By Marianne McBrearty

Anxiety rips through the mind, storms gather inside the thoughts of getting those first words down. The writer then puts up the roadblocks, temporary traffic lights and has all their creativity sitting in traffic waiting for the light to turn green. As the hours and days pass by, even successful writers can extend that traffic queue back years – they might get rid of the electronic traffic lights and employ the hi-vis jacket man with the flip sign that says ‘Go’ ‘Stop’! The weight of the words starts to pile up feelings like concrete they can’t carry anymore, abandoned, if only bulldozers can manoeuvre them. The writer finds ways to delay sitting at the laptop, or open the notebook, as there is always that last episode to watch or that mate who needs some friendly advice tonight – so we might as well go for some drinks. Of course, it helps with the writing, you know meeting people, conversation, you convince yourself, just like you said to yourself last week. 

What is that word ‘Block’ – that has caused terror on the writer’s desk. There are the extremities of writer’s block where a writer can simply decide to abandon their career as a writer, switch course in life or maybe they created the masterpiece so early on not much else flowed the same way after that. Harper Lee spent years in absence of her writing after the success of To Kill A Mockingbird, it would be 55 years later when she released her second novel. Yet to think of the word ‘Block’ as an American English word, the definition is more comforting as the distance from one street to the next. It conjures up families, friendships, lovers, enemies, communities, societies, neighbours, schools, shops, places of worship, hospitals, languages, complete treasures inside every block of the neighbourhood filled with stories for the ambitious writer. The word Block should be embraced. It should be a go-to-place, where writers can search to find their characters, descriptions, and dialogue. They should build their block on their desk, brick by brick, created just as their world will transform onto their page. Whether they are creating a novel, script, poetry – layering each brick, forming what their block will transform into, the characters that live there, the genre, the words then start to seep onto the pages. 

When the artist has control over their blocks, they start to see how its form sits crafted together. For ancient Celt dry stone wall building, crafters used similar techniques to create their walls. With the lack of binding material to set each stone together, they built the bricks together like an artform. They cleverly would look at each shape of the stone and see which ones would sit together, giving the wall its strength, form and shape. They would chisel away at a block to create the shapes needed to fit and build walls with great lengths such as Haiden’s wall in AD117 that it is believed to have taken 6 years in completion. As the Celt stone wall makers, Victor Hugo took 15 years crafting and shaping his writing of Les Misérables, constructing his masterpiece equally with great strength and precision. 

Being a second-year creative writing student at Westminster university means… Yep, you guessed it, I’ve already completed first year. This means that I’ve been lucky enough to hear from a huge variety of working writers in the bi-weekly reflective writing guest speaker events. This was of huge benefit to me (and all the other students I’m sure) as—up until then—I had never met a working writer, in any medium, so hearing about the writing process and the dos and don’ts from people who get paid to write was of more benefit than I have word count to do justice in this blog. Regardless, in this blog I’m going to discuss the speaker that kicked off second years guest speaker events, Katie Hale.

Who is Katie Hale?

Katie is a poet and novelist who earns her income solely through writing, another way to put it would be… She’s living our dream. Though “earning her income solely through writing” isn’t technically true, but I’ll get back to that in a moment. Katie gave an insightful overview into the life of a writer: overcoming writers block, doing your research, balancing the rest of your life with writing, I could go on. However, the reason this talk was so useful—in a practical sense—was because she took the time to give us a thorough review of all her different income streams.

Show Me the Money!

What is this? An economics class?!

No…

That right there is the problem. A lot of people want to work as a writer but a lot of people don’t have the first idea of how much a writer earns, or where their money is really coming from. According to Katie Hale’s pie chart (yes, she had a pie chart) only 17% of her income is coming from writing. Ideally this percentage would creep up the more novels a writer has available for purchase and the more of a name they make for themselves. But in the meantime, Katie earns her income through funding & grants, mentoring other writers, residencies and attending speaker events (like this one). A full list of her income sources can be seen below.

Funding: 42%

Facilitation: 21%

Writing: 17%

Admin: 10%

Events: 7%

Residencies: 3%

While some people may be disheartened by this, discovering that only 17% of a working writer’s income actually comes from writing, I wasn’t. I already knew that it is very difficult to make a living solely as a writer so this wasn’t breaking news. What was breaking news, however, was how Katie has managed to make a living in the industry, in and around writing.

“Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.” As writers, we hear that a lot, but it is usually pertaining to your writing abilities, not how much cash is in your wallet. But, as I see it, the same is true for your earnings. The longer you write, the better you get, the more of a name you make for yourself, the more connections you make, the more projects you can earn royalties from etc. I’d like to thank Katie for a brilliant talk and for renewing my hope that it’s not all doom and gloom for a writers bank account, that it is possible to make a living as a writer without having to make it as a household name.

Hamzeh Ghaderi

As humankind—the most complex evolved creature—we are conscious and have consciousness, meaning we can think before acting, and we can consider different scenarios in our mind and then execute the one that fits the most, as we assume it to be. This is called “free will”. We are free to decide what to do, but this is only when we’re awake. What about when unconscious? Are we still able to make any decisions and be in charge of our lives? The answer is simple: we do not have any power of being in control while sleeping. This is a totally different world— an unknown one—far from the physical one we experience and live in when our eyes are open. It is like a parallel universe. The body is the same, but our thoughts are far away. It’s like traveling spiritually, but at the same time, it is not even that simple to define. It just needs to be imagined differently.

Having this thought, another question arises: has anyone ever tried to control their sleep and dream about their favourite thing? Probably yes, but definitely, they’ve been unsuccessful. It is because when you fall asleep, your brain, the centre of your decision-making, sleeps, too; only one part remains conscious, and that is where dreams are produced in cooperation with the unconscious mind.

   Now, aware of this and also knowing that some dreams only last a few seconds in our short memory and then they vanish, are you keen to remember them? Well, I think not everyone actually is, but for me, it’s essential to know what I’ve seen, which places I’ve visited, and who has been in my company during that period.

Now, let’s enter this world of dreams through another door, shall we? Though before we go, let me tell you why I call dreaming “being in another world”? It is because dreaming consists of one-third of our lives. Yes, that’s true. Approximately one-third of each person’s life (eight hours out of twenty-four) is spent lying in their warm beds and sleeping, meaning they are entirely deaf from hearing what’s happening in the conscious world.

   The world of dreams doesn’t follow the Fundamental Interactions (gravity, electromagnetism, weak interaction, and strong interaction) as if it is in a different loop with distinct rules that disobey space-time. It has basically no rules. How strange! It can be brutal and unbelievable from an outer (conscious) perspective. Let me explain more! In a possible circumstance, when you fall asleep and wake up in the world of dreams, you may end up in a cold, tight cell for a long time and stay there powerless and feel suffocated, shiver in the cold, get hungry or thirsty, and no one would be around to release you or at least help you survive—I basically call this a nightmare. In contrast, you may end up in extreme happiness and pleasure. For instance, instead of the horrible cell, you may fall into another part of this world that is just joy in its utter meaning, which is so much that you, in your dream, tell your conscious part that you don’t want to wake up to reality, but it is too late; as soon as you think about the reality—the world which your actual body exists in it and is breathing in an out constantly—you wake up to it instantly.

   Let’s look at history together to find out what our ancestors thought about dreams and compare it with today’s science. Back in Ancient Greece, Plato, the great philosopher, argued that dreams were the way in which the gods conveyed their messages to humankind. He believed this was a communication channel between us and them and that without dreaming, this channel would be disconnected. He also had second thoughts simultaneously, considering that some disturbances in the human body’s internal motions could be the cause for seeing dreams.

   Dreams have been essential for religions. For instance, according to the religious texts (the Bible and Quran), Abraham saw in his dreams that he had slaughtered his son, Ishmael, for God; hence, when he woke up and told the story to his wife and son, they said this was a god’s command that must have been obeyed and executed as “a prophet’s dream is no dream but reality”.

   According to the Islamic history books, Muhammed, the prophet of Islam, also had a dream that, after his death, his followers realised it. Once, when in the middle of poverty and forlornness, in Makka, Muhammed had told one of his very first disciples that in his dreams he’d seen that one day the very disciple was going to wear the crown of the King of Persia, and according to the same historical sources, some years later and after the Arabic Invasion of Persia, the very disciple put the crown on his head—the same one that the Sassanid Emperors used to have it on their heads before then.

   Dreams are also vital in literature. They can be seen throughout the works of many novelists. For instance, Alice in Wonderland—by the English author Lewis Carroll—is about a girl’s dream. Alice goes down a rabbit hole to find the mysterious underground wonderland. She encounters fabulous creatures that defy all reasonable expectations. After numerous incoherent adventures involving a Hatter, a Hare, and the Queen of Hearts, she wakes up in time for tea.

   In contrast, today’s advanced science (particularly neuroscience and psychology) defines dreams as the stories and images our minds create while we sleep. Dreaming may have benefits, such as helping the brain process the information gathered during the day. Furthermore, scientists argue that dreams are a state of consciousness characterised by sensory, cognitive, and emotional occurrences during sleep. A dreamer has reduced control over their content, visual images, and memory activation.

   Saying all this, I, a new writer who loves traveling into fantasy worlds, can define dreams differently. I believe we have two lives: one in which we are alive now (according to the physical definition of life) and can move, speak, smile, think, make love, and become angry, thirsty and hungry, whereas, in the other world (the world of dreams), we can be the same, but without surrendering to the rules of physics.

   I tell you this: I can live a better life in the world of dreams because I can marry the most beautiful girl and live happily beside her or become the wealthiest man with no one around to stop me from becoming that person. I can become a king, or maybe a god. It is a fantasy world far more advanced than the conscious world, and that is why I like it more. Even time travel (such as going from point A to B faster than the speed of light) is possible in my dreams; hence, I don’t get fatigued or exhausted from traveling and exploring it. So, let’s enjoy the world of dreams tonight!