I’m reading Jessica Watson’s Book True Spirit about her solo sailing adventure around the world.
There were many times the sixteen-year-old could have lost her head.
At a talk in North Sydney, a member of the audience asked Jessica what she was thinking when her boat flipped over four times in a fierce storm.
Four knockdowns in one night.
What was going through her mind?
She was too busy hanging on to think or feel anything, she said.
This could be a description for the current post-election state of the nation.
Unlike our politicians, Jessica is a plucky and inspirational young woman.
She had a boat to sail and a world to circumnavigate.
At the talk, an eight year old school girl stood up with her mother to say she was doing a school project on an inspirational person. She had chosen Jessica.
Jessica talked about the criticism directed at her and her parents for undertaking such a dangerous journey, but as she repeatedly said, they all knew the risks and prepared extensively to reduce them.
Still four knockdowns in the middle of a stormy sea, on your own . . .
These real-life stories of journeys and adventures are loved by readers.
We seem ever hungry for true life stories.
Yet there’s nothing truer than fiction, Hemingway said
While all my writing, of course, has elements of my deepest, darkest thoughts, I struggle about how much of my real-life to put in a story.
Especially if it is about love, or sex or family.
Even if I start with a character far removed from myself, the story winds it way back to what I know.
And to what I choose to reveal.
There is, it seems, no escaping yourself.
I deal with this by pretending no one will ever read what I’ve written.
It frees me from perceived critics and conservative judgements.
Secrets, knockdowns . . . even general elections, have to be dealt with.
Best to keep your head.
Pic taken at The Rocks, Sydney. It reminded me of a phrase of my Dad’s, ‘running around like a headless chook.’ It seems, in Sydney there are headless pedestrians. And – it seems, they need directing.
