The MOOD Podcast

The Soul's Journey Through Literary Art, E060

• Matt Jacob

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Diana Darling is an acclaimed writer and author who has spent over 40 years living in Bali. Her work is deeply influenced by Balinese culture and mythology, blending Eastern and Western perspectives in her art and writing.

During our conversation, Diana shared the inspiration behind her novel 'The Painted Alphabet', where Balinese mythology intertwines with contemporary storytelling, providing unique perspectives on spirituality and death influenced by her experiences in both Western and Asian cultures.

Some other things we discuss were: rituals that surround death in other cultures, the meaning of life and death, how storytelling can transform opinions and inspirations, tips for how to get into writing and navigate the world of publishing and media.

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Matt:

Where do you start?

Diana:

I rented a typewriter, sat down and started Once Upon a Time.

Matt:

Was it a success?

Diana:

It was reviewed by the New Yorker.

Matt:

Tell me about the aftermath of the book.

Diana:

I think about it a lot.

Matt:

How do you go about staying creative?

Diana:

You need a certain amount of independence and quite a lot of ego. Don't ever say anything. You've heard before.

Matt:

What about if people want to make a living? How do people go and get published? First of all, welcome to the Mood Podcast, where each week, we bring you inspiring conversations with top artists and creative minds from various fields, exploring their personalities, their purposes, processes and philosophies. Whether you're a seasoned photographer, an aspiring artist or simply someone who loves to learn and be inspired, this podcast is for you. I'm your host, matt Jacob, and thank you so much for joining me in today's conversation.

Matt:

Our guest today is Diana Darling, an acclaimed writer and artist from America, but who has been living in Bali for the last 40 or so years. Her novel, the Painted Alphabet, released in the 90s, is a beautiful blend of Balinese mythology and contemporary narrative, offering readers a vivid exploration of spirituality, morality and the timeless battle between good and evil. We talk about the inspiration behind her novel and the process of translating her observations and experiences of Bali into a literary masterpiece. She explains the timeless impact of the story's themes, including spirituality, moral dilemmas and the battle between good and evil, and how she was able to express such moralities that are more relevant than ever today. Diana also shares her unique perspective on spirituality and death, influenced by her Western heritage and her extensive life in Asia. She reflects on the profound changes she has witnessed on this beautiful island over the decades she has been here and how these transformations have impacted her philosophies, creativity and art. We explore her academic background, including her time at the School of Fine Arts in Paris and the New York School of Social Research in New York, and discuss how these experiences have shaped her literary work and storytelling approach. Throughout our conversation, diana provides really valuable insights into her writing techniques, her pre-writing and drafting processes and how she approaches revisions. We also discuss the importance of community and collaboration, with Diana sharing how her work with local and international artists and writers has influenced her creative process. Additionally, she offers practical advice for staying curious and creative, balancing discipline and spontaneity and fostering an environment that nurtures creativity. Her expertise in editing and branding is also covered, providing artists with key principles for effectively communicating their unique style and vision through their marketing texts.

Matt:

This episode is packed with rich wisdom, practical advice and inspiring stories from Diana Darling's remarkable journey. I hope you enjoy. Diana Darling, welcome to the MOVE podcast. Thank you very much. As a, I mean, I don't want to put you in any boxes, but as a literary artist, multiculturalist, even historian, maybe looking at some of your previous work, certainly in local life here in Bali. I'm interested in certainly to begin with, spirituality, life and death and your kind of your views on that, having lived in Asia but also having essentially the genetics of a westerner but your environmental influences for the for the past so many decades being in Asia. So what is your view on death and how do you think and how has that kind of impacted your craft and your writing over so many years?

Diana:

Well, thank you for asking that. It's an interesting question question. My thoughts about death are really formed by living here and I've absorbed as much as I can the Balinese attitude to death, which is it's not an emergency, it happens, it's natural, it's a process and it's nothing to show off about except at the cremation. But it's not a personal tragedy. When it happens to you, it's a call to go to work for the people who are around you. Death in Bali, like everything else, is not sentimental, and this is the biggest lesson I think, from the Balinese that I've learned. The sentimentality around natural processes is just, it's a construction from my own Western culture, it's not a fact of life. So I don't know what happens when people die. I know that we probably won't see them again.

Diana:

I know that the Balinese believe that a great deal happens after you die. That takes a lot of ritual attention, and so you have a lot of protocol around the care of the body, but also a lot of offerings and rituals around the care of the soul which is going through a transition. First it has to get out of the body, which, according not just to the Balinese but I think the Tibetan Buddhists as well and certainly many other cultures takes a bit of time, takes a bit of time. I'm just struck by when I watched my mother die in hospice. It was a thoroughly natural and good process and I was lucky to watch it, but I had the sensation without being at all psychic myself, I had the sensation of watching this fine scarf rise up from off her forehead and that's my only indication that anything is going on, that there's a. But I knew that was the moment that she died and I said fly, mom, at that time.

Diana:

Now the Balinese seem to have a lot of very detailed information about what exactly happens. So the soul is leaving the body over what the Buddhists say is about 20 minutes, and the Balinese want to assure a transition back to the essential elements of water, air, fire, earth and ether, whatever that is. So this all takes a lot of ritual supervision or help. There's the journey of the surviving soul, the Atman, onto a series of processes of purification, a kind of purgatory, apparently under the sea, and then calling the soul back up from the sea this is after cremation Calling it back again and escorting it up to the temples in Basaki where it joins with the rest of the ancestors that may or may not incarnate into your family, and then some of it comes back into the family compound and is buried under a shrine and that's where you worship your ancestors or your recently dead.

Diana:

So how much of that I can take on I don't know. I won't know until I die, or perhaps until my husband dies and I go through this process more intimately. But I know that it's, as I say, it's not a sentimental event. When somebody dies, being sad is not the same as being sentimental. You're sad, everybody's sad, and then you get on with things. It's something that we live with, and perhaps it's better to live with being aware of it. I'm not sure I think so. I think as I get older I'm much more aware of it. I don't think it's impacted my writing at all, though.

Matt:

Okay writing it all, though. Okay interesting that you seem to take a observational standpoint, kind of a distance from that belief system or cultural practice. Is that something that you've, I guess, deliberately taken a position on, or is it something that you kind of experimented with or dived in? I know you've obviously have experienced this culture for for many a time. You've written a book on it which we're going to get to. You've had a husband who's obviously from here and etc. Etc. So you're kind of integrated as much as you can be as a westerner. But it seems like like there's still a distance between you and the religion here, or at least the cultural practices. Would that be fair to say?

Diana:

Oh, absolutely yes, there's a difference, because I'm not Balinese, although there was a time in my life when I would have loved to be Balinese. But it's not possible to become Balinese. I think even Javanese would have trouble becoming Balinese, unless you're born into the culture and have the very earliest rights and an upbringing within a Balinese family. It's not possible, and I came here fully formed. I was in my early 30s when I first came here. So and I was very formed as well, because I was an artist I had struggled to build up a faculty of discrimination of things. I had very strong values about art and creativity and what was expected of me in life. I was like a finished Western person. Of course, I loved all of that, being challenged, being in Bali, and I was fascinated by the challenge. But the distance is a natural one. I can empathize with it, I can make things up inside it, but I'm very much who. I am a product of the West. I'm a product of the West.

Matt:

I ask because I'm fascinated with the dichotomy and the balance between nature and nurture, and also religion and its geographies, because one then might not be able to move to a certain place, fully integrate and spend more of their life in one place than not in that place, try to understand and immerse themselves in either a cultural religion or the blurred lines in between, and not necessarily feel like they can become that. So when you think about Balinese Hinduism, the kind of external immersification of people into that religion is almost non-existent. So therefore you could only be that religion if you're born here. Does that make any sense?

Diana:

I think I know what you mean. At the same time, I have to say that in the beginning, when I was first here say the first 20 years that I was here I took part in the religion and I was really immersed in it. I did everything I could to understand it and to take part in it, because it's a very experiential religion. It's very much about doing things.

Matt:

Ritualistic and experiences.

Diana:

Yes, it's the ritual, it's the right behavior in the right environment, whether it's in a temple or in the 1980s, when you're living really very, very close to the ground and in the midst of the weather, in the midst of nature and everything else is, you know, it's easy, this idea of the invisible world. It was almost tangible in those days. Now it's hard. Now it's hard to get a sense of oh, this is a populated space. Mostly we feel the presence of other people and the presence of ideas and constructions, buildings and constructions, buildings. The invisible world to me has sort of retracted a bit perhaps.

Matt:

Or I mean for me anyway. Why I mean? Is that a byproduct of more distractions and more differences, more cultural differences coming into the space?

Diana:

I think that's certainly part of it. I think just the fact of construction is a big factor. When you pave over the family courtyard, the ground behaves differently. It's the same place, but the nature of the place has changed. Not that I'm at all a mystic, but I think that what goes through the earth and comes up through the ground, it runs faster when it's not covered with cement or tiles or whatever it is. When you take down big trees, whatever has been inhabiting that tree moves. It can be bugs, it can be birds, it can be ghosts, and so the place changes. And I think if you ask a very young Balinese person what they feel around a holy place or something else, I have no idea how they would answer. I just have no idea. I know for people my age it's a pity they've renovated this temple. It was fine before, they'd say.

Matt:

That wouldn't be allowed in other religions, would it? I mean, if you demolished a mosque, let's say, and built over that, there would be world war. A mosque, let's say, and built over that, there would be world war, Is that true? I mean, why are Balinese so not forgiving but welcoming and very calm about those types of things and very, almost equanimous with that type of behavior or those types of externalities impacting their culture?

Diana:

I think it might be because they're very confident about what the cosmos is, very self-confident in who they are and what their place is in it, and it's not easily jostled by ugly buildings or too many people. I mean, some people are getting more irritable when they see their land changing, or they're very touchy about desecration too, but not as much as Indonesian Muslims. There's a great deal of tolerance. I think they're profoundly stable at a certain point in themselves.

Matt:

Extremely and that's going back to something you mentioned earlier about your earlier self coming to Bali, and you had very strong values. Much of it probably a complete assumption, but I know what I was like when I was 30, much of it probably linked to an ego, and very much I'm going to assert myself on this world and space. I sense that from the Balinese here and that's one of the attractions of living here is that maybe that tolerance comes from a lack of materialism and maybe a lesser identity with self, and so that's something to be inspired by.

Diana:

Well, those are two very different things. I wouldn't say the Balinese are not materialistic. They certainly are, but having a sense of. I think their sense of self is a lot more diffuse than ours is. Ours is restricted to the ego, possibly a bit left over for family, country, tribe, whatever that is. But the Balinese superego, in a certain sense, is in the village, in the way of doing things. It's not particularly jingoistic in the sense that there's Balinese nationalism. There's been a trace of that since the terrorist attacks in the early part of the century. But the identity is spread out through the family, through their ancestors. Ancestors are extremely important, yeah, the larger family, the village, the Banjar community, a way of doing things. There's a sense of Balinese identity in that they distinguish themselves from other Indonesians. They're aware of the fact that there's a Balinese way of doing things that's different and they think it's excellent, which again gives them this confidence?

Matt:

Almost a separate nationality, isn't it?

Diana:

Yeah, it's a separate ethnos. Yeah, that's a better word for it, if you can put it that way, yeah.

Matt:

Tell me about your early days as an artist. I know you went to school at the I'm not going to pronounce the French in Paris, at the School of Fine Arts let's say what did you study there and how did you get into art, and what did you bring to Bali in those early days as an artist?

Diana:

Well, I was a sculptor when I came here and that began. I was in the theatre before, when I lived in New York. I wanted to be an actress and I went to Europe on a short holiday, maybe two months, and I was in London for a long time because I wanted to go to the theater. I thought theater in London is going to be better than theater in New York. And then in my last week I went to Paris. It was springtime, it was a totally magical time for me. It was a totally magical time for me and I happened to see a piece of sculpture in someone's studio. The artist wasn't there. This is the work of Ipustigi, which was in marble. It was a kind of a lying figure called the Death of the Mother, and it struck me like a piece of Beethoven's music. It's really what it evoked the figurative expressionism, I suppose you'd call it. But the impact was enormous and I said that's what I want to do. So I went back to New York. I went back to New York, said goodbye to my mother and moved to Europe and I went to Carrara to learn to carve the marble and after three years there I went up to. I learned to carve the marble.

Diana:

After three years there I went to Paris to draw, because that was the example of this epustige, that there were a handful of young sculptors that he sort of mentored and that was the example he gave to us in his own practice you go somewhere, you draw for a year or two. So I was at the Beaux-Arts, which is the art school in Paris, and I went to. I was in a master class for sculpture where we just modeled in clay from a live model and I went to drawing classes and this was just all to develop what you need to know if you're a sculptor, especially anything figurative at all. My work was also a kind of figurative expressionism. I made imaginary anatomies and some of them were.

Diana:

In the beginning they were a bit monstrous but very finely carved, I can say, and I was trying to. Whatever I wanted to do in theater, I was trying to do it in marble and enjoying the fact that my work was between my hands and that if anyone wanted to know who I was, they didn't have to look at me, they looked at what I make. So that's where my head was when I came to Bali. I was coming from Europe, from a very mature art scene there to a place that had no art scene. The art in Bali in those days was religious Dances.

Matt:

The art in Bali in those days was religious Dances.

Diana:

Dances. The statues were either sitting in a little temple or guarding a gateway or a pathway, and I tried making some sculpture like that too, just sort of for fun. But it was the religion here which was everything that was interesting to me, certainly not the sculpture. And there was, as I say, there was, no art scene at all, like anything I was accustomed to, so I just put it behind me Right okay. And I read and read and read everything I could about Bali and eventually began to write about it.

Matt:

And had you had any training in writing or you just kind of learned by yourself?

Diana:

No, I had good teachers.

Matt:

Okay.

Diana:

And I'd read a lot and I've always been a good reader.

Matt:

And so how I noticed actually on page one of the painted alphabet, you said for my teachers so where were you taught? Were you taught here, and what kind of teaching did you have for writing?

Diana:

Well, I've had teachers, wonderful teachers, all through my life. I had wonderful teachers in school. I had wonderful teachers in school. I had teacher figures in my life. I suppose I was also thinking of the old priest in our village who was something of a teacher he was actually a drinking mate. And then there was our landlord, who is the son of the famous Balinese painter, augustinio man Lempad. Lempad had already died of old age by the time I came to Bali, and his son was already an old man too, and he was a great friend to my first husband, who was Australian, john Darling, and John just soaked up anything this man said, and so did I, so he had someone to talk to, to puff up his ideas, to think out loud with. So it was very much a learning experience all of this, and I thought I could live here forever because I couldn't possibly learn everything about it. You know, if one day I get bored, I'll take up the Balinese language, which is impossible to learn.

Matt:

I feel like that as well. I mean, we've only been here a couple of years, but I feel like there's an endless amount to learn, endless amount to kind of dive into and just get your head around. It seems to be layer upon layer upon layer. Language is a huge part, obviously, with so many languages in indonesia generally and dialects here in bali. So, um, yeah, I feel definitely. Tell me about the lead up to arguably your seminal moment in terms of the painted alphabet in your first novel. Tell me about the process in writing that, before we start talking about the book, what was the process like? Was it a conscious decision right, I'm going to write a novel?

Diana:

or did you find yourself in an environment where I feel like I can write something here I'm going to write a novel, or did you find yourself in an environment where, oh, I feel like I can write something here? Well, my encounter with this story came when I was reading about Rangda, basically, and the story that was always performed in the temples in my time was Chalo Narang. But there was another story. There were several other stories that used to be performed that lead up to this confrontation between Rangda and the Barong, this so-called confrontation of good and evil, which it isn't. And I was reading about those other stories when I came across a synopsis of the story of Duku Siladri, and there were two things in it that really piqued my fancy. One was the talking animals and the other was a scene where this junior witch goes down to the river and takes a bath and she finishes and puts her clothes back on and then she hears a man coming, so she takes all her clothes off again.

Diana:

So I thought that was great and I thought I said to my husband shouldn't we try to sponsor a performance of this, because it used to be performed as an arja, which is the Balinese opera form where they sing the poetry right? And so we organized the performance for a temple festival near us, in our village and it wasn't at all what I hoped it would be as a theatrical experience. I thought there'd be rehearsals and they'd make costumes for the animals and all this. I had no idea. It was just another Arja performance and an hour before they started, the Arja master came out and told the troupe okay, now this is the story tonight and this is what happens, and you play this and you play this it was so formulaic.

Diana:

So, I thought, oh my gosh, I'll just write it for my own pleasure, you know, to see what I can get out of this synopsis, to see what I could get out of the story. So over the next few years, my husband, john, and I would ask old people when we met them if they knew the Duke of Ciladri story. And they'd all laugh and they'd sing a little bit of it, and then they would tell the story. So I began collecting these versions of the story and then, when our marriage broke up, I happened to be in Australia, in Sydney, waiting for him to take his stuff off, my stuff in storage, and I had two weeks to wait, two weeks to fill in, and I was very anxious to be at work.

Diana:

I was going to go on to the foundry in Melbourne to make some sculpture, but I really wanted to make something during those two weeks. So I decided this is a good time to start that novel and so I rented a typewriter that's how long ago it was, that's how long ago it was and I sat down and started once upon a time and started writing it out. Like that. I already had the story blocked out in my head, in notes, and then later on, when I was well into the story, I came across a printed version of the original poem that the story is based on. Somebody had written out in Balinese verse 94 pages On Monta.

Diana:

Yes, well, no, 94 typewritten pages of Balani's verse, and somebody got a copy for me from a university, so you just copied it. Great. So I brought it back to Bali, showed it to my next husband, who I have still, and he slowly read it out to me and we talked about it. And he slowly read it out to me and we talked about it, and so I was able to adjust the story a bit to go on, you know, to take in elements that hadn't been in the oral versions that I'd collected.

Matt:

And then I just wrote it out. It's a wonderful story, essentially at the top of it, between good and evil, but there's so many kind of um, spiritual journeys along the way, sacrifices with um. You know that I'm not going to give any of the story away because everyone should read it. But if a was it a success? B, what was the the success for you internally when you're writing this novel and what you kind of? What did you get from it when you've achieved this book? Was it a sense of you know, wonder with the world and what could be next, or was it a sense of achievement? Tell, tell me about the aftermath of basically the book and and how it did with both you know, in the market, but also with with yourself, and how you kind of moved through life after that well, it was tremendous fun to write.

Diana:

It was, it really was my own entertainment. And, um, when I finished it I thought I read it again and I thought this is pretty good actually. And I was going to America to visit my family in around 1990, I guess and I took my portfolio of sculpture and the manuscript of this novel and I said I'll see which one goes. And I showed my portfolio around to some galleries in New York and they said, well, this is very nice, but you have to live here. I said, but I live in Bali. Oh well, I'm not sure what we can do.

Diana:

But it was different with publishing. I was staying with a cousin who had a friend who was an agent who read it, and she said I'd love to represent this. And so she did and she found a publisher, a good publisher for me, houghton Mifflin, which is one of the big old American publishers. And it was a very happy deal. They took it on, they gave me a little bit of an advance and when it came out this is the advantage of having a really good publisher they managed to have a review, I guess it was, with a little interview in the middle of it in the New York Times. Wow, big three-quarters of a page in the New York Times is reviewed by the New Yorker and they were very friendly reviewers as well.

Matt:

You had great reviews for the book.

Diana:

Yes. So that was wonderful. You know, it was more than I ever hoped for. But I thought, oh, this is great Because I was writing it for people who I respected, people who I looked up to, but who knew nothing about Bali, and so I had some hope that it would be not just a few people in Ubud that would read it, but that it was a reading book that would be for anyone who likes to read reading book.

Matt:

You know that would be for anyone who likes to read. Yeah, definitely a popular approach to a book and making it more accessible, I guess, to people who aren't necessarily as esoteric or specific to that place that you're writing about and those people you're writing about. Is that a challenge with writing where, I mean, you're obviously a very intelligent woman and there's you's so much vocabulary as well as, I think, three or four or five different languages that you speak? Is there a challenge to not make your writing too academic or too esoteric and still make it accessible to the likes of me who just can read the most basic of verse? Is that something you think about when writing?

Diana:

I think about it a lot. I think when I reread the painted alphabet. There are places where it feels just a bit rich.

Matt:

Okay.

Diana:

And I think as I get older as a writer I get simpler and I hope I become more clear. And the challenge to be even when I'm writing something very mundane, like about somebody's hotel or something like that. I try very hard to avoid marketing language. I try to make it fresh so that if anybody bothers to read it which isn't likely, usually people don't read anything anymore. But if somebody bothers to read what I write, they'll say oh, and then they'll go in further.

Matt:

It's inviting a conversation. Really, why do you think?

Diana:

we don't read much anymore. I think people don't read books very much anymore because they're dirty and smelly and time-consuming. It breaks my heart, but the children in our family don't read. They don't have any books, they just don't read. When the teenager wants to read something, he borrows something from us, but the parents don't read to them. It's a different culture now. It's an electronic culture. Tv is stronger. The news you can read about it. I subscribe to the New York Times still, but if I've seen the news I don't read the story.

Matt:

Do you read the opinion columns though? Sorry, Do you read the opinion columns or the commentary? You know non-factual news more like thoughts and opinions. Often, Often, yeah.

Diana:

Yeah, but I'm still a reader. Yeah, but I think that it's a generational thing mainly.

Matt:

Yeah, I think digitized world has a lot to answer for that. You know whether and we were talking about audio books before we came on air, weren't we? And I'm more of a? I mean, I read books, but 90% of reading is I listen to.

Matt:

So I listen to something all the time. We talked about kind of the power of that, and maybe I'd love for you to narrate the painted alphabet, because I think having an author speak those words gives you more of an insight as to the intent and tone, to what they were meaning and, you know, avoids any misinterpretation. But yeah, I think there is a romance to reading books, there is a nostalgia to it and, um, whether it I mean it arguably benefits society the more people are educated or read or have reading abilities, right, um, because it's sparks curiosity. It sparks, um, the, the desire to see someone else's opinion. It sparks conversation. There's so many benefits to it, isn't it? But I don't know, I don't know where it goes from here. We'll have AI reading to us before too long, or not, or not?

Matt:

Tell us about the writing process. You know, I want to kind of appeal to, to, to, to want to be writers out there, and me being one of them, I I really enjoy the writing process. I do some newsletters every week and just general copy stuff, for whether it's my photography stuff or this podcast, I really enjoy it. I don't, it's very intangible. I can't, can't really put my finger on where that satisfaction comes from. But I'd love to know what your process is when maybe you get a new job or you think of something you want to write for yourself. How do you go about doing that? Where do you start? Blank canvas, what's the process?

Diana:

For me, it begins with hearing the first sentence in my head, and I'll wait around for that. Walk around, do something, sit around, look out the window, whatever. When I have the first sentence, that's my keyhole.

Matt:

So you have a concept already, or have been given a concept, and then you are essentially waiting for yourself to come up with that first sentence.

Diana:

Yeah, Okay interesting.

Matt:

And then that's it You're off.

Diana:

Well, sometimes Still digging around, I'll write with a pencil, with a mechanical pencil, on a big folio-sized piece of paper, a kind of clipboard.

Matt:

Okay.

Diana:

I write in pencil and then, once I have a bit of a body to it, then I transcribe it to the computer, editing as I go, and then I'll keep going. I tend to sort of like a painter. I knew once he started in the upper left hand corner of a canvas and he painted across until he got down to the bottom and then he signed it and he was finished. So I write a bit like that I start at the beginning and go through building.

Matt:

Edit as you go as well.

Diana:

I do a lot of editing, yeah yeah, but other people as well for other people as well.

Matt:

That's part of my freelance work okay and tell us about that a little bit. I mean, how do you edit without putting your own spin on it? Or you know, I've never done editing, obviously, and I'm interested to hear hear more about what that actually involves and what the process of that is.

Diana:

Well, most of my experience editing has been with the Lontar Foundation, which is a publisher in Jakarta of English translations of Indonesian literature. So when I get a text to edit it's the translation, but I also get the Indonesian original with it and I'll begin going through the text and if I run into something where it's not clear what's meant, I refer to the original and I might re-translate it to make it clearer. That's an advantage. You had asked about multilingualism in my work. That's a help when you can read the original. Not all editors of translations have the other languages and they edit purely on the English, but sometimes it helps. There's a bit of a collaboration going on there. I communicate with the translator and everything I do is I use track changes. If you know what I mean by that, it's a thing in Microsoft Word where every change you make in a manuscript it shows up.

Matt:

Got it yeah.

Diana:

And you can also make comments and things like that. So that's a kind of conversation I'm having with the translator. But the idea, I think that what my job is as an editor of a translated text is to make the English as strong and clear as possible, and that's not necessarily the job of the translator. Sometimes they're more concerned with reproducing an identical meaning or as close to identical a meaning as there is, but it doesn't always make for good sentences. So I work on that skin, on the surface that's going to touch the eyes of the reader, and I'm very lucky that the Lontar Foundation has such a good head in John McGlynn. He's the American who founded it and he's a translator himself. But somehow he realizes that his own English isn't the very best on earth either and he turns it over to an editor to deal with that, to make a correct translation into literary English, because these are mostly works of fiction. They're literary works and so they need just that last bit of work.

Matt:

So, from the technical side of editing and writing, how do you go about staying creative? And or how how would you advise people like me and other artists who who want to spur creativity in their life and curiosity, and how do you kind of go through life, I guess, maintaining a level of curiosity and inspiration? Do you pick from sources or do you? Is it endemic to you and your environment?

Diana:

I think what it takes. Virginia Woolf had thoughts about this. She said for a woman to write, she needs money and a room of her own, but I think this is true of men as well. You need a certain amount of independence and quite a lot of ego, and since we moved to Ubud and are living in the family compound, there's not really room for ego when you're living closely with a lot of people, and I haven't been writing fiction really since then. So I try to find a kind of not creativity, but a feeling of having done good work by being as professional as possible, and you can bring a certain amount of creativity to copywriting or editing. It depends on how hard you push. I think that's what it is when you want to do your very, very best. That's similar to being creative.

Matt:

Is that what you mean by needing an ego? Where does the ego fit into that?

Diana:

It doesn't so much.

Matt:

Okay.

Diana:

It doesn't so much. When I say creativity, I'm thinking of fiction, okay, and that takes a lot of ego.

Matt:

Imagination almost.

Diana:

Yeah, it's time when people can't bother you. Yeah, it's time when people can't bother you, yeah, yeah, and open-ended time, which doesn't exist in family life, even when you have people to help you. It's a hard thing to you. Can't do it, I can't do it. I can't shut people out, I can't say don't bother me for four hours. It just doesn't happen like that.

Matt:

What is your advice, then, to people like, well, anyone let's say, I know you do some work for brands and companies, maybe website copy or marketing copywriting, something like that Is there any kind of tips or advice that, let's say, me as a photographer can kind of take on board when we're writing things about ourselves, self-branding or website or a newsletter or something Any kind of like little things we can take away from someone who's an expert?

Diana:

Well, what I would say is, first of all, don't ever say anything you've heard before. If you find that you want to use a term or a phrase that's familiar to you, think about it again and dig a little deeper. There's an awful lot of what do you call it boilerplate out there, boilerplate. What do you call it boilerplate out there? Boilerplate? I don't like when I edit for the Tanjung Sai, for instance, which is one of my clients. It's a very old little boutique hotel and it's all Indonesian run, and so they asked me to help them with their social media copy, and what they do is they write it themselves first and then I fix it up, which usually means throwing it out. And anything that has the word curate or indulge or delectable any of these words I don't use them. They're ruined. You can't use those anymore.

Matt:

And AI is ruining them even more.

Diana:

Oh yeah, I mean that's what they use. I used to write for Mosaic and I'm sure they've got an AI program that they're using now, because you don't know what kind of food they're serving anymore. It's just all delectable and curated.

Matt:

Let's move on to the future.

Diana:

You can cut that.

Matt:

Okay, no, no, no, we're going to keep that in. I can't let you leave here without talking about AI and I'm not expecting maybe you have very good experience with it, maybe you don't and I'm not expecting maybe you have very good experience with it, maybe you don't, but you know, similar to the generation who are brought up not, maybe, reading books, they're also brought up with, obviously, social media Now, big influence of AI. If someone wants to write something, people go and chat to EBT, me included. Well, actually, I'll write something first and then throw it into chat to EBT, kind of say is this okay, don't use delectable, don't use indulge, don't use curated. Do you see that as a real danger to writing, certainly to fictional writing or literary artists out there who want to make a career out of this? Is it a danger?

Diana:

I don't think it's a danger. I think it's an aesthetic danger on a very superficial level, because it's so prevalent, but anyone who wants to write from their authentic imagination or experience won't use that sort of language. Won't use that sort of language. It does, though, depend on reading well, and a lot, in other words, reading at a very high level.

Matt:

I think that's really important if somebody wants to write. So if someone does want to write, what would you say the fundamental skills would be needed in order to write well? There are some things that has to be kind of in that person or learned by that person to write well.

Diana:

Well, an experience of reading is really important Thorough knowledge of the language, being able to use the grammar correctly which isn't as widespread as one would hope and being grown up in yourself enough to hear your own voice, which is there. I mean, everyone has a voice, everyone has a way of seeing the world, and it can be very hard to hold that. From childhood all the way through to old age, it's something that you learn most people. There are some people who are truly gifted and always write authentically, but all through their teenage years. I think that's exceptional. It's a stage of adolescence. It's a stage of learning by imitation, and even good writers will imitate the writers they think are good. So it takes a certain amount of growing up.

Matt:

Yeah, imitate and iterate, not necessarily emulate Fine line growing up. Yeah, imitate and iterate, not necessarily emulate right, fine, fine line. What? Um? Where do you see the industry going then? I mean a similar question, but you know when? The reading industry is certainly seems to be in decline as social media takes over, podcasts take over. You know, people can listen to a podcast maybe rather than listen to a book or read a book, or they can listen to a book rather than read a book. Where do you see this writing industry going over the next 10, 20 years?

Diana:

um, I think it will mutate a little bit, but I think that there's such a need among human beings for stories, for songs, poems, textbooks, just information, the news. There's so much in human communication that we require that AI can't do, because AI isn't intelligent. I mean, it's smart but it can't think. Yet, you know, it can't perceive, evaluate, re-examine, put forward an opinion. I think that's very far off.

Matt:

I think. Yeah, yet you mentioned news. I'm interested in your opinion or your perception around the news industry, the media industry, if that is something that we can rely on as a true source of written information by intelligent humans who are you know, and it's not too curated and it's not too compressed and it's not too censored. Is that something again that you think about or you've seen devolve over the last 10, 20, 30 years?

Diana:

devolve over the last 10, 20, 30 years, perhaps I think that with the death of magazines as well as book publishing, and it's harder for people to keep up educated opinion as far as news goes. As a consumer of news, I think you want to read more widely than you used to be able to. I used to subscribe to the Economist and that was my main news source. I wouldn't depend on it anymore. Now I have to get my news from a number of other sources because, certainly in America, but perhaps everywhere, the news is moldable, it's malleable and it's susceptible to other interests. So you have to be wide-read in the news if you want to be well-informed. I think that can include social media or traditional media that's published on social media. It can be journals that used to be in print and are now online.

Matt:

It could be some of the great newspapers, local newspapers I think the responsibility is now incumbent on on us as the public right to go and find these sources, rather than before it was. This is the source we get fed that information yes, which is? Also the danger, because people are lazy and people have 200 characters on twitter to tell everyone the news and it just becomes a little bit um, diluted for a start and necessarily maybe excluding some truths.

Diana:

But that's maybe a different conversation altogether well, yes, we see the the results of that in societies that are now so divided your home country, I guess, being one of them. Oh yes.

Matt:

Yeah, interesting. As we wrap this up, I wanted to just last question about writing Advice for writers. You know we talked about writing, the technicalities, creativity of it, but what about if people want to make a living? How do people go and get published? How do people go and get recognized? Are there any tricks of the trade?

Diana:

Or is it a lot of it down to luck? Continuous work, perseverance, all of that, yes, all of that. First of all, you want it to be good. That's not to be overlooked.

Matt:

Okay, how do you know if it's good?

Diana:

You don't. You don't, but you use your highest abilities of judgment. You try to judge your work as if somebody else had written it. You develop a critical editor in yourself.

Diana:

I think if you want to be a really good writer and that again, that comes from wide reading right, I can't emphasize that enough the next thing is you've got a manuscript. If you want to be published by a good publisher which is the best way to go and you've written a book of fiction, you absolutely need an agent, and that you just need, you need help with. You can look for agents on the internet. That's very hard. Personal connection is much, much easier, much more likely to work. So that's hard. Getting published by a good publisher is hard. That's hard. Getting published by a good publisher is hard. If you send in your book to be read, it may not get near anyone who has the right eye for it. So, again, luck is part of this.

Diana:

If you self-publish, there are ways of getting your book distributed. But fortunately I haven't had to go that route and I don't know a great deal about it, but I know that there's a lot online about it Getting your book recognized. If you're with a good publisher, they'll take care of that. If you're self-published or with a very small publisher, then you try to get it reviewed in a place where the sort of reader you're trying to reach is likely to read about it Right. And there are literary festivals, which I think can also help writers a lot, although reading and writing are solitary activities and literary festivals are very much talking places. So if you're not a good speaker, you might not do well at a literary festival. Some very good writers can't talk at all, unfortunately. So I mean, it's not a perfect venue for promoting a book, but it can help a lot.

Matt:

Well, you're certainly a good talker. It's been an absolute pleasure to listen to you. Thank you so much for coming down here and spending time with us. It's an honor to have you and I really want to invite you to narrate your book Painted Alphabet for us, just to put it in audiobook. I know a lot of people would love that, so you can come and use the studio any time. Wonderful, yeah, as long as you narrate the book for us.

Diana:

Well, thank you so much for your very kind and intelligent attention.

Matt:

Thank you, thank you again. I'm going to leave you with one question, though.

Diana:

Okay.

Matt:

I'm sure a lot of people want to hear this. What's your favorite book?

Diana:

My favorite book oh one.

Matt:

Give us top three. Okay, top three that we should all read tomorrow.

Diana:

Well, it depends on what you like, and I'm not sure you would like any of these, but I'll give you three. One is Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It's the first book in a trilogy that she wrote about the marriages of Henry VIII. Some of the marriages Okay. It's just brilliantly written. Non-fiction or fiction she's written this like a novel but, it's a historical novel and it's very powerful.

Diana:

I've read a lot since then. I've read the whole trilogy twice and I admire her so much that I'm reading her early books now, and they're not nearly as good. It's interesting to see how she grew, how she grew into this tremendous stature yeah, to be able to write.

Matt:

No one really just makes it straight away, do they? I mean very, very, very few people actually like get a hit with their first attempt at anything no, it's a it's.

Diana:

It's amazing. Um another book that I love uh is called a paragon a p e I r a g o n a paragon it's a greek word, okay now that's written by an irishman about. This is a. This reads like a novel, but it's a true story. It's the revelation of a true story of two men One is Israeli, one is Palestinian and both of them had young daughters that were murdered by the other side.

Matt:

They're quite topical for today.

Diana:

Yes, and they become friends. It's an incredibly moving story and also so wonderfully told.

Matt:

And the author's name.

Diana:

I'll send it to you. And then the third book would be something I read about 60 years ago called as I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner. It's a very short book, but it was written from the point of view of a woman who's dying and her different children. It's just very wonderful as an object. It's like a little jewel.

Matt:

Great. Well, we're going to check those out for sure. Thank you so much again. Hopefully we'll, have you in here another time, hopefully narrating the painted alphabet. But, until then, thank you so much.

Diana:

Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you.

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Matt Jacob

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