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Big news! I'm moving back to England from Australia and in this video I talk about what ‘home' means for us as writers.
In the video I explain:
I left London in 2000 and am returning in June 2011 having spent seven years in New Zealand and four in Australia. I won't say the move is forever but I'm looking forward to going home!
When I was writing Pentecost, I set my protagonist Morgan’s home in Oxford, England which to me is my spiritual home. My Dad lives near there and I went to University there. If you ask me where is home – Oxford is it for me.
It also stems from Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure – excellent classic but in it, Jude sees Oxford from afar and calls it a new Jerusalem. That image has stuck with me for nearly 20 years because Jerusalem is the other place in the world I am so ‘romantically' involved with. I’ve been ten times over the years and I love it. As someone who is deeply fascinated by religion, it’s just an amazing place.
So home is an inspiration for us as writers – aspects of our home pop up in our writing. We all know the physical landscape of home so we can weave in the little details that make our writing real. It grounds our work in specifics which makes for better writing.
We also bring the feeling of home to our writing – whether it’s a sci-fi adventure or thriller or romance, the emotional pull of home runs deep. Home can also mean people, coming home to our partner or children and those emotions can give our writing real strength.
(gasp) Moving back to England?!? from AUSTRALIA?!?!? Quick, someone, get Joanna a hot pack and something to put her feet up on! She must be feeling faint!
😀
Seriously, all the best with the move, Joanna. I moved here from there when I was ten and have only been back on holidays twice. It was lovely to visit, but my wife (also a UK expat) and I do prefer here, even though we have some awesome friends in Swindon (amongst other places).
Sydney was my home for nigh on two decades before my wife and I upped sticks and moved to Cairns. On one hand it’s nice being away from the Big City craziness – but on the other, were it affordable, I think we’d consider moving back. My first novel is set in an alternate modern day Sydney, which gives me license to resurrect a couple of places that closed down a while ago.
In the end, though, home really is wherever my lady wife is.
You’re right Rob – home is where those you love are – but my husband is coming too! 🙂
Welcome back to England’s green and pleasant land. Offer of advice avoid British newspapers and BBC news, they are so negative.
I have lived abroad a few times; Germany, Cyprus and Kenya and I did consider going to live in Spain or the USA a few years ago but I’m glad I didn’t. I enjoy travel and visting places, but I love returning to England. Anywhere in England is good for me because as a service child and ex military myself, I’ve moved around a lot and wherever I am is my home. One of the things I love about England is that we are just above the Mosquito line and just below the Midges line; it’s a simple thing, but simple things please me.
I also love your posts, but of course we can get them anywhere in the World. 🙂
I find newspapers and indeed news is negative everywhere! I haven’t had a TV for nearly 5 years so just avoid it – I do still read The Guardian online which keeps me up to date but I agree, it’s always the same!
I’m looking forward to being without mosquitoes, huge spiders, sweltering heat and humidity – and in fact wearing a coat and scarf again!
Welcome back – subtle product placement btw.
Home to me will always conjure up a vision of a lone whitewashed bungalow sprawled in the veldt on the outskirts of Boksburg in South Africa.
Before moving to SA at the age of 12, I attended 13 schools here in the UK.
Discovering this slippery word, home, actually meant something to me when I returned from university was an emotional moment for me.
Still is.
obviously not so subtle product placement! Glad you approve 🙂
I went to school in Malawi – which was never home, but I have a fondness for it – and I think the years of traveling mean I will always be a nomad but like you, surprising to feel so emotional about returning to at least a spiritual home
Welcome back to Oxford! 😀
Having been to university in The Other Place (lived there aged 0 -10 too), I’m not sure I’ll ever quite feel at home in Oxford. But my parents and granny live nearby, and it’s definitely nice to be back after four years in London. 🙂
boo hiss to the other place!
I’ll be living in the big smoke, working centrally but will definitely be out to Oxford for some Pimms and social networking 🙂
Ah, should’ve read the first line of your post more carefully! *ahem* Welcome back to London too! I’m quite often popping back to see friends at Goldsmiths, so I’ve still got a soft spot for it.
And any time you want to get together for Pimms… 🙂
Hi Joanna,
I explored this very topic recently, albeit from a different angle. I visited F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birth home about a month ago, and was strangely underwhelmed by the pilgrimage. I’m still not sure why, but it’s probably because I think of Fitzgerald in NY, or Paris, or the Riviera. Not St. Paul. I had a great discussion with Kelly (in the comment section) about what home might have meant to Fitzgerald, but ultimately that proved to be an exercise in projecting our own sentimental (or lack thereof) thoughts of home.
http://www.afewstrongwords.com/2011/03/babylon-visited-or-my-trip-to-fitzgeralds-house-day-190/
I think home is, to paraphrase Hemingway, a moveable feast. That might be a slightly less cliché way to say “home is where the heart is” but I think in terms of writers and other creative types, it is quite different. You’re right, home is an inspiration for us writers, either directly or indirectly. Home has meaning, even to those (especially to those?) who wander the globe. Home centres us and grounds us, and acts as a big ol’ reset button sometimes.
That’s because writing is a very personal thing that plumbs the depths of who we are. Nothing really quite reflects that like our deep, personal connection to home.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I was about to say “congrats” on the move, but I always feel strange about saying that in these situations because I’m sure you have both good and bad feelings about moving. How about this: fare well on your next adventure!
~Graham
Thanks Graham! We’ve been looking at which way to fly back and I’m looking at all these hotels where famous writers stayed – the James Michener suite at Raffles, Singapore! (that would be lovely!)
Hi Joanna,
Congrats on the move. Have fun and try not to stress out too much. I’ve never moved to another country (lived all over the U.S.), but it sounds like a great adventure.
-Martin
I am a crazy person – having moved all my stuff from UK to New Zealand, then New Zealand to Oz and now back again… so this time, I’m selling everything so it’s not so expensive 🙂
Welcome back to England. I moved to the London area from the US three years ago and I love it. International moves are terribly stressful as I’m sure you know. Good luck with the move.
Am trying not to stress – but the paperwork is killing me already 🙂 I hope to organize a writer’s tweetup once I’m settled so I’ll look forward to meeting you sometime!
Hi Joanna,
I can tell that you are really looking forward to retuning home and I’m so excited for you.
My home is Mayne Island, British Columbia, but I’m from Eriksdale, Manitoba.
I was born and raised in rural Manitoba. This is where my philosophical and spirtual views were formed and nurtured. However, strangely, it never felt like “home” to me.
I found my island home in 1999.
I set my first novel (Maynely A Mystery) on Mayne Island. The first part of The Sweater Curse (published by Decadent Publishing) is set in rural Manitoba, the second half in urban BC. Currently, my WIP has four main settings–Manitoba, Newfoundland, Ontario and Quebec. As you can tell, being at home and feeling at home has had a profound effect on my writing.
Yesterday, I was rescaling with a problem: how much information should I include about Eriksdale in my next book?
Your post has helped me see how important setting is. Thank you.
Much like Martin, I too have never lived outside my coutry of orgin. Although, I’ve often dreamed of embarking on this adventure.
I admire your courage, Joanna.
I love your “island home” – that’s gorgeous! Definitely include your feelings and details on setting – it’s one of the most important things to me in books I read. I still think Michener’s The Source is responsible for my obsession with Israel!
Good luck with your move. I hope it all goes well.
Good question – complicated answer. The deepest roots are still in River, the hamlet in West Sussex where I was born. Even after eleven years London was never home; Liverpool was immediately I moved there, and remained home for 20 years. Now I’m as close to a true home as possible, not able to return to Sussex – the air and earth of Magura (which means Hill in Romanian) carry echoes of the chalk downs of Sussex and 40 years after leaving River, I’m rooted again in Hill.
That’s marvelous Arabella – I will be down your way soon enough!
oh wait, just saw you have now moved to Transylvania – now THAT is an amazing move and somewhere with deep literary roots! will you be writing horror?! / gothic?
Home and family life has played a big part in my children’s books – they are all firmly rooted in my experiences.
I was at Oxford University too, Somerville College, but a few years before you I imagine!
I’m sure your big move will unleash lots of creativity.
Congratulations on your impending move home, Joanna! Moving to the other side of the world is always exciting — but especially when your direction is back toward your roots!
For me, “home” has very peculiar connotations. I was born in Texas, moved to (West) Germany at age 3, to Oklahoma at age 19, to (East) Germany at age 24, and back to Oklahoma at age 30. Because I grew up with two different cultures, I’m what’s called a “Third Culture Kid”: one who has taken parent culture and childhood culture and mixed the two into a unique third culture.
One of the results of this is that TCKs feel continually rootless — homeless, really. When I’m in America, I long for Germany. When I’m in Germany, I long for America. Every 2-3 years, I get the itch to move my whole life someplace foreign. When I can’t move my life, I rearrange furniture. I’ve been in my current apartment for three years, so this past Christmas, I flipped the living room.
So when I think of “home,” I think “everywhere and nowhere.” As Johann Bojer put it, I am “restless and forever in motion.” For me, home isn’t a location. It’s an ethereal, always-just-out-of-reach concept. Contentment is a discipline I work at daily.
The great thing about being a rootless TCK is that I can bring that restlessness into my characters. I can infuse it into their personalities so that when the moment comes, they will move, act, decide, and strive. They might start out as unwilling heroes, but I can give them the steel they need to face their villians and, in the end, come out victorious. : )
ooh, I’m going to say I’m one of those too – of a kind! We moved all over the place, including to Africa for a while and I know I’ll get itchy feet after a couple of years in England. But part of the reason to be back there is it’s so easy to calm the itch but heading off across Europe. In Australia, you have to travel a long way to find someone who doesn’t speak english and eat meat pies!
Yes, I do envy you a little the renewed access to the continent! Oklahoma is somewhat landlocked; even Mexico is farther away from here than any foreign country is from Germany!
That’s great that your coming home. The UK is a great place for writers. But of course it doesn’t matter where you live, we are all one as writers.
I live in the town of Luton myself, just north of London. Oxford is a cool place though. Have a safe flight back home.
A poignant and percipient post. Have considered moving back to old blighty myself, but the occasional Pimms on an occasional sunny lawn, haven’t been quite enough to pull me back from the various wild and sunny mountainscapes that seem to keep me in their cleavage.
May the wind be at you and yours back nonetheless and getting rid of all your “stuff” is liberating and the only fresh way to go. Happy trails!
Big news indeed! I hope you have a smooth transition.
Home is such a complicated question for me and dogs my writing. I’ve lived long stretches in very different places, like yourself. It makes me question whether my writing seems realistic (even down to the way people talk) with so many disparate influences. Ah well.
Home is always ‘where I’ve been for the past few years’, though I never let go of any former homes in my heart either 🙂
Thank you, Joanna, for this tip and all that you offer the writing community.
I’m from a relatively small Canadian town and have a strong sense of belonging here. I doubt that I could be happy anywhere without that feeling. It’s not just the recognition, almost a physical relief, that twigs inside when I’m within half a mile of the outskirts and see the familiar landmarks (which are mostly nothing spectacular), but it’s the connections I have to the friends, family and acquaintances that make this place home for me.
I find in so many novels that the main characters seem to live in a social vacuum. They lack siblings, or have no intimate friends or others who care about them and with whom they touch bases regularly. I suppose the author needs them to be somewhat isolated for the stakes to feel more intense, and I realize that we can only populate our stories to a certain limit before they become confusing.
I wonder whether it’s a good idea to at least have the main character think fleetingly of the people who matter to them, as we do in real life. It’s a rare moment when I’m not thinking of someone I know on some level, even just for a nanosecond.
Enjoy your perspectives and all the efforts you make to get us in sync with the technology that’s available to us.
I was raised in Las Vegas Nevada and I never write about Vegas in anything. I also don’t watch TV shows related to Las Vegas. Vegas is a cliche (at least I feel that way)