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I Was A News Reporter For 16 Years, Seven Of Them A Foreign Correspondent In The Middle East, Africa And The Balkans. Perhaps The Most Useful Equipment I Acquired In That Time Is A Lack Of Preciousness About The Act Of Writing. A Reporter Must Write. There Must Be A Story. The 'mot Juste' Unarriving? Tell That To Your Desk.

-Geraldine Brooks

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I Was A News

Geraldine Brooks

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I Was A News Reporter For 16 Years, Seven Of Them A Foreign Correspondent In The Middle East, Africa And The Balkans. Perhaps The Most Useful Equipment I Acquired In That Time Is A Lack Of Preciousness About The Act Of Writing. A Reporter Must Write. There Must Be A Story. The 'mot Juste' Unarriving? Tell That To Your Desk.

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I Knew I Was Going To Be A Journalist When I Was Eight Years Old And I Saw The Printing Presses Rolling At The Sydney Newspaper Where My Dad Worked As A Proofreader.

Sydney In The 1960s Wasn't The Exuberant Multicultural Metropolis It Is Today. Out In The City's Western Reaches, Days Passed In A Sun-struck Stupor. In The Evenings, Families Gathered On Their Verandas Waiting For The 'southerly Buster' - The Thunderstorm That Would Break The Heat And Leave The Air Cool Enough To Allow Sleep.

My Sentences Tend To Be Very Short And Rather Spare. I'm More Your Paragraph Kind Of Gal.

Certainly I'm Still Mining My Experiences As A Journalist. I Think It's No Coincidence That All Three Of My Novels Basically Are About How People Act In A Time Of Catastrophe. Do They Go To Their Best Self Or Their Worst Self?

Write What You Know. Every Guide For The Aspiring Author Advises This. Because I Live In A Long-settled Rural Place, I Know Certain Things. I Know The Feel Of A Newborn Lamb's Damp, Tight-curled Fleece And The Sharp Sound A Well-bucket Chain Makes As It Scrapes On Stone. But More Than These Material Things, I Know The Feelings That Flourish In Small Communities. And I Know Other Kinds Of Emotional Truths That I Believe Apply Across The Centuries.

There Are Always A Few Who Stand Up In Times Of Communal Madness And Have The Courage To Say That What Unites Us Is Greater Than What Divides Us.

Even The Classics That We Read To Our Young Children Are Full Of Wolves' Fangs And Burning Ovens And Bloody Feet And Ice Shards Piercing Hearts. Even The New Testament Climaxes With An Act Of Unspeakable Torture. Might As Well Just Read To Our Kids From The Amnesty Annual Report And Be Done With It.

'you've Got Mail!' Exclaims The Cheery Automaton At America Online. The Flag On The Mailbox Icon Waves Invitingly On My Computer Screen. For A Second, I'm 10 Years Old Again, Waiting For The Postman's Whistle To Slice The Stillness Of An Australian Afternoon.

Does Any Woman Ever Count The Grains Of Her Harvest And Say: Good Enough? Or Does One Always Think Of What More One Might Have Laid In, Had The Labor Been Harder, The Ambition More Vast, The Choices More Sage?

I Was Really Interested In How Marriages Work, How You Can, You Know, Be In Love With Somebody And Spend Many Years With Your Lives Intertwined, But In The End Another Soul Can Be Fundamentally Unknowable. And I Think That The Stress Of War, When One Party Goes Away And The Other Has To Deal At Home, Is A Really Testing Time In A Lot Of Marriages.

Book Burnings. Always The Forerunners. Heralds Of The Stake, The Ovens, The Mass Graves.

Both My Parents Loved Words. That Was The Big Deal In Our House.

We Are Not The Only Animal That Mourns; Apes Do, And Elephants, And Dogs. Yet We Are The Only One That Tortures.

I Swim In A Sea Of Words. They Flow Around Me And Through Me And, By A Process That Is Not Fully Clear To Me, Some Delicate Hidden Membrane Draws Forth The Stuff That Is The Necessary Condition Of My Life.

While I Love To Read Contemporary Fiction, I'm Not Drawn To Writing It. Perhaps It's Because The Former Journalist In Me Is Too Inhibited By The Press Of Reality; When I Think About Writing Of My Own Time I Always Think About Nonfiction Narratives. Or Perhaps It's Just That I Find The Present Too Confounding.

But That Franklin Trip Changed Me Profoundly. As I Believe Wilderness Experience Changes Everyone. Because It Puts Us In Our Place. The Human Place, Which Our Species Inhabited For Most Of Its Evolutionary Life. That Place That Shaped Our Psyches And Made Us Who We Are. The Place Where Nature Is Big And We Are Small.

A Book Is More Than The Sum Of Its Materials. It Is An Artifact Of The Human Mind And Hand.

You Can't Write About The Past And Ignore Religion. It Was Such A Fundamental, Mind-shaping, Driving Force For Pre-modern Societies. I'm Very Interested In What Religion Does To Us - Its Capacity To Create Love And Empathy Or Hatred And Violence.

Sometimes I Want To Have A Mental Book Burning That Would Scour My Mind Clean Of All The Filthy Visions Literature Has Conjured There. But How To Do Without 'the Illiad?' How To Do Without 'macbeth?

Who Is The Brave Man--he Who Feels No Fear? If So, Then Bravery Is But A Polite Term For A Mind Devoid Of Rationality And Imagination.

Yes, It Seems We've Got This Mutant Gene In Our Human Personality That Makes Us Susceptible To This Same Kind Of Mistake Over And Over Again. It's Really Uncanny How We Build These Beautiful Multicultural Edifices And Then Allow This Switch To Be Flipped And Everybody Goes, 'oh, The Other, Get Them Out Of Here.

I Had Been Afraid Of Breast Cancer, As I Suspect Most Women Are, From The Time I Hit Adolescence. At That Age, When Our Emerging Sexuality Is Our Central Preoccupation, The Idea Of Disfigurement Of A Breast Is Particularly Horrifying.

The Brave Man, The Real Hero, Quakes With Terror, Sweats, Feels His Very Bowels Betray Him, And In Spite Of This Moves Forward To Do The Act He Dreads.

Because I Worked As A Newspaper Reporter For About 14 Years Before Attempting My First Novel, I Learned To Write Under Almost Any Circumstances- By Candle Light, In Longhand, In African Villages Where There Was No Power, Under Shelling In Kurdistan.

And When I'd Be Reporting In Israel, Palestinians Would Say, The Jews They're Not Like Us, And The Jews Would Say The Same Things About The Palestinians, They Don't Want What We Want. And I Never Bought It As A Reporter And I Don't Buy It As A Novelist. I Think, You Know, The Sound Of Somebody Crying For Their Lost Child Sounds The Same.

I Am Not Part Of That Earlier Australian Generation Who Set Off On A Deliberate Search For Fame And Fortune In Distant Lands. My Generation Was The First That Didn't Need To. By The 1980's When I Left Home, Our Culture Had Grown Deep Enough And Wide Enough To Encompass All But The Most Rarefied Of Ambitions.

It Is Human Nature To Imagine, To Put Yourself In Another's Shoes. The Past May Be Another Country. But The Only Passport Required Is Empathy.

We Were Too Intelligent, Too Cynical For War. Of Course, You Don't Have To Be Stupid And Primitive To Die A Stupid, Primitive Death.

I Took The T From Logan Airport To Harvard Square. I Hate Driving In Boston. It's The Traffic That Drives Me Spare, And The Absolutely Terrible Manners Of The Motorists. Other New Englanders Refer To Massachusetts Drivers As "massholes.

And One Of The Things That I Learned Was You Can't Generalise At All About A Woman In A Veil. You Can't Think You Know Her Story, Because She Will Confound You Over And Over Again. She May Be An Engineer Or A Diplomat Or A Doctor. Or She May Be An Unbelievable Babe With Bleached Hair Down To Her Waist.

The Thing That Most Attracts Me To Historical Fiction Is Taking The Factual Record As Far As It Is Known, Using That As Scaffolding, And Then Letting Imagination Build The Structure That Fills In Those Things We Can Never Find Out For Sure.

Jewish Prayers Are Mostly About Daily Things - The Sliver Of A New Moon, Dew On The Grass, The Bread And The Wine.

Despair Is A Cavern Beneath Our Feet And We Teeter On Its Very Brink.

They Say The Lord's Day Is A Day Of Rest, But Those Who Preach This Generally Are Not Women.

All The Times, All The Very Many Times, I Had Been Forced To Thwart And Stifle My Own Nature Seemed To Gather Together Then, In That Hot And Dismal Corridor. I Heard A Rushing Sound In My Head And Felt A Pressure In My Breast, Like Floodwaters Rising Behind A Flimsy Dike. Before I Knew I Did It, The Soup Bowl Was Rising In My Hand As If Elevated By Some Supernatural Force. Then, Its Yellow-gray Contents Were Running Down The Nurse's Pudgy Face.

Supernatural Forces

To Know A Man's Library Is, In Some Measure, To Know A Man's Mind.

How Strange It Is, Anna. Yesterday, I Have Filed In My Mind As A Good Day, Notwithstanding It Was Filled With Mortal Illness And The Grieving Of The Recently Bereft. Yet It Is A Good Day, For The Simple Fact That No One Died Upon It. We Are Brought To A Sorry State, That We Measure What Is Good By Such A Shortened Yardstick.

God Warns Us Not To Love Any Earthly Thing Above Himself, And Yet He Sets In A Mother's Heart Such A Fierce Passion For Her Babes That I Do Not Comprehend How He Can Test Us So.

She Was Like A Butterfly, Full Of Color And Vibrancy When She Chose To Open Her Wings, Yet Hardly Visible When She Closed Them.

For Most People, Chemotherapy Is No Longer The Chamber Of Horrors We Often Conceive It To Be. Yes, It Is An Ordeal For Some People, But It Wasn't For Me, Nor For Most Of The Patients I Got To Know During My Four Months Of Periodic Visits To The Chemo Suite.

I Think That You Can Honour The Sacrifices Of A Common Soldier Without Glorifying War.

The Day In 2004 When The Radiologist Told Me I Had Invasive Cancer, I Walked Down The Hospital Corridor Looking For A Phone To Call My Husband, And I Could Almost See The Fear Coming Toward Me Like A Big, Black Shadow.

...the Hagaddah Came To Sarajevo For A Reason. It Was Here To Test Us, To See If There Were People Who Could See That What United Us Was More Than What Divided Us. That To Be A Human Being Matters More Than To Be A Jew Or A Muslim, Catholic Or Orthodox. P. 361

You Go On. You Set One Foot In Front Of The Other, And If A Thin Voice Cries Out, Somewhere Behind You, You Pretend Not To Hear, And Keep Going.

What's Wrong With Leading The Way? We've Played That Role Before, After All. We Gave The World The Secret Ballot... That Did So Much To Raise Living Standards And Improve Conditions For Workers Worldwide. We Were A Leader In Extending To Women The Right To Vote. We Were Barely A Nation When We Set The Bar For Bravery And Sacrifice By Common Soldiers In Foreign Wars. We Grew Up Out Of Racism And Misogyny And Homophobia To Become A Mostly Tolerant, Successful Multicultural Society. We Did These Great Things Because We Know We Are In It Together. It Is Our Core Value As Australians.

If Screenwriters Have To Kill Off A Female Character, They Love To Give Her Cancer. We've Seen So Many Great Actresses Go Down To The Big C: Ali Macgraw, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Debra Winger, Susan Sarandon.

The Great Thing About Being Always Among People Of Noble Manners Was The Inevitable Elevation Of One's Own.

I Can Always Write. Sometimes, To Be Sure, What I Write Is Crap, But It's Words On The Page And Therefore It Is Something To Work With.

Instead Of Idleness, Vanity, Or An Intellect Formed By The Spoon-feeding Of Others, My Girls Have Acquired Energy, Industry, And Independence.

It Is Natural To Want To Forget, Anna, When Everyday Is A Brimful Of Sadness. But Those Souls Also Forgot Those That They Had Loved. You Do Not Want That, Surely? I Have Heard Some Preach That God Wants Us To Forget The Dead, But I Cannot Believe So. I Think He Gives Us Precious Recollections So That We May Not Be Parted Entirely From Those He Has Given Us To Love. You Must Cherish Your Memories Of Your Babes, Anna, Until You See Them Again In Heaven.

I Was A News Reporter For 16 Years, Seven Of Them A Foreign Correspondent In The Middle East, Africa And The Balkans. Perhaps The Most Useful Equipment I Acquired In That Time Is A Lack Of Preciousness About The Act Of Writing. A Reporter Must Write. There Must Be A Story. The 'mot Juste' Unarriving? Tell That To Your Desk.

Here We Are, Alive, And You And I Will Have To Make It What We Can.

I'm A Praying Atheist. When I Hear An Ambulance Siren, I Ask For A Blessing For Those People In Trouble, Knowing That No One's Listening. I Think It's Just A Habit Of Mindfulness.

I Borrowed His Brightness And Used It To See My Way, And Then Gradually, From The Habit Of Looking At The World As He Illuminated It, The Light In My Own Mind Rekindled.

If There Is One Class Of Person I Have Never Quite Trusted, It Is A Man Who Knows No Doubt.

Moral Certainty Can Deafen People To Any Truth Other Than Their Own.

If A Man Is To Lose His Fortune, It Is A Good Thing If He Were Poor Before He Acquired It, For Poverty Requires Aptitude.

When You're Writing Non-fiction, You Go As Far As You Can Go, And Then Ethically You Have To Stop. You Can't Go. You Can't Suppose. You Can't Imagine. And I Think There's Something In Human Nature That Wants To Finish The Story.

September 11, 2001, Revealed Heroism In Ordinary People Who Might Have Gone Through Their Lives Never Called Upon To Demonstrate The Extent Of Their Courage.

Writing Is Like Bricklaying; You Put Down One Word After Another. Sometimes The Wall Goes Up Straight And True And Sometimes It Doesn't And You Have To Push It Down And Start Again, But You Don't Stop; It's Your Trade.

I Do Believe That Our Modern English Usage Has Become Way Too Clipped And Austere. I Have Been Reading Excerpts From The Journals Of 18th-century Seafarers Lately, And Even The Lowliest Press-ganged Deck-swabber Turns A Finer Phrase Than I Do Most Days.

My Mother's Family Were Full-on Irish Catholics - Faith In An Elaborate Old Fashioned, Highly Conservative And Madly Baroque Style. I Sort Of Fell Out Of The Tribe Over Women's Rights And Social Justice Issues When I Was Just 13 Years Old.

When I Write A Word In English, A Simple One, Such As, Say, 'chief,' I Have Unwittingly Ushered A Querulous Horde Into The Room. The Roman Legionary Is There, Shaking His 'cap,' Or Head, And Al Cap Is There, Slouching In His Signature Working Man's Headgear.

Both My Mum And Dad Were Great Readers, And We Would Go Every Saturday Morning To The Library, And My Sister And I Had A Library Card When We Could Pass Off Something As A Signature, And All Of Us Would Come With An Armful Of Books.

I Was Not 15 Anymore, And Choices No Longer Had That Same Clear, Bright Edge To Them.

Men Can Absent Themselves From Real Life For Their Art More Easily. Women Are Anchored Into The Quotidian Business Of Getting Food On The Table, Making Sure Everybody's Socks Match, The Soccer Gear Is Ready. I Admire Idealists, But They're Usually Enabled By Someone Who Holds The Tether On Their Balloon, Who Pays The Bills And Sweeps Up After Them.

And At This Moment In History, Our Core Value Happens To Be The Raw, Aching Truth Of The Human Predicament. It May Also Be The Only Belief That Can Save Us As A Species. A Species That Will Continue To Find Comfort And Delight In The Companionship Of Animals, The Miracle Of Birds, The Colours Of The Corals And The Majesty Of The Forests. We Are In It Together, On This Blue Spinning Marble In The Cold And Silent Void. And We Must Act On That Belief, If We Are Going To Be Able To Continue To Live A Good Life Here, In This Beautiful And Fragile Country, On This Lovely Planet, Our Only Home.

And So, As Generally Happens, Those Who Have Most Give Least, And Those With Less Somehow Make Shrift To Share.

The Sarajevans Have A Very Particular World View - A Mordant Wit Coupled With This Unbearable Sadness And... Truckloads Of Guts, You Know.

I Think Probably The Scaredest I've Ever Been Was In Somalia. I Arrived There When The Episode That Became Known As 'black Hawk Down' Was Still Taking Place. The Americans Were Still Pinned Down Under Fire. And Everybody Else Was Basically Going The Other Way, And I Was The Only One Putting My Hand Up For A Flight In.

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