 3-point line and taking one hundred shots, sinking every one of them. And he did it without a basketball. It was his mental warm-up - he was setting his aspirational identity as someone who could score three-pointers like that. He was creating his reality.

Before I knew anything about the neuroscience of visualisation and all that, as a 14 year old kid with a basketball, I would do the same kind of exercises, and it would help my game. In the car on the way to the courts, I would close my eyes and play Love You Right by Euphoria on my Sony Walkman (80's kid), and visualise all the moves I would do in the game. I was never 100% successful, but I definitely did better than if I had just spent the time staring out the window.

The second reason this aspiration identity exercise is important has to do with narcissism.

We all have it, and we all naturally attach “what I do” to “who I am.” It’s not entirely false to do this, but it isn’t the healthiest thing to lay on your fledgling book or idea. It would be like inviting a new friend out to dinner to meet your people, and then spending the entire night telling everyone how you and her met, instead of letting her speak for herself.

When we have an idea to share, or a book to write, there is a great danger that it stays in the shadow of our own insecurities, our pride, our filters, and whatever else is wrapped up in who we are. We end up writing about ourselves. We share our stories, our experience, our research, without every giving the idea space to speak and grow for itself. We take our little book out to meet everyone, and spend the night talking about ourselves.

So, spending some time asking your book what it aspires to be effectively give it its own voice. Just for a second, we separate ourselves from our ideas, and allow the idea to become its own person.

I recently played this game for myself, and thought it may be helpful to share one of my answers. The questions start at the surface, what does my book look and feel like? Then they drop to emotion-level, how does a reader feel when reading it? And then we ask the deeper philosophical questions, like why does it all matter?

Below is my response to one of those philosophical-level questions, “What is a book? What should a book be?"

—

A book should be looked forward to. Enjoyed, relished, easy to comprehend, with a lot of return power. It should be so great, you want to share it, you want to buy copies for your friends.

A book should move you. It should make you feel things, because it reminds you of some piece of yourself you’d forgotten all about until you opened it.

A book should point to something, just, not its author. It should point to the reader, to the good, or hope, or joy, an opinion, an aspiration.

A book should raise questions, and invite new conversations. It should encourage more discussion, not be the final veto on a topic.

You should feel proud to hold a book, like its very existence in your hand walks you taller, and laces your language with fresh nuance and intrigue.

A book should be a well that dips deep into your soul, drawing ancient waters of your own spirit for you to drink, perhaps with company.

A book should light you up.

—

After answering this question about what I think a book should be, I realised that the book had spoken for itself. It has raised its voice and shared its aspirational identity, this is what I want to be in the world.

If I am wise, I will hold on to these words, and consider them a true aspiration of the book I am yet to write. My book has spoken, and I should listen, and not be afraid of its lofty aspirations.

Because (of course) the aspirations we most fear call us forward to our best work.