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Neon Pilgrim Review

I’m officially on holidays, so I’m finally munching through some of the “to-be-read” pile. The first thing I picked up off that pile was Neon Pilgrim by Lisa Dempster, which I bought from the EWF Page Parlour a few weeks ago.

I should probably flag it here that I interviewed Lisa for Yartz just before the Emerging Writers’ Festival, and she seemed absolutely lovely. I’ve also been following her blogging for a while, so I went into this book with an already reasonably good opinion of Lisa and what she’s been up to. I have to say though, that this book boosted that by about a hundred percent.

Neon Pilgrim is about Lisa’s journey along the henro michi – a back-breaking trek, 1200 kilometres through Japanese mountains, all the way around Shikoku. No small effort.

I’ve never really read travel books before. Something about the term “travel literature” puts me off – I imagine middle-aged intellectuals relaying things like “the rich history” of countries with Western histories much older than Australia’s… While it’s all very interesting, it’s not something I’m keen on dedicating myself to for a whole book. And I’m sure this isn’t even what travel literature entails. It’s just what my mind has made it.

When I heard about Neon Pilgrim though, I felt like this might be something I could relate to, and get something out of reading. When Lisa started the journey, she was a 28 year-old, overweight and very depressed. Having visited Japan as a student, she had heard about the henro michi, and decided that this was what she needed to pull her out of depression.

The pilgrimage is said to be enlightening, each henro (pilgrim) is accompanied by the spirit of Kobo-Daishi, who the walk is done in honour of. The Japanese who inhabit Shikoku believe that by giving settai (gifts) to pilgrims, they too honour the spirit of Kobo-Daishi even though they cannot do the trek. So the journey itself is a respected thing, and pilgrims are helped out a great deal by those who live in the towns and cities that the henro michi passes through.

The book is written simply, there’s no complicated jargon or assumed prior knowledge of Japan or its rituals. The book includes a glossary of Japanese terms used in the book, but most of the time it isn’t needed, as Lisa makes meanings very clear.

Along the way there are fantastic crazy old men, deeply respected veterans who have done the pilgrimage hundreds of times, and kind people Lisa’s own age, who are all doing the pilgrimage for different reasons. There are bears, and spiders, and blisters. Every story along the way has its place, and the pilgrimage becomes a mesh of encounters and problems to negotiate.

I won’t say that the prose is amazing. It’s good – very funny at times, and at others you can really feel Lisa’s frustration. But I wouldn’t call it artful. Artful prose isn’t what this book is about though.

There’s an old Taoist saying, that “the journey is the reward” – while Lisa’s fitness improves, and she meets some wonderful people along the henro michi, the reward in terms of escaping depression is less tangible. I think this is one of the things I loved about the book – Lisa proves to herself that she can still get out of herself and tackle the world, but along the way she still hits that brick wall many times. She doubts herself – in fact, it’s not until temple 76 that she actually thinks that perhaps she will actually reach the end. At certain times in the journey the only way forward is to “step. Step. Step”. And I think this is how it is, and how it’s meant to be – getting through tough things like depression is like that, it’s not “cure!” and then everything’s great. It’s just one foot in front of the other.

At the end of the book there is no definitive ending. Yes – Lisa makes it to the end. But it’s only the end of the henro michi – the start of something much bigger. And I didn’t even find the open ending frustrating, I found it incredibly hopeful. While I know I probably won’t do a trek like this, I have taken a lot from the “Step. Step. Step.” attitude and the idea that accomplishing something is not the end.

Lisa Dempster, the smiley lady you will see at many a literary event, has walked 1200 kilometers and slept in some very crazy places. She has gone through some absolutely insane shit – go shake her hand next time you see her. Or go read Neon Pilgrim. Or both.

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Cxxx

Last week I posted about Ex Calamus, the new webzine I’m involved in with fellow RMIT Creative Writing students.

The latest installment in Ex Calami glory is called “Cxxx” – don’t ask me the meaning, but I do think of that particular combination of letters quite fondly now.

Cxxx is attached to the E.C website, and is another writing project based on constraints. Cxxx is all about nanofiction or micropoetry within 130 characters. Unlike Ex Calamus’ Webzine, there is no theme or time-limit. I have some work up there, and the content seems to be added to almost daily. Check it out!

…and I promise, my blog will not continue to just be posts plugging my work. I’ll write some actual content in the next few days. Cross my heart.

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Teaser Tuesday

Ladies and gents, I’m back in action! Today I handed in my final essay for the semester, and now I officially have four and a half weeks of holidays! And I have big plans. There will be blogging. There will be lots of catching up on the reading I miss out on during the semester – my to-be-read pile has grown into some absurd piece of architecture. I have plans to get a new project thing happening via this blog also, so look out for that during the next few weeks.

For now though, it’s Teaser Tuesday!

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
  •  You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

“It was seventy-five kilometres away, one of the longest distances between temples anywhere on the pilgrimage, and the walk had a reputation for being awful; supposedly it was the place where the majority of walkers drop out and return home. After my night at Saba-daishi, I began walking alongside the famously wretched Highway 55.”

From Neon Pilgrim by Lisa Dempster.

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Pride, Procrastination and other Disasters

You’ll have noticed my blog has been incredibly quiet of late. I apologise.

I’ve written very little. I’ve blogged hardly at all. I’ve read only to wind-down before bed or else I’d never sleep. I’ve seen hardly anyone and I haven’t had a beer in over a week.

This is life on the arse-end of the semester. Four assignments due in a three-week period. We’re still in that period, the last one’s due on Tuesday.

So I’m still not blogging and all of the above.

But in the name of procrastination and pride, I thought I’d post the following interviews I did for Yartz, with Lisa Dempster and Emilie Zoey Baker. They were done just before the EWF, there’s just been a little delay in getting them up – technical stuff. Computers, hey?

As I can’t figure out how to embed youtube clips:

Here’s Lisa’s interview.

And here’s Emilie’s.

And for those of you who just can’t get enough, here’s a link to the reading that EZB was kind enough to do for the Yartz .

Enjoy your weekend viewing, my friends, and I will return to this very blog after Tuesday when I am officially ON HOLIDAYS!

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Ex Calamus

It’s Latin for “from the pen”. Dig? I think it’s a smart name.

Ex Calamus is a publishing collective powered by RMIT Creative Writing students. We were looking for a way to keep ourselves writing and get in practise for actual publication, and so Ex Calamus was born.

The Ex Calamus webzine is a weekly publication. On Thursday night, all Ex Calamus writers are emailed a theme. The deadline is 6am Sunday morning. So Ex Calamus is a high-pressure quick-turn-around project.

In its third week now, the Ex Calamus webzine’s past themes – “Gold”, “So don’t close the blinds”, and “This Space Intentionally Left Blank”. A different writer from the group nominates the theme each week.

I submitted a short story called “Johnno in the Easement”, about a kid who is forced to grow up in the blank space between his parents’ garage and the fence.

The webzine is available for download as a PDF document, and is uploaded on Monday afternoons. Keep your eyes on it!

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Darkness and Addictions

It’s a well-known historical fact – creative people, writers particularly, are really good at addictions.

Amphetamines, prescription drugs, opium, alcohol.

Life have compiled a whole album of “Famous Literary Drunks Or Addicts” – there are some surprising addictions up there such as Louisa May Alcott’s addiction to opium, though typhoid-related-fever is a decent excuse.

I can’t say I was surprised by this. I know addiction and creativity go hand-in-hand. Many creative people seem to have that “something-to-get-away-from” in common. Perhaps this is why so many of us find ourselves in reading, and deal with ourselves better in writing. Or drinking. Or substance abuse. They’re all just ways to crawl away from the dark places.

Over the last weekend at the Emerging Writers’ Festival,  on a panel titled “Going To A Dark Place”, writer Joel Magarey talked about his OCD. I left that room really encouraged by the fact that this man has written a book that deals so candidly with something that’s so stigmatised and crippling. To look your demons in the face like that, and not be afraid to put it out there, is amazing. It should also be noted that the OCD is not all Joel’s book is about. It doesn’t take over.

Lisa Dempster’s “Neon Pilgrim” confronts her depression. Henry Rollins’ “Black Coffee Blues” talks about depression, making it dark but essentially toothless. Even J.K Rowling’s “Harry Potter” has dealt with depression in her children’s books, and she is not ashamed to tell people.

The list of writers with depression or other mental illness is endless, but mostly we never find out about it. And when we do it’s an “Oh. Who’d have known?” situation. It’s certainly more okay to put these kind of things out there now, but I don’t think we should underestimate the strength of people who do.

I’m constantly chased by anxiety. And when I hide in the toilets now there’s that poster on the back of the door staring at me, letting me know that “Anxiety Is Paralysing” (thanks Lady, I get it!) and I curse that bitch while I try to breathe like I have normally sized lungs.

I think the key to dealing with the “dark” parts of ourselves is to accept them. Work around them.

Turn the darkness into something productive.

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Breakable Bags, Zelda and Reframing Rejection

8.30am. It was absolutely freezing this morning, but I got out of bed. I got to the city. I got coffee. When I walked up to the door of the Town Hall, a fatherly looking man in an entirely-too-endearing beefeater-esque hat shook his head and made me finish my coffee outside. There are some serious injustices in Melbourne.

Once safely in those doors, the caffeine starting to do its job, Festival Fever took over. They asked for my autograph (…on the door list), they handed me a WEEKEND PASS necktag, and they pointed me towards showbags. And I have to say, I have mixed feelings about this year’s showbag. Last year, the bag itself was awesome (I still use it on a daily basis), but the contents weren’t so crash hot, with more pamphlets for things not relevant to me than things I was actually interested in. This year, however, the bag itself is incredibly cool (great size and comfy to wear) but dangerously breakable. I can see myself having to carry another bag inside this bag, in wait of its breaking day. Until such time – awesome. And the contents! ABR, Inscribe, Readings’ catalogue, Bookseller + Publisher, Wet Ink. And even the pamphlets are actually relevant and interesting – I don’t know how much of this was planned and how much just came in, but I’ll be busy with its contents for a while.

The day had an insane amount of knowledge on offer, so I came out pretty tired. So much went into my brain, and such is the extent of the notes I took, that I simply can’t recall all of it. I can, however, retrace my steps in terms of rooms and events, and give you a little taste of the glory that was the Emerging Writers’ Festival Town Hall Program today.

The day started with “Seven Enviable Lines”, which featured the Festival Ambassadors sharing seven pieces of advice they wished they’d received earlier in their careers. Natasha Campo’s “publish or perish” was quickly written down by me, and affirmed at every panel today. She also stressed the importance of being brave in asking for help from whatever relevant people you can find. Advice I’ll definitely be taking on board.
Sean Riley’s advice was not to be afraid to use the words “no”, “absolutely not”, and “go fuck yourself” – if, as a writer, you’re not backing your own work, then nobody will. He also said to remember to “arrive late and leave early” in scenes. An uproariously funny speaker, and certainly one I’ll jump to see if there’s an opportunity in future.
Jill Jones’ advice was to be aware that “writing is bad for your health – especially your posture”. As soon as she said this, everyone in the room wiggled in their chairs and straightened up self-consciously.
While this panel was on, it was nice to see each of the speakers nodding and each other’s advice. Also funny to see was Julian Shaw taking a photo on his iPhone – which soon appeared on Twitter. It was a reminder of the huge role that Twitter has played in the whole festival this year, and which was hugely present in every panel, whether through people talking about Twitter or just the guys either side of me posting tasty little snippets from their smart phones.

As I moved from room to room, trying to find zany ways to wear my necktag like they do on Survivor, I couldn’t help but feel comforted by the amount of people walking around with notebooks, madly trying to hold on to the pearls of wisdom imparted there. In fact, it was the people without the notebooks that looked somehow out of place.

Dion Kagan hosted the panel on interviewing, titled “The Gentle Art of Persuasion”. Dion cited many of his own “train-wreck” interviews as proof that the only real way to get better is to practise. I must say, I took a lot of encouragement from this – my first two interviews for camera aired just over a week ago – I’m still waiting to see them. I know now, though, that if they’re terrible it’s just a right of passage. Panelist Barb Lemon compared interviewing to adding character voices when reading a children’s book – I’d never thought of it like this, but now that the thought’s been introduced, I’ll be sure to approach story material in a much more interview-y way.
Travel writer Brian Thacker had some insanely wonderful stories, and he approached all his travels in this way – no formal interviews, just approaching it all with curiosity, taking notes, quotes in shorthand.
All the panelists also offered little hints to make interviewing much easier – check, double-check, triple-check all the technical stuff. Press record before you enter the room to make it more comfortable in dictaphone interviews. Have questions in a notebook, but don’t read them out verbatim. Best piece of advice for the panel, though?
Tate Ischia shared his favourite piece of advice about writing – that the whole thing is like Zelda. You have to go on weird quests which seem to have nothing to do with anything, meeting lots of people and doing lots of little tasks. In the end, all of this means you slay the dragon. You win the game.

The “Taking It Online” panel (exactly what the name implies) started with Phillip Thiel’s embracing of the impermanence of the internet. “It’s writing made to fade, and quickly forgotten”, he said. While that’s a scary thing in many ways, Phillip seems to have come to terms with it, embraced it, indeed turned it upon itself: his work centres around “a year of…” projects. This year, Phillip is kissing a different person every day – today it was festival director Lisa Dempster.
Also in this panel Mel Campbell put forward a convincing case for writers not to allow themselves to be taken advantage of just because of the newness of writing for online audiences.

In “Never Surrender”, the amazingly accented and very funny Paul Callaghan encouraged us to “reframe” rejection and accept it as part of the process not only of being a writer, but of being a human being. Elizabeth Campbell echoed this, saying that failure can be treated as something both inevitable and productive. By far the most entertaining speaker of the day though, was Sean Condon, who lamented his failure. Indeed, his failure at even failing saying he “counts actual rejection as something of a success!” – he by far prefers a rejection letter to being utterly ignored.

The final speaker of the “Mining The Personal” panel, Lou Sanz, was an absolute hoot: while her contribution wasn’t rife with advice, it was certainly a nice piece of comic relief when my mind was getting too full of information.

Today’s program ended with “The Pitch” – a panel featuring representatives from different publications and publishing houses. While most of the information boiled down to “read the submission guidelines, be considerate”, some more specific tips from certain publications will hopefully give me a bit of an advantage next time I submit something to them.

It started at 9.00am. It finished at 5.30pm. It was a damn long day, but one I’m so glad I didn’t miss.

The EWF Town Hall program is on again tomorrow, so if you’re free you should come down and soak up some of the fantastic advice and inspiration on offer.

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The Importance of Creative Peers, Again

A few weeks ago I posted about creative people’s hierarchy of needs. The one that resonates most with me is “the need for creative peers”.

The last week has really solidified that for me.

Currently in the last week of semester, which is followed by two or three weeks of things-still-due, my fellow course-mates have been working furiously on a final writing folio for one subject. Mine isn’t due until next Tuesday, so I’m still breathing easily, but some others were not. I received a 5am email begging for help to cut 500 words from a 2,500 word story. I did my best.

All throughout the week coming up to this, I’d also received copies of many other people’s stories for feedback.

My boyfriend laughed at me. I didn’t mind though. Because I know that when I get up to 24-hours before the due date and stress out about my idea being no good, and can’t see the typos for the words, and have to either make up or cut out 500 words – well then I know my creative peers will be there, inboxes wide open, ready to help.

And even when it’s not about editing, I can’t stress how grateful I am to have all these creative people around me. There’s a group of slam poets waiting to hear my latest lyrical bonanza. There’s a publication group waiting for me to send in some work to help make it great. There’s a TV show waiting for my reviews and interviews. And there’s you, dear reader, waiting with bated breath for my next post.

All these people just make it so much easier to produce. I’m thankful for you all.

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Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
  •  You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

“As she kept talking, the paramedics manoeuvred the stretcher into the lift and pressed the button for the ground floor. The doors slid shut on the woman lifting a pretend phone to her ear just like the treadmill guy, while at the same time a voice called out, ‘Is that Alice Love I just saw on that stretcher?’ ”

From What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty.

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