The Writing Process Blog Hop is a movement which asks that writers answer the four Writing Process questions and then nominate a few others to do the same. You then thank the writer who nominated you, pointing to their blog. So, thank you Peter Macinnis for the nomination.
What are you working on?
I am finalising the manuscript for an academic book based on my research into the extraordinary memory methods indigenous cultures use to retain huge amounts of practical and scientific knowledge without writing anything down. I propose that enigmatic archaeological sites such as Stonehenge are primarily as knowledge spaces – somewhere to aid memory and convey information, most of which is practical, the stuff survival depends on. The book will be published next year by Cambridge University Press as Knowledge and power in prehistoric societies: orality, memory and the transmission of culture. Academic titles are like that!
I have just completed a proposal for a book for the mainstream reader on similar topics, with more emphasis on memory and a larger range of archaeological sites. The working title is Ancient memory spaces. It is now with my agent, Lyn Tranter.
Lots more about that research on my other blog, Memory Spaces.
How does your work differ from others of its genre?
This is a hard question, because I am not really sure what my genre is. I know it is non-fiction, but it is really across disciplines. The Cambridge book is clearly archaeology. In that genre, no-one else has applied all the research on ‘primary orality’ – the way communications work in cultures which have no contact with writing. No-one else is linking formal memory training and non-literate knowledge systems and the archaeology on non-literate sites. Yet the people who built Stonehenge, Avebury, Chaco Canyon, Poverty Point, Easter Island and so many other amazing sites around the world were non-literate. They must have had complex knowledge systems and they must have used memory systems to manage to keep so much stuff in memory.
The ancient Greeks call this artificial memory – not just being reminded of things but formally working to commit it to memory by studying. Oral tradition isn’t all about religion and history, as so often implied. It is also about a vast amount of information like animal and plant classification and characteristics (thousands of them!), navigation, genealogies, astronomy, geology, rules, surviving resource stress, resource rights … How do they remember so much stuff? And isn’t it logical that people in prehistory used the same methods?
But there is so many other aspects – the role of art, portable memory devices, how amazingly effective these methods are … it just goes on and on. I want to tell the world about it all!
Why do you write what you do?
Because this is what I am so interested in at the moment and my brain doesn’t like working on anything other than what it is interested in. What bliss that I can do just that!
I still love my spiders and topics of previous books. But I must write about what I am reading now and convey all the wonderful things I found out when I was doing a PhD on this topic.
I believe that what I am writing about is important. I can’t write just for fun. And I’m no good at humour. So I write seriously. It’s just the way my words come out.
How does your writing process work?
Oh dear – this could be a very long answer. Ask me if you want to know more! I have all sorts of systems in place developed over the years of writing. I have a studio (I call it my Garret) where there is no noise and no food. I am surrounded by a whole lot of things which are very different to the real world and so it just feels totally different which seems to make my thinking change track. Everything is written or pasted into exercise books, 5 mm grid only, each covered in coloured paper and contact which acts as a code. There are 100 of them neatly on the shelves.
I start each writing session with a journal update which divides the outside world from my writing world and focuses me on the task at hand. I write every day – even if it is only notes and even if it isn’t any good. I just want to write and hope that someone out there wants to read my words.
And when I am gardening or walking or cooking or waiting in queues, I have imaginary conversations with people about whatever I am thinking about. Endlessly. Then these conversations become the next page of words. It’s a lovely lifestyle.
Tagging Todd Landman: academic, writer on really important topics like human rights, and [wait for it] magician!
Tagging Narelle Harris: a writer in many genres including speculative fiction, apps, Melbourne Guides … but she won’t be back in Australia until September, something to look forward to!
I am still enthralled by spiders, go out and watch them and want to tell the whole world that there is nothing to fear in these incredible critters.
