Refreshing the Wells 27: Donna Hanson
Here’s the multi-talented, prolific Donna Hanson talking about what refreshes her well. Check out Donna’s website to discover just how multi-talented she is.
“This is a really hard question. A well seems like a quiet place to me. Dark, with drops of water rippling the surface. A place where there is a centre and peace. I’d like that place. I may have to go looking for it. My well is a turbulent place, like someone pulled the plug and everything is a swirling mass and the suction sound is drowning everything else. Its full of stuff! Ideas, stories, emotions, craft project, thoughts of friends, family, the news all crawling over themselves to climb out of the well. So if that is the state of my well, then what feeds it? How do I make sense of it?
For writing, things just come to me in random places. I’m in a seminar and a totally random idea comes to me. It may have nothing to do with where I am but had been fomenting from a conversation the week before. Or from a book I read, or a thing I’ve seen, a word or a song. So that must be that life refreshes my well. I’m an extroverted thinker so this probably makes sense. Chaos seeking chaos may be. I want to know and experience so much. I want to shove it all in, cram it down, taste it, be it.
But I do crave that well, that place where I can gather myself. This morning I was walking to the bus and Tuggeranong valley was before me, a white, foamy layer of mist hanging before the mountains. I wished that I could share that sight, that feeling it evoked. I looked at that vista and sighed and drew it in to that calm place that must exist inside of me, that part of me that rejoices in the beauty around. Perhaps it is that that stops the vortex in my well from escaping. It’s what helps me make sense of it. I have a lovely deck. I don’t sit on it often enough and look at the mountains and the valley and the clouds, but I try to look at least once a day and it’s never the same.”
“This is a really hard question. A well seems like a quiet place to me. Dark, with drops of water rippling the surface. A place where there is a centre and peace. I’d like that place. I may have to go looking for it. My well is a turbulent place, like someone pulled the plug and everything is a swirling mass and the suction sound is drowning everything else. Its full of stuff! Ideas, stories, emotions, craft project, thoughts of friends, family, the news all crawling over themselves to climb out of the well. So if that is the state of my well, then what feeds it? How do I make sense of it?
For writing, things just come to me in random places. I’m in a seminar and a totally random idea comes to me. It may have nothing to do with where I am but had been fomenting from a conversation the week before. Or from a book I read, or a thing I’ve seen, a word or a song. So that must be that life refreshes my well. I’m an extroverted thinker so this probably makes sense. Chaos seeking chaos may be. I want to know and experience so much. I want to shove it all in, cram it down, taste it, be it.
But I do crave that well, that place where I can gather myself. This morning I was walking to the bus and Tuggeranong valley was before me, a white, foamy layer of mist hanging before the mountains. I wished that I could share that sight, that feeling it evoked. I looked at that vista and sighed and drew it in to that calm place that must exist inside of me, that part of me that rejoices in the beauty around. Perhaps it is that that stops the vortex in my well from escaping. It’s what helps me make sense of it. I have a lovely deck. I don’t sit on it often enough and look at the mountains and the valley and the clouds, but I try to look at least once a day and it’s never the same.”
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