Writing

6 November 2007 redux #blogvember

6 Nov 2013

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Today is the sixth anniversary of when Robert and I met. Three years ago I wrote an open letter to Benedict about his father. When I re-read it this morning, I cried. Tears of joy. To celebrate I am reposting that letter.

Cheers

Dear Benedict,

Soon it will be the three year anniversary of the day I met your father. I started my new job on 5th November 2007. Remember remember the fifth of November, I thought, well if I don’t like the ACT Government, I can always blow it up.

I met your daddy for the first time on my second day of work. It was a Wednesday. The Tuesday was a public holiday – no one told me that. I started on Monday in an almost entirely empty office with most people, including your daddy, taking the Monday off. So after an exhausting and emotionally draining first day in my new job, I had a day off to recover. Then on Wednesday when everyone actually came to work, I spend the morning being introduced to people; whose names I immediately forgot. I was quite freaked out. I then rounded out the morning with an absolutely appalling sandwich for lunch because I didn’t know where to go.

In the afternoon I was sitting quietly at my new desk, reading a cheery card from your lovely Mamie who was a bit worried and had sent me a card and some lip balm (it’s windy in Canberra in the spring, she thought). Suddenly, there was a crashing sound close by. The sound of sheet metal being hit with something. I jumped out of my chair with surprise to see your daddy standing next to my empty filing cabinet. His foot had collided with the cabinet in his enthusiasm to cross the space between me and the rest of the office.

Hello, he said, I’m Robert. After a few pleasantries he wandered off again to his little windowless glass box about 5 metres away. As they say that was the beginning of the end.

Shortly after this day, he asked me out for coffee to interrogate me about what I knew about industrial relations. I think I passed – I seemed to be able to answer his questions ok. I didn’t know at the time, but he had done his research (smart man your daddy). He knew who I was – while I was still quite in the dark about him! He seemed to like me. So I started giving him a hard time.

I cracked some jokes at his expense. He asked me out for drink after work. Soon I was seeing him everyday. I didn’t want there to be another single day when I didn’t see him.

My darling boy, your daddy is a wonderful, kind, witty and generous man. He knows a lot of things – like where everything is in the whole world, the names of all the Australian Prime Ministers in order to Federation. He knows lots about books and has read a huge number of them. He knows all about how government works. He can cook – really delicious food, and his lemon tart is enough to make you grow out of your egg allergy quick smart.

Most importantly Benedict, your daddy knows what really matters in life. Love, laughter, fun and joy. He is loving. He has loved you since you were just an idea and not yet a boy. He is the best daddy a boy could have. I weep with happiness at having met your daddy.

Your mama x

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Breaking Bad is finished. Now what are we going to do? #blogvember

5 Nov 2013

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We have finally finished watching Breaking Bad. All of it. It’s over. Now there is a yawning gulf in our evening particularly between nine and midnight that used to be filled with the archetypal anti-hero doing appalling things.

What are we going to do?
That awful absence of addictive television has left us starting at each other on the couch wondering how to converse with each other. The coasters permanently glued to the arm of the chair have been swept aside in favour of books, journals and other enriching and edifying materials. The living room has been cleared of clutter that had accumulated through weeks of neglect. The nana rugs have been laundered to remove the cat hair and melted shards of chocolate. The endlessly ignored and actively not-read for months pieces in the New Yorker and other fine publications have been absorbed and agonised over. Plot and character developments and the denouement have been dissected. It is over. It is finished. There are no more episodes. Nothing left to discuss. No more bad renditions of the ‘Say My Name’ scene.

And yet I am not ready to let it go, not quite yet. I am not yet ready to move onto something new, not ready to start another huge distraction. Lucky I have blogvember. How else would I fill the endless stolen hours? Before I leave Breaking Bad I give you this flashback from my childhood. What on earth would my grandad think of tv about meth labs and bad guys set to a soundtrack of his favourite gunslinger balladier?

 

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I’ve got this lovely 12 place dinner set. Would you like it? #blogvember

4 Nov 2013

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Sometimes married life, or co-habiting life, or just hanging out life, has traps. Like a bear-pit. These traps can sometimes, I have heard, take the form of unscheduled and unannounced visits from other people’s parents.  Or so I am told. If you do happen to find yourself in such a situation, perhaps you’ll need a little help. Here’s what advice I have picked up along the way, from friends who have had this sort of thing happen to them.

If you hear about a proposed visit by MIL to your town while you are away on holidays, the best thing to do is promptly forget. You don’t want to ruin your relaxed state. When you return from holidays, still forget. Until two days after you get home. Then hubby will remind you and you won’t have time to do anything. This is probably for the best.

When he does remind you three key pieces of information will be imparted. Your MIL is in your town, you are going to take her for coffee, he can’t remember her number. (These facts are all interchangeable with other facts like, today is Saturday, the car needs petrol, I can’t find my keys, as they are, equally, all completely useless).

If you arrive at MIL’s temporary accommodation with her longtime friends, say hello, be welcoming and friendly. If she then produces all her luggage when you think she’s gone to collect her purse, remain calm. Under no circumstances should you shoot accusatory glances at hubby*. He is in the same boat, that is far out to sea, in the dark, with no EPIRB or any flares. The next 48 hours will be a stormy period. Better to stay calm and dry for as long as possible.

Natural topics of conversations for MIL

  • Your wills
  • The contents of her house and how she’d like you to have them
  • Your husband’s ex wife (etc)
  • Your husband’s children
  • Your husband’s father
  • Your husband – with the sub-topics of, his job, his parenting, his political beliefs, his table manners, his future plans, his children
  • Your house and its contents
  • Your choice of school – together with choice of what age to send your child to school
  • The education system at large
  • How many ‘certified’ genius grandchildren there are in the family and how your child is going to be one of them
  • Young people today, and all that.

There are a number of approaches for dealing with ‘the natural topics of MIL conversations’. Most of them involve irony and a thick skin.

Over, say a 48 hour period, if you are very proficient, you can employ all of the different approaches in turn. Sometimes, if you are extremely good, you can employ different approaches for the same conversation at different times. Naturally, you may be finding yourself in the same conversation a number of times over 48 hours. You can either play a straight bat, take the ironic route or just pretend that you didn’t hear the question. Anyone like another cup of tea?

For example, the conversation about the contents of the house will go something like: ‘I have a 12 place setting Noritake dinner set, would you like it?’ Your response should be, I’d love it, but MY mother just gave me a 10 place setting Satsuma and we really can’t store it. I mean where would we put it? This last phrase should be accompanied by an expansive gesture around your tidy living room. This may then morph into, if there is anything at all that you want in the house, just say so. It is a good idea to defuse this with wry remarks about bringing your own roll of red stickers next time you visit. Mine. Mine. Mine. Sold. Sold. Sold.

Exactly the same conversation at another time about a different dinner set may include phrases like, have you had this valued? Anyone ever appraised your collection?

Having narrowly avoided collecting more 60s dinner sets, a camphor wood chest and a glass table with a light inside (just for example) the conversation may take a morbid turn towards the wills, death and dying and the rosy future you will have after everyone else is dead, with the 60s china and the glass table. You need to be ready for this. Here, my research tells me, you can use all the different approaches together. The question about your own will, should be answered with, are you happy with your solicitor? Perhaps we should get further advice? This will perhaps deflect the conversation momentarily into the legal profession and all that ails it. And away from you and your BLANK will kit you collected from the post office last time any one mentioned it. Cup of tea anyone?

The school conversation, much like the genius grandchildren can either be treated seriously or ironically and you can use the same stock responses for both. Yes, we do think our child is your most special grandchild and indeed a genius, would you like to see his umbilical cord?

*Using the term loosely of course, to mean ‘other spouse equivalent’ which I read once on a form.

Tea set? Would you like one?

By: Category: Adventures, Blog-vember, NaNoWriMo, Writing Tags: , , ,

Sunday Confessional One #blogvember

3 Nov 2013

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Too early for tinsel?

Too early for tinsel

Sunday is here. Following on from last year’s innovation, this Blogvember will feature a Confessional post on Sundays. Without further ado, for ado seems unnecessary, this Sunday I confess I am not ready for it to be December again. I have barely recovered from the last time.

December in our family is not just about Christmas. It is about birthdays. A lot of birthdays.

In our immediate circle of family and friends in the month from 28 November to 27 December there are nine birthdays. And there will be another added this year, when my sister-in-law has her second child. The December birthday honour roll includes two nieces, my brother, my son, and close friends children turning three and four; including one set of twins. I am always wary of adding them up in case I forget someone.

There are also a minimum of four childrens parties. The attempts to do combined parties are thwarted by interstate relatives and grandparents, or other difficult to work around family commitments. This means that we are at birthday parties every weekend for the whole of December, sometimes two in the one day. This is before the Christmas celebrations are taken into account. It makes me tired just thinking about it. This year I thought I had gone out early enough in the planning. I booked the hall. Set the date. Announced. Only to have been too late again. It’s three separate parties for the three kids who are turning four in the space of two days.

The shopping alone is enough to kill me. The present choosing, wrapping, card writing and arranging is a marathon. The cooking, and cleaning and in between it all, the odd bit of Christmas preparation. Last year, I wrote myself a list. It is in my diary. It has a detailed explanation of where I put the birthday accoutrements and in which box the Christmas lights have seen out the year. I glanced at the list the other day. I promptly shut the diary.

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The annual treasure hunt

Boxing Day used to be all about cricket, ham rolls and beer. It is now about making the 27th of December special for my beautiful boy. I promise myself every year I will be one of those organised and on-top-of-it people who shop at the mid-year toy sales, who buy in bulk and wrap as they go. Bless me father, for I have sinned.

Oh how I laugh when I get to November and there are no age appropriate gift cards in the box. Tasteful adult cards? I have millions of them. Ones with dinosaurs and fairies and stuff little kids like? Totally absent. My continued lack of preparation and incremental forethought stares me in the face, as I peer into the box hoping that something will appear. Better get shopping. Actually, better have a gin before I start.

Suggestions welcome for birthday presents for girls turning three, four and nine, and for brother who has everything.

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Writing time #blogvember

2 Nov 2013

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Unplug and write

Unplug and write

I burst into the kitchen just now. Robert is shelling broad beans. I’ve got this idea, I say. I’ve been trying to think of an idea, a kernel for a post, all afternoon. I continue. You know that story about Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan talking about how long it takes to writes songs? Yes, he says in a drawn out way. Well, I press on, I think I’ll write about that, and writing. About how long it takes. Yes, he says again. Not very enthusiastically. I exit the kitchen. Sometimes the ideas sound better in my head than when I say them out loud to you, I say. That’s the role we play for each other, he says. Read More

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We are here #blogvember

1 Nov 2013

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It’s the first of November. It is not 4 in the morning. Which is just as well as today has been full enough without extending it for another 10 hours. It is the first nice evening for a while and we are sitting outside. It is the start of Blogvember, or as we call it round here, NoNoNaNoWriMo.

I can’t commit to writing 1667 words a day, for every day of November. While I would love to, and I’d love to feel the fantastic sense of achievement of ‘winning’ NaNoWriMo again, I know what is required. I know I am not able to commit the time required. Never mind that I am bursting with story fragments, ideas and characters. I just don’t have the time.

Me? Nerves of steel!

Me? Nerves of steel!

Instead I will blog every day for November. That’s a blog post a day for 30 days. Last year’s blogvember was a whirlwind of working full time and writing every day and the hardest thing was finding and processing images. This year will be no different. I won’t be able to find any more free time.

If you write everyday, you need images for your blog; to promote it. It provides a visual reference for your reader. Something that represents your words. If you’re a writer, you need to conjure those images, but in the minds of your reader, not in the blogosphere. The writing and the blogging I have done, particularly in the last three years has shown me the difference. If you want to write fiction, you need to stop blogging. If you love your blog, it is hard to find the time to write fiction. That is just my experience. This year at least, I have a stock of images ready to go … well sort of. I have taken photos. I have sometimes even processed them into acceptable blog images. I have a few ideas for posts I would like to write. Mostly it will be a ‘pantser’ effort of making it up, just in time, as I go along. My creative processes will be curtailed into snippets of compressed, expedient writing, rushed and hurried, while I should be doing other things. I will spend a bit of time this evening, formulating some ideas and trying to work out how to carve out the hour a day I really need to do Blogvember, or indeed any creative writing process, justice.

While I struggle to find the time, I commit to bringing you insights, small and large into my life and the lives of those around me. The big issues, the tiny and insignificant issues, the issues that matter and the ones that only a tiny handful of people will actually care about. Hope you can join me for the wild ride.

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The Weekend

13 Apr 2013

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Today would be a good day to write and write and write. It’s warm, my head is full of ideas. There are few plans for other things.

But I won’t. I will shop and cook and organise. I will exhaust myself with the dashing to and fro gathering all the supplies to survive another week. I will waste the precious time with talk to myself about how my family needs me and that I be happier if I rearranged the furniture.

This is a waste.

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By: Category: Adventures, The rest of my life, Writing Tags: , ,

American literature – part two – the long list

18 Mar 2013

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Where to start?

Where to start?

There has been a fantastic overwhelming response to American literature – through the fence, with too many suggestions to read this year, let alone the next five years. I have received a deluge of book suggestions. Many authors, some titles and now I am trying to wrestle them into some sort of shape and form.

For now you can read some of the suggestions and responses here

Stay tuned.

 

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American literature – through the fence

17 Mar 2013

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For a long time I have been wanting to read more American fiction. Great GatsbyThis spark was renewed last year when I read the hauntingly beautifully written William Stegner’s Crossing to Safety. A book I really, really enjoyed.

To my shame, it wasn’t until 2011 that I read John Cheever’s classic and perfectly formed short story The Swimmer and The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, which when first published, resulted in hate mail to The New Yorker and cancelled subscriptions (I highly recommend the New Yorker Fiction podcast of this story, it gives me chills.) I should add my thanks to Kylie Ladd for both introducing me to the joy of the podcast and to The Swimmer.

Prior to this I’d plowed my way through much of Tom Wolfe (the whole of it actually), Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Dave Eggers (as well as McSweeney’s) and David Foster Wallace – all of whom write in a specifically American way, to my way of reading. But the wider range of the classic American texts and the best exponents of the short story, I have ignored. Largely this is because the emphasis was on reading English literature, and in some circles American literature was considered somehow less. Even at university, the bulk of my first year English texts were British. Except Fahrenheit 451, which I didn’t read – by then I was busy with other entertainments.

This is just such a wrong perception. It was said often when I was young that American fiction was full of sound and fury signifying nothing – a reference which, embarrassingly I always thought was about Macbeth. I had no idea about Faulkner. This belief that American fiction was not worth my reading time, coloured my view of the ‘classic American’ texts. And Gatsby, God’s Little Acre, Hemingway and Mark Twain.

Of course, I read To Kill A Mocking Bird, Catcher in the Rye, Grapes of Wrath (oh how I cried and cried), and even most of Kurt Vonnegut as a rebellion against the requirements to toil through all those Austens and Brontes. Indeed I think Vonnegut was the turning point. I read every single book our library possessed, and those who know how much I hate the library, will understand the commitment required.

Interestingly, now with a soul searching period of literature, post the past decade and a half, of tragedies and disasters, of bombs and hostility; the Americans are out in front in my view for dealing with what David Foster Wallace called “real American type sadness”. While here we wallow, trying to make sense of our own time in Australian fiction, and of our own stories, the Americans are dealing with their own loss and breakdown. The Road, White Noise, Falling Man, Infinite Jest, Back to Blood – the list goes on. All books about the end of times in their own specific way. All by men.

It was clear when I started writing this post, that I would get myself into trouble, it was stunning how quickly this happened. I can’t shake the academic training and I’ve stopped short of presenting any analysis because I haven’t read enough. It is ironic really that I am pronouncing that I want to read more American fiction but can’t write about it as I would like because I haven’t read enough of it. I am now in danger of labouring this point so long you’ve stopped reading!

How to proceed then. Limited reading time, but the desire to know more about a tradition that I had alternatively ignored and loved. To start, I think it might be worth addressing the gender imbalance. I’d love your suggestions. Online reading group this isn’t. That would be doomed to fail for lack of time right now. But I think a list of classics that I could work my through would be great.

I would like to compile a list. Tell me then, which American fiction should I read?

More particularly, which American women writers should I start with?

Comments please.

 

By: Category: Adventures, Book Reviews, Writing Tags: , , ,

Memes, themes, dreams … 2012

31 Dec 2012

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DSC_0293

I cannot wait to see the back of this year. Cannot wait. From its inauspicious beginning, to the never-ending sick of May to September, the drama, madness and chaos has continued relentlessly. It has featured extremely difficult parenting moments, and pseudo-parenting of the big kids, who while not my direct parental responsibility, still have a big call on my emotional resources. It also featured a seemingly endless stream of challenges.

Benedict turned three. His celebration was joyous and it made my festive season to see him dive into his cake. At least I held my promise of always doing a special celebration for him. Read More

By: Category: Adventures, Australian Women Writers 2012 Challenge, Benedict, The rest of my life, Writing

Blogvember post the last … what no one tells you ~ part one

30 Nov 2012

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What you must not do, is reach behind you into your past and try to drag parts of it with you.

You are not that person anymore.

Let me tell you a story.

This is a story about ‘everywoman’. She’s you, she’s me, she’s your wife, your sister, you lover, your friend. Let’s call her Stella, although that isn’t her real name. Stella lives in a world where the truly important and transformational aspects about her life are hidden, not discussed, not for public consumption. She lives with a haze of unspoken thoughts and fears hovering just out of her grasp.

Why didn’t anyone tell me?

What no one tells Stella is how much of herself she will lose. Or about how much she will lose control of perfectly simple things, like getting in the car and driving away. Or about her bodily functions and how they will betray her while she is trying to get on with life. Or the boredom, or the self loathing, or the sheer frustration of trying all day to something easy and minor and trivial that cannot be achieved while holding a baby that won’t sleep.

No one tells her that everyone, every woman feels like this. In Stella’s mind they are all coping and it is only she who is paralysed standing next to your car for an eternity trying to decide if you should just carry the baby into the bread shop or whether you should get the pram out of the boot. As she stands there a stranger approaches her gently to ask if she is ok because she is concerned that Stella has been standing there for such a long time.

In Stella’s mind everyone else loves making craft and cuddling tiny babies while not reading their book. In her sleep deprivation addled brain, it is only she who is monumentally incompetent and you are the only one you who can’t do all the housework and cook the dinner and look after the babies all day.

What no one tells you is that this is the last bastion of the secret club that you can only enter by having a baby. A secret door that once you pass through it you can never go back. The changes are profound and you can’t know this from the outset. The mechanical details of having a child can be taught and explained but no one will tell you what it feels like. Not often does anyone try to speak honestly about the grind and the isolation, and if they do soft words in rosy colours are applied over the hard messages to soften, to conceal and to temper the blows.

If Stella is lucky she will be well supported. But no amount of support and encouragement is going to silence the noisy voices in her head telling her that she should love this, that it is natural and easy and that if it isn’t, that it is her fault. If she is unlucky she will not be supported. She will be bullied by doctors and nurses and her pain from the birth with never leave her. If her expectations, no matter how unrealistic about her birthing experience are not met, she will feel like she has failed in some way, and no one will want to talk about it. Not her friends, not her partner, not anyone; because after a while someone else cannot hear her tell the story over and over again without wishing it would stop.

Sometimes Stella will feel like she is surfing the wave to the shore and that soon, she will get up on her feet on the wet sand and walk, free from the clinging water. Other times the tide and the gritty irritating sand will trap her, pulling her back under. She will occasionally try to feel herself again. She’ll try to read the New Yorker or the Paris Review but the page will swim beneath her eyes and she will struggle to hold a coherent thought and then the baby will need a feed or comfort or the toddler will pull all the books off the shelf and Stella will leave the page there only to have to try to tidy it up later.

No one will tell her that it will take years before she will successfully drag some part of her past into the light and reconnect with it. If she is lucky she will know women with children older that her own, to give her glimmers of hope that one day she might be able to do these things again. The things that make her feel whole again. But today is not the day this is going happen. Today Stella will start at 5-30 and keep going till she collapses in the evening, only to have to get up during the night over and over.

Sometimes other women will tell Stella about the joy. The sheer bliss of newborn smell or rosy sleeping cheek or smiles. The telling won’t be enough to convey the heartrending and the unraveling of which will go with these. Or forever living with your heart outside of your body.

 

Welcome. Here is your life changing gift.

By: Category: Blog-vember, My favourites, NaNoWriMo, Writing Tags:

Blogvember post 29 … the penultimate post

29 Nov 2012

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With much fanfare and as much excitement as the finish of NaNoWriMo, I present the penultimate post of blogvember.

A quick recap if you’ll indulge me.

I wrote a blog post a day for the past 29 days.

I will write one more tomorrow and that will be a blog a day for the month of November. I wrote each post on the day they were published. I didn’t prepare in advance. I had a few prompts from my good friends on twitter, but otherwise I made it up as I went along. As with my writing for NaNoWriMo, I am a pantser with these challenges. Hardly any preparation, just a shell of an idea. See what happens.

I managed to write over 9 000 words. Not all of them are great words, some of them are out of order.

I did write over 1200 words about gin, which was a surprise. So few words?

A few posts were totally fantastic and a delight to write. I particularly loved post 28 for the reactions and for the joy of recognising a fantastic person. I also enjoyed writing everyday. Some posts were painful and were affected by tiredness. You can work out which ones those are for yourself, I am sure.

Only one day was I totally unable to write anything at all. The dog ate my homework post on day 17 features, The Kinks and well, sometimes that’s all you need. Well, The Kinks and rosé. I also wrote about a wide range of subjects, many of them close to my heart. And there is still one more post to come. Stay tuned.

 

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