Chained to the wheel

So here's this week's thing: every week's thing, come to that.  As I may have mentioned once or twice, I work full time, which leads to a very fragmented writing life.  I'm trying to rewrite the beginning of a junior book, and the more I rewrite, the more I delete.  I pick apart every sentence the moment it's on the page.  But the main problem is that I don't know where I'm going.  With the book.  With writing generally.

Maybe I should write and not think.  Maybe I should have done NaNoWriMo (when?).  Maybe I should give up this thing.  Maybe I should have become a lawyer.  Maybe I have run out of things to say. 

The usual.

And then I find this picture.

It's my great-grandmother, Isabella.  Behind her is the house she lived in for nearly forty years.  When her daughter Freda (now 95) gave me the picture, she said she couldn't believe the house was in the photo: it was shameful to be that poor, it still made her cringe to look at it.  As a young woman Isabella went to the Boer War, apparently to find her brother, and nursed on the ship on the way home. Then she married a rural widower 28 years her senior, was spurned by her husband's first family, took in washing to help, walking for miles over the hills near Roelands with baskets filled with other people's dirty laundry.   She died at 65, exhausted. 'She had a hard life, my mum,' says Freda.

And here I am, worrying about a book I don't have to write.

Eternal soundtrack

Inspired by Mike and the 'geezer jamboree'(!), I'm mulling over what music I'd want to take to the hereafter.  You're supposed to be limited to seven songs, which makes things tricky.  My seven tunes today might well differ from my seven tunes tomorrow.  Today's pick, in no particular order:

Tuxedo Junction, Glenn Miller
A Town Called Malice, The Jam
Tinseltown in the Rain, The Blue Nile (It's sheer accident these first three start with 't'!)
Sing, Sing, Sing, Benny Goodman (also handy because it lasts 9 minutes)
Dancing Queen, ABBA (you knew ABBA had to get a look in, didn't you?!)
Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan
A Day in the Life, The Beatles

 What are yours?

When your best just isn't good enough

I don't know whether it's because of the amount of US television/music/movies our culture is saturated with, but it seems to me that Australians are becoming as obsessed with success - usually measured in tedious material terms - as any of our North American counterparts.  It's all about being a winner, fulfilling your potential, reaching your dreams.  If you don't have - or strive for - a great career, a fabulous family, and a whole pile of Stuff, there's something wrong.  (Or maybe that's just living in a big mining town, I don't know.)  We're expected to aim high, and if you miss, it's your fault.  You're not talented enough, determined enough, focused.  It's all about you.  You're in a race, and there's no dropping out. 

This attitude has become attached to writing, too.  If you don't win prizes, write bestsellers, get grants or make a living from it, there's something a bit sad about you.  You should be out there promoting, getting your name known, increasing your sales.  The more people buy your books the better, right?  Aren't you going to be the next J.K. Rowling?  Not going to do NaNoWriMo?  A thousand words a day, fifty thousand words a month - write until you're sick of your own words?*  What kind of writer are you?

So much of what is important about writing is so easily lost.  The pleasure of making a story take shape, of massaging a sentence until it is supple, of going beyond what you think you can do.  The physical delight of your hand moving on a page.  The satisfaction of printing out new pages, still warm from the printer. 

Writing is not a competition.  The point of writing for me - aside from its intrinsic satisfaction - is communication.  We're telling stories, sharing stories. 

Finding connections. 

Getting real.

If writing isn't about that, you'd be better off becoming a lawyer.** 


* I'm not dissing NaNoWriMo, but I wonder how there can be joy in it.
** I'm not dissing lawyers either.  Some of my best friends are lawyers :)

Things in spring

1.  I have started a new kids' novel.  I felt despairing after my no-more-YA pronouncement; then I had more ideas for YA novels; but I returned to despair knowing I don't have the time to bring the ideas to life.  So I took my notebook on the train, and en route to work I wrote down any and every idea that entered my head, hoping that one of them would be for something shorter and more manageable.  One was.  It has grown legs, and now I'm seeing if it will be able to run and leap. 
2.  It's planting season.  If you'd told me ten years ago I'd develop into a mad keen gardener I would have sniffed and told you you must have the wrong person. My one failed attempted at growing basil (basil!  how hard could it be?!) convinced me I was a brown-thumb.  Enter husband with mushroom-compost-toting abilities, a bunch of newspapers and giant pots, and presto, a (food) garden has been born.  (Only food - the rest looks like the overgrown jungle it is).  For the last few weeks every meal has contained our potatoes, broad beans, spinach, herbs, onions, spring onions, leeks, and the garlic isn't far away (Doust, are you paying attention?!).  The Good Life indeed.
3.  I've been cycling around the lakes in my suburb, delighted by the baby ducks and swans, the swarming insects in the trees, the abundant blue of Perth spring skies.  By the fact of being able to cycle at all, given that I couldn't for so long.  The joy of skimming over footpaths, bending into curves, pedalling through the warm air, feeling strength returning.
4.  John Lennon would have been 70 today, and I didn't need Google to remind me of the date.  He talked before he died about how life would be long, that he would have decades of creativity ahead of him.  A reminder to waste no time - creatively or otherwise.

Lower Picnic Area content alert*

*This post contains references not suitable for children or the easily offended.

The wonderful and with-it Simmone Howell put me onto this blog, which contains stories of various girls' and women's First Times.  The sheer range of experience is moving, thought provoking and fascinating.  I wish I'd read it before I wrote The Virginity Book (like that title?), although I have to say, I had no shortage of source material from my friends and colleagues, which generally flowed more freely after the consumption of wine.  When the novel comes out, I'd like to collect one-sentence descriptions of FTs, so start thinking about that one.  (Yes, you'll be anonymous.  I promise).

And speaking of vaginas, watch this.  I'm still laughing.

Things various

Some thoughts:
1.  After my decision to quit YA, I thought I'd be relieved.  Instead, I felt depressed (and also really touched by the sweet responses I had from folk - thank you).  I'm not sure what kind of perversity it is, to want to do something you have no time to do, but there it is.  I wanted a resolution.  There is none.
2.  It is spring, and I have daffodils.  I planted the bulbs, and was convinced they had failed.  Then one day there were green shoots.  A few weeks after that, glorious, heavy-headed flowers.
3.  On the weekend I had brunch in a cafe in Kings Park with writing buddies Kirsty Murray and Patricia McMahon; a Health PR reunion, replete with singing and percussion; and a catchup with some women I worked with at Parliament.  Last week one of the guys I worked with at Health died suddenly, and the only good thing to come out of the shock was to make me realise how important it is to celebrate the friendships we have, to be grateful for those still with us - to make sure, in the busy-ness of days, there is time for what matters. 
4.  I have a day off today, to walk on the beach, sit in silence, listen.
5.  Kirsty suggested the novel be called The Virginity Book.  What do you think?

The end of the line

This is the first couple of chapters of the V novel, put into Wordle (thanks to Meg McKinlay).

Neat, huh?

It seems to me as if I've been writing this novel forever, and one of the things to come out of my editorial meeting was the decision to push back (to coin a phrase) the publication date to early 2012 (as my publisher said, it's not exactly a stocking filler :)).  The pressure of day job means that I can't do the book justice otherwise, so I am both a bit sad and relieved to have some more time. And I think that unless something extraordinary happens (like Lotto), this will be my last YA novel, as I can't continue to try to write such complicated, long work amidst the rest of my life: I have run out of steam, and have got to the point where effort far outstrips rewards. I am satisfied with the YA novels I've produced, and now need to be realistic about what is possible, given all the other constraints I have. So I want to go out with a bang - and to do it right.