Peace.

I know it’s hard to make time for your writing, especially when Australia’s forests are burning and so many of our world leaders are working against peace.

It’s difficult, but this is a crucial time for you to swim upstream and locate the peacefulness within yourself. You need to practice it and express it, even if you’re the only one you know who’s brave enough to do it. Right now.

Know yourself. Pay attention to your core.

Your core: the part of yourself that relaxes when it’s working toward devotion in your craft. The part of yourself that notices things deeply, makes connections between the profane and the exquisite. The part of yourself that knows how to make something from nothing, tapping into a mysterious creative source that nobody can really explain.

Pay attention to the art that you make. Please go deep, and challenge yourself: take us right into your scenes, show us the complexity of your characters.

There’s a mutual honouring that comes from living and writing from your core. When you devote yourself to the art you make, you can write a story that calls for transformation. It’s not easy — transformation never is — but there is a peace that comes from writing with courage. There’s also a peace that it creates, inside yourself.

It’s worth a lot, that sense of peace.

Because when you feel at peace, the people around you can feel it, too.

That’s how it spreads.

Love,