relationships

To add emotion to your writing

One needs to be able to express emotion through their writing, not just explain what something looks like.

I have tried, without too much success, to explain this to writing partners over the years because I believe, in order to be successful as a fictional writer, one must be able to connect with their own emotions. If you can’t, then what, exactly, is the point of writing a fictional piece?

For many, this is too much. They may get lost in their own words, or their own thoughts, their own beliefs, or their own lack of foresight. One might get so lost in their writing they don’t have time for the people around them. When they still do not learn anything about other people’s emotions, then the fault lies with them, not the people around them.

This doesn’t need to be simply about writing. It’s a truth in all societies. If you aren’t listening, you aren’t learning. If you haven’t got the guts to let yourself be mentally attacked, or be able to mentally defend yourself, then how are you going to learn to be able to express your own emotions?

Some people seem to think when one does not display emotion on their faces, they are not feeling anything. This is not true. For the most part, when someone isn’t displaying an emotion someone else can read, it’s because the person who is expecting this “display” has no understanding of what, or who, the person they are interacting with is.

So, they try to put their own emotions onto someone else. Do me a favour, don’t do that. If you don’t understand that person or who they are, even after years (or months) of them telling you exactly who they are, then walk away. You haven’t learnt anything.

Of course, if the person you are interacting with does not tell you anything about themselves, or simply repeats the same few words over and over again, with no substance to it, then they do not want you to know them, or anything about them. One begins to question, and very quickly I might add, whether anything that person has said is true. When things don’t add up, the questions may become more and more insistent.

That’s one scenario, anyway. There are several other things you can walk away with from this interaction. This person does not wish to know anyone else. This person does not, or cannot, interact freely. This person does not understand social interactions at all. This person has underdeveloped emotions and thinks everything they read or see is either completely untrue, or completely true. This person has been raised as a single entity without having to care for, nor understand, other people.

It still ends up being the same thing, though. If one is unwilling to even write about one’s emotions, then the interaction with others is unsatisfactory to those others. So, choose your words carefully when you write. Understand the context of a situation when you write. Don’t jumble up words with no meaning, don’t go into extremely long definitions of the shape of a clock, or the shape of a keyboard, or the colour of a cup. Don’t tell me in long, flowing descriptive sentences of what the cup feels like either. Show me why it’s picked up in the first place. Show me the exact moment the person picking up that cup is feeling an emotion. Give me visual cues in your words of where that person is at emotionally, mentally, or physically.

Here is one perfect example; it’s sitting on my desk, staring at me, the bright yellow paper curled up on one corner. The words are scraped onto the page with a very clear hand and the letters of the name have been corrected once or twice to make it obvious whose name it is.

The name itself is not important because it doesn’t pertain to this exercise, but the rest of the words exert such a pain in me for the feelings of the person who wrote it I find it difficult to stop myself from bursting into tears. The reason being is because I know that person so well, I feel a small piece of my heart break off at those three simple words.

“Cheapskate has cancelled.”

Now it’s your turn.

Last Year…

I noticed something very disturbing on someone else’s Instagram. It was a comment I wasn’t meant to see, but I did, and it was regarding me. This is where you guys get to see how messed up some people are.

My husband and grown up young men, all over twenty three, had liked something of mine. It was not a bad thing at all, it was a hook for a story I was going to tell, but what I saw in response to all that, was someone saying, ‘What’s she done there. Who are they? Her boyfriends or something?’

it wasn’t quite those words, but it was pretty damn close.

Now why would someone do that, or say that? Because they do not understand what families are. They do not understand people at all. They have had absolutely no experience in being in a family group. They are physically and mentally unable to distinguish between family members and “Boyfriends”.

I might have reacted to that, because that sort of behaviour is something that needs to be reined in. Drastically. I would say every reaction I had to these people after that was completely justified, because they were not nice people at all.

When some evil little cow who is so caught up in being in the limelight, and being on camera, and being all these wonderful things, turns around and says something like that, you have to see there is some kind of breakdown in communications. There is something wrong with them. They have no idea about the outside world, they have no idea about what real people are like, and they are so disconnected from reality, everything is a “game” to them.

I could see the problem there. These people had no social skills. They didn’t understand how to communicate properly. They had no idea about “real life” people. And, they had ruined someone else’s perfectly good reputation simply for being pathetic, jealous, nasty little people.

If this sounds familiar to anyone else I know, or anyone I have spoken with in the last twelve months, you need to let me know here, because this is the kind of stuff we are trying to eradicate if we can’t reform it. This is why I asked, requested, but never pleaded, for some kind of game, scavenger hunt etc, as it had been done in the past, to show these people what it was like if they actually got themselves outside and had some fun.

Being locked inside has done a lot of terrible things to young people’s minds, and being constantly on the internet with misleading information has created so many societal problems, including a huge rise in mental health issues, that something needs doing. Ask any pharmacy what they sell the most of in the last fifteen to twenty years and they will tell you the rise in people taking antidepressants is so steep, that sometimes they’ll run out of a certain product and have to recommend another.

So, maybe sometimes, those people who live in cities should get out of them and see the real world, and maybe sometimes there should be a ban on social media on people’s devices for a day, and maybe sometimes, people just need to disconnect from the internet altogether, just to give their mental health a break — because if they don’t, they will be more inclined to be getting angrier with misinformation, sadder with the handling of that misinformation, and more likely to rely on electronic products than using their own common sense.

It’s a logical conclusion, don’t you think?

“Independence”

For me, is a very difficult thing to let go of. I don’t actually feel like saying goodbye to it.

I’ve been independent of people for most of my life, in a monetary sense, so when I find myself in a position where I need to be dependent on other people making money, it annoys me. It not only annoys me, it makes me very angry sometimes as well.

Especially when they don’t have much of a sense of humour.

This applies to more than one person, so try not to make assumptions when reading this. I know my sense of humour has dropped considerably over the last however many months, and it has dropped even more considerably over the last however many years.

I used to be pretty good at making “light” out of a situation, but when it feels like anyone who has an ounce of power is against you, it begins to take its toll.

I’ll tell you something too. They don’t give a shit.

You wanna know who makes things work properly around here? Me. But, nowdays, I also have to listen to a lot more than one person’s woes, and one person’s problems, and one person’s dreams, because everyone else’s dreams have come to me as well. It’s not pleasant.

My instincts may not be finely honed in some senses, but in others I am very aware. Every little thing that goes wrong anywhere nearby, and sometimes not even close at all, I am aware. And, just to prove it, along it comes on the TV later that day. In itself, that wouldn’t be so much of an issue, but knowing someone out there is doing that to prove a point to me, just makes me angrier.

What if, for example, I just wanted to go for a walk, or do something for myself, or see something for myself instead of having it sent to me over the airwaves because someone else is bored?

What if, as another example, I wanted to earn money for something I’m not too bad at, but can’t, because everyone else like me is in exactly the same position I am and can’t afford to buy it?

What if, as another example, people are using my experiences as learning tools, and I am not getting paid anything to teach those experiences. I used to get paid for that sort of thing… Now, it’s expected to be sent along to those who are still working, still earning a wage, still getting all the things they need and want, and I get sweet fuck all.

Hmm.

Doesn’t make much sense does it?

I’d kind of like my independence back.

Experiences, Expectations, and Truths.

Not everywhere is the same. Not everyone is the same. One person’s self-improvement is not necessarily someone else’s.

To walk into a land not your own and see it as an adult with a fixed mind, rather than walking through it is a child, a teenager and someone from a completely different area who wishes to learn the local ways, are two very different things. To grow up with an understanding of the land itself, by walking with her, smelling her, growing with her, learning from her, and living with her, is very different from someone coming into it with blinkers on and not understanding, from their own guilt of being “privileged”, what it’s all about.

When we say, ‘Speak for me, for I cannot speak for myself,’ it comes from a place where people have adapted and changed, yet have a few people around them with much louder voices who say, ‘I have changed, yes, but I also take advantage of a system who sees me as someone who needs help, when I actually don’t.’ When a person says, speak for me, please, they are asking from their heart for someone else to say, “This is how my friend feels.” They don’t want bullshit, they don’t want someone yacking on about crap, they just want someone in their corner.

There are many people here in WA who are proud of what they have achieved through their own hard work, despite all the bullshit they get thrown at them. There have been many issues in the past, yes, but that is through individual grievances, not group ones.

The story and the dreaming is still very much alive. It’s a pity many people who do not live out in the country do not understand her history, and have lost their way. It’s disturbing. There aren’t enough people to explain exactly how disturbing it is, and how much is being lost through not being connected. Trying to understand something which is completely foreign to oneself, is not the same as understanding through experience. Making up modern yarns about something and passing it off as truth, when there are already traditional, well-documented stories, is not something that’s meant to be done. This is where we start to lose real history.

Understanding the difference between fiction and reality can be very difficult for some people. It can be even more difficult for people with an agenda to fix things that don’t need fixing, and to not fix things which are in dire need of fixing.

If one went back to the reality of “tribal” lore, for those who don’t know what that means, over here in W.A it was pretty bloody nasty. Those who did the wrong thing were basically “evicted” from their camp, and if they kept coming back, they were chased off. Those who did things a lot worse than just “the wrong thing”, suffered a fate far worse than simply being killed. To these people, the nutters, the killers, and the ones who interfered with children, looking to be convicted of a felony by “white-man’s law” seemed a lot more pleasant than getting speared.

“White man’s privilege” is exactly what the bad ones wanted. Understanding this is possibly the most important thing you will learn today. A few have lost their way due to interference from well-meaning people who do not understand how things work within a community. What I, and those who walk with me, are trying to do — is teach you a little bit about facts right here, and right now. We don’t do this through trying to be mean, or trying to have “out-loud” conversations, we do this carefully. Sometimes it’s hard to get voices heard, and sometimes it’s difficult to make people understand, so when we tell you stories, it’s the meaning behind the story that’s important, not the story itself.

Here the words are different. Here, still water with hidden logs and vast amounts of mud and muck and things one can get stuck in are places to avoid rather than dive into, and it is better to wait until the rains come before we start talking about that — this is what the real dreamtime stories were all about.

Teach your kids to be safe.

Clearing the Air.

There are certain things I need to explain. I’m only saying this so those who read it can look outside their own sandboxes for a change and realise there are other people out there who are not the same.

When I speak these things in the early morning, I am taking in the ones who live with me, and their thoughts are not always wise. My house is full of men (my husband included), and I’m the only one who is not.

Besides that, they’re sleeping, so we need to be careful. Do you understand this now?

‘We did not know they were asleep.’

It is very early here. If you looked at the time for where I am, you would perhaps choose to understand this better. We do not endorse gossip or foolishness, and I will not go down that path. It is not who I am, as a person.

I ask the one beside me, who says he is decidedly not female, whether it’s okay to speak about them. You see, this is my kindness to you, to them. We are trusted because we don’t carry on like silly people about all this, that, and the other — we just listen. Not everything should be repeated. I can’t make this any clearer.

We know the poets amongst you are finding it easier to speak your mind through the trickiness of words, and this is very clever, and it’s okay too. Just don’t expect all the “romantic” things to be real for you. They aren’t real for us, and bending for you won’t achieve good things. I have tried to show the younger men, this one beside me included, that not everything is best unveiled. He is laughing, because he understands this now, although it has taken quite some time to show this through my eyes.

We expect there to be a lot of complaints about the simplicity of this explanation. My kindness to you is your saving grace and this has been agreed. I wasn’t picked as a friend or partner because I am soft or particularly gentle. Sorry about that, but this is who I am. It’s also why I haven’t fallen out of any rocking chairs. I haven’t quite reached that age yet. Give it a few more years.

I will tell you it is more often than not I have been put in situations where I have been asked to protect a friend’s back from ridiculous people who don’t speak or write what they are thinking. We hear you anyway.

It’s not quite the same, he says, not quite the same as hearing a friend (someone genuine) say (or write), ‘You look particularly handsome today, buddy.’

I remind him I didn’t quite say it like that, it was quite a bit funnier. It was fine to be laughing with someone, and we are trying to show you what the difference is.

Let me give you an example of how I speak with my own boys. You may see why we all get along.

‘Hey baby, look at you. You look very pretty today.’ (I am definitely a mum and this was definitely one of the boys. He laughs, you see, because there is no underlying weirdness or strangeness here. He is comfortable in who he is, with me. It was also a genuine compliment — not contrived, and people can tell the difference. I was also being cheeky.)

It’s simple confidence, for the most part, or, well I wouldn’t call my own confidence “Charisma” exactly, because that’s something I can turn on or off.

Do they understand this yet? Some of them? I know the ones I’ve come in contact with in person know this well enough to see when I’m playing.

There is a difference between being silly and being creepy. Some people are creepy. Some are slimy, worse than eels. Some are very rude. There is a difference, and to understand that difference, you need to have the right attitude, not the wrong one.

I can hear the mumbling as well. Oh well. I know who will understand this and who won’t, so this will be their decision as much as my own. We appreciate our differences, and we show respect, and that’s just the way of it. I am being a lot kinder than some might think, and that’s possible because they don’t hear what I hear. This has been filtered down quite a lot, to be honest, although the distant holler of “Geronimo” as a silly duffer jumps into a pool of water with a very big splash “just for something to do” is something I would enjoy doing too.