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A Commemoration – Three Years Post-Afghan
Today marks three years since I returned from my five-month deployment to Afghanistan. In some ways, it feels like those three years have been a lifetime; in others, like it was only yesterday that I stepped out of one world, and back into another that I couldn’t quite recognise. I left Afghanistan in mid-September with another junior officer and a number of the soldiers from our Shadow UAV contingent as part of the drawdown of Tarin Kot Multinational Base. The majority of my Troop, those soldiers under my direct command and my responsibility, remained behind. I also left behind my best friend, whom I had—unintentionally, and at that stage, completely…
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Writing, Empathy and Dealey Plaza
Empathy is a tough one. For a writer, it’s vital. Undoubtedly, somewhere in the mix there will probably have been a few great writers who weren’t overly empathetic, but the links between our capacity to empathise and our ability to create complex, interesting, relatable characters (whether they are likeable or not) seems clear. On the other hand, sometimes being empathetic can be overwhelming. Sometimes it seems that if you would let go and allow it to, the world would devour you. It can feel like a fine line between remaining sensitive to emotion, and drowning in it. We visited Dealey Plaza on Sunday morning before we left Dallas. The city…
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The Pointy End
Happy mid-week madness* everyone! [*Disclaimer: as far as I know, there is no madness here. At least nothing clinically diagnosed.] There is no doubt in my mind that I’m reaching the pointy end of this university trimester, where everything starts to get a little bit tighter and, as a first-time full-time university student, I start to feel the pinch a bit. I have two 2500 word assignments both due on the 23rd of September, a psychology exam a few days later and a political ideologies exam about a week after that. Of course, my brain is whirring with everything that I should be doing (like heaps of exam revision!) while…
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Writing and Learning
Sometimes, Mondays just seem to come around so quickly. Weekends tend to be consumed by chores and studying, and you manage home-made pizza and a movie on Sunday night, then it’s Monday again. What the hell, world. Anyway, on to the post! Today is all about learning. I have a confession to make: I’m a bit of a nerd [Dislciamer: obviously depending on how you define nerd]. I love to read, I love to learn new things, I love studying (some days), and I find that it constantly boggles my mind how much there is out there to learn about, and how much we can utilise the things we learn…
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Finding Your Artistic Arrogance
Hey peeps, welcome to the middle of the week! I mentioned on Monday I was going to post about this, so get excited. I’ve been thinking about artistic arrogance quite a bit recently (a recurring theme inside the restlessly churning cogs of my brain) and wanted to share it with you all. Where to start…? What do I even mean by that idea, artistic arrogance? For me, it’s about keeping your doubts hidden, even when you’re agonisingly unsure. Nothing is more painful or off-putting to other people than the classic awkward introduction of: “well, it’s not very good, but” or “everyone else’s is better than mine,” or “I’m not very…
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The Pressure Cooker of Advice Lists
Happy Monday world! Does anyone else ever feel pressured as a writer? You know what I mean: you have to do x, y and z to develop your voice. You have to use this story structure. You need a theme. You need a strong female character, but don’t push a feminist ideal; more speech tags but you should only ever use ‘said’; more diversity, more action, more intrigue, more adverbs, less adverbs… It can’t be just me. Everywhere we turn, someone is telling us how to write. Some might argue that’s just an extrapolation of all the other things that the world and its nosy people feel free to tell…
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The Truth About Rehab
I wrote this late last week after a frustrating series of training days. I try to use this blog predominantly to talk about writing, with a side splash of updates about living as an Aussie expat in America. But today I’m going to break the mould a little. If you’ve read any of my work before, you’ve probably heard me offhandedly mention rehab. The story itself is a lengthy one, but hopefully I won’t get too lost in the retelling. In early 2012, I injured my lower back. Due to a number of factors associated with work, I rehabilitated myself for the remainder of that year and into 2013 through…
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Burning Out
I’m feeling burnt out. It’s Sunday night and we had a big day today. Though it fortuitously included waffles for breakfast and froyo for a pseudo-lunch, it also included a hike through the Wichita Wildlife Reserve with Kim and her pup Frankie that left me pretty wrecked. Writing Monday’s blog post on a Sunday evening, I feel exhausted. And typically, that leads me to feeling some mild form of creative despair. I’m sure you’ve been there. Raise your hands if you know what I’m talking about (don’t worry, no one can see you guys). Yeah, that’s what I thought: almost everyone in any kind of creative endeavour has. [Disclaimer: I…
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The Battle with the Churn
Happy Monday to all you Americans out there! (Australians, I sincerely apologise for bringing up traumatic Monday memories for you). We’ve had a busy weekend, but this blog post has been on my mind since last week, and I’m keen to share it with you. I want to talk about the ‘Battle with the Churn’. I’m not sure how familiar a term this is to Americans (or even to Australians…?) but it’s a fairly common one in the Australian Army: basically it refers to self-generating work and/or stress. With that loose definition in mind, I’m sure the idea of churning is quite a familiar one. It’s what happens when you’ve…
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Are Wednesdays for Writing?
Hey everyone! I know I promised that I would be publishing poetry on Wednesdays, but that idea has recently hit a small snag… Turns out that many magazines and competitions categorise posting your work on a blog as ‘being published’ and since a frequent condition of submission or competition entry is that previously published work isn’t allowed, I’m in a bit of a bind! I won’t be posting much poetry, or short stories up here for a while as a result, since I’m trying to get more involved in submitting my work to magazines and entering competitions. Instead, today I’d like to talk about making yourself write. Wednesdays are for writing. The alliteration is…
