Category: writing

There comes a point…

…when you grow so tired of telling yourself to do something that you finally just settle in and do it. I’ve been writing ‘a post a day’ in one form or another on my to-do list for so long, that the blergh of not doing it has started to outweigh the discomfort that I feel about sitting down to write.

I feel like I’ve forgotten how to write, and I’m hoping that writing on here, on this not-quite-anonymous but mostly invisible place will help me to train my brain to think in a writing kind of way. I wish I could write ‘re-train’ instead of ‘train’ but looking back through all my files I am faced with the truth that for someone who feels her life work to be ‘writing’ I ‘have written’ very little. I have almost nothing left in my years of notes that I haven’t already used, so whenever I start something new (like my Christmas show that is only three weeks away, or my new show for fringe which is only three months away) I am starting from absolute scratch. There is no momentum to kick things off. Which of course has its own momentum into reverse. The less I have that I can use to start, the less inclined I am to start. And the less inclined I am to start, the less I have that I can use to start. And so on.

But I remember when I had a blog. And I know I’ve talked about this a lot (too much), but for me blogging was a much deeper experience than any other form of social has ever been. If I didn’t write on my blog every day I at least visited my blog every day (many times every day), and I definitely visited the blogs of all my friends every day (many times every day), and it did make me think about writing a lot. And by ‘think about’ I don’t mean it made me think ‘oh, I must get around to writing’ it made me think about things in a writerly way. By which I mean it made me see things and feel things more deeply and in more detail. I composed lines in my head. Words and rhythms would form without conscious effort it seemed.

Already, I can feel something of that reignited. I did a quick flick through the somewhat reduced but nonetheless treasured blogroll. And there they are, my blogging friends, taking the time to observe, to record. While I’m typing, I feel the momentum of writing growing from within my chest.

Returning my blog to this standard, straightforward template has felt freeing too. No need for the complications of linking this to that, of making sure the SEO is doing its SEO thing. Of course, wordpress has got a little more complicated over the years, but I think I’ve got the editing module as simple as it can be.

So here I am back at the blog where, for months (years?), I’ve been promising myself 500 words a day. I hope as I get warmed up to the task they become slightly more interesting than this, slightly more thoughtful, but I have also promised myself that here are words and thoughts that I don’t need to judge. Their purpose is simply to be the foundations of what is coming next.

Magic thoughts

I’ve never got a handle on this feeling I sometimes have that writing is coming. It feels both exciting and reassuring. My writing is about to pour forth. And it will be as good, as recognised, as I my mind has always imagined it would be.

It’s really happening, I think. But the evidence is that it is not. I’m 51 years old, nearly 52 and this feeling has never been transformed into anything more tangible than this thought. I have finished very little that I’ve begun and those things that I have finished have been good–some very good–but no one has described them as great.

I can explain why this has happened, why I’ve had the feeling but never the result that it has promised. It’s because the feeling itself is dopamine enough, so I am never compelled to go that instant to my notebook and my pen. Rather, that sense of reassurance that I mentioned? It tells me that it is going to happen and so there is no urgency. And without urgency I do not act.

If I had gone that very moment to create, who knows what magic I might have made?

I read only recently–perhaps in those Daily Stoic emails I have subscribed to–that the only thing that stands between us and success is our inability to work through the temporary discomfort. This had deep resonance for me. I recognised myself in it. (Strange then that I don’t remember exactly where I read it, only that I did).

Over time, I’ve come to see these moments as the manifestation of something that is almost magical. Like a fairy, it existed only in that moment and because I didn’t catch it then, it disappeared.

They are gone, those stories I was meant to tell.

On distraction

In which I spend the day attending to work as best I can

I can’t look away from the ABC and the news about the Liberal party eating itself. And trying to stay logged out of twitter. But I’m not sure what to say. And although it’s my dad’s birthday today I don’t want to write about grief or even about relationships…

…so today I’ve been getting some of my writing projects tidied up a bit, and as well as getting to work on my blog I’ve been doing some tinyletter work lately. So far, I’ve only posted them to myself but I’m getting on top of things now, so if you want to subscribe, the link is on this page over here

Surrogate launch

In which my book is launched

My book is launched! And I had a wonderful time. We were at the beautiful imprints in Hindley Street, and Deb Tribe from ABC Radio Adelaide launched it for me (oh my gosh, not to gush, but what a generous person she is…and a wonderful speaker too, completely captivating…she’s a marriage celebrant too so if you are getting married you should one hundred percent look her up).

The night didn’t all go quite as I had planned. In my mind, I had this idea that I would spend the time flitting between the many lovely people I know, cross-pollinating my friendships and making sure that everyone was put in touch with everyone they should be put in touch with, and then they could all spend the rest of their lives saying, ‘And to think, it was your book launch we met at, TC.’

Of course the reality was that I had about seven seconds with each person, and spent a lot of the time feeling rude because I was chopping conversations off before they’d even begun.

But it was brilliant beyond brilliant to have a chance to reconnect with friends I have lost touch with, to nourish family connections, to thank people who have helped me to write and to be a writer, to acknowledge the creative relationships I’ve been so lucky to have through the years…to share this time with people I love and respect and admire.

I can say without a doubt that I have enjoyed the process of having my second novel published much more than I did the first. When the first one came out, my dad had only recently died and we had moved to Abu Dhabi and then I turned forty … I kind of tried to hide from the publication of Black Dust Dancing. But this time I really have wanted to celebrate. To celebrate not only the book, but so many other things too. Friendships mostly I suppose.

Anyway, not to get too sooky, because there was enough of that on the night. My book is out and about in the world. It’s nerve wracking of course, but it had the best bon voyage party any book could ask for.

Twentysomethings

In which I discover that things are going okay

The main thing that happened while we lived in Abu Dhabi is that seven years passed. Lots of the woodo-psciences say that Seven Years is a Thing. If you google, you’ll learn that all of our development occurs in blocks of seven years, that our cells regenerate entirely leaving us (literally) a new and different person every seven years, that a different chakra dominates at each of our seven year cycles…all this and much more besides.

To be honest, I’m up for a bit of woo. I mean, I believe in climate change, and my kids are fully vaccinated, but I like to have a tarot reading every now and then. Astrology and tarot talk about seven year cycles too. There’s the seven year itch, the 7-Up movies, and maybe George Costanza wasn’t as silly as he sounded when he wanted to call his kid *swish-swish* in the shape of a seven.

So, anyway, we were away seven years (well, the mister was away for nearly 9, but when I say ‘we’ I guess I mean ‘I’) which means that when I came back I was seven years older. And so was everyone else. I’ve noticed this in all the obvious ways – children are taller than I am, for example – but what has taken me by surprise is the sudden appearance of a whole new generation coming up behind me.

They were always there. The twenty-somethings. And for nearly twenty years I’ve been older than them. Until recently – until I got back to Adelaide—I could sit in the lunchroom or a workshop with a twenty-something and it would be clear that I was older than her. But I wasn’t old enough to be her mum. Now, I sit in the same lunchroom or a workshop, and it is clear to both of us that there is a distance between us. The change has been generational.

I think one of the reasons this has taken me so much by surprise is that in my part of expat-world there weren’t really all that many twenty-somethings. They are too old to be there with their parents, too young to be there with work. It’s a segment of the population that I didn’t see. Out of sight, out of mind. And now, bam! Here they are again, everywhere I look.

My dad used to say that every five years or so (let’s call it seven) you look in the mirror and see yourself as they age you really are, not as they age you think you are. So maybe it would have happened anyway. But certainly, being away has exaggerated this effect.

If there’s a younger generation, then I must be part of an older one. In most respects, and as I think I’ve mentioned before, I like to think that I’m jiggy with getting older because truly it’s better than the alternative. But confronting the reality of my writing career has been a little confronting. Lurking in online writing groups, I see the many wonderful young women who have so very much to say and who say it so beautifully. They are so much better at navigating the world of writing now, working much more intuitively with a sense of what is needed in a world of always-on connectivity. Their writing has resonance and relevance that I only recognise after the fact and not in advance.

It makes me think that maybe I had my chance. It makes me ask myself: Is it realistic to expect that a middle aged woman in Adelaide can advance a rather patchy writing career?

The good thing about this is that I’m asking from a place of peace and satisfaction with my life. I am very happy to be a middle aged woman in Adelaide. After many tumultuous years I welcome the simplicity of my life as it stands at the moment. Not only that, but counterintuitively, recognizing that I have only a slim hope of establishing a writing profile of even small significance has given me back the joy of writing. This was really brought home to me a little while ago when I was listening to a conversation some people were having about the frustrations of trying to establish a career as a writer. I realised that I was entirely free of any of those problems. I don’t expect to be able to make a living from it and I don’t want to. I don’t expect to be able to do it full time and I don’t want to. I don’t expect to make shortlists (though I’d like to). I could empathise with every person in that conversation. I remember clearly a few years ago when I was paralysed first with grief and second with the knowledge that I would never be anything more than a second-tier writer (and not even that because no words would come not matter how I tried). For some time, I was sure that I would never write again. So when I heard them speaking about these sorrows and frustrations I knew exactly what many of them were describing. But I also realised that I don’t have them anymore. That I am, as I said, at peace with myself and my place in the world.

This year, I’ve had more energy and enthusiasm for writing than I ever remember having before. I’ve mapped out my next novel with a clarity that I have never experienced. And a few ideas for short stories and essays that have been wallowing in the deepest recesses of my brain have developed some form and some shape that seems perfectly do-able. And I feel confident that I’ll be able to get a script together in time to put on a fringe show.

This won’t last. I do know that. Life will happen around me or to me and projects will get put on the backburner. Someone will write a horrible review and I’ll be back in the pit of self-doubt and agony. I’ll get to a point in my novel where all I can think is, ‘What’s the point?’ But for now, I’m going to let myself enjoy this feeling. I think I will celebrate with an evening of solid procrastination catching up on half a season of Nashville.

If I were the kind of person to have Eureka! moments then this would be one

In which I begin again

A good thing happened to me today.

The foundation stone for my next novel fell into place. It missed hitting my toes and everything.

And the world looked different to me.

I hadn’t realised it until about 2.30 this afternoon, but not having a novel-in-progress has been having quite an impact on the rest of my work. I mean I know that I’ve been feeling blah about my work, but I didn’t understand what I was feeling blah about. And in fact, the feeling of the blah was making me feel even more blah because I thought I should be feeling wonderful. I had assumed that getting my current novel back to the editor with its final-before-copy-edits edits would invigorate me. It would free me to get stuck into the other projects I’ve got on the go. A couple of things I’ve got are reasonably solid and should be easy to work on.

But no. Instead of sitting down and working with focus (which I’m actually not too bad at doing despite appearances) I’ve been bumbling around, picking one thing up and then another and not really sure what to work on next.

I sat down with my journal this morning and instead of trying to write an essay or a short story or get started on my novel, I decided to write about how I was feeling and what I was thinking about my writing work. I know. It sounds uber-naff, but I did it anyway. And after writing and writing and writing, I discovered that there was a deep, tight knot of frustration somewhere in my brain. This in itself isn’t unusual, but this particular knot seemed to have some kind of quality that other knots have not had. So I kept writing and writing, until…I don’t suppose you can call it an epiphany exactly after three hours and several pages of writing, but it was a revealing (I think revelation is probably a bit too biblical too).

For the past fifteen years I have lived with the foundation stone of a novel in my consciousness. I have not always been writing a novel, and I have not always known the details of that novel, but the foundation stone has been there and the rest of my life has been about building the novel up from there. By that, I mean that I’ve always had an understanding of what it is I’m trying to write about. Even if I’ve had to knock walls down and rebuild them a million times since, the foundation has been strangely rock solid right from the beginning. I’ve just always known.

Perhaps this seems an odd thing for a person who has only managed to produce two novels in fifteen years to say – that a novel is an anchor in her life – but as far as my work goes it’s been the only constant and I hadn’t properly understood until today the function that it has provided in giving me something to organise the rest of my life around. (An ungenerous interpretation would be that my powers of procrastination are so phenomenally powerful that I can’t function without something to avoid.)

So after I’d worked that out I turned the page on my journal and wrote down every single idea related to my novel that’s in my head. Of course its foundation had been there all along, and once I started writing with a bit of focus it came to quite quickly. So there you go, and that’s that then. I know exactly what it is I’ll be avoiding working on for the next three years.

Ciggies

In which there are cigarettes

He wakes to the sound of a wattlebird, a call that starts as a scratching sound and ends in a song. It is as if, he thinks this morning although he has never thought it before, the bird is trying to clear its throat after a night on the piss with a packet of ciggies thrown into the mix.

Ciggies. The word belongs to her. If he were using one of his own it would be fags or smokes.

Ciggies.

She looks over the top of her computer from time to time and says, ‘I’m going downstairs for a ciggie. If anyone asks.’ But if you mention cigarettes and smoke breaks these days, people roll their eyes and say, ‘All right for some,’ and he doesn’t want to see them roll their eyes when it’s her, so when they ask (and someone nearly always does), he shakes his head and says, ‘What? No, haven’t seen her sorry. Is her coat still there? Yeah? Well, she can’t be too far away.’

He went downstairs with her once. Pretended he was going next door for a coffee then stood with her in the laneway, four metres from the door. She stood, carefully placing the outside edge of her boot on the outside edge of the line they’d painted four metres from the door. Black, with red embroidered flowers, she wore those boots once or twice each week in winter. They went past her ankle but finished well below her knee.

She smoked with her left hand and this was a surprise to him because that was the hand with the missing finger. Not her whole finger, only down to the knuckle, enough to leave her middle finger shorter than the other two that flanked it. She smokes the same way she does everything – quickly, but thoroughly, turning the white stick to ash faster even than his father ever did. He wanted to know whether that was the finger she used to flip the bird but then he thought a woman like that wouldn’t, would she? She wouldn’t flip the bird.

‘Can I get you a coffee?’ he’d asked, but she shook her head. ‘No caffeine after three,’ she’d said.

The wattlebird calls again. A car door bangs closed, an engine starts. From the other side of the bed, the alarm starts its call. He watches as his missus, his wife, the mother of his children, reaches out and presses snooze.

On reading

I’ve spent the last couple of years working on my second novel. Looking back on it, my pattern of work seems to have been to have worked like a demon for short patches of time (say two months) and then to leave it, neatly marked-up and post-it-noted on the corner of my desk for long stretches of time, at one point up to a year. Some of those down times were because there were other things going on (writing a thesis, moving countries, cooking meals because oh god, they want to eat again?). Some of them were because what’s the point, insecurities, whatever made you think you could write a book blah blah blah and so on for ever and ever. And some of those breaks were because I was trying to solve a problem of where to go next and I needed a bit of distance.

One of the things I used to do when I was trying to solve a problem in my writing was to read like a demon. Mostly I read authors who write like I want to write, looking for answers to my problems (is it okay to have more than one narrator, is it all right to move through time so quickly, what about all those italics I’ve always loved can I get them to work?). I do find answers. I don’t copy the people I read – I don’t think I do anyway, In a strangely, counter-intuitive kind of way, reading also gives me more confidence in my writing. Not that I ever finish reading Ann Patchett and think, ‘I’m as good as Ann Patchett any day.’ More that I think, ‘It is possible to finish writing a story, look at this, she’s finished quite a few.’

But apart from that, somehow or other I’ve once again got out of the habit of reading and I don’t feel like I spent all that much time reading last year. I know I was busy last year, but for me reading is more to do with being in or out of the habit than it is about busy-ness (though of course being busy does have an impact on habit). Netflix isn’t helping because I’ve started ending my evenings with an episode of Grace and Frankie or whatever Scandi-noir-landscape-damaged-but-I-could-save-him detective currently holds my interest. And then there’s the whole problem of read a bit, put the book down, leave it there for a week another week another week and then so many weeks that I’d really have to start again.

So what I’ve been trying to do is to read books as quickly as possible by which I mean in the shortest timeframe. Like, say to myself, ‘I’m going to read Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth now, and that’s the main thing I’m doing until I’ve finished it.’ This attitude takes a bit of work because even those of us who do consider reading to be a valuable, ethical, rightful use of our time find it hard to place reading in front of life’s many other important tasks such as feeding our children and earning our living. But it’s reminding myself to add ‘book’ to the ‘purse, keys, phone’ grab on my way out the door, or picking up my book instead of scrolling through the news app on my phone (I don’t know about you, but I am constantly refreshing that app at the moment I think trying to reassure myself that it’s going to be okay, it’s going to work out fine, I mean we’re humans right the most sophisticated beings on the planet we can fix this, but mostly terrifying myself like actual, deep-seated fear that I think has become a constant in my emotional repertoire). It also means that I’m choosing books based on my ability to read them quickly – so length primarily. And I was going to say complexity, but that’s not at all true, because I read Grief is the Thing with Feathers a few weeks ago and that might be short, but it lacks nothing in complexity.

And here are some words just to let you know that this is an abrupt ending, but it’s started to rain and I have to go and get the clothes in off the line and I’ll probably never get back to this if I don’t finish it now.

A week of bits and pieces

I got offered a writer’s residency this week. Reading the email to tell me that my application for the residency was successful wasn’t quite as exciting as reading the email to tell me that my next novel would be published, but it was a wonderful email nonetheless. Writer-in-residence. Hey, wow, that’s so cool. Yay. It made me feel like I was back in my writer’s life. And it’s only now that I’m starting to feel that way again, that I do feel like I am living a writer’s life, that I realise I wasn’t feeling it before.

Some people find that turmoil and grief and black thoughts and long dark nights are good for their art and creativity. That absolutely wasn’t my experience. I found it almost impossible to write in the years after my dad’s death and through my grandfather’s ageing. That has had a far bigger impact on my writing than I realised. I was convinced – by which I mean I was filled with the belief – that I would never write anything of any substance again. The depth of that conviction was revealed to me over Christmas when I got my contributor copies of The Griffith Review: State of Hope. It’s the first thing I’ve submitted for years. When I flicked through and found it there, my writing published, I burst into tears. Proper sobbing tears.

I’ve often wondered whether people ever make conscious decisions that they’re not going to write. Like a teacher might leave teaching or an accountant might leave accounting, would a writer ever leave writing? Probably not. I imagine much more common is the gradual process of writing less and less, along with the whittling away of time until one day you wake up and think, Wait! What? But I was going to be a writer!

Over the last couple of years as my life has been going through a few transitions and as other transitions have been looming, I’ve had to think about what I’m going to do with myself, how I’m going to live my life. The thoughts I’d had about no longer being a writer solidified for quite some time. I know all the cliches that age is just a number and you’re only as old as you feel and fifty is the new seventeen and so on…but middle age made me think more carefully about how I spend my increasingly limited time. Sitting in front of your computer stringing words together that might or might not coalesce into a story that might or might not float a publisher’s boat and that people might or not respond to is one way of spending time, but there are many others. Making a living for example. There’s something more…a person has to make peace with the knowledge that even if writing is what she does best, she isn’t the best at writing. This is partly ego and a girl needs to get over herself, but also when a person reads a lot of wonderful books it does make her think that maybe there are better ways she can be of use to the world.

…none of this is what I intended to tell you…I was going to tell you about the residency but then I was going to tell you about the rest of my week as well…
…About the three day InDesign course I went to for two days and abandoned on the third because otherwise I would have needed brain surgery on the fourth oh my goodness humans is this the best we can do surely there are better ways of getting things from our brains to the printer;
…about the portrait session I had with a photographer because I need new headshots done – ‘Can you flirt a little bit?’ he asked. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked back and holy moly I really hope the mister doesn’t cark it because truly ruly my state of global celibacy will be permanent;
…about teaching the floppy adolescent to drive because he turned 16 and got his Ls and deadset one hundred percent this is the stuff that What to Expect When You’re Expecting doesn’t warn you about, eh…
and I do feel wrong for not even mentioning the fact that when I woke up this morning it was to the horrifying news that it is not just a dream and he-who-shall-not-be-named has been inaugurated as the president of a democracy and sweet baby cheeses save us all. But I’ve run out of writing time and I have to go and get the Future Prime Minister from cricket and if I don’t press publish now I never will.

Resigned

I finished my job last week. Like, you know, not going back kind of finished. I’ve been working in libraries again, this time at a school. The end of the school year came and I decided that I would, well, ‘resign’ makes it sound much more dramatic than it really is, but I suppose that’s what I did. Anyway, the upshot is that I don’t have a job.

I think I might have retired from libraries. I’m not sure, but it feels that way at the moment. (future employers, please don’t read that last sentence, okay? Obviously when I tell you yours is the job of my dreams I mean it. Okay?).

There were all sorts of reasons that I decided to leave the job, but in the end they all boiled down to the same thing: my heart wasn’t in it. I mean, I liked it – much of it I loved – and I did a good job and I put myself into it and I was sad to be leaving it.

But at the same time there were other things I wanted to be doing that weren’t getting done. My novel for one thing. And other writing things I want to do. I can’t write them until I finish the novel manuscript. My study. I’ve got a thesis due at the end of October and I don’t see the point of going back to study at my stage if I’m not going to do it properly. There was all of the stuff about being the kind of parent I want to be. The Floppy Adolescent will be leaving home soon and I want to spend more time with him because it’s true that adolescents are unpredictable beasts, but they are also spontaneous and fun and make jokes that only adolescents make. Friends. I like to be a good friend. I like to spend time with my friends and I like them to be able to ask me for things if they need them. And then in this strange limbo-life that all expats lead to a greater or lesser extent the house as a whole was missing the flexibility of my freelancing life, and that’s going to become more and more of a thing as the Floppy Adolescent moves ever-closer to Young Adulthood.

It was odd, because for so long I’d been convinced that going back to work in a traditional work-way – with a desk and colleagues and a daily start and end time and a regular salary – was going to help me find my equilibrium. That being able to answer that question, ‘What do you do?’ with a definite answer rather than, ‘Oh, well, I don’t know, I don’t do anything much’ would help me to feel that I had a place in the world. Somewhere to go and someone to be when I got there.

For a while having a job did do that. It was good to be part of something bigger than myself and to spend less time in my own head. Plus, matching kids with books is a pretty nice way to spend a day. But I could tell that if I’d stayed it would start being counterproductive to my (constant) search for equilibrium. That I would start to hate getting up in the morning and would be consumed by all of the things that I couldn’t do while I was going to work. And I wouldn’t be doing a good job then. I wouldn’t do a bad job – I’m an earnest, eldest child and I’m nothing if not conscientious. But I’d always have half a mind on something else. It would be a churn.

I do know how fortunate I am to be able to make this decision. I’m fortunate that my partner earns enough for the four of us not only to live on, but also to be able to make choices like this. More fortunate still, I married a man who means it when he says he values me and that he believes writing a novel that may or may not be published is a good way for a person to spend her time. I know how lucky I am.

For a few days it seemed like maybe I’d made the right decision in that ‘this was meant to be’ kind of way because it looked like I might have one of my best freelancing clients back. One door closes another one opens. I don’t know why I still let myself believe that kind of stuff because that door closed almost as soon as it opened and for one reason and another it didn’t work out. So I’m freaking out a bit about no income in the immediate future. As much as I reconciled myself to the financial disparities in our incomes a long time ago, I’m bothered that I’m making no financial contribution at all, plus however much I tell myself not to be worried by it, the lack of financial autonomy plagues me.

But overall I know that I’m on the right path. Somehow or other the strands of everything will be woven together. Oh, look, a cheesy life’s big tapestry metaphor to end.