Holly Ringland - Author

Author Holly Ringland has well and truly picked up the pen. In the past five years, she has published two novels – The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, and she has just released her first non-fiction title, The House That Joy Built, which explores the transformative power of creative work.  Meanwhile, the screen adaptation of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart screened this year on Amazon Prime.

Holly's creativity and joy seem to radiate from her.  But to courageously begin writing the stories she'd been longing to write her whole life, first she had release herself from the grip of fear. 

Holly describes this life changing moment and how she sustains herself through the marathon of the work – to create stories that have now connected her with so many adoring readers.

WE HEART HOLLY RINGLAND.

Transcript

Are You Still Working?! Holly Ringland
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Courtney: [00:00:00] Hello, gorgeous listeners. Welcome to the very first episode of, Are You Still Working?! How to take your creative ideas seriously. I'm Courtney Collins, and I would like to begin this first season by acknowledging the Gumbaynggirr people, the traditional custodians of the land I live and work on in the mid North coast of New South Wales.

I pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Their sovereignty was never ceded. This podcast values connection, creativity, and storytelling. And I am so delighted to bring you episode one, Holly Ringland.

Holly Ringland is an acclaimed Australian author whose love of stories and storytelling prowess has won her ardent fans and international admiration. Reading Holly's work, I get the sense she's been wandering through the natural world her whole life, [00:01:00] paying a great deal of loving attention. And from this loving attention, she creates stories of resilience that connect deeply with her readers. I call it the ripples of Ringland or the Ringland effect. And you can find it in her debut novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and her second novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding. And as if she intuited the invitation to be our first guest on this podcast, Holly has just released The House That Joy Built, her first book of nonfiction, which is all about what happens when you move through fear and the transformative power of actually doing creative work. When I spoke to Holly via Zoom, it was just a few weeks before the book came out.

Welcome. We're on Gadigal country in Sydney, where are you today?

Holly: I am talking to you, Courtney, from Yugambeh land, which is the Gold Coast hinterland in Southeast Queensland.

And it's [00:02:00] a gorgeous blue sky day, the gum trees are swishing and just before I came in to talk to you, the magpies gave me a nice carol outside. You know, I'm in a singlet. It's a classic winter's morning here. 

Courtney: I know, at the particular point you are in your career, you're doing a lot of work that's seen and very public facing. So I wanted to just, I guess, step a little bit away from the public facing stuff. 

Holly: Wonderful. 

Courtney: And I expect it will, possibly resonate with some themes that you've been exploring deeply for your new book. Let's start with what are you working on this week? 

Holly: That's a, that's a beautiful question and it gives me pause to revel in the sheer delight of floating around in your mind, CC, because the way you phrase things the things that you're interested in, the [00:03:00] questions that you have have kept me steady for years through email, because this is the first time we've spoken voice to voice and the way that I, you know, you talk about the ripples of Ringland, but from the very earliest emails, I can remember us exchanging back in 2016. I think I reached out to you knowing that I was safe to do so because I was kind of drowning in doing the work, the unseen work and the hard work that the graft of writing, which is that you have to find and sustain so much will to do it alone, particularly when it's without guarantee or understanding or visibility.
The truth at the moment is that my week is a combination of trying to deeply rest my central nervous system from so much front facing work, which is a privilege, and it is [00:04:00] something that as writers we are working So inherently, deeply, indescribably grateful for, to audiences that are not intimate, that you can't always see, that you can't feel. And when that's how you're made, that public facing stuff can be really tough. I'm now using the term micro rest.

I think I have nothing on for three hours. I'm going to lie my whole body down and I am going to. Play Mario Kart with my partner, Sam. So we're middle-aged people that scream and play Mario Kart together for respite and it is joy and it's wonderful, or I go outside and I sit with the dogs or I listen to the birds, or I sit with my Mum while she's gardening, you know, those are the micro rest windows that I'm pulling together. Things that I'm doing this week - I have a couple of written interview type pieces that I need to answer [00:05:00] about The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, my first novel, which is now a series, and so I need to remember how to talk about that and talk about all of the hard, true, beautiful things from that book.

I've got a few things about My second novel that people are asking me to speak to the Seven Skins of Esther Wilding. So I'm remembering how that book feels and how to talk about that. And then as you said, my third book is coming out. So there's the swirl of pre publication where I'm talking to all of the magicians behind the scene in the village that make books like our agent publishing team, those sorts of people about how to talk about the book.

So I find myself in this extraordinary and unexpected foreign country. That I've never visited before where all at once I'm talking about three bodies of work that my brain still haven't caught up to the fact that I've actually even pulled from the unseen out of my [00:06:00] body. And now they live out there and that's my week.

Courtney: Wow. Respect, respect. I mean as you're describing, you know, in this really short amount of time, the bubbling up of your inner life , has been exposed and celebrated and rightfully so.

Can you take yourself back, before those, you know, momentous occurrences and think about a time when, I guess things began to shift for you, you know, moving from, the unseen work, and, a lifetime of writing and thinking about stories to, I guess, yeah. Popping, popping that seal.

Holly: I had lived in fear of being a failure if I tried to write the stories that I have felt in my body like silt. At the bottom of a river, procrastination, fear of failure, perfectionism, all of those forces had such a grip [00:07:00] on even my ability to allow myself to let my thoughts unspool, to allow myself to daydream, despite me knowing at the same time in this war with myself, that writing was the one thing about myself that has never changed.

And I guess when I say writing, I mean storytelling and I've known that about myself since I was three. My mum taught me to read at that age and that love of story has existed in me and that, that lured to it. 

But the time I was 34. I was in such a tight chokehold of a grip with fear that I think the only thing that could have shaken me free popped the seal, as it were. In my case was kind of a volcanic eruption. to jolt me out of the grip that fear had on me.

And the volcano was sitting in [00:08:00] hospital with a beloved family member who died very quickly. And I was with him when he breathed. And then he didn't breathe again. that was my first experience of witnessing death in anyone beloved to me, a dog, a family member, a friend. I'd experienced bereavement, but I had not been with somebody when they died.

And he was one of my biggest champions And in the madness of grief after that moment. I turned, it's funny, I was writing about this for the house that Joy built that I could not read another grief pamphlet. I couldn't focus on fiction.

I couldn't read non fiction. And even, you know, Mario Kart wouldn't have helped me. Rom coms wouldn't have helped me.

But I found myself turning towards books about creativity Austin Kleon's 'Steal Like an Artist', which is all about how creativity is in our body and that we will [00:09:00] only ever experience what we want with our creativity if we find the courage to be seen, to come out of the unseen and to be seen.

So that violence of, of the experience of having the honor of witnessing the death of somebody that I love. Is what it took to pull me out of the decades long stasis that I was in, and I just thought I would never overcome the fear. It was about six weeks after he died. I was in England. I was home alone. My partner, Sam had gone to work. It was a beautiful day like today and grief comes so unpredictably. You think you're fine. And then suddenly you're wailing at the postman when they knock on the front door. Luckily that day I spared the Royal Mail postman but I did go and sit in the back garden and I just, it just went through me like a harpoon in that way that the wave will come, it overtakes you [00:10:00] and you kind of, you can't even keep it inside. It's just the wail that comes out and I, in that madness after the wail, I went upstairs to my office and I thought about this man who had died, who was so beloved to me and his twinkling big eyes and, and his smile. And with rage, I thought 'What would happen if for 10 minutes, you just don't listen to all the reasons why you're not good enough to do this thing that has been asking you, has been making your body sick, has been clawing at your throat and knocking at the inner walls of your heart. Has been asking you to exist. What if the 10 minutes you don't listen to why you're not good enough? And what if you just try?' And I, leading up to this, CC, I had done all the things. Hemingway had a moleskin notebook. So I went, I don't know why I was taking cues out of Hemingway's book, And I was a student. No one [00:11:00] can afford moleskins when you're a student. Food budget on the moleskins. I bought a fountain pen. I grew up on the Gold Coast. I've never used a fountain pen in my life. I bought a fountain pen, I bought the ink refills. So I sat there at my desk thinking this, and I remember taking the cap off my fountain pen. I've told this moment in interviews and in stories many times, but it never loses it's power over me. I always feel quite shaky when I say this, because in just that moment of asking myself who I could be, if I didn't believe for one second that I was not enough, I took the cap off the fountain pen and I, my hand shook and then I, it was like dissociation. My body went cold and I watched my hand and I watched myself write the opening line to the Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. 'In the weatherboard house at the end of the lane, nine year old Alice Hart sat at her [00:12:00] desk by the window and dreamed of ways to set her father on fire'. I dropped my pen and I said something like, holy f**k.

And then I felt. I remember sort of a little gasp. I thought, Oh, here she is. This is something. And that was the combination of the destruction of a version of my life and the beginning of the creation of a life where the unseen and the seen came crashing up against each other where my sense of safety had been all about what was seen. Never about what was in the unseen.

Courtney: The ripples of Ringland are ringing through my body right now. 

Thank you. Thank you for telling that story. 

What were you doing, before your writing life exploded in the real world? 

I worked kind of at everything that wasn't a trade. And by trade, I mean, I never became a [00:13:00] doctor or a lawyer or a nurse or anything like that. I worked in retail. I worked in hospitality. I was a temp in admin in data entry. I was a secretary, an executive assistant. I worked as a ranger in a national park on and off for four years on Anangu country, Pitjantjatjara land in the Northern Territory. I was a public servant. I kind of did a little bit of everything and then moved to the UK to be a mature aged student at 29 to try and pursue the dream of becoming a writer as a way of saving my own life at the time, because my life was just in ruins after leaving what I swore to myself would be the last violent relationship I would ever have. 

So I moved to Manchester undertake a Master of [00:14:00] Creative Writing, not because I thought university would teach me to be a writer, but because if I went to the UK without structure, I feared that I would become a 29 year old working in a pub, and I had done that sort of backpacking working life. I wanted more structure than that. I had life savings to do it, But, you know, I graduated that in 2011, and it took me another three years before that day at my desk.

Yeah. But I've, God, I've done everything. Ugh. 

Courtney: Research, we call it. 

I love that you bought the moleskin and that you bought the fountain pen, the material, you know, representations of, this is what the writer needs. In terms of the material world, what are the things that you reach for in your world at the moment to remind yourself of the writer that you are? Because you, you, you have manifested all of this so what, what does that look like now? 

Holly: Oh, these are [00:15:00] beautiful questions.

So my incredible, beautiful partner, Sam, years ago when I was writing the Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Sam and I would take long walks together in green spaces near our house. And there was one day where we came home. And as I was emptying my pockets of sticks covered in lichen and feathers and pebbles and dried leaves and a flower, and so on, Sam was just sort of standing to the side. And I looked at him and he just had that look on your face with somebody that knows you really well, that just makes you laugh and you're like, what? And he kind of pointed at every windowsill and ledge in our house. And he's like, going for a walk with you you know, especially when you're writing, it is like going for a walk with the most joyful dog that has been told there's no limit of how many treasures they can bring home from the park. And I, I roared with laughter and I [00:16:00] kind of said, there's no higher compliment Thank you. And so I consciously and unconsciously gather, I'm in this space of my long suffering, beautiful parents who we have been unintentionally living with from England since 2020, and I have taken over their office. I've written two books on their property now. In the. Post pandemic, current pandemic living world that we're all in and having even no space of my own has not stopped the dog going to the park and bringing home the treasures.

So, while I'm standing here talking to you, I have a woven basket with Maireener shells from Lutruwita, Tasmania, filled with gumnuts that I have collected, a banksia leaf, a bird feather, and a I have little Lego figurines of Mr. Fredrickson and Russell, the small [00:17:00] mailman from Up.

I have sprigs of lavender from Mum's Garden. I have all of the jewelry that I very intentionally put on every morning, depending on how I'm feeling and what motif reminds me of what story I want to hold close, like I realise as we're talking that the abalone shell that I'm wearing today and the gold swan that's with it, it reminds me of Esther, I gather, I wear it on my body and I keep it around me wherever I am in my space.

Because Mary Oliver said, right, joy was not made to be a crumb. I am not a minimalist. Marie Kondo doesn't know who she said, does it spark joy? Yes. Welcome to my menagerie. The core of what I gather, I [00:18:00] realise are the things that brought me wonder when I was a kid. And somewhere along the way, we forget that as adults, we are still awed and we still feel wonder about the same things that we noticed when we were little people taking in the world for the first time. I gather and I embody the inside worlds on the outside because to have an imagination that you are connected to is to live in two worlds.

So I think I am constantly engaging and making the imaginary world and the other world and the mystery of that. Known to me in things that bring me awe and beauty and wonder. So it can be tangible. It's a way of speaking to the inside, to the inner country, and saying, in the [00:19:00] same way that I speak to outer country and landscapes, Hello, I'm here. I'm glad to be visiting. I'm grateful to be on this land. The imagination is the inner country and I treat it in the same way. 

Courtney: by the nature of your success, I'm imagining there's a lot of travel involved and being in other people's spaces. when you don't perhaps have your, your tactile talismans around you or, or easily accessible How do you I guess in those kind of microcosms, how do you create the conditions for yourself in order to, to write or create? Or do you just wait?

Holly: No, that's, that's a beautiful thing to ponder because it is so true. I mean, the sight of suitcases sort of make me throw up in my mouth and yet you know, like I have the privilege of movement and the ability to travel and all of those things. It's just the ache for stability that we have as humans where it's, I just want to [00:20:00] stop for, you know, it's like when anything is out of balance, we want whatever is imbalanced more than the other. When I am away from my stationary treasures that I gather, to go into the headspace into that inner country I was just talking about, it feels a little bit like I need to create the conditions or the spaceship or the air travel where I can go through that veil into the world. And I use whatever resources I have at my disposal. So I think that's where jewellery plays a massive part for me in the sense of not just adorning myself in colour and beauty and texture that inspires a tactile thinking space inside of my mind. But also being very selective if I choose and made jewellery because it carries the courage of the person who made it.[00:21:00] 

And when I wear it, I think they went through the wash of all the same things I go through, even like, if I have no idea who The jeweller is personally, but if I wear woven earrings or resin poured rings or an abalone shell that I'm wearing today, that somebody else has fastened a molten sort of little bail on so that you can hang it from a chain.

I'm wearing other women's work, other women's courage. And that gives me that sense of. Connectedness and company when I am alone in my work, and then the resources that we have to hand, you know, our phones that can be such shackles and weights around all of our necks, the quickest way I can go into the space that I need to go into the world behind the veil is music.

And it's music without lyrics. [00:22:00] It may be if I want to sort of gee myself up, I'll thrash around to Pearl Jam, but when it's time to get to work, it is all sort of modern or classical music without lyrics, but always a very big swelling melody, because it's the language of emotions.

my go to is Ludovico Einaudi. he is my go to musician on Spotify and following on from him and speaking about the algorithm, using it to our advantage. It has brought me into discovering other modern classical composers and their music that I would never find otherwise.

And it can be everybody from Max Richter, who's really well known, but also somebody that I'm quite besotted with is Hania Rani, who's a Polish modern composer, and she composed music as it happens. [00:23:00] That's in the series of the Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. Wow. So those are a few people off the top of my head. And it's the doorway. That's how I get in. And if. I've got those things at my disposal and I still feel like the well is dry inside, I will seek out and practice the idea that input is output. So I will use. Apps like Pinterest, for example, even though everything is so full of ads today, everything just feels like you're constantly being sold to.

If you can manage that fracturous noise on these apps and use them for their function, like just even searching for quotes about, say, the ocean on Pinterest or. a place that comes to [00:24:00] mind or a season or a vintage illustration or an artwork. making the algorithm actually work for you so that it shows you things related that you might not ever look up or know to look up or find otherwise.

So those three things, are how, I, find the path inwards when I don't have The comfort and the soothing effects of being somewhere where you're not constantly in transit, where you're not living out of suitcases. And are these clean undies or dirty undies?

I mean, it's like, those are just not the most romantic conditions for creativity. So wherever you can bring yourself that. Sense of magic that you were when you were a kid and even you, you watched Astro Boy or, you know, and you're like, Oh my God, people living in space or, or just finding a shell on the beach.

And you're like, who's lucky enough to [00:25:00] find this perfect shell??

Holly: those sorts of feelings is what I constantly am trying to connect with and find as an adult because. Being a thinking, feeling, creating person can be a really shaky way to live because you're always cracking yourself open that version of ourselves, when we were little and young, Is where the potent experiences of knowing the power of play, imagination, the natural world, awe and wonder, and a quality of life comes from that is so powerful when we are adults managing so many hard experiences. 

Courtney: You're giving me so much that I'm going to apply as soon as I get home, I guess I'm wondering, given you've come out of such an intensive writing period what [00:26:00] you, what you learnt about yourself in writing The House That Joy Built. That you didn't even know a few months ago.

Holly: I'm ever humbled by realising how mean we can be to ourselves in our brains without possibly realising that that narrative has the microphone. So when I signed the contract to write The House That Joy Built, I didn't have a word. There was nothing in a Microsoft Word document. I didn't have a word down. Not one. Yeah. It was just the idea. And, 

Courtney: and I would, sorry to interrupt, but the faith and trust of your people and your publisher, 

Holly: No, that's absolutely right. and I was, I had low psychological defenses because I was tired and when I, you know, I don't know about anybody else, but when I am mentally tired, it is so much harder to [00:27:00] regulate the negative bias that our brains have in our DNA because in terms of human evolution, negative information had more value to us so that we could protect ourselves and live, but now in modern lives, negative bias, Uh, the idea of like, Holly, can you write a book and my negative bias being no, like my life is not under threat and yet it feels like it is. So it was, it was an, it was a moment of, will you accept the faith and belief that other people have in you and what you have to say that you don't even think you have to say. working hard on anything is hard. the easy option is not doing it or giving up, but staying the distance, like running your first half marathon or a marathon.

Like it's not fun. The 38, the 38 [00:28:00] km is like. I am going to die. 

Courtney: I don't feel very well. 

Holly: I don't feel well. What, you know, why am I, like the hard work is, it's going to push you for everything that you've got. I think the difference between me in 2023 and maybe me in 2018 was when this opportunity came based on the faith and belief that others had in me and I was the one stumbling, going, I don't know if I can do this.

I sat really quietly and I just heard a question in my mind that I've written into the house that Joy built. And the question was, but what if you can? what if you can? You feel like you can't and you know it's going to be hard and you know you're going to hit the 38k mark and sort of beg someone to put you out of your misery.

But what if you can make it over the finish line? What if you can write a book? Under these tight conditions, what if you can meet this [00:29:00] opportunity that seems to have come to you off the backs of other people's instincts and story skills? And I had the words of Frida Kahlo on my wall because I love her for all the reasons everybody loves her. I especially for the beauty that she created in pain. And I had her words on the wall. and I'm paraphrasing here, we can so often bear more than we think we can. So I just every day asked myself, what if you can, and what if it's not as bad as negative bias is catastrophizing in your head? And what if you do uncover something writing this book that you didn't know about yourself beforehand?

And what if it's not shit? what if people don't think that it's rubbish? what if it offers anybody something that might make them feel less alone? What if? What if you [00:30:00] can? 

Courtney: Your insight is so welcome in my life. 

When we first talked about this podcast, you were Already high on my list, and I didn't even know you were writing the House that Joy built. But I think there is something from your your deep and courageous exploration of all the realms and your incredible gift of articulation that is, How can I say it?

It's just pure gold, Holly, and I really, I can't wait for people to hear this because I think anyone that hears what you have to say about courage and how to be with yourself and how to be kind to yourself and negotiating these realms. Will just actually get such an accelerated kind of program So, thank you on behalf of everybody who's coming. The vast audience that we are. Bringing towards us. 

Holly: I feel like [00:31:00] I want a curtsy, like, 

Courtney: Well, please do.

Holly: like a deep sort of curtsy or, or sort of some sort of genderless bow or something. Thank you for this. 

Courtney: Are You Still Working?! is an independently produced podcast by me, Courtney Collins and produced by Lisa Madden.

If you enjoyed listening, you can support us by reviewing it and telling all your friends. And if you want to stay connected to creative prompts and highlights from our episodes, follow us on Instagram at Are You Still Working?! Till next time.