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Voice Within: A Storybook by Storytellers
This podcast narrates to you short stories, poems and letters from a collective of authors. It is a simple cup of tea in hand, or a long drive kind of moment, to truly immerse yourself in a tale or two. For the love of a good story!
Voice Within: A Storybook by Storytellers
Finding Your Voice: How To Find Your Creative Vision in Storytelling - An Interview with CJ Melchizedek
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Voice Within: a storyteller's exclusive
Subscribe to show your support for all authors, storytellers and writers.What happens when a teenage fantasy reader discovers an undeniable creative calling that transforms their entire life? In this captivating conversation, writer CJ shares the remarkable journey of finding his creative vision and how it became the compass guiding his life choices, spiritual evolution, and artistic expression.
From hidden bedroom scribblings in a small rural Australian town to Melbourne's vibrant art scene, CJ's writing passion evolved alongside his expanding worldview. He reveals how the imperative to write—not just a want but a need—motivated academic improvement, major life changes, and ultimately led to his unique literary voice. "It set the tone and scene of my entire life," he reflects, illustrating how creative vision extends far beyond artistic output.
The heart of CJ's work centers on what he beautifully articulates as "inspiring people to be multidimensional in the modern world." Through his spiritual or visionary fiction, he crafts characters navigating between conventional reality and deeper spiritual dimensions, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health challenges. Rather than viewing these experiences as limitations, CJ reframes them as potential doorways to richer perspectives, suggesting that integration rather than rejection of our multifaceted nature leads to wholeness.
Particularly moving is the discussion of his story "A Love Letter to Humankind" in Voice Within 2nd Edition, written from a tree spirit's perspective. This piece embodies his belief that reconnecting with nature represents a return to our essential selves—a timely reminder in our increasingly technological world. Whether you're an established writer or someone just beginning to hear the call of creative expression, this conversation offers profound insights into how developing a relationship with your creative vision can transform not just your art, but your entire life journey.
For more information or to contact CJ directly about his work, email chrisjameswriteraustralia@gmail.com
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Hi, chris, good to see you. Is it okay if we call you CJ?
Speaker 2:Definitely Leigh.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the studio. So we've got some questions for you today for the Voice Within podcast, and let's just get right into it, unless you've got something to say before we start.
Speaker 2:Just that this is a subject that's very close to my heart and that I'm just stoked to be talking about it.
Speaker 1:actually, and the subject specifically.
Speaker 2:The creative vision, your creative vision. So, whoever you are, it's the subject of if you want to create or write or you feel drawn to doing that. This is all about how important that is, how you can find it, why you'd want to find it yeah, things like that and it's just something that lights me up, so I'm stoked to be talking about it.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. I'm looking forward to hearing more, so let's start. So how long have you been writing CJ so?
Speaker 2:let's start. So how long have you been writing CJ? Yeah?
Speaker 2:the other day I just turned, apparently 43 and I started seriously writing at age 14. I started reading fantasy like a lot of people started on Lord of the Rings and it was just so amazing and, yeah, it just inspired me so greatly. Even though it took a long time to read it and digest it and understand the language, it gave me this sense of growth that I loved, and so then I was just like I need to write books. That was what came to me at that age.
Speaker 1:I was like I have to do this, and did it remind you of anything else in your life, or this was a whole new adventure for you?
Speaker 2:It was a whole new adventure, and that's what was so great about it, because there wasn't anything terribly wrong with my life, but it was all just going through the motions mundane. And then there was this and it was just like wow. It wasn't a sense of I want to do this, it was I have to do this.
Speaker 1:I am doing this.
Speaker 2:And yeah, and it became apparent after my first few attempts that I didn't really have the skills to write and to write in the way I needed to to do this monumental task. But I couldn't stop anyway. I was just shamelessly writing anyway.
Speaker 1:So you were just in your bedroom, pen and paper or computer, and just letting it out, putting it down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally yeah, I think 15,. I started my trying to write my first novel and I got about 15, 20,000 words through.
Speaker 1:Ooh, you set the bar high, cj.
Speaker 2:In a couple of years, though, like it was, you know, 15 to 17 or something.
Speaker 1:Wow, and was there anyone who was privy to what you were doing? Or this was something you were just doing privately?
Speaker 2:No, I was doing it privately and kind of hiding it as well in a sense, just because I didn't have anyone around me like that who supported or understood that kind of creativity. I suppose, yeah, lived in a rural area of Australia and not rural small city in the middle of Victoria.
Speaker 1:yeah, and sorry go on no, you go. So you were reading these books and you were inspired by them, and that was what you were starting to write something that's inspired by those and recreating similar kind of worlds. Well, that was the odd thing.
Speaker 2:And this has continued through the whole time I've written. But the odd thing was that these were fantasy books and I wanted to write them but I ended up just writing biographical stuff. And it was always fictionalized elements of my life and different characters that were based on people I knew or people I'd imagined. So that's what came out and that's what I've ended up writing.
Speaker 1:Still to this day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these days I weave a lot of spiritual or new age elements in and multidimensional things, but it's usually set in the modern world, grounded into reality, semi-biographical, great yeah.
Speaker 1:So you were doing this writing in private, and before we started having this conversation, you did mention to me something about the next chapter. Can you tell us a little bit about the next chapter of your life?
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Or where you went after the private writing in the bedroom.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, sure, so, yeah. So it was a significant thing for me because, as I said, I was living in a mundane modern reality, in a rural kind of setting, very small-minded, kind of closed-minded, I guess, mentality around me, although my family were all pretty intelligent relative to everybody else, but I only learned that when I grew up.
Speaker 1:But anyway, what happened was.
Speaker 2:I got so inspired to do something with my life and do something in the world that it made me start to get better at school, because I wanted to learn the skills I needed to be able to write what I wanted to.
Speaker 2:And then, eventually, I became aware that I didn't want to stay in the place where I'd grown up, that I wanted to go to Melbourne because I knew that the universities were better and they had a creative writing department, and so it led me there. I left home and I got not only introduced to university life there, but just the most like mind-blowing art scene on every level.
Speaker 2:Like just writing theatre, painting, music, just all of it. Yeah, so for me that's why it's such a huge thing, because it kind of set the tone and the scene of my entire life. It took me from one place to another, writing itself.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. And so when you were there, did your writing because we're talking about how long you've been writing for. So then did your writing change at that time time?
Speaker 2:because we might go on to the look.
Speaker 1:Look more at the next one. We've kind of covered two things in that when did you start writing and and why do you write?
Speaker 2:so I.
Speaker 1:I got the answers to both of those in your early life, but I sounds like you've gone through quite an evolution of why do you write? It comes from the same place, but because you're in different circumstances, the response that you have is different.
Speaker 2:Definitely yeah. So after I'd landed into Melbourne for a few years, it was so mind-expanding that my writing totally did change. And what I was why I was writing at that point was I wanted to. I wanted to capture the excitement and the inspiration and the depth I was experiencing in my connections with people socially, because it was so different to what I'd had where I grew up, and so that started being the inspiration and the reason for the things I was writing.
Speaker 1:And what sort of things were you writing and did you start sharing them publicly at that time?
Speaker 2:No, because I was still trying to write entire novels.
Speaker 1:And so this was my second attempt.
Speaker 2:And I got about half a novel's, or a bit less than half a novel's worth. This second attempt, which I started when I was in first year uni and yeah, so I didn't share it with the public because I wanted to finish it and get it published. I was really ambitious and focused and focused, yeah, and naive that's okay, that's what we all do.
Speaker 1:I think, yeah, you're having your own reasons, but also influences from outside that show you other possible reasons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. Influences from outside that show you other possible reasons? Yeah, totally. So there was that phase, but then, while I was there, I was also becoming more and more of a spiritual person, because I was unwell and I was learning about healing and I was starting to hang around with a new group of people who were very focused on themselves in the way of wanting to get healed and wanting to represent truth, and then that was what then defined a change in writing style and also made my creative vision more conscious to me, and the reason of why I wanted to write then became because I want to give spirituality back to the West, because that's what had happened to me and it had enriched my life so much that, yeah, so, going from like 15, 14 to when it all started, to now to about 23, being in Melbourne for five years and having two or three years of hanging out intensively with this spiritual crew, and then, yeah, the writing freshened up and became something else again.
Speaker 1:Sounds amazing of that content coming through your spiritual connections and life aspects of your life you were living. It's a new way to share or not a mainstream way to share that kind of information that makes it more accessible to people. Totally yeah, yeah, it's through we might say entertainment in a way yeah, yeah, yeah, it's through. We might say entertainment in a way. Yeah, can you kind of describe how you feel all that comes together and how it lands with the reader.
Speaker 2:Well, how I hope it lands with the reader is that they get if they're new to spirituality. They get introduced to concepts that's woven in still with a story that they enjoy reading and that fulfills them in the sense that the character develops and they can relate to the character.
Speaker 2:But if you're more of a spiritual person, there's also depth in there or a sense of and a sense of kind of enjoyment for those people as well. Wonderful. And yeah, I'm not somebody who's sold a great deal of books or who's had a great deal of fans, but the feedback that I've gotten, particularly over the recent years it's made me really happy because I felt like those things have been happening for people.
Speaker 2:Your goal is being achieved in a way, to a degree, it's not really that heady that what you're sharing with the world is being received. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to put you on the spot, but you don't have to do it in two sentences. But if you needed to encapsulate your creative vision, can you do that in a couple of sentences, or is that something that's not so clear?
Speaker 2:No, it is. It's inspiring people to be multidimensional in the modern world and in their own lives yeah, yeah, that's what it is for me.
Speaker 1:I love that um, and that.
Speaker 2:That's what it's all about for me yeah yeah, um, and I haven't always been able to say that that came from, uh, came from doing a project a couple of years ago. That was, um, publishing a book and doing crowdfunding and things, and I had to really go oh, what is it? I'm trying to give here, you know, but yeah, that really sums it up for me. Yeah, I love that it's exciting.
Speaker 1:It's exciting. So how could you share just a couple of the themes of the stories and how that is?
Speaker 2:in practice. Yeah, so we'll go to the project I was just referring to, which is called Emerging from the Cave, which is a spiritual fiction novella that I published a couple of years ago and so, within the themes of that story, basically got a person who appears as a social outcast, or the modern world might see them as a failure because they can't handle being around people, they keep inverse hours and all this, but they have a very deep and rich inner world and they've always felt really connected in a way that is both earthly and spiritual. Yeah, yeah, so this person is heritages from Europe, parents were born there, he's the first generation born in Australia, set in Melbourne, and he starts to have ancestral dreams that go back like to before the first ice age.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Sorry, just after, yeah, about 13,000 years back. And so, yeah, basically he doesn't find it comfortable or easy, but it's about the spirituality comes into his life and then he has things it's like reality shows him and then he's like, okay, well, let's do this, and then he, he begins to basically integrate his and other things happen.
Speaker 1:I don't want to spoil the story there's don't no spoilers, but I'm getting the feel for it yeah, yeah, it's like rich.
Speaker 2:He has really intense, deep experiences and there's a love interest involved and it makes him want to move beyond his inertia and integrate back into the modern world. But bring this rich, multidimensional spirit into it and that's a pretty good example, I think.
Speaker 1:So it's a way of seeing this world quite different, starting to see this world quite differently too.
Speaker 2:Totally, and for me, some of it's personal, because I've had mental health issues since I was almost as long as I've been riding. Almost as long as I've been riding, and I for a long time, it's since even that age 15, around that age I was always like this is I'm experiencing my reality, so the nature of it is real, Like you can't say oh, or you're just tripping or you're mental or whatever.
Speaker 2:true for you? Yeah, yeah, true for me. So, um, because I've felt like that for so long, when I do these characters and put it into these stories, it's that that's how I write it and portray it and, um, I want that also, that message, to empower people and to be able to go, not be like, you know, if you're really mentally unwell, that's great. I'm not saying that More like bring the good parts of that into and acknowledge those gifts and skills and bring them into your life and integrate them into like a kind of more cohesive whole and integrate them into like a kind of more cohesive whole.
Speaker 1:That's something.
Speaker 2:I'm really passionate about because I suppose it's played out in my life and so positively.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, yeah, and I guess too with that that you step into this space. It's another one of the rich things about the art of storytelling you can step into this rich space and I think that's for everybody. When anyone either is a receiver of a story or a teller of a story, we seem to step outside of all those boxes and labelling and we step into this. I don't know, we were using the word mythic earlier, this kind of mythic world, and you used the word multidimensional world.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We can be in that space and that's I don't know. I personally know that's where I feel I'm home.
Speaker 2:Me too. Yeah, and yeah, I think mythic multidimensional, it's an interchangeable term, and that's how I feel too, and that's why I love doing it, because I want to give that to people. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Share that space together. Yeah, writer and reader. Yay, I think we're coming toward the end of our interview, so I'd just like to ask, generally speaking, how does your creative vision impact all the other areas of your life? You've touched on a few little things here, but we've stuck more to the writing, but how has it affected other parts of your life?
Speaker 2:Sure, it affected other parts of your life and sure, um, yeah, it's, it's kind of like part of it's, a clarity of going oh yeah, that's what I'm representing and bringing because I do other.
Speaker 2:I teach a particular kind of meditation and I play quite spiritual music. So the whole bringing the mythic or multidimensional to the modern world is an overarching theme, and so it's given me this sense of kind of clarity and empowerment about it and also this capacity to put it into the structures of the modern world, to be able to put the book up on Amazon and say which genre I am and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yes, so what genre do you put yourself in?
Speaker 2:New Age or multidimensional Sorry, spiritual fiction or New Age? I'm still trying to remember because it's quite different in the US how they look at that to here.
Speaker 1:And it seems to be an evolving space. That's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, visionary fiction. Oh lovely, yeah, yeah, that's a really that's a term that a bunch of writers have been working on that write the kind of things I do and I really like it, it's where there's the same kind of things character development in stories and plot and action and all that but the character's inner visionary reality is what kind of pulls the story along and drives it, so I love that term Me too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I suppose now because if I went back, say, to when I was in my early 20s, like it was the creative vision I have now, which I felt back then but maybe couldn't put it into such clear language it drove so many aspects of my existence, it made so many things evolve, it made me want to keep growing, it made me want to keep doing the work I do, and that's what I'd like to say to the listeners is that developing your If you want to write, developing a relationship with your own creative vision is incredibly rewarding.
Speaker 2:And I like to think of it as you've got kind of like a feeling aspect of it, where you can just feel that inspiration and you can let that drive you to write and just curiously, innocently, write what you want to write and you don't need to know or or say exactly what it is that it is. But then you've also got the another aspect to it, which is that drive and that fire and that ability to just get things done. And that's different to the first one. Then the third one, where you can actually define it and put it into two sentences or whatever you asked me before that's yet another thing.
Speaker 2:But they're all aspects of what is your creative vision and the craft. And the craft and that's what I want to give here is to say for me it's, it's, it's been a central thing, like a central, amazing thing for my whole life. That's created so much um evolution for me, but I feel like it really is and can be all that for everyone yes, yes, it's not just for so-called writers.
Speaker 1:We're all writers, we're all creatives. I totally support that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:I'd like to just comment a little on. You know how I can see everything you've told me like in the story in Voice Within. Everything you've talked to me about today. I loved what you. I love your story in Voice Within. It's one of my favourite stories. They're all my favourite, but one of my favourite stories and what I loved about that story is that I totally went on that journey and in the way you wrote that story there wasn't anything superfluous. It was so beautifully crafted that I just dived in and went on the journey.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's so fulfilling to hear.
Speaker 1:Thank you I just loved that about your story because mine weaves all over the place. I just loved that you took me and then I was at the end and I was blown away. So thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Thanks, lee, that's amazing to hear. Yeah, so that story, which is in Voice Within 2, called A Love Letter to Humankind, is written from the perspective of an ancient tree spirit.
Speaker 1:Love it.
Speaker 2:And it was. You know, it's kind of like a part of being multidimensional or being mythic. Is that sense of being connected to the environment and different parts of nature? Yeah, like I was just. I remember when it came, when I was starting to craft it, it was just like I've got to write this story and I've got to give it to Simona for that and yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the perfect publication for your work, I feel.
Speaker 2:And yeah, it was just so such a drive to do it and it's so fulfilling to hear you say that. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Did you do a lot of crafting or did it come through? How was the process of creating that? It was?
Speaker 2:pretty slow and carefully crafted. Well done. I did have quite a bit of flow with it too. I think, there was just maybe two or three writing sessions and just got all the material out. But then somebody helped me chop it down and edited it and be usefully critical, because when it's that trippy and that, out there you've got to really try and anchor it down, anchoring it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it was kind of like that.
Speaker 1:But trippy. I love how it's trippy, it's not trippy. Woo-woo, it's like it took me there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I was in that expanded reality. Yeah, and the message there too, and I felt it.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like, yeah, beautiful, and that message of the tree, you know the tree kingdom saying you know, it's not just sad that we're all getting killed by humankind, it's also. We always had this bond together and we, you know, we enrich each other and yeah, yeah, I just needed to get that message across.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the connection. We can't lose it. That's who we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, that too, the preciousness of that, like I really believe that nature is who we are, that's our essence and I think some of the stuff going on at the moment like I don't want to get political, but it's like, yeah, some elements of inventiveness and progress can be great. But seriously get out there in nature and relax and feel good again and remember who you are, because you'll feel so much better for it.
Speaker 1:Don't forget the foundation.
Speaker 2:That's right yeah yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 1:And just to finish off, is there a place where the listener can get access? There's Simona's books and Simona will be sharing all of those details with the listeners, but is there somewhere where the listener can access your work?
Speaker 2:The best thing to do at the moment, because of the way things are, is to email me at it's all one word, chrisjameswriteraustralia, so that's all one word, chrisjameswriteraustralia at gmailcom and send me a personal message and I can send you links to some of the work that's up or give you some of the stock you know, mail you one of my books and organize it like that because I'm in a transitionary phase with all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I put you on the spot there, and the reason we're here is to celebrate Simona's great work compiling all storytellers together, so that's a really great one for people to get.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:A cross-section of all sorts of amazing writers exploring all sorts of new territory in their writing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But should someone want to explore a little bit more down your way, it's nice to have for them to be able to contact you Definitely Thanks for that. Yay, okay, so let's wrap up and I'd like to say thank you so much for coming today to be interviewed and really appreciate being the person to interview you, and I love your work and wish you all the best. And please finish with what you'd like to say, chris thanks very much, lee.
Speaker 2:I'm just so happy to be doing this and in this space talking about this. I'm so passionate about writing and, yeah, it just feels good to be doing this, so, thank you.
Speaker 1:Go Samona, bringing storytelling back to the Australian culture.
Speaker 2:Indeed, for sure, okay.
