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Raising Social Justice Awareness with Meaghan Katrak Harris

May 5, 2022

In Podcast Episode 16, Raising Social Justice Awareness, I chat with Meaghan Katrak Harris – author of Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism about her book and how the arts can be a powerful medium for raising social justice awareness.

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Welcome to Episode 16 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Raising Social Justice Awareness.

I’m joined by Meaghan Katrak Harris – Social Worker, Academic, Consultant, Writer and author of Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism.

We chat about writing Memories and Elephants, genres, influences, publishing, casual racism and privileged practices and behaviours and their impact on individuals and society. And how the arts can be a powerful medium for raising social justice awareness.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

  • Meaghan’s background in social work and academia
  • Meaghan’s Book, Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism
  • Lived experience and telling your own story
  • How we’re all more than one story
  • The insider/outsider dance
  • Creative non-fiction and memoir-based narrative
  • Creative influences and inspiring authors
  • How privilege plays out in racism and other contexts
  • Raising social justice awareness through the arts

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 16 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 5th of May as I record this.

II’m excited to have Meaghan Katrak Harris, author of Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism join us for the podcast today.

Meaghan is a social worker, academic, consultant and writer. She has a long and diverse social work background. This includes extensive experience and commitment to working alongside First Nations Peoples, families and communities. When not writing, Meaghan lectures and researches in social work at the University of Sydney and works in private practice across social work supervision, individual, group work and organisational change. Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism is her first creative non-fiction book.

Meaghan and I have connected online as fellow the kind press authors, publishing our books within a few months of each other. It’s been exciting to watch Meaghan launch and share her important book, Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism with the world. We chat about Meaghan’s book as well as her work as social worker, academic and writer, and her key themes and lived experiences. They all weave together around the value of community and raising awareness of social justice issues and impacts.

Today we will be speaking about writing Memories and Elephants, genres, influences, publishing, casual racism and privileged practices and behaviours and their impact on individuals and society.

Enjoy listening to this insightful and inspiring conversation!

I hope it encourages you to read Memories and Elephants and to take some time to think beyond the dominant narrative.

So let’s head into the interview with Meaghan.

Transcript of interview with Meaghan Katrak Harris

Terri Connellan: Hello Meaghan. And welcome to the Create Your Story podcast.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Hi, thank you for having me.

Terri Connellan: Thank you for your connection across our writing and books. We’ve connected online as fellow authors in the kind press around writing and publishing. And it’s great to chat further on this today. So can you provide a brief overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work you do know?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Sure. Yes. Thank you. So I’m a social worker and I have been for probably nearly 30 years now, working alongside communities in various roles. Probably about the last 15 years, I’ve also been an academic, teaching and researching in social work. So that’s been my career to date and social work’s such a broad profession, it’s given me the opportunity for lots of different ways of working with people. And, academia, I guess, has led me into doing more writing as well.

Terri Connellan: Awesome. Yeah, so it’s great to see how all the different strands of your personal life and professional life have come together to this day. So let’s have a look at your book, particularly, I’m really excited to talk about Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism.

And congratulations on your book published in early December, 2021. So we’ve both recently enjoyed that process of taking a book from that idea from jotting things down, through to published book. Can you tell us a bit about what that process was like for you?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Sure. It actually happened quite quickly, the process, which was exciting and interesting. And it actually started with my submission to the This I Know is True book through the kind press. And that happened really just because a good friend of mine, Annabel Sharman, who writes the introductory chapter, said to me, you should put a chapter in this book. You should get into this. And I looked at it, I looked at the submission and I thought, this looks awesome, but I don’t think that I’m the right fit.

Anyway, I said this to Annabel and she said, look, please just talk to the publisher. Talk to Natasha [Gilmour], everything that you talk about, she has a similar view on crossing genres and perhaps, maybe disrupting genres a bit and writing across academia and also creative writing. And, supporting women led businesses, the whole gamut. So the long story short was I did do the chapter and then I got into a conversation.

I’d already written the essay. And I got into a conversation with Natasha and I said, look, I’ve got about 12 I’d like to publish. And, several months later there we are. I’d nearly finished all the essays. I did another self sort of lockdown to get the last bit done, but, I had the work there and it was just a beautiful fit to find the kind press, I think for me.

Terri Connellan: Yes, I absolutely loved working with the kind press too. Natasha and her team are just really fabulous. Kind, as their name suggests and groundbreaking, I think in the approaches that they take to different voices and as you say, cross genre work, pushing the boundaries a bit. So in terms of the actual pieces, were they written over many years?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Oh no, I smashed it in a few months, probably in lockdown. I got a bit of inspiration and one of the first essays was the privilege of sharing parenting fails. And I wrote that as a response to what I was seeing happening and kind of my internal discomfort with it.

And once I started, I just wrote them all. And, I guess, lockdown probably had something to do with that, time to think, walking and thinking, because I’d written them all in my head. By the time I kind of sat down and put them down on paper. But, I always saw them as a collection. So that’s why I was so happy to put them out together because I kind of felt like it told a story. They are each a standalone essay, but I felt like in their entirety, it was a better story if you like.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I found reading it that there’s a lot in the spaces between what you write. There’s the spoken of what you experience, but also the unspoken. And I think, as you say, across the essays, it connects off into a bigger picture. So can you share with us a snapshot of what Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism is about?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Sure. So I describe it as a series of sociopolitical memoir based essays. So while they’re memoir based, I share my experiences against the backdrop of a bit of a socio-economic analysis of Australian society, culture, you know, the way we see ourselves.

And I kind of try to shine a broader light on the story, on my story, which I think can be extended to other experiences. So I guess for me, the analysis is as important as the memory or the memoir. And that’s kind of was my focus. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, they’re beautifully told, and I think to me, the power of them is really just capturing those moments in life, when, as you call it casual racism and casual because it just seems to slide off, people’s tongues because of that privilege that people feel. And I think it’s that ability to capture the moment, but also the impact on you. You talk about feeling winded at times and the physical reaction of what happens on you is really beautifully told, but also must’ve been hard to tell.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: It was, you know, I shed tears writing it, but I felt like it was an important story to tell. The hardest thing was deciding whether it was in fact, my story to tell. And again, I consulted with people I love and my family and basically, they said, well, you know, this is your story, this is your story. If you can’t tell your own story, then what can you write about? But I was very careful to not to appropriate an experience that wasn’t my own. Because I’m also a white Australian person. So I have with that, all the inherent privileges, that every other white Australian has, but I have borne witness to this casual racism with my Aboriginal family and my multicultural family.

And, it is my lived experience, but I really wanted to be clear to position myself as to not to be appropriating the lived experience beyond what was mine. And I think doing it as memoir based, I just told it how it happened. So hope that that came across and the feedback I’ve had so far is that it, that it did. That’s how I came up with the ‘we’re all more than one story’, we’re all more than one defining characteristic. And, I could be defined by lots of things and lots of things that don’t define me at all, based on my appearance or where I live or what I do when we’re all so much more than that.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, absolutely. I loved that point where you said, you know now we are all more than one story and I think that intricacy to the insider/outsider dance, that’s hard to get right in your memoir. I was interested to hear more about that dance. It’s a dance you’ve engaged in for many decades now.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: I guess it is, but I think it’s probably something that, as we get older and wiser, we think about more, perhaps the complexities of when we’re younger and we’re living our life. And I was always very sure of my place in my family. Absolutely. And I still am in and in my community. But I guess I talk about when, being part of an Aboriginal community and the commitment to the advancement and activism, when that morphed into work, I felt there was a change in me that I became more aware that I could be taking up, as a white person, taking up space.

And I was never made to feel like that by other people. This was my own internal dance, if you like. And I think it’s an important one to be aware of. And I know at times, I consciously stepped back from employment and changed to work in mainstream as we call it, because I was so fortunate to start my career as a community worker in an Aboriginal community controlled organization. And, that was a privilege that has shaped me beyond anything I could say.

But then I also reached that time in that dance when I realized that, you know what, this is part of who I am too. And if I’m not honoring that, I’m not honoring my Aboriginal family and friends. If I’m feeling like I can’t honour that part of my life, then that’s not showing respect to those people that have had such an impact on my children, my family. And I feel like, in some ways maybe the essay, particularly, The art of casual racism was kind of my showing up for that and saying, okay, this is it. This is how I see it. This is who I am, and this is how I’ve lived it and continue to live it.

Terri Connellan: And I think, as you said before, touching into your lived experience is a really powerful lens for each of us. Particularly for you, telling your story with so many different cultural experiences and community experiences and diversity, which is fabulous. Thank you for sharing that. So, how would you describe the genre that you write in and what were your influences? We mentioned cross-genre before.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Creative nonfiction, I guess. They’re memoir based narratives. I have always been a big reader. and I guess I never really realised the impact that reading creative nonfiction has had until quite recently, when I started writing these. And I talk about it in the first essay where I am suddenly drawn back to reading this genre because my head’s in that space. I’m writing these stories in my head. So I’m back reading Helen Garner, I’m reading, Joan Didion, I’m reading Roxanne Gay. I’m just really quite obsessed with reading other people’s stories. And I found that very validating because there is so many different ways to do this. There’s not one right way to write it. You write it as it comes, I guess. But yeah, I don’t think I’d realised the impact that creative non-fiction has had until now.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And you mentioned Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence too, which I also read when I was writing my book and I found that a really validating book.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Absolutely. And I’m glad you reminded me of that because I read that after I pretty much finished that essay. It came out or I got hold of it anyway. Julia Baird talks about, 20 years ago, as a young uni student, I think finding Helen Garner. And I thought, oh gosh, I’ve talked about that. And then I thought, of course, that’s not an accident. We’ve all talked about that because it is such an influence. So hence, my line about. I know, I felt late to the party, but in good company. So yeah, I found that I bought a copy from several friends. I found that book so important.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, and I think that’s been my experience and from reading your work, I think it’s that trying to find a way to bring our personal life experiences into a narrative that it also shines a light on ways it can help people or guide them on their own journey or give them some tools to think about things.

So, you write in the second person, which I love. It’s one of my favorite voices, I guess, in literature. Why did you choose that? How did you come to writing as you, rather than I, or we?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: I can’t do this question justice and several people have asked me. People have contacted me specifically to ask me why I chose to write the essays like that. And I’ve got no good answer, Terri, other than that’s just have they came out. And I don’t know if future writing will come out like that. I don’t know, but I just couldn’t write them any other way. That’s how they came to me in my head. And so that’s how they went down, and any analysis I’m doing now is retrospective.

I’m wondering why did I need to step back from it? But I don’t know. This is all, you know, with the benefit of hindsight and it’s interesting to think about, and I guess part of the answer will be how any future stuff comes out. If I continue to write it in that style or not.

Terri Connellan: I found it interesting. You said you wrote , the ‘parenting fails’ piece first. Cause that’s the one where I actually really noticed how you’re using ‘you wonder’. The piece is about that ability to joke about something with parenting fails that in other contexts would have dire circumstances or have judgment. And what I found was you were saying, you wonder, hmm, you wonder. I particularly loved how you used it in that context.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Well, thank you. And that was, like I said, I would come home and I would say, can you believe it, this happened or that happened. And I was in a way, naively amazed at how people could not see that or understand, or, even feel a bit embarrassed to be able to joke about these things, because it is such a mark of privilege. You know, I would’ve died before I told anyone that my kids had nits and I’m still like that. And I know it’s a socially responsible thing to do, but when people send those messages, oh god, how can they do that?

If you’ve never been judged, if you’ve never been stereotyped, if you’ve never felt that society could be making assumptions about you, then you have that freedom. And I got such great feedback about that essay. One of the best bits of feedback I got was someone messaged me and just said, ‘Ooph – that got me in the gut – and thank you.’ And that was from the perspective of someone who was in a position to be able to do that. And she had never seen that that was a privilege. And I wondered if I’d been a bit harsh then, but, she was very gracious in her feedback.

Terri Connellan: That’s so amazing to hear. My feeling of reading the piece is I think, cause you took people on the journey with you, of like you said: I’m seeing this, and I’m thinking this, and I’m trying to work this out. I think it just works incredibly well to get the point across and for people to hear you processing, with all your knowledge and all your life experiences, where does this fit? This is not right. And I think, that way of approaching that type of content is going to have more impact than people saying ‘don’t do that’, for example. Yeah. I guess it’s raising awareness, isn’t it and consciousness about the impact?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: It is. And I think honestly that’s probably one of my motivators for doing the essay was I actually feel that the arts is a far better way to address social justice issues and awareness, than straight academia. You know, I joke about, as academics, we might write a paper for other academics to pretend they’ve read or students to read because they have to. It may be great work, but it’s to meet certain criteria for academia and it doesn’t necessarily reach a wider audience.

And I’ve long felt that the most powerful stuff that, I think it can be life-changing has been creative and in the arts. And I didn’t consciously think now I’m going to do this. I got a bee in my bonnet about it. I started that. And then there was that sort of ripple effect where it grew from there, but I feel like that’s where I can make a contribution, if any.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. But then also your academic work is important in another way.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Oh yeah. I’m not diminishing it and I’m not a serious academic like some people are but then I’ve written a few things and I’m part of some great research that I’m very committed to. But I don’t have a full on tenured position. I have had in the past. Then I consciously chose not to stay on that path and it’s important work, but I get far more joy out of creative writing, far more joy.

Terri Connellan: And was it hard to shift from the academic voice or academic way of working to the creative, more personal?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: No, no, this is like the natural state, I think. It was great because a colleague and friend, another academic, who read the book messaged me, and this is the wonderful things you learn about people. She said, ‘oh, fellow over-user of capital letters’. Because I talk about in the acknowledgement that I had a very kind gentle editor who let me have my desire to capitalise important thoughts.

And this friend said, you know, I do that too. Everyone who knows me personally knows I do that. And we joked about it and I joked about how my PhD supervisor many years ago had to beat that out of me. But, in creative writing we can do these things.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, it is great. My work was in government and in the TAFE sector, mostly where you’re writing strategic documents and there’s a certain way of writing. So for me, I still think I’ve got a long way to go to get back to probably my more natural voice. It’s sort of dusting off, or shifting from that academic voice. Yeah.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Exactly. Because it is very different . It’s far more rigid in corporate or academic writing. Of course. Yeah, absolutely.

Terri Connellan: But as you say, it sounds like the way that you’ve worked with Memories and Elephants it’s like you’ve hit your natural gear, found a way to really write joyfully and perhaps express things that have been there for a long time.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Yeah. And it was an absolute joy to do. Absolutely. I loved doing it. I had so many ideas and thoughts that I wanted to get down. And as I said in the first essay, I probably think I only had about 12 stories in me. Well, I did, I had 12 and I knew I was done then with that, I felt like that was enough. And I know I spoke to Natasha from the kind press, when I talked about putting them together. And I said, but I’m worried it’s not enough. And she quoted Elizabeth Gilbert, who’s another writer that I really admire as well, in saying that the story tells you when it’s finished, to paraphrase. That the story will end when it ends.

And I honestly felt like that. I would have had enough material, but I just felt that’s what I wanted to say. And I feel that collection is enough as it is. And funnily enough, lots of feedback has been, I didn’t want it to end. And I thought for a minute, oh gosh, is it not long enough. And then I thought, you know, what? It was finished when it was finished. So that’s not a bad thing.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I think it’s beautiful just the way it is. As I said before, to me, it’s that sense of each piece stands alone, but they reverberate and echo and also keep you thinking a long time after you’ve read and something to go back to. So yeah, I think they work incredibly well. So you’re a social worker, academic and author in the social justice area, as well as we’ve mentioned, across all sectors of government and non-government human services. Can you tell us more about your focus, projects and writing there?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: At the moment I’m teaching at Sydney Uni. I’ve been teaching there for the last three or four years, and I’m working on a few research projects with my colleagues there, that I’m really committed to and feel very fortunate to be involved in. So that’s my academic work at the moment. And I’m also working on a couple of other creative writing projects that I’m hoping will come into fruition this year.

Terri Connellan: Oh, fantastic. That’s great to hear there’s more creative work in the pipeline. Yeah. And I’ve spent some time just reading through some of your academic work too. So it’s been interesting just to see the different perspectives. In a way, your theme is pretty much similar.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: It is, my work is all, whatever it is, social justice, underpinned with my commitment to social justice. And it was interesting when I told a friend of mine about the creative work I was doing… he’s a filmmaker, artist, musician, activist. Richard Franklin, his name is, and he’s a very dear friend. And he said “oh, you’ve been dancing around the edges of the arts for a long time. So it’s about time you jumped in.”

Cause I would always be involved, as a participant, as an audience member, as an advocate and a supporter. And I found that very validating from someone, who’s achieved so much in this space.

Terri Connellan: So have you got any advice, if there’s people who have a similar passion or a similar theme or focus in life around social justice and want to write more personally, would you have any particular tips or thoughts for them?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Honestly, I think finding your authentic voice is the key. Then I don’t really have any advice other than particularly as females, particularly as women to be unapologetic about wanting to have a voice and wanting to put something out into the world, not make ourselves smaller or feel we have to justify and apologise for wanting to do that. I think my advice is take up space, find your big voice. As one of my dear friends and colleagues, Dr. Mareese Terare talks about in social work, is find your big voice and find your authentic voice. I think that would be my strongest advice. And it doesn’t matter, if you’re not ready to share your work, I feel that it helps us grow so much in doing it. And you will find your audience.

Terri Connellan: That’s beautiful. I love that. Find your big voice, that’s great.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: I love it too. And I quote Mareese very regularly with that beautiful term.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And as you say, it’s not all about publication. Just working with a group of women writers at the moment and I think publication is important to think about as a potential path. But it’s really great to have that free writing and that exploring and that ability to find your big voice comes from play.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Yeah, I think that we know what we want really in our heart to do with that work. I know when I had written a few of the essays, I told a friend. They said, oh, you know, maybe you won’t want or need to get them published. Maybe writing them will be enough. No, it won’t be, I want them published. I knew, I felt I had something to say and I knew I wanted to put it out in the world. And it’s just about finding the right way to do that and, and the right time and things like that.

Terri Connellan: That’s great that you did find the right way and the right time then. And I think that’s just part of the author journey, isn’t it? It’s meeting the right people, collaborating, the publishers, the editors, the people encouraging us behind the scenes. It’s all part of the rich journey.

So, a question that I’m asking all people on the podcast being the Create Your Story podcast is how have you created your story over your lifetime?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Oh, gosh, how have I created my story? I think that I’ve never really had a plan particularly. I know that works for some people. I’ve always been open to opportunities and not been frightened to take risks, creatively like, in my career, you know, leave a job, find another job. I think I’ve kind of just tried to live true to my values.

And my commitment to my family has been my driving motivator. But, even if five years ago, someone had said that I would be doing creative non-fiction, I would have been like really? It’s not like I had that on the plan. It’s not like I thought I really want to write, I’m going to sit here and think about what to write about. Like, the stories came to me and I just told them, and I feel like a bit of a witness in that sense, that, it’s our obligation to share what we learn. So I guess my plan has just been to try and do no harm and live a good life.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. It sounds like share your wisdom along the way too.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Well, we hope we get some the way. I don’t know, but we hope so don’t we? I say to my students, the more I know, the less I know, I know. And that remains true.

Terri Connellan: Yep. That’s true. So, my book, Wholehearted, is about wholehearted self leadership tips for women and practices. Thank you. And, so I like to add to the body of work I’ve created by talking to people about their top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women. So I’d love to hear yours.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Honestly, more and more. And I just had a conversation with a dear friend today about this, it’s about, you know, we say, lift a sister up. Let’s take every opportunity to support each other, to promote, to validate, to do all those things that lift us up individually and as friends, but also helps all of us, as women, as writers, as creatives, whatever it might be.

 And about that authenticity, about just showing up as you are, doing your best to support the cause is what I’m pretty big on. I think it’s kind of that simple and that complex.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And it is too, but I love that lift your sister up and yeah, I just really appreciated your support all the way through my writing journey there in the background saying, well done. Thank you. And you know, just liking posts and things. It really helps.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: I feel like we talk a lot about supporting the arts or creativity whether it be black businesses or, and I have this conversation with students where they say they might really want to support a female led business or a black business, but they may not be in a financial position to do that.

And, you can share a post, you can like a post, you can spread the word. And that is helping, that is supporting and that’s showing up. There’s lots of ways we can do that for each. And if we are in a position to purchase something, let’s think about it. I read a quote recently, the way we spend our money basically is a vote for the world we want to live in.

So, do we want to try to support small business, female led, all those things, and less the, you know, big multi-nationals. If we can do that, we should try try the best we can.

Terri Connellan: So true. But I also agree with your point, that there’s so much you can do that doesn’t cost money too. Doing reviews for people, sharing their podcasts, different reviews on blog posts. It’s certainly been part of my journey to both acknowledge others and be acknowledged by others. Again, it’s another type of dance that we can engage in with others and I know my life is so much richer for it as I can see yours is too. So thank you. And, that wraps up our conversation for today. It’s been lovely to have a chat with you, so thank you for your time.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Thank you for having me, Terri. I’ve really enjoyed thinking about some of those questions you posed, so thank you.

Terri Connellan: My pleasure. So where can people find more about you and your work on line?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Well, I’m on Instagram and there’s a link to my stuff there. I’m late to that party, but you know, I’m there for it. I’m finding it a very supportive environment. I’m on Facebook. I’m on LinkedIn also. So I’m not hard to find.

Terri Connellan: And we’ll pop the link to your book too, in the show notes and yeah, just encourage everybody to read Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism. It’s a really important book. I think everybody should read it. And make sure you do all those things we’ve talked about: post a review and share it with others.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Thank you very much.

Terri Connellan: My pleasure.

Meaghan Katrak Harris

About Meaghan Katrak Harris

Meaghan Katrak Harris is a social worker, academic, consultant and writer. She has a long and diverse social work background. This includes extensive experience and commitment to working alongside First Nations Peoples, families and communities. When not writing, Meaghan lectures and researches in social work at the University of Sydney and works in private practice across social work supervision, individual, group work and organisational change. Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism is her first creative non-fiction book.

You can connect with Meaghan

Memories and Elephants

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meaghankatrakharris/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-meaghan-katrak-harris-37718a209/

Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism is a collection of memoir-based essays set against the socio political background of Australian society.

In these essays—written with clarity and compassion by Meaghan Katrak Harris—you’ll explore the intersectionality of Australian culture, classism, racism and identity as the author has lived it. 

Drawing on her experiences of being a teenage mother, a member of a large multicultural family, a social worker, and an academic, Meaghan uses powerful personal narrative to illuminate often uncomfortable aspects of our society—the elephants in the room that have been historically downplayed and ignored. 

Taking you from memories of country life to the city, from the street to national television, Memories and Elephants invites you to think beyond the dominant narrative of Australian identity. 

Terri’s links to explore:

My books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Other free resources: https://www.quietwriting.com/free-resources/

My coaching & writing programs:

Work with me

The Writing Road Trip email list – community writing program with Beth Cregan

Connect on social media

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/

Podcast chats with other the kind press authors including me!

Ep 13 Embracing a Multipotentialite Life with Laura Maya

Ep 10 Intuiting, Channelled Writing & Connecting with Natasha Piccolo

Ep 3 Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch #2

Ep 2 Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch #1

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

May 25, 2021

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About the Wholehearted Companion Workbook

The Wholehearted Companion Workbook works hand in hand with Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition, unveiling Terri Connellan’s transition journey from a successful thirty-year career in one organisation towards a different, more purposeful life. From her experiences, Terri provides positive self-leadership insights for women going through or seeking major change in their lives.

The Companion Workbook goes deeper with how to put the learning into practice. It walks you through the key ideas in Wholehearted including fifteen self-leadership skills, providing deeper reflection and crafting personal strategies to live more wholeheartedly. You will learn how to apply skills and practices like intention setting, writing as daily practice and prioritising exercise and self-care in this practical toolkit for women seeking to positively transition, whether self-initiated or instigated by others or circumstances.

If you love making notes and engaging as you read, reflecting on how what you read might apply in your life, you will find the workbook a valuable companion.

Published by The Kind Press, Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook are out now and available worldwide in both ebook and paperback and in bookshops in Australia. We can’t wait to share the Wholehearted book and story with you to enrich and inspire your wholehearted life.

Consider Wholehearted for your next BOOK CLUB choice. Book Club notes are available. Reach out directly HERE and Terri will do a virtual drop in and guide you through the Wholehearted journey.

PRESS RELEASE: the kind press is proud to announce the release of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition by Terri Connellan


Beth Cregan

Wholehearted is an inspiring and generous story of Terri’s Connellan’s desire to create a purposeful, meaningful life. This book sets you on a quest to claim your ‘onlyness’—the unique blend of style, skills and strengths that only you can offer the world. Like breadcrumbs scattered along a forest path, Terri shares the wealth of resources and practical skills she used to find her way back home. But this isn’t a book you read from the sidelines. Filled with reflective exercises, journaling prompts and mini assignments, you now have a roadmap for rethinking your life and navigating the journey that awaits you.

Beth Cregan, teacher, storyteller, writer and founder of Write Away With Me

Read more about what readers are saying about Wholehearted HERE.


About the author – Terri Connellan

Terri Connellan is a certified life coach, writer and accredited psychological type practitioner. She has a Master of Arts in Language and Literacy, two teaching qualifications and a successful 30-year career as a teacher and a leader in adult vocational education. Her coaching and writing focus on three elements—creativity, personality and self-leadership—especially for women in transition to a life with deeper purpose. Terri works with women globally through her creative business, Quiet Writing, encouraging deeper self-understanding of body of work, creativity and psychological type for more wholehearted and fulfilling lives. She lives and writes in a village on the outskirts of Sydney surrounded by beach and bush.

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Terri Connellan

About the publisher – The Kind Press

The kind press is an independent Australian-based publisher. Those at the kind press work with authors ‘to create high-quality, stylish, books that are diverting, inspiring, spirited and clever.’

Working in partnership with the kind press is the perfect fit. With a focus on sacred co-creation, this is in line with the Sacred Creative Collective and Quiet Writing values and my desire to publish independently. It is a brilliant, supported way to publish and learn more about writing and publishing from those who are expert in the field. You can learn about the kind press HERE.

Sincere thanks to Natasha Gilmour—editor, publisher and founder of the kind press —and all at the kind press for all the support and guidance in shaping Wholehearted and its Companion Workbook for publication.

Media and Permissions

For all media enquiries, or to request permission for use of content from the pages of Wholehearted and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook book, please email your request to publisher@thekindpress.com

Rights

If you are interested in the availability of rights to Wholehearted and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook, please contact natasha@therightshive.com

Keep in touch for updates

Sign up to the Quiet Writing mailing list for book updates, special offers and news! Plus receive the free ’10 Tips for creating more meaning and purpose in your life’ personal action checklist to get you started on more wholehearted living.

Connect on social media

Connect with me on social media! You can find me as @writingquietly in most places. Here are the links to find me on socials. Look forward to connecting there.


love, loss & longing podcast writing

The Healing Power of Writing and Retreat with Kerstin Pilz

December 12, 2021

Subscribe on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Amazon Music | YouTube | Stitcher | Podcast Page |

Welcome to Episode 5 of the Create Your Story Podcast!

In this episode, I’m joined by Kerstin Pilz, published author, former academic, writing teacher, yoga teacher and retreat leader.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

  • Transition and turning points
  • The healing power of writing
  • Dealing with grief and challenges of loss
  • The value of retreat for writing and life
  • Being a TEDx speaker
  • Claiming your story
  • Writing her memoir, ‘Falling Apart Gracefully’
  • Writing practices and teaching
  • And so much more!

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to this episode of the Create Your Story Podcast.

I’m thrilled to be speaking today with my friend, Kerstin Pilz, who you might remember featured in Episode 2 of the podcast as part of the first Wholehearted virtual book launch. Kerstin and I connected via social media and have had the joy of meeting up in three continents and countries including when I joined Kerstin for her first writing and yoga retreat in Hoi An, Vietnam in September 2018. We chat about retreat, the value of incubation in writing, Kerstin’s memoir in progress and more.

But first, a personal update and something you might like to be part of. As I speak it’s the 12th of December 2021 and the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club is open for enrolment with the first orientation session coming up this week on 15 or 16 December, depending on your time zones. This is a year-long, actionable, community read of my books, Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook. So if transition is a big theme or focus for you now and into 2022, it will be a powerful, value-packed way to do the work of transition over time with accountability and community, and make space for the deep shifts you desire. it’s part book club, part group coaching and a transformative reading experience.

So head to the Book Club links or the links in my Instagram bio, where I am @writingquietly to find out more and join the fabulous group of women gathering.

Now to introduce today’s guest.

Kerstin Pilz PhD is a published author, former academic with almost 20 years university teaching experience, a TEDx speaker and a 200 RYT yoga teacher. She is currently completing her memoir Falling Apart Gracefully. Her previous publications include academic monographs and travel features in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the New York Times and travel industry magazines. When tragedy turned her life upside-down, she discovered the healing power of writing and now teaches creative writing online and on multi-day retreats in her beautiful home in Mission Beach, Far North Queensland, Australia and in Hoi An, Vietnam, where she lives part time.

Kerstin and I met via our mutual interest in writing and living a creative life after a more academically and teaching focused career. Kerstin was the retreat host in Vietnam for retreat I attended while writing Wholehearted in 2018, is a Wholehearted Stories author: Grief and pain can be our most important teachers.

Today we will be chatting about transition and turning points, shaping a self-directed creative life, writing as a source of healing and growth in challenging times and the experience of being a TEDX speaker and of writing her memoir ‘Falling Apart Gracefully’.

There’s so much wisdom in this chat and I am excited to share this conversation with Kerstin with you today.

Transcript of interview with Kerstin Pilz

Terri Connellan: Hello Kerstin and welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast. Thank you for your connection, your support of me, Wholehearted and Quiet Writing.

Kerstin Pilz: Thank you, Terri. I’m really pleased to be here. Thank you so much.

Terri Connellan: So we’ve connected around creativity, living a self-directed life, writing and so much more on our journey together. We even met in three continents in Frankfurt, Hoi An and Bundeena where I live. So it’s so great to be able to share the insights from our conversations and our connections today. Can you provide an overview for people listening about your background, how you came to be where you are and the work you do now.

Kerstin Pilz: Okay. Thank you. Well, where to start? You’ll probably be wondering along the track what my accent is so I’ll start with that. I’m German. And when I was eight years old, I thought I want to be a writer. I just loved the idea of creating stories, but then of course, life happened and I moved to Italy and then eventually to Australia and I couldn’t write in either of those languages as a novelist or writer. So I went into a different career. So I taught literature for many years at the university, and I actually ended up doing a PhD in Italian studies on Italian literature. And then life change happened for me and I realized, it’s a turning point that necessitates perhaps finally actually also going for what I’ve always wanted to do, and that is write full time.

And so that took a few stops and starts, copywriting, travel writing, teaching at university and eventually I created Write Your Journey and the idea is I’m sharing tools with my community that helped me heal after a very difficult life event. And writing had been my tool, I call it my lifesaver. So personal reflective writing. And I’m also at the moment finally coming to the end of my draft of my memoir about these events called Falling Apart Gracefully.

Terri Connellan: Incredible. So it’s amazing how many similarities there are in our stories. And we often find the theme s that we both relate to align. One thing we’ve both shared is a major transition from a long-term career. In your case, a career in academia to a more creatively focused life. So can you describe what that transition has been like for you? How long it took and the main turning points. And I know that’s a big question too.

Kerstin Pilz: It’s a big question. It took a long time. I sort of felt at at age 48 when basically what, what triggered my life change was that my husband got sick with cancer and then he passed away and I realized that it was such a profound experience. I felt like, okay, a portal had opened up, I’d gone through a portal and it was time to become somebody new as a result of that experience of going through grief and so on.

So it wasn’t as straight forward as I had hoped it to be. And it took a lot longer than I had envisioned it. So basically I decided to leave a tenured university position as a head of department, which was a big choice. And most people thought I was crazy and I would regret it.

I mean, who let’s go of excellent superannuation, a lot of time paid leave that you can spend at home to do your research and to write your papers. But I no longer wanted to write in that voice. And I’m sure I could have, perhaps within academia explored other ways of using my voice in new, more creative ways, but it also had to do with the fact that I no longer wanted to teach Italian, which was the language that my husband and I had spoken.

And so I think it took me a long time to actually come to the point where I was writing my own book because I had to first process those events. So I turned to travel writing, and that was very exciting. I actually moved to the Maldives for a year. I worked there at the university, it was a DFAT funded appointment. And then I stayed on and I became a travel writer. So I would say I honed my writing in many different genres until I finally reached that point where I was ready to write that memoir and I love writing it. It’s not giving me a lot of income at the moment, but you know, I’m happy. I’m happy to be living in my passion and not making much money, but I can live very frugally.

I used to live in Vietnam as you know, for four years, which made things easier. And I loved living there. It was a great community, but then COVID happened and I remained stuck here and the borders closed. So that was in a way a blessing in disguise because it has forced me to stay in the one spot. I can’t travel as you know, the borders are closed. So I said to myself, well, let’s write that book. And yes, I’m very happy to say I’ve been extremely productive on that front.

Terri Connellan: Oh, that’s fantastic. And it’s incredible to hear your journey through, from academic career to where you are now and the twists and turns. And I can certainly relate to your point that what you think is going to happen or what you plan to do and what happens often two very different things. So in your Wholehearted Story on Quiet Writing, you share the story of how grief and pain can be our most important teachers. And you’ve touched a bit already, what happened in your life that that story is about. So what did you learn from moving through and on from such difficult times?

Kerstin Pilz: Oh, yes. Well, my difficult times, and I have said it publicly in my TED talks so it’s not a secret. My grief was complicated by the fact that I found out virtually in the same week, if not actually on the same day that my husband, when I found out that he was terminally ill, that his cancer was incurable. I also found out that he had been unfaithful to me, serially unfaithful. And so my world fell apart, you know, several times in that moment and so what I learned from that, and that was the moment when I had to make a decision, do I leave him? And of course it was not clear whether he had three months or five years, the doctors kept saying, we don’t know, it could be two years. It could be three years. So the decision, yeah. Do I stay or do I leave? That was a real turning point for me. And in order to reach that decision, I did something unusual. Most people probably wouldn’t do that. I locked myself away in a 10 day silent Vipassana retreat.

I remember my best friend saying, are you sure you want to do that? What if you have a breakdown, the monks are not trained to help you, if you have a meltdown. I said, it’s fine. This is a conversation, a very deep conversation. I have to do on my own terms. And I feel that Buddhism can give me the tools to actually understand what it is I have to do. Namely let go, and cultivate compassion.

And I think this is where I discovered the whole heartedness paradigm, if you like, is do I close my heart and leave this man and say, all right, that’s it you’re on your own? Not that he would have been on his own. He had a family and he had his daughter and, you know, Italian family and close my heart and perhaps become bitter, drink too many glasses of red wine just to close that chapter.

Or do I take the other choice, which is a much more difficult and stay with this man. Of course, he also wasn’t like in the movies repentant and I had sort of imagined that moment where he goes home, ‘Look sorry, honey. It happened. I’m very sorry.’ No, it didn’t happen that way. It was actually much more brutal.

However, the choice was, do I keep my heart open? Do I use this as a opportunity to evolve and to grow? Or do I choose the other options? Which could very well lead to me becoming a very bitter and twisted old lady. So I’m grateful I took that choice. So that’s the first thing I learned, to actually embrace the personal hurt. You also as your most important teacher, I mean, it’s a sort of banal and simple thing to say, but it’s super important, I feel. Secondly, it gave me that feeling of being invincible. What else can happen to me? And in fact, as you know 10 days after the funeral, we had a major category five cyclone, which was billed as the largest cyclone in living memory, destroy my beach side town.

It in fact made landfall, not far from my veranda. And so, what I learned is that you’re actually more resilient than you think, the inner resilience. And the other thing I learned and this was shocking, is that our Western society, first of all, unless perhaps you are a Christian, but most of us are secular or even atheist, we don’t have any rituals to deal with death. We don’t have any sort of protocol or any comfort around grief. In fact, I found it very shocking, how people judged me, how people told me, get over it already. It’s been five months, how people felt uncomfortable to even mention the topic. So that was an incredible learning.

And that’s where much later I discovered Brené Brown who says it so eloquently. The truly brave are those who allow themselves to be vulnerable because it takes courage to feel all those messy emotions. It’s much easier to run away to numb your pain. Not that I didn’t try that of course as well. But those emotions will always catch up with you in the end. So that’s another very important thing I learned that if you’re over grief, you get through it. And if you give yourself to actually get through it on your own time, in your own time and on your own terms, it’s a much deeper healing. At least that’s what it was for me. I’m sure there are people who do it in different ways and equally feel healed, but that was what happened for me.

Terri Connellan: Yes. And from the experiences I’ve been through, obviously quite different set of circumstances, but resonates with me with what you’re saying is that we would never wish for these circumstances in any way, shape or form, but when they do happen, there’s an opportunity for us to dig deep and that idea of creating a story, or as you say, in your lovely TEDx talk, being in charge of the stories that we tell. I guess that Falling Apart Gracefully too, your beautiful memoir title. We do fall apart in a way, but what’s the rebuilding process too.

Kerstin Pilz: Yes exactly. In fact, I did pitch this to an agency who said I don’t like the title because you want the rebuilding part in there as well. I said, yes, it goes without saying, in fact I had thought about it as ‘never waste a good crisis’ because really it was an opportunity to use this moment to actually learn something really profound.

And of course the other thing you learn when you are in the face of death and especially if a loved one is the preciousness of your own life. And that moment when he say I am no longer going to remain stuck in a shadow career. I am now going to go for what I really have been wanting to do. I could drop dead or, you know, have a cancer diagnosis tomorrow.

You just don’t know. This came completely out of the blue for us. We were about to head overseas and go on a adult gap year and had everything planned. It was basically the eve before our departure that this happened, that he got ill.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, it’s just amazing how life can change so quickly. I think that’s something too we learn from these experiences and to make the most of every moment. So tell people what your life looks and feels like now, because it’s obviously through all of that, moved on to something quite different.

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah. So it took a long time. I did a lot of detours. I did a lot of things. I kept thinking immediately, the next year, you have to be productive. You were a head of department. Now you have to quickly do something else. So I took on a voluntary position, very onerous, as a director of a film festival. And I realised that wasn’t actually what I was meant to do. So it was a long process of figuring it out.

Right now my life looks like, well, the best thing was for me to decide, to rent my house out on Airbnb. I’m lucky enough I can do that here, it’s a beach side community. And to start again in a completely different community. And that was Hoi An in central coastal central Vietnam. You’ve been there. It’s a wonderful place. And I did a yoga teacher training in Nepal the year in 2016, when we decided this. I have a new partner now I should say, so that also happened. So that’s a lovely, it can happen. You can have your life back, even after difficult things happen.

And Hoi An, I set up myself as somebody who teaches and shares the tools that help me heal and yoga, meditation, mindfulness, journaling, and of course also creative writing. And so I used to teach it in workshops in Hoi An. And I built up my online platform. I do also teach these things online although at the moment I’m focusing exclusively on getting my own book written.

 But the main thing and I really enjoy this is holding those retreats. You were at the very first in fact in Hoi An, and we were only a very small group. And now with COVID, I have shifted them to Mission Beach, cause I literally got locked out of Vietnam. All my things are still there. And I decided, well, let’s do them in Australia. And of course there’s a lot of demands. Lots of people want to do these retreats. So we have five day retreats where people can really get into their manuscripts, into the body, finding the stories they’re holding and, and just use the time to write.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. I love that your business is called, Write Your Journey. And what you’ve done is really created and shaped a beautiful journey through incredibly challenging times. So it’s really inspiring. So while we’re talking about retreat and my experience of being on retreat with you in Hoi An, Vietnam was such an important part of my journey and my writing, my book Wholehearted. And one thing I’ve come to realize is the value of incubation in writing and retreat, especially in hindsight, when I look back over the four years of writing my book. So what would you say is the value of retreat as a writer? And what experiences do you create as a retreat leader and host?

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah, so I think the value of the retreat is really giving yourself that stretch of time, where you’re away from your family, away from your work, from your desk. I encourage lots of offline time, because you really want to slow down and become present to those stories inside of you, that that are dying to be told. I also of course, offer guidance on how to tell a story. So I tailor these retreats to the particular group, so one time, people wanting to write nonfiction books. So, you know, be focused on that. The last retreat we had people wanting to focus on short stories so we did a lot of emphasis on that. And I think the value is that you have the opportunity to really get into the flow. And I noticed this also with writing my own book. You know, if I give myself a long weekend alone without a partner without anything else, you really stay with the story.

And often the benefits come, rippled through you even much later. So I think rest and retreat. I’ve actually realized this when I was in Thailand for that Vipassana retreat I mentioned. It was at a public temple. I was the only white person. There was all local women, mostly women. And they said to me, well, we do this once a year. It’s sort of, they didn’t use the word ‘self-care’ but basically the idea is as a Buddhist, your work on your inner transformation, you’re constantly working on yourself and you should take regular retreats to deepen that inner work.

 For me, when I was still working, we got 20 days paid leave, which is not very much. And I always thought, why would I spend those days of leave on retreat? Like, let’s say meditation retreat, not speaking. I always considered it to be a waste of time and I’ve changed my mind 100% on that. It is the best investment you can make for yourself.

Terri Connellan: That’s beautiful. And in terms of the experiences you create, I know the retreat I went on was a blend of yoga, writing, but also getting out and about, and for me, it was very much about sharpening my senses too. I know in Hoi An, we went to the local markets and we bought the food. We went back and we cooked it and we ate it and it was actually very rejuvenating.

Kerstin Pilz: Yes, actually. And you will remember, I think maybe it was even on that morning when we went to market, we use the, the Buddhist concept of beginner’s mind, you know, see the eyes as if you see the world through fresh eyes as if you’re seeing it for the first time, which in a context, in a foreign context, like Vietnam where everything literally is foreign and new is easy. It’s part of the experience anyway, but we also do that very actively here in Australia. And of course, for most people coming up from Melbourne, let’s say Mission Beach, which is very tropical, is also like they’re going overseas. But to actually consciously focus on seeing things for the first time through beginner’s mind is a really good lens to use as a writer. Yeah. Like you said, sharpens your skills of observation.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, and I think it’s about a reset. We can feel quite jaded. And I think that taking ourselves out of our normal day-to-day routines, it’s just totally refreshing.

Kerstin Pilz: Mm. Yes. And also you do it with a group of like-minded people. You know, I sometimes have very small retreats. The one that you came on was very small. Sometimes I have larger ones and of course, inevitably you get people from every personality type imaginable, but the thing is you’re there because of your shared passion and your shared drive to actually do that slowing down. And that can be very nourishing, the synergy that is created even those of us who are introverts will really benefit from that exposure to others who are on a similar journey.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. I found that to be the case. So in October, 2020, you presented a TEDx talk on the healing power of writing, which is incredible. And we’ll put it in the show notes and encourage people to watch that talk. Can you tell us about that experience, which I’m sure must have been quite nerve wracking, why you chose that topic and how writing can help us heal?

Kerstin Pilz: Three questions I guess but that’s great. I love talking about that experience. So first of all, the experience was just very random. I got stuck here, borders closed and I was like, okay, what do I do next? And so just coincidentally actually was somebody who came to a retreat. She also went and presented and she mentioned it to me. The deadline was like the next day. And I thought, okay, I’ll give it a shot.

Choosing a topic was very easy because the healing power of writing is what I do, and what I would like to think my business is about. And the tagline to that actually is you are the author of your own life, so you can write the next chapter. So my narrative, my story that I had set up for myself being based in Vietnam, doing what I do in Vietnam, I had retreats scheduled that year, which of course had to be all be canceled is, turn a page at any moment and write another chapter. And especially as long as you keep in focus that you don’t want to be the victim of any circumstances you want to actually be the hero of your own story, claiming your own story. So that I thought has to be the message and especially given this was of course, the first year of the pandemic and we were all a bit in shock, what’s happening here. So I thought it might also be a really good time to share that message with the world that, Hey, we’re all going through this very difficult time collectively, but there is one tool we all have available to us 24 7 at the cost of pen and paper. And that is self-reflexive writing.

So, and then to the logistics, the event was in Townsville, which is just local, it was three hour drive. I was very lucky that the person who organized the event Joanne Keon, she teaches public speaking at the local high school there in Pimlico Townsville. And she offered some coaching sessions and for free. And I thought, of course, another skill. Why not? So I actually went and met with her a couple of times and she really helped me tell it as a story that draws the reader in the reader, the listener, the audience. And the difficult part was that other famous TED talk speakers, but even the not so famous ones generally get a year lead up time.

We had from finding out that we were accepted to the actual night of the presentation, we had just under one month, which was extremely scary, but in a way it was a blessing in disguise because it meant my focus for one month, and I was by myself cause my partner was back in Vietnam, was to get this talk written and rehearsed.

And because you don’t get a teleprompter, you actually have to learn every word off by heart. And I’ve written a blog post on how to prepare, because I learned so much from this experience that I thought it might be useful for others to share. But one of the things I’d like to say is it really taught me that it’s okay and it’s important to own your story, to claim your voice and to feel confident stepping in front of an audience and saying, here is my story, and this is the reason I would like to share this with you. And then to tell your wobbly knees, just keep me straight because I have a very important message to share with the world and my knees obeyed.

 I mean, I was quite impressed by myself, how well I did, considering that I had a bright light shining right into my face. I couldn’t look at any notes. I had to have memorized every word. We had a time limit, and if you go over the time limit, we were told it will not be uploaded to the TED side, so it will be disqualified. But we had no way of seeing a timer. So in other words, you have to rehearse it, not to the second, but basically you have to feel very comfortable with the pacing. The other thing I did, if anybody who’s is thinking of doing a TED talk, I rehearsed it. Well I said it out loud to myself in every context, in the car, doing the dishes, going for a walk, but I also rehearsed it with live audiences just to see what happens if somebody coughs and you get thrown and you go, oh my God, I’ve lost my spot and you go blank. Or if somebody drops a glass, which happens you just keep going.

And nobody will know if you keep skip a sentence or paragraph, cause they haven’t read your script so they will not know. So you just keep going. And that was very helpful and it was a great experience in itself to make me feel more confident about it’s okay to claim your voice. So anybody thinking about it, I encourage you to do it.

Terri Connellan: Oh that’s fantastic. And that idea of owning your story and claiming your voice. And I think it’s the same in writing, but it’s probably another step, particularly if you are a writer to then as an introvert, which you are, I am, perhaps many people listening may well be also, you have to really work, I think to claim your story and to really share your voice is another step at it. And it takes like all these steps, hard work, hard inner work, learning the skills and being able to move through that process. So congratulations on that and thanks for sharing your learning here and also in that blog post again, we can pop that in the notes because I think there’s just so much learning from that experience.

Kerstin Pilz: Yes, there’s a lot to be learned and that’s how I prepared just reading lots and lots of blog posts, how other people had done this. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: That’s great to hear. So your memoir, you are currently writing is called Falling Apart Gracefully as we’ve discussed. So how are you finding the writing process yourself? That longer term, longer haul, writing process is quite different, isn’t it?

Kerstin Pilz: Yes. I knew what I was going in for, because I have done a PhD. And I had published as you know, is required when you are an academic. And so I knew it was going to be a long haul. However, I stalled because this is, of course not a research project. It’s not fiction, I’m not making up characters and give them funny lines. You know, this is actually about me and what really happened. And also of course you need to tell it as a story that is interesting, that has tension, that moves the reader forward, you know, is a page turner, that would be the ideal way to tell it, and I’m aiming to do that.

So I think I’m very good at teaching things. I’m often a very bad student of my own teaching, but one of the things I would say, and you know, this yourself is journaling is a wonderful practice for any writer. Maybe even just simple things like morning pages to train the writing muscle, to become more comfortable in your own voice to write faster and to lose that fear of the blank page, because you can just start. And I often do that when I’m struggling to get into a chapter, I might just journal and you know, maybe three pages and then halfway through, it’s like, ah, that’s where I start and you find it. So it’s a process and for a long time, I approached, perhaps like I would have approached the PhD: researching thinking, planning, scheming. But with my memoir, it doesn’t actually work that way for me. It’s really a process of discovering the thread of the story as you write.

And then once you understand how to tell that story, I’ve chosen the three act model. I’ve obviously read heaps of memoirs, but once you have found that structure, then you can make an outline and then you sit down and you say to yourself, I’m not writing my book today. I’m writing scene X. And if I have 20 minutes, I can still write a very rough draft of scene number 25. And then maybe in the evening after dinner might have time to polish it a bit further. And then the next day I have something that is more solid than if I hadn’t sat down to do that. So choose the little pockets of time you have. Choose them well. Use the Pomodoro technique, which I know you use d and trick yourself into being productive. What works for me – and I never thought this would be the case, is to have a very strict routine. I always was, you know, the rebel. Routine? That’s for boring people. Well, I’ve changed my mind on that too. And for example, one thing I do is I combine it with exercise. So like this morning I get up at 5:30 in the morning. I’m a morning person now, which is another surprise. I do my physical exercise cause that teaches me, like, I might struggle, I don’t know, running up the hill because I’m not that fit. But if I do it for 10 weeks, I get better. And that is a mirror to my writing. It’s the same thing. I might struggle to write the first draft, but if I keep doing it, I will finish. I will get better. So have a routine, have a system that works for you. And then just do it, focus on it.

Obviously I speak to a lot of aspiring writers and I hear it all the time: I would love to write a book, but I just can’t do it. I haven’t got the inspiration. I’m waiting to be inspired. Inspiration will not come. Like Dani Shapiro says, put yourself in the path of inspiration every day. Or like Dan Brown says, sit down and write every day. He writes even, I think on Christmas day, I think he takes one day off a year.

Terri Connellan: So much about mindset. It’s about practices. It’s about self-belief you know, believing you can do it better. But a lot of it is just that step by step, day by day, you know, that idea of just getting our butt into the chair and doing the work is a big part of it too. But all those things can come together, can’t they, to also self-sabotage, you know, when our minds play tricks, our inner critic tells us, what are we doing? We’ve got to have an income somewhere along the way through all the work that we do. But it’s a huge learning process, that whole journey of writing a longer haul piece. So congratulations.

Kerstin Pilz: Thank you. Well, I’m not where you are. I’m not there yet, but I liked the idea, what you just said is an evolution, because that’s what it is exactly. You grow as you write that thing and you get so much clarity. With a memoir, of course, you do want a little bit of distance from the story because you don’t want to make it a whinge or revenge story. And for me, this is now 10 years after the event. I have so much more clarity. And it’s no longer a story about my husband. It’s the story about my rebirth, how I reemerged from this situation. The other thing I will say about the process, something to maybe help your listeners, if they are on that path and wondering how to do it, I found it very helpful to also have a support group.

So don’t show your writing to your partner, your best friend. They’re not going to be your best critics because they’ll either feel uncomfortable to say something negative or they’ll just praise you because they love you. So have a group that is your peers, a writers’ group. I had a writers’ group that I ran for four years in Hoi An and then the borders closed and we kept going for another year via Zoom, but it became too complicated.

But now I have a small group, three of us. We meet once a week and we critique and read each other’s chapters. And since we started that I have made huge progress. So that is a really good thing as well to do.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And that’s one thing I’ve really learned from my journey too. We often think of writing as just us with a pen and paper or computer. But my light bulb moment was when I wrote my acknowledgements. And then there was just this cast of many, many people involved in the community of writing that book in many ways. So whether it’s feedback, support, just that ability to talk about what you’re going through, I think is so valuable.

Kerstin Pilz: Yes, exactly.

Terri Connellan: So shadow career. In my book, I talk about shadow career, and I know that you have also been running some workshops recently around the idea. And that is a concept talked about by Steven Pressfield in his book, Turning Pro. He uses examples like being the roadie when we actually want to be the musician or being the teacher of writing when we actually want to be the writer. So I know this concept resonated with you in recent times. Tell us more about your thoughts about the shadow career and how it might be playing out.

Kerstin Pilz: Well, exactly like you just said, do you want to be the writer, but become the writing teacher. And I think you and I actually connected initially by both reading Pressfield. I think the penny dropped like six years or whenever it was 2016, when I first started this idea of Write Your Journey. And I read Pressfield and the shadow career, and I thought, oh yes, I’ve been a university lecturer teaching literature and dissecting it and writing papers on different authors when I really wanted to write my own book.

And I had always taken the excuse, well, my English wasn’t good enough. It was great for writing academic stuff, because that can be a different way of writing, but I wasn’t yet confident enough to write in a more lyrical prosaic way. Although that was just an excuse. And so the shadow career, yes, it’s a form of, self-sabotage. What I’ve also realised in my case, for example, it’s an inheritance of blockages of trauma. Like my mother, and I say it in my TED talk, the biggest gripe in her life is that her parents, growing up in post-war, being born into Nazi Germany. And then afterwards, after the end of the war, they were too poor to send her to high school. So she has remained in this narrative that she is the dumb one in the family, the one unworthy of an education. And she didn’t have the tools or the ability to break out of that narrative. So the shadow career is, like you said the roadie or the roadie who drinks himself into alcoholism thinking I’m a musician, but really you’re not, so it is so easy to remain stuck in those shadow careers.

So then what I did is. I started Write Your Journey, which I thought was a clever idea. And it is however, it actually meant, I spent a lot of time setting up my own website, which I loved. I actually really enjoyed that experience of learning new skills in that way. And then I ended up teaching writing to others.

I think the penny finally dropped when I was reading your book again the day before your virtual book launch. And I thought there is somebody who came to my retreat. She’s finished her book, we’re launching her book, where’s my book? And she talks about the shadow career. And that’s when I thought, okay, that’s what I wrote to my community and I said the monthly Zoom writing sessions that I hold live, they will be on hold until I finished my book. And so the last one I held last weekend was on the topic of shadows and it was incredible. It was such a great topic to use because of course we all live with these shadows and we need the shadow. To be whole, we actually need the shadow. And if you’re writing fiction, your character needs a shadow to be interesting, but don’t remain stuck in the shadow career. Claim your own career.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. That’s fantastic. And it’s great that you were able to share your insights with your writing group too. And for the light bulbs, probably to go off for different people. Because you’re right, that’s again something I reflected on in writing my book that we need the shadow, but we need to make it more conscious.

Kerstin Pilz: Mm. Yes. That’s what Carl Jung said, making the shadow conscious. That’s the work.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. So we were chatting just before we came on live about how our themes and our stories are often very, very similar. My podcast’s called Create Your Story and you talk in your TED talk about being in charge of the stories we tell ourselves. So it’s obviously a strong theme for you. So I’m really interested for you to tell us how you’ve created your story over your lifetime.

Kerstin Pilz: So I think it comes back to that tagline I mentioned earlier, you are the author of your own life. So you know, I’m a high school dropout. I dropped out of high school when my English teacher in Germany said, you will never learn English. I said, right, I’m going to show you. Actually, I didn’t think that I went off and I worked in a hospice, of all places, at the age of not even eighteen. And in those days, it was the eighties, they didn’t have the training and work health safety that we have now. In Germany, this was, and so the things they made us do would be illegal these days, lifting bodies and so on. But it taught me so much and it also forced me to sit with dying people, and to be for the first time as an 18 year old in the presence of a dying person was extremely powerful. And it made me realise how precious life is, how it’s actually a unique opportunity because also a lot of the people in that old people’s home were very sad. You know, they had wasted their lives. Some of that has to do with historical circumstance, poverty, perhaps, but it was a much deeper teaching than high school would have given me at that point. And so I have stayed true to that dictum that I now have that you are the author of your life.

So I did eventually go back to high school because I knew an education would be important but I did it on my own terms. I actually worked in a restaurant. It was hard. I never went to any parties because I was always working on the weekends, but I was in charge. I was the one in charge. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that I was born very far away from the ocean and in a cold and gloomy place, not too far from the border with what used to be east Germany. And it was during the cold war, it was very gloomy, very gloomy. We were an occupied nation. We had American army forces around us. You’d hear them training every day, with the tanks and machine guns and that risk of cold war lingering, it really shapes your psyche in some ways.

So I work hard, saved a lot of money and I discovered Italy, sunshine and la bella vita, la dolce vita, so that’s when I realized you can, unlike my mother who has remained stuck, I was the one I never was allowed to go to high school. You can change your life at any moment. And so that’s what I’ve done. I’ve realized I can actually live in Italy. I lived in Italy for a while then I lived in Bali in the eighties before anybody did yoga there. And eventually I ended up in Australia and so what’s the question again, how I shaped my life?

Terri Connellan: It’s about how you created your story. And I think the way that you’re seeing that is reminding yourself constantly that you’re the author of your own life. You’ve also used the word self-directed, which again is a word I love too, that idea of, we have choices. We’ve talked about luck versus choice too. Luck plays a part in life, but sometimes we can overly put the emphasis on luck and talk about your lovely blog post that influenced me in Wholehearted. And I think we need to just focus on that hard inner work that we can do to make change.

Kerstin Pilz: Yes. And actually that, now that you mentioned that blog post again, that was really important to me to share that with the world. I’m really grateful that it resonated with you and others, of course, because often I get people saying, how lucky are you? You’re living in Vietnam. How lucky are you? You’re working from home. Yeah, well, I rent out my house on Airbnb, I often camp so that I can rent it out. Not everybody would want to do that. Not everybody would want to go to Vietnam and set up new and live on a small budget, but have the benefit of that self-directed life. So it wasn’t luck, it was hard work and determination and staying true to my values.

Terri Connellan: So in all of that, you’ve learned so much about wholehearted self-leadership. So you’ve read my book, you know some of the tips that I have recommended from my experiences. I’d love to hear about yours. What are your top tips and practices?

Kerstin Pilz: We share the personal journaling as a way of staying connected, of honing that inner compass and also of just unburdening yourself, saying the things that you’re afraid to say. Because that’s the other thing, where the fear is, go near the fear. And if you’re writing fiction, go near the fear, because that is where the energy is, you know, the same for a memoir. Tell us the things that you are most scared of. So confront your fears. Don’t bury them. Don’t try to outrun them. I tried that for a while, but that doesn’t work.

And other practices, mindfulness, of course. After I had my stints in various monasteries, I even received teachings from the Dalai Lama. Not just me, there were 300,000 other people. I did develop a regular meditation practice. I’m a little bit slack at the moment and when I do slacken up, I realize it. I just feel a little bit more disconnected from myself.

And also I feel less relaxed when things become stressful. And for me what’s really important is also to get enough sleep. Very important, not to be undervalued as a superpower. And well, I personally also like yoga because I feel it’s a mind body, it’s a holistic approach to life and to do your own wellbeing and to allow yourself to rest. To get out of that, I have to produce in order to be valuable to society. I need to show that I’m constantly busy, that I have to-do lists that are impossible to get through. No, it’s okay to rest. It’s okay not to be productive. Like Bronnie Ware in her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying says, what do people regret the most when they’re dying? Well, I didn’t spend enough time with my family. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. Those are some of the things I’m sure the minute we stop this podcast, I’ll think of something else.

Terri Connellan: It’s great. Just to hear what’s front of mind for people and what comes to mind immediately. And I love those tips and practices that have served you well. So thank you so much for sharing about your life, your work with Write Your Journey and particularly your deep learning over time and the hard inner work that you’ve done through challenging circumstances.

Thank you for sharing them today and also through Quiet Writing which is much appreciated. I’ve gained great strengths from our connection, from your work and from going on retreat with you. So thank you for that. So if you can let people know Kerstin where they can find out more about you about your work online.

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah. And thank you Terri very much also for creating this community where actually I’ve met a lot of people online through you, and that’s wonderful in that community. So my website is WriteYourJourney.com. You can just contact me through the contact page if you want to get in touch with me. I run regular retreats. And one day, I might even have a podcast, but for now I also have a Facebook group where I post regular writing prompts and motivation articles I find and so on. And my aim going forward with my business is to actually, because my passion. You just have to stay with your passion. And I’ve realised my passion is memoir. I never thought that would be the case. But it’s a such a powerful tool because even if you’re not planning to write it as a book, sharing and writing your life story just bring so much order and clarity. And so I’m hoping in the new year when I have finished my book, you know, brought it to a point where I can back off a bit is to actually have a memoir writing group or a program or something like that. That’s sort of a long-term plan. So, and on Instagram, of course I love Instagram. I’m not that active at the moment because I get lost in social media as we all do. But since I live in a beautiful place or when I lived in Hoi An, I love taking photos. It’s another passion of mine. And so Instagram it’s @writeyourjourney.

Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you. And your photography is always so beautiful. It’s lovely to see all the amazing places where you’re living and writing from. It’s such a joy. So thank you so much. We’ll pop all those links in the show notes and thanks for chatting with us today.

Kerstin Pilz: Thank you very much, Terri. Really appreciate it.

Links to explore:

My books and book club:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club – open for enrolment now and kicking off December 2021

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Other free resources: https://www.quietwriting.com/free-resources/

My coaching:

Work with me

Personality Stories Coaching

The Writing Road Trip – a community program with Beth Cregan – kicking off Jan 2022

Connect on social media

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/

Kerstin Pilz

About Kerstin Pilz

Kerstin Pilz PhD is a published author, former academic with almost 20 years university teaching experience, a TEDx speaker and a 200 RYT yoga teacher. She is currently completing her memoir Falling Apart Gracefully. Her previous publications include academic monographs and travel features in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the New York Times and travel industry magazines. When tragedy turned her life upside-down, she discovered the healing power of writing and now teaches creative writing online and on multi-day retreats in her beautiful home in Mission Beach, Far North Queensland, Australia and in Hoi An, Vietnam, where she lives part time.

Kerstin’s website: www.writeyourjourney.com

Instagram: @writeyourjourney

Facebook: @writeyourjourney

TEDx talk on The Healing Power of Writing: https://www.writeyourjourney.com/kerstin-pilz-tedx-townsville-the-healing-power-of-writing/

or shortened version:  https://youtu.be/btxVXcRDhqY

podcast writing

Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch 1

November 2, 2021

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Welcome to Episode 2 of the Create Your Story Podcast!

This episode is the first Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch event on 9 September 2021. I chat with Penelope Love and Kirsten Pilz, who have been key partners and supporters on the journey of writing Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

  • An introduction to my book Wholehearted.
  • How the concept for the book was born
  • The writing, editing and crafting process, especially with Penelope
  • The value of retreat in the writing process, especially with Kerstin
  • Personality and writing
  • Tenacity and the long-haul writing process
  • Shadow careers and developing journeys
  • And so much more!

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 2 of the Create Your Story podcast. This is a recording of conversations from the first Wholehearted virtual book launch event, just after Wholehearted was published on the 6th of September, 2021. Being locked down when the book was published, all the initial events were of necessity of virtual.

It was an opportunity to connect with people who’ve been on the journey with me in various ways. So in this episode, I’m joined by Penelope Love who received the very first long draft of Wholehearted and helped me to take that draft into a form, able to be submitted as two books for publication.

Penelope is a publisher, speaker and winner of the International Book Awards as an author of Wake Up in Love. And she is also an incredible editor and partner in the book writing process. We chat about bringing the books to life together in an accessible and sacred way in this conversation.

I’m also joined by Kirsten Pilz, who has been a fellow traveler on the writing and creative solopreneur journey. Kirsten is a published author, former academic with almost 20 years university teaching experience, a TEDx speaker and yoga teacher. She’s a retreat leader and I’ve had the pleasure of joining Kirsten on a writing and yoga retreat in Hoi An Vietnam in 2018. We talk about the value of retreat and how this time was a really important part of my writing journey with Wholehearted though it took me quite a while to realize it in hindsight. We’re also joined in this conversation by Natasha Piccolo, who is a fellow author at the kind press with her new book, The Balance Theory, which is forthcoming next year.

We chat about so many aspects of Wholehearted, the book and wholehearted living, writing, editing, long haul creativity, retreat, personality. I had so many tingly moments listening back to where we really touched on some heart-filled and deep aspects of writing, truth and life. In the show notes, I share links about where you can find out more about my book Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook as well as more about our guests, Penelope and Kirsten. The great news too, is that there are solo episodes coming up with Penelope, Kirsten, and Natasha where we dive deeper into their stories, their writing, and how they’ve created their story. I hope you’ll enjoy listening and that you’ll gain some insights to help guide your life, especially if writing and creativity are a really important part of it. Enjoy listening.

Transcript of Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch chat

Terri Connellan: Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining me for the first virtual book launch of Wholehearted it’s fantastic to have you here. And all people who have been on the journey in some way, shape or form, writing, family, readers, advanced readers, connections on Instagram. So thank you so much for being part of the journey. it’s a real honor to have you here. So, first up, I’ll share what we might track through as we go through the session. First of all, welcome to two special guests who are joining me today. Penelope Love who’s been my editor all the way through, received the first, very large, a hundred thousand word draft, and has been on the whole journey with me as my editor, particularly shaping one book into two, which has been incredible, so great to chat with Penelope, and Kerstin, and also has been on the journey for a long time with me, both are authors of Wholehearted Stories on my Quiet Writing website.

And we’ve connected in lots of different ways. I think through social media initially, I went to a writing retreat, with Kerstin in Vietnam, which was just a beautiful way to, I think get in touch with my writing self. So we’ll explore some of those particular touch points.

 First of all, I thought, I’d talk a little bit about the book just briefly, as an introduction, for those who may not know it so well, and about, what it covers, why I wrote the book, how it fit in.my life. Then I’ll have a conversation with Penelope and with Kerstin about their roles and also about Wholehearted generally. They’ve read the books so they can share some thoughts about that.

 So first of all, what is, Wholehearted? Why did I write it? When did it come from? So, the book Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition emerged from my journey. So I went on a transition journey deciding what to do with my life and realised that I didn’t want to stay on the path that I was, which was working for 30 plus years in a government organization, in the technical and further education system in Australia.

And I started to make a path from that. But as I was going through, I found it was really important for me to write about it and to start to shape the journey in a writing sense so as well as going through it, I felt the need to capture it. And my why was very much about helping me to write, make sense of what I was going through, but it was also about supporting women to develop self-leadership in their own lives.

Because I think if you’re making change particularly midlife, but at any time in life, there’s not a lot of guideposts for us or ways to support us for going through that change. So I thought I’d share with you my notebook from 2017 of how it started. So there you go, this a lovely mind map of the first ideas of what Wholehearted might look like.

And then there’s another page of a summary. And I was just looking at it. That’s sort of the chapter summaries, which actually is what it ended up, looking like you know, chapter four, chapter five. The thing that got fleshed out was the wholehearted self leadership skills, but down the bottom here, there’s three boxes that say the structure could be personal narrative and application and exercise.

And that’s pretty much exactly what it ended up being. So it’s interesting that time four and a half years ago thinking, here’s all the things that I’m going through that I want to be able to put into a book. Here’s how I want to help women, here’s what I’m learning and through that, just knowing that it was a mix of experiences, it was a mix of what I’ve learned from it. And it was a mix of how can I help you with with those experiences. So in that 100,000 word draft all of that was in there. So it was quite a big book, but when Penelope received the first draft, she wonderfully said to me, I think you’ve got two books here, which was like, oh my goodness.

It was an amazing moment. So together with Penelope, we’ll talk about that more in a moment we went through and worked out, which things belonged in the main book, which belonged in the second book. And the second book was a workbook, much more practical. So we teased out those aspects and that journey of writing two books at once commenced, but the focus was on the main book, first of all.

But knowing that in the second book we were tracking along with the main book, but then working out how the two came together. It was like a whole, like a piece of marble and there were two pieces in there and with wonderful help, we went through and pulled out the pieces and brought it together.

Kerstin Pilz: How long is the final book, the main book, how many words?

Terri Connellan: The main book’s about 75,000 and the workbook’s about 37,000. So there’s still quite a lot of text in the second book. And what we worked on was bringing out the examples. Do you want to comment Penelope on what that was like, going through that, seeing the two pieces

Penelope Love: Well sure, you know, today I pulled up our first initial conversations on email, about the book, just to refresh myself on the long journey and the initial steps of it.

And what happened was when I read your outline, it came back to me, it was seven pages for this book and that’s, and it was so Terri, it was so thorough. And it was an experience reading the journey, the outline itself, it took me on the full journey of the book. And I, I saw the one big section of the outline that I put a big circle around.

And I said, this could be a book in itself and you know, Terri asked well. How do you know? And it’s a very intuitive process. And I think it also is combined with, I’ve been editing books for 24 years, or I should say editing material for 24 years , books for about 17 of those. And. I think it’s just a matter of seeing so many books over the course of my career and knowing when something is just too much for a single book. But I couldn’t, and no one could deny how this material worked together. So it was a great initial run. And what I really loved about the process is that in the beginning you could feel overwhelmed or you could feel no pressure. And I took the no pressure approach as I read through it.

I just put a very large liberal highlight over areas that I thought were not the main book. And then I put it in Terri’s court and she was able to that big highlighted section, start to see what I mean and then I think the back and forth made it not overwhelming. If it’s one person facing all of this task of having to sort through and say, which is which it’s not, but it was a really neat little, like a tennis game.

And we, and we pulled together. Or we pulled apart two angels in the marble.

Terri Connellan: Yeah . We actually color coded it. So I think you color-coded at first. So we had blue for the main book sort of a pinky color for the workbook. And then there was another color for things that we thought didn’t belong, but we, we also took the view that everything could be repurposed somehow.

Penelope Love: It’s true. It’s true. And I also embraced that philosophy whenever I edit that nothing is really ever wasted. And I knew that these little sections of texts that didn’t really fall into either book could be perfectly saved in archives, for posts to help promote the book or even the seed of a new book. So that’s how, and when you treat it like that in the beginning, there’s not pressure to do something with everything. It just puts a relaxation around the process.

Terri Connellan: Exactly. Thank you for that. So what the sort of shape that we ended up with that process was you come into the book hearing about my experiences. So I start with my moment – often with transition and turning points, there’s a particular thing that happens in your life. And many of you may have experienced this where, you know, I’m not staying here, whatever it is, relationship, job, place of living. Just a point in life. There’s often a point. In our Wholehearted Stories on Quiet Writing , you see that again and again, and the story is, Heidi’s one, for example, she hears a voice saying “I don’t want to do this anymore”.

And it’s just this thing that often happens to us. For me, it was a particular situation in the workplace where I wasn’t given a job that I thought it was a great fit for. Not a big issue, but in the context of that, it made me realize I could no longer stay where I was.

So it was a real turning point that, took me down a fair way and then had to rebuild. So I write about that in the first part. And then I talk about that journey back. So, what sort of toeholds and footholds helped me to connect back, some major themes that helped me. So things like connecting with our passions and personality, knowing who we are, our body of work, and then there’s 15 wholehearted self-leadership skills that but is sort of the bulk of the book, but they particularly just my learning on the journey, but also ways that people can also support themselves through any type of change or ongoing in their life.

So I guess that’s where that mix of personal narrative and practicality comes from. You have read the book, so I don’t know if you want to make any comments about how that comes together for you just as a reader. That’d be interesting to hear.

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah. I mean, I thought on the one hand, there’s the very organized, the what is it in your, in your personality type? The…

Terri Connellan: INTJ

Kerstin Pilz: which is lovely. And then there’s that interest in the tarot, which I just find so fascinating because it’s not at all encouraged in these workplaces and you and I both have been in Education. And so I’ve found that really fascinating, how that opened a new way of approaching yourself and your life through that emphasis on intuition and also tapping into the archetypes. And in fact, that is one for me, one of the more interesting results of reading the book, the shadow stories and so on. So maybe talk about that a bit more. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: So there is a chapter, Chapter Eight about the shadow side and I found as I went through my journey, there were a whole lot of things that kept cropping up and learnings about things like shadow career. So that’s a Steven Pressfield idea that we often, for example, be a writing teacher when we want to be a writer, be the roadie in the band when we actually want to be the musician. And write the PhD on something when we actually want to be that person. So yes, it’s a great insight into what might be in our story that we can amplify and tap into and also what might be holding us back from that. So that’s helpful. And then those other things like grief, envy, I talk about envy and often when we feel envy or feel that strong jealousy of something or desire for it, if we can try and see that as a force for good, rather than get sucked into the comparisonitis, that can be really powerful too. So there’s actually quite a lot in that chapter. It was interesting. That sort of shadow side, I think, as you’re working through anything, particularly when it’s difficult.

My mother had a terminal illness and I was supporting her in that time when I was writing the book too. So it was actually written from a really challenging place as well. So, it’s important to honor those energies of life too.

Kerstin Pilz: And may I just ask a follow-up question, with your emphasis being on wholehearted and that’s often also not at all where leaders comes from in the workplace, although I’m finding perhaps a little bit more, like my last boss was female and she’s very much an intuitive person. And also heart-centered, I was wondering,are you finding this maybe since you’ve left the workplace, which is now a number of years ago, has there been a shift with regards to that being a little bit more encouraged or are you still a sole pioneer in that field?

Terri Connellan: Well I think I’ve been lucky because of the coaching training that I did with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, which is very much a female led heart-led community that I’ve been more connected with that sort of energy. But , I do think that more intuitive, receptive side of leadership is starting to come to the fore. It’s probably still got a long way to go, but it’s beautiful to be part of an organization with Beautiful You, for example, that is female led and is pretty much totally coming from that place and just feeling the difference. And I think, you know, for me, that was a beautiful counterbalance from, from where I’d been before.

So I think we’ve got a long way to go with that, but it was interesting to think about where leadership and self-leadership fit together. And the reason I was thinking about self-leadership was because of my experiences in the workplace and how that grew from that.

I think perhaps there’s a lot of self-leadership to be done in our leaders perhaps of all genders to tap into that female, not just female, but the intuition side. Because I found when I was in the workplace, it was very damped down, even though it was my strongest cognitive function, I tended to rely on the extroverted sort of things. It’s a good question, but I, I think we’ve got a long way to go. I might handover to have a chat with Penelope, and further about our relationship. So that’s just a bit about the book and we’ll keep talking about the book as we go through.

So to introduce Penelope more formally. This is her beautiful book Wake Up in Love a beautiful memoir that was published earlier this year written over 16 years and so a long writing journey. Penelope is a publisher at Citrine publishing a writing mentor and editor, and, as I said, Penelope received the draft and really helped me through that whole journey and has continued to be a point of contact and support the whole way through for which I’m very grateful. So thank you for that. So what I’d be interested to explore with you Penelope is what did you see in Wholehearted when you first received it? We talked a bit about that, but what was it like to receive it? I’m sure it was quite overwhelming. It was a long draft.

Penelope Love: I made my initial comment that the outline itself was seven pages. It’s not, nothing is daunting, you know, to a fellow. I N something Jay, because my introversion, lets me be very quietly with these ideas and I, and I love it. So in a lot of ways, the more the merrier. But, you know, I’d been following you on Instagram. I believe we met through a Susannah Conway challenge, something like that. And so when I received the manuscript, we’d actually done a get to know you call probably a year beforehand or maybe six months. And that primed me to sort of watch you and watch your postings in a way that I probably wouldn’t have had we not had that get to know you chat. And so when I saw the outline, it was like everything I knew about Terri in seven pages. And I could, I see the way her mind works. She’s very, very good at collecting details and organizing them. And so I had appreciation for where she was going, because I had been following her journey online. So that led it to not be so overwhelming. Another thing that had I had done, and I can’t remember, I believe this was before you’ve handed me the manuscript, I enrolled in the Sacred Creative Collective. And so in between following you on Instagram and then enrolling in your Sacred Creative Collective, and then receiving the outline and the manuscript. Perfect. This is a textbook for everything I wish I could have gone deeper into during the Sacred Creative, but not in, in that interactive format.

It was like part of it was in PDFs, part of it was in discussions, part of it was on Facebook postings. And so this book outline was, oh, great, everything’s in one place now I get to help organize it. So, it really opened my whole heart. It allowed me to do the work I do best . You know, there’s a fine line between shadow career and what you’re supposed to do. And I know that somebody who has wanted to be a writer and a published author all my life, it’s very easy to find yourself in the shadow career of editor. And I wrote about that in my own Wholehearted Story. At the same time, you know, I couldn’t deny that I was meant to do this project.

It was almost like a karmic fated sort of thing that it fell in my lap. Just before I went through a career transition. So the book itself became a guide for me, guiding me through the year I was editing it. And I’m in the middle of the summer, of the year 2020, when everybody was in COVID crisis of, you know, what am I doing, really with my life? This book was just, it was such a gem to be able to have that, even though it wasn’t in its finished form, I still had all the information and access and I was using it actively. And as a publisher myself, I find that the books that are written from that place of experience that Terri went through with the transition from her job, from her career to her heart career you know,, it vibrates that, it resonates as I was reading this book, I was finding and fine tuning my own career to make it more authentic and wholehearted.

And I was finding, and most of the pieces are there. But during that period, I did find other aspects of esoteric interests that I like to study. And Terri’s brave sharing about how she goes wholeheartedly into tarotist studies, despite the taboo nature gave me the permission slip to do the same thing when astrology came my way.

And I know I read astrology into my daily life and daily work in a way that, I wonder had I not been reading Wholehearted, would I have embraced this?

Terri Connellan: And now Penelope is encouraging me to get into astrology so, it’s that lovely effect of you know, the things we do and the things we share really help us with that next step of the journey. So…

Penelope Love: yeah, and the spiral metaphor that is in her logo and on the cover of the book, I feel it’s, you know, always really spoke to me and the book helped give it meaning and more reflection. And, I feel this is part of the spiral and we find more interests and we go deeper and deeper.

Terri Connellan: In the structure of the book, that was in my mind too of going big and then going a bit more detailed with the chapters. But yeah, that idea of layering, the learning like this, there’s quite a lot of repeated stories and different angles in there, but it’s sort of how we learn over time and we learn in another way. And we often we go back to the same things. Don’t we, look, we repeat, we go back and we’re moving through and that’s, to me what the spirals about is that, that idea of layering and learning and continuing, and I tried to build that into the book too. So I don’t know how, if you had a sense of that, as you were editing that how that sort of energy fits with the narrative.

Penelope Love: It does. And it, what it taught me is that, you know, when you get to this other sort of familiar place along the perimeter, but you’re not the same as you were the time you visited it, so you can go deeper.

Terri Connellan: . Thank you.

Kerstin Pilz: I just had a question too about that process if I may, because I think that might be interesting for other writers, because you said when you sent me the first draft, which obviously I’m sure wasn’t the first draft. I was just wondering how long did it actually take you to get to a point where you felt confident to send that to an editor? And then how long did it take for Penelope the editor to work with you to shape it into what you then send on to your publisher?

Terri Connellan: I’ve got my timeline here to remind me, so I started writing properly in the first half of 2017. I think I sent it to Penelope in the middle of June 2019. And actually I finished that first long draft when I went to Vietnam with you, September, 2018. And then I didn’t know what to do with it apart from just fix up the spelling. Like, there was lots of editing, but it wasn’t structural. And that’s what I didn’t know how to do. And that’s when I reached out to Penelope because I knew what I wanted to write, but I didn’t know what to do next. I just didn’t have the skills. And I think that’s what I’ve really learned is that power of collaboration and of reaching out to people to help. Most of that was pulling the two out, working out the two drafts and then working on the first book. And then the second book, I mainly finished by myself later with the kind press.

Penelope Love: And this is a book mind you that had over a hundred thousand words in the first manuscript. If somebody has a 50,000 word manuscript, the process is not going to take as many months. Somebody asked me that the other day, you know, how long does my book need to be before I send it to you? I mean, I’ve taken a book about 30,000 words and fleshed it out. And then if books come in about 50 to 70, they generally stay around that. And then usually when they come in over a hundred thousand, we’re working at trimming them down. Just as a practical matter of business. That was another consideration that I brought to the table for Terri was that if you put everything in one book, it becomes such a huge book. You have to charge a lot for it.

 And. You know, this is a way that now there’s two books and it becomes maybe more affordable. Somebody can get book one and then get book two at another time. So there’s all these considerations that you make when you see things from that outside perspective, that when you’re writing a book, you’re not looking at it that way. Another reason to bring in people with other skillsets, because these points of view help to make the project whole.

Terri Connellan: Oh, they do. And I knew it needed to be less, but I didn’t know how. And then when you said it was two books, that made perfect sense. To be able to just take out the more practical pieces, made a lot of sense.

Kerstin Pilz: Are they sold as a package or individually?

Terri Connellan: Individually, but like on Amazon they package them up together too. You can purchase the two which is good and in terms of working through, you can read the main book without the workbook, but everyone will be different. But the way I envisage is, someone what might read through the first book and then perhaps do another reading and go back and work through and do it in a detailed way.

And I’m starting a coaching program too to collectively work through the book as a group, which I think it’d be really nice way to do it because again, as it was a solo journey for me. And that’s one of the reasons I wrote the book, it can feel quite lonely when you’re going through a big change. So I think even if people are working through the book, it might be really nice to connect around that journey and have those conversations, because just as I’ve learned from your stories and the other women’s stories, we all learn from each other too.

Kerstin Pilz: And so that workbook essentially also could be used by a course facilitator for their own course. So it’s like a resource, like a textbook, I guess in a way.

Terri Connellan: Meredith Fuller wrote a lovely review, and she’s a psychologist, she got an advanced copy. So she’s actually been working with a client who didn’t want to do psychological work via Zoom. It didn’t feel comfortable cause they were locked down. So she gave them the book and the person’s worked through the book at a time when they didn’t feel able to have face-to-face consultations. So that’s really interesting to hear. She said, she sees it as valuable for individuals, groups.

Kerstin Pilz: So that’s beautiful feedback already from your book. That is an amazing resource you’ve created.

Terri Connellan: I think so. And that was always how I saw it too. Like it’s got multiple uses.

So what do you think Wholehearted offers women? You know, it really well. What would you say Wholehearted offers women?

Penelope Love: Well, you know, I think it comes down to it being born at this very time, following the year of the pandemic and people really getting this chance to look at their lives and see, am I doing what I’d like to be doing? Am I in my shadow career or is there another step I can take toward getting out and living a wholehearted life where I have my own career, that feels good to my heart. And every day I look forward to doing it because it’s what I love. Wholehearted is a guide to that.

Going in order is always an option, but there’s so much that you can, the book is so modular and that’s what I love. So a lot of people that I know over the course of my career, they like to, open up to whatever page and seeing what they open to. And Wholehearted can almost be read almost kind of like a tarot deck. You open and then you see what chapter and that very much could resonate where you are in your journey and what you need to work on now. I feel that because of Terri’s connection with that esoteric system, that the book invites that and can even be used that way to play with. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: So that’s true. Cause I mean, there’s that linear reading through, but there’s also a bit like a tarot where you pull a card, there’s a way of just engaging with what resonates at the time. And that’s interesting because that’s actually how I wrote it too, because I used NaNoWriMo that 50,000 words in a month model, even though it wasn’t a novel and I actually had the outline and then I’d do my morning pages, do my Tarot and then I’d tend to write with the structure in Scrivener of where I felt drawn. So if something like envy was popping up, then I’d write about that cause it was bubbling up for me. So it was very much written from that time. Even though the structure was linear, the writing process wasn’t particularly. That’s really interesting.

Meredith in that article says “As an introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging female INTJ her work is well structured while enabling the reader to meander.’ So that’s really nice. Thank you for highlighting that. And thanks so much for everything you’ve done on the journey. It’s been absolutely unbelievable having you there and we’ve developed a really deep and close relationship from that whole journey too and so appreciative and thank you. And we’re going to do a lovely double up of me holding Penelope’s book and Penelope holding mine.

Penelope Love: It will be here tomorrow. US, they shipped them out on Monday, but so I’m getting it Thursday. So as soon as I get that, we’ll coordinate.

Terri Connellan: So Kerstin is a writer, writer for wellbeing coach, hosts beautiful writing retreats one of which I attended in Vietnam, yoga teacher, and is also writing a memoir, just about to the end of the first draft called Falling Apart Gracefully, and shared some of those experiences in your Wholehearted Story.

So we thought we might talk about some of our touch points Kerstin and particularly the retreat, the value of retreat, the Wholehearted Story and the role of challenge in our lives. So I found when I went on that retreat and it probably is only in hindsight. I did a presentation on personality and writing, and I looked at my whole journey, psychological journey through the process of writing the book. And when it came to 2017-18 and the writing retreat, I’ve put writing retreat Hoi An Vietnam and then introverted feeling, extroverted feeling, extroverted sensing all these things that are not my strengths. It was a time of my muse reconnecting and coming back. So obviously retreats are important to you and you lead them. What do you see as the value of retreat and incubation in the writing process?

Kerstin Pilz: So for me, actually, I went on my very first retreat when I had what I would call an emotional and mental breakdown. And I went to Thailand to a very hardcore, Vipassana retreat with just locals. And afterwards they said to me, look, for us, we do this every year. It was a lot of burnout housewives and it’s part of our spiritual growth. And I thought, how interesting, I had always thought, you know, holidays should be, and we only get 20 days of annual leave here in Australia. I think in the U S is even less. And I thought, I want to spend those days to do something really constructive with my life. I don’t want to be sitting in a meditation room and just listening to my thoughts in my head, that’s really boring and unproductive. So that was the time that opened my eyes to the fact that the retreat is actually a way to replenish yourself and to do really important inner work, going on an inner journey, because my holidays had always been about exploring adventure, outer journeys. And so the value of that inner journey, and especially for a writer, because when we work on a project, like you said, at the beginning before we started recording, I believe you know, we’re so focused on what we’re putting on the page, but a lot of the information is subconscious and intuitive.

And even as I’m writing my book now, I always give myself plenty of time when I just switch off. And that’s when you actually connect with a lot of the deep messages of the book or the stories you want to write. O r go on an artist’s date, you know, like Julia Cameron says.

So a retreat, I feel is a really important way to just slow down. First of all, slow down disconnect from all the devices. A lot of authors and I love that you are very active on Instagram, which is of course where we met. And where you and Penelope just said, you met. Which is wonderful, but it is so distracting. So that often, you know, when we just give ourselves that time, it doesn’t have to be a whole week to go on a retreat.It’s a time of replenishing withdrawing. There’s a book that came out last year by Catherine May called ‘Wintering: the need for rest and retreat in difficult times’. And it really just explores fully. And for her, it was also leaving a career and becoming ill and then period of resting and retreating and actually exploring what the value of that is, which is not valued in our society. You know, I come from Germany. My father was really judgmental about me resting and retreating for almost a year during my grief time, because I wasn’t in his eyes contributing anything to society, but you do because you actually replenishing from the core and that’s so important.

Terri Connellan: Just to reflect on what you are saying. The reason it came up for me and thinking about that time of retreat was reading this beautiful book The Writer’s Process by Anne Janzer which I’ve written a post about recently. And she compares the writing process to bread making. And she talks about the Muse and the Scribe as two different mental processes, but she talks about bread making, but it’s, the Muse comes in when the bread’s rising, you know, you got to let it sit and I know in taking a long time and it just sat on my desk over there where the finished book is now, and it was like a piece of dough rising and it was, I had to integrate more experiences too and make sense of more things. Sometimes I think it’s letting things come in isn’t it? It’s that, I don’t know, integrating, allowing, receiving.

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah. And it’s also sitting with the idea because a book, unlike an article or blog posts is, a long-haul journey, it’s a marathon. And so to actually sit and have a whole week or even a weekend, just to stay where you’re not answering emails, where you’re not worrying about mundane, everyday things where you’re not even with your partner, having conversations, whether they are good or bad that you normally have. It’s a luxury that you give yourself, but it’s sort of essential.

And also I found when we were on retreat in Vietnam, which is of course interesting again, because you’re in a different country. So like you just said, you’re extroverted skills and suddenly on overdrive because there’s so much visual and olfactory and whatever stimulation. But I find on a retreat that is often also when, especially in my retreats, we do our morning workshop and then we might go to the market and look at the colors or as we did, drinking freshly squeezed juice and, and often that’s when things ferment and compost, somehow deep inside. And then you go back to your afternoon session and something unexpected comes out on the page. There’s a freshness. You wouldn’t find just sitting in your office, looking at what’s going is the day over yet? Have I produced enough?

Terri Connellan: I remember we went to the markets and it was just an explosion of color and smells and I think often we get dulled down too, sitting inside and not engaging with our senses.

And then we cook the meal from the produce and then we ate the food and it was just sensory experience. So for me, I think it, and it’s taken me a while in hindsight to realize that, that time is really important for allowing the work but also allowing myself, to just get back in touch with a broader range of myself and from a personality perspective, some of those things that are not my natural bent, but which really enrich me. So thank you for that experience. It was a really important part of activating the muse in the middle of the journey.

Kerstin Pilz: Yes. And it gives you that distance also, I mean, especially going away whether it’s overseas or to another country, or just out of your comfort zone, it gives you that beginner’s minds lens, you’re looking at it through fresh eyes and I’m sure editors, like Penelope would tell her writers, just let it sit and then come back with fresh eyes after you have some distance. And that’s what a retreat can do as well. Beginner’s mind.

Terri Connellan: So in your Wholehearted story, and I know your memoir is about really difficult times, going through grief experiences and challenge. And certainly my story, different story about, I guess, the similar theme is that theme of going through difficult times and from that creating a positive outcome.

So how do you see challenge and growth fitting? How does Wholehearted play into that, your book? Just interested to explore.

Kerstin Pilz: First of all, when I met you, I said, oh my God, there’s someone on the similar journey and you can actually give your self permission to tap into that, heart centeredness, like you say, in your book. You were at work, feeling like you’re crying in the bathroom or something. And you feel when you then step back into your role or, you know, proper, again, you’re leaving parts of yourself behind and if you have a 30 year career, like you did, mine was almost 20. I realized, and this is thanks to you that I’m an introvert. I had always known, but I hadn’t really consciously thought about how my work as a lecturer was actually forcing me everyday to be an extrovert. So being able to use that wholeheartedness as a pass through life and giving myself permission and understanding why I would feel so exhausted sometimes. It came from being outside of my natural comfort zone is an introvert, which doesn’t mean I’m shy or can’t connect to people.

It just means I have a lot of quiet time, quiet writing, connecting with myself. So I think the difficult times, those threshold moments when our lives become turned upside down they also break us open to a different dimension of ourselves.

If we are in that sensitive, receptive mindset to stop and to just stand still and say, what can I learn from this? What is this opening up inside of me? Because society teaches us to just power through grief and to armor up and to be strong. And like Brené Brown says the really courageous are those who allow themselves to be vulnerable and to sit with the grief and to actually listen into it and to be present to all of those difficult feelings rather than going, oh, let’s just quickly numb ourselves with some wine or run away from the feelings.

So I think it’s a moment of deep growth of possibility, for evolving in ways you possibly consciously couldn’t achieve in the same sort of impactfulness.

Terri Connellan: Mm. Thank you for sharing that. And also how we connected and a sense of synergy along the way, because it does help, it’s hard going through it. You can feel really alone. So to see others who are also forging a path, providing insights, tools, pathway, such as you provided for me through your retreat too. I think we can all help each other grow and understand that, you know, it’s not easy either that work.

The other thing we talk about in the book is a piece you wrote about the role of luck versus hard inner work. And for me there’s certainly elements of luck in our lives, but I think we often can attribute too much to that and not realize just how much hard inner work it does take to deal with situations like this. It’s a long process.

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah, exactly and thank you for bringing that up. I often, and I’m sure you probably get that too when people say, well, how lucky are you that you have the time to write this book? Well, hello I was retrenched. Or how lucky are you, people tell me to be writing a memoir. It’s like, yeah, but I’m writing a memoir about losing the person I married thinking I’d be married to them forever. And then finding out something that I didn’t actually want to know, namely, that he had a second life. So the lucky part is that I allowed myself to actually be open to what these difficult times have to teach us. I think that’s the lucky part that I’m not running away from it,

Terri Connellan: neither are you.

But I think it’s that decision to when it’s another transition, it’s a turning point moment where you think, well, what am I going to do with this? And, as I tell in the book, I reached out to other people, I looked at what they were doing. And that was when I started my blog a long time, 2010. And for me, that was about finding my voice because writing was important, it was just a way of getting that back front and center out of fairly recent grief experiences to take me forward. So Penelope, do you have any comments or questions?

Penelope Love: I was relating very much to the retreat comments that you were making Kerstin because of the trip I just took and my husband’s asking me, well, what exactly did you like about these places that we visited? Cause he wasn’t necessarily resonating in the same way that I was, but what I was. Now, I have a better answer for him. And it’s this process that was occurring. You know, it’s not so much the streets of any one city that made me really love that city, but what I was loving, what was happening inside me when I was seeing something different that I’ve never seen before.

So yeah. Thank you for helping me put words on that. Cause that’s, and I couldn’t agree more of how important that is in the writing process. Because when I look back, you already speak about writing your memoir as a long haul and it’s different from a blog post or an article. I once at the beginning of my journey had an editor say to me, oh, well, if you write enough articles, one day, you’ll wake up and realize you have a book.

And that always stayed with me and I never really thought as I was writing the love life column, that became my book, that it was going to be a book. But when I had that critical mass of articles and I did start to see it, and then the weaving process of past articles, it becomes its own monster of a process.

But what happened was that as I was living my life, I realized that when I went to India, when I first met my husband and when I went to Costa Rica, these were the two places where the book really got started. And they were not on American soil. And there were lines and journal entries that became the foundational pieces of the book. And they were both from India and Costa Rica. So had I not traveled, had I not journeyed I would not have been able to tell this story of being on home soil. So it’s very interesting. The retreat dimension. I love this very rich conversation.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s beautiful. That process too, with the blog for me, a lot of the pieces in the book began as blog posts too. So I think it’s that finding a way to write and get your story out and find your voice in any way, shape or form, they can then become pieces in other places, just as the pieces that weren’t in the book can become something that goes somewhere else. So I think what you’re saying is really true about honoring that writing self in any way we can.

Kerstin Pilz: But that also ties in with something you say in your book, which is about the importance of having these networks, because it was actually very important for me. Like when I found Susannah Conway who started also because of her grief journey and then you Terri, it’s like, oh, I can give myself permission to write this. It’s actually like for a long time, I thought, well, what happened to me was terrible for me, but really I didn’t experience genocide. I’m not a female in Afghanistan, you know, it’s not that bad. But I think the networks are really important to actually validate any story is important, any story of profound transition. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s what I’ve loved about the stories of wholehearted living and I’ve just gone through and read them all again, putting them into one document to look at the next step with perhaps publishing them. And it’s incredible how, like the themes in there are in my book. I think the first story Katherine Bell’s prompted your story, Kerstin, so it’s like all the stories and experiences prompt each other’s voices to feel a bit freer and to feel a connection.

In one of them, one person writes a letter in response to Heidi’s story so I think that whole importance of women’s voices and stories and sharing and working collaboratively. One thing I’ve learned and, if you look at the acknowledgements of my book, you think writing is a solitary experience. And then when you stop and think, all the people and all the experiences and all the particular group experiences that helped me: group coaching, mastermind, coaching myself, retreats, all of that was part of this rich journey. I know you said, Penelope, writing acknowledgements was so important to you and your journey too, that thinking back on who was part of it, who helped you? What made a difference? And when there’s still many, many more people I could have included, but I had to stop somewhere, but it just makes you realize writing a particular book is so collaborative and so important.

So thank you both for being part of that journey. So just one last question for you, Kirsten. What do you Wholehearted offers women particularly around writing and creativity and those aspects?

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah, I just thought, first of all, it gives you the permission, like we just discussed, you know, to actually believe that you have a voice and that you have a legitimacy to tell your story. And I like that it is a personal story. So I’m following your journey which is nice because you think I’m not alone, and it gives you very practical tools namely the tarot. I’m aware of Susannah Conway. I have somebody, my community here, in fact teaches writing via tarot cards, but I’m still dabbling in it. And I think that’s a really interesting tool that I would like to explore further. And also of course the whole shadow work, the Jungian shadow work and the personality type, which for example, I used to teach in my work as an intercultural communications lecturer, but I never really thought about it so much with regards to how it actually impacts my own personal life and reading about it in your book that really opened up new ways of thinking.

Even of writing, even writing a character, maybe I identify their profile before I create the character in the book. So I thought that was really helpful. And also the emphasis on writing, being a writer, on a retreat I get a lot of people who say I’m a, ‘want to be’ a writer. Penelope, I’m sure you know, this, everybody resonates with this. We want to write. But we end up in the shadow careers, imposter syndrome. So I think that’s really helpful also in your book that you show people that you are a writer just by writing morning pages, for example, every day..

Doesn’t matter whether they end up anywhere or whether you get accepted to the PhD program at Wollongong University, you’re still a writer. And I think that’s really strong message of encouragement.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. That’s beautiful. It’s lovely to hear the particular areas of focus that resonate with you and that also we had a lovely conversation when I was writing with Beth this morning and another lady, co-writing, we were talking about the long haul writing and the word tenacity came up. And Beth, was saying, it’s very much about tenacity, but it’s about realizing that everyone just starts an ordinary writer and you just keep sticking at it and sticking at it and going through to be extraordinary and it’s, but anybody can do it with what we’re saying. We all have different talents. But it’s very much about by sticking at the process, what we can bring to it, as we go through.

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah. And that’s the other thing, I just wanted to say, because you’re a very organized person and disciplined. Writing a book does take discipline. Cause you know, there is that like Liz Gilbert says, you have the fantasy of the artist and then there’s the artist and the writer who like her sits down. She says, I’m like my farmer parents every morning at six o’clock and I write yes.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, exactly. Because the other lady we were writing with was asking questions about how long it took and what the process is like. And she said, tenacity, it takes tenacity and we went, oh yeah, that’s a good word. It does. Thank you so much. Have you got any questions at all Natasha?

Natasha Piccolo: I just want to congratulate you. I really enjoyed hearing your process. And it’s amazing, like being a young writer I’m only just 30 and having a book out next year. It’s amazing to learn from somebody who has been writing for years, years, years, years, years, almost double my time. And it’s beautiful because it gets me very excited for my career.

Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you so much. That means so much to me. I’m excited to be able to inspire you. Cause I know people inspired me too when I was younger and I think we all need that inspiration to keep us focused on our dream because it starts, like I showed with my book. It starts as that sort of mind map.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah, I really resonated with that. Because my book, I started writing it when I was 20, so it’s been literally a decade. And I’ve got probably 20 journals and scrapbooks and brainstorms and like a whole archive from the last 10 years that, it just made me really excited to release my baby next year.

Terri Connellan: That’s very exciting.

Kerstin Pilz: What’s your book?

Natasha Piccolo: The Balance Theory. So it looks at the idea that the only universal goal that you can truly observe from cellular to cosmic is that the universe is attempting to balance itself.

Kerstin Pilz: It’s a non-fiction book.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. Narrative nonfiction, very similar process. So clinically I’m a speech pathologist. So a lot of my understanding of this concept has come through my clinical work over the years. But in my personal life, there was a lot of loss, grief, trauma that was basically mirroring the lessons as I was going through it clinically with clients so there’s that marriage of science and spirit, which is what the whole book is about.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. Yeah. I write about that in the postscript, how those things are coming together. It’s like consciousness, the map of consciousness work of David Hawkins and that sort of energy work. Things coming together. So that would be a really challenging book to write too.

Natasha Piccolo: It was, it was a beautiful process though. It was channeled, so I did it through meditation. I would meditate and there was one big meditation that came through as the divine nine. So there was nine chapters and that’s what the proposal was based off, that meditation. And after 10 years of scribbling ideas in journals for a very long time and not actually forming a manuscript. I went that’s what it is. It’s the divine nine. And now I’ve got to work backwards and go from that point. So just this morning I finished the first full draft, so that will be sent to Natasha at the kind press today.

Terri Connellan: Oh, wonderful. And she’s a beautiful person to receive your work. She’s just been amazing.

Natasha Piccolo: She’s a dream.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I’ve been very blessed to have Penelope with the developmental editing and then Natasha and her kind of press team with the next step of the journey. She’s incredibly supportive. So we will be fellow writers in the stable.

Kerstin Pilz: May I ask a final question about your writing process. So developmental editing with Penelope. Did you have somebody also, who did your line editing or was that done by the kind press? So, you know, your typos.

Terri Connellan: Do you want to answer how you saw your part, Penelope? Because I’m interested too, because it wasn’t just developmental. We did far more than that too didn’t we?

Penelope Love: Yeah. You know, that’s the thing when you’re working with someone like Terri and you have that soul connection, it’s really hard to separate the developmental part from the detailed part. And so especially because that process of finding voice. Not really finding it, but fine tuning voice. It goes hand in hand. So I would say we were able to work that process almost simultaneously. And then at the end of the developmental process, we were relatively confident that when it was going to the kind press, that it would only really need a polishing over. And that has a lot to do with Terri’s willingness to be involved at that level in the process.

Not every writer works that way. Some people just want to get it on paper and then I’ll worry about the lines then I’ll worry about, does this paragraph merge into this one? Fine. But Terri and I were able to do that work along the way.

Terri Connellan: And once we got the shape, right. We then worked through chapter by chapter. And we did the moving things around and sometimes bits moved. But at that stage, it was much more about the content within that chapter. And then the draft that went to the kind press was, it was a strong draft because it had been through all that editing and then the editing team, and Natasha hands-on edits as well. And she has another editor who is very skilled and has worked with a lot of the top houses too. So I’ve been really honored to work with some incredible people and, and I wanted to independently publish. That was always my choice. So you know, for me, it’s been a really great fit and great journey.

Natasha Piccolo: Congratulations.

Terri Connellan: Thank you for joining us today. So thank you for coming live and being here. It’s been really lovely. So I’ve popped in that review just because it was such a lovely one. That’s the first review it’s by Meredith who is part of the psychological type community. It’s been lovely to have people such as yourselves Penelope and Kerstin who know me and know the book and get it. But then others, like Meredith, who haven’t been as closely involved, she knows me through the psychological type network, but her review is really beautiful about how it fits with coaching and client work. And also she understands personalities, being a personality type person. So she highlights that too, that link between structure and meandering, which I was conscious of as I was writing. But it’s lovely when someone reflects that back to you. So that’s really very kind of them.

There are Book Club notes. So if people who were working through book clubs, I’ve created some book club notes, and some coaching opportunities coming up, walking people through the book as a whole, in a coaching space. So how do you think that would be I’m interested in your comments?

Natasha Piccolo: That is definitely what I would be doing with The Balanced Theory.

Terri Connellan: Is it? That’s a nice way to go!

Natasha Piccolo: Absolutely like, just from the structure, it’s because it’s teachable learnings as a coaching module. It works well. And I think that your book is very similar in that structure. Very tangible.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And it’s one thing to read a book and to do the activities, which you can, and sometimes people will intend to do it but it’s hard to get the time. So another thing too, is that structure helps create the time to do it. Yeah.

Kerstin Pilz: They can work through it as a week by week program program.

Penelope Love: Terri, I think it’s going to be amazing because the Sacred Creative Collective was almost like an early incarnation of what’s possible. I think you’ll find it probably a lot easier as a leader of such a collective to have this resource.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. I appreciate that feedback. Awesome. So any other questions or comments before we close?

Penelope Love: I have one comment. I just wanted to say Natasha. It’s so nice to meet you. We connected on Instagram and this is almost a rare opportunity to meet somebody that you’ve connected with in a more live way. Look forward to connecting over our posts in the coming years.

Natasha Piccolo: Definitely.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. Great to connect with you too, Natasha. It’s exciting. You’re getting to that stage with your book and yeah. Keep in touch. Thank you so much Penelope for everything and for joining today.

Penelope Love: Thank you too and I didn’t mean to overlook, it’s just that I feel almost like a colleague shift that we’ve had through the Wholehearted Stories and Natasha is completely new in my life, but I’m going to make sure that I’ve also connected with you on social media and then refresh myself on your story and stay more connected with you as well.

Terri Connellan: Thanks so much Kerstin for coming and being part of it. And for your support over the years, Write Your Journey and Quiet Writing have been very much kindred souls.

Kerstin Pilz: In parallel.

Terri Connellan: We connected in Sydney, totally synchronistically we were in Frankfurt at the same time and then in Vietnam. So we’ve had some lovely in-person catch-up.

Kerstin Pilz: And now we’re all grounded in Australia!

Penelope Love: Really remarkable. The chances of that, that’s amazing – that’s some really aligned stars there.

Terri Connellan: Thanks so much for being here.

Kerstin Pilz: Good luck with your next one. Have fun and enjoy the moment.

Terri Connellan: Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.

Links to explore:

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Other free resources: https://www.quietwriting.com/free-resources/

My books and book club:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club – kicking off December 2021

Review of Wholehearted by Meredith Fuller

My coaching:

Work with me

Personality Stories Coaching

Connect on social media

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/

About Penelope Love

Penelope Love, MA, is a publisher, speaker and winner of the International Book Awards as author of Wake Up in Love. In 2000, her career launched in the editorial department of the University of Michigan Press, followed by Barnes & Noble, and the original publisher of Chicken Soup for the Soul. As she expanded into book design, production and business management, it was a natural evolution into the role of publisher. In 2016, she founded Citrine Publishing based on a visionary publisher-author partnership. Penelope passionately supports people in writing the books that only they can write, while also sharing the memoir only she could write, about sexual trauma healing and marriage to her spiritual teacher along a united path of Tantra and Self-Inquiry, illuminating these essential steps on the journey to liberation.

Penelope’s Blog: https://www.wakeupinlove.com

Citrine Publishing: https://www.citrinepublishing.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/penelopelovely

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/penelopelovely

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/penelopelove

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/penelopelove

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PenelopeLove

Subscribe to Penelope’s Love Life Column: https://wakeupinlove.com/subscribe

About Kerstin Pilz

Kerstin Pilz PhD is a published author, former academic with almost 20 years university teaching experience, a TEDx speaker and a 200 RYT yoga teacher. She is currently completing her memoir Falling Apart Gracefully. Her previous publications include academic monographs and travel features in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the New York Times and travel industry magazines. When tragedy turned her life upside-down, she discovered the healing power of writing and now teaches creative writing online and on multi-day retreats in her beautiful home in Mission Beach, Far North Queensland, Australia and in Hoi An, Vietnam, where she lives part time.

Kirsten’s website: www.writeyourjourney.com

Instagram: @writeyourjourney

Facebook: @writeyourjourney

TEDx talk on The Healing Power of Writing: https://www.writeyourjourney.com/kerstin-pilz-tedx-townsville-the-healing-power-of-writing/

or shortened version:  https://youtu.be/btxVXcRDhqY

Natasha Piccolo

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tashspeaks/

inspiration & influence planning & productivity reading notes

How to read for more creativity, pleasure and productivity

August 7, 2017

reading

People have asked me how I get so much reading done. Here are my strategies for how to read for more creativity, pleasure and productivity.

On Quiet Writing, we share the threads that tie our wholehearted stories together. They can be passions, skills, values – anything we go back to over and over again in different ways.

One of the key golden threads that ties my story together is reading and a passionate love of books. My life has been a mosaic of loving reading, learning about it, teaching it and sharing this love with others.

In this post, I share my reading story and background in teaching reading and sharing its joys and skills. I reflect on my current approaches, providing strategies for reading more broadly and effectively for creative purposes and pleasure.

My reading story

I wrote in my last Creative and Connected about our unique blend and how the skills and experience we bring together make up our onlyness and contribution to the world. When I reflect on my onlyness, the art of reading, teaching people to read at and sharing this love shines out.

As a child I always loved books. I can remember being at school in Year 1 reading a story about The Cutty Sark. It’s my first memory of being a fluent, independent reader. I grew up in a house full of books and my father was an avid reader. On holidays, I can remember him reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and The Source by James A Michener. He read Australian classics to me when I was young – Blinky Bill and Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and those stories still resonate.

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I excelled at English, especially exploring books deeply and writing essays about them. I was headed for a career in journalism and communications but was put off by the more extraverted side of this. So I studied English and Education instead, enabling me to develop my love of reading and literature and also learn to share it. I studied primary education and focused on literacy. My Honours year featured research on literacy and language structures in early readers and whether they encouraged children to enjoy reading. I also researched the poetic reading experience and whether educators fostered a love of reading poetry.

Later, I completed a Diploma in Adult Education specialising in literacy. This focused on adults who had missed out on the ability to read and write well in their first language or who needed to learn it in English as another language. For nearly 20 years I taught in this field, teaching everything from how to read signs to working with apprentices on their trade courses to teaching speed reading and reading for tertiary and academic purposes. I gained a Masters in Language and Literacy specialising in English for Speakers of Other Languages where I learnt all about genre and social contexts.

Then, I became a leader in adult vocational education including working on strategic policy and advising Ministers and Government. My reading was all policy documents, reports, media and many emails! I also read about leadership, mentoring, competencies of leadership and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as I built my leadership and self-leadership skills especially as an introvert.

And through all this time, I read for more personal enjoyment: for pleasure, for information and for productivity. I love to mix reading novels with reading that is more about personal development, learning and knowledge. Being an INTJ Myers-Briggs Type, Introverted Intuition is a dominant function. The ideas and symbols from books are a central organising principle in both my inner and outer life with pretty much everything stemming from that quiet reading time.

The many skills of being able to read

As my background shows, there are many skills of being able to read and many ways in which it plays out. Here are just some examples:

  • functional reading – to get around and meet the basic needs of society
  • content reading – reading for vocational areas, for a purpose such as a course
  • reading for pleasure – focused on the pure experience and enjoyment of reading and books
  • reading for information – reading to research, gain ideas, summarise, scan and skim
  • academic reading – skills of reading literature and articles to summarise, argue a point, write an essay and come up with something new
  • reading for social media – scanning, reviewing, liking, responding, connecting, visual reading
  • reading for strategic purposes – policy, strategy, positioning, influencing, persuasion

And the truth is, we often mix them up to suit our reading purpose.

There’s also a kind of reading linked to creativity and productivity and ‘reading like a writer’. It’s something I am finding myself thinking about as I step into more fully embracing my writing life. It’s as if we need to bring all the many skills of being able to read together and apply them in a new way. This is especially so in this environment of social media and technological choices around how we read. So what does it mean to ‘read like a writer’?

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Reading like a writer

Novelist V E Schwab takes the role of reading seriously in her job as a writer. In an interview on Caroline Donahue’s The Secret Library Podcast, she says:

About two/three years ago, I decided I wasn’t reading enough. I was really busy and I couldn’t find time…At the beginning of the interview I said “it’s not about finding time, it’s about making it.” And I realised that reading is a fundamental part of my job and not just in the, “Oh I need to know what else is selling and what else on the shelves.” It’s a fundamental part of becoming a better writer…”

V E Schwab describes a ‘story monster’ that lives inside her chest and the more stories she takes in, the cleverer it gets. The story monster provides intuitive guidance when writing, like a barometer, enabling her to feel the story. Reading broadly is the best way to ‘feed’ the story monster, and is a critical input into the writing process. She explains:

So I decided that reading needed to be treated like any other part of my job and needed to be something that I made time for, a commitment. And so I set out to read one hundred books a year. I always have one paperback, I always have an e-book and I always have an audiobook….I’m continually accompanied by narratives….It’s still difficult, I still have to work at it…but I’m just committed to it.

You can read V E Schwab’s summary of her year in reading for 2016 here. This interview and her committed approach to reading made me think about my own practices. It really helped me to hone my thinking about the various reading skills we bring into play, how we can vary our reading for creativity, pleasure and productivity and read like a writer.

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How to read for more creativity, pleasure and productivity

Some of the hallmarks of reading for more creativity, pleasure and productivity including reading like a writer include: setting a target, accountability, variety, intent, making the most of the opportunity to read and making time.

Here are some strategies for reading for more creativity, pleasure and productivity. They are based on my knowledge and experience as well as tips from other committed readers including V E Schwab, Joanna Penn, Gabriella Pereira and Nick Hornby:

1 Read across different book formats

In line with V E Schwab’s strategy, read across book formats – hard copy, ebook and audiobook. I find I read differently and choose specific types of books for each format.  I tend to use ebooks when I want to really study a book and make electronic highlights and notes. I’m listening to audiobooks on writing techniques and business for authors. And I like to relax and read for pleasure with the hard copy of a book in my hand. You can autosynch between devices including between ebook and audiobook. You might decide to go pretty well all digital as Joanna Penn has done. Find out what you like to read and how and mix it up!

2 Make time for reading

All the committed readers I know including myself make time for reading. They don’t watch a lot of television or they get rid of the TV altogether. Or they get used to reading with distractions! Social media is another time waster that takes away our reading time, so monitor that carefully. Find a way to weave reading into activities like driving and walking via audio books. It’s simply a case of committing to reading more and putting the strategies in place to make it happen.

3 Commit to reading goals for the year

One strategy that helps is to set a reading goal for the year such as 100 books a year as V E Schwab has done. You can also join book clubs or reading challenges with goals such as the Australian Women Writers Reading Challenge I have participated in over a number of years. I’m aiming to read 52 books this year. I know I need to be more organised in tracking my progress to this goal. I’m also aware I do a lot of reading that is not related to completing a book, but it’s still a goal worth shooting for or extending beyond.

4 Be accountable to your reading goals

Once you’ve set the goal, be accountable to it. My Creative and Connected posts each week are an opportunity to check in on my reading. It’s amazing how quickly the week rolls around and just being accountable keeps me focused. I could perhaps include a goal and tracking in my Creative and Connected post as a way of keeping an eye on progress and being more accountable. You can also keep track of your reading via Goodreads.

5 Read more than one book at a time

Probably one of the big changes in my reading habits is that I no longer read one book at a time. Reading across different formats has helped to break this limiting way of thinking. I’m now reading about 4 or 5 books at once. I read across formats depending on the circumstances. And I can pick up the book that best suits the time I have – like reading to relax at the end of the day rather than speeding up the mind with ideas. It might not be for everyone and there are times when you might want to read one book at a time, but it’s worth experimenting with.

6 Read across genres (mix it up)

Linked to both #1 and #5 is reading across genres and across fiction and non-fiction. There’s a fabulous list of genres here. V E Schwab reminds us of the value of reading broadly. If you’re writing a novel, read both inside and outside the genre you are writing in for new perspectives. If you like historical fiction, read the occasional fantasy novel. Have both fiction and non-fiction books on the go at once so you can choose what suits the moment best. Even if you love literary fiction, have lighter novels available to you so you can keep reading when you are not quite up to the more intense read.

7 Stop reading a book you don’t like 

Another habit I’ve learnt to break is feeling that I need to finish a book even if I don’t like it. Nick Hornby in Stuff I’ve Been Reading says: “Read what you enjoy, not what bores you.” And in The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, he says of a boring book: “Please, please: put it down. You’ll never finish it. Start something else.” It’s good advice. It only slows you down and wastes your time.

8 Read actively: highlight, take notes, make reading lists

Reading actively helps keep you engaged so highlight, underline and take notes. Ebook options make it easy to highlight electronically and keep these documents as a single record. I keep notes in a large Moleskine journal too if I am reviewing a book, such as when I wrote about White Hot Truth. This more intensive reading can be time-consuming but it rewards you many times over in return as you engage deeply with an author’s message. In DIY MFA, Gabriela Pereira suggests actively making reading lists just as you would in a formal MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program.

9 Share your reading experiences

Share your reading experiences whether it be on Instagram, your blog or on Goodreads. Write reviews, share quotes, celebrate your library, participate in reading challenges, blog about genres that you love and why. Through my daily Tarot Narrative, I link books to a tarot story for the day which helps me to revisit the books in my library and share value from them. Others are appreciating this connection! Social media has been such a boon for sharing reading experiences, finding out about new books and reminding us of what we love.

10 Read like a writer

Gabriela Pereira in DIY MFA says that “Reading like a writer is like trying to figure out how a magician performs his tricks.” V E Schwab suggests a similar view on this when she talks about her ‘story monster’. It’s really about getting behind the scenes, under the hood and getting a feel for the narrative or structure of non-fiction. As Pereira goes onto say:

Because the moment you figure out how the author pulled off her trick, you’ll be able to start applying it to your own work.

11 Read about reading 

And finally, read about reading and take the time to reflect on your reading journey just as I have done here. Seek out books that help you take a meta view of your reading patterns and skills and how to extend them. Connect with those that seek to spread the pleasure and joy of reading through reviews and sharing information about books.

I’m preparing two special reads about reading coming soon:

  • Creative and Connected this Friday will feature a round up of books about reading and celebrating reading: the art, history, process and joy of it. So look out for that!
  • I’m working on a free ebook on reading as creative influence. It’s about the books that have influenced my story, so sign up to Quiet Writing to be the first to receive it once it’s released this month! Just pop your email in the box on the right.

And whilst I’ve talked about reading more in some ways, it’s not always about quantity. Reading more creatively, productively and enjoying it is always a valuable goal, regardless of volume. A message that resonated in my recent coaching training is to honour our spend, making sure we carve out space to apply what we read and implement the knowledge.

Thanks for reading. I hope this has been useful and of interest.  

Share your thoughts on how you read more or differently for reading, creativity and pleasure – would love to hear! You can respond via the Comments here or on Facebook.

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

Reading is a great love of mine – you can get my free 95-page ebook on th36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

In praise of comfort reading

Practical tools to increase writing productivity

The courage to show up

20 practical ways of showing up and being brave (and helpful)

 

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inspiration & influence reading notes

Reading Australian women writers in 2017

February 6, 2017

Working out what to read next is always a challenge. But books by Australian women writers are always on my mind and that’s in no small measure due to the Australian Women Writers Challenge.

It’s the sixth year of the Australian Women Writers Challenge and it has done much to change the face of how Australian women’s writing is seen and celebrated.  The challenge is part of a world-wide movement to raise awareness of excellent writing by women, helping readers to “challenge the subconscious stereotypes that govern our choice of books to read.”

The challenge was started in 2012 by Elizabeth Lhuede in response to gender imbalance in books reviewed, in reading preferences and choices and in award representation. It has created a groundswell of readers, reviewers and bloggers making a conscious choice to read, review, recommend and celebrate books written by Australian women.

Promoting Australian women’s writing

I participate to help promote Australian women’s writing. The challenge overall has resulted in thousands of Australian women writers’ books being read and reviewed. It’s led to increased national and international recognition of the initiative’s achievements, built slowly over time. 

The challenge has made me keep my antenna up about Australian women writers’ successes, awards and commendations. The Australian Women Writers Challenge connects with other movements aiming to raise awareness of writing by women – VIDA Women in Literary ArtsThe Stella Prize and #readwomen on twitter celebrating women’s writing. I’m proud to be a Stella Sparks supporter, this year highlighting the impact of nonfiction writing by women on Australian culture and society.

It’s always so fabulous to see Australian women writers succeeding locally and on the world stage including seeing their stories made into movies. Think ‘The Light Between Oceans’ and ‘The Dressmaker’ in recent times.

My experience with the challenge

It was natural for me to want to engage with this challenge from the start.  I have a great love of Australian women’s writing. My Australian literature bookshelf is about 80% women writers. This passion developed naturally during my university literature studies and has endured. It’s my history and lineage.  They are not the only writers I enjoy, but they are the writers closest to my experience with all the local references, influences and language especially as it relates to women.

I also want to contribute to the legacy of writing by Australian women into the future. The challenge has kept my writing heart alive and is an inspiration as I read. It’s a message too that I am also able to write and create, express my stories and find space for my narratives in whatever form. As my heritage, it’s where I can find linkage, possibilities and a springboard for creating.

What’s in it for participants?

I’ve signed up again in 2017 because it’s now an integral part of my reading choices. I continue to be inspired and excited by Australian women’s writing. There are so many Australian women writers’ works I simply would not have noticed or enjoyed if not for the challenge.

Many of these books were picked up because I was looking for Australian women writers in libraries, bookshops and online. I possibly would not have read ‘The Light Between Oceans’, ‘Poet’s Cottage’, ‘The Longing’ or ‘Claustrophobia’ if not for the challenge. These have become some of my favourite reading experiences over the years.

I have deliberately read across genres and the challenge has contributed to my enjoyment of the beautifully science fiction inspired, ‘When We Have Wings’, the Celtic fantasy world of ‘Sea Hearts’ and the weaving medieval narrative of ‘The Scrivener’s Tale’.

I’ve been more aware and excited when Australian women writers have been nominated, short-listed and won awards for their books. And I’ve sought out the books to see why they were celebrated in their achievements, especially ‘Questions of Travel’, ‘Burial Rites’, ‘Mateship with Birds’, ‘All the Birds, Singing’ and ‘The Natural Way of Things.’

How I’ve participated and what I’ve read over the years

In terms of participation, my reading lists are not enormous – around 6 to 7 books a year. (Some participants would have read this many books already this year – at least!) I’ve engaged with the AWW community via social media, tweeting and blogging and contributing in that way. I’ve made some great online connections with Australian women writers and readers. This has enriched my reading life and extended beyond it.

Last year, my reading attention was elsewhere and my AWW focus was a bit light on, so I am keen to engage more in 2017.  I also hope to do better with the reviewing side this year.

Here’s my reading list so far over the past 5 years of the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge:

2012:
Searching for the Secret River: A Writing Memoir – Kate Grenville
Sarah Thornhill – Kate Grenville
When We Have Wings – Claire Corbett
The Light Between Oceans – M L Stedman
Poet’s Cottage – Josephine Pennicott
The Engagement – Chloe Hooper
Disquiet – Julia Leigh

2013:
Fishing for Tigers – Emily Maguire
Sea Hearts – Margo Lanagan
Sydney – Delia Falconer
The Secret Keeper – Kate Morton
The Scrivener’s Tale – Fiona McIntosh
The Longing – Candice Bruce

2014:
Questions of Travel – Michelle de Kretser
Burial Rites – Hannah Kent
Mateship with Birds – Carrie Tiffany
Currawong Manor – Josephine Pennicott
The Fictional Woman – Tara Moss
Claustrophobia – Tracy Ryan
All the Birds, Singing – Evie Wyld

2015:
The Golden Age – Joan London
The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka – Clare Wright
Three Wishes – Liane Moriarty
A Short History of Richard Kline – Amanda Lohrey
The Husband’s Secret – Liane Moriarty
Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty
The Lake House – Kate Morton

2016:
One Life – Kate Grenville
The Natural Way of Things – Charlotte Wood

It’s been a rich journey and I encourage you to seek out the voices of women writers that excite and sustain you wherever they may be.

What am I planning to read (and review) in 2017?

My list so far for 2017 includes:

The Good People – Hannah Kent
Indelible Ink – Fiona McGregor
Speaking Out – Tara Moss
The Wife Drought – Annabel Crabb
Resilience – Anne Deveson

This year has a special focus on classics and forgotten Australian women writers. Readers are encouraged to review one or two classics, including books “that might once have been popular but which have now fallen out of favour.”  A classics Bingo card will soon be released to encourage people to read books from various decades.

This post, ‘100 Years of Australian Women’s writing online’, outlines the significant efforts to collate digital archives and documents to support the challenge. Elizabeth Lhuede is compiling a list of digital archives and downloads, finding many more classic and forgotten books online than anticipated. So much richness is to be found there!

To find out more about the challenge:

If you want to know about the background to the challenge, you can read about it hereAnd you can sign up for 2017 hereYou can participate to whatever level you can manage and there’s no ‘failing’, just doing what you can (as I do!).

The AWW reading and writing community is generous, diverse and inspiring. You can connect via the blog, through twitter @AusWomenWriters or hashtag #AWW2017, via the vibrant Facebook community or through Goodreads. There are readers, writers and reviewers from all walks of life reading so diversely and widely. The consolidated reviews are excellent and highlight the work of AWW readers and writers across all genres. 

The pleasures and learning are immense, raising awareness of reading choices and celebrating narratives and works by Australian women. It inspires women to find their voice through reading the voices of others. It’s no light-weight endeavour. These are the voices of creative possibilities and I treasure them.

I look forward to another year of reading books by Australian women writers. I hope you’ll join the challenge and connect with the community to inform your reading choices. And a special thanks to Elizabeth Lhuede for initiating the challenge and continuing the leadership of its evolution in 2017. I, for one, am so appreciative.

Thought pieces:

This Stella Prize podcast ‘Winning Women’ features a conversation between Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction winner Eimear McBride and 2016 Stella Prize winner Charlotte Wood. It’s a riveting and rich discussion on the work of both writers and gender in writing.

Via the Sydney Writers’ Festival Instagram account and Charlotte Wood, last year’s Stella Prize winner, some inspiring words to finish:

Upon receiving the 2016 Stella Prize, #CharlotteWood recited her five reasons to keep #writing, penned when she considered quitting.
1. To make something beautiful. Beauty does not have to mean prettiness, but can emerge from the scope of one’s imagination, the precision of one’s words, the steadiness and honesty of one’s gaze.
2. To make something truthful.
3. To make use of what you have and who you are. Even a limited talent brings an obligation to explore it, develop it, exercise it, be grateful for it.
4. To make, at all. To create is to defy emptiness. It is generous, it affirms. To make is to add to the world, not subtract from it. It enlarges, does not diminish.
5. Because as Iris Murdoch said, paying attention is a moral act. To write truthfully is to honour the luck and the intricate detail of being alive.

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