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WRITTEN BY FAITH & SHANE JESSE XMASS

What else besides writing do you do? . . . but also how did you fall into this writing caper?

Well I'm actually a trained bush regenerator and for the last couple of years have been making my money planting trees and gardening with kids. I landed this job because of an ace little community nursery called Trees in Newcastle. I convinced them that I needed a community education officer, that the knowledge had to be spread to the far reaches of public awareness. After that I just went to a few local schools and told them I could get them plants for a dollar a pop and that TIN was paying me to give them unlimited free workshops.

That gave me free reign to infiltrate little minds. I became a propaganda-rist. I showed them lovely frogs and worms and beetles and let them get their hands in the soil so that they could find out that it's not just dirt but living Earth, the same as we are.

Unfortunately this little adventure ended because I decided that city life sucks and moved out to the hills. I now live in the most beautiful place, surrounded by bushland with heaps of wildlife and a little waterfall in the gully. I'm poor and I'm back on the dole, but finally I have a little time and space to write :)

Writing is something that happened to me very early on. Because I went to a Steiner school, and was not taught to write until year four, I was so blown away by my new skill that I never got over the fun of it. When I was eleven I had a poem published in the local paper and somehow discovering that I was all right at it spurred me on. That was when I started to keep a journal.

Going to Uni almost killed it for me but luckily I escaped before it did too much damage. To be fair, Uni also introduced me to the concept of sharing and workshopping my work with others and although both my creative writing teachers were pretty dud, I met some damn good critics among my fellow students.

Since then writing has became a teacher, healer and friend to me. Right now I am trying to get back into the habit of writing just three long hand pages per day, preferably in the morning, as this is my major break down point. I have no routine and so I very easily lose the rhythm of what I am working on. That's why everything I write is so short. Not only am I lazy but I sometimes find it really hard to justify writing as a priority. It just seems a little self indulgent and so I only really do it when I am either really happy and balanced, or at crisis point. Funnily enough, when I do write I find that I stay balanced more easily, and for longer.

I think deep down I know that writing, like all forms of creative expression, is part of what Cabbalists call 'the great work' and that even if no one ever reads what you write it still has purpose and the act of writing it has worth.

How do you view your writing? . . . Do you hope it does more than entertain an audience? . . . Does some sort of subtle education arise in your writing?

I very rarely set out to entertain. Occasionally I try to be funny but I do it very poorly. It seems to me that there is already way too much shit out there designed to entertain us, to keep us from thinking about the real issues like the evolution of ourselves and our planet. 'Entertainment' makes me think of baby sitting...

I write about what I see and think and the people around me. I try to translate my observations on to the page as accurately as I can so that it evokes that feeling or picture in others. Most of what I write is consciously or subconsciously a wake up call to myself. Like 'coming down lightly' was about me and my boy, though it's also about thousands of other lovers. I wrote it without thinking and only later read it and went 'shit ey, humans really are muddled, they completely misunderstand each other!'

There are times when I'm really riled up where I just write 'at' the audience, usually angrily and arrogantly, sometimes moralistically. It pissses me off no end the way people treat each other and their planet and sometimes I just wanna bite them.

How do you see writing in Newcastle at present & in the future? . . . How do you view young writers validity federally? . . . Is writing in Australia very important?

I've lived in Newcastle for the last five years. A beautiful place in terms of people and creative life but a shit when it comes to traffic and pollution. I wouldn't live in Sydney if they paid me... Newie writers are a great bunch of people, especially the young ones, and some of them are very good. Funnily enough, after the writers festival got up and running our regular open mike night kind of died. It was as if we were satiated by the festival. It was if we felt as though this was such an awesome forum and creative motivator that we didn't need to chase audiences among the drunken anymore.

I think that writing is important wherever you are. In fact I think of writing as a form of magic, of spell casting. Therefore you have to be really sure of your motivations before you begin. Otherwise you call up something that you never wanted or you don't get anything at all.

I think that writers who set out to fit into a market or a scene are coming at it all the wrong way, but of course this is only my opinion. To me the words 'market' and 'scene' have no place when talking about creative expression. They are words that speak of someone who is afraid of not having enough, or afraid of not belonging. To be a powerful and magical writer you have to let go of being afraid, of getting it wrong. You have to stop thinking about whether it'll sell, or whether such and such will like it, or whether it's entertaining. You just have to write it down as it comes, as though you are listening for the words instead of consciously stringing them together. It's like you said before Shane, you've gotta write your story and the story of your people....continue...