Writing is something I have done for as long as I can remember – retreating to the page whether in a journal or a scribbled story outline or two. I write best when I am away from my familiar, trust me I have a study, a writing desk and a library of books and I write best on the move – in crowded, noisy spaces, on planes and recently, in hotel lobbies…When I lived in the UK, writing on trains was a total joy, the rocking and moving scenery allowed me to retreat to the world I am trying to create.
My pen has been stilled by events, by sudden deaths and periods of darkness – and each time I have had to learn to write again, trust the shaky voice and write until the pen flows, The result is not always pretty and more often than kept locked away. Imagine my shock when I realised that I learned to write from my father, a story teller and secret keeper. He left school at 12 and I have no memory of ever seeing him read a book or speak of writers, yet he encouraged us to read – all be it encyclopedias and medical books – the latter I have no idea why our parents had such books – they were heavy, thick complete with diagrams and moveable parts…and no, none of his seven children work in the medical field.
I had spent years distancing myself from a man that I saw as hard and not as cultured as I and yet, his stories, vivid antidotes of growing up in Antigua stayed within and slowly emerged. Names, places, events stretched and re-imagined and the more I wrote, the more I realised that I was trying to understand him and me, my feelings towards him, his life and our relationship. And unlike a character in a famous TV program who asked questions about relationships in their monologue, real life doesn’t offer such moments. Yet, the inner dialogue finds comfort on the written page – A character can question a moment that had no real significance at the time.
Events sketched and redrawn with clarity – people who died before my spirit took root on earth stood before me – they are filled with anger, love, lust, cruel intentions, kind moments and adventures. The more I allowed myself to follow these characters, the more I saw my father in 3D and things that I thought made sense no longer mattered and things that mattered, no longer made sense. This I know for certain – writing, real writing comes from a place you can’t quite touch or place, yet, it has power. For a long time I though that ‘Write What You Know’ literally meant limiting yourself to your experiences and community and now I know that it means a lot more than that. It is writing about what you want to question; what you want to make better; what you want the world to see and sometimes, just sometimes, it’s about allowing our imagination to take flight and touch worlds we can only feel…..
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