Category: writing

Home again

‘Oh, three weeks,’ I say breezily when people ask me how long I’ll be away.

‘Three weeks?’ they ask. And then: ‘are you taking your children?’

I shake my head, because it softens the No, which, as you can see, is a much harsher word if you say it with a capital N.

It went like this: meeting in Perth for three days; home for one night, then on a plane to Tasmania where I stayed here as part of this programme; then on a plane (or, as it happens two planes, one of which was terribly, terribly small and a little bit chilly) to Canberra to go in this comedy competition; and then, early the following morning, I got on a bus to drive across the Hay Plain and ended up back in Adelaide.

As my children themselves would say ‘that’s not really for children’.

When I’m away from my children I do feel a kind of disjointedness, a vague restlessness, a need to keep moving forwards to the time when I will see them again. I miss them. I ring them every day and wallow in their voices, long for a cuddle with them, look at their photos for hours at a time. But I also observe of myself, a certain distance from the missing-ness. I’m not sure how to articulate this, and I’ve been trying to put it into words all day. I’m not going to judge how much I love them by how much I miss them. Nor am I going to make any judgement about myself as a mother in relation to others on the basis of how much I miss my children when I’m away, because…well, because it’s pointless and doesn’t help me to answer the questions I’m asking of myself. After a few basics have been covered, there are so many differences in being a mother that you just can’t afford to judge yourself in relation to others. Like the sign on the back of my grandmother’s toilet door said in some kind of rhyming prose ‘there will always be someone better than you and always someone worse’ (there was also a poem about bowls which ended ‘what he could do with kitty, I could do with jack’ and so I think from that you can guess quite a bit about the rest of the house).

So the best I can come up with is the rather obvious observation that we all miss our children in different ways, because so many people, when I tell them I’m about to go away say ‘I could never do that’. This means a whole lot of things I know, including ‘I would miss them too much’ as well as ‘there isn’t anyone else who could look after them for all that time’ as well as ‘that really sounds like a shit way to spend a few weeks why on earth would you take three precious weeks of your life and flush them down the great toilet bowl of the past in such a fashion’.

I can make any number of sensible justifications for trips away. For example: you try starting a new novel when your study has two doors which make a perfect circuit for little boys to run around. Or this one: it’s my trade-off instead of going out to work two or three days a week (two days a week for one year being the equivalent of a few weeks away). But obviously I don’t really need to make the justifications to myself or I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t go away. I mean, I applied for the residency. I accepted it with much excitement. I quarantined the time and protected it ferociously as I thought over and over to myself during the last six months ‘it’s all right, your quiet time is coming, July will be here soon’.

Three weeks was a long time. The longest I’ve been away. And for the first time, I did cry at the airport (in between Perth and Hobart). But it’s been a bit of an emotional year, so I’m not convinced that was all about missing my boys.

In Hobart, I lived by myself. Like, I was the only person in the cottage. The bedrooms, loungeroom, kitchen, bathroom were all for me. Just me. It was pretty strange at first. I met the mister when I was eighteen and we moved in together when I was twenty two, so you can see that I’ve not lived by myself very much at all. Also, there was no television and no internet (I’m thinking of making a t-shirt). And, like I said, it’s been a bit of an emotional time around here. I’m in control of the shadows, but I have to work at it. So I was very glad for the mister’s company when he came to visit for a few nights on his way home from a meeting in Melbourne. And there were some very special uni friends who took good care of me. But mostly, I would say that I liked being by myself.

I’ve always been happy enough with my own company. It comes with the territory of being a bit of a book nerd I guess. I like parties, but I like being by myself too. I like it a lot.

It wasn’t really like living by myself, of course, because it wasn’t real life. What I liked most was that I didn’t have to make any decisions for anyone else. I didn’t have to think about what people were going to wear or to eat. I barely had to make any decisions for myself. It wasn’t my house, so I didn’t have any cluttered cupboards to niggle at me. I had so few clothes that the washing was a simple matter of a load every few days. I had no garden of rampant soursobs to make me think ‘I really must get on to that’.

All there was to do was think and write and delete and think and write some more.

That’s not real life, but it was a lovely, lovely interlude.

The solitude. I liked the solitude.

I was happy to be home. My youngest boy said ‘I’m so excited I’m going to go upside down’ and then did a handstand on the grubby lounge, and it made me laugh and it still makes me smile. It’s been a gorgeous weekend of boys cuddling my legs for no reason at all. It’s good. It’s good to be home.

But being back amongst it all, amongst the races, the jumps and the screams, it makes me know that I really did enjoy the last few weeks. And if I can, I’ll do it again.

It’s probably because I had caesareans.

PS I will write about the guilt another day, because I find that a most fascinating thing.

Should I blog?

I ask this very specifically, for and about people like me who want to be ‘writers’. I apologise in advance for the earnestness of what is to follow, but I’m preparing a couple of workshops that I’m giving over the next couple of months and as I’ve been trying to articulate how I see blogging as a form of writing, and its potential (or otherwise) for ‘new’ writers, I couldn’t think of any other way to think it through than to write myself a blog post (so I guess the simple answer is ‘yes’).

In asking this question I’m not saying that my blog and my blogging habit all stem from ‘wanting to be a writer’. My blog and my blogging habit are about…well, you’ve got a blog, you’ve read my blog…you know all the things that it’s about. And this question can be easily applied to the wider set of questions, ‘should I blog instead of…’, and I’m sure you have your own range of neglected options to insert here – knitting, playing with children, getting together with friends and so on.

I’m not going to define exactly who I mean by ‘writers’ or ‘want to be’. You can decide for yourself whether or not it applies to you, but I do think that the discussion is slightly different for ‘new’ and ‘established’ writers (as discussed in posts such as this and this at Sarsaparilla).

So, having apologised for this post, my blog, my writing and myself; having determined that we are simply addressing one very small part of blogging; having broken a most important blogging rule (get to the bloody point) I shall ask the question again (because by now you’ve probably forgotten what it even was).

Should people who want to be ‘writers’ blog?

First up, the most obvious argument against blogging: blogging is a distraction from other writing. You already know what I’m going to say, don’t you? So is vacuuming the dust from the corners of the cutlery drawer. As is teaching myself to say the alphabet backwards (actually, I did that the night before my matric biology exam, but I offer it here in case you haven’t thought of it for yourself and need a new procastinatory activity). And reading The Advertiser, weeding the grevilleas, watching Grey’s Anatomy. The list goes on. It’s a spurious argument that one about distraction (do you know, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever used the word ‘spurious’ in a written sentence), presupposing too many things: that every moment I have spent blogging might have been directly applied to some other project; that I haven’t also been writing other things; that other writing projects are all more worthy than this; and that blogging is only about writing.

Perhaps now is a useful time to recall the wise words of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union: abstinence from all things bad, moderation in all things good.

There is a danger that blogging will swallow your best ideas. That once blogged, they can not be used in some other form. The scrape of the spoon on the bottom of the saucepan that led to this post isn’t available to me any more, for example. But that doesn’t mean I’ve necessarily lost anything. I love that piece of writing. It works perfectly as a blog post and wouldn’t work so well anywhere else.

I’ve become less worried about it too since I began performing standup. In standup – though I’m a beginner there too, so speak only from a beginner’s perspective – it seems okay to repeat yourself on your way to getting it right. You should polish your pieces until you think they will work, but very often you (I) don’t know whether they will work until they’ve been said outside the safety of your empty kitchen.

Blogging has sharpened my writing. I know, when I blog, that someone will read what I have written, and quite possibly that someone will read it only a few minutes after I’ve finished writing it (if I got hit by a bus, would I be happy for that to stand as my Last Post). I’ve been able to experiment with voice and with point of view and blogging has heightened my awareness of the every day. I might think, for example, of the colour lipstick I wear and the sentence I could use to describe that on a blog.

I could have learnt that from my other paper journal, perhaps, but a blog does not work in the same way that a private journal does. Because a blog is not private. Different bloggers deal with this differently, but deal with it they must. Anger, for example. I would never directly blog about my anger with important people in my life. Too hard to mop up. But I do blog about it every now and then. Like here. I can’t tell you how pissed off I was that day. And I didn’t need to once I’d written it down that way. And it gave me an idea, and there’s a larger piece of writing that’s grown from that, and I’ll be able to use it one day (well, I hope so, you know, maybe).

Not only does a blog bring you readers, it brings readers you get to know a bit about. Because blogging can’t be only about the writing. It’s about reading too. Reading a lot. And somehow, I think that can’t help but give you an insight into your own writing that isn’t available in any other form. You get told endlessly at workshops ‘write for yourself first’, but blogging teaches you – quickly – what that means. Not just how to do it, but the implications too.

On the relationship between your blog and your readers, there’s something to be said about learning how to ‘write what you know’ – direct experience – and transposing it to mean more than what just happened or what you immediately felt. But at the same time, you must be honest, because your blog readers (generally) expect that what you write in this form is true. I haven’t quite worked out how to articulate this point yet, but I know it is an important one. Do let me know if you think you know what I’m trying to say.

There’s a lot that blogging can teach you about other forms of writing. I imagine you could learn a lot about writing an open-ended narrative like a soap for example. And there are endless types of online writing which would blogging could introduce you to. I’m not sure about a novel though (and there’s an excellent discussion about that here). Though possibly if you were very good at forward planning and had a very particular kind of structural control. Maybe then.

That’s enough for now, isn’t it? I’ve spent far too long on this, haven’t I? Thanks for reading this far if indeed you have. Back to the shoes and coffee cups tomorrow. Promise.

Meltdown

Flicking through one of my many lists of things To Do – this one divided into Big, Medium, Little, then further into Long (term), Medium, Short – I realise that the deadline for the ABC Fiction Awards is looming. June 29.

I have something I was vaguely intending to enter. It needs a lot more work. Like a lot. But in some ways, I was thinking of giving this particular work this One Last Chance. You know, One Final Push, before I think to myself ‘well, it’s had a good life…it didn’t get published, but that’s life in the big city…NEXT’. And I feel like if I don’t give it One Last Chance then I’ll never be able to move on to the next thing. Which I have to do, because I told someone I would, and they gave me something in exchange. Do you see what I mean?

But June 29. That’s not far away. Is it?

So I have written a plan of what I would need to do. I have used a clean printout and my lamy lead pencil (it’s red). It Can’t Be Done. Not with Everything Else. There’re the obvious things – an important gig next week that I want to write some new material for (I think that is how you use the word gig, though to be honest, it does not come easily off my tongue); a small number of book reviews; an article which is already overdue; an article whose deadline looms; the Big Comedy Piece I am determined to write; the application for something I really want to do; the new novel which I am Determined I Will Begin. And then, there’re other things – the replacement computer I must buy before this one just refuses to start even after I plug and unplug it six times; the move of rooms so that I am no longer trying to work in the middle of the boys’ racing circuit; my determination that my contact with my friends Will Be Maintained. There’s cooking of course, and getting the boys safely home after school. And there are Other Things. Enormous wake-me-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night but not mine to blog about things. You know. You’ve got them, I’m sure.

And then, there’s the vegetable drawer which, no matter how many times I clean it, still has liquid in the bottom. Only last week, I cleaned it out, used the edgey veges for stock, converted the stock into soup, which was spooned into containers which were transferred to the freezer. How awesome is that? But wait, there’s more – we went away for the weekend, and because the freezer was so full it seems not to have closed properly and so we returned to a half-thawed freezer and potentially-botulistic soup – oh, it broke my heart, no matter that the ice had formed a beautiful winter wonderland.

Is it any wonder the mister returned home one evening to find me on the recognisable edge of a torrent of tears?

How I said, waving somewhat melodramatically at the vegetable drawer which seems to be filled with liquid mould again am I supposed to create? There was only a slight pause before I began – somewhat melodramatically again – I’m a failure at my job…all I have to do is keep the mould out and LOOK just LOOK.

I’m sure that you can see there was no room for rational discussion here. No amount of no one’s worth should be judged by the state of their vegetable drawer was going to work.
So, he did the only thing he could do. He scraped the cucumber – or was it zucchini – off the bottom of the drawer and then, when I sat down to work on the manuscript, he went into the bathroom and scrubbed the grout with an old toothbrush he had saved for just such a time.

And how do I repay this kindness? A few days later – when PlaySchool is on and I could be addressing the puzzle of the chapter which I know will work, I just have to work out how – I blog.

A happy tale of woe

The printer, once turned on, makes a soft, but annoying, whining sound and nothing more. No lights, no whirrs, no beeps. I have unplugged it, shifted it, hit it with varying degrees of gentleness, but all to no avail. It’s stuffed.

This limits my choice of readings to those pieces of which I have a clean and readable copy. This simplifies things to the point that I don’t have to think, and I do often like it when life works that way. When the universe says here is how it is. Hopefully, the Easter shopping will be dealt with similarly. Unlikely, I know, so I have started the shopping list.

Of course when I take the printer to the shop, they will say it’s cheaper to buy another one although I am very happy with this one, and at this stage, can’t really justify buying myself another one which also does photocopying.

In the meantime, I have been flicking through a photo album with a man who sighs and says ‘more forgetteries than memories these days’. And then he laughs and so do I, because we both like our own jokes.

Eleventh hour

I am doing a reading tomorrow night, and now I must concede that it will have to be something I’ve already read before.

I have had plenty of notice, and I really wanted to write something new, but what with one thing and another I’ve barely had a chance to clean my teeth, let alone write the piece I wanted to write.

I only know that it is about the rhythm the dishwasher stole.

Bit of a shambles…

that million penguins experiment. And I’m probably one of its more generous observers.

But in other news, I screwed my courage to the sticking post, registered for raw comedy and last night won my heat. I then enjoyed a most excellent glass of wine as well as the opportunity to gaze upon this man again (and yes, the curl of his lashes more than compensates for the odd twist to his smile) then sensibly came home to enjoy a cup of tea and late night conversation with my babysitting dad rather than staying out and starting on the mango daquiris.

Another million penguins

So, have you been to visit A Million Penguins, Penguin’s “collaborative, wiki-based creative writing exercise” yet? I highly recommend it, although they hardly need my linkages, because they’re getting up to 10 hits per second and 100 edits per hour, apparently. Which makes writing anything about their content (of which I’ve read a fair bit over the course of today) pretty pointless.

As you may know, I have a small interest in online fiction myself, and one which I’m developing further this year (of which project I will write more in the coming weeks), so I’m really interested in how it all develops at Penguin. I reckon it is really exciting, and it gives writers and readers a lot of new opportunities.

What is there to learn at this early stage? The experiment is grappling with a number of closely related issues. Its absolute enormity is one, and one which they probably talked about beforehand. I’m sure they knew it would be popular (tho they might not have imagined they’d get as many hits as some p0rn sites). I have often thought of asking one or two people to join my blogopera to keep it going, but a million…that really is a lot of people. When I called my blogopera ‘adelaide sprawls’ it was a way of acknowledging the potential for the structural sprawl of fiction, a sprawl which is of course magnified when there are so many authors. Can there be any hope for a cohesive narrative? Does it matter? Of course, that’s what they’re trying to find out.

If it is to be a story of some sort, then there is going to have be a bit of give and take by writers. You might need to surrender your own brilliant idea for the common good. I have no doubt this can be done (just call me Pollyanna), but I do wonder if it’s a bit of a problem having such an experiment conducted by a major publisher.

In one of his early blog posts on the project, Jon, the guy from Penguin providing the running commentary on the developing story says “the wikinovel experiment is not a place to prove to Penguin we should publish your book”. Is that gonna cut the mustard? There is still gonna be a lot of people more interested in showing their individual talents than their ability to collaborate on a wiki.

Still, enough people are taking it on in the right spirit (edit: perhaps that should be enough people want to take it on in the right spirit, there does seem to be a lot of argy-bargy going on), and even in these early days, I’ve read a couple of great posts and am greatly enjoying watching it all unfold – if you do go over there, don’t forget to look at the discussion. It is, I think (and as I’ve already said), an extremely interesting development for both writers and readers.

And if you do want to join the fun, don’t forget to read the terms and conditions, in particular “By posting your submission on the Wiki Novel and the Site, you grant us a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, world-wide licence to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, publish, distribute and display any content you submit to us in any format now known or later developed. If you do not want to grant us these rights, please do not submit your content to us”. It will be the basis for an interesting law exam question in a few years I expect.

Back to school

‘You look tired,’ the mister said. ‘Very tired. And kind of sad.’

Like he could talk, having just returned from a few hours on the tennis court honestly believing that he could put some of Federer’s shots into his repetoire.

But I am very tired. And kind of sad. Not, you know, depths of your soul can’t get off the couch sad. More a slightly self-indulgent woe is me and well, better get over it there’s dishes to be done kind of sad.

It is post-holidays, back-to-school blues.

One thing about school is that I have to start getting up at half past seven again. I am not a morning person. Have I told you that? Nor am I a hot weather person. Such nots do leave only small windows of opportunity for greatness. As the mister asks ‘so what exactly are you – a mid-winter, mid-afternoon person?’ Whatever. Getting up at half past seven tires me out.

I did enjoy the school holidays. For all the usual reasons – the beach, the movies, the baker’s clay and while I do not like playing Connect 4 with an over-competitive 6 year old, mostly I do enjoy the company of my children. Plus, I discovered something I had not anticipated (this being my first school holidays as a parent). For people like me, who work from home the holidays are quite convenient, because during the holidays you are, very often, at home. So is everyone else of course, which does bring difficulties (I’m quite sure Virginia Woolf was not describing a wardrobe when she conceived of a room of one’s own, but I’m here to tell you it can, in fact, work quite well, particularly if the people who lived in the house before you had the foresight to convert a hall cupboard into a large-ish walk in wardrobe). But, if you are able to block out the noise and the mess – as I very often, but not always can – then it is an opportunity to do a tiny bit more work than at other times (yes, yes, putting aside that last undignified moment on Australia Day, the culmination of a full week of martyrdom, I’m sure I’ve apologised for it and anyway it wasn’t totally unjustified and we got a very ordered laundry cupboard out of it didn’t we).

With a return to school, time is much choppier. One of my children is at kindy (or preschool or whatever name you give to that which four year olds do for about three hours a day – can anyone explain to me what is so revolutionary about this thing The Rudder announced yesterday, because be buggered if I can see any difference between it and that which has been going on at least since I was four) and the other is at school. This means that I drop them off at 9, pick one of them up at 11.30, then pick the other up at sometime between 3 and 3.30 (I never have worked out when exactly school finishes).

So, while the kindy year is a golden one in many ways, I’m sure you can see that in terms of me getting any of my work done, this is a HOPELESS arrangement. As I said to the mister some days it makes my heart sing, and on others groan. That’s how life is.

Plus, I am about to turn 38, and I have not made any real plans for this year so I’m feeling a bit floundering and what’s the point and what am I doing with my time/life – but that is a post for another time. Right now, I have to go and catch the bus so I’m not late for kindy pick-up.