Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Good afternoon.
I need you to know that the fact that I'm barefooted
is not some kind of deep Jamaican cultural statement;
it is simply the mistake of a woman
who should not have worn high heels this morning to come give a TEDx talk.
So good afternoon.
A couple of weeks ago,
I did a calculation,
and I realized that at 41 years old, nearly 42,
I have actually been working with writers and writing for 39 years.
Yes, since I decided at about three or four
that really the purpose of my existence was to tell stories.
And I was that kind of kid.
My father said he once came into my room, and he found me tearing up my books,
you know, those books they make for toddlers with the thick pages?
He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm looking for more words!"
I was that kind of kid.
My aunt Caroline also likes to tease me that it actually took quite a long time
to get me out of a book or away from paper into the world.
So I thought it was appropriate
to come here today and simply to share with you
the top five things that I think that writing has taught me about life.
Number one: illuminate the darkness.
When I was a kid, I was more inclined to write
from the point of view of vampires than fairies.
When I became an adult, my first novel, in part,
dealt with what happens to a group of women when one of them is raped.
And quite understandably,
a lot of women came to me who read the novel and thanked me for it.
But my favorite feedback was actually from a man.
I'd done a public reading,
and at the end of the reading, a little man came up to me,
very small, very old Jamaican man,
and he grabbed my elbow and said,
"That girl in that book. When she got raped, that was a bad thing."
I said, "Yeah."
He said, "I feel it for her.
I never thought of anything like that before."
And then he went away, and I thought, "Yeah."
Now that's part of why I like doing this,
because I want people to feel for each other.
I want people to have compassion for each other.
One of the things I feel like I've always been doing
is buzzing around a bit like an insect, since I was a little girl.
Not something noisy like a bee or a mosquito,
but something like what in Britain they call a daddy long legs -
it's very silent, gets into strange, little, dark corners -
paying attention to complicated emotions that people are experiencing.
What does it feel like to live with someone who cheats on you?
What does it feel like to be homeless?
What is the emotional experience of wanting to sleep with a married man?
What is it going to feel like if you decide to sell your body?
These are some of the things I've written stories about and asked myself about -
and I think to myself: "Why are you doing this?"
Why are you doing this?
And I think what I'm trying to do is illuminate the darkness.
I'm trying to shine a light on secrets
because I don't believe in secrets.
It doesn't mean I don't believe in privacy - it was talked about earlier -
I do believe that people have a right
to share what they want to share when they want to share it.
However, I don't believe in the kind of secrets
that keep us dark from ourselves.
The kinds of secrets we don't even tell ourselves.
The kind of secrets that we don't have the courage at 2:00 in the morning to go,
"I'm lonely," or "I'm afraid," or "I'm ugly."
And I think one of the things that literature can do
is to increase our tendency to look at our own darkness
even if no one else can see it,
even if we're not ready to show it to anyone else.
Rather than choosing repression
or rather than choosing resilience
to say to ourselves, "This is who I am, and this is how I'm feeling."
It's one thing I think is very important that literature does.
Another public reading I gave -
a woman put up her hand -
by then I'd written my second novel;
it was essentially about a homeless man going mad -
she put up her hand, and she said, "I hate that character."
I said, "Okay," because I was fine with that.
I have no problem with passion; my problem is apathy.
So she was angry; I was cool.
She came up to me afterwards and said,
"I really hate that character!"
I'm thinking, "Well, I worked hard on him, okay, but all right,
you're entitled to your opinion."
She went away and came back with her friend,
She came up to me, she said, "I hate the character, and I know why."
I said, "Why?"
She said, "Because he reminds me of me."
And her friend nudged her and said, "That's all right," and they went off.
I thought, yes, that's also why I do it, to illuminate the darkness.
and look at ourselves and give ourselves a break.
So that's point number one.
Point number two:
yes, yes, sex is great, yes, (Laughter)
when it´s done well.
But I'm making a larger point here,
and, actually, a potentially more important point.
I don't mean what you think I mean.
I went back to my old high school about a year ago, in Jamaica,
and I noticed that when they asked me to speak to the students,
they only allowed me to speak to the students 16 years old and older.
I thought, yes, yes, I know what this is about:
I write about sex, yes, okay, fine.
And I realized, of course, that I always have been someone,
interested in human sexuality.
One of the things I do is I write erotica;
it's only one of the things I do.
And, again, I was that kind of kid.
My grandmother tells me that once she was giving a tea party.
I was about seven, and I came in and walked around and looked at the guests
and said, "You have a penis, and you have vagina;
you have a penis; you have vagina."
And she said, "Yes, dear," and sent me out.
(Laughter)
But the funny thing is this:
Only about a quarter of the work I do
has anything to do with explicit sexuality.
So I found, like scarlet women before me, that a little goes a long way.
I've developed something of a reputation.
My favorite word is a swear word.
It's a four-letter word beginning with "F" and ending with "K,"
the musicality of which
has been compromised somewhat by Hollywood movies over the years,
and the kind of word that TED doesn't want me to say out loud.
Oh, I wish I could.
Anyway, I like this word.
But I like this word not just for its titillatory nature,
actually, I like it for a more simple, writerly reason.
I like it because it's so complex.
It takes a whole continuum of emotion with it.
Think about it.
This wonderful four letters that can express
the irritation of stubbing your toe
or the beautiful vista of a mountain range
(Laughter)
or the gorgeousness, the darkness, the complexity between two people.
One little word, four letters that I'm not supposed to say to you.
(Laughter)
I ask my students often, "What do you think of bad language?
Of sexually explicit language?
Why do we call it 'bad language'? What's that about?"
And they tell me a variety of things.
I ask them,
"Why do you think that writing sex is one of the easiest ways to be dismissed
as inconsequential or intellectually inferior?
Now, do I look intellectually inferior to you?
But I write about erotic moments."
And eventually my students, even in 2011, work around to the following idea:
You're a woman.
Well, maybe.
But I'm a writer first, and a writer condemns no word.
They simply ask, "What is my intention to my reader?"
Writing sex is a very serious business,
is a very intellectually challenging business.
Do you know how hard it is to find perfect sexual similes
that don't involve trains going through platforms,
explosions, waterfalls, heaving bosoms?
Yeah. Really challenging.
I also write erotica because I feel
that there is no better barometer for life than sexuality.
That space that can be all about tenderness and love and violence
and politics and taboo and everything in between.
As a woman, writing about sex has taught me to stand up for my beliefs.
Being a woman writing freely about sex
means that I'm a woman who is walking free through the world.
Point number three: one little thing at a time.
In 2000, I stopped writing novels.
Every single time I came to the page to write a novel,
I could hear my own teachery voice -
I teach creative writing, how to write novels.
I could hear my own voice going,
"The purpose of the first sentence in the story
is to get the attention of the reader."
"You can't write."
And I became extremely overwhelmed by the novel form,
and I thought about writing one, and I couldn't.
I thought about everything that makes a novel so complex and interconnected,
and the causal links, and the similes to check,
and the research you have to do for the character.
I thought of all these things and couldn't do it.
I banged out a lot of short stories - couldn't write a novel for a long time.
So I decided to take some leave from my university to try and get over this.
So the first thing I did is I went back to my childhood instincts,
and I went to a local park.
I lay down on my stomach with a pen -
not a computer, a pen -
and some paper,
and I started writing.
And it felt as if I was recovering from an illness.
I wrote, "The sky is blue,
the grass is green,
I'm crap,
the dog barks."
And I joke, but this was serious; this felt as if I was reclaiming my voice.
So every day, for weeks,
I went to the same park,
to the same place
and gave myself the same task:
to just write what was in my head and what I saw.
And slowly my sense of humor started coming back,
and my aesthetics started coming back.
And in the way that happens to writers,
a little character started talking to me and whispering in my ear,
and his fingers smell like pepper,
and he started telling me a tale.
And I thought, "Yes, I'm doing it."
And time was passing, and 100 words became 200 words,
became 500 words, became 100,000 words,
and at the same time,
I recognized that all of my girlfriends and, this time, my male friends too
were going through changes.
The kinds of changes
that come from that stage in your life when you're in your 30s to late 30s;
you begin to think, "Who am I married to? How do I feel about my children?
And this career, do I really want to have it anymore?"
And I began to realize
that the ones that were surviving and getting through the difficulty
were taking on this same principle:
one little thing at a time, one little word, one little emotion,
one little challenge.
If it's too big, cut it in half and deal with half.
So, this novel was working for me.
170,000 words at that point,
and then something else happened.
Number four thing that writing has taught me about life.
You will need help.
In May 2009, I woke up one morning
and it felt as if someone was using a hot hammer to pound my hands.
The pain radiated from my hands into my wrists and all the way up,
in both hands, into my elbows.
And I genuinely have never felt pain like that before.
And I tried to breathe; I thought of calling my best friend,
who's in the audience.
I thought about calling my mother, and I thought it's 3:00 in the morning,
and I tried to breathe.
And I cried.
And eventually, as soon as I could, I went to my doctor,
and I said something I was going to say almost constantly for the next two years:
"My hands hurt."
Eventually it was diagnosed as something called repetitive strain injury.
At that point, it didn't matter.
I was two-thirds through a novel that I'd worked so hard to get through.
And I couldn't bathe myself;
I couldn't wear rings;
I couldn't shake hands;
and writing seemed absolutely impossible.
And I was so bitter.
I can't begin to tell you how betrayed I felt by the universe
that my hands had gone.
Look at how much we all use our hands. See this?
I couldn't walk down the street and swing my arms easily.
And then what happened is that I realized everyone was trying to help.
Oh, boy.
Splints for these hands, massage, aromatherapy, meditation.
My local cab driver prayed for me every week.
(Laughter)
I love him so much; he's such a sweet man.
And none of it worked.
Every single man I know, and some that I don't,
walked up to me on the road and said,
"Love, you have got to use that technology,
you know, that technology that you use?
You've got to get voice-recognition software.
Now, you see, I instinctively knew that voice-recognition software
would be like making love in a raincoat.
I know that works for some people, but it doesn't work for me.
See me with my feet on the ground like this.
Anyway, I tried voice-recognition software;
it didn't work.
What you do, if you don't know,
you put the headset on, and it translates the words into a computer.
Remember, you're listening to me;
I have combination British-Jamaican-American accent.
Where do you think I was going to find that in voice-recognition software?
Globalization, no; it hasn't reached to that point.
(Applause)
So one morning - I did give it a try -
and one morning I found myself yelling into this headphone,
"And, and, and, God damn it,"
and it kept writing, "Air, air, air, God damn it."
It got "God damn it!"
Threw it away.
The final offer was from my baby brother, who is gorgeous and wonderful,
and who came home with me,
and decided to act as my secretary -
a bit like Barbara Cartland, the romantic novelist,
who apparently dictated all of her novels.
And I always suspected that woman had no soul,
and I knew it when we tried this dictation.
Eventually my poor brother had to leave; this didn't work either.
And then I sat in the middle of my living room,
and my hands hurt,
and I didn't know what to do,
and I thought everybody's tried to help and nothing has worked.
And then I realized something really important.
None of the suggestions had taken away the pain,
but there was plenty of help.
And in fact, I was in a minority of one.
All of these people believed I could write this novel,
every single one of them.
So I got down on my tummy,
and I turned on some Jamaican traditional music
with lovely names like Nyabinghi and Bruckins and Kumina,
and I did it!
I wrote 55,000 words and finished that novel in three days.
(Applause)
So it brings me to the final point really:
We all flow.
Across those three days, when I decided I was going to do this,
I entered to the state that I call "the flow."
Someone once came to me, an acquaintance,
and said. "I heard you don't believe in God."
I said, "Yeah, I was brought up by communist-liberals,
so I'm not sure about the God thing."
And she asked me a really important question;
I thought it was beautiful.
She said, "So what do you do when you need to see something greater than yourself?
So what do you believe?"
And I realized I believe in the flow.
My experience of the flow is sitting in front of a computer and dancing.
The flow comes to you when you are so sure in this moment.
It is an entire moment of concentration and self-belief.
It simply comes from repetition, from doing whatever it is you're doing,
over and over again.
I've seen athletes do it, and we probably all know this moment,
when you dig deep in that last mile,
but I think that all of us can enter the flow,
this space of concentration and self-knowledge and self-belief.
I think it's entirely possible
to round a corner and look at a river
and go and put your toes in it
and feel as if an old, primal emotion -
which I think is really, really old one -
which is that we're just vessels for something larger than ourselves.
I think it's really important
that we all understand that we can enter the flow.
Some people call it prayer.
Some people call it meditation.
Some people call it orgasm.
I call it writing a good book.
Because it is this moment in which you do not question
whether what you're writing or doing or feeling is okay
because you are okay in this single, precious moment.
And if I've ever written anything that made anyone feel okay,
this is a good life.
Thank you.
(Applause)