PTSD in the ADF needs to be treated as a workplace injury

In a recent radio interview with David Curnow (listen here), he asked what could be done to help those who have served in the military deal with their psychological wounds.

My answer strayed onto the way the system makes it very difficult for those who are struggling to seek help.

The way it works is this:
1. If you report you are having psychological issues to the ADF you are often deemed unfit to deploy
2. If you don't deploy there is no place for you in the army

Now when I first heard about number 2, I couldn't believe it was right. But when I questioned the validity of the statement an army psychologist confirmed it was true.

I still grapple to understand how this can be the case. The ADF is a workplace, no? You acquire an injury (this time it happens to be psychological) at your workplace. Does it not count as a workplace injury?

According to the framework of the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013 (WIRC Act) which aims to help injured workers achieve an early return to work, employers like the ADF should:
– increase the provision of suitable employment to workers who are injured to enable their early return to work
– enhance flexibility in the system and allow for adaptation to the particular needs of disparate work situations
– provide a framework for the effective occupational rehabilitation of injured workers and their early return to work

I just don't see how the ADF is doing this. The headline of a recent article read,
ADF personnel seek PTSD treatment in secrecy to avoid 'career suicide', members say (read here)
It describes how people serving in the ADF are being forced to seek psychological assistance in secret so their careers aren't ruined. How can this do anything but confirm that the system is not working?

Sure, some people will recognise they have a problem and pay to see a therapist in their own time. But others may not. They might be so scared about admitting anything is wrong that they are unwilling to take this kind of action. What happens to them? When they return home to their families, what happens behind those closed doors.

The psychological cost of being deployed on life-threatening military operations is beyond imagining for anyone who except those who have been there. The level of trauma left behind can be so large that it fills, then spills over the top of an individual, splashing onto the family of that person.

If the ADF doesn't do more to help, many people's lives will be broken. Veterans will continue to take their lives. Partners and children will continue to bear the brunt of the system's failure. Something needs to change.

The picture, the words

My fellow school captain, Patrick, unearthed this photo of us. It appeared in the paper when we became captains of our primary school. I wrote about it in my book from memory, but this is the first time I have seen the actual photograph in many years.

Here's how I described it in my book...

'What a pretty face you've got, love,' the photographer had told me as he squished me beside the boy captain for our shot in the mayor's office, after our official welcome into our new roles. 'And you must be smart as well, to be captain. Bet the boys love you.' I wanted to believe his words, but the ideas rested on my skin, unable to penetrate.

When the photo had appeared in the local paper, a big grin lighting my face as I pushed my badge into the lens for the whole world to see, Mum had smiled and hugged me. But her eyes had still been puffy from crying and they hadn't quite met mine. How could good stuff happen to me when she spent ten hours a day sobbing.

Anyway, thought some people who read my book might be interested to see a photo from that time.

The Real Reason Authors Should Be on Social Media, or The Shame of an Audience of Zero at Your Author Talk

I would like to play out a little moment in time that happened to me recently surrounding a Q & A event for my newly published, and first ever book, Enemy.

Scene 1

(Location: Bookshop)

Event Organiser: So how many people do you know are definitely coming tonight?

Me: Umm… I’m not exactly sure anyone is coming. I kind of used up my friends for my book launch

Event Organiser: (Panic stricken look on face) Have you told people about it on social media?

Me: Yeah

Event Organiser: I’m sure people will come. It’ll be great

Fade on my face showing that I am100% sure she is wrong.

Scene 2

(Home)

Me tweeting and facebooking the event again, trying to outrun the growing feeling of shame that comes when planning a party nobody wants to attend. Three responses ping back to me. All friends. All saying something along the lines of, “I was planning on coming, but something has come up.”

Holy Crap.

Scene 3

(Home)

Me:  (text to publicist) I just wanted to let you know that it seems highly unlikely that anyone will be coming to this talk tonight. Sorry for being such a no-friends loser.

Scene 4

(Home)

Publicist: (on phone) I’ve spoken to the bookshop and Cate [my publisher who was doing the Q & A with me]. They both know it may be a no-show. If it is, you can just have a glass of wine and chat with them. You won’t be the first author this has happened to. It’ll be fine. Try not to worry.

Great. So now my publisher knows they should never have produced my book and this bookshop now wishes they had not sacrificed their precious shelf space to stock it. Kill me now.

Scene 5

(Home)

Another message chimes, this time from someone I went to high school with who follows my page on facebook but who I haven’t seen for twenty years.

Friend: I’m still coming tonight, but don’t know how long I can stay.

Me: However long you can stay is more than fine. Look forward to seeing you then.

Brilliant. Now I have a lone witness to my absolute failure as an author and human being.

Scene 6

Just before event

(Location: Bookshop)

Me: Sorry about this. The only people I knew were coming are now not coming, except one guy who probably can’t stay very long. It’s all a bit embarrassing, isn’t it?

Event organiser: I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Woman 1: Are you Ruth Clare?

Me: Yes… are you… here for the event?

Woman 1: Yes. I found out about it on twitter.

Me: (nearly sobbing with relief) I’m so glad you’re here, I thought no one would come!

Man 1: Hi. We met on twitter.

Me: We did! I wasn’t sure if you would come!

Man 1: I’m looking forward to it.

Scene 7

(Location: Bookshop.)

A crowd of eight people gather, looking attentive and friendly.

Cate: Let me welcome you to this event…

END

***

Now firstly, let me say, I am extremely grateful to be in the lucky position of having a bookshop host an event for me at all. May I also say that this particular bookshop did a fantastic job of promoting my Q & A event in their newsletter, in-store and on social media.

My publisher also got in on the act, promoting the event to the large number of followers on social media. I have less than zero complaints that everyone did their absolute best to spread the word about the event.

Let me also say, that in the few weeks since my book, Enemy, has been out in the world it has had some pretty amazing media coverage. I have talked about it on Conversations with Richard Fidler (an hour-long radio interview that broadcasts Australia-wide and has a huge podcast following both here and internationally). It has had a multi-pages excerpt in one of Australia’s largest circulation newspaper publications, The Good Weekend Magazine, which subsequently rolled out to regional centres. It has had an amazing review in The Australian, as well as a few more community radio interviews. It pretty much could not have had a more amazing amount of exposure.

But let’s look at the reality of the situation. This is my first book. People don’t really know me. To ask someone to come to an event like this means asking them to arrange babysitters to put the kids to bed, or leave the excitement of their after-work drinks, or interrupt the very lovely eating of takeaway while watching Netflix.

To attend an author talk takes effort and energy. If people are going to do it, they need to have a good reason why. So what was that reason? For my event, the reason boiled down to the effort I had made at connection on social media.

Apart from one person who attended after reading the excerpt in The Good Weekend, every single person who came to my event was someone who I either met exclusively via twitter or facebook, or who was aware of my event because they followed my posts.

I really had no idea if anyone would come. I was beyond delighted that they did, but I know that unless I had put myself out there, the attendance at my event would have been one person. So if you have been umming and ahhing about whether you want to get involved in social media, may I suggest that you picture yourself in the position I was in.

Your first book is published. You have the opportunity of doing more than one event to promote it. Who are you going to invite? How are they going to know about it? Even if you are with a big publishing house, you are still one person trying to compete with the lure of binge watching House of Cards or Nashville.

People are people. When you are starting out in your career as an author it may be the personal connections you make on-line and in the real world that save your event from complete disaster.

Let the shame of the no-show override your shame of being a blowhard. Start making connections now!

Honesty versus loyalty in memoir writing

Last night I had one of the most vivid and disturbing dreams I have had in years. In it, my father put his hands around my throat and tried to strangle me. After an initial struggle I managed to overpower him, wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze the life out of him.

Normally, that would have been quite enough to be going on with, but, in the way of dreams, I realised that earlier in the day I had somehow also been responsible for killing my mother. In the dream I was not overly upset by their deaths, my major concern was over how to dispose of their bodies without being caught.

Jump to a moment of me chopping up bodies and putting them in a suitcase (I have recently watched The Jinx, I am hoping I can blame it for this turn of events!). Then jump to a moment of me shoving the suitcase in the back seat of the car I was using to drive me to bookstores to promote my newly released memoir.

Now I know people say that hearing other people’s dreams is about as interesting as watching paint dry, so most likely there will be very few people still reading at this point, but for those of you who have persevered, this dream feels like it is a doorway into the deeper feelings I have about putting my story out in the world.

Writing a memoir is, by its nature, a very personal experience. I am telling the story not just of my life, but of the lives of others. I have tried my hardest to do that story justice – to be honest, transparent and generous. But a lot of the terrain I have covered in my book is not pretty. And I do wonder how my Mum and Dad would feel to see themselves represented through my lens.

There’s a saying that goes, “Blood makes you related, but loyalty makes you family.”

I have thought a lot about this during the process of writing my book. So what is loyalty? The Oxford Dictionary defines it as, “giving or showing firm and constant support or allegiance to a person or institution.”

It also defines the word “betray” to mean, to “expose (one’s country, a group, or a person) to danger by treacherously giving information to an enemy.” Or, in another definition, “Be gravely disloyal to.”

Intellectually, I know that in family systems, especially family systems where abuse is occurring, the concept of loyalty can be extremely damaging. It can mean that children become secret keepers. That they see themselves as worthy of abuse rather than asking whether what their parents are doing is wrong. It can mean that they would rather betray themselves than their parents. It can also mean that when these “loyal” children develop into adults, they stay true to the dynamic of their family of origin, which may mean that their own children may be doomed to live within familiar patterns of abuse.

There can be big downsides to loyalty. But there are some pretty major upsides as well. For me, the biggest upside is the sense of belonging. I think one of the reasons writing a memoir is difficult, and is now giving me nightmares of myself as a callous murderer, is the deep-seated fear that I am now moments away from being thrown out of my tribe.

There is also the fact that I generally think of myself a loyal person. If I love you, I will fight for you, defend you, sing your praises, help you succeed. I am loyal to my Mum, my brother and sister. I am loyal my husband and kids. I am loyal to my friends.

But I also have a strong need for openness and honesty. If there is an elephant in the room my brain keeps shouting, “Elephant! Elephant! Elephant!” so loud that the words often end up trumpeting out of my mouth.

The people in my life who get me, love that about me (thank God, because seriously I can’t seem to shut myself up!) But not everyone is so keen on honesty. Some people think that loyalty means seeing no evil, hearing no evil, keeping quiet and toeing the line. For those people, loyalty and honesty are completely at odds.

But for me, they aren’t. I want the people in my life to speak their truth. I want them to tell me when I step on their toes or push against a boundary or say something that hurts them. And I want them to know that though the moment might feel a bit awkward and full-on, and though it may not always be handled graciously, I will always circle back, reflect on what they have said and hear them.

In making room in my relationships for both loyalty and honesty, hopefully it will mean that I have the privilege of truly knowing the minds and hearts of my nearest and dearest, so I can connect to them more deeply. That has got to be a good thing.

So maybe I can find a new way to interpret the dream. Reflecting on my childhood has allowed me to see my parents as flawed people who were doing the best that they could, rather than merely objects that failed to fulfil the needs and wants of my childhood. Maybe the father and mother I murdered was the outdated image I was held of them from the past. Maybe I needed to chop my parents into pieces so I could put them back together again in a way that made sense to me. (But don’t tell the dream police, I’m not sure they would understand.)

What do you think? Is it possible for loyalty and honesty to exist together? Would you ever write a memoir?

One of my darlings I had to kill

William Faulkner wrote, “In writing you must kill your darlings.”

So what does that actually mean? It means that piece of perfect prose or amazing analogy you have spent weeks agonizing over, the one that elevates your work to a new level but doesn’t fit with the story you are telling, must go.

It can be hard to say goodbye, but if you want to write with clarity and strength, rather than meander through a series of prettily written passages that take the reader nowhere, kill your darlings you must.

I recently had to do it in my manuscript. I had discovered an image that not only drew comparisons between my childhood story and a weapon of war, but that also hit me on a visceral level as a true representation of how the disintegration of my family felt. It was a shining beacon of perfection. But there was a problem.

This glowing passage, by its very nature, had to be written in an adult voice. And my story is written from my child perspective. So, though I loved it, still think it is a brilliant analogy, you will only find echoes of it in my book. And I am okay with that, because though I love clever writing, I love story more.

That doesn’t mean, however, that no one will ever see the analogy. You can see it right here, right now. How lucky are you! So here it is, the darling I had to kill.

***

When a bomb goes off, it causes damage in different ways – rupturing, tearing and piercing.

Firstly, the blast forces highly compressed air particles to travel faster than the speed of sound, rupturing air-filled structures like the lung, ear, and gut.

Then, more intense energy in the form of shockwaves passes through the organs and tissues, disrupting molecules and tearing at internal structures.

Moving into secondary fragmentation, the bomb casing and shrapnel is thrown violently outward piercing soft flesh and releasing more dangerous fragments when it strikes buildings and glass.

Finally, when the vacuum created by the rapid outward movement of the blast refills itself with the surrounding atmosphere, it creates a high-intensity wind that causes people, buildings and fragmented objects to be drawn back in toward the source of the explosion.

I didn’t know it yet, but Dad’s leaving had thrown a bomb into our family. In a few short days, our lives would be blown apart. I was about to spend the next six years sifting through wreckage…

I reassured myself that tomorrow Mum would be back to her old self, standing at the stove cooking chops and veges for dinner…

It turned out, I was very wrong. The highly compressed air had already blasted from the bomb. The concrete structure of rules and schedules that had defined my life with Dad was razed to the ground, and the mother I had always known was never coming back.

***

So there it is. My darling does live after all. Have you killed any darlings lately?

Stop comparing. Be kind to your writing self

When I decided to try my hand at writing a book I did what I normally do when embarking on a journey into the unknown: I researched. 

I read books on story structure, creative writing and memoir. Armed with all of this helpful information, I began the task of getting words down onto a page.

  

Once I was a ways into my manuscript, I listened to podcasts like this one and this one, and wrapped my head around the difference between plotters and pantsers, the merits of a crappy first draft and how best to utilize beta readers.

When I was nearing a stage of being ready to show my work to someone, I poured over blog posts on author platforms, the publishing process and pitching.

In the past few years have managed to write and edit a manuscript, get an agent, find a publisher, and am now on the cusp of launching my first book. Some might say that is a reasonable effort.

But during my on-line research, I read (continue to read!) many accounts of authors finishing their first book, starting immediately on their next, and continuing a cycle of churning out books at a dizzying pace. One book a year. Often two. Some people hammering them out in a few short months! I wanted to be one of those authors.

For most of my life I have pushed myself hard. Take no prisoners. Cut no slack. I am a doer who gets things done. In my work as a copywriter, I am the queen of quick turnaround. I gain great satisfaction from beating deadlines and exceeding expectations.

I planned for it to be the same with writing books. But I hadn’t counted on the way delving into my emotional world could sap my drive.

In all my years of writing copy for brochures, websites, and business plans, I can’t say I have ever shed a tear. The same cannot be said of writing a memoir covering such light-weight terrain as my deepest childhood wounds and the trauma of war. (There are funny, happy bits as well – promise!)

Still, despite the fact that some days I felt so drained I could barely put one foot in front of the other, I tried to stick to my guns. I was determined to have the first draft of my next book, a young adult fiction, completed by the time Enemy hit the shelves.

With that goal set, as soon as my memoir manuscript was with my editor, I started in. I began churning out words and managed to get about a quarter of the way into the draft. Then the edits came back, and I had to rake back over that old ground. Each time I re-worked a section I re-lived the experience on which it was based, feeling those old feelings so I could distil them into the purest emotional truth I knew.

By this time, I had started to feel tired. Deep down to my bones tired.

But I have never been one to let the mundane fact that I am human stop me from pushing myself like a machine. So when I finished that next editing process, I jumped straight back to my other manuscript.

But I could feel my blood running thin, like my foot was on the accelerator but there was nothing in the tank. Finally, after finding myself wide awake night after night with stress pulsing in my gut, and hacking up a lung each day for three months from a cold I couldn’t shake, I began to question what the hell I was trying to prove. And to whom.

I think part of my motivation was fear. I felt so lucky to have had a book accepted for publication that I wanted to prove – to myself, to my agent, to my publishers – that their faith in me was not misplaced. Another reason I wanted it done was because I had heard that writing a second book was harder than writing a first, and I wanted to see if I could do it. There was also the fact that before someone suggested I should give fiction a go, it had never occurred to me. And I was really excited by the idea.    

But though I still think about my YA book all the time, I have had to face up to the fact that I am not going to be one of those quick turnaround authors. My first book is hitting the shelves in three days time, and my second manuscript is not finished. And you know what, I am okay with that. More than okay.

I am a first-time author. I am still figuring out what my writing process actually is. So I am taking the pressure off. I am not going to fall into the comparison trap. I am practicing being kind to myself, instead of always expecting more.

Besides, I have written a book. An actual factual book that people can buy from bookshops. That is a peak life experience right there. I need to spend the next few months mooning about the place with a big smile on my face, letting the wonderful delightfulness of it all sink in.

Then, once my feet touch the ground again, I am going to get back into my YA. Not to prove anything to the imaginary critics in my head. But because the guy in it is so hot. And my lead character is so funny. And I need to figure out what happens between her and her mother. And what goes down between her Mum and her aunt…

Now that I have had a taste of writing books, I am hooked. I want to do it for a long time. That means protecting myself against burnout, and choosing the carrot over the stick. No more comparisons. Just me with a laptop having fun with my imaginary friends.

Each person's creative process is as unique as the work they produce. How do you approach your writing?

How to narrow the focus of your memoir

One of the main issues I have found with memoir writing is not lack of material, but rather too much. Each day has moments worthy of notice and attention. If you add a lifetime of days together, that is a ridiculously overwhelming volume of material to work with.

Another problem is, that although there are moments from your life that are incredibly important to you on an individual level, they may not be at all important to your memoir on a story level. So how do you narrow your focus?

I heard a piece of advice (from a podcast I listened to years ago and I can no longer find- doh!) that helped me enormously in this process. The wise person said that she saw memoir as a piece of non-fiction writing where you are making an argument for something, and your life story is merely an illustration of the point you are trying to make. The example she gave was that someone could write a memoir making the argument, ‘Life is better when you share it with a cat.’ You would then go on to draw examples from your own life that demonstrated this.

I love the way this concept stops your memoir merely being about you as an individual and broadens it into something larger and richer. When I took her idea and applied it to my own book, it took me months of driving myself bananas to come up with something that I thought really captured what I was trying to communicate. I decided the ‘argument’ of my book was: ‘If we don’t look after veterans, it is not just them, but their families, who pay the price.’

This was a very effective way to separate out the stories that needed to be included in my book from the ones that didn’t. That’s not to say it was easy. Some of the stories I left on the curb were favourites of mine. ‘Killing your darlings’ takes on a whole new meaning when the story you are abandoning is very personal and intensely meaningful… but it is necessary.

A memoir is not a journal. It is something you are writing for an audience. If you can’t make tough decisions about what belongs and what doesn’t, you will never create the clarity necessary to transform a bunch of stories into a book.

What about you? What techniques have you found helpful to help narrow the focus of your memoir?