Erin Pearce: Monsters, Grief and Courageous Outcasts

Time and space in a beautiful little cabin in the Perth hills reminded me that ‘Writer Erin’ was only waiting, not extinguished.

My stay at KSP was nothing short of transformative. I arrived as a burnt-out, full-time working mum who, in the busyness and strife of life, had come to believe that the writer within her would just have to wait.

And I’d waited years, sitting on words and stories and silencing the cry to create because I was too busy, tired, and overwhelmed. After my son was born in 2021, my husband did his best to support us while juggling two jobs, but I suffered horrible post-natal depression, and it often left me feeling like a single mum. I’d originally hoped that maternity leave might offer some space to write, but between caring for my baby and trying to manage the house while battling my brain, the dream slipped away.

Before the Caruso Writer-in-Residence Program, I was incapable of even considering re-entering the world of the novel I had started trying to write seven years ago. So much time had passed. I had returned to work in three part-time jobs to help us stay afloat in the financial climate. Even if I could create a moment in the chaos of life to sit down and look at my novel, I could never write anything. It was like reading someone else's manuscript. To me, the thought of writing was accompanied by the kind of dread and fear provoked by an impending meeting with an estranged relative, whom I only see once every couple of years and feel I hardly know.

But embracing the priceless gift of time and space in a beautiful little cabin in the Perth hills reminded me that ‘Writer Erin’ was only waiting, not extinguished. For two weeks, I detangled myself from the ‘real world’ and immersed myself in my book – a speculative fiction novel for young adults about monsters, grief and courageous outcasts.

I took courage in an amazing quote by Bruce Rascoe that I found scrawled in one of the cabin diaries left on the desk: “A writer is still working if he is staring out of the window.” As a working mum, time often moves quickly, without remorse, and unless you can create purposeful space for it, the slow and quiet moments pass by without so much as an apologetic wave. It was very difficult to sit and just ‘be’, but I enjoyed my first afternoon in the cabin often just staring out of the window. I permitted myself to remember that sitting and thinking about my story was still a part of writing. I wrote as I crocheted between ‘desk sessions’. I wrote as I took myself for walks in the crisp air while chasing the sunset.

I finished re-reading my abandoned draft document, and by Day Four, I felt like I knew my characters again and could journey with them into new territory. And then I wrote my first new chapter. It was short, but it stitched events together and was so much fun. Oh my goodness, I was writing!

Every day after that was different. Sometimes, the words flew out of my fingers, and I kept writing through the night and into the early morning hours. Sometimes, there was silence, punctuated by surprises, such as random brainwaves that resulted in the ‘accidental’ mapping out of a picture book concept. Other days, I was struck by a massive download of ideas, thoughts, and scenes to write.

I worked up my ‘writing fitness’ again, flexed muscles that I thought had atrophied. And the more the flow of words returned to me, the more I felt that I just might be a writer still. That I just might be able to keep writing once I got home.

I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I still work three jobs. I still have a little human depending on me. I still need to make sure I spend time with my husband during the week. We still have a home to run, bills to pay, meals to prepare, chores to get done. But I have to tell you, KSP renewed my determination. Even busy, dog-tired and sometimes overwhelmed, I’ve grabbed what time I could and I have written! And I have returned to my novel each session as though continuing a conversation with a good friend. I may not have endless time available to me, but I will take what I can get, and I will write.

My residency wasn’t about my word count  (although what I achieved was a definite bonus). It was about restored confidence, a rediscovery of enjoyment, and a complete mindset change. I have not been this happy in such a long time, and I hadn’t even realised it. Many friends reminded me during this time that it is not selfish to ‘fill your tank’. In fact, as a mum it is essential.

So I left KSP with the stunning revelation that I cannot live well without nurturing this crucial, wonderful part of my identity. I might be a wife and a mother, but if I am not also a writer, I will be an incomplete version of myself. And my husband and son deserve to know the best me.

My exclusion from writing due to being a working-class mum is not unique. How many brilliant voices have gone unheard, silenced by the economic, social and cultural barriers that dictate who gets to create, to be heard and to belong? There was absolutely no way for me to get to this point without KSP’s commitment to elevating marginalised voices (including working mothers) through the Caruso Writer-in-Residence Program. Thank you, KSP, for this pivotal moment in my career and life, for validating a mother’s journey, story and place in the world, and for giving her back her voice.

Every mum deserves to be her whole self, and the world deserves to hear her story.

Erin Pearce is a writer, mother and library technician from Perth, Western Australia. She was shortlisted for the John Marsden Prize for Young Writers in 2010 and the 2012 QANTAS Spirit of Youth Award (Written Word Category). Her stories and poems have been published in several Australian literary journals and magazines, such as Indigo and dotdotdash, and her creative non-fiction piece “My Scallywag Suit” was published in the Fremantle Press anthology, The Kid on the Karaoke Stage and Other Stories. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing) from Curtin University, where she received the Outstanding Student Prize for Creative Writing in 2007 and First Class Honours in 2008. With her husband, she wrangles a cheeky three-year-old in Perth’s northern inner suburbs.