At the moment, I am practising being a storyteller. Perhaps I have always been one.
In living an authentic life, much difficulty lies in understanding ourselves. If one were to frame this struggle as a negative, or as a conflict – why don’t I know what I want? Who am I? What should I do? – I’ve felt that, for myself, that frame yields little in the realm of personal transformation.
Try to choose carefully, Arren, when the great choices must be made. When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.”
The farthest shore, ursula k le guin
Personal failure in that mode led me to a different hypothesis, consisting of these parts:
- be a person of being, rather than a person of doing
- the doing is the discovery
- time spent doing a thing is not wasted time at all
Which is all a little Disney-esque, friends we made along the way kind of philosophy. Yet that makes it no less true.
These days, in my career sabbatical – I am an ex-CEO now – I’m practising doing nothing. I’m pretty bad at it – thus, these books. Yet I am discovering different things to write about, different ways to be, as a father, husband, and professional still in his thirties.
Here’s an adjacent thought, from Russell himself:
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
Bertrand Russell, mathematician and philosopher
So these days, for me writing anything – this blog included – I exult in, for the joy of writing itself. If someone finds value and joy in it, then all the better.
On being an author
On a personal basis, I’ve aspired to write science fiction. Indeed, I’m published a little as a speculative fiction author, and as a poet. Yet: in between corporate jobs, running a startup and being the CEO of said startup, I end up with not much free headspace to dedicate to writing.
Add to that a pandemic and two kids under five.
Of course, many of you reading this are parents yourselves, and perhaps this resonates – the things that you love doing before being married and having kids, perhaps in your twenties – perhaps travelling, or more solo activities like writing; can easily fall by the wayside, lost between the laundry socks and the drop-offs, the Zoom calls with your team, the one forgotten item on the shopping list that you now need the errand to get.
Each holiday for years, I found myself with a few hours of free time; whilst the kids had just gotten to the age where they could play with each other. Almost with a will of its own, I am drawn to making, and creating; rather than rest and relaxation. I scratch that creative itch because it won’t go away, even after years of ignoring it.
Blue Mountains Magic
With that background set, I give you a scene. One day – May 2023 – in the Blue Mountains, the kids are playing. I write a little poem about the conversation my daughter Josie and I recently had.
It felt amazing. I wrote a few more, and these became the text of the first three books I wrote: We’re going to see the cats today – a story about disappointment; My grandma died – a story about grief; and Birds! – a Frankie’s first words book.
It was great fun to illustrate these books – I tried doing the full illustrations for one digitally and got a little frustrated with my low skill level at using Illustrator, photoshop, et al. I think I probably abandoned that angle halfway through the first book. As a second go, I did them in marker and then coloured digitally – at the time, I did not have the art scanner I have now, and moving between a digital and physical medium was pretty exhausting, so I finished a book or two in that manner – middling results! – and decided to redo them a third time.
I was dabbling in art somewhat a decade ago – nothing to write home about; just some acrylics in abstract art with a little hip-hop and a little East-Asian art-inspired style. On a whim, I picked up a cheap watercolour set and started playing with it.
Watercolour was it. I enjoyed painting in that mode. Again, my skill in it was lacklustre, but like anything you enjoy doing for the sake of simply doing it, the reward is in the practice.
I couldn’t tell you the tangible reasons exactly why physical watercolour paintings were the route I ended up illustrating these books. I enjoyed the organic nature of the medium, the way it bleeds across the page is pleasing to my aesthetic sense. The cleanliness of the art itself. All up, it was just a beautiful match for the telling of stories, which is something that has always driven me in my free time.
I’ve probably redone illustrations of the above books three, perhaps four times now. With four more books on the way, two more drafts of future books, I can’t keep endlessly redrawing the past illustrations.
It is, however, certainly pleasing to see past iterations and compare my skills over time.
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valéry 1871–1945 French poet, critic, and man of letters
I could say that about both the text and the art on these, too. I think I’ll have to call these works ‘done’ for now, lest I spend a lifetime polishing them.
To connect to the original premise of this post – why do I write children’s books? I love writing. I love my children. I enjoy the stories we tell together. It’s a positive habit to encourage myself to write, draw and create often. So these children’s books are the natural emergence of what results from those joys and desires.
How does it feel to be sitting with this – it feels pretty good!
