The Art of the Journal with Sonya Walger

In which Dan talks with Sonya Walger (@sonyawalgerofficial), author and actress, about the power of journaling. Sonya is a longtime keeper of journals and her insights into the power of writing about our lives feels so urgent in this moment when technology promises to cure all our ills. As Sonya says in the interview, it's about "authenticity, which isn't necessarily the same as truthfulness, but an expression of everything in its complexities."

Mentioned in the episode:
Lion, a novel by Sonya Walger
Wifehouse, a novel by Sonya Walger

Music by MondaMusic

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Welcome to What's the Big Idea? I'm your host, Dan Carney. I'll start today's episode with the opening from Lion, a novel by today's guest. But how hard to be the one who stayed. The one who packed the raisins but not the nuts, who wiped the lipstick off the piano teacher's mug, tissue wrapped the Christmas ornaments, washed the sheets, staunched the blood, ignored the lies and the slammed doors, peeled the stickers off the walls, fought for sunscreen and table manners, made beds, combed out the lace, stapled the hems and later sewed them, kissed the friends, befriended the lovers, returned the books, loaned the car, the house, the denim jacket with the Liberty lining, combed out the lice, listened to the story tape jammed in the car stereo, held back the hair bent over the loo, paid the school fees, paid the tennis coach, paid the airfare, combed out the lice, pushed the swings, paired the socks, allowed the cigarettes, forbade unkindness, packed the trunk, renewed the passports, taught the second tongue, recited the alphabet, churned the ice cream, bought the bras, the walkman, the wedding dress, learned the names and never forgot them, shared the crossword, the towel, the chewed gum. The one who did not stray, who was always where I left her, who never spoke a word against him, who signed birthday cards in his name, lied in his name, raised a human in his name. And here I write a book about the one who left. She tells me this is betrayal. She tells me she did her best. I tell her she did, that for better or worse, this book is not about her. No one can be two parents. I tell her my writing is not a measure of her failure or of anyone's failure. It's a book about love. My mother tells me she will never read this. I will write it anyway. I would not be here without her. And I know some of that was just driven by the tech companies themselves, but there was this sense that we believed that technology could really serve us personally, professionally, creatively. You know, there was the iPhone was still in there, there were iPads and social media, and there was a promise that this was genuinely going to make us more connected and make our lives easier. And now AI's here, continuing that trend. And in many ways, technology has. This isn't a rant against uh technology. This isn't uh, you know, a call to lay down all technology and run off into the woods. But I think there's also been a growing feeling, and maybe even a kind of quiet grief, that something essential is being taken from us. A sense that our basic humanity is being chipped away. And you see it everywhere. Classrooms full of Chromebooks, families sitting together while everyone stares at separate screens, and parents frustrated by their own phone habits while worrying about their children's. And social media has made us constantly visible and constantly performing, constantly distracted. And I think that people are hungry for something that isn't a rejection of technology, but a balance, a return to something that makes us feel human again. Being outside, reading real books with real pages, and writing, not for an audience, not for likes, not for a post, but writing for ourselves, like taking a pen and paper and just thinking. And that idea of writing as reflection, as clarity, is what brings me to today's guest. Tonya Wallager is an author with a special connection to journaling. And I think in many ways she's the perfect guest for a moment we find ourselves in, or perhaps is a moment we're beginning to enter, a moment when we start to ask ourselves: is it time to take back ourselves from technology? Okay, here's my interview with Sonia. I hope you enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

I am a novelist and an actress and a mama. Not necessarily in that order, but um, those are some of the things that I do. Uh yeah, delighted to be here.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Yeah, I'm excited to talk about your career, uh, acting, writing. I'd like to start with sort of a big picture question about what writing means to you personally. Um, you know, I I've been feeling for a while like we are approaching what feels like a moment when we're really just fed up with technology. I feel like it's been it's been coming for a while and a return to the type of tactile experiences like journaling. Um it's feeling more and more relevant in schools and outside of schools. And I and I and I thought you could start by just talking about what is writing on just a personal level to you, when you're alone with your notebook, what does writing mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Thank you. It's a lovely question to to sort of think about. Um I think, you know, the act of making marks on a page or on a blank surface is as old as humans. I mean, uh that's what those beautiful hand paintings in the caves are. That's what those, you know, old buffalo and bison and creatures being chased off cliffs. I think the act of wanting to um take something that was inside you, be it a vision or a thought or a feeling, and make it outside you to reify your experience, feels very old and very primitive and and and a really essential part of being human. I don't know enough about the animal kingdom to know what artifacts animals are making. I know they are they are they are artists in their own way, but I'll I'll speak for humans. I think for me, it's how I feel connected to myself is to write. It's often how I find out what I'm actually thinking or feeling is to discover it on the page. I like to say it's how I find myself out. It's how I find the difference between what I might um, you know, pronounce at a dinner party versus how I actually feel about something. So for me, writing is uh c closely allied to authenticity, which isn't necessarily the same as truthfulness, but but um an authentic expression of something in all its complexities is is often why I go to writing, why I go to my journal, why I scribble down an idea for a short story or the outline for a novel or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

I had the the chance to see you speak to a group of students about uh journaling. And it was really moving. It was very, I mean, back to your point about authenticity, it was a very authentic moment. And as we know, adolescents see through phoniness immediately. And uh they were pretty captivated by your presentation and your interaction with them, I think, because it felt to them so real. And and and during that session, you talked to them about your own journaling journey when you were their age. And I wonder if you could talk my listeners through that now. How as a child you got into journaling and later looking back on old journals, how that's influenced you.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Yeah, I I just I first of all, thank you for having me. I just loved doing that class. I will do it again if ever you want me or need me or would like it. I I I really enjoyed it again, just sometimes the process of hearing yourself think and have to articulate what does journaling mean to me? You know, you the invitation was to come and teach an English class or to teach in the, you know, something about reading, you know. And and and immediately and very instinctively, that felt like to me the area I wanted to hone in on. Because, as you say, um, journals have meant an enormous amount to me throughout my life. They have felt like, along with reading, if you like, they've been like my left and right hands that have kind of kept me company and guided me through. A book I actually brought to class to sort of illustrate my point was a book that I read. Um it was called The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 and three-quarters. And it was really formative when it came out. I was younger than 13 and three-quarters when I read it, and it felt transgressive and um immediate, and so all the best things that literature should feel at that age, like it was written for me, even though it was, you know, a spotty teenage boy obsessed with a girl called Pandora who never noticed him and his rowing, you know, parents were on the brink of divorce. Um none of which was my experience, but the but the truthfulness and the day-to-day and the mundanity of noticing this spot that won't go away and this dog that won't stop barking, or you know, whatever his dad's drunk again, or dad smells of booze again, whatever it was, um, it it all felt um so normalizing and so sort of wonderful to discover that that was what a book could be, that a book could be born out of such tiny observations and sort of build to something else. And it was very funny. So I'm not going to say that, you know, I read that book and grabbed my journal, but it is definitely when I look back and think about books that left an impact. I don't think I realized it at the time, but it definitely did. And and I think I and I definitely kept journals during my teens, intermittently, like every teenager, no one does anything all the time, but from time to time that would be a habit. When it really concretized was moving here at 26, and I think feeling profoundly lonely in LA and very much isolated geographically, culturally, emotionally. You know, the one thing I had, which sort of perversely for most people, I had work, I had the job, I just didn't have everything else that goes with it. And so, really sort of digging into myself and what it was that I was doing here and why I was here, and maybe to keep myself company too, I really started journaling. And I never stopped. So I've kept journals absolutely thoroughly without pause, really. I mean, maybe months here and there, since I was 26. And so when COVID came around and my dad had died very unexpectedly in an accident just before COVID, I felt very strongly the need to get my stories down about my dad so that Billy and Jake, my kids, could know their grandfather, who was just so ludicrously larger than life. If you'd written him in a movie, I always said you'd have been asked to scale him down because he was just improbable. And I have a legendarily terrible memory, which may also be a reason for unconsciously keeping journals, is to actually like get things down. So I had thought when COVID came around and we all had nothing but time on our hands, well, maybe I'll write these stories about my dad in a book. Or in a document for them. And so I went to my journals and I pulled down this tub of journals that I had lugged around with me for you know 26 years. Always, every house I've ever moved into, thinking, I'm just mortified. Like, what am I even doing with these? What are these my legacy? Like, I don't want my children to read these repetitive, banal sort of narcissistic documents. But what for whatever reason, sentiment, I suppose, I had I had dragged them with me. Anyway, I took them all down and I went through them with a highlighter, and I treated them as though they were textbooks, and I and I just went in with the with the sole reason of of isolating stories about my dad. So I laid them all out in in um chronological order, which I'd never done before, and then I highlighted what felt relevant, and then I went back through them again with um those little post-it tabs and tabbed everything that felt like, well, that's a story, well, that's a memory, well, that's a cool, that's even a good sentence. And then I sort of extracted, I used the word harvest, but I I literally would I sort of went through and culled and put in a dumped-in Word document anything that felt germane or interesting, or just like, oh, I'd forgotten I knew that, or I'd forgotten I'd that was what jacarandra and Minocides in the spring smells like, or oh, that was a cool cup of coffee I had alone, waiting for him yet again in my life. You know, they were just these little moments. And then I took these moments and I they were in the document was known as I called it beads on my desktop, and I had all these beads, and I every now and then I would take one out and I would work it. I I call it sort of working the clay. I would sort of massage this moment into something bigger, try and imagine the moment behind it, how had I got to that cafe, who had bought me the coffee, how long had I been waiting, what trip was that, what age was I? And then I turned them into these little episodes or moments, in some cases chapters, all the while aware that I was sort of creating something that was bigger than a word document now, and that also had me in my moment then, during COVID, parenting two very small children in extreme isolation with Davy and witnessing my own parenting sort of up close. So there was this piece that started to emerge of how was I parented and how am I parenting, and where are they different, and where do they intersect? Where how I was parented, how has that informed how I narrate the world to these children? So all of that bloomed into this book Lion, and and Lion was you know published very soon after COVID, and uh and so I look to my journals as as the beginning of the beginning. That that was the birth of me as a writer, you know, and I I I finished Lion and I wrote Wife House very soon afterwards, which just came out. I'm now into my deep into my third book. None of these, none of these um artifacts would exist, would exist without my journals. I don't think I'd be here without my journals. Like I just think they're they're such an integral part of how I digest the world.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

I wonder if you could expand on that a bit because I think that's that's such an interesting point. We do a lot of hand-wringing in society today about the amount of screen time uh young people have. And and us too, to be fair, we all have a lot of screen time, but for developing young people, those formative uh late elementary through middle school years, you're talking about a sense of self being created in part by journaling. And I wonder if you could talk more about that and then how you sort of think about it in terms of your, you know, young people today. You've had two middle school-aged children, and and how their lives may be shaping in a in a way that's different than how yours did.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

I mean, Golly, we I I don't know that I can speak to the screen panic any more than has already been spoken to. I I I am, you know, by nature an optimist, so I tend to focus on like, well, what can I live out rather than just telling them about it? Like it doesn't, it doesn't feel meaningful unless it's you know uh grounded in something in in in a habit they're already seeing in me. So they see me wrestling with you know screen time, they see me, my phone is so loaded with um things that things that only that only that that allow in that inhibit screen use, right? So I have an Instagram because I have to sell a book, but it allows me six minutes a day, and then it literally makes it die on the phone. And you know, they they see me with all of this sort of paraphernalia. I'm very articulate about how I am, I am at the mercy of this thing. How could you age 13 possibly not be? I'm not equipped to manage it at 51. And and that we all we have a you know, everyone gets a free pass in this house to say to each other, hey, put the phone down, I'm having a conversation with you. So my children will say it to me, and I have to do it in the same way that if I say it to them. So so I guess there's a sort of baseline of we're all in the muck together working this out. I think to go back to your original point at the beginning, you know, I think I think reading and a return to reading and a return to reading on the page, and luckily my kids both do read and they both read on the page. We're not a Kendall family. I have nothing against it. I just think that the actual tactile experience of a page is really profound in the same way as making marks on a page is really profound rather than this disembodied experience. Um you know, they see they see me read. My children see me read. I I think that's uh key. It's not just me talking about reading, it's me. I'm never anywhere without a book. Every time they get in my car for pickup, I've probably been reading, waiting for them. Um they see me journaling, they hear me journaling, they've seen me, you know, wandering around with endless notebooks stuffed in every bag. Um will it affect them? Will it make them? I don't know. I hope so. I think we I think we see I think we're so profoundly affected by by all that we grow up around, and and in ways that we're not even immediately conscious of, you know, it evolves later and emerges later. My hope is that having um literate parents who who care really deeply about um a bodily experience of this world, not just an academic or an intellectual one, but an actually embodied experience of holding a page, um being around somebody's physical body when they tell you a story, not just through a screen. Um you know, drawing with your hands watercolours. I don't know, making things, you know. We m we make a lot of stuff in our house. And I one of the things I love about the school is that Billy's constantly coming home. I don't love this last-minute stuff, but her like, I have to make a poster, it needs to be done in 25 minutes. Can we go to CVS now? I'm like, it's 9.30. What's happening with the posters? Okay. But but I love that. I love that that it's not, can you hand in a Google Doc? It's it's a it's a tangible thing. And and just circling back to your initial point, I think the more tangible things we are making, those things are incontrovertible. Those are facts, those are actual artifacts that can't be argued with, that someone can't say that's not truth or that isn't true. That exists in the same way that I exist. And the more we're coming back to each other's bodies and things we can hold, and pages we can turn and posters that children have made, that an AI couldn't possibly have made because it's their dirty thumbprints in the glue. Um I I the more we we can return to these hard truths, um, the the better it is for all of us, for our children, for us as parents, for you as educators. I just think it's I think it's the right way to lean. And I'm I'm so delighted you you observe it. I God knows I've been straining that way myself for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Yeah, I I mean, like you, I tend to be an optimist and I'm not sort of anti-tech, but um I feel like we're uh as a society, there's a sort of subterranean, but maybe coming to the surface craving for tactileness that I am wondering in five years what it'll look like, what our relationship will be. When you were going back through your your old uh journals, um were there is there a particular moment or a story that you discovered that you could share with something that you were either, oh, I'd completely forgotten about this, this is amazing, or maybe something that you really didn't even remember writing, but it struck you as poignant.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

I think overall my biggest takeaway is how repetitive they were. I you know, I I had sort of assumed that there was enormous growth in these pages. I sort of hoped. And I'm like Oh my god, you just spent 15 years either longing for a boyfriend or longing for Davy to propose or longing for your babies or longing for the next diagram of yearning is what these pages are. Um I was like, was nothing enough, woman? Jesus Christ. Um so so yes, poignant in their human, in their humanity, in in in just um a huge sense of compassion for this striving human trying to make the best of things, and and always hoping for something sort of bigger or better, and and you know, the the the older woman in me wanting to sort of hold her in my arms and be like, it was all okay, it was all okay, and it is gonna be okay. Um, you know, but I I I don't have a single anecdote. That was more my takeaway of the whole wash, and and you know, sort of heartbreakingly, but maybe for the best, those journals were all lost in the fire. So, you know, I had we we lived in Malibu and we lost our home. And I with hindsight, I would have grabbed that tub. I would have done. And I don't, I don't think I I know I didn't know that at the time because we we evacuated, we had time to take things. At some level, I must have walked into my office and decided I didn't need those. And so part of me wants to honour that decision and be like, you didn't, you weren't running for your life, you chose not to bring them. So they were gonna honour the fact that they did their job. There are hopefully another 50 years of journals to come with more stories and novels to be harvested from them. And maybe they did exactly what they needed to, which was to sort of point me in this in this direction and then be released, and then not then I don't need to feel um embarrassed about how many times I wrote, I wish I had a boyfriend. Well the right point.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

I know people always get on Taylor Swift for writing like the same song over and over, but it's like that sometimes it's just how people are. They kind of have to work through something for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

It's who we are, we're all trapped in the speech of who we are. Like, I uh believe me, I'm sure she'd love to write something about I don't know, something more existential, but but we are who we are. I I come up against this with my books too, where I'm like, oh, I think I think I've covered this ground. I'm like, yeah, well, I think Jane Austen covered it pretty thoroughly too, but we don't begrudge a single one of those. And Charles Dickens hit us pretty hard on cross-society, cross sections of Victorian society. Um I think you work, you work with the with the cloth and the thread you're given, and and you hope you hope you make something, embroider something slightly different this time.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

So you're you're deep into your third book.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

But you're also an actor.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

I'm also an actor.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

And um working on something now, I understand. And um for those listeners who have Apple TV, that you'll you can find Sonia. We'll see more of Sonia.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

So yeah, no, I acting has always been something I loved. I went to a very, very academic boarding school, and um the sort of one pressure valve release, it felt like, was these acting lessons that I had steadily for the whole seven years that I was there. And I I really loved it, and I had this very maternal relationship with my, or she was maternal to me, the the acting teacher that I had there for that time. And, you know, it was very much an either-or when I finished school was do I go to university or do I go to drama school? And and I got into Oxford, so there was sort of no arguing with that. So I I went to Oxford and studied English literature while I was there, but kept acting on the side, doing tons of student plays, and I got an agent while I was still at university. So it all came quite easily, dare I say it, in those early days. I was like, oh, this is cool. You set your sights on something and you get it. Amazing, that's cool. I guess that's how the world works. And then I left Oxford and had a big fancy agent and didn't book a job. Or I did, but not right away. And I had never known a free fall like it. I was just like, what do you mean? But I'm but I'm that person who works really hard and then she gets what she wants. And that does is just not how acting acting works. And nothing, nothing had prepared me for the humility required of being an actor. Um, I'm gonna say humility and not humiliation, but but they're they're they're quite close. Um and uh anyway, I I worked and I did lots of theatre and then I Indies and TV shows, and then I I came out here, and and then I really have worked here steadily ever since. I've not worked back in England since I left. Um so I came here at 26 and sort of did an HBO show and then did another, and I it's sort of gone on gone on from here. And I've done some really interesting work and I've been part of some amazing and sort of um, you know, TV that has meant meant stuff to people, which is a really lovely thing to be a to be a part of, to have been part of Lost, to have been part of For All Mankind. Um you know, there have been a few that that have been um important to people, and that's a really uh amazing experience. Amazing experience to meet people who who want to talk to you about how your work has impacted them. Um it's just interesting because I for the last four years I've really been writing and really happily doing it, and have felt this great relief at oh, I'm so clever, I found this one career now where it just doesn't matter if I'm old or fat or out of what like nothing matters. I can just sit in my office and write books and I should have been doing this all along. I'm so happy doing this, and I feel so fulfilled, and more importantly, it doesn't require anybody to say yes to me. I can just do it. Publishing is a different story, but creating, generating chapters is just me. And it's very disenfranchising being an actor, it's very disempowering and and quite infantilizing if you let it be. I think there's a reason so many people in my career are um, shall we say, misaligned? Because there is something distinctly off about being a fully grown adult with absolutely no agency as to how you're gonna earn your living. And you're you you're you know, you're parenting, you're running a house, you're booking holidays, you're doing all these things, and yet you're in this other half of you completely stunted, waiting for someone to give you permission to do your job. It's a it's a it's a great mismatch of sensibilities. Um, and and I felt like I'd outgrown it. Um, and then I got offered this fantastic role where I was like, all right, I guess I haven't outgrown it. I'm gonna go and play this now. So now I'm on a new show for Amazon called God of War, which is based on, I guess, a very successful video game show, video game called God of War, about which I clearly know nothing. Um, but uh I should do some more research. Anyway, I'm playing Freya, Queen of the Gods, Queen of the Valkyries. Um and was sounds amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing. I went yesterday to Vancouver and was fitted for my wings. So I said today I can I can retire now. I've had a wing fitting. I think there's no nothing earth to reach for.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

How big are these wings?

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Like this big.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Gold, amazing wings. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Well, you said that you know, about journaling, it's authentic, which is not the same as truthful. They don't have they're not necessarily the same thing, which strikes me as maybe something you could say about acting. Very much maybe striving for something authentic, even if the truth of what you're saying or what you're performing is not is not there. How would you compare the two? You know, as someone who's professionally active, professionally written.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

What is the the I think of them as like sisters. I think of them as like sisters that have the same parents, you know. Um I think the Greeks knew what they were about when they had the muses be all related. I think they're different expressions of the same thing, and this idea that you can reach after truth through fiction is, I think, an endlessly fascinating point, and that actually maybe the truest way to arrive at um truth or irreducibles can only be reached through the veil of fiction. That truth itself is so unpinned downable. One of my dearest friends is a documentary maker, and we always are talking about what you know what he's capturing on his raw footage versus the story he is then going to contrive to tell us from that footage. You know, he's a filmmaker. That's he's a storyteller. He's a storyteller like I'm a storyteller. You know, we uh we're storytellers, human beings. It's our uh it's our most basic instinct is to take experience and uh try and share it, try and communicate it across this uh divide, and then and then and then elevate it and then make it beautiful, then make it uh poetic or symphonic or artistic, but but that's what we do is to try and sort of close this gap between us by uh flinging a line out and saying, I I saw this. Did you see that? What did you see? You know, and and it's in that interchange that that interchange is fiction right there. That that's what it is. I mean, this is why when Lion came out and I was asked by my publishers, and they only asked me once, which I was so grateful for, and they said, you know, we're just checking, this is fiction and not memoir or biography. And I said, No, it's it's it's a work of fiction in which everything happened. But the very act of writing it down, the very act of telling it, to me is an act of fiction. It is an act of taking a thing that was inside me and turning it into this other thing, and that otherness is fictional. And and that's what acting is, that's what bringing Freya, Queen of the Valkyries to life is, is I'm I'm given these lines, and hopefully, hopefully, God willing, I I inhabit my raw material, my experience of being in the world, and and weave or braid that into these lines that I've been given in order to arrive at something new, something that wasn't on the page and that wasn't just in me, but this third new thing that is a fiction and a you know a character all of its own.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

So much of what you're saying makes me think of one of the values that we have here at school, and is that how more important the process is than the product? That that ultimately, yes, there are times when you have to produce something. In your case, you're writing for your publisher, you are on screen acting, but how you get there, all the countless hours, the iterations, the rolling of the clay as you describe it, like that's where it all that's where it happens. And then that thing at the end is just um a manifestation of everything that led up to it.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah, and it's it's it is exactly as you say, and I see I see it, you know, you walk the walk at New Roads, and my kids were at two, you know, incredibly progressive schools prior to New Roads. Like this is this is what they this is what they do best, actually, is is commit themselves to to process. I I watch them get older and get more focused on the outcome. I think that's an inevitable part of of growing older. Um, but again, you know, they've got two, they live with, for better or worse, they live with two artists, these kids, and they they watch us, you know, make things and make things that don't see it into the world, or or that see it into the world but have a limited impact. And that's okay too. In fact, that's more than okay. It's still a thing you made. And you know, I cook every night, and I love cooking, and I find it a huge release. And when I'm not working and when I haven't written or I haven't acted, I actually find it quite creative. I feel like, well, I made a risotto, so that's a thing I did today, you know. Um, and we'll we talk about that too, which is like sometimes you make things and all they're good for is four people to eat at the end of the day. And that's still a thing I made. That's still of value. That's still it doesn't have to have a frame around it, or a golden statue next to it, or a publisher's seal on it. These the to living a creative life can be making a good lunchbox, can be cutting a beautiful rose from the garden and sticking it in a jam jar. Like it it it I'm such a huge and fervent believer in not not dividing those people that are creatives and those that aren't. You we we all are. The act of getting dressed every morning is a creative act, I think.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

One of the things you said to the class that I was observing, I was sitting in on, that I really liked was you you pulled out this journal, you gave everyone in the class a journal, a blank journal, and it was it has no lines, the paper's unlined, and you said, I don't like lines because it, you know, paraphrasing it here, but it creates too many boundaries, it makes me feel boxed in. You don't even necessarily stay on the page, you go across the page into the next page, and it's that I think schools have traditionally put students in too many positions where there's a right answer. And one thing I appreciate about what you said to the students is this liberating sense of just how can you just be yourself on the page? And whether it's a little bit or a lot, whether it's every day or every other day, whatever, there's just something freeing about not pursuing an end that is correct or that looks a certain way.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

It's totally right, and that's I I so agree, Dan. And I I to piggyback on it, I would say, you know, that's that is the point of journaling, actually, isn't it? Is that it has no end. I mean, I happened to harvest a novel from mine, but that was not the end when I'm writing it. It's certainly not the end when I write today or that I did yesterday. There's no intention there, other than some relief, some setting down of something that I've been carrying around, and I just need a place for it. And now it's held, and now I can carry on with my day. Um, you know, I think the other thing that I said to them that I firmly believe is when you get a new journal, um, either scribble on the first page or just immediately turn over to the next one. The fur the blank page and its pristine state is so intimidating, even to an experienced quote-unquote journaler or even just a writer. The blank page is terrifying. And somehow you feel the need to write something really impressive on that first page. And I try and make it a habit of my first page, I deliberately spoil it. Like I'll put a shopping list on it, or a phone number, or a doodle, or some childish scroll, or something as banal and trite as it gets, because it gets you over the page, it gets you over the need to be impressive or pithy or erudite or to have seen to the heart of your experience or something. You know, there's like it the more I was saying this to the kids, the more quotidian it is, the more every day, the more you don't save it for special thoughts. I mean, my journal, I have one that fits in every bag. I have minis, big ones, they're all going concurrently. Heaven help me if I actually have to find a phone number, because God knows which of the six it's in. But they have, but they are all living, breathing documents. They've got scribble-down phone numbers and parking directions and uh reminders to call back so and so and you know, vital insurance details and all this stuff, and in there, you know, how I feel and you know, a thought and a reflection or a short story idea or whatever it is. And I I love them that way. I love having them all the melting pot of it. And I even I think I flicked through my journal briefly to show the kids that I'm not just saying that, like I really mean it, to take the preciousness off them and make them just every day, just humdrum things, as humdrum as your phone was what I said to them. They should be as as vital as that, they should live stuffed in your backpack, be well thumbed, pull them out, every now and then pull them out instead of the phone, instead of texting someone, throw it down in your journal and then stuff it back in the bag. You know, I say all of this, neither of my children write journals, so it remains to be seen if there's any impact here. But uh, maybe one day.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

What do you think of journaling prompts?

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Great! Whatever it takes. Oh my god, I'm a fan of all of it. I'm not precious about anything at all. Journaling prompts, do it, get you to scribble something down, fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Yeah, if you were writing a prompt for young people, let's say all 13-year-olds out there, all 12-year-olds out there, what's something that you think they should wrestle with and and if imagine they're all journaling and you're gonna give them.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Yeah, I I always believe, you know, start really small. Start close in. Start just by observing things. What did you have for breakfast? What did it feel like in the car ride on the way to school today? What happened between the front gate and sitting your bum in the seat? Who'd you talk to? Who didn't who gave you shade? Who didn't? Why? You know, um I think the the the lofty questions, the sort of big prompts produce um perhaps less authentic answers, more generic, more pleasing answers, the more the tinier the little piece of cloth that you're asking someone to embroider, the more likely you are to get something that's close to them. So getting into the habit of observing your own life closely and being like, huh. Yeah, I guess I had apple juice this morning. I didn't really want that. I wish I had a matcha. I didn't want to get a matcha because so and so was at Blueie's and that was weird. Look, you know what I mean? Like, and that just started with what did you have for breakfast? What did you wish you had for breakfast? Those would be my prompts, would actually be to to really come way, way, way close in. What does it feel like to wear the clothes that I'm on is on my body today? What can I see from my bedroom window? I I I my instinct is to to start with with intimate, and the more will bleed out from there.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Is the routine of writing was that something that was difficult for you to build? Or did you find that I remember you saying to the class something like you might journal for a while, then you maybe you wouldn't for a couple of months, and then you come back to it. And but now that as someone who's writing for a publisher, I mean, how how I would I guess how the practice of that has translated to sitting down and you know writing for someone?

SPEAKER_00 42:46

Um, well, I will say this sitting and waiting for inspiration is a mugs game, so that's that's definitely not how you do it. Um I don't know anyone more disciplined about his writing than my husband, so I have an amazing partner to live with just in terms of his example, his daily example of going to work is really extraordinary. Um so that's like a very useful metronome to just have going constantly in the background. Uh you know, life there's life before the fire, and then there's life after the fire. Life before the fire was a very steady and predictable, quiet routine. The children went to school in the canyon next door. I wrote every single day without fail, sometimes six days a week. Um, and my hours were beautifully my own. Uh, life since the fire, obviously, in the immediate aftermath, that was just a rupture and a trauma, the likes of which I hope we never visited it on again. But you know, stumbling through six months later, finding my feet and being like, actually, writing will help me. Writing will help me through this. Um, I did journal throughout it because I did feel. Like I I will want to one day, one day I will want to know and remember what this was. So I did, I did keep those. I have not looked at them and don't plan to for a while. But about four or five months in, I was like, all right, I'm ready to return to the book. I'm ready to see if there's anything in there for me. And also what am I, and I'm a different person now. Like maybe I'm writing a different book. And coming back to that, and little by little piecing in for myself in this gentle way, uh, the rhythm of, okay, let's just start with 90 minutes a day. That's not too much, an hour and a half. Anyone can do 90 minutes. You can you can manage that. And then, you know, some days more, some days less, but 90 minutes was the minimum. And that was very grounding and anchoring to find myself in a new house, but still doing the things that I used to do. Um, now that this TV job has come and I shoot in Vancouver and I live on a plane, and I and I'm constantly flying up just for a wing fitting or costume fitted, tattoo fitting, you name it. I mean, I it's not just shooting, the the the surrounding things are incredibly time consuming. And then I come home and I'm like, oh my god, laundry and kids and homework, and we didn't get them to the dentist. And so I feel like I can't I land home and I'm constantly getting up to speed. So the writing I've started to go, all right, writing happens on these planes. You have these wonderful two and a half hour journeys over and over, where there's nothing else. There's no doctor, there's no appointment you can make. Don't don't buy the Wi-Fi use these to write. So again, I'm trying to be gentle about it because it's tiring this new life that I'm suddenly in with a lot of travel and filming long hours and things. So m asking myself to write a novel in the middle of it may be a tall order. Um, but I'm very loath to let the habit go. It's been so sustaining and such a source of comfort and pleasure and and and reward the reward of of putting putting something in the world that only has your name on it is is after being so collaborative for so many years, um, is a pretty extraordinary thing. It's a pretty extraordinary thing. I'm I'm not I'm not ready to give that out just because I started on a TV show.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

I just love the the elbow grease of that story, just the the the routine, the time, the patience. Um it it reminds me of uh a story I heard. Um I was watching a documentary about the Eagles, the famous rock band, and they were telling a story about their early days. I think they're probably living up near where you live now. They're up in the canyon somewhere, and they're sharing a house with another musician, Jackson Brown, and he's like up above them, and one of them comments on how he would listen to him through the ceiling and just kind of, you know, playing a note, playing a chord, making some tea, coming back, and he's just kind of workshopping one little piece of one little of one song over and over. And this and this member of the Eagles said, That's when I realized, like, oh, that's that's how you do it. It's not like inspiration doesn't just suddenly land in your doorstep. Like it's it's the time, it's the patience, it's the working of again back to the your clay analogy. And it's just cool to hear you as an artist describe that. Um, yeah, or thank you so much for taking the time to talk. It's it's really been lovely. I I wonder if you could just leave us on, uh, give us a little taste of what the third book is uh going to be about.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

The third book is is uh very much a work in progress, but it's um it's set in England between the wars, um, between the first and the second world war. Um, it's a dark comedy, and it's about a young woman who is reluctantly becoming a writer. That's about as much as I can say, with any hope of it sticking. So I think that's but I think that's what it's about.

SPEAKER_01 48:09

Okay. Very cool. Well, Sonia, thanks so much. Um thanks for your thoughtfulness and just all your ideas on journaling, I just think land really well in schools, but especially in this moment we're having right now, as we're sort of, I think, wrestling existentially with our own humanity in the face of um technology.

SPEAKER_02 48:30

Yeah, that's right.