We Women Writers
Inspiring and encouraging women to write, to develop a personal writing practice through exploring the real-life writing stories of other women
We Women Writers
Janice Exter Konstantinidis - Memoir: A Journey of Self-Discovery – Part I
This is Janice’s second visit with Jane on the We Women Writers Podcast. The conversation will be aired in two parts. This is part one of this conversation. In this conversation, Janice Exter-Konstantinidis shares more of her journey as a writer, reflecting on her experiences with memoir writing, the cathartic nature of daily writing, and the evolution of her writing style. She discusses the themes of aging, memory, and the connection to land, while emphasizing the importance of writing as a tool for personal growth and understanding. Janice also explores character development and the significance of structure in storytelling, ultimately revealing how her writing has transformed her and her perspective on life and creativity.
Quote:
"Writing changes things."
Takeaways:
- Exploring themes of aging and memory can enrich storytelling.
- The evolution of writing style can reflect personal growth.
- Creating a structured approach to writing can enhance storytelling.
Resources:
Website: https://janicekonstantinidis.net/
Books by Janice:
· Shifting Landscapes:
o https://www.amazon.com/Shifting-Landscapes-Janice-Exter-Konstantinidis/dp/B0DJ77GPBY/ref=sr
· Out With The Washing:
o https://www.amazon.com/Out-Washing-Janice-Exter-Konstantinidis/dp/B0DN6C2VPM/ref=sr
· The Time In Between:
o https://www.amazon.com/Time-Between-Janice-Exter-Konstantinidis/dp/B0DPQCC926/ref=sr
Jane Jones (00:36)
Good morning, Janice. We welcome you to We Women Writers for the second time. How are you this morning?
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (00:43)
I'm well, thanks. How are you?
Jane Jones (00:44)
I'm very well, thanks. All right, listeners, we have with us again, Janice Exter-Konstantinidis. She's a retired gerontologist whose life has unfolded across Australia, the United States, and most recently, Paris, where she has spent the last 17 months delighting in the city and its architecture, peculiarities, and the ongoing adventure of learning French. Made writing her primary focus, particularly in poetry and reflective prose. Her recently published memoir traces the unexpected and often unspoken turns of a life shaped by endurance, curiosity, and reinvention. Writing is a daily ritual, a way to notice, to revisit, and to honor what might otherwise be lost. She continues to write with regularity, often starting the day with a limerick and ending it with something more still. Thank you, Janice. That's a really good bio. I love that.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (01:52)
Thank you. And I do notice in there that this habit that I've...developed about writing every day and that came from you so I'm really grateful to you for encouraging us to just if it's write a few words just do something because it's like the prompts we do in our group you know often times when you start to write something it'll be a whole page and then you think I didn't know I wanted to say that so for me it's very valuable.
Jane Jones (02:22)
Excellent. Well, thank you for that. Because that's one of the main purpose of We Women Writers is to inspire women to write and to write every day, and even five minutes. So yeah, we had a conversation a long time ago that we published recently earlier in the year. And we just wanted to catch up with you because since that conversation we had, you've done a lot of publishing and a lot of writing since you've been in Paris, and I would just like to explore that a little bit with you. Good, so start where you like.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (02:55)
Well, I'm not sure how it was triggered, but I thought that I'd better get my memoir finished because I kept threatening to do that for the last 50 years. And it's evolved over various forms from some I don't like looking back on now. And I guess it's all a sum total of them, though. And it sort of...took on a new form, and I kind of could really relate to it, and I got through what looked to be three books. I didn't know that, but the guy that helped me edit it said, I think we can get three books out of this. And I'm thinking no one writes three books in a memoir. He said, well, it's getting lengthy, and I really think there's a lot of good content in there. I guess so, we published three books of that memoir, and then I think I mentioned to you before, but I'll just start again. When I wrote it, it was out of my head. It was gone.
And for me, it was incredibly cathartic. It freed me to go on to start to explore nice things. My environment, I've always written a little bit about nature, and in my environment, I've always been enchanted by it, but this time it was without the shackles of me having been a kid that was abused.
Jane Jones (04:10)
Yeah. And if I remember correctly, there's a couple of things I may note, we'll touch base on as we go back, I'd like to loop back around. I remember correctly our last conversation, you had talked about a meadow, and you had talked about the one Nana that you had that you would play the piano for.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (04:41)
Yeah, my great-grandmother, yeah.
Jane Jones (04:48)
Great-grandmother. And so, this, you just mentioned about the writing having been cathartic, and now you could focus on nicer things and finding that some of those nicer things were, there's a thread of nicer things that you have written about, you've thought about, or that you could talk about. A thread of those lovely things all the way through all of the really difficult, difficult years.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (05:11)
There is, but I actually don't revisit it in that way. It's come out, noticed lately I've been writing about a family, and I've been writing about, there's one where there's a lady that's in a nursing home or a retirement center, you know, for people, and she's pretty much bedridden, but she goes to, I've called it The House At The Edge Of Sleep, and every, forgot what they say in French, but Steve would know. So, she just, every time, it sort of indicates that she could be bedridden a little at the beginning. I didn't want to just set that scene up so categorically, but she goes to back, like it starts, like the wedding or when the baby came. And it just fluctuates in and out of her life, and she visits each room or each area of the house every night. And over that period of about, I think it's about quite a few pages, she gets, 33 maybe, she gets to see and we get to see her life again. So, she lives her life again.
Look up at the light.
Jane Jones (06:25)
Okay, thank you. Whoa. Pardon, pardon everybody, the listeners, I've got a sneezing thing going on right now. And if I got a sneeze, I'm going to mute myself, and Janice just ignore me. So, I apologize. There we go. Good. Okay. So, apologies, back to the room. She visits each part of the rooms every night.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (06:45)
And we get to see when she met her husband and the day she was married. It doesn't go into incredible detail, but you get a sense that you're sort of drifting in and out of her life, and you think, that would have been nice. Yeah, she's had a good life. And in the end, so what I'm trying to say is that, and then that was written. And then I wrote another one about two elderly ladies that made a promise that they'd never see each other suffer.
And somehow, one of them helped the other one pass without being particularly insidious just by being there. Because she fulfilled a promise, and I called that the promise of the feather. And then moving along, I'm starting a story about a family. And it's, I'm realizing that I'm not revisiting my memoir, but I'm living out my grandparents' lives.
Jane Jones (07:19)
Hmm.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (07:36)
I didn't know that until recently, and I'm thinking, you know, these are very, why are you writing about old age? I mean, I'm not young, but it's not my life that I notice.
Jane Jones (07:48)
But there are echoes of things that you think are your grandparents’ lives.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (07:52)
Particularly, my great-grandmother. And I'm thinking, so that's where I am with that. And another one that I've started about, I've got this fascination with lately, and I don't know why I even talk about this at the moment, but the land that we can never own it. We can't own land that we can harvest. We can cultivate it. We can live there, even families over dynasties. But at the end, it will reclaim itself, and it will, in a sense, belong to someone else, but never belong. So, I want to go back there and look at something in early Australia about when they were given land when they came from England, they were often given land to go and settle, the early settlers. And I'd like to look at that.
Maybe with a hint of my grandparents, because they were early pioneers, but not that early. They're known to be; they have roads named after them in Tasmania, so they're in the 18th century. Anyway, that's where I am, with land and possessions and people, and I don't even know how I got there, but I like doing that.
Jane Jones (09:12)
So you've gone from the original book that you published, which was Words of Beak, with your friend from Tasmania. And then you also have, we talked in one of our writing evenings, we talked about your Words of Bloom, that you have things that you know as flowers and things like that. But you didn't publish that, that's not out.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (09:37)
I should do that, you really just reminded me.
Jane Jones (09:40)
Yeah, I still have the URL for you.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (09:43)
Do you?
Jane Jones (09:44)
Yes, I still do. keep it. So, for when you're ready.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (09:48)
Thank you.
Jane Jones (09:49)
You're welcome. My pleasure. Yeah.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (09:53)
That's a nice thing to write.
Jane Jones (09:56)
We like it. We enjoyed what you wrote, so I'm sure others would enjoy it as well.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (10:01)
I don't remember. I mean, I've written so... And that's what happened, like, when I say cathartic. It was like I had a torrent of stuff inside me that was held, like a dam was held back by all this ugliness. When I got it out, my brain went wild.
Jane Jones (10:18)
Lovely. Let's, if it's all right, I'd like to explore that a little bit. You talked a little bit about at the beginning again about the writing, the daily writing. And so can we. I'd like to explore that a little bit. Were you writing daily about the issues, or did you do like a daily prompt, or just something that's just a few minutes? Let's explore that a little bit. Cause I don't want to use all my words. I like your words.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (10:44)
We started the prompts in the group that you began, and I found them to be very useful and surprised myself by being able to turn out quite a little story in five minutes or so. How long did we go for? Five or ten minutes?
Jane Jones (10:58)
Five minutes.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (11:00)
And I would, looked through again when I came here and looked up prompts, but I'm prompting myself now, so I've got a story going. But it originated there because I learned that I could have an idea and then start working on that and just see where it went. If it didn't go anywhere, that's okay. But if it did, I was happy. So, what I did. I look at the story, say I have a family where there's Mae or Luke, and they meet, and she's inherited some land. And so, let's just cut to the chase there. I will say to myself in the morning.
Luke is a boy who loses a brother in a dam in a flood one time. And then they go off and write about it because I want to start to trace their development back. I really would like to go back to settlement, but right now they're in, they're possibly in... I've written the story so that it's... People have cars
But nobody, I'm not talking about email or anything that would date it particularly. So I would like to gently shift them all back generation by generation until we get to the point where land is given. I mean, I don't know when I'll ever make my point that you can't own it, but I just have this sense that you can't. And it goes back to that bloody clearing. Excuse my Australian...
Jane Jones (12:29)
That's okay. No, we're good. A lot of other words are worse. So that's good.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (12:36)
Australians like a good bloody here and there. But it does, it goes right back to that childhood clearing where I wanted to be it. So, somehow it's integrated into my brain,
I really do think that it goes back to that clearing. I thought about it the other day, and I don't know. I was on a train, and I saw a dappled sunlit area. And I thought, that's a clearing. You like that. You felt at home there. And I think the child in me, only what I realized the other day, that child saw the beauty of the sun and the trees. So, it went deeper than just liking it. It was an appreciation that I couldn't articulate.
Jane Jones (13:19)
As being part of it.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (13:21)
Yeah, and it's being beautiful. I didn't have a concept of external beauty.
Jane Jones (13:31)
Okay, so your writing kind of come back to concept of external beauty, you saw something and it wasn't that it was external to you, but that it internally reflects or is experienced as beauty, but it's experienced in here.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (13:50)
Yeah, and I didn't know that I was thinking,
Jane Jones (13:53)
No, it's not a thinking thing.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (13:50)
No, how beautiful, and isn't it aren't the trees lovely? I will describe sometimes you'll hear that. But it wasn't until the other day that it gelled what the clearing was. It was a really wasn't a it was a haven for me to run to in the morning and to love. It was a child's appreciation of beauty. And no one had ever discussed that with me art or sunsets or sunlight filtering through trees which really used to attract me. I didn't know why, but now I know because it was me knowing about that as a beautiful thing, but not not having any frame of reference.
Jane Jones (14:31)
Right, yeah, yeah. And being able to write about it from coming to the idea or the experience from lots of different perspectives, lots of different places. And while it is not, you make the statement that we can't own the land. And because we don't, we're not meant to, we can't. So attempts to own it is our bit futile because eventually we're finished and away we go. And somebody else comes and has their go at trying to own the land, which is like this proverbial never-ending loop.
But for each of us individually, it's our time, it's our experience of having a go at that and understanding that the, and understanding that, we'll wait to see where, I won't go any farther because I don't want to impinge on your book and the way you're looking at it, but you're coming at it from a different perspective. And it comes back to that clearing and this place that you had that you reflected that you felt home.
It was being reflected in you, and you were reflecting in that because there's part of you that could recognize that. And so as you're writing and you're going through things, something happens in your writing at some point in time. And I remember we talked about this before, something happens in your writing at some point in time, something starts to shift, but it's almost unaware until you look back and go, I'm in a different place.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (16:19)
Yeah, that's interesting. And it finally, as I said, came to me on a train looking out into fields in Paris the other day, and there was that kind of a clearing with the dappled light and trees, and I'm thinking, that's my clearing, could be my clearing, why is it? It's beautiful. And I thought, well, that's all there is to it. It's just beautiful. It's not yours.
Jane Jones (16:44)
I said funny, though, except you carry it with you.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (16:47)
I do.
Jane Jones (16:48)
Because you see another clearing, it's like, that's like, that's, that's my clearing. It's not really the clearing because you're a different age and you're in a different place on the planet. But you carry that with you. You carry that, that experience with you.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (17:04)
I wonder, was it a child that hadn't been exposed to, and I thought about this for days, that hadn't exposed to culture as such, or painting, or I hadn't got paints or stuff like that. I didn't, sorry, I didn't get them until I went to school. So, I wonder, was just that an early recognition of how wonderful the earth is?
Jane Jones (17:28)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you have an, this ability as a writer, you realize when you were little that you were actually a poet. Yeah. Yeah. But you recognize that later in life, and you can see, you see the thread. So, the, like the podcast we’re focusing on the writing and how it changes things, and how ‘cause people will say, I'll say to people, it'll change your life. And people will say Well, how? I say, I don't know. But I know it changes things.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (18:07)
It does
Jane Jones (17:08)
And a person can write, and you can decide what to put out there, what not to put out there. You can get some help in crafting it once you've everything down and like you said, it's like there's this dam broke and and now you're free these things were holding you back and if I remember correctly a previous conversation we had you weren't writing too clear, you weren't writing to understand, you weren't you were simply writing and if you explore that a little bit with us about how you approach that writing that ended up breaking the dam.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (18:56)
When it started out, I had a pretty terrible childhood, and I was incarcerated, and I went on to have some pretty bad things happen to me up until I became an adult and took over my own, and still I made bad choices, but you know, they have their antecedents. And I would write about that, and I think, oh gosh, that's dark. And then put it away. And then about 15 or so years ago, the Australian government began to apologize for locking children up. People contacted me and said, Well, you were there, you write a little bit. Right. And I thought, you should write a book. That was the mantra for years. You should write a book. I'd tell someone about such and such and say that should be a book. I'm thinking, yeah, but I don't know how to write a book. I don't have a clue. So, I started off when it came to be this inquiry by the Senate Inquiry of Australia into children being locked away. It started out very, very, I was born, this happened. No meat on it really. But it was enough to present to the inquiry that actually an account of what happened. And then someone would read it, I'd go to a conference, and someone would say, Yeah, but you ought to induce the characters and put some meat on them. And I'm thinking, I'm not sure how I do that. You know, so that's how it all had to develop to this point where I finally wrote it, but it wasn't... an itemized account of years; it became a lyrical poem. And where I deviate and say, this happened. But we're more into a magical realism, as I mentioned here before, I think. And that's the only way I really could approach it, by setting it aside from black and white facts, that it sort of floated above the narrative, that I could see it and look at it without having to immerse myself right in the rot of it.
Jane Jones (20:57)
Yes.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (18:58)
If that makes sense, it made sense to me. It liberated me to a point where I could focus on it.
Jane Jones (21:07)
Okay, so the writing, get somebody comes and says, hey, can you do this? And you do that. It's an account for government legal purposes in Australia. And it's a witness to a certain degree of the beginnings of the experiences you had without bringing the dam into focus, and going, it was okay. And they use that word witness, I think that's really useful and helpful. And then somebody can come and says, Try this, and then you try that. So, there's a progression that you do, and into this magical realism that you said that we did talk about before, and allowed you, which is in the writing, is really valuable because you can write it and be looking at it from over here, back here, but write about it. And it has an impact in your life and in the way your heart and mind work and how you interact with the world around you. So, the, if I understand correctly, there's a progression, but there's writing all along that you engage in. All along, at the same time you're writing limericks, you're doing, you're involved with the San Luis Obispo NightWriters and to some degree the Cuesta College Writers' Conference.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (22:43)
Going to conferences and even I took a course on the Limerick and The Lick and Lure of the Limerick I think. So, I was able to do mechanical things in the end. I learned a lot but I still was far away from actually doing what I do now. It's a huge, long process for me, and for others they start early. I know we listened to Elizabeth Roderick the other day, and she was a young girl. She started very early with her writing. Had a form and a shape, and many of the others you've interviewed, they were a bit younger, but mine took, it's still 70 years on, plus coming into focus.
Jane Jones (23:23)
Yes, and each person's got their own journey, and whether they're actually going to end up writing a book or not. There's this process of writing. There's something that happens when you write and your heart, your mind, your soul, whatever it is that’s you took this time and went on this journey. And writing is a thread throughout. Because I would like to emphasize that for the listeners that writing is an important part of Janice's journey, and it's an important part of mine, and it's an important part of other people, and could be an important part of your life as well. and finding where writing is showing up. But it's not something you can approach with understanding of where you are in the journey because you won't know till you get
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (24:19)
No, and I'll never, no I won't. I have difficult, some difficulties come up in life occasionally, and my initial response is that... It's so complicated. I think for me, I process things in chunks, small chunks, because I don't think I could actually take on board the whole, someone died or someone, it's a terrible habit. I'm not sure that I could actually process all that. I tend to, I found out about myself that I tend to process it in chunks. It could be five years before the light dawns. That's a kind of, I don't know, that we all have it, but it's a kind of protective shell.
And I can get a bit naive in all that, and people think, but didn't you see that? And I'm thinking, no, I didn't actually. Why didn't I? And then later I'll answer, because you take longer to process how it hurt and trauma.
Jane Jones (25:11)
That resonates with me, and I'm sure it resonates with a lot of listeners as well. And that is, has me thinking about the five minutes of writing. That's a small chunk. That's a small piece of a way to, a small experience of getting into writing and communicating in writing, and it's a small chunk. And a person wants to go deeper into that piece that they wrote, they can, but it starts with that small chunk. Yeah. Yeah.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (25:45)
Yeah, it might be, yeah, just how we all process. Things that happened to us or things...
I think it's just retrospection for me. For planning is okay, I'll just get into it and plan it I'll do it. But I think it's just things that happened.
Jane Jones (26:05)
Yes, that we, in our responses at the time and looking back, like you say, it took five years for something to dawn on you. And I absolutely track with that. It's like, why would you do that? Why would you? But why? Why? And there's no answer because you just like, well, didn't you see? Didn't you? Yeah, but so, so, the writing, when you're looking back on things like that help us to understand ourselves, and help us to understand or experience it again so that we feel it.
It comes out on the page, it's there, and now we can reflect on it on the page. And sometimes we see something in the writing that we were not aware of because we see it on the page.
What was the experience like of realizing at some point in time, slow dawning maybe, so maybe it's a point in time, or maybe it's like over a slow period of time, where you looked and went, I'm not there, that dam broke, that's all gone.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (27:22)
It happened pretty soon after the memoirs were published. Like, I would send the editor a chunk of it. I mean, he actually didn't do a lot of editing in the end, but I need to, sometimes I think I need to go back and redo that, but we all do. She says justifying our own mistakes. Delete that.
Jane Jones (27:41)
Well, I might leave it in.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (27:45)
Colin Meeks, I must give him due credit. I would send a chapter away or two or three chapters. I don't go back there anymore. I don't want to visit that home. I don't want to visit that child. And that's weird. Because I lived in her mind for many years being sorry for her, and people would say, Why don't you go and have a conversation with that child? I don't want to talk to her anymore. She's, she's, she grew up.
Jane Jones (28:10)
Yeah, I love what you just said, because it says when you write about it, then it's gone. It's there. It's like it was a fact of history, but it's not something you need to revisit. And there's this, I'm going to use the word void, but that's not the connotation of that. There's an open space now. There's a meadow. There’s a…
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (28:32)
There could be a clearing.
Jane Jones (28:33)
There could be the clearing. There could be a place where the light comes in. Whoa, I love it.
And this, that now is where that, that where that place used, that space that used to be inhabited by things that were hard and that you, that would just, let's leave it at that at hard. Now that it's open and there's a clearing, and and now the, your creative mind comes in, and now you're explore, you have this, this woman, this in this, in the, in this house. What was the name of that? no.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (29:08)
The House at the Edge of Sleep.
Jane Jones (29:10)
The House At The Edge Of Sleep, right. And then there's the one you're writing about the couple in Australia, and I'm gonna go back, and one of the main points of that that you have in your heart that is finding its way through that story is that we don't ever own the land.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (29:30)
We never own the land. I'm looking at a piece here by the way now I want to say not read it but I don't just I'm able to plan what I write now.
I've got whole thing here, it's called Mara's Story Arc in Vignettes, and I've got points all the way down to three, six recurring themes and anchors. The landers are witness, not owned but aware. So, when I begin to write, I'm not going to refer to this, but I've mapped out a plot for Mara.
Jane Jones (30:07)
Yeah, yeah.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (30:08)
Mara joins the army out of patriotism, but to become someone else. Her connection to the land is severed, not in anger but in silence. So, she carries it with her, but in fragments, a slow departure, no grand farewell. But she does come back to it. So that's how I get Mara to leave the land. And I haven't written that yet.
Jane Jones (30:31)
No, and so what you said there, and I love the story details, because we're getting a little peek into this book that's kind of come out. It's like, we'll be able to say we knew about that as we heard about from Janice as she was writing that and that experience of it, which, interestingly enough, will change or impact our reading of that book when we do read it, because we have a connection.
Masha Hamilton. We talked about these books, and I hadn't read this yet. I'd ordered this book. It's the Staircase of a Thousand Steps. wow. And it's, it's, not that it's out of print, but when I went on Amazon, there was just one hard copy and one paper copy anyway. So, I got the book and I took it with me to my son's and my son and daughter in heart. And I read it in a weekend.
And we were busy with doing. I read that book, and having spoken with her and knowing her, it was, I was hearing her as that. So, thank you for sharing that little bit about this book that you're writing. Cause when I get it, it'll impact or influence my reading of it. You talked about the, now you can plan something.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (31:42)
Yes.
Jane Jones (31:43)
Whereas the writing before, as opposed to now, share the feeling of the two experiences.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (31:55)
Yeah, well, the first one was just, I think, instinctual. I did this, and I heard, and it was awful. I no planning in it because was very, very linear, but the actual memoir doesn't come out as linear because the first writing of it to the Senate Inquiry did, because I think it might have had to, but I didn't know any other way anyway, so they got what they could. And also, I might add, I did it for the women that don't have a voice, that have died, that have were semi-illiterate that worked hard, and you, I had a voice and I felt I should use it, but that was all fairly spontaneous stuff on the page.
And now I won't have that. I’ll have, I've got Mara's story arc in vignettes, and I'll go, and write them first. Like the childhood and the land already underway, established Mara's bond with the land, her grandmother's quiet wisdom, her early powers of perception. I might in touch on all them, but I need to be aware that that's what's happening. So, it's more complex for me, the structure now to plan it. And then I'll go off into my magical realism so, it always doesn't doesn't start wafty. It has a very solid base.
Jane Jones (33:04)
So, this is one of the things that's a real important thing that I'm gonna bring out is you, that's developed in you over the experience. And now that this gate, this dam is broken in this space, you are now able to develop that, all of what you've learned in writing up until now, it's now coalescing, and you're coming with your way of your method of writing this story. And that may stay the same. It may change as you go along. It may change depending on the storyline. But right now, where you're at, a lot of people will say, That's a good idea. I want to do that. And they'll try to do that. But they haven't found their own way.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (34:03)
No, that was my need to anchor me because The House At The Edge Of Sleep, that just floats away every night and I can do, I didn't, it's got an overall arc, where she's got to be in bed and she's got to go back and think and actually little stories that within themselves will have an arc, but none of it was really sat down and plotted like I've done this one about the land. It has, I got done a lot of that. I'm grateful to you and the group because of that, because I remember we talked with Karen Wright that was interviewed as well. One night, we were talking about development of character. And these are just technical things that I do adhere to to some extent now. We talked about it'd be very important to write out the character's birthday. I don't believe in much in astrology, but their astrological sign, their eye colour, what habits they had so that when you write about them, they don't fall out of line.
They're not going to do something that's not consistent with that character. You have to be fairly consistent. Now that I'm writing fiction, I have to be fairly consistent with, well, pretty consistent with who did what, when, and what they're likely to do. Like I saw on TV the other night, someone that had a very sturdy character, very, very, a soldier, suddenly did a very impulsive thing. And I said to myself, That's not in character. He wouldn't have done that. They've slipped up. Remember when we used to discuss what we should do with how we should make the characters work and believable? So, all that stuff's starting to come back into play now.
Jane Jones (35:48)
Yeah, yeah. And sometimes in a story arc, remember one movie I saw, and I don't remember names of movies or things like that, mostly, is that there's a, the guy slips up with something, but it's part of the story arc. That's different. Like it was some army guy, military guy who had infiltrated some group. I think the guy was an American and infiltrated some other country's group. And there was, like in like how you held up three or something in different countries will use those different ways of saying three. Some people say three, whatever they do. And then the guy realizes that the guy is not a countryman, that he's actually a plant. So, bring that up because that's different from what you were saying is that in the story that you were watching the movie, somehow, something had happened, and it was out of character for that person.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (37:02)
Yes. It jarred me because I thought, I really thought you were a lot stronger than that. And then he went on to be very strong again. So, it wasn't just a hiccup. It was a hiccup, but it wasn't planned that we were going to make him vulnerable; we're going to make him human or fragile. I think it was a real mistake in the scriptwriting.
Jane Jones (37:25)
Gotcha. Being able to map out something, mapping out a character, there was this experience in this conversation that you had, and you're surrounded by writers. This, this conversations happen all the time. And, and so we are involved in conversations or we hear conversations, and to all of this stuff coalesces to you finding this way. And I love what you said. said, needed this to do it this way, this vignette, this way that you've created for yourself to anchor you. I needed to anchor me. If people, when people write, when women write, men too, but the focus is women here. When women write, they find their way, and they just keep, you just play at it.
And that's where the five minutes a day or something every day, when you write, even if it's when you're writing a post, you're aware that you are writing something, and you can choose how to write it on the page. You can scribble it. You can do it crooked sideways. But if you are writing something intentionally with your pen then or pencil, then that's really important. Yes.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (38:39)
Got to write it down. I like, I've taken that cue from you, and it really works. I have to feel it. Couldn't, obviously, I'll type later, but just the first thing like, like, I like to write a limerick every day. I don't like to, it probably ends up with one on my mind. But I think that process, it's quite a disciplined process when you have to. And it, that process of actually writing it, and your mind shifts out of. I know where in my brain it goes. It feels it goes kind of … I just can isolate it. It's a weird sensation. I think it's all rubbish I'm talking, but I think I know where in my brain I go to find that ability to write the limerick. Because if I have to think about a direction or what I'll cook for dinner, it's not the same place.
Jane Jones (39:30)
No, it there's obviously there's lots of different parts of the brain. I track with that quite easy. I don't have the physics or the science or the medicine to experience to to be able to explain that. But I know what you mean. So, for me, I had an experience where I had to do a lot of writing in a short period of time. And you know, you kind of, you find a place and you get that rhythm. And for me, it's gonna be different for somebody else. But having said that, the focus is really actually in the writing. However, one comes to the page, however one, wherever somebody is in the process of developing their own personal selves and the project they're working on.
But you said earlier a few times, it's kind of complicated. You can't kind of say one thing and then that impacts every part. It's just a piece of it. Like you have a house and there's the front hall and there's the, well, let's say the front door and then there's the door to the bedroom and the door to the bathroom and the door to back door. There's lots of different doors. And when you're talking about the front door, nobody thinks you're talking about every door.
When you're talking about creative things sometimes, and because I'm guilty of this thinking, this person means this. And so that so I apply it to a different thing. And of course, it doesn't work because that's not what the person is talking about. And I didn't have the, and I still lots of things don't have the awareness that where I am in relationship to what that person is saying, and and how I'm using it, and how it's going in. And it gets very complicated.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (41:25)
It's a wonder to me we can never communicate, but apparently we do.
Jane Jones (41:29)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (41:32)
Yes, I mean, the time you get down in there and you get up again and think to resonate with someone else, that's pretty cool.
Jane Jones (41:40)
It is, and sometimes that resonates, the resonating is almost, it's almost, we've used that phrase a number of times in our conversations, if there's no words there, we get to a place where there's no words. I asked you to describe or explore the idea of where you were in relationship to the writing you did before and the writing you did now.
And we have lots of words, but it feels to me like there is this surprise, where last time we talked, there was also a surprise like it's different. I'm different. And you can explain where you are now, but how that happened.
It's difficult to articulate, but you can sure know it's there.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (42:40)
It's very difficult to articulate.
Jane Jones (42:43)
Yeah, yeah, because I think it's a very personal thing for each individual, and it's really important that we don't attempt, well, we probably attempt to because that's just human nature, but it's important that we don't define that for anybody else.
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (43:03)
Well, yeah, there's probably been many theses in psychology done about it, but I don't think I want to read them. I think it's just coming to it of my own. If I get sick or I need it interpreted, maybe. But I think I need to just come to it myself.
Jane Jones (43:17)
Yes, yeah. And encouraging people to have the experience of writing and to go through it and walk along beside them and interact with them. That's where things are discovered without having to depend on outward things. You said this earlier. Was that you realized that this, when you saw this, when you're on the train recently, this meadow, and you, you kind of realized that this was your meadow. That happens inside you. And then you share that with us. And it's like, that's, Oh, I can put myself on a train. I can understand that from myself, and I can have an experience like that.
Whether it's exactly yours or not is, it can't say, right? And it almost doesn't matter because I can see it and I can feel it and I can...
Janice Exter Konstantinidis (44:25)
That was a figment of your imagination of a dog.
Jane Jones (44:30)
Yeah, yeah, but I can track with you, and then I understand so that when we're talking, you got, she got me, she heard me, and then we keep talking, and there's lots of little disconnects that happen maybe, but generally speaking. It's a it's a growing thing. It's a, and then like I don't know what the words are. Lots gets created.
And awareness comes in about things that we didn't know before. And you talked about being aware that now something was different.
And now you were creating, and you were looking at something from a different perspective.