Ask the Author: Linda Cockburn
Answered Questions (9)
Linda Cockburn
The Quiet Revolution. A Masterplan for a Flourishing World. This has been the work of years. Working through the threads of what we do wrong looking for points of departure from it. Solutions that don't just create the next wave of problems and require short-term thinking. But instead assume we want to save not just ourselves but every generation to come. The answers are all indigenous, but need to be made 'new' in a way we will embrace, and live off the back of the current world we've created, but grow it into something that doesn't just make the planet flourish, but us all.
Often books talk about all the things that are wrong for 75% of the book, it's hard not to, but we all know it, we don't need our noses ground into that shit-pile. We want answers, not just the vague, we need ingenious solutions, or look, here's another piece of tech that will ensure we don't need to change, we can keep leveraging more out of the diminishing world.
I've read a lot of books full of graphs and statistics, science is awesome, and we need to rely on it more than ever, but people are increasingly unswayed by facts. Facts which are now on the chopping block, constantly contested and disputed. Change is not going to come from piling more facts on. We've become fact-resistant. So how do we change? We're going to change not because the situation demands it, but because we want to. Our human foibles are on display. So what life would we choose over this one? The dominant paradigm can only be changed by a stronger one. What is stronger than the religion of easy and endless novelty and consumption?
We want our lives to mean something, not just be caught up in the cogs of an economic system. We're bowed down in debt that can never be repaid, personal or environmental, if we continue as we are. We're tired of being busy, and made ashamed if we complain of it. We set everyone free of debt. From personal to global debt. We wipe the Monopoly board clean. Put it away and pull out a different one, one based on Reciprocity. Not just to each other, but to the planet.
Reciprocity is the method by which we arrived in the Anthropocene with so many resources. All the generations that came before us lived by it. They gave back as much as they took. It's the law of the universe. If you take more than you give, eventually there's nothing left.
And changing how we live, how we view the world and each other could be the greatest gift we have to give. We'd regain not just a stable planet, but meaning. We'd become heroes.
The Quiet Revolution is how we might do that. What it might look like, who we might yet become.
The future is the most exciting place we've never been.
Often books talk about all the things that are wrong for 75% of the book, it's hard not to, but we all know it, we don't need our noses ground into that shit-pile. We want answers, not just the vague, we need ingenious solutions, or look, here's another piece of tech that will ensure we don't need to change, we can keep leveraging more out of the diminishing world.
I've read a lot of books full of graphs and statistics, science is awesome, and we need to rely on it more than ever, but people are increasingly unswayed by facts. Facts which are now on the chopping block, constantly contested and disputed. Change is not going to come from piling more facts on. We've become fact-resistant. So how do we change? We're going to change not because the situation demands it, but because we want to. Our human foibles are on display. So what life would we choose over this one? The dominant paradigm can only be changed by a stronger one. What is stronger than the religion of easy and endless novelty and consumption?
We want our lives to mean something, not just be caught up in the cogs of an economic system. We're bowed down in debt that can never be repaid, personal or environmental, if we continue as we are. We're tired of being busy, and made ashamed if we complain of it. We set everyone free of debt. From personal to global debt. We wipe the Monopoly board clean. Put it away and pull out a different one, one based on Reciprocity. Not just to each other, but to the planet.
Reciprocity is the method by which we arrived in the Anthropocene with so many resources. All the generations that came before us lived by it. They gave back as much as they took. It's the law of the universe. If you take more than you give, eventually there's nothing left.
And changing how we live, how we view the world and each other could be the greatest gift we have to give. We'd regain not just a stable planet, but meaning. We'd become heroes.
The Quiet Revolution is how we might do that. What it might look like, who we might yet become.
The future is the most exciting place we've never been.
Linda Cockburn
Gerald Durrell's Corfu, overlooking the Aegean Sea. Or Keri Hulme's Lighthouse in The Bone People. I'm always attracted to books with people living in remote, peopleless forests in a cozy cabin surrounded in books and a well-provisioned pantry.
Linda Cockburn
Find your voice, maybe you've already found yours. It just feels right, it's the natural conversation you have in your head, and when your pen hits the paper it flows and it's undeniably you.
I found AI Marlowe, an online bot that will, for free, tell you what writer your voice is most like. I loved that the closest for me was Khaled Hosseini, and it gelled for me. The voices I love to read are the ones closest to my own. Not surprising really, their words already have a map in my head.
Pinpoint the writers you love most, not just for the storylines, but for how they write them, how they structure it. Analyse them. It's easier to analyse someone else's writing. The insights you can then apply to your own writing and shorten the time it takes to learn from your own mistakes. Which we all, inevitably do. It's not emulation, you'll always graft on something new and branch out into a different space. But it's a wonderful point to diverge from.
I found AI Marlowe, an online bot that will, for free, tell you what writer your voice is most like. I loved that the closest for me was Khaled Hosseini, and it gelled for me. The voices I love to read are the ones closest to my own. Not surprising really, their words already have a map in my head.
Pinpoint the writers you love most, not just for the storylines, but for how they write them, how they structure it. Analyse them. It's easier to analyse someone else's writing. The insights you can then apply to your own writing and shorten the time it takes to learn from your own mistakes. Which we all, inevitably do. It's not emulation, you'll always graft on something new and branch out into a different space. But it's a wonderful point to diverge from.
Linda Cockburn
There are so many paths our lives might have taken. Pivotal moments and parallel universes. When we make a choice, or a choice is made for us. Sometimes I sit at the crossroads of those historical moments and wonder what my life would be like had this happened, or had not transpired.
What would I be doing, who my children would be, if Andrew & Carl, my deceased partners had not died all those years ago. I'm very happy in how my life has turned out, but the mystery of those possibilities sometimes haunt me.
I wouldn't mind an opportunity for a spot of time travel.
What would I be doing, who my children would be, if Andrew & Carl, my deceased partners had not died all those years ago. I'm very happy in how my life has turned out, but the mystery of those possibilities sometimes haunt me.
I wouldn't mind an opportunity for a spot of time travel.
Linda Cockburn
I mostly read non-fiction. Fiction is a rare treat, and I love it, to be caught up in someone else's world. At the moment my bedside table has Scott Ludlum's Full Circle, which is beautifully written. Tim Jackson's Post Growth. Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky, Can We Save the Natural World in Time? and Hugh Mackay's The Kindness Revolution. I continue to dip in and out of the Cloudspotter's Guide.
Linda Cockburn
I find that getting into flow, which is the opposite of writer's block can be attained two ways. One is I torment myself with not letting myself write, building a big head of writing steam, I'll play with the characters and write a line or two, notes to myself, a piece of dialogue, and insight into the characters. But I won't start writing till I have a very strong sense of who they are and where they are going. Start too soon and it becomes a halting process. It changes, but that energy needs revving up before I let it go.
Or, if that time is not available to me I'll write, often it feels like in circles, but I'll keep writing, not going back and editing, or rewriting. That's for later. Do it too soon and I'll come back to the point of writing something new and nothing will be there. Some of it I know is crud, even while writing it, but eventually I'll grab hold of the tail of the snake and off we go.
Or, if that time is not available to me I'll write, often it feels like in circles, but I'll keep writing, not going back and editing, or rewriting. That's for later. Do it too soon and I'll come back to the point of writing something new and nothing will be there. Some of it I know is crud, even while writing it, but eventually I'll grab hold of the tail of the snake and off we go.
Linda Cockburn
I wrote a poem decades ago using the line Eat My Shadow, Swallow My Echo. I thought it sounded like a great title. Decades later I stumbled over the words while writing an assignment for a Professional Writing Degree. The first three chapters were written. Life intervened, no time to complete it. Regretfully I put it away. That was in 2013. In 2018 I stumbled across the chapters once more and knew I couldn't not write the rest.
Linda Cockburn
Writing taught me how to lucid dream. I didn't realise what I was doing was a thing. I was working full-time, 7 days a week running an heirloom seed growing business and writing had to take a back seat. But it didn't want to. Eat My Shadow wanted to be written and it was insistent. I remember telling my partner if I didn't write it I would go mad. Then I'd turn out the light, be in that in-between sleep and awake place and the characters would start talking. I'd hear/see passages of up to 500 words. Then I'd force myself to wake completely, snap on the light and write it down, often in reverse. I'd do this off and on all night, often my writing was barely legible, especially when I didn't bother to turn on the light. And yes, my partner and I sleep in separate rooms - and love it!
Linda Cockburn
Being in a state of flow. When time stops and the words start dancing. It's magic. I'm addicted.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more