I want my worlds to collide
Books & ideas worth mentioning, investigating writers groups & The Inklings
In this update I explore my Veruka Salt moments, mention some ideas and books, share what I discovered at local writers groups.
I want my worlds to collide
There’s been a voice within me this month who wants my worlds to collide.
This voice is telling me that I want my podcast and email newsletter to wholeheartedly reflect my creative self, KPH. And I want it now!
You are forgiven for thinking I sound like Veruca Salt. If you’re my vintage, you’ll recognise that the Veruca Salt I’m referring to is one of the Roald Dahl characters, brought to life in the 1971 film, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
Veruca was the one who wanted the geese that lay the golden eggs, and sings "I Want It Now" as she runs around the room, whilst making a mess of everything and then jumps onto the scale which decides the good and bad eggs. This film was also enjoyed by my children, and I may occasionally refer to them as Veruca Salt if they become too demanding with their personal requests.
Despite this unwelcome navel gazing, there’s also been a series of serendipitous moments that are nudging me along my creative path.
Books & ideas worth mentioning
We’re in the process of deciding our book for the August One Roof Quarterly Book Club. One Roof is a community for women who run small businesses. We’re probably going to choose Hidden Potential, by
. He writes the newsletter here on . It was a surprise to my book club co-host, , that I hadn’t heard of Adam Grant’s books. You may already know his other books, Think Again, Originals, Give and Take, to name a few.To help me decide if Hidden Potential would be suitable as a One Roof Book Club choice, Anna pointed me to Grant’s interview on the Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. You can listen to it here. Grant identifies as an introvert and shares many interesting insights during their conversation, including:
the concept of brain writing, as a more effective alternative to brainstorming
the value of idea promotion instead of self promotion as a way to share your gifts with the world
the difference between our beliefs and values, and why making the distinction matters
why re-thinking beliefs and even contradicting oneself is important
It’s difficult to distil a 90 minute podcast interview into five bullet points. However, drawing out these insights is one of the reasons why I enjoy listening to podcast episodes shared with me by my friends and colleagues. They are the headlines that help me investigate the concepts discussed. As a life long learner, summarising the concepts that stand out to me in the podcasts I listen to is how I’ve discovered authors and new ideas, and it helps me challenge my status quo.
In this podcast episode Adam Grant also mentions the conversation with Steven Bartlett when he interviews Malcom Gladwell. Gladwell is also an introvert, and another of my favourite authors (I have a few). His conversation with Bartlett is also worth a listen, not just because Gladwell sheds a few tears. I experienced many meandering thoughts as I listened to this episode. Gladwell’s insights resonate very strongly with me.
I was introduced to Gladwell’s work via his debut book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, when I worked for a global organisation and we were launching Red Stripe, a Jamaican beer, into the local market. We wanted to seed the beer into the Melbourne market, and hand pick venues to stock it. The marketers responsible for the brand launch encouraged us all to read The Tipping Point as a way to contextualise our strategy for this product launch.
I went on maternity leave soon after, but continued to follow Gladwell’s books. During Melbourne’s 262 cumulative days of lockdown from 2020 I immersed myself in his Masterclass and read the rest of his books. If you’re new to Gladwell’s books I’d start with either Blink, Outliers or The Tipping Point. They are all good!
Investigating writers groups & The Inklings
I went to my first writers group a few weeks ago. I did not know what to expect. For 90 minutes I enjoyed listening to 10 people read 1500-2000 words of their writing. We were seated in a meeting room to the side of the local council library. The facilitator encouraged feedback in this safe and constructive environment.
“How was it?” my Husband asked me when I returned home. As a I shared the experience with him I flippantly said that I should start my own writing group. I could choose the when, where and who. Dismissing this comment as my need for control, I felt reluctant to reinvent the wheel when there had to be a group near me I could join. The problem was that the meeting I’d attended started at 6pm and it was a 1 hour drive in peak hour traffic to travel 11kms. A quick round of online research for other writing groups over the next 24 hours uncovered the same issue. The time or location did not line up.
My Sister believes we must take notice of things said flippantly as a window to our soul. Two days after attending the writer’s group I met up with a friend who’s also writing a book. We’ve written together a number of times, and on this particular day we’d agreed to enjoy lunch at Mr Tulk and then write in one of our favourite spots in State Library Victoria. During our time together we played around with the idea of starting our own writing group.
A few days later I went to the movies with my Dad to see Freud's Last Session, a film about Freud inviting iconic author C.S. Lewis to his home to debate the existence of God. Here’s a photo of my Dad enjoying a choc top. We had the entire cinema to ourselves!
Freud’s Last Session was an endurance test and I am not recommending it. But it was also a lesson in patience. Twenty five minutes into the film, when Dad asked if I wanted to stay, I’d resolved with myself that I was invested and would see it through until the end. And I’m glad I did.
During the film we learn that C.S. Lewis was in a writing group with J. R. R. Tolkien. There’s a scene where we see the emerging writers meet to discuss their writing over a cleansing ale. Driving home from the movie I kept thinking about how much I loved the name of their writing group: the Inklings.
Six days later I was reading the final section of Cal Newport’s latest book, Slow Productivity. Slow productivity is a term coined by Newport and defined as:
A philosophy for organising knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner, based on the following three principles:
Do fewer things
Work at a natural pace
Obsess over quality
Newport believes accomplishment without burnout is not only possible, but should be the new standard. I agree, and have implemented his insights from other books, including Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, and have benefited from more time to invest in all aspects of my life. Reading Newport's insights in Slow Productivity encouraged me to review the way I approach each day in my four day working week. I'm a couple of weeks into this new workflow and it's been incredible how focused and productive I've been. And that's a big statement for someone like me who's very organised and achieves a lot, most of the time. I can hear my Dad's voice saying 'high achiever' as he reads this.
Let's agree I am a recovering high achiever, embracing a slower pace.
The lesson in patience played out in the loveliest of ways.
On page 189 of Slow Productivity, as Newport explores the importance of obsessing over quality, I read the following heading.
START YOUR OWN INKLINGS
Newport writes that in the mid-1930s, C.S. Lewis, then a professor of English literature at Magdalen College at Oxford University, started an informal writing and discussion club.
He invited his friends to attend, including, J. R. R. Tolkien, also a professor at Oxford at the time. At first, they met every week or so at Lewis's rooms at Magdalen, where they would read works in progress and discuss their literary ambitions. They later added the tradition of meeting one morning a week for a beer and discussion at the Eagle and Child, a pub in the center of Oxford. They called themselves the Inklings.
It was in these meetings that Lewis began his interest in writing speculative fiction. In 1938, drawing on the encouragement and guidance of the group, he published Out of the Silent Planet, a space travel story that attempted to correct some of the dehumanizing trends that he and Tolkien had observed in early science fiction writing of the period. This was the first in a trilogy of novels that laid the foundation for him to shift his fiction ambitions toward the world of fantasy, leading eventually to the Chronicles of Narnia series. Tolkien, for his part, drew heavily on feedback from the group to help shape the growing collection of connected fictional mythologies that would, later in his life, evolve into The Lord of the Rings. Indeed, Tolkien biographer Raymond Edwards describes the Inklings as a "partial midwife" for Tolkien's fantasy masterwork.
Later commentators would describe the Inklings as coming together for the specific mission of rejecting modernism and introducing fantastical narrative forms that could make Christian morality more accessible. But as Edwards argues, such analysis was both "over-solemn" and "exaggerated." As he elaborates, "The Inklings was, above all else, a collection of Lewis's friends. ... Like most 'writers' groups, their main function was as an audience, to listen and criticize and encourage." It's here that we find the exportable lesson of the Inklings. When you gather with other people who share similar professional ambitions, the collective taste of the group can be superior to that of any individual. This follows, in part, from the diversity of approaches that people take toward creation in a given field. When you combine the opinions of multiple practitioners of your craft, more possibilities and nuance emerge. There's also a focusing effect that comes from performing for a crowd. When you want to impress other people, or add to the conversations in a meaningful way, your mind slips into a higher gear than what's easily accessible in solo introspection.
Newport believes that forming a group of like-minded professionals, all looking to improve what they're doing, provides a shortcut to improving your taste, an instantaneous upgrade to the standard of quality that you're pursuing.
Whether you agree with Newport’s sentiment or not, all roads were leading to the formation of my own writing group, the Inklings. I photocopied the pages from Newport’s book and hand wrote a card to two of my writing friends, who are also writing books in the non fiction, personal development and self help genre.
Welcome to the Inklings, I wrote, as I invited them to our monthly writing group. It’s invitation only for now, but I’ll keep you updated with our writing journey.
Remembering to be patient
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the impatience I’m experiencing about wanting my worlds to collide. I recognise this discomfort and know it’s part of the process of returning home to my creative self. I know I can do hard things, and I know I need to remember that life will unfold in a way I can not imagine or control.
I’m reminding myself that I can have it all, just not at the same time. I’m not the first person to acknowledge this. In Susan Cain’s Psychology Today article from 2011, Love, Work, and Friends: You Actually Can Have It All, With One Caveat, she reflects on Kenneth Koch’s poem, You Want a Social Life, with Friends.
This is why I think Kenneth Koch was incredibly wise. The conventional wisdom is that you can't do it all. But he said you can. Just not all at once.
Cain is a significant writer for me because her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, helped uncover my ambivert tendencies. You can read more about this in my article, Discovering I am an Ambivert.
With love & gratitude,
KPH
I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which I live and pay my respects to Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty has never been ceded. It always was and always will be, Aboriginal land.
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