The evolving writer

Anna Karenina & Suicide

/ frankiebanks27@gmail.com

‘Oh Anna’ I sigh.  As she knelt on the tracks and drew her last breath (the television adaption, A Beautiful Lie). I wanted hedonistic Harry (one of my characters) to stroll out of the dark tunnel. He would gather up this exhausted girl into his strong arms and carry her off into the sunset.

Anna’s story has been following me around Melbourne. I was on a train to the city,  when it was stopped at Carrum as a woman was threatening to commit suicide. This woman could have been our modern day Anna.  I’m sure whatever emotions were running through her head were very similar to those of Anna’s grief and isolation.  I hope our modern day Anna found someone to listen to her.

Suicide is one of those taboo’s that we don’t talk about isn’t it. Maybe because I find myself in the happiest place mentally I think I have ever been. I feel the strength to have this conversation.

About 12 years ago I began my obsession with a large oak tree in a country lane. I would drive past it nearly everyday on the way to town. I always thought that tree would do the trick should I ever need assistance in the death department.  There was no heavy opera music to accompany this thought, it was very matter of fact.  That tree somehow gave me comfort, I would smile as I passed it, at the secret we shared.  I would sometimes drive faster to reach it.  However I could never quite bring myself to turn the wheel and face the car in its direction. When I felt the life sucked out of me these thoughts seemed perfectly rational. Luckily I never followed through with my strange exit plan. I dug myself out of that hole and I surrounded myself with wonderful people and beautiful things.

A few years later news came through the village that a Dad had taken his life by crashing his car into a tree.  As I heard the news my face reddened and my heart beat faster. That awful childish guilt of having had the same idea.  But this wasn’t stealing plimsoles or gambling marbles, this was life or death. Had his tree passed him by for weeks like mine? Had he smiled in acknowledgment at his tree too, knowing that if one day he felt that bad there was an easy solution? Or was it a split second decision? We will never know.  I thought about his wife and children.  It must be awful to be the one picking up the pieces, the one left behind that has to carry on.

‘Wasn’t it just an accident?’ I asked one of the ladies, her frown and sadness reflecting mine. I was hoping the village grapevine had got the story wrong.

‘No’ was the short reply, there are few words when it comes to suicide.  We both looked down at our feet, what more was there to say.

I was shocked.  This secret that I had kept was someone else’s too. If I had met him in the pub would we have discussed the amount of large oak trees that lined the country road to town?

Isn’t it awful that we keep our deepest most powerful thoughts to ourselves for fear of being labelled?  Surely letting the dark stuff out immediately takes the burden from our shoulders and makes us lighter, more able to float through life.  We grow stronger because we are admitting the truth.

JK Rowling’s description of depression as the dark ‘dementors’ sucking the life out of you is awesome. I’m sure a lot of people felt relief at this description. Relief to know you are not alone.  I’m glad to say I have never felt that low again.  We all carry the gun powder and the match, lets not ignite it.

I have worried about this piece of writing and how it will be perceived. It has been sitting in my ‘drafts’ for a couple of weeks now. I think it’s time to let it go.

Anna’s story and The Beautiful Lie ended up for me to be the most beautiful truth.  Truth and honesty is what makes good writing.  Sometimes even the writer does not know where that lies.

My book Sharks & Lovers is available to download here:

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The Ping of Hope

/ frankiebanks27@gmail.com

I get home from my writing group and turn on the laptop. Jodie and Tabitha are in Jabiru, Northern Territory, Australia and it’s about 38 degrees. They sit together in the pub supping beer, laughing and joking.  As the sun fades on the horizon their eyes reflect the changing light on the escarpment. After a hard weeks work Victoria Bitter has quenched the girls thirst and soothed their tired limbs but there is an ache they share that VB can’t touch.

Ping!

Finally an email from a publisher, I read it and let out a little scream. They ask me to send more chapters! This is great, they want more. I take the liberty of sending them more from book one but also some chapters of book two which I am now nearly half way through. I arrange my documents ready to send back, read and re-read. Please love it.

I’m so excited and yet I realise this is a drop in the ocean, I might never hear back again. Stay positive, believe. I will get that book deal.

My hunger for this is now quite ferocious. I growl at the laptop as I send my email back trying to send my energy too.

‘Come on let’s do this!’ I say sounding curiously like a tennis player giving themselves a pep talk.

I’m here let’s get on with it, my book is ready to go and so am I!

Before my altercation with the author at the Wheeler Centre. I was sat listening to them talking about the next big thing. It’s me, It’s me! I thought. I know that sounds awfully arrogant but this is different I’m happy and proud of my work. I know these books could do a lot of good. Perhaps break down a few barriers, just as writing them has broken down my barriers. It’s why my emotions run high when I talk about my writing. It’s me on a plate, no holes barred. I don’t care if people like it or loath it, as long as it’s heard. Please world just listen, even if it is background music on your elevator ride. It’s on, it’s alive, it has a pulse, in fact it gives me palpitations!

My book Sharks & Lovers is available to download here:

Amazon       Kobo       iTunes

Anna Karenina & The Beautiful Lie

/ frankiebanks27@gmail.com

I surprisingly kept my cool as I untangled my earphones to listen to the podcast of Anna Karenina. Too many books sit next to my bedside table and so I take a different route to absorb Tolstoys words. I have been watching The Beautiful Lie, a television adaption of this story and I am hooked. The characters are all so full, brimming with different emotional states.

My teacher at the writing group has encouraged me on several occasions to read this book. As with a lot of messages in my life it takes a few attempts for me to hear it. Surely if I am already watching the modern version I will be able to understand it, follow it and take something from it.

As I listen to the woman’s voice telling the story in my head. I eventually shut out all my other thoughts and hear the words. The sentences are ‘wordy’ they are poetic and have so many consequential meanings. The mood of the book is far darker than the television adaption, maybe easier to achieve with those harsh Russian names, older words and language.

There are a few similarities between my first book & Anna.  In fact there are a few similarities between my life and Anna’s. As I listen hard, more is revealed that I understand, that is a truth in my world, my head, my book and my characters.

Perhaps that is why I was nervous of reading the book. Sometimes the scared little child wins my battles and I believe I’m not good enough. The ‘I can’t’ comes out to play. It really is time to tell that little girl that she can, she will and she is.

I am going into the city today on a mission to be seen and heard. The little girl wants to stay at home, watch some TV and curl up on the sofa. It is time to start believing in myself because if I don’t no-one else will. I hope when I meet other people today I will be able to shake their hand and be strong. I know my voice will quiver but that noise is just the last few bricks crumbling from the wall I built a very long time ago.

I have given the little girl in my head a tune to hum to remind myself that unlike Anna Karenina I am on the right path. Poor Anna, I am not yet at the end of her journey but I am pretty sure her tale will not end happily. I wish I could reach through to her world of fiction and hold her hand, I would listen and talk just like she did with Dolly.  How true that we can be so strong for others and yet sometimes not so for the person in the mirror.

I am lucky enough to have a few people holding my hand. In fact they do a very good relay of passing the Frankie Banks baton. No small feat considering not many of them live in the same country or even know each other! They nudge me back onto my yellow brick road when I stumble into the woods.  So as I hum ‘follow the yellow brick road’ walking up Swanston Street today. Watch out for those flying monkeys and the green faced witch. I am on my way to the Emerald City and about to climb into my hot air balloon.

Thank you Team Frankie Up up and Away!

My book Sharks & Lovers is available to download here:

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Numinous

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‘If Freud had given somewhat more consideration to the psychological truth that sexuality is numinous – both of a god and a devil.  He would not have remained bound within the confines of a biological concept’ C G Jung – Memories, Dreams & Reflections

I lay in bed last night reading and re-reading a couple of pages of Jung’s book and nothing was going in. I have owned this book for about fifteen years now.  I go back to books a bit like clothes, my old favourite pair of jeans, sometimes they are a bit tight around the waist and don’t quite fit. Other times they fit perfectly and are exactly the right accompaniment to the rest of my attire. Last night Jung’s words just didn’t quite fit and as I was about to turn off the lamp the word numinous stood out.

Jung explains it; ‘numinous – both of a god and a devil’

Numinous is defined in the dictionary; ‘having a strong religious or spiritual quality’

Depending on your religious or spiritual connections would depend on your interpretation of the word numinous. I agree with Jung’s statement about Freud but I think it stretches further than Freud and sexuality.

The Dark Side

Society have always liked to shun the dark side, always trying to be good, on the side of good, making the bed scary. Locking bad away. What would happen if we embrace the bad, give it a platform, give it a voice, let it out. Do we really think it would take over? There is a reason that good generally wins and that is because of human nature, most of us are inherently good.  The problem comes when we are told to hide the parts of us that are ‘bad’.  Whatever that is, from an obsession to a birthmark, to an addiction.  We all have traits that at some point someone has told us are bad.


This comes back to resistance, another word I have come to appreciate and acknowledge.  The more we try to resist anything the stronger it gets. The ‘bad’ becomes stronger and the good becomes weaker. We need to first walk with this bad, let it take a few steps, experience it, talk to it, feel it. Maybe even hold its hand. Take time to understand it and then perhaps when it is released it won’t be the monster we first thought.

Fire Guard

Whilst we were living in England we had three fire places with two small children. One day our friends came over with their two children and not use to fires in the home they asked us to put the fire guard up, which we did. This fascinated their children more than the actual fire, our two pulling them away and telling them ‘hot,hot!’ If you can’t feel the heat of the fire you don’t have the information to make the right decision. Our children have never put their hands in a fire because they they can feel that it is hot.

We are all numinous, whatever that means to you and how you connect to it.  We will always have good and bad and we need to accept the whole if we are to grow. Next time you feel the bad winning within you or next to you or around you, talk to it, listen to it and feel it. Don’t shut it out, shut it down or ignore it. Maybe it just needs a voice or perhaps just wants to be heard. We are all numinous.

My book Sharks & Lovers is available to download here:

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Synchronicity

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When I was halfway through book one I decide I need some feedback. What if this book is a complete load of rubbish?  I’m nearly up to forty thousand words.  After talking to a few local authors it’s tempting to just keep writing as the story has been flowing out of me.

‘Have you written the plot?’ asks my friend

‘Nup, it just flows. Every time I sit down at the laptop the characters know exactly what they’re doing.  In fact they know before I do sometimes!’, I laugh ‘I watch my fingers on the keyboard, then look up and re-read it thinking what on earth are you doing now Harry?’

She smiles at me ‘That’s perfect, just keep going then’

In the end my doubts get the better of me and I decide to send two very different chapters to a friend of a friend.  The feedback as I suspected it would be was very constructive and exactly what I needed at the time.  All questions and queries all relate to a) what was in the next chapter and I had already written b) what had previously been written or c) what I already knew I needed to work on.

My confidence in the book resumes and to a higher standard.  I start having imaginary interviews in my head with Jonathan Ross.  I try to visualise the front cover.  I have never had an abundance of confidence and I have never really found anything other than dance that I excel in.  Could this be my thing?

On a night out with some school friends I just happen to sit opposite a recently published writer.  I had sent her an email and she had given me some advice about local writing groups.  I have been so consumed by my book I forgot to reply and thank her.  How embarrassing.  She asked me if my book is a public conversation, what a great question I think.  My face reddens slightly, I feel like I am coming ‘out’.

‘Kind of, its funny how it becomes your baby and you become protective, I couldn’t possibly say I am a writer’ I say, ‘I do have about forty thousand words though!’

‘That’s great’ she says, ‘keep going, I’m working on number two now and I don’t call myself a writer yet’

‘That’s crazy, you’re published, of course you’re a writer!’ I tell her.

We talk most of the night in hushed tones.  I steal her away from the other conversations and hang on her every word.

‘When you get your publishing deal, you’ll get an editor and they will help you too’ she says

I raise my eyes to the ceiling and laugh.

‘It’ll happen’ she says

Somewhere inside me I know she is telling the truth.  This book will get published I can feel it, I just don’t know when.

The next day I open my wardrobe and what falls out are two folded pieces of A4 paper, I have carried these around for years, about ten to be exact.  They are the idea for a book and what book two is now based around.  Indicators, synchronicity call it what you want, they are everywhere if you just look in the right places.

My book Sharks & Lovers is available to download here:

Amazon       Kobo       iTunes

A Trip to Swinburne University

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I was lucky enough, a couple of weeks ago to attend Swinburne University Writing Festival.  Being new to this writing game, I couldn’t wait to go and see if I was getting it right. I am about 30,000 words into my novel.  To say I was nervous was an understatement, sweaty palms, tummy churning. I drove into the city and completely underestimated the time it would take to get to Hawthorn from Bayside. Amazingly I found a parking space immediately and wasn’t late. I got the lift up to the third floor and was greeted by a warm smiley face, ‘Are you student, lecturer or other?’ she asked me ‘other’ I replied, I’m always ‘other’ through will or circumstance, conformity doesn’t come naturally to me.

As the festival started, my heart was in my mouth, what if nothing they say made any sense and then that awful feeling of, ‘please don’t ask me any questions, what so ever, not even my name, 9×7=?; I never knew the answer to that bloody question. Racing mind, under confident kid at school, staring out the window hoping I was somewhere else. I close my eyes and when I open them, calmness washes over me. I look around; there are all walks of life in here, all ages, cultures, a real melting pot.  I relax my shoulders and shut off my annoying child. What Makes a Good Story?  The panel are introduced and are all very different from each other.  Could it be possible that there is no box I need to try to squeeze into to be a writer, I can just be me? The panel are asked the first question; what book would you take to a dessert Island?  The answers come in, ‘Trainspotting’, ‘The Goldfinch’ among others including ‘How to get off a Dessert Island’, ‘Raft Building’ etc.  Trainspotting, one of my favourite books, I need to reread it I think immediately; my book has a slight drug theme, perfect.  The Goldfinch, I loved it! I have something in common with these published writers.

As I sit making notes about What Makes a Good Story; identifying with the character, suspense, conflict, detail, I am ticking these off as I mentally find them in my book. I let out a little sigh.  Oh my god, Yes, Yes, Yes.  I have to stop myself spontaneously erupting into a huge orgasm in the vain of Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.  All these words are penetrating me slowly and deeply. At the end of the talk, I rush back along the Nepean Highway to do the school run on cloud nine. I had only signed up to day one, but I can’t wait to get home and sign up to tomorrow there is ‘The Perils and Pitfall of Writing a Memoir’.  My book started off as memoir and is based on a lot of experiences from my life so that’s a good enough reason to go along surely? I just need to go back there and feel immersed in this writing culture.  I scroll along to day three on my phone and then I see it, ‘The Pitch’, my heart jumps into my throat,

‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it, Oh shit, and shit, shit’ I say aloud

‘What is it? Is someone ill?, what’s happened?’  Asks my nine-year old son

‘Oh Goodness, I can’t believe it, Oh No, I can’t’ I say

‘What? tell us?’

‘So this writers thing at the Uni on Thursday, you can pitch your idea, so I’ll have to tell them about my book, I hate speaking in front of people’ I say with a huge grin on my face excitedly.

‘Hmmmmm’ says my son not understanding.

‘I have to do it, I have to tell them about my book, I have to do it’ I say

‘Great, then do it’ he says, things are so simple put by a nine-year old!

‘I will’ I say giving him a hug.

I spend the evening thinking about how to summarize my idea, my book.  But also thinking about the person that was writing the memoir back in February. They are a distant memory now and have overcome some huge personal millstones. The next day I go to the Uni a little earlier and sit sipping a coffee, the talk starts with an amazingly strong woman.  As I listen, she says exactly how I felt when I started to write, ‘getting to know ourselves as well as our world’. I’m not the same person who sat down in February to work through a stage in my life that I was embarrassed, ashamed and confused about.  Only four months on, I feel like an author of a completely different book, a book about courage, facing our truths, and saying fuck it. This is me.  I’ve found a different voice; it has stamina and packs a punch.

The panel talk about ‘who owns the story?’ I have thought about this a lot with my own book as there are some truths that although are my own, I would not want to hurt anyone else by publishing.  One of the panellists says, ‘I pity the family that has a writer as you steal their narrative’.  Everyone sees an event in a different light.  All these ideas resonate with me so much and yet I am not writing a memoir, maybe I should be, or maybe that is the next book, not this one? I come away buzzing, going again today was completely the right thing to do, but I feel slightly confused and scared.

‘Oh no that under confident child is coming back, the one that likes to beat myself up for the slightest misdemeanour, let alone the bigger story’, I think.

I rush again to pick the kids up and only just get there on time. In the evening, I go through my pitch, take out any negative verbs, and replace them with certainty.  I feel happy and go through the pitch about fifty times until it is etched into my brain.

Typically, I decide to go a different route to Hawthorn today and yep I am stuck in traffic with 5 minutes to go, I dump the car in an hour slot and hope I don’t get booked.  It’s raining. I walk into an unfamiliar building and get the escalator up to the third floor, ok I’m in a parallel universe, or this is the wrong Swinburne building.  I go back down onto the street and look around, I see the building I need and jog along. In the lift I find a piece of calm and when I get to the third floor, I am just in time, I go to the back and make a coffee, a ritual that yesterday seemed to keep my hands busy and my mind focused. The talking starts and the audience is asked if there is anyone that would like to pitch that they haven’t spoken to.  The speaker acknowledges me as I tentatively raise my hand.  Immediately my hearts beat has found its way to my ears and I feel the blood rising to my chest and face. The panel are introduced and I feel comfortable that they aren’t scary, just normal people. Others give their pitch and my heart is still racing and then its my turn, I know mine is shorter than the others but hopefully it’s enough. I walk up to the front and I am given the microphone, I have no idea what to do with it and am told to hold it closer to my mouth.  The pounding bass of my heart is so loud in my ears and the voice that echoes from the microphone certainly doesn’t seem like mine.  I look down at my notes and although I try to make eye contact with the panel, I am secretly hoping my notes will suck me into their world.  I finish and take a seat next to one of the panellists, he is smiling and saying good things.  I can’t quite make it out, but my hand is frantically trying to take the words from his mouth and write them down. I take my seat and try to breathe, my hands are shaking and I keep nearly losing my pen, I look at my notebook and try to write the comments, eloquent, well executed, liked the ending.  I need a tangible hook, be more specific.

On the way home I reflect that I couldn’t possibly give them the whole story but yes I should have told them about Harry, my favourite character who is, being seduced by women everywhere and who I think I’m slightly in love with too! Again I rush back to get the kids but don’t make it in time.  As I arrive home it is raining and the kids and I arrive simultaneously at the front door. ‘Don’t you even care about us?’ says my little girl, ‘why didn’t you pick us up, we are all wet now from the rain’ In the morning I explain to my children that I will always be here, but that I want to be a writer too and that they will need to share me with the world.  They look at me with wide eyes and wonder.  I hope they understand. This is just the beginning.

My book Sharks & Lovers is available to download here:

Amazon       Kobo       iTunes