As I write this it is Christmas Eve eve – the day before the day before! Not long now until families gather, gifts are exchanged and the feasting begins. For some people it is a time of joy and excitement, for others a reminder of what they lack or have lost. For other people it’s a rare opportunity to stop and relax and for yet others a chance to reflect on the reason for the season. I’ve always been quite partial to Christmas. I’m not sure quite what it is: the sense of anticipation? …the associated traditions? …the joy you see from children? I’m also a gift-giver so thoroughly enjoy the process of buying, wrapping and bestowing gifts on those I love. And perhaps that is the essence of Christmas – the giving rather than receiving, the sharing and the caring. Whatever your circumstances, I’d like to take the opportunity to wish you a blessed and Merry Christmas, and hope that you get to enjoy a special day. And, as Christmas passes and thoughts inevitably move to the New Year to come, I would also like to wish you all the very best for 2017. And, with one last note, in the spirit of giving I have a couple of special promotions coming up on my e-books. Maybury Place will be free for three days from December 25th to December 27th and The Bell Curve available for $0.99 from January 1st to January 6th. Best wishes for the festive season…and see you on the other side!
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It’s been a busy few months for me, hence the lack of an October post. Over the past two months I have been immersed in all sorts of writing projects. Amongst other things, I have written some articles on the subject of writing, completed a wide range of business writing for a commercial client, edited a screenplay, engaged to mentor two lovely ladies wanting to pen their own novels, edited a children’s book and attended a book fair. As writing can be a lonely business, it’s been great to collaborate on so many projects with other people, and to be able to materially help them on the way.
Over the last two months I’ve also had the opportunity to reconnect with a number of people from the past through the wonders of Facebook. In 1987/1988 I attended Capernwray Bible School in the north of England. I met my husband at Capernwray and made some friendships that have endured all this time. However, as you’d naturally expect, I didn’t keep in touch with every person who attended with us over that period. For a start, this was a time before mass electronic communication and so there weren’t platforms like Facebook to facilitate ongoing contact. But, when one of my former students recently tagged me in a photo taken at the time, this opened up the chance to rekindle some old connections. In many ways, this reconnection has been like going through a time machine. I have in my mind the image of these people nigh on thirty years ago. Most students were only in their late teens and early twenties so to suddenly see them transformed three decades down the track has been quite a revelation. Most of these lovely people seem to have not only survived but thrived, with spouses and children and careers and passions and interests. It was funny too, to look at my own photo and reflect on the hopes and dreams I’d cherished as a 20-year old and to see where I’d come during the ensuing decades. And if that wasn’t enough of a trip down memory lane, I also had the opportunity to briefly meet Nichelle Nicols, who played Uhura in the original 1960s Star Trek series. My friends all know me as a not-so-closet fan of science fiction so the chance to meet her wasn’t one to be passed up lightly. Of course she isn’t as young as she used to be either, but at nearly 84 she’s an inspiration, still travelling the world and patiently meeting fans, in spite of her own health troubles. She seems to me to be the embodiment of Spock’s famous line, “Live long and prosper.” So as I climb out of my time machine this seems a fitting place to end this post, with me extending to you that very same sentiments, wherever you are in the world: Live long and prosper - and enjoy reading some books on the way! I met a friend and fellow author for coffee over the weekend. We don’t see each other as much as we would like and always have a lot to catch up on when we do. When we first met one another, quite a few years ago now, our conversations were all about writing and publishing. Now that we are firm friends we talk much more about life, our families and the regular and irregular happenings in our everyday lives.
During the course of our most recent conversation we started to talk about interpersonal relationships both in and out of the workplace and the things we’d observed about how people treat one another. Life being life - and people being people - we had quite a bit to say on this subject. :) I told my friend that I’ve been ruminating lately on the subject of kindness. It seems to me that it’s a very under-appreciated and under-estimated virtue. Kindness fixes so many things. You can’t be critical while being kind. You can’t be angry while being kind. You can’t shout kindness or fake true kindness. And think about all the positive things it does. Kindness includes, uplifts, encourages and affirms. Yet as a word, kindness is not very strong. If someone is labelled as kind it doesn’t seem a great epithet. It’s almost as bad as being called nice. What a shame that such a brilliant virtue doesn’t have a more powerful name – and yet if it did, would it indeed be so sweet? In my humble opinion the world needs more kindness, more kind-wielders, if you will. It needs people willing to inject and distribute kindness wherever they go. Perhaps, without using the word kindness, Maya Angelou summed up this kindness-in-action philosophy when she said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I’m all for making kindness less a random act and more of a way of life. Care to join me? Identity crisis?
We’re having some local body elections in Auckland in a few weeks, a time to elect a new mayor and select those on the governing bodies that run our fair city. As part of this process we were sent a form to check our voter registration details to ensure our eligibility and ability to vote come the time. One line of information collected is a person’s occupation. For years I’ve been listed by the title of mother (or a variation of this), a title I deliberately chose as it reflected where most of my time and energy had been invested. It’s a worthy and important occupation that has been somewhat downgraded in status over recent years, but one to which I’ve been more than happy to be aligned. Now, however, my children are growing up. Even my child with special needs doesn’t require as much intensive time as he once did. Instead, my focus has shifted to writing novels. I decided the time for change had come. My new job title thus seemed intuitive: novelist. I duly filled in the form and posted it off with a feeling that I had set a figurative stake in the ground. From now on, in answer to the question, “What do you do?” I would come back with the reply, “I’m a novelist.” No sooner had I dispatched this little and insignificant form than things began to change. I’ve been giving tuition in English this year and over the last few months have gone from have two students to one to four…and shortly I will have five. A friend asked me to help her with a work project, looking at the communication strategy of the business she works for, and this has led to all sorts of writing. Over the last few weeks I’ve edited manuals, written website content, drafted new marketing material and even written some interview scripts for video. What happened to being a novelist? I’ve been thoroughly enjoying some of the new challenges that have come my way, even if they are temporarily halting my selected career as a novelist. It’s meant that the book I have in production at the moment will have to wait just a bit longer. But along the way it occurred to me that there’s something more important than having what we do locked down. I also realised I’d already summed up this sentiment in my novel The Tender Conflict. Here’s what the character, Mark, says: “It’s never about what we do that matters but who we are. People say the secret to success in life is money or prestige or fame, or the number of children we have. But one way or another most of that stuff evaporates. The bottom line is that we’re human beings, not human doings. It’s how we go about being and not what we spend our time doing that counts.” Ultimately it’s who we are that matters more than what we do. Perhaps next time I get asked, “What do you do?” my answer should be, “I live…and try to make the most of each precious day.” I started off my monthly blog series back last November with a photo of the character, Larry Donner, in the 1987 movie Throw Momma from the Train. The character of Larry was wonderfully played by comedian Billy Crystal, a man famous not only as an actor and comedian, but also as nine-time host of the Academy Awards. A few days ago my husband and I were fortunate to attend one of his live shows here in Auckland – the first time Billy’s ever performed in New Zealand. The format of the evening, done in interview style, was a retrospective of Billy’s life and work, recounting his rise to fame and special times with some of his celebrity friends. It was a fabulous evening, rich with interesting anecdotes and the quick and brilliant wit of a very funny man. At the same time I’ve also been watching some online tutorials about writing and the current one I’m watching is about the subject of humour. The tutor, filling in for a guest of the regular lecturer, quotes Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame). Adams has developed what he calls “The Humor Diversification Rule” which basically says that there are six dimensions of humour:
His observation is that you have to use at least two of these dimensions for people to recognise the humour in what has been said. As a writer it is always fascinating to learn new techniques and to be introduced to concepts you’d never heard of before. I’d never thought to deeply ponder why some things are funny (and some people enjoy them more than others) and why some things are not. Wherever the truth behind it lies, I do know one thing: I’m extremely grateful for humour. It can not only amuse but diffuse, getting rid of tension and stress and often putting our light and momentary troubles into their proper perspective. In biblical parlance, “A merry heart does good like a medicine.” So thanks, Billy, for a great evening! A couple of weeks ago I shared a portion of a Mark Twain quote on my Facebook page. The original quote reads:
“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” As a Jane Austen fan I don’t feel the same sentiment at all. I love all the subtleties and ironies and activities that happen throughout Pride and Prejudice. Instead, on Facebook, I remarked that it seemed strange that Twain would keep trying to read a book he did not seem to like. I started to feel my own sense of pride (for Jane) and prejudice (against Mr. Twain). Since then I keep coming across other quotes he made, some of which are instantly recognisable even if I wasn’t aware who had originally made the remark. In fact, the more you look, the more you realise Mark Twain was the king of quotable quotes. Here are some of my favourites from him: “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” “Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” “Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.” “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” “Books are the liberated spirits of men.” (…or women!) “Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.” "The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.” Let me know if you have a favourite Mark Twain quote. I’d be most interested… And do join me on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/keitha.smith.novelist/ While my last novel, The Worth of Water, is in its final stages of being massaged into shape, I’ve started to think about some ideas for my next story. I have the bones of an idea and some things I would like to explore so decided to do a bit of reading to see if I could understand some of these concepts a bit better. During the course of this reading I came across this “alteration” to the well-known Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: This really made me laugh at first. The thought that something which didn’t even exist when Maslow proposed his theory in 1943 becoming more important than the most basic of human needs seems crazy. But anecdotal evidence indicates that many people would rather have WiFi than eat on a plane. Some people put WiFi access ahead of seeing family and friends. And, in a recent survey taken here in my home town of Auckland, 48% of respondents would rather WiFi be restored before water supply in the event of a natural disaster!
How life has changed. On our local news the other night one reporter discussed how much time is now devoted to social media. According to the report the average person now spends an hour a day on social media platforms, with estimates that this amount of time rises to about three hours per day for young people. What did we all used to do with this time? What are we missing out on? And how did something so new to our existence come to mean so much so fast? Let me know what you think! Life can get pretty busy, can’t it? Life’s journey sometimes sweeps us along on a wave of activity with demands at every corner. Many times all this activity is positive – we’re achieving and stretching and growing. Life is enjoyable and satisfying and so full of hope you can almost smell the essence of it in the air. Other times, all this activity can threaten to overwhelm us. There’s too much to do, too many demands, too much negativity. When life starts to take us down a not-so-scenic path it can be difficult to handle. It gets particularly tough when that path involves many aspects of your existence all at once – like finances, job security/satisfaction, health, family and relationships. All of a sudden small things can start to cast a much larger shadow. At times like this it’s tempting to think that not only is everything wrong, but there isn’t any of that hope I mentioned earlier. “Where has its sweet fragrance gone?” you ask yourself. I’ve recently had a run of things that just haven’t gone my way for one reason or another. Amongst all this I tried to sell a juicer online that we no longer need. I knew selling it might be a stretch as I faced plenty of competition – and indeed the auction expired without a successful purchaser. The shadow this very minor setback cast seemed disproportionate for what is, after all, a pretty trivial situation. At times like this I have to remind myself that what’s needed is a new kind of attitude – starting with a state of gratitude. Gratitude might be seem like such a small thing, but sometimes we all need reminding that not everything is wrong. No matter how bad things might be, there’s always something for which to be grateful. Even trying to find just one thing a day is a start. I hope that wherever you are in your life that things are going well. But if you’ve strayed off the joyful path and have found yourself somewhere less than picturesque, take some time to count your blessings. It may just lead you to a much better attitude. I’ve had cause several times this year to ponder the definition of success. It’s an interesting concept to think about. On the face of it, in our modern western world, it’s easy to equate success with wealth and prestige. It’s tempting to look at people like actors and career high-flyers and think, “Wow, they’re successful. They have recognition of their skills. They’ve reaped financial rewards and have used the bounty bestowed upon them to live a life of prosperity and accomplishment. That must be success, right?” Well, of course it is a form of success. But just who decides the benchmark for success? Is it calculated by monetary terms, by awards and accolades, or even by the amount of followers a person has on various social media platforms? And if that’s the case, how does the average person ever feel successful? On the other hand, my son, who suffers from autism spectrum disorder, has had a challenging time getting to his sixteen-year candle count. His communication deficits have so often separated him from his peers and made the job of trying to make sense of the world extremely difficult. If measured by the criteria above, he would never be described as even remotely successful. But at a recent meeting with his team at school they praised him for the enormous progress he has made and told my husband and me that the work he’s producing makes him a role model for some of the other students. It almost goes without saying that this commendation made us feel exceptionally proud! In my novel, The Bell Curve, I explore the fact that success can also mean different things at different ages. I based most of my secondary characters around this amusing ditty I found in a magazine: At age 4 success is… not wetting your pants At age 12 success is… having friends At age 16 success is… having a driver’s license At age 20 success is… having sex At age 35 success is… having money At age 50 success is… having money At age 60 success is… having sex At age 70 success is… having a driver’s license At age 75 success is… having friends At age 80 success is… not wetting your pants Of course I’ve always know that success is so much more than fame and fortune but sometimes it’s good to remind ourselves that when it comes to feeling as though our lives count for something and are worthwhile, the only person to set the standard of successfulness should be us. My family and I have recently returned from a couple of days in New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington. It’s a city famous for being our seat of power, for being the middle of Middle Earth (and home to the makers of the Lord of the Rings films) and for the amount of wind it gets. In fact, the city has its own version of L.A.’s Hollywood sign, with the end few letters appearing to blow away in the wind. We enjoyed a lovely few days there and, yes, the city did live up to its windy reputation. But here’s the thing about wind – it actually has its uses. In the United States in 1990’s, scientists constructed a fully enclosed research facility known as Biosphere 2, an environment completely sealed off from the outside world in which a team lived for two years. Over the course of the experiment scientists studied the complex interactions within life systems in five distinct areas with a focus on the interactions between humans, farming and technology with the rest of nature. Many plants flourished under the dome but some species, particularly trees of a larger size, only grew so far before they collapsed under their own weight. This failure to thrive came about because of the lack of stress wood, normally created in response to winds in natural conditions. I think our lives can be a bit like this. None of us particularly like it when our lives get stormy but in truth these times can help us develop our own version of “stress wood”. Rather than collapsing, we bend and strengthen and are ultimately stronger next time we face such winds. Quite a number of the characters in my novels undergo their own stormy times but they grow and develop and are able to move on. In particular, The Bell Curve is full of characters facing issues particular to their age and stage. And I see it too, in my own life and in the lives of friends – that process of learning and growing stronger in times of trial. So perhaps we need not entirely fear the wind – it may be teaching us as well as testing us. |
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June 2019
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