We are all writers here. Let’s talk.

In the midst of a quiet exercise, as we all had our heads bowed over our journals, something happened and the card table at the centre shook, causing the spheres to clink together in a quick little song of supernatural promise. The ghosts of Rozelle were saying goodbye.

While my time in the once notorious Callan Park as a medical student was unforgettable, I have had very different experiences there as a budding writer.

Surrounded by other writers at Writing NSW, I was emboldened to own my voice and centre my own stories, because no one else will do it for me.

It’s perfectly fine if you’re not writing at the moment and if you don’t write anything ever again.

Slowly you realise that the word resilience is charged with the act of springing back. It is ok to revolt, to recoil, even if from yourself.

The writer’s voice: a precious thread that can guide us out of this dark labyrinth.

The resilience is the container, really, for my vulnerability – the egg carton holding the fragile shells. Inside the shell of my skin, my brain is the white, the yolk my yellow heart, quivering in gooey jelly.

Resilire. The question I have with this word is — what direction? For spring back, I mean. Towards the object or away from it? Both?