This is not a religion. There is nothing here that I need you to Believe in any more than you'd believe in a hammer, or a paintbrush or a well designed and beautifully presented excel spreadsheet. Zen Hedonism is something you use to get things done. It is a tool, a device, a mental .

A few weeks ago a friend and I had an unnecessarily lengthy discussion about the sounds that building security systems make when they decline your security ID. There may have been beer involved. Our theory was that there is someone out there whose job is to compose the three note chimes that security systems use. They probably have to come up with three or four options for a committee, for a client. Those three descending notes? Someone wrote that.

The other reason why this is not a religion is that I'm not asking you for a percentage of your income for ever and ever in exchange for some cosmic credit, redeemable only upon your death. I mean, you can if you want to but all it will get you is the warm satisfaction of knowing that I get to afford this month's gin.

Our discussion naturally ranged onto the other possibilities that we would have chosen should the task have been assigned to us. Options included a sad trumpet wha wha whaaaa, a recording of a small child shouting No! and the sound of a big scary monster waking up and noticing you. We came up a lot of different brilliant noises until were politely asked to leave the bar.

Religions have some funny ideas about money. Largely they claim that money is evil except that which you give to them. They call that money love. It's like they want to protect you from the evils of temptation by absorbing it all themselves. And sometimes I can't tell if they truly believe what they are peddling. These preachers who claim you should be humble before god and then ask you for contributions towards their new private jet.

You need to listen to the noises gatekeepers make when they stand between you and your goals, your dreams. Sometime the advice they give, the reasons why they won't fund you, are genuine. Maybe you haven't gotten your script to a good place yet, maybe your business plan does have some tragic flaws in its predicted cash-flow. Take the good advice and make your plans stronger and come back at the gatekeepers stronger and harder until they yield.

Sometimes, though, the noises gatekeepers make are pure bullshit. If a rich man is telling you your soul needs to be free of worldly goods and he lives in a mansion then he is scum. If someone tells you that the only way to glory is through them then they are lying. If a more experienced artist is telling you that the only way to succeed is to emulate them then, seriously, avoid them at cocktail parties. Your path to glory is yours alone. Heed advice, use it when it's good, but never blindly follow.

So, yeah, Zen Hedonism is not a religion. It is not the one true way. It is a bunch of ideas and suggestions and services that may help you. Feel free to pick and choose which bits you want to use and which you want to ignore. And yes I do want you to pay me for it, but only that which is of value to you, as and when you need it.

Last thing: I don't care if you do belong to a church and want to donate to it. If it brings you comfort in the cold lonely dread of night then fine. But do so with your eyes open. And if your church calls for a tithe of 10% of your income make it 10% of your disposable income, the money have left after you have paid your rent, fed your kids, paid the power bill. Your god will still love you. If not then maybe it's not love. And if your minister or pastor has a problem with this then maybe listen more carefully to the noises they make and decide what rings true for you.

Having a more creative role at work brings about a fresh challenge. Previous to taking on this day job I was working in splendid isolation writing and living in a small converted barn in the middle of nowhere. I had zero neighbors and very little intrusion into my creative process, a process that included loud music and a surprising amount of moving around. Now I work in a large open-plan office space with roughly 25 people. I still get to listen to music but just on ear-phones. Where this gets problematic is in keeping still. And not singing.

For me creative freedom and freedom of movement have always gone together. Space. Mental and physical. And I am very aware that I was lucky to have both of these in abundance over the last couple of years. I got to go fast and loud, all day and all night.

Only about 40% of my writing actually happens at the keyboard. If the work is going badly there will be pacing. If the work is going well then there’s a lot of walking around, talking to myself, folding laundry, taking a shower, doing the dishes and so on. If the work is going especially well then, oh yes, there will be dancing.

Creative freedom does not mean throwing out all the rules or never bothering to learn them. Colour theory, the three-act structure, audience genre expectations. Stating: “I never follow the rules,” is a self-imposed rule. And it’s lazy. True freedom is not just raw talent. It’s raw talent channeled through discipline into grace. It is obtaining a high level of understanding of when to apply the rules, the effects they can have, and when best to break them. Creative freedom comes from skills grown and crafted until the breadth of your ability delivers you unto a state of .

To be fair, I haven’t actually asked if there is a No Dancing policy here at work. It’s not like this is some weird remake of Footloose meets The Office, (someone please make this show). But this is my first venture into working for a large government organisation. I had to pee into a cup to get this job. And I’ve only been here a couple of months. Too soon to start a rebellion? Maybe not… It’s something to think about. Maybe that's the coffee talking.

My point, and I do have one, is that creativity should be celebrated. Creative triumphs, no matter how big, should incite some kind of joyous semi-rhythmic arse wiggling. To music. Loud music.

My new role where I work seems to be the go-to person for "Hey, this thing, this system that we've been using forever, it doesn't work very well. Can you fix it?" I'm thinking of buying some blue overalls and a red and yellow checked shirt only they don't seem very business casual.

Fresh eyes. A new perspective. These are the marketing terms for "hasn't been here for years and so hasn't given up yet." If you've ever been at a new job and the person showing you around says something like "Don't worry, you'll get used to it," then you know what I mean.

Years ago I was crewing for a theatrical production and each night we had to carry a couch off the stage and through a couple of doorways across a narrow corridor backstage. The problem was that the doors opened towards each other, making it difficult to get the couch through. An older gentleman who had worked there forever chuckled at our first attempt at navigating this and stated that it had always been a bit tricky. I looked at the problem and asked him if we needed the second door for anything. He looked bemused, said "well no, I suppose not." So I took the door off. He never spoke to me again.

You may have noticed but sometimes I'll make a typo or a grammatical error. I'll be so lost in getting a story out of my head that I don't fully see the words I'm putting on the page. And it's not like I don't notice a mistake at all; I'll read the same sentence over and over again because something about it is bugging me but I can't for the life of me work out what is wrong with it.

Fresh eyes. A new perspective. Get an editor. Get a friend to read your work. Read theirs in exchange. This works for missing plot points and odd jarring character moments too. Quite often you can be too close to a story, too involved in the world you are creating, to have proper perspective on the tools you are using to convey the story. You know a character is wearing a blue dress, you can see it so clearly. So of course another character was going to react that way because it's the exact same blue their wife was wearing when she left but on reflection and deeper analysis you realise you never actually typed the word "blue" anywhere. Invest in proper feedback. This thing you've put your heart and soul into, this piece of writing you've sweated blood and tears over? Yeah, full of mistakes. Fixing them is just as much part of the creative process as the original rush of story-telling.

At work I'm currently taking all the separate internal employee request forms and combining them into one interactive document. This is actually more interesting than it sounds. And while I wouldn't call it sexy, it's not like it has pulling power at a bar like "hey, yeah, so I'm a jet pilot," it is fun crafting something that makes other people's lives easier. It brings me joy to fix things. I'm crafting logic maps, refining how people work with information. I'm embracing my inner geek. And I'm learning new things, new tricks with formulas and macros. Learning brings joy, even for those of us over mummble mummble. Plus they got me the cool new design software I asked for so hells yes the documents I'm making look pretty.

Creating is joy. Yes, excel spreadsheets count.

We are writers, right? Articulate. Able to express in words deep feelings, moments, characters, stories, concepts. Yeah. Right up until someone asks us where we get our ideas from.

When my first novel was about to come out, the publisher’s publicist rang me to go over some of the questions that the press may ask me. This was my first time round the block so this was all very exciting and I got quite starry eyed and hopeful. This was three weeks before my third radio interview in a row with another radio DJ who had not read my book. Yeah. That’s some quality listening entertainment right there. Anyway… One of the questions I was told to have an answer prepped for was: “Where do you get your ideas?”

Um...

Er...

Told you: articulate.

Traditional art would have us believe that the muses are scantily clad young women who kinda just hang around artists and writers playing harps and smiling encouragingly and this never ever happens to me. Stephen King talks about how his muse shows up, begrudgingly, if he keeps a good writing routine. Letting your muse know where to find you is the best first step and I agree with this approach. It works for me. I get up, have a coffee, a shower, get dressed and go to work like I would any other normal day job.

The other question that popped up a lot, one that I initially wasn’t ready for was “So, how does it feel to be a published writer?” Context reminder: the person asking hasn’t read my book and neither have - nor will - 99.99% of their listeners. And that’s being generous. It's the media obsession though: “How does it feel?” I dunno. Good? Scary? A huge damn relief? “Financially though, that’s gotta be… no? Wait, why are you crying?”

I find it helps to draw. I’ll spend hours drawing when I’m working on a writing project. It centers me; it settles my mind. Someone will say something like “I must have taken ages to both write and illustrate,” and yeah it did but they were both happening at the same time, so there’s that. I wrote this blog while drawing the illustration above. I know writers who do their best writing thinking while playing video games. If it works for you then work it, work it hard. Note: just because it works for someone else doesn’t mean you can use it as an excuse to play Fortnite all day.

The story for my first novel is basically a young guy gets cancer and then runs away with all the charity money raised to save his life. It came to me when I was very unhappy. I wasn’t exactly suicidal, it was more like I wanted to end the life I was living and start a new one. I was married, had a nine-to-five job working in retail, a mortgage and 2.5 cats. I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing, everything society and sitcoms say we are supposed to be doing, but it was making me misserable. I was stuck. There was talk about how come I was still painting, still trying to be an artist, when I was married now and should be a grown up. I didn’t want to die, I felt like I was already dying. I felt a growing sense of helpless panic. I needed to make a significant change. I needed an inciting incident.

I have worked with a lot of screenwriters and artists who have felt the same way. The key questions I ask them are: "Why are you doing what you are doing?" and "What would you enjoy doing?" This then leads to the question: "Why are these two different things?" From there I can start helping them build a plan.

I wanted to burn my life down. I wanted to burn all my bridges and to be standing on them swinging an axe* and yelling with glee as they fell tumbling and flaming into the abyss. And my publisher’s publicists said: “Maybe don’t say that in interviews.”

Turns out thirty isn't too old to quit your job and run off to art school. I found myself broke, divorced, practically homeless and happier than I had been in a long time.

*I own an axe now. It's shiny!

It doesn’t take a lot to change the world. It’s simple math.

A few years ago I was running a screenwriting workshop in Auckland. The brilliant Kathryn Burnett was teaching and I was sorting the morning tea out in the kitchen. Also happening in the venue was a Catholic workshop for engaged couples. Apparently Catholic priests are the most knowledgeable and best informed to give guidance on living as a married couple. Anyway…

What was interesting was watching how the soon-to-be-married couples handled the simple scenario of Morning Tea. The woman who was sorting their biscuits and so on and I started a game of guessing how long they’d last based purely on how they interacted together in this small microcosm.

The math is simple. If the sum total of the Joy you create is greater than the misery or drama you cause then you are making the world a better place, even if only incrementally.

Some of the couples hadn’t quite got the coordination of who got the biscuits and who made the coffee but they showed willing. We gave them good odds. Some couples got their own tea and biscuits. We gave them even odds. The couple that both left their cups outside on the picnic table for someone else to pick up for them, well, we gave them maybe six months. Tops.

A painting that brings a viewer a moment of joy is making the world a better place. A poem that enchants, a song that lightens a heart is making the world a better place. Breakfast in bed. A plumber who shows up on time; a courier who delivers safely. Small things but incremental.

There was this one guy, this one husband-to-be, who worked out that the biscuits I’d set out for the screenwriters were better than the selection offered by the church. I offer no comment on any deeper metaphysical implications of this. So he kinda casually wandered over to our table to see if maybe no-one would mind if he had a biscuit that wasn’t strictly from the table he was supposed to be at. The woman serving them leaned over to me and said: “She’s going to have to watch that one like a hawk…”

The couple we gave the best odds to made a game of it. They assessed the situation, conferred – giggling – and one took on the making of two cups of coffee while the other hunter/gathered biscuits. They found simple joy in providing small treats for each other.

Then all the starving screenwriters all came stampeding out of their session and headed straight for the biscuits and we’ve never been invited back again.

Before I take on any advocacy or mediation case I always ask a series of questions. These include: What happened? When did this happen? What would you like me to do about it? And: Okay, what aren’t you telling me? There’s always something.

As storytellers, be it in screenplays, novels, plays, it is our job to tell intriguing, entertaining and honest narratives, even when we are making them up. People notice if there is something missing. A gap, a missing piece of information, an action made by the protagonist that doesn’t quite ring true. People notice and it takes them out of the story, out of the world we are trying to immerse them in. Their suspension of disbelief is lost. They know when something, some vital fact, isn’t there even if it isn’t glaringly obvious. The missing casts a shadow; a trace of an outline.

I’ve been in a meeting with a client’s boss and I’ve been firmly defending their rights and their boss has asked them about their sleeping on the job. Which was new information to me. It’s not ideal. It’s not what you would call an optimal bargaining position. Afterwards the client told me that they didn’t tell me because they didn’t think it was relevant. “I thought they just wanted to talk about my drinking.” Really? You don’t see how they might be related?

The why is always important. Why did you do that thing? Why is your boss angry? Why did the main character suddenly leave town with the waitress? Is there a connection?

Storytelling is the art of weaving convincing patterns. A good storyteller, a good writer, can see these patterns in everything around them. No, it’s not the gin talking.

I often get asked about the legalities of putting real-life events and characters into fictional works. My advice is to not do it. Just because something was true in the real world it doesn’t mean it will ring true in the world of your story. Is an action true to that specific character? Does the scene fit the tone of your film? If you have to explain to your audience that a particular thing actually happened in real life then you haven’t done your job properly. Also, you want your characters and their actions to be believable and so much of what people do in real life just doesn’t make any sense.

So, yeah, sometimes I approach any advocacy or mediation case like I’m asking a drunk friend why they got kicked out of a bar. “The bouncer was mean!” It may take a while but quiet calm and a maybe coffee helps important facts to surface. “Everyone else was dancing on the tables too!” Did they have their trousers on? “Yes.” Did you? “…no… You’re mean!” Yes, yes I am, but only because I care.

So for a while there I was thinking about living under my bed and only leaving for brief bathroom necessities. I figured if I dragged a pile of books and comics and blankets under there, maybe put in a bar, couple of pinball machines… The kittens were totally on board with this plan.

Rejection sucks. As a writer you should expect to experience this a lot. All the time. Forever. Even after you’ve had one thing made, one thing published, it still happens. That tiny death of your soul. That unspeakable blow that rips your self-confidence to shreds with complete uncaring disregard. It happens a lot.

Part of why it hurts is that we put so much of ourselves into our work, our creations, our substitute babies. We have to. If we didn’t then what would be the point? That’s the catch: we have to put our soul into our work but also be able to discuss it objectively. Gin helps with this. The trick is to remind yourself that it is one piece of work that is getting rejected, one piece of writing that you can easily fix. It’s not you as a writer that is getting turned down not you as an actual person, okay? Put that sharpened ice cream scoop down. It’s going to be okay.

The other reason why it hurts is that we have a tendency to put unreasonable expectations on the difference in our lives that one piece of work will make should it be successful. So when we get turned down by a publisher or a funder, it’s not just that our hard work wasn’t good enough. It’s the dashed hopes of escaping a day-job, of critical acclaim, of getting invited to all the cool parties, of getting laid. This one manuscript was going to do all this, seriously, if we only believed enough. If we were kind to strangers. Tidied our room without being asked.

Another trick is to leap-frog submissions. Stagger sending work out, have multiple opportunities pending. That way when something fails then you still have other hopes out there. It becomes almost a masochistic game. The risk here is that unfortunate timing can mean you have a truly epic Bad Day. If that happens then yeah, living under your bed seems like a very sensible idea. Take snacks.

When I ran the NZWG Seed Grants part of my job was to send the rejection emails. Usually around fifty of them. It was not a fun job. I learned fast to ignore any emails that came back within the first 40 seconds. Just… no. Pro tip: if you have an alert on your inbox that makes a cheerful wee bing whenever you get an new email, switch that fucker off. Kill it. Kill it with fire.

The first tricky thing about having a day job is time management. You lose more than the eight hours a day you may spend at work, you also lose the time it takes to get ready and then travel there and then travel back again. Bathing is important. As is putting on trousers, apparently. The time frustration really kicks in around 10am for me. I’m awake and energized (coffee) and ready to write! And I’m at work… All the awesome ideas I have are clamoring for attention in my head and it feels almost sacrilege that I’m ignoring them. And they all seem all the more awesome for being denied.

Then, when finally home at the end of the day, my brain is fried and words are hard and blah.

The second tricky thing is keeping your Voice. This is a more subtle thing that creeps up on you, especially if your day job involves being around lots of other people. The language, the conversations, slip into your mind. Any artistic pretensionsyou may have drown in the grey tedium of normality until you catch yourself being vaguely amused when someone says “working hard or hardly working, right?” Your own hopes and dreams become more and more ephemeral; worse, seemingly irrelevant. In a mild state of panic you’ll ask a colleague what they are working on, thinking they’ll tell you about their screenplay or sculpture class but instead they say “same shit different day,” and you’ll want to run naked from the room wearing nothing but a strategically placed post-it note that has “completely out to lunch” scrawled on it.

The first trick that works for me for both of the above is naps. Come home from work and have a nap. It doesn’t have to be a big nap, you don’t even have to fall asleep, but make sure you spend at least 20 minutes in a dark and quiet space with your eyes closed. Let it all quiet down. Let it all fade away. Settle. You could be in bed or under it, it doesn’t matter. Build a blanket fort and use it as a safe buffer between the day you just had and the extra mini day you are squeezing in once you get up again. Let your Voice come back. Trust me. The time you spend on the nap you will more than make up for in creative productivity.

The other trick is to lose the separation in your head between work and life. You are a creator. There are patterns and stories everywhere for you to find. My current job is to enter employees’ hours into a calendar spreadsheet. It is excruciatingly tedious work and over the last couple of weeks I’ve entered hundred of pages of this data. But there are patterns to the numbers. It’s story-telling at its most basic. This person worked normal hours for a year or so then suddenly they worked lots of extra hours for months, then took five weeks of holiday. This other person hardly took any sick leave and never worked public holidays but then took two weeks bereavement leave. After that they worked public holidays. After that they started taking more sick days. There are stories and patterns to be found everywhere. Our calling as creatives is to find these stories and grow our craft of telling them. Normal is real. Our role is to make it sing.

I have a day job. It’s not what I want to be doing with the rest of my life but I do like to be able to pay bills and buy food. So this is the joy I try and find in the work. I get up and walk with all the other workers to a place where I make a contribution that is reasonably valued. I participate. Nice, normal people wish me a good morning and if it’s a Monday they will ask me how my weekend was. I wear tan pants and a shirt with a collar. I have a security card on a lanyard just like a real grown-up.

I have moments of mild panic. I realize that I’m cleanly shaved, freshly showered and productive at eight-thirty in the morning and I question the life choices that lead me to this point. And I fear discovery. I’m waiting for Insecurity to show up and ask me to leave as they’ve found out that I published a novel that got made into a film and seriously what was I doing here with the nice normal people? These people have families! It was that third chocolate biscuit I had at the farewell morning tea for Sharon that gave me away. That black t-shirt that one time.

To get this job I had to pee into a cup. No this wasn’t the sum total of the interview process though I can imagine a job interview where one has to answer questions like “Where do you see yourself in five years time?” while desperately wishing you needed to go and hoping you wouldn’t miss. Once, in a job interview, they asked me what my weaknesses were I said “Kittens and hokey-pokey ice cream.” When they didn’t laughed I added: “Not at the same time, of course.” I didn’t get the job.

On sunny days I walk to work along the waterfront. The warm light glinting on the cool water fills me with a sense of purpose, like there is a grand design and I’m somehow fulfilling one small part of it. And I’m right. It’s called paying the damn rent so that I have a place to live and to write and to hopefully create something beyond what I’m doing now. This gets me out of bed each morning and keeps me participating despite my growing panic. There is fury building, an energy that drives me. There is also coffee.