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Sam van Zweden

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Admiration/Inspiration Thursday

Today I feel like I could do just about anything. I haven’t slept through a whole night in a very long time, but the last two nights I have. I thought you should all know – today I feel really good. 

Inspiration in the last week has been much and varied: 

Nanofiction based in an alley

 

I found my missing copy of Monica Wood’s “The Pocket Muse”. Haven’t heard of it before? Get it. Trust me. It makes it easier to get the cogs moving on those days when it just doesn’t want to happen. I actually just found it on Google Books, but I do so love my hard copy. Hand-bag sized, loving little volume of word-making things! 

I’ve been messing around with micropoetry and nanofiction submissions this week for the Melbourne Writer’s Festival’s “Poetry 4 U” event. I took some inspiration for this from a woman I used to live with. She makes such wonderful stories, her actual personality is so much better than anything I could make up. I love to write about her. 

School has provided inspiration – actually setting me tasks I’m interested in doing (oh, bless you, RMIT!). I wrote a few scenes from my family history and was surprised by how fun it was. I imagined my grandparents’ terror at the prospect of going to Bonegilla (what a happy experience this website makes it seem!).  

I’m going to write a column today about reading on public transport and the joys and problems of that. Inspired by a friend unashamedly telling me that he covers embarrassing book covers with brown paper so he won’t be judged. 

Feeling good is a good place to write, so often it comes from that other place. 

So right now, I’m inspired by this mysterious glow that comes from being well-rested. I’m off to write!

5

In Other Words… I’m On The Radio!

I’ll be chatting to the lovely Jorja Kelly at Syn (90.7 FM) tomorrow afternoon. Jorja hosts “In Other Words“, a Syn show about all things language. It airs from 3 – 3.30pm on Tuesdays.

And it’s LIVE! Terrifying, no?

Tune in to discover a new must-listen show, and hear me put my foot in my mouth on live radio!

In Other Words:
Tuesdays at 3-3.30pm
LIVE on Syn 90.7 FM

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Why Write?

As the first week of semester, this week there have been a lot of introductions. This has been a bit weird, because my course is specialized and I have my classes with all the same people. Introductions were purely for the teacher’s benefit, as we all know each other quite well by this stage.

There were a few different questions. They included; “What’s something peculiar about yourself?”, “What was the last good book you read?”, “What was the first piece of literature that really spoke to you?”, “What’s your favourite album?”, and possibly one of the more challenging ones – “Why do you write?”

Wow. Why write? It’s just too big a question to answer concisely.

I was put on the spot, and I think my answer in class was something like, “Ahhh…. Because I have something to say. But right now I have nothing to say.” I’ve been thinking about it since then. Why write?

Tonight at work these guys came in who I recognized instantly. These particular guys made many years of my life hell, though I hadn’t thought about them in a few years. When I was about 10, I had a big crush on a boy in my class. I wrote him a note and left it in his locker (actually, plastic tubs we called ‘lockers’…it all felt very grown-up). It confessed my love for him, and likened us to Romeo and Juliet (ugh!). I feel squicky just thinking about how soppy it was – gimme a break though, I was ten, and it was my first big crush.

When the boy got the letter, I don’t know what happened. I still don’t know if he showed his friends, or if he just decided to make my life hell without telling them the reason. Whatever happened, he and his posse of cool hot guys set about making the remainder of primary school hell, and this continued throughout my teenage years even though he went to a different high school.

It was really psychological stuff – I don’t remember him ever physically hurting me or anything. But I remember the looks he gave me, and the way he and his whole group would whisper when I walked past. I never told my parents, but when they told me I had to go to the private high school he went to, I begged them to send me to the public school instead. I told my parents I wanted to be with my friends, but it wasn’t so much that as wanting to avoid the torture this boy would put me through if we were at the same high school. He and his friends made me feel about two centimetres tall, every time I saw them. Growing up in a small town, it was hard to avoid. In the end it had nothing to do with the letter I left him when we were ten. It was just about how I was nothing.

So when these guys walked into the store, I felt nauseous. I wanted to hide under the counter, or run off to the toilet and let someone else serve them before they noticed me. I was working alone though, so I couldn’t.

It was really confronting – I felt exactly like I did in primary school. They still have some kind of power over me, even in Melbourne where I thought I’d shaken off all that kind of thing.

I’ve been thinking about them all night. That train of thought collided with many others. One was “Why Write?”, another was “Fucking Anxiety”.

And I came up with part of an answer that I feel satisfied with as to why I write.

Control.

I could never control how those boys made me feel, or what they did to me. I can’t control a great many things now. But I’ve always been able to control what I create. And that’s not to say that writing is some kind of cathartic process for me, because it’s not. I don’t write things to share which serve to sort out my feelings.

Words never turn me away. They never make me feel tiny, no matter how frustrated I get while working them into the shape they need. I can always depend on them, and I can control what I have to say about the world through them.

Why Write? For me, part of it is about control.

6

Admiration/Inspiration Thursday: A Week of Inspiration

This week, I’ll be sharing with you some of the inspiration for my writing this week. Via the wonderful Steph Bowe I discovered “We Heart It“, and have been sourcing a lot of inspiration from there.
So here’s kind of an inspiration journal for the last week:

I’ve also taken inspiration from an old chair I used to own. It was big and red, and I bought it with one of my best friends for $25 – he bought the matching one. He still has his, but mine broke. I have a lot of memories that go with that chair, and they’ve been inspiring me.

I’m reading Jane Austen (still) and her language has been creeping into mine. It’s frustrating to know I absorb things like that, I’m so unsure of my own voice. It becomes really obvious when Jane Austen shows up in my work, I wonder how much more subtle stuff gets past me. I don’t know if it’s inspiration so much as influence here…

I’ve been playing with my hair all week. I got it cut last week and I’ve been trying to make it work for me. Not there yet, but the attention to myself for however long it takes each morning leaves me feeling a little better about myself. Self-confidence inspires me.

7

Hit Me

Hit Me

Tom sits heavy at the table, so heavy that his bum muscles start going numb.

“Hit me,” he says.

Perfectly tuned machines ping around him, he cannot see outside, and pretty soon his arse will lose feeling altogether. Tom sits even heavier.

He says, “Hit me.”

A clock flies across the room, “YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT FUCKING TIME IT IS,” Anna screams, and Tom quickly shuts the door behind him, falling on unsteady feet toward his wife.

He sees his kids sitting in their pyjamas at the kitchen table. Their faces are filled with sleep and they both hold teddy bears.

“Oh, hey guys!” The kids don’t smile. One of them starts crying.

Anna’s picking up her car keys, saying “I’ve had enough of this, Tom. I’m done with this shit.”

She’s picking up already-packed bags and moving towards the door, telling the kids to follow her. Tom steps into the doorway ahead of Anna.

“Put the bags down, sweetness,” to Anna.
“Go back to bed, guys” to the kids, with a confident smile. They stay where they are.
“You’re not going fuckin’ anywhere,” to Anna.

She looks into his eyes with a hard expression, none of the softness she had when Tom married her. The clock’s still ticking, but the second hand’s shuddering in the one place, like time stands still.

“I was out with the boys,” Tom tells his wife, “Time got away from us. No matter. Let’s go to bed, my love.”

Anna shakes her head, glances quickly towards the kids.

“I told you to choose, Tom. We’ll lose the house. There’s no savings. It’s all gone! I can’t stick around for this.”

She moves toward the door again but Tom grabs her by the arm, hard.

“And take my fuckin’ children, woman? No no,” he shoves her back against the fridge, his hands around her throat before he realises what he’s doing.

As Anna’s whole body strains against Tom’s strength, he comes to himself and lets go. He falls back across the room, hits the wall, and slides to the floor. There are tears.

“You piece of shit,” chokes Anna, grabbing their children by the wrists and pulling them behind her to the door.

“Hit me,” begs Tom, “I’m done. I’m sorry. I won’t go back, just don’t leave. You can’t leave! Go on, hit me!”

She’s out the door, and Tom moves after her. The car engine starts, and Tom watches the headlights grow smaller into the night, away from the house.

He screams into the night.

“HIT ME!”

He can’t go home. There’s nothing there, just piles of microwave food baked onto plates from three weeks ago, and bills shoved under the door, spilling across the kitchen floor. There’s no dial tone anymore, and even if there was he wouldn’t know where to call. They’ve disappeared. Pretty soon the house will go too.

“Eighteen,” says the dealer.

Tom nods slowly.

“Hit me.”

“Twenty-five,” says the dealer, scooping up the cards, “Bust.”

“Hit me,” says Tom.

The dealer just stares.

Tom says, “Hit me.”

This piece appeared in Ex Calamus ezine, issue number seven, which can be downloaded here. Support local emerging writers, read Ex Calamus!

4

Old people, dead birds, relationship breakdowns

It’s a gripping title, no?

I’ve been meaning to post about recurring themes and imagery in my writing, and to find out if this happens to other people. Will I grow out of it? Do I actually want to grow out of it?

I go through phases where the same imagery pops up in my writing, whether I like it or not. And they continue to resurface.

I’ve gone through a phase with disjointed and severed limbs. One with dead birds. Right now I’m going through a thing with old people. Usually there’s a relationship breakdown involved, or cyclical and unstoppable time. Perhaps it’s the way all these things can be connected to decay, and appropriate to use with breakdowns and time.

I’m torn between whether this makes my writing same-ish, or if it’s giving me the opportunity to really explore the possibilities of imagery. I’m leaning towards the latter. I never use the same image in the same way. It’ll get recycled, but it a new direction…

Does this happen to anyone else?

3

Paying Off

One thing I’ve found essential in this writing game – a thick skin.

I’ve been submitting my work to magazines and journals for about a year now, and it’s a really bizarre process. Most times, you email off your submission and you don’t know whether they’ve received it or not, then you sit on your hands for the allotted amount of time before assuming you’re safe to send the piece off somewhere else.

Occasionally I’ll receive a “Thanks for your submission – we’ll get back to you shortly,” and when I do my heart bursts with joy at some (any!) sort of acknowledgement.

Only recently have I got entirely practical and a little bit anal about this thing, and made a spreadsheet which details which piece went where, when, and when I should hear expect to hear back from them – and then the contact details of who I plan to contact if I don’t hear back. That was one thing that became really clear to me throughout the EWF – if you don’t hear from an editor within the timeframe they give you (most submissions guidelines will tell you how long you can expect to wait), it’s absolutely okay to contact them to check what’s happened to your submission. Editors are people too. They get busy. They lose stuff. They experience technical cock-ups.

The last year has been a long haul of ‘submit/wait/submit somewhere else/wait again/maybe get an actual “no”/cry for a bit/submit somewhere else/wait … ” (ad infinitum). But after all this, I think I’ve finally gotten somewhere, folks!

Yesterday I received not one, but TWO emails that made my heart sing. One said, ‘yes, yes actually we would love to publish your piece!’… the other said they thought my piece had potential, made some suggestions for re-working, and encouraged me to re-submit it.

I won’t name names of publications here, because I have a feeling that’s not entirely kosher. Let me give you all a bit of a spoiler about your first acceptance letters though – they are ABSOLUTELY the opposite of rejection letters.

The rejection letters I’ve received thus far go something like: “Dear Sam, Thanks for your submission to ____. Due to the volume and quality of submissions we have received, and limited space in the publication, the editorial process has been difficult. We are sorry to inform you that we will not be including your piece in our next issue, however we encourage you to submit more work in the future. Regards, Editor.”

They’re so vague and soul-crushing. “BUT WHY!?” I’m screaming at my computer, “WHY!? What was wrong with the piece?”

Acceptance letters though? Nice. Lovely! None of this vagueness. They say yes, then they tell you exactly why they think you’re awesome. I kid you not. It’s such a just payoff for all the soul-crushing the last year has brought. Finally, finally, finally, I got something past an editor!

So keep your eyes peeled, kids, I’ll keep you updated as to WHERE my work will be appearing closer to publication date.

And maintain a thick skin. It’ll happen.

4

Together Again

They had 47 years together
before Grandpa got swept away
on a tide of cold sweats and
shaking limbs.

They planted a sack of rattling bones in the ground.
The test tubes and charts left behind
had nothing to do with what we remembered
Grandpa to be.

We cleared all that away,
all the empty pill bottles
the special oxygen mask next to their bed –
we kept the Grandpa from before.

Grandma smiled sadly,
standing in his cardigan at the cemetery –
her feet pointed toward Grandpa’s grave
as she stared into the hills.

“He’s at peace now,” she said.
But all I could think of was
that bag of bones under six feet of clay,
the earth pushing down on him.
But not the “him” that I remember.

She wore the cardigan for ten days,
and when she wore her own clothes again,
they were just
…black.

She seems less now,
shrinking into whatever black she wears today
and I wonder if she still sets his place,
or turns down his side of the bed.

I wonder how it is that they’ll
find one another in the dark,
together again in the family grave,
when the dirt is just so heavy.

This piece appeared in Ex Calamus’ sixth edition, themed “Reunion”. You can download it here.

4

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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