The Writing Coach

On visiting Derek Jarman's Garden

There are times, I think, in every writer's life, when inspiration feels in short supply, when everyday events take over and fresh input is needed if we're going to thrive creatively. I hit this point a week or so ago and we took a decision to get away. We are now staying in Rye, on the South Coast of England, a town I last visited as a child of eight years old, a place that held strong personal memories. My family is sleeping as I write.

I knew, when we set off, that I wanted to visit Derek Jarman's garden at Dungerness, a pilgrimage I've desired to make for some years (yet have always somehow put off). So it was a thrill, today, to finally visit the landscape that I'd first read about eight years ago when researching my novel 'Bluethroat Morning'.

I've long admired Howard Sooley's photos of Jarman's garden. For those not familiar with the garden, the British filmmaker Jarman called his garden 'Paradise' yet it was planted in a landscape that some might consider more of a hell than a heaven - in the 'flat, bleak, often desolate expanse of shingle that faces the Nuclear Power Station in Dungeness, Kent'. Spurred on by a true personal vision, his painterly eye and strong ecological conviction, Jarman tended the garden from 1986 until his death.

It is difficult to begin to express the intensity of my experience today, on visiting the garden. Suffice for the moment to say that it has strengthened my conviction in the necessity and power of art, of beauty and the individual vision of each human being. I am, I admit, in pensive mode right now. How could I not be? I've begun each day of the school Easter holidays by remaining in bed with Louis Fischer's 'Life of Mahatma Gandhi'. It is difficult not to question one's own motives, the values of one's own actions, when considering a life as meaningful as Gandhi's. The effect of Jarman's garden on me, however, has been to remind me that one does not have to change the world in huge ways to make an important impact. Jarman's faith in nature, in beauty, in the power of the human spirit, in love, in poetry - all these have a huge impact on anyone who visits this garden or simply reads Jarman's words and views Sooley's photographs in the book 'Derek Jarman's Garden'.

Refuse to Choose

I've recently begun reading Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher, as recommended on the blog of fellow creativity coach Cynthia Morris.  The subtitle is 'A Revolutionary Program for doing Everything that you Love'.  Well, I have to say this was too intriguing to resist and I simply had to get a copy.  The book is aimed at people who have many passions but find it difficult to commit to a single specialism.  These people, Sher calls 'Scanners'.  Sher argues that one does not have to commit.  You can 'do everything you love, freely, with passion, purpose, and real results.'

I wasn't sure, at first, whether I qualified as a 'Scanner' yet I had a feeling that I was one!  On the surface of it, I'm a writer, I've committed to the writing life.  I've published three novels and have nearly finished a fourth.  But then, there's that entrepreneurial streak I've spoken of, my desire to build my business further.  It's on hold, but it hasn't vanished.  There's my love of coaching too and my fascination for the work of other coaches.  Oh yes, and didn't I say something about wanting to study contemporary visual culture?  What about that little fantasy I have about auditioning for drama school when my kids are grown?  I also want to master the cello, the guitar, the sax and my own voice.  Wouldn't mind spending a little time studying fine art too...  Is Sher serious?  Can I really do all this? Might I not be better sticking with my specialism and getting the fourth novel finished?

On reading 'On Photography'

Last night I settled down to read the second essay of Susan Sontag's book 'On Photography', entitled 'America, Seen through Photographs, Darkly'.  I was drawn to read Sontag for several reasons.  I'll shortly be applying for an MA in Contemporary Art Theory and know I have a lot of reading to do, if I'm to convince the University that a literature graduate and a novelist is now serious about shifting her attention to art history - and I do want to go in at MA level, rather than doing a BA in art history.  But why get into the reading with Sontag?  I saw a spread in the Observer recently, photographs of her, taken by her partner Annie Leibovitz, photographs that chronicled the decline of Sontag's health.  And I was reminded of Sontag's vibrancy when she visited UEA to give a lecture about her novel 'The Volcano Lover'. 

So I guess these facts led to me, eventually, picking up the book and beginning.  I love it, of course.  I'm learning so much and so fast, it's intoxicating.  This second essay focussed particularly on the  Jewish American photographer Diane Arbus.  I was drawn in, reading about the difference between the work of Alfred Stieglitz and Arbus.  Both photographers attracted huge crowds when they exhibited at MOMA.  Stieglitz, according to Sontag, made concrete the ideals of Walt Whitman - the aim was to show that all humanity is "one" - yet the images of people from sixty-eight countries were all "beautiful".  Arbus's work however, defied that ideal.  She photographed "monsters and borderline cases - most of them ugly; wearing grotesque or unflattering clothing; in dismal or barren surroundings".   Arbus, formally a fashion photographer, photographed 'freaks', "a hermaphrodite with a dog, a tattooed man, and an albino sword-swallower".