The Beautiful Words is the title of my third book. Readers often ask authors which book is their favourite, and while I find it hard to choose, TBW is special because I poured all my passion for books, reading and writing into it.
So, it seemed apt to name a newsletter after the thing it’s going to celebrate - words, layers of meaning, story, creativity. It’s lovely to have you along for the journey with me.
Photo: With my book at The Laneway bookshop, in Perth.
I also get asked whether I was a reader and writer from a young age, and while I was, I actually grew up in a family who didn’t live inside their heads and inside books. They were, and still are, outdoorsy. My childhood was spent riding bikes, camping, climbing trees, windsurfing, going to the beach and going on road trips. It was a quintessentially Australian upbringing. I enjoyed those things, but they never felt exactly like ‘me’.
I loved the car trips and the tree climbing because I could look out the window, and through branches and dream. I liked the windsurfing because I could sit under a shady patch and read. It wasn’t until Year 11 at school though, when I started to read the classics – the Bronte sisters, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S Eliot and Tim Winton, that something really clicked.
I realised that I was a highly creative person, who had a deep affinity with words. I’ll never forget my Year 12 English teacher telling me that she suspected that one day she would see my books on shelves. I didn’t come from a bookish or academic family, so this was something I couldn’t even fathom.
I went on to study English (and French and Psychology and Theatre) at Sydney University and found a group of poets to share words and wine with (I finally got to live the full writing cliche). I remember reading everything Margaret Atwood ever wrote, and scouring vintage bookshops for battered, dog-eared books that looked interesting. I still love going to second-hand bookshops and picking up random books that call to me. I credit these shops for making me the ecclectic reader I am today.
Photo: I still love vintage bookshops. This one has an excellent Margaret Atwood collection.
It wasn’t really until I hit my 30s that I fully identified as a writer and then tried to write a book myself. And it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve felt like I’ve found people who are intrinsically similar to me. Readers, other writers, authors -people who love stories and words and finding meaning and questioning what it is to exist on this planet. That’s not to say that we’re all the same, but I’ve found that people who love words and books as much as I do are generally deep thinkers and there’s an immediate ability to engage on a very real level, and shirk superficiality. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at book events and ended up in really interesting converstations with readers and writers.
I spent many years working as journalist, and in some ways journalists are kind of my people too. I love their energy and their passion for story and drama and engagement in what’s happening in the world. But there’s a quietness, a reflectiveness in my nature that never wholly fit with the pace of news journalism. My writing had a lyrical quality, even when I was writing for newspapers. I was anointed the ‘colour writer’ and sent on stories that had an emotional context and room for description. In hindsight, I see how this segued into my becoming an author.
Photo: A room of one’s own. With a library. Varuna Writers’ House.
The first time I went to Varuna in 2021, it felt like coming home to myself. I spent a week with three other writers in the Blue Mountains. Varuna is a place that has been set up by the Dark family in memory of author Eleanor Dark, solely for the purpose of nurturing writers. It gives permission for long walks, sitting in the wild native garden, reading from the extensive library, sharing work with fiction writers, poets, academics and screenwriters (usually around the fireplace with wine - yes, it’s as romantic as it sounds). It’s being given the gift of time to spend hours at the page, or just with our thoughts, with no distractions or domestic interruptions. In other words, it wholly supports and nourishes the creative life. And I think this is important because creativity is not something that we are necessarily taught to nourish and revere in this country. It can be framed as an indulgence of sorts. But I believe in the arts and what they offer us in terms of enriching our lives and our humanity. I think this is so whether you identify as a creative or not.
Sometimes I wonder if I’d be different had I been bought up reading more, writing more, as a child. But then in each of my books the landscape is the thing that underpins the story, the characters. And I think this was the gift of my particular childhood with a family who is different to me. Each book has been inspired by and anchored in a distinctive place. I’m currently editing my fifth book set around a lake in northern NSW and writing the first draft of my sixth book set in a tiny hilltop village in France.
Photo: From my room looking over the hills to the French Riviera.
Naturally, I had to go to both these places for ‘research purposes’. I’ve always loved a road trip, after all.
Vanessa x
Gorgeous Vanessa - your words are always on another level of beauty! I’m halfway through TBW and am obsessed with Sylvie and Holden x
So excited to read more of your Beautiful Words’ here at Substack 🙋🏻♀️