Returning to the Page

On language, memory and the measured work of honouring what a story asks

I signed a book deal, a generous one for a first-time author, about this time four years ago. In fact, the soon to return co‑contributor to this publication may have played a role in that, after a late night in East Brunswick gave me the unlikely courage to negotiate a deal I never would have pushed for on my own.

A late night in East Brunswick about four years ago

One hundred and seven thousand words later, and after plenty of back-and-forth with my wonderful publisher, I’ve decided to rewrite, or maybe reimagine the manuscript altogether.

It sounds dramatic, though it doesn’t feel that way from the inside. Four years is a long time in a life. Enough for perspective to shift, for loss and joy to pull you in new directions, for the ground beneath you to move. Through all of it I kept writing; columns, essays, reflections, reports, scripts — turning whatever ability I had into something I could live by and live off.

That work in all its variety and various meanings sharpened my attention to language, place, value and care. It honed in me the need to slow down and notice: how people hold themselves in a room, how light arches across a sterile city street or how a single sound — the brush of a broom, the rubbing of nervous feet on well worn carpet, the satisfying drop of cutlery on a freshly cleared plate can shape a moment and set the challenge of capturing those singular moments on a page and give them meaning in the reader’s eye.

My recent work with Yoorrook and assisting in the Treaty process deepened my writing senses further into a much deeper task than merely describing the granularity inherenet in all of our days.

Being close to truth-telling, real truth-telling, changes you. Seeing the discipline it requires, the courage, the care for detail and memory, forced me to think harder about how I write and what I owe to the stories I’m handling. It made me understand that doing something properly often means doing it slowly in a time where time itself waits for no-one.

As I looked from afar, at those rooms and communities it moved me closer to the truth of the storyies beyond abstraction. It was a living task. Listening to Elders, sitting with their testimonies, turning the weight of history over in my hands, I understood responsibility differently. Not as a burden, but as an obligation to be steady and patient in spite of the tight and impending deadlines. That experience softened and sharpened me at the same time, and it lingered when I returned to my own work.

Somewhere along the way it became clear the book I began four years ago wasn’t the book I needed to deliver now.

The story had been shifting underfoot; quietly at first, then with more insistence. It was no longer asking for edits; it was asking for space. It needed me to come back to it with fresh eyes, shaped by the years since I first set out.

Rewriting a book from the ground up is a sizeable task, though this time I’m not starting from scratch. Whole sections of the original manuscript can be lifted, reshaped, recontextualised. Scenes that still hold the integrity of the story will remain. They’ll simply find their place inside a version of the story that reflects what I’ve learned along the way. However even with that head start, the scale is daunting. But if the story is the boss, and it is, then I must follow where it leads.

People often frame rewriting as perfectionism or punishment. It isn’t either for me. Rewriting is returning. It’s acknowledging that I didn’t yet know enough when I first wrote those pages. I wasn’t wrong; new things had simply come to light, and I needed to catch up to them.

Working on Man of Words (working title only, actually I’ve renamed it since then) has taught me that returning to a story reshapes the story itself. The manuscript evolved with me. It pulled me back to moments I’d moved past too quickly and to the gaps I hadn’t yet had the perspective to sit with. It became a way of tracing how certain experiences—illness, childhood anxieties, loss, movement, community—shape the way a person tells a story. Not as a performance, but as a simple acknowledgement of the forces that leave their mark.

Those early drafts did their job. They set the bones. What they didn’t yet carry was the voice I have now—the one forged through regular writing, through deadlines, through long-form work that stretched me further than I thought I could go.

Since signing the deal, the world has shifted, and so have I and so have you probably. I’ve sat with grief, celebrated small joys, watched the best and worst of public debate unfold, and walked beside communities pushing against erasure. All of this changed the way I write. All of it reminded me that time isn’t an inconvenience, it’s an ingredient.

One thing writing has shown me is that each draft reflects a particular moment in time. Every rewrite offers a chance to see things a little more clearly than before.

What I want now is steadiness. I want the book that readers eventually hold, to feel considered and grounded, to make the reader feel because it is shaped by patience rather than haste, and by the simple discipline of returning to the page even when the day isn’t cooperating.

There’s a rush to everything these days. Publish, announce, deliver, move on. A book shaped by memory, place and the experiences of many people can’t be written at that speed. It needs quiet, space, and the kind of steady attention that lets meaning rise at its own pace. It needs time to cook.

Taking the time necessary to do things and do them the best we can, is often dismissed as procrastination, yet stories that draw on family, history and community need room to settle. They rely on years of listening, observing and understanding, not just from me, but from the world around them. Slowness, especially when telling an integral part of a sotry though goes as far back as huan memory itself, is in part an act of justice through all the chaos and in the hope the world has turned just a little, so those stories can be heard with a respect and readniness that perhaps wasn’t there before.

The urgency I once felt to finish has eased into something more grounded. It helps if you have a publisher that cares and understands, and for that I am incredibly grateful! The version of Man of Words that eventually finds its way into the world won’t be shaped by haste, but by care for the people, places and moments it hopes to honour.

Four years ago, I approached the work with ambition. Now, I approach it with purpose. So I’m rewriting the book. Not because the earlier manuscript failed, but because the story and the world revealed more of itself over time.

It still feels big. It still feels daunting. Yet it feels right.

The story is the boss. I’m simply doing what it asks of me.