I've always been in a hurry. To grow up. To travel. To get a degree. To have the dream job. To meet the one. To move in together. To get another degree. To write a first novel. To get married. To have children. To buy a house. To write a second novel. To have more children. To buy a better house. To renovate. To get another degree. To write a third novel. And always, the unwavering dream to be a published novelist: by 25, by 30, by 35, by 40...

 

For 15 years, I've scrawled down words when I can, while babies and toddlers sleep, during washing cycles and episodes of Bluey, while breastfeeding, late at night or before dawn, in playgrounds and during swimming lessons, on buses and trains, and in cafes within a small radius of my kids' school. It's only recently that I've been assured of a few hours of writing time each day of the working week. Children are fascinating and hilarious, but the work of raising them is mundane and repetitive, a day in, day out slog that is torture for the under-utilised brain, longing for conversation, stimulation, and connection.

 

My psychologist asks me what I want, and I panic for a moment, and then it pours out of me: ‘I want my own life.' By which I mean that I want an existence that is independent of the role of mother and wife. I want a place in the world. I want to matter to more than just my family and friends. I want a public existence. Sometimes, I cynically think it is just about earning money; if you are paid to do something, then you have worth. But it is more than that. I want to be valued, but what I long for is the connection of a stranger reading my words and being impacted by them. I know so clearly what I want, but how do I get from here to there, when I have endless washing to process and snacks to make, and a million things to pick up off the floor? The weight of responsibility feels oppressive: there is barely room to move, barely enough air to breathe.

 

Without a community of like-minded people, it is hard to define yourself or to establish a sense of legitimacy. I do not feel legitimate; I feel like a fake: pretending, always pretending. Yes, I am a writer because I write, yet that seems too tenuous, too make-believe. The words of an accomplished woman, who I met at one of my husband's work functions, ring through my ears: 'If it's not published, did it even really happen?'. I spent most of that evening sitting outside in the cold evening air, breastfeeding a newborn, and the words stung. Did those desperately fought for hours of writing, those words that filled notebook after notebook, now lingering in folders on my laptop, amount to nothing because they weren't out there being read? Perhaps she had a point. I love to write, but is that enough? Ultimately, I write to be read.

 

I visit the book shop often and, although I buy a lot of books, sometimes it is enough for me just to be surrounded by them. It's one of my go-to fixes if I'm feeling down: walking, flowers, coffee, a visit to the bookshop. But one day, after a rejection that floored me, I found myself glaring at the shelves, feeling sad and overwhelmed. So many books, so many words, and no place for mine. Gone was the buzz, the warm feeling I usually get from being in the company of books. I left feeling flatter than when I'd arrived.

 

Emerging is defined as the act of moving out of, or away from, something to become visible, apparent or prominent. This conjures up the image of stepping out of the shadows into the light; of moving from darkness to illumination. There is a clear before and after, the emerging a brief transition from one state to another. But perhaps emerging could be conceived of in a different way; a way that is more in keeping with focusing on the journey or process rather than the end point.

 

As a teenager, I was fascinated by natural forms: seed pods, shells, flowers, rock formations, plants, and trees. I filled notebooks with detailed pencil drawings and kept shoeboxes full of specimens. When I was sixteen, my dad returned from a trip to see his family in South Africa with a large cardboard box full of seedpods: I could not have been more delighted. I was drawn to the art of German photographer and sculptor, Karl Blossfeldt, who took close-up photographs of natural forms, and was especially drawn to repetition and spirals. I had a book of postcards of his images that I stuck all over my dark blue bedroom walls. At the age of 42, I finally had an unfurling fern, based on one his images, tattooed on my forearm, perpetually capturing the process of emergence. In Maori art, the koru, an unfurling silver fern frond, is a symbol of creation and renewal. Its circularity conveys the idea of continual motion with the inward coil, the corm, with its rolled inner leaflets, suggesting a return to the point of origin. An integral cultural symbol that embodies new life and growth, it is also a metaphor for the way life both changes and stays the same: the chaos of change and the calm of the everyday exist in equilibrium, representing a state of harmony in life.

 

A friend of mine told me that when she turned 30, she destroyed all the music that she had created up until that point. There was a substantial amount, and it required a systematic approach. I was so shocked by her admission that I was momentarily mute, yet I can understand the impulse. It is one, I fight from time to time: the need to obliterate all the agonising discomfort of the perceived failures that have come before. But then in another decade, will I feel the same about the work I'm now doing? And who am I to judge whether it is good or bad? Isn't the whole point to send art out into the world as a kind of gift that may or may not resonate with people? I've always liked this advice from Andy Warhol: ‘Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.'

During the Perth Festival's 2022 Writers Weekend, I went to see Helen Garner being interviewed by Gillian O'Shaughnessy. She is such a deeply introspective and emotionally honest writer, so unflinching and analytical in the way she approaches the experiences of her life. Several times, I wiped away tears: at the eventual acceptance of the demise of her third marriage; on the unexpected rewards of being a grandmother; and at the grief she experienced retrospectively with regards to her abortions. I can hardly believe she is almost 80. I long to be as brave and curious and as intellectually sharp as her. Garner spoke about her friendship with the writer, Elizabeth Jolley, who was rejected by 39 publishers in one year and was not published until the age of 53, but who then went on to have a prolific career, with significant critical acclaim, well into her 70s.

I am reminded again of this late emergence by my writing mentor when I confess that I have been struggling to feel motivated to write my third novel, unable to let go of my hopes for the previous one, and fearful that in another five years, I will again be broken-hearted and dejectedly confining a manuscript to the bottom drawer. He says you do not need to grieve the unpublished works, only store them for a later date when they might be better received. Once post-modernism discovered Elizabeth Jolley, she was asked by her publishers for other works, and she was able to draw on the bank of writing she'd amassed over many decades. I recall that the reason I wanted to have kids when young was because I knew that writing would be a long haul – or a slow emergence – and a pursuit I hopefully will be able to continue until I am an old, white-haired woman, with the deep lines of a life well-lived and the wealth of a million shared stories.

Kim Aikman is a writer, living in Walyalup. Her work has been published in Westerly, Verandah, and Meanjin Quarterly.