One is exactly enough
14 Mar 2012
9 January 2010
I am wearing a sign. It floats above my head. Like a speech bubble. It reads:
I have only one child, please ask me when I am having another one.
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I find that I am now 39
4 Mar 2012
It was my birthday, last week, and I decided it was about time I had a birthday party. Haven’t had one (well a proper one) since about 1995, so waste not a moment more I thought. A practice go for next year.
It has been the wettest summer in Canberra for years and years. Naturally I planned an outside garden cocktail party. And naturally it started raining at 2-30pm and by 7pm we’d had another 30mm of rain. My minions slaved away with tarps and portable heaters, 4 million helium balloons and candles, while I tried in vain to get the toddler to keep out of the water, eat his dinner, and stop setting fire to things!
Rain
1 Mar 2012
Toddler and I
Under the same umbrella.
His arms tightly around my neck
His face pressed against my cheek.
Cool water drip down my neck, as the umbrella shifts while he cranes to see a passing dog.
Drinking our tiny little coffees – froth for him, piccolo for me, we watch the passers pass.
Puddles
I’m his mother … I need to let go
16 Feb 2012
Today, being Thursday, I stayed home with my child. That’s how it goes. Thursday rolls around. We wake up, have breakfast, wave goodbye to Robert. Then we fang around a bit and maybe go for a pram walk, to the shops, just do stuff.
In a hectic week, sometime we don’t even get out of our pyjamas. Read More
Book review – Animal People – Charlotte Wood
31 Jan 2012
Welcome to my first review of 2012. The first of many for this year – she says hopefully.
Charlotte Wood’s novel Animal People, follows one day in the life of Stephen, a character who also appears in her novel, The Children. Stephen is a character without ambition – lost in the distance he creates from the rest of the world and its concerns, he observes and pities those around him. He struggles to make sense of ‘animal people’, ‘dog people’ and the visitors to the zoo where he works, as they fawn over the animals. Isolation and desolation wash over Stephen’s life. Read More
Dear Blog, sorry for ignoring you, Love Me.
11 Jan 2012
Three people asked me about my blog in late December. One of them is a pretty important person in our town and two of them I see often; when I go to work. I talked animatedly to each of them about my blog, what I write about, and how much I love it. I did however feel like a bit of a fraud; as I mentally calculated how long it has been since I actually written a post.
For the whole of November and some of October before that, I was obsessed about NaNoWriMo. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Every Tuesday, I sat at Lonsdale Street Roasters (coffee heaven, hello everyone) and wrote and drank coffee til my bum went numb on the hard chair. I then went home and wrote some more, on a more comfortable chair.
Racking 'em up!
I ignored most other things. I tried not to get distracted. I still had to work three days a week. I still went to yoga, I went to the shops. But I didn’t watch tv, I didn’t garden much, and I certainly ignored my family more often than normal. My patient and kind Robert, looked after the children. Both the big and the little were restless, filled with end of year angsty tiredness.
Cheers
It quickly moved from celebrating NaNo victory to mad christmas and December rush. We have a lot of December birthdays in our family and immediate circle – a lot. Every spare moment I was buying gifts, wrapping, sending acceptances, thank you notes. We made Christmas cakes, and puddings, and then mince tarts. And ice-cream. After being away last year, and labouring away the year before, it was like we were cramming three years of christmas into one. We had visitors, we went visiting. Frankly, while some of it was very enjoyable and some of it hilarious (especially Christmas eve when the carefully set kettle BBQ went out after half an hour, necessitating a few changes of plan and then later due to extreme drunkenness we forgot to cook the potatoes) it was totally exhausting.
So here we are in early January. I am half-way through a significant milestone. I have enrolled in a yoga intensive for this week. Two classes per day for five days. This is much more important than it looks because of what it represents. For me, this week is about bringing myself back to a position where I can move on. And it is hard. My muscles remember how much work it takes. I know the poses, I know what it feels like to do so many classes. I used to do it all the time. Then I stopped. And I shouldn’t have left it. I should have made myself go, had more courage to overcome the fear of changing schools and leaving my familiar and-well loved teachers from Sydney.
Sydney Yoga Space Intensive 2006
I am back now. Back on the mat. Significantly, my past experience is assisting me. What is so significant about yoga for me, is that it gives me back control of myself. It helps my body become strong and relaxed, it gives me mental and emotional space from my responsibilities and it allows me to feel good about my outer shell, as well as my inner world which it is easier for me to feel good about.
I won! I’ve finished NaNoWriMo!
29 Nov 2011
That is all. I won. I wrote 50028 words from 1 November to 29 November 2011.
NaNoWriMo you are mine.
NaNoWriMo Update
21 Nov 2011
Day 20 has just passed. My word count is up over the 30 000 word line. It is starting to look like the downhill slide.
The denouement is creeping closer. I am carefully setting the scene for the fall and resolution.
I have had some pretty huge writing days. At least three days over the month I have written over 5ooo. Another few I have written over 3000. I did not keep my promise to myself to write everyday. The delicious progress bar chart on the NaNo site has little steps in the middle of most weeks where I didn’t progress at all. On my least productive day I wrote 25 words. A long sentence. That was it.
As I press on for the last 10 days (eek!) as I pass 35 000 and then 45 000, I have to keep reminding myself that not every page will be great but that it exists at all is great. I look forward to the race to the finish line. Not least of all because they maybe, just maybe be champagne waiting when I cross it.
I am learning an enormous amount about the writing craft during this challenge. Here is a sample of the lessons. (Any seasoned writers reading this, please turn the page now, before I fall in your esteem.)
1. Dialogue is hard to write. Actually, good dialogue is hard to write.
2. You need an infinite variety of synonyms for ‘quietly’ or ‘softly’ if your characters are whispering to each other a lot. (Mine are)
3. My characters spend a lot of time with their faces pressed up against the glass looking out – at the view, at the skyline, at the planes. They are always doing it! Is this normal?
4. If you write with action in both hemispheres at once, map out what season it is at any point first. So confusing. I am sure that these sections will need editing, a lot of editing.
5. You need to keep checking your character’s motivations, clarifying point of view. Would she really say that? Is she just not going to answer the phone?
6. Some word, that you don’t often have to type are really hard to spell and look all wrong when you type them; meringue for example.
7. Sometimes the writing is easy, it comes out and flows well. Sometimes it is torture to sit at the desk for one more minute writing what you know is essential description but so boring that you’d rather stick a pencil in your eye that write one more word about the departure lounge at Heathrow. (For the record I just stopped; the plane took off, scene finished, job done.)
NaNoWriMo Halfway Update
15 Nov 2011
It’s November 15.
It’s NaNoWriMo halfway mark.
Shortly before 4pm I typed the 25 002nd word of my NaNo story.
Here is my last paragraph for the middle of the story.
Outside it was warm and the late summer breeze carried with it the promise of cool weather and the change of seasons. They walked to the tube, Cooper still none the wiser about their destination. The afternoon was proceeding better than Matthew had hoped. Pleased with himself, he bounced on the balls of his feet.
Stay tuned. I’m on track and have really started to enjoy the process. I am now so focused on the task at hand, my week has been reorganised around getting me in the chair and in front of my macbook. Seems to be working.
I’ve lost control
5 Nov 2011
Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40
INTERVIEWER
E. M. Forster speaks of his major characters sometimes taking over and dictating the course of his novels. Has this ever been a problem for you, or are you in complete command?
NABOKOV
My knowledge of Mr. Forster’s works is limited to one novel, which I dislike; and anyway, it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathizes with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or wherever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves.
—
Nabokov’s characters did exactly what he wanted them too. I’m close to 7000 words into the NaNo novel and already I’ve lost control. My characters are doing their own things! I’ve written myself into a corner and now I have to write a sex scene. There are continuity issues, my flashbacks are out of order, it’s the past – no wait not that far back – fuck. Wait, that hasn’t happened yet. It’s a nightmare. And entirely par for the course with the challenge of writing this fast. Regardless of my plotting, I’m still having to ‘pants’ parts of the story. There isn’t time to story board the sequences, so by the seat of my pants, I am guessing, making it up. Cranking out the daily words so I don’t fall behind.
Trying to introduce enough tension between the central characters and avoiding any more love interests – man are they trouble!
Sunshine in a cup … Write on Wednesday
18 Oct 2011
This week for Write on Wednesday we are back to our faithful timer and the challenge of writing to a prompt for five minutes. The wonderful Emily Dickinson and “Bring me sunshine in a cup”.
Bring me sunshine in a cup.
Place it gently on the table, right in front on me. Watch the dust motes dance and swirl in the early summer breeze.
Feel the glowing warmth rising. But what is it? What is the strange sensation of warmth and light? Is it the tea? Is it the warm breeze? It is the warm thoughts of home rising quietly within me as I sip the tea. Soon, soon I will be there again. Home. Where the sunshine just seeps in and is not confined to a mere cup of warmth and light. Home. Where the close spaces with their familiarity ease me back into the rhythm of living. Where the simple pleasures of tea, a bath and a moment’s peace in the sun can begin to restore me. To give me back the zest. To give me back the calm. Like a soothing balm the light illuminates my face.
National Novel Writing Month #nanowrimo
16 Oct 2011
Update!
It is now two hours until NaNoWriMo starts!
I am bursting with excitement and nervous energy. Tomorrow I will be sitting drinking coffee and writing like demons are pursuing me across plains of lava; in other words as fast as humanly possible to get a great start.
I have an arc of a story. It has characters. Love interests (yes plural – holy crap!) It has locations and I can actually smell it now.
Wish me luck.
This much neglected blog will now become further neglected and I am sorry to my handful of loyal readers for that, but a larger cause and a bigger quest is at hand.
____________________________________
It is nearly November. In fact there are fifteen days and counting left of October.
This year this means one important thing. National Novel Writing Month.
I have started my preparation. If you can call staring into the middle distance and hoping a story arc whacks you over the head, preparation.
This year I have themes. This year I will start on the first day. This year I will write every day. This year I have some characters.
All of these little preparations are a big improvement on last year. Last year I didn’t start until the first week was almost over. I had no characters. I did not write every day. And I only wrote a pathetic 3260 words.
I have high hopes this time. I am better prepared. I have a child who reliably sleeps through the night. I have a day off a week. I have a couple of story ideas. I’ve made some notes.
I am participating in this grand writing collective frenzy for one reason; to test myself. To see if I can do it. To see if I have enough story writing in me to write something sustained. 50 000 words. It is a tough ask. It is 1 667 words a day. Each and every day for a month.
We shall see. In the meantime, I will continue to hope for a story arc or a brilliant idea. I have still got a few days.
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