Duality in Writing and in Life
Duality in Writing and in Life
Many moons ago, when I lived under my parents’ roof, I expected to have solved the mysteries of life by the time I reached the grand old age of forty. What a fallacy that was. I realise now that despite the personas we project to the world, life is mired in uncertainty. It’s complex and not binary. A kaleidoscope of choice and difference. What is more, two truths can exist at once.
Yet we find dualities all around us: in nature, in our philosophies and communities, even in writer life. Light and dark. Night and day. We were born; we will die. Yin and yang. Pleasure and pain. Belief and doubt. Solitude and communal time. The zeroes and ones of binary code. Culture wars. The innocence of youth and the wisdom of age. Journaling versus writing for an audience. The protagonist versus the antagonist.
Contradictions and contrasts are often ingredients for finding our tribes. They trigger intellectual curiosity and fuel creativity. But they can also be a deliberate simplification that do us harm. They can make us worry when things don’t seem a perfect fit.
In my own personal example, I can now trace back the signs from my past that tell me I was meant to be a writer. It wasn’t my first career path, although writing was always a tool I used as part of my skill set in a professional environment and for personal growth. The blank page is a place to unravel my thoughts and excavate my worries. A place to take the storm inside of me and make sense of it, even when the words are not meant for public consumption.
I recognise, however, that writing as a career is a process of duality. It requires us to be both thin and thick-skinned. To have a soft heart and a deft pen. I am much more comfortable with the private side of being a writer: a woman in a room, coaxing black pixels onto a white page, creating worlds of wonder and empathy. The public side is harder: seeker of validation, narcissist, ego and doubt. Still, I know enough about duality now to understand that fear isn’t always a warning to protect ourselves. Sometimes it’s a signal showing you where to go.
Nowadays, I notice duality in the world and reminds me of the need for balance. After all, our progress through the world is an interaction of competing forces. We are capable of both exerting forces and being subject to them. We are part of never-ending cycles. The pendulum swings not only in the external world, but also within us. We are not stagnant. We are malleable and capable of change. We are chameleons.
It’s those possibilities that interest me in both writing and in life. Who can our characters be? Who can we be? Great folly exists in putting a stake in the ground and refusing to move it. Knowing ourselves and the world, piece by piece, is a lifelong process. There is no end point for us to crystallise who we are, as long as both courageous and kind to ourselves when we seek to change. Our cells and minds are always sparking. We can peel back the sticky layers of memory and experience, and start afresh, for as long as our bodies serve us. There are no cookie moulds. We are changed by every interaction. We live through a chain of ourselves.
Isn’t that one of the best attributes of humanity? Our ability to learn and unlearn, to keep progressing and adapting. Even through fear. One step at a time. One word at a time. One act of courage at a time. That’s all we can do. I’m still figuring it out, like a jigsaw in my head that will never be tidy. And that is the beautiful, messy wonder of writing and living.
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N. Z. Nasser is a writer of paranormal women’s fiction. Her stories are about women who change the world, filled with magic and rooted in friendship. A lover of barefoot walks along the beach, she is glad to have left behind her career in the civil service and to never wear heels again. Whether she is writing in her garden office or wrangling laundry, she is happiest with a cup of tea at her side. She lives in London with her husband, three children, two cats and a fox-mad dog.
MIDLIFE DAWN
Shivers of excitement shot up my spine. It was time to draw a line under the past and find a new me.
By forty, I thought I’d be living my best life. When my idiot husband gambles away our savings, I divorce him and try not to kick him in the nuts when he fights me for custody of my cat. I throw myself into teaching English and survival skills to anyone unlucky enough to land in my night class in godforsaken London.
That is, until my mum dies in a car crash and I suspect foul play. That’s when it really gets weird. Mum’s barely cold in the ground when my cat goes missing. To top it all, the Metropolitan Police don’t seem to have heard of the detective investigating the accident. My first instinct is to have a nap and hope it all goes away, but I’m my mother’s daughter. Secrets set me off like a bloodhound.
When a mysterious man tells me I’m the last of an ancient magical druid lineage, I laugh in his face, but I’m intrigued. I want to believe there’s more to life than a messy divorce and a dead-end career. It doesn’t seem crazy to follow him into the undergrowth in Crystal Palace Park. Not even when I hear my cat telling me to stop.
To avenge my mum and survive a new magical world, I just need to pull on my control pants and hold on for the ride.
If you’re a fan of Paranormal Women’s Fiction and magic-wielding heroines over forty, get your hands on Druid Heir Book 1 today.
Praise for Midlife Dawn:
“Midlife Dawn is a breath of fresh mage-blown air. The worldbuilding is vibrant, the characters’ connection and relationships sing, and through it all is my favourite part of the genre: telling human stories through a superhuman lens. Brilliant.”
– Emmie Mears, author of the Stonebreak series and the Ayala Storme series
Book Links
Midlife Dawn, Druid Heir Book 1
Midlife Tremors, Druid Heir Book 2
Midlife News, Druid Heir Book 3
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