Where the Sun Rises No.6 on Amazon Australia :)
‘Les Miserable’ have you ever read it?
Hey everyone,
I have been reading Les Miserable for the past year, yes one year! The thing is the book is 1263 pages it is huge! It is bigger in size than the Bible, haha. I am a little bit more than half of the way through.
I am loving the gems that Victor Hugo puts in with this writing, but I am also struggling with the amount of detail he includes. It makes me very aware of the modern attention span, which they say is 8 seconds long shorter than a gold fish which is 9 seconds haha. 😉
I want to persevere with the book as I love the actual story of love, redemption, grace, revolution and justice and mercy. It is an epic story that is worthy of attention. Hugo actually received one of the highest payments for this book at the time, the equivalent of a million dollar payment for it. He argued for this, but in a way it is also a historical book talking about France and the revolution in detail. It is definitely worthy of the money but that is phenomenal, even now not many people receive that amount of money.
Anyway, I just wanted to post up a pic to show how substantial the book is – I am loving the wisdom, philosophy, observation of life, complexity of characterisation, and the depth of story.
I do recommend reading it, however you have to persevere haha so be prepared for this. 🙂 It is not for the faint hearted. 🙂 (The cover has deteriorated over the past few years).
Happy reading and writing! I am still writing my third novel – and enjoying this process. 🙂
Carl Jung said it perfectly…
“Until you make the unconscious conscious
it will direct your life and you will call it fate”
– Carl Jung
Writing the “Truest” thing I know…
Hey everyone,
I was reflecting about my third novel recently and, I realised the statement (“Write the truest sentence you know”) of Hemingway’s was true of this novel. I have always wanted to write a true story one that has universal themes and experiences but telling stories for people who sometimes don’t have a voice.
With Hemingway, I have also resonated with his writing style, his views on writing and some of life, though not all. But I read at a young age about how he wrote and how he said you need to just write the “truest” most honest thing you know, and remain faithful to this.
All of my stories have been this before I read his work but I resonated with this as I have always done this. I believe this novel I am writing now, “Where the Light Comes in” is probably the “truest” novel I have written, well only in terms of being close to my life and expressing spirituality. Parts of my life are included, and my experience and I have already said that I am seeking to write honestly from this. This novel represents a part of my heart and perspective that other novels or fiction I have written have not.
This is why it is a vulnerable but rich experience writing this. It is interesting writing down details that happened in your life, but you have to change them for the character it is happening to, for the sake of fiction. I have enjoyed this experience and I hope when it is done that others will resonate with this novel, as out of all of my work, this reflects part of my beating heart.
I hope this book can express some part of this quote by Hemingway:
“We are all broken. That’s how the light gets in.”
Ernest Hemingway
It is indeed true that we all have broken parts and this is where the light shines through us and the Divine is seen. It is where we connect with each other as long as we don’t judge each other. 🙂
So, this is the journey of this novel and my ultimate desire is to write a novel that authentically reflects some deep parts of me but also a story about a character called Sarah Johns. 🙂
Thanks for reading. 🙂
My previous novel is Where the Sun Rises and also a book about writing for wellness – Freedom Writing. If you are interested.
Have a great day. 🙂
Suz
New Year’s Day writing!
Hi everyone,
In Australia at the moment we are having an inordinate amount of rain. This was actually a blessing for me as I edited and rewrote sections of my novel that I had not had time to do with work etc.
I worked on it all day with the sound of rain drops on the roof and a feeling of cool around me. It is summer here in Australia. 🙂 When an author does not right we think about our work and we live our lives which is great but when I am absorbed in the work I am creating – there is nothing like it for me. Maybe doing visual art as well, seeing it form.
I am immersed in another world with characters and people, dialogue, scene, setting and creation of a world. I absolutely love it! For this year to come I hope and pray I can do this more often, I can create, as this is my inner most desire and why I believe I am here. To write and create visual art as well. It gives me this inner peace.
This novel I am rewriting and editing at the moment, has parts of my own life in it, but is about another character. It has been a fascinating a process which trickled through since 2018 whilst I was also working on Where the Sun Rises. This has parts of me not accessed in previous work and I think it is the richer for it. 🙂
I have always shied away from putting my life into things, only small parts etc. and no author can never put themselves into their work. But there is a difficulty and also a liberty in doing this. It is a piece of fiction crafted by me, but it allows me to express the things I have seen and learnt over the years. I have been through a lot, and I think when an author puts some of their life into their work it makes it extremely rich and beautiful. I think of Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, loosely based on his life. It is a masterpiece. He weaves his story through the novel and also fictionalises it as well. I have written a character with different experiences to me but then some of my life too. I allowed myself for the first time instead of holding back always and I am really loving it. After all we read authors to see their vision of life in a way through the characters and circumstances.
Anyway, it is a rich story with humour, joy, love and pain, just like life is. I am so happy that on New Year’s day and today, I spent it writing my third novel I have written, in totality. I hope once it is ready to go out into the world, people gain something valuable out of it and enjoy reading it. Thanks for reading now, and I hope and pray it is a beautiful year for you, full goodness, light and joy and in the hard times, that you have loving people around you.
HAPPY NEW YEAR! 🙂
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Hello,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! – If you celebrate Christmas, and even if you don’t, have a lovely Christmas time and hopefully a peaceful time with your friends and family. 🙂
Remember that family is not always genetic but it is those who make you feel seen, heard, valued and loved. I hope you are surrounded with these people these holidays. 🙂
Love Suzanne
Telling stories…
A thought I had the other night was that I have always wanted to give a voice to the voiceless, be able to give them a loud speaker. But it occurred to me a lot of writers want to tell people’s stories, but sometimes we need to tell our own.
In my next novel, I put some more of my own story, mixed with the story of the main character. It is still fiction but it is also part of my story interwoven together. A lot of good novels have both these elements within. 🙂
Just a thought about writing stories…the ones we resonate with have base in reality. Thanks for reading more another time. 🙂 Suzanne
Working on my new novel Sarah Johns…
I am excited by the idea of working more on my third novel I have written, which is about Journalist and foreign correspondent Sarah Johns. My friend recently read it for me she is a lawyer and writer in New York and she was complimentary and positive about it and gave me glowing feedback.
Stay tuned about this new novel it is exciting to put aside other responsibilities and do what I love, which is to write. 🙂
Thanks for reading 🙂
Freedom Writing for discounted price for two days!
My story…writing to be free…
“Write the truest sentence you know”
Ernest Hemingway
I have written one other book about writing to release trauma or past experiences, or emotions, it is called Freedom Writing. It was published after one of my previous students ended his life and I felt the urgency of making sure I share the power of writing things down as a way to heal ourselves. Sixteen years ago, I experienced an act of domestic violence from my ex-husband. I had been married to him for ten years and in this time, he was emotionally abusive to me, throwing things, raging, name calling, swearing at me, at times he threw things at my head. This act of violence was a one off and a trigger warning if you have been through domestic violence, he strangled me. When he was doing this and I was screaming out “help”, the world stood still and the universe was never the same for me again. Everything changed and the earth moved on its access. My kids came running from down below on the bottom level of our house. I heard their footsteps running up. My choker from around my neck was on the floor, as his violence had snapped it off. I remember screaming “help” into his face – which was all red. This was the man I had trusted and said I would love forever, and he said he would love and protect me? Hmmm…it was devastating.
He let go of me and I ran to get the keys, he blocked me from getting them and I walked outside and told the kids to follow me. They didn’t as he was holding them back. I walked up to the main street so I could be in public and so he would not be able to touch me again. I felt this strange courage, disdain, anger, shock and adrenalin pulsing through me. He had never laid a hand on me before. He had smashed things before on the wall, which by the way is a very intimidating, traumatic and scary thing to see, especially as a woman, but he had never harmed me. He ran after me on the main street, and called out
“Come back. Your kids need you.”
“I’m not leaving them. I am leaving you. You strangled me,” I said.
“There were reasons for that,” he said, with tears coming down his face, not from being sorry, as he clearly wasn’t.
“If you really think that, I am never coming back to you.” I said and I kept on walking down the main road, crying but determined.
He got the car, put the kids in and followed me. I was hiding in a bush on a random driveway and he told me to get in the car. Thank goodness I had the presence of mind to do this.
“You get out of the car and I will drive me and the kids.” And he did. I didn’t want to get in a car with him, he would be yelling and arguing and justifying his actions. Following this I found out he went down to our Pastor in our local church and told him an incorrect version of what happened. He said he pushed me by my shoulders (later I found out he told my friends this lie as well), but actually he strangled me and broke my choker in the process, I still have this broken choker and I had a red mark on my neck where he strangled me. My daughter Leah saw the choker on the ground as soon as it happened. This could not have happened if he pushed me back by my shoulders. Regardless, he began lying about it to people.
Being a Christian I thought I should show grace and I never pressed charges but part of me thinks I should have. I also was shocked later to find out that my “Christian” husband went around lying to my friends about what happened to make himself look like the victim.
For years I didn’t tell this story publicly, for my kids’ sake, (possibly even my ex-husband) but now I know I need to be honest and authentic. What happened after this traumatic event was very significant and it is why I am writing this second book about writing therapy. Following this event, of course I had PTSD– and I retreated to my parents’ house. In the coming months I went to a support group for people who had been through abuse. In this time, I kept seeing the event over and over every night like a horror film I wanted to turn off. One night I got up and said to myself, I am going to write this down as it happened, and be completely honest. It actually wasn’t something I wanted to do, particularly, but I felt compelled to do it. It must have been Divine intervention. Once I wrote this poem down – writing the events as they happened and how I felt, I was completely released from this memory of my ex-husband’s violence, it completely disappeared and I could not even conjure it up in my mind. Even if I wanted to. It was phenomenal! I couldn’t believe such a simple act could free me from this so completely.
Speaking about it had not freed me, though it made me feel supported and not alone, but writing it down had removed it. In the months that followed I wrote poems every day of the memories or the pain I was going through to heal, and as I did, I felt my inner life becoming freer. I was free from bitterness about the ten years of emotional verbal abuse and the violence at the end. I found a simple tool that could help so many people, I told my counsellor about my experience and she asked me to do a workshop at a retreat she was running for women who had escaped traumatic situations. In preparation for this I decided to do some research and then I found that this had been studied since the 1980s and it was 2007 when I stumbled upon its power. I collated some of the research and found that writing for therapeutic purposes had been found to provide dramatic physical, mental, emotional and psychological benefits as well as for grades of people at university or school. I wrote a workshop to show others this amazing tool, and I have not looked back ever since.
Now it is 2023, and I have done much more research into this, and though when I discovered this, writing for therapeutic purposes was not a widely known thing, it is now spoken about in films, taught in university courses and recommended in counselling and any mental health literature. I am so beyond excited that it has become very mainstream and widely known. My purpose, dear reader for this book is to reveal some amazing techniques that we can all use throughout our lives whether we are stressed with normal things, relationships, trauma, past experiences or anything, we can use these tools to experience relief. It can take a long time to release things but you will experience release as you go.
It took a few years, but I healed from my past marriage, and the abuse he inflicted on me and I have forgiven him which is a big part of being free yourself. I know God saved me from that marriage and He also helped me to heal and this was achieved through counselling and writing everything down. So, I am writing this so I can help others to experience the freedom I found first-hand.
So, welcome to this humble guide, it is not exhaustive, but it is just to give you some pointers on how to get started. There are many books out there you can read that will provide you with other methods as well. 😊 Thanks for reading my first chapter.
This book will be published at some point but this is just my first chapter. Thanks again. 🙂
Suzanne Strong 