THE STARTING POINT IS ALWAYS THE HARDEST POINT. First, you need to muster the courage. Then you need to commit to the act. Later, you have to figure out who will be interested enough to want to publish your work. It sounds simple when put like this, but many writers know this is not the case. It’s sometimes not enough to be passionate, or to be talented.
When I first started writing, it was in fits and starts. Time stolen in between jobs; idle moments spent ruminating on lines; lunch breaks feverishly noting down scenes and observations on a piece of scrap paper or in my phone. Of course, I had written before that, in zines and blogs mostly to no-one. They were in plain view, yet hidden. Eventually I wanted more than to write to myself and to my friends.
And how? It was only through the publications and organisations who were committed to publishing writing by people they hadn’t heard of (and who didn’t necessarily come to writing via conventional pathways), and who were interested to help nurture this same writing. Certainly, writing — particularly early writing — is rarely ‘perfect’, but it is only through working with mentors and editors that we are encouraged to continue polishing a piece of writing until it shines. And we keep building upon it: more opportunities eventually present themselves, which instils confidence and a stronger understanding of what exactly it is we want to say and explore. When there is interest from others in ways both large and small, writers are able to hone their craft, in the hopes of reaching towards a certain sense of proficiency (however loosely that is defined). It is only through this act of communion, with other readers and writers, that essays, short stories, screenplays, poems, and other hybrid works, take on a certain life of their own, for them to be able to move and inspire others — be they people searching for a window to the self, or those wanting to learn; good writing hardly ever exists in the vacuum of one person’s mind.
I named this anthology Under the Paving Stones, the Beach as a hat-tip to my favourite saying from the Situationist International movement. The Situationists were a loose group of artists, intellectuals and activists in 1960s France who were interested in changing the status quo at the time. The slogan came to prominence during the 1968 student demonstrations, expressing the desire that beneath the city, which had been hardened and paved by stone, there was the freedom of the beach. It’s a metaphor that points to
hope: that if we bother uncovering what’s beneath the surface, then we will find what it is that we are looking for.
In this anthology, with writing selected from the Centre for Stories’ Writing Change, Writing Inclusion program, a similar thread of uncovering emerges: in it readers will find poetry, a screenplay, short fiction and creative non-fiction. While there is no one theme, what binds these pieces together is a sense of curiosity and care, each one animated by a passion for writing individual truths that arise from memory, imagination and experience. This is a collection of work that is as playful as it is sombre, as writers reach inside themselves to uncover what it is they’re interested in expressing: pieces flit between joy, sorrow, longing, absurdity, and the desire for psychic freedoms, belonging, closure, love . . . Much like the Situationists, we know from history that change is something that is built upon, little acts of resistance and spontaneity that create a larger whole. Under the paving stones, the beach!