Pockets of Wisdom and Inspiration
We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from coming
Natalie Goldberg
I first heard of Natalie Goldberg's book “Writing Down the Bones” from a Tiktok. Now, I'm not proud to say that some nights I stay up and get sucked down an app into the late hours of the night, but I'm Gen Z. Call it diplomatic immunity. So there I was, doom-scrolling, liking anything in the mere split second I see something aesthetic or remotely interesting and skipping in an even shorter split second (would this be 1/4th second?) to videos hot-wired in my brain to be uninteresting. Until I saw this tiktok that told me to keep a writing practice. This guy had optimism seep through him and he held up this small red moleskine, enthusiastic, life-chaning-esque music in the background. He went on about how every morning he would write in this small red notebook and explained Julia Cameron's idea of Morning Pages from her book, The Artist's Way. Essentially, you drag yourself out of bed and write for 20 mins. Anything on the subconscious will just flow from your doom-scrolled brain to your hand that hasn't written anything besides grocery lists. He also said that it was kind of like his little self-study project, he figured that writing at the ass crack of dawn would make him more honest and would put a little less self-judgement in the things he wrote. I said, I like this idea (I like it Picasso) and I'll do it and wake-up at 7:00am (I didn't wake up, but I did write).
I continued to watch his videos and came across his top five summer reads. One of them was Writing Down the Bones (the rest I added into my TBR, so yes all seemed to be very "TOP”). I latched on to his words when he said “I re-read…” The last few months I had an article-reading frenzy on a website I recommended here before, called Five Books. I've been reading about the Manbooker Prize and was wondering what made the winner of the Manbooker Prize… the best book of the year. This rabbit hole has lead me to one of their articles where they interviewed the Chair of the Manbooker Prize panel, Neil McGregor about this year's shortlist, mind you this was before they announced a winner.
This feels like an obvious point to make, but how can you pit books like Treacle Walker and, say, The Trees, against one another? Each has such a different character, such a different soul. How can you weigh and measure them?
Don’t think of it as singling out the ‘best’ work of fiction, among these six possible titles. What we’re saying is that these are six books that we want to recommend to people to read and re-read.
And so I read a Manbooker Prize winning book. It was actually the International one from last year, titled At Night All Blood is Black, translated from the French to the English. I read this 100+page book in one sitting, but always I was on edge. I finished it. And my immediate thought was “I wanna re-read that”.
So this is what convinces me to read anything now. If a person says they've re-read this book, it really means it's worth paying 18euros for and waiting three-weeks for it to arrive from the UK (BREXIT, amirite).
Writing Down the Bones is a guide book for anyone who wants to write. She offers insights, tips, tricks, and comforts you that it's okay to write trash. I especially like the part, “A List of Topics for Writing Practice”, because quite literally she provides you with a list of topics, as well as how to curate your own.
When I first started writing here on Substack the first few months had me looking at life like I had new glasses. I was noticing little things I hadn't before, things as simple as the light hitting the trees, small conversations I've eavesdropped on, all the good stuff. I had also started listing down topics, whatever that came to mind. I have one noted called “memory of food”, no context at all but on May 1st I wrote that down. Another one, “the importance of pen and paper”.
I think the past two months I've really been pondering about what it means to “indulge” myself. I look back on the article I wrote last October, you know the one about my cry for help and cry for direction. I remember Faye commenting to indulge myself regardless if I drop the thing, and try everything. I think now I've made sense of it. I stumbled around the words of wisdom she imparted, and understood it as indulging myself on shopping, how whimsical. So I broke my bank and had decision fatigue every time I faced the IKEA tab on my screen. Not to mention, Black Friday deals. Later on the shopping did stop and my period started. All the pent up energy finally released. TMI?
These days I've been binge reading all of Rebecca F. Kuang's books. Which was approximately 2,000+ pages in a few weeks time. The Poppy War Trilogy quickly became my favourite read this year as a history-nerd and as I guess, fantasy nerd? I've spent countless nights unable to stop reading. I've indulged myself in her worlds and watched possibly every interview she's done discussing the books. Yesterday, I felt my brain implode from information.
Three reasons for why I became so obsessed with Kuang's mind: I never thought that anyone in the field of academia and debate could draw creative parallels from their work, I never thought that you could explore so many “what if” questions in the form of historical fiction (duh???), I never thought I would enjoy reading word per word, military tactics. After watching (and RE-watching) hours and hours of Rebecca's interviews I was able to deduce two really shocking things which was that she wrote The Poppy War while she was studying undergrad, continued to write the trilogy while she was taking up an MPhil. and Msc. in Contemporary Chinese Studies, the other thing is that she's 26 years old.
In a Q&A, she mentions how her notebook is structured during lessons. On the right side she writes class notes, on the left side she writes notes that she can use for the book. Hence incredibility historically accurate events and knowledge of military tactics to the T. Here is where she drew creative parallels, and here she explored history's biggest “what-ifs”. The what ifs she chose to explore is a spoiler to the whole trilogy, once you read it we can talk about it more.
Her newest novel, Babel: An Arcane History or The Necessity of Violence, is about translation, the British Empire and student revolutions. Stylistically nods to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell and thematically nods at The Secret History. Both books I happen to not only own, but LOVE. This historical, speculative fantasy, dark-academia book is about a cohort of students from different backgrounds brought up to study in Oxford and eventually work for Babel, the Institute of Translation. The main character Robin had to decide between Academia and possibly stopping the Opium Wars. His character held SO many contradictions but was still a lovable character. The cohort gave me The Secret History vibes and my mind is swirling with more to share about them but I can't give too much away. You'll just have to read it. What I loved especially was how she presented and wrapped up many complex topics and questions about academia, race, and class AND neatly packaged them into a story you wouldn’t be able to stop reading. She's a debater so the language is easy and readble (duh). Anyway less me selling her books to you and more substack article point making.
And he wondered at the contradiction that he despised them, that he knew they could be up to no good, and that still he wanted to be respected by them enough to be included in their ranks. It was a very strange mix of emotions. He hadn't the faintest idea how to sort through them.
The first few times Professors said that History majors were “writers” I squirmed internally in my seat. I don't know where my writing insecurities come from and what the big deal is about, I just know that I've never wanted to label myself as such. I don't go to writing workshops or conferences. I don't have something within me that can be translated into a poem or some blog post (ha). But the complete title of Writing Down the Bones is actually: Writing Down The Bones Freeing The Writer Within. Writing doesn't discriminate. It's the easiest thing in the world that everyone has creative access to. I still think about this quote from Babel about words and etymology:
The curious thing about etymology, they soon learned, was that anything could influence a language, from the consumption habits of the rich and the wordly to the so-called vulgar utterances of the poor and wretched. the lowly cants, the supposed secret languages of thieves, vagabonds, and foreigners, had contributed such common words such as bilk, booty, and bauble.
I forget that everyday people have an effect. We have something to say, of course, as each human life is different and everything we observe, consume and think about is different. Which means anyone really has the capacity to change another person's way of thinking, to completely change languages, to be probably a great writer when our generation is long gone and the new generations will brand their books as a “classic”.
Basically if you want to become a great writer, you need to do three things. Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much.
So I've decided that this is the indulgence that I'm going to attempt. Now that I see that writing is not limited to ranting OR creative writing and now that I think a great deal of this is letting yourself be free from personal/subconscious constraints, I feel a bit anew. Writing more in detail, exploring other ideas, writing about my surroundings, keeping a morning pages writing practice, the human life itself is interesting regardless of the things you think are mundane. I'm guilty of overthinking, judging also of what is worthwhile and what isn't. So here's to saying yes more often. Here's to writing about the mundane. The material, as Natalie says, is right in front of you. So now I'll watch how the light hits my windows, how my book's spines get hit in subtle, golden streaks in all the right places, how the leaves of my plants are turning as new baby leaves open up to the sunshine, and how great it feels to not wake-up at 7am.
Reading
The Poppy War, Dragon Republic, The Burning God, and Babel: An Arcane History or The Necessity of Violence all by RF Kuang.
What It Takes To Be A Credible Collector With A Covetable Collection
Rereading this article about how to nurture a personal library
Watching
Art
I wish there was a way for everyone to transport to Fernando Zobel's exhibit in Prado but here is an article about it. The exhibit presented the art that inspired some of the paintings there and I was in awe.
I just want to say that this was a nice comfort read :< thank you for this and also for the book recos!