REPORTING ‘MY’ WORDCON1—PART 3 The sprint of NaNoWriMo

The importance of building a network and the passion we need to put into what we do, even if it is just for an assignment or for a bigger project, links the head teacher’s speech on the third day of WordCon1.

Karen Simpson Nikakis has come to talk about the NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—an initiative that has started in the Usa and that has become international. It’s a challenge that invites you to write 50,000 words in one month. The month chosen is November but there are other versions, called Camps on April and July. In those latter months it’s you who decide your words-challenge. There is a website to which you can subscribe for free and update your progress day by day. Your signs of progress are, therefore, visible on a personal chart and you can also see other people’s. If you reach that amount of words at the end of the month, you can upload your whole writing and win the competition.

Karen encourages us to participate; it gives motivation and creates a time for you to write. It’s actually what I’ve already done last November and I’m thinking of doing it again. Although I didn’t reach 50,000 words it’s helped me to keep going on a project I started last year and that I’m still working on.

Without it I would probably have stopped dedicating myself to it as soon as the semester finished. I didn’t write every day of that month, but as Karen says, it has definitely created a time and space to write; every Wednesday, in fact, I met with other people in one of the premises opened to this initiative. Being together with other motivated people encourage yourself, you are part of a team. Not to mention the fact that this is also a way to establish a network with people that share the same passion and may help you to take the first step in your future career. In Karen’s experience, NaNoWriMo has firstly helped her to get out the idea of her novel; then, in the following edition in which she participated—although she felt stressed for having more expectations—she performed better. And now that that her fantasy novel The Emerald Serpent has been published, she says, “that book wouldn’t exist except to NaNoWriMo.” To her words, “NaNoWriMo gives you a sprint; gets your project from zero to something; put you in a community who support you and say ‘Write!’”             

REPORTING ‘MY’ WORDCON1—PART 2 Assignments: only school assessments?

As a publisher assistant and former student at Writing and Publishing Bachelor course, Marika* gives us some tips on how to succeed professionally. She was passionate about everything she did, from completing assignments to internship; from internship tasks to freelance editing job. In editing a manuscript, she created a good relationship with the author, helping him to shape the contents and the message the author wanted to express. Marika put her passion, all herself into her work. There were also topics the author wrote about which were totally unknown to her; so she researched them and she discovered new things. She wanted the book to be at its best and worked to obtain that. And she did, as was demonstrated by the fact that, after that book, the publishing house assigned her other manuscripts that, by now, have been published.

Marika repeats a few times that the work of building her identity as an editor, writer and illustrator didn’t start at the time of the internship, but already before, during her study. This is something that makes a connection between her and me, because she considered the assignments not just something she needed to pass—maybe with a good mark—and go on; she took them further, as tools to create from them her profession. Like Marika, I’ve always seen assignments as opportunities to express myself; as ‘sketchbooks’ for practising and for being able, one day, to turn my dream of becoming part of this area in something that is less a dream and more a reality.

One of her assignments—that I am also doing—was the creation of an e-book. She grabbed it with passion; wrote and illustrated a children’s e-book that to these days can count over 800 downloads. It’s not a best seller, but it helped her to build her curriculum.

“I produced that e-book and it’s up there. This is what publishers want to see. This is what people who will accept your article or your story want to see, not just a certificate of a degree or a PhD. That shows to your possible employer that you have passion. That’s what they are looking for.”  

Marika recommends starting to form our network now, workshopping with classmates also out of school; be editors and writers to each other, and ‘use’ our teachers, asking them questions because, as she says, “they are your biggest assets.”

*Name has been changed

REPORTING ‘MY’ WORDCON1—PART 1 An example of success, a light of hope

Here we are, at the first day of WordCon1, a series of a three-day conferences organized by my school to talk and discuss, through personal experiences, different aspects of the writing and publishing world. Possible careers, incentives to write and how to survive in this hard-to-break-into industry are some of the topics we—students at first, second and third year of the Bachelor degree, students of Diploma, teachers and guests—are going to cover during these three days. I can’t participate to the whole WordCon1, but I’m at the opening and will attend on the last day.

In front of my eyes, there is Marika*, an editor but also an ex-classmate from when I was in first year and although she was at her third when I first met her, we studied two subjects together. Unlikely me, she moved with confidence. I was new, surrounded by native speakers of English, struggling to cope with the language, as well as trying to adjust to the new environment and completing school assignments. Immerse in a room full of English speaker was like living in a bubble in which sounds come distorted to your ears and events displayed in front of you don’t appear clearly to your eyes. A feel of disconnection with the place and the people that surrounded me overwhelmed me. This was not my place. I was an intruder.

I looked at Marika with the same stare you turn to the student at year 12 when you have just started school: a mix of admiration and bewilderment, and the dream that one day you will grow up to be like them. Except that the gap between us was not much about the age but more about the knowledge (firstly, of course, the knowledge of English, although for her this was natural) and familiarity.

And here Marika is now. She’s come here to talk about her experience after having graduated in 2014. Marika, now an editor, the incarnation of the proof that my studies actually might take me somewhere out there, into the ‘industry’ of publishing. I’ve made some previous attempts to enter in it, along with the assistance of a teacher, applying both as a possible employer and as an intern; however, I’ve had no luck yet.

I see her and I think about myself. I’m a student at third year now, as she was when we met; I’m not confident as she was—sometimes, I still feel in that bubble—but I definitely closer to her than to the version of me of two years ago.

Our eyes meet, she recognises me; she smiles and comes to hug me. We chat a bit and I feel good. That smile and hug of recognition make me strongly realise that I belong to something, make me strongly realise of being part of something, part of a past to which she had belonged and we share. Among all new faces, I’m the connection to her past in this school. I’m not anymore an intruder; I feel that these old and new walls belong to me as they belonged to her.

The gap between us has, in some way, found a bridge. But there is a new gap now: I’m still a student while she’s become a publishing assistant. She is a freelancer editor, illustrator and children’s books writer; three fields in which I’d like to land one day.

Marika explains to all of us that she started with a non-paid internship at a small publishing house. Once a week, she went there and put to practice what she had learnt at school whilst learning new things. She started proofreading texts: checking for misspellings, for coherence in the number of pages and in the fonts used, scrutinising other elements that cannot be missed before publication. Then, she stepped up to other more complex phases of editing.

She must have been passionate and diligent, because after a while the publisher told her that they have nothing more to teach her. They proposed her to work autonomously on a manuscript. And she did, working on her own in close contact with the author; helping him to recount his story; polishing it to be presented to the public. From that moment, other manuscripts have passed under Marika’s hands and turned into books which are currently on the market.

I take her business card. I haven’t given up; I’m still in the search of an internship. Perhaps, I’ve been looking to the wrong direction. I look at Marika’s business card with the big logo of a bird at the front and it lights hope within me. 

*Name has been changed

Discovering poems: TETELESTAI, by Conrad Aiken

I’ve just discovered a poem, by Conrad Aiken, that has been introduced to me during a course of writing and publishing. Tetelestai is the title of this poem, a long poem about death and life seen from the point of view of a dead man. It’s an invitation to celebrate life, the life of everyone, common, anonymous people, sins and weaker.

Every life is worth celebrating, as Aiken says “I am no king [...] / I have no name, no gifts, no power, / Am only one of million, mostly silent; [...] / Well, what then? / Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust, / The horn of glory blowing above my burial?”    

We don’t need to do something extraordinary, we don’t need to be famous, to be rich. I wonder why this poem was not introduced to me in high school. I wonder if this happens also in Australia’s high schools. It would be a pity, a missed lesson. It was written in 1922 but it has no time, as the content is so important such that it is able to pass through any temporal barrier. Especially in our society, in which it seems you are bound to become ‘Someone’, aspire to have money, aspire to do something incredible, aspire to undertake high study. Instead we should remind us that we are what we are and even a humble life worth the effort to live it.

I’m generally not keen on poem, but I do exception.

“Rain has showered its arrow of silver upon me...”

And...

“I, your son, your daughter, treader of music, / Lie broken, conquered... Let me not fall in silence.”

And more...

“I [...] / Herdsman and roper of stars, who could not capture / The secret of self...”

And more...

“I [...] / who grew/ Without wishing to grow, a servant to my own body...”

And more...

“I was no better than dust, yet you cannot replace me...”

And so on.

How can I not like it? I think that if a poem reaches also the heart of a ‘scatterbrained’ or of a non-specialist, that poem cannot define anything but masterpiece.

I’ve tried to find a translation of this poem in Italian, although I know that something will be missed in translation, but I was curious of how it would sound in my language. I haven’t found it yet. In the meantime, I enjoy it in English as it came out from the poet’s pen.

 Tetelestai
Conrad Aiken

I
How shall we praise the magnificence of the dead,
The great man humbled, the haughty brought to dust?
Is there a horn we should not blow as proudly
For the meanest of us all, who creeps his days,
Guarding his heart from blows, to die obscurely?
I am no king, have laid no kingdoms waste,
Taken no princes captive, led no triumphs
Of weeping women through long walls of trumpets;
Say rather I am no one, or an atom;
Say rather, two great gods in a vault of starlight
Play ponderingly at chess; and at the game's end
One of the pieces, shaken, falls to the floor
And runs to the darkest corner; and that piece
Forgotten there, left motionless, is I....
Say that I have no name, no gifts, no power,
Am only one of millions, mostly silent;
One who came with lips and hands and a heart,
Looked on beauty, and loved it, and then left it.
Say that the fates of time and space obscured me,
Led me a thousand ways to pain, bemused me,
Wrapped me in ugliness; and like great spiders
Dispatched me at their leisure.... Well, what then?
Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust,
The horns of glory blowing above my burial?

II
Morning and evening opened and closed above me:
Houses were built above me; trees let fall
Yellowing leaves upon me, hands of ghosts,
Rain has showered its arrows of silver upon me
Seeking my heart; winds have roared and tossed me;
Music in long blue waves of sound has borne me
A helpless weed to shores of unthought silence;
Time, above me, within me, crashed its gongs
Of terrible warning, sifting the dust of death;
And here I lie. Blow now your horns of glory
Harshly over my flesh, you trees, you waters!
You stars and suns, Canopus, Deneb, Rigel,
Let me, as I lie down, here in this dust,
Hear, far off, your whispered salutation!
Roar now above my decaying flesh, you winds,
Whirl out your earth-scents over this body, tell me
Of ferns and stagnant pools, wild roses, hillsides!
Anoint me, rain, let crash your silver arrows
On this hard flesh! I am the one who named you,
I lived in you, and now I die in you.
I, your son, your daughter, treader of music,
Lie broken, conquered.... Let me not fall in silence.

III
I, the restless one; the circler of circles;
Herdsman and roper of stars, who could not capture
The secret of self; I who was tyrant to weaklings,
Striker of children; destroyer of women; corrupter
Of innocent dreamers, and laugher at beauty; I,
Too easily brought to tears and weakness by music,
Baffled and broken by love, the helpless beholder
Of the war in my heart of desire with desire, the struggle
Of hatred with love, terror with hunger; I
Who laughed without knowing the cause of my laughter, who grew
Without wishing to grow, a servant to my own body;
Loved without reason the laughter and flesh of a woman,
Enduring such torments to find her! I who at last
Grow weaker, struggle more feebly, relent in my purpose,
Choose for my triumph an easier end, look backward
At earlier conquests; or, caught in the web, cry out
In a sudden and empty despair, "Tetelestai!"
Pity me, now! I, who was arrogant, beg you!
Tell me, as I lie down, that I was courageous.
Blow horns of victory now, as I reel and am vanquished.
Shatter the sky with trumpets above my grave.

IV
... Look! this flesh how it crumbles to dust and is blown!
These bones, how they grind in the granite of frost and are nothing!
This skull, how it yawns for a flicker of time in the darkness
Yet laughs not and sees not! It is crushed by a hammer of sunlight,
And the hands are destroyed.... Press down through the leaves of the jasmine,
Dig through the interlaced roots--nevermore will you find me;
I was no better than dust, yet you cannot replace me....
Take the soft dust in your hand--does it stir: does it sing?
Has it lips and a heart? Does it open its eyes to the sun?
Does it run, does it dream, does it burn with a secret, or tremble
In terror of death? Or ache with tremendous decisions?...
Listen!... It says: "I lean by the river. The willows
Are yellowed with bud. White clouds roar up from the south
And darken the ripples; but they cannot darken my heart,
Nor the face like a star in my heart!... Rain falls on the water
And pelts it, and rings it with silver. The willow trees glisten,
The sparrows chirp under the eaves; but the face in my heart
Is a secret of music.... I wait in the rain and am silent."
Listen again!... It says: "I have worked, I am tired,
The pencil dulls in my hand: I see through the window
Walls upon walls of windows with faces behind them,
Smoke floating up to the sky, an ascension of seagulls.
I am tired. I have struggled in vain, my decision was fruitless,
Why then do I wait? with darkness, so easy, at hand!...
But to-morrow, perhaps.... I will wait and endure till to-morrow!..."
Or again: "It is dark. The decision is made. I am vanquished
By terror of life. The walls mount slowly about me
In coldness. I had not the courage. I was forsaken.
I cried out, was answered by silence.... Tetelestai!..."

V
Hear how it babbles!--Blow the dust out of your hand,
With its voices and visions, tread on it, forget it, turn homeward
With dreams in your brain.... This, then, is the humble, the nameless,--
The lover, the husband and father, the struggler with shadows,
The one who went down under shoutings of chaos! The weakling
Who cried his "forsaken!" like Christ on the darkening hilltop!...
This, then, is the one who implores, as he dwindles to silence,
A fanfare of glory.... And which of us dares to deny him!

(Source: from Gary Smith’s lecture notes, ‘Writing for further study’ class)