Group writing can be painfully difficult. So much of writing is about exposing yourself to other people. Good writing often makes the writer and the reader feel extremely vulnerable, as if secrets are being told. Writing with imminent group-feedback on the horizon feels like preparing one’s dirty laundry to be publicly aired and critiqued. With that in mind, it takes an incredibly comfortable and supportive group of people to make workshopping a practical possibility, let alone a meaningful exercise. The support and friendship I felt coming from all my fellow Wricers is what made the workshopping, even the program itself, so meaningful to me.

The piece I began working on in Yangshuo is a very personal work. It’s a semi-fictionalised account of the few days I spent in Hong Kong on my way to Guangzhou, and the old friends I caught up with there. Through the work, I tried to go out on a limb and tackle discomforts I have about the ways I understand race and culture as an Australian. Many of us brought similarly personal stories to the workshop table, dealing with past traumas or deeply private beliefs which can be grating to have challenged. The feedback I received on my writing went further than helping with the formatting and story structure; the openness and honesty which the WrICE environment fosters made it possible for the other writers to actually challenge the morality of the work, even to the point of directly asking me to see the world differently, and I think the outcome of that is beginning to be visible not just in the writing but in my life generally.

There are a few things which I think contributed to this idyllic writing environment. First and foremost is that everyone who came along was a uniquely likeable and interesting person. Letting a group of people like this into an emptied out hotel for one week is a great way to build fast friendships. Secondly, the structuring of the group meant that our friendships were never tested against anxieties around seniority or who had the right to voice an opinion. David and Francesca never felt like our authoritarian “mum and dad”, they were (and still are) our friends. This lack of hierarchy and the fact that no one tried to default to either of them for opinions on what they were writing helped build the sense of mutual respect which was needed to create the fantastic workshopping environment. Lastly, the relative isolation of our writerly Eden in Yangshuo made me feel like I was living in a special creative universe, with different laws and possibilities. I was somewhat sceptical before I came about what the WrICE program could do for me, worrying that I might waste the time or just lose sight of my work when comparing it to established writers like Alice Pung, but this was not the case. The WrICE program helped me to be braver with my writing, and made me feel confident working with other writers.

Another really major thing that the intercultural experience of WrICE gave me was a chance to hear about the histories of Indonesia and the Philippines through a very personalised, cultural lens. Thank you to Larry Ypil, Maggie Tiojakin and Eliza Vitri Handayani for that. Hearing intelligent and emotionally sensitive people talk at length about the things which help define their country to them is one of the most moving intercultural experiences a person can have. I want to end this blog post with a link to a song I wrote while I was in Yangshuo. I wrote it after talking to Maggie and Eliza about the reign of President Suharto in Indonesia, particularly thinking about the persecution suffered by the Chinese Indonesian population during and in the aftermath of this period. I never would have written something like this if I hadn’t been given the chance to talk to these other writers. Not only would I have not known about what happened, I never would have had the courage to comment on the feelings people must have had through such a tumultuous time if it weren’t  for the support and encouragement I received in doing so. For me, this song is a personal achievement, marking what can be possible when working in the light of other writers.

https://soundcloud.com/peter-darcy-clynes/oh-lee-kuan-yew