How I Started Writing

 

Words. Words. Words. They are an amazing thing words. They can destroy people and they can keep people alive. They can make you cry or they can make you laugh and they can change your life.
The words that changed my life were:-

'If you continue to do the things you've done in your past, you'll continue to get in the future, the things you have always gotten.'
Author unknown 
If you are like me then photos
catch your eye. Isn't he cute!
Since reading those words it was as if I could see a map laid out infront of me and I didn't like where it was heading. I hadn't like the road I had been on since I was 17. I just didn't know how to get off it. Then in my late 30's those amazing words came into my life and they frightened me. It meant that if I was going to listen to them, act on them, I would have to go against everything I knew, everything I did and everyone in my life who liked me the way I was.

In my journey to today I have found out many things but one of those things is that people don't like change. They like comfort and in comfort comes complacency, boardum, apathy and a lack of understanding of people who don't want to run with the sheep any more. Hence as I deliberately experienced 'things' I had never experienced before, people who I classed as friends, who liked comfort, dropped off and new ones were picked up. It is the way of things even if it is not understood at the time.
As I tentatively, slowly experienced one brand new thing at a time it enabled me to leave that road behind and head off in a completely new direction. Now fifteen years on I am now in an amazing part of my life. A life I thought I would NEVER have and as hard as I look I can not see that old road that I thought I would never be able to leave behind.
The snails are a leaving

One part of my new life is my writing. I used to write when I was at school but gave it up when I was severely criticized by a teacher for writing about three professors who were shrunk and in doing so fell into a tank of sponges. It was amazing to me that approx 15 years later a movie came out with the same theme. I knew then that I was not what I had been made to feel on that day. That my ideas were not that crazy and so slowly, slowly, e-v-e-r so slowly my world around me changed and the words came into my life and changed my life forever.

New people came into my new life who were positive, supportive, understanding. Some were even filled with the same crazy thoughts as I had and here I am now writing a children's novel. One of two at the moment. They are novels about the occupants of my models, my miniature village, My World.

There have been many people who have helped me with the creation of my story. Helped with support, understanding, positive criticism and truthfulness. I think, though that if I was to pick out the ones that have helped the most it would be three men.

The first would be Doug Reiser, who was the only person who allowed me to display my models. No one else knew what to do with them. No one else understood them.
Doug Reiser allowed me to show my work for six years at the Gold Coast Show and on his retirement we had our photo taken. A photo he had been promising me for all that time.

Without him I would never have met:-


Jeff Gilberthorpe. He is an amazing man and he was so generous to allow me to visit him at his gallery on the Gold Coast for the three years I knew him until he moved to Spain.

It is because of this man that I am writing at all. He met me at the Gold Coast show on the second year that I was displaying my models. He invited me to his gallery and we struck up a friendship. He patiently listened to my ideas, my dreams and I listened to his. He was the one who said I had to give my models substance, life, a reason for being and so insisted that I come up with a story.
I remember when I took my first story back to him to read. He said,
"What this?"
"It's my story. You told me to write a story so I wrote one."
"Yes, but not this one!"

It still makes me smile to think about it. I went away and came up with the basis for the one that I am now writing. A little girl and her dog meet up with the occupants of the forest and they both learn a valuable lesson about the meaning of friendship.

The next thing he wanted me to do was to come up with a character. I protested that I had not been able to come up with anything in 40 odd years and now he expected me to come with something just like that and I snapped my fingers at him. As it was, some weeks on, that is exactly what happened. I woke up and a little character walked through my foggy brain. I said to it,
'Oh no you don't."
I Grabbed it, made it out of polymer clay and dashed down to see Jeff. He said, 'You've done it. That's it. That's exactly what you want."

The other man I want to mention is Garry Luadaka, my partner for many years.

Without his love and support I would never have progressed. He has put up with the scatterbrain that I am at times. The summer storms I throw at him and his life being invaded by my creative river that is constantly flowing through my/our lives.

In 2009 the Gold Coast Council ran a 'Write that Kids Book' course with Louise Cusack as our teacher.

 She looked at my work and said, "Yes, very nice BUT!" and told me to work on it. The next year our group (some people did not carry on through to this year) applied for a grant and asked Louise to teach us again. In 2011, we became the Prana Writers.

I have now been involved with the Prana Writers of the Gold Coast for six years. They are a lovely bunch of people. I have been involved with many people, in many situations and committees but nobody like these. They are so supportive of everyone. They are like the family people dream of and this support has definitely paid off because several of them are published in one form or another.

One day I will be a published author. To go from a life were I thought I would NEVER achieve anything to achieving that would be mind-blowing! To go from that to creating My World in reality and being able to walk around in it, well there are no words for that!


See links below of our member's blogs.
http://pranawriters.com/
Rebecca Fraser

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