Essay by Luke Foster
“I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” J. D. Salinger
I think I am up to the fifth or sixth time of proofreading my book Mother’s Love. The more I look the more I see that needs changing and now I am thinking the big problem is that I have made is by including the names and stories of people I have known without asking them.
The other big mistake is that most of the book was written just for me and not to be published for public consumption so there is a double up of ideas and quotes. As I wrote most of the essays as separate entities rather than a collection to be put together in a book.
My spelling has been atrocious particularly of people’s names as word spell check doesn’t always cover these.
I think to become a better writer I need to get back into the good habit of reading lots of novels and biography’s and I have only read two books in the past four months. The books I read are Haruki Murakami’s the Novelist as a Vocation and Faith Hope and Carnage an interview between Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan. Murakami’s book was about how he approaches writing his novels and the one about Nick Cave delved into all areas of his life and I most liked how he talked about the process that he uses to create his books and songs.
“You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.” Haruki Murakami
I started reading Murakami as when I lived in South Korea many years ago his novel called Norwegian Wood was one of the few books in English that I could find at the bookstore, and I didn’t read it until many months later when I returned to Australia.
“In getting older, I find myself becoming progressively more ineffectual in a lot of different ways, and part of that is down to no longer having the youthful feeling that what you’re doing has any true impact.” Nick Cave
I find this quote by Cave interesting, and I perhaps am starting to feel the same way, but I think all you can do is be honest with yourself with your creativity and not be concerned with what is happening around you.
I think I am in a better head space than last year when my mental headspace was woeful, but I didn’t realise it. Now I have support workers who help me with being grounded in my mental health and organising concrete things outside myself rather than the manic creativity where I produced a lot but a lot of it was of poor quality particularly my drawing.
Now I have a couple of studio residencies lined up and two art exhibitions so instead of wafting along I have concrete deadlines and goals to achieve.
I am also trying to organise myself to get a part time job as I need more money to achieve my artistic goals.
