No More Beer and Skittles

Oh, I know, it's been ever such a long time.  But I've been busy.

Dianne Wolfer, Naomi Kojima, Yoko Yoshizawa, Leonard S. Marcus, me, James Foley and Norman Jorgensen at Ku  De Ta, Singapore

* At the end of May I was lucky enough to visit Singapore to present at the Asian Festival of Children's Content.  My first session was with the dynamic Cynthia Liu on realism and imagination; the other was with fellow Western Australians Dianne Wolfer and Norman Jorgensen on Light Touch, Gritty Themes.  I had absolutely no idea what to expect: given that most delegates were from Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea and China, as well as a few from the States, the UK and Canada, I wondered how we would communicate across cultures, with our vastly different assumptions about and experiences in the world.  It was therefore fascinating to see how love of reading and books united us.  The fact that most of us grew up on the same diet of English language books (Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, even the Little House series) provided a shared language; passion for getting kids reading did the rest.  

We often whinge in Australia about how hard it is to make space in the curriculum for reading and particularly reading for pleasure; compared to what some of our Asian colleagues are up against, in highly competitive cultures that put a high value academic, maths-based achievement at the expense of what we call humanities, we have nothing to complain of.  Despite their difficulties, I met scores of teachers and others determined to make space for literature in Asian schools.  I salute them.

Just out of interest, the gritty themes session - which I was the most concerned about re cultural divides - was standing room only: we had 120 people attend. I talked about Bye, Beautiful and Losing It: I did note the shock on some people's faces as I explained what Schoolies Week is.  That's one tradition I'm sure the audience was pleased not to share with us!

The only quokka-free zone on Rotto

* In June we had our annual Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators retreat at Rottnest.  I started playing with a couple of projects, including one with Patricia McMahon.  After feeling creatively exhausted for a while, in part as a result of Real Life events, it was deeply satisfying to be among my people, and to actually feel inspired, rather than tired.

* If you happen to be a young Queensland writer, you might want to enter this.  Good to see that state is still doing something to support writing, although it's still heinous that it cut out its Literary Awards.  I sincerely hope the government has a good re-think about that one.  

* I am doing dry July for the first time: my team is Drinks Paused for a Cause, and you are most welcome to donate.  So there'll be none of this:

Losing It unleashed

Having a book launch involves as much organisation, angst and 'why-am-I-doing-this-again?' fretting as your average wedding.  Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating, but really, a launch is not for the faint of heart. Once upon a time publishers used to organise launches: in these uncertain times, those days have gone the way of three-book contracts.  A launch is the author's business.

So the first thing I did when organising the launch of Losing It was to say, 'Help!'  

Help came in the form of the superlative Patricia McMahon, who did everything from script her four teenage co-launchers to coordinate the platters to supply her very own husband for security and clean-up duties.  

Help also came from the team of The Literature Centre, who provided the venue, books, glasses, moral support and wine-toting (thanks Mailee!).  The Literature Centre is second home to many of us writers, and first choice for book launches (of which mine was one of four for May: the author-organised nature of these things is clearly not putting many of us off!) 

I am waiting for some more photos of the four gorgeous girls who played my four characters: in the meantime,  see below.  And if you want to know why you should never have sex in a Yaris, watch this.

And if you want to know why I wrote Losing It, read this, which also features my daughter's first published photograph.  I'm not sure why it got a mention on the Australian Christian Lobby site, but hey, I hope all their readers buy a copy.  I'm sure they'll find it worthy of, er, discussion.

Lots of Losing Its.

Lesley Reece, still luminous from her BHP Billiton partnership launch that same morning.

Patricia McMahon: 'Take the shot, then put that camera down.'

My wonderful supporters #1.

My wonderful supporters #2.  There was a lot of love in the room that night, in both directions.

Bye, Beautiful and places in the sun

Writing can seem like a lot of effort for little reward.  Your books (if you're lucky enough to get published in the first place) might be ignored, go out of print, drop off the radar (or never be picked up by the beacon in the first place), or date too quickly (I believe I mentioned a phone box in my first novel, just as one example).  Now there is a whole new level of uncertainty with the demise (they say) of the bookshop and the unknown quantity of the ebook.

I am therefore more than usually gratified that Bye, Beautiful, six years after its release, is still getting attention like this.

Also, I spoke at John Curtin College of the Arts last week, and was presented with a range of remarkable interpretations of Bye, Beautiful, like these:

In other news, I recently drove 2000kms with an old school friend to visit another old school friend on her mango farm.  It reminded me of how important high school is, despite its limitations or otherwise - and regular readers of this blog will know I haven't always been inclined to speak fondly of my alma mater - and particularly the importance of those formative friendships.

I also learned that I'm a pretty good shot with one of these:

And that fanging around on one of these in the dunes is about as much fun as there is:

From the mouths of others

Today, this week, I have no words: ironic, perhaps, given that Losing It was officially released on Wednesday.  So instead I am gathering the words for you, that you might find a pattern you like among them.

1.  since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves;
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom ...
e e cummings

2.  I am over-run, jungled in my bed, I am infested with a menagerie of desires: my heart is eaten by a dove, a cat scrambles in the cave of my sex, hounds in my head obey a whipmaster who cries nothing but havoc as the hours test my endurance with an accumulation of tortures.  Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders?

How can I be kind?  How can I find bird-relief in the nest-building of day-to-day?  Necessity supplies no velvet wing with which to escape.
Elizabeth Smart, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept


3.  chaos, n: The wrongs are always more visible, the threats always closing in when in truth the world opens and opens and opens.
David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

4,  Neither she nor James had ever uttered the word 'love'.  Both were too shy.  Both were troubled by what might dissolve if they dared to name it.  Neither wished to alarm the other, or to reach and find their hands empty.
Gail Jones, Five Bells

5.  But no one succumbs to a temptation they find unattractive.  What is it, this compulsion to scrawl things on blank pages?  Why this boundless outflowing of words?  What drives us to it? Is writing some sort of disease, or - being speech in visual form - is it simply a manifestation of being human?

Margaret Atwood, Curious Pursuits

S*x and speaking

1.  I am chairing two sessions at the Perth Writers Festival: one about the Mickelberg brothers with Tony Buti, and Tapping into the Zeitgeist, with David Levithan, James Roy, and Indian rock star writer Chetan Bhagat.  I scored the latter because the fabulous AJ Betts is engaged spreading her fabulousness in a workshop at that time.  I can't wait.  I'm also speaking at Spearwood Library for the National Year of Reading on Valentine's Day.

It's a good way to start the year.

2.  I have just sent off the final proof of Losing It, with not a moment to spare.  It's the cumulation of lots of discussions and deep thought about sex and sexuality, and I'm proud of it.  I'm not the only one thinking about sex, though.  Tracy Clark-Flory says here that 'Sex is one of the most profound ways that we have to connect with other human beings, to transcend our physical separation'; Faramerz Dabholwala gives us a history lesson in case we thought sex was invented in the sixties; and Michelle Griffin recommends here that teenagers read (not watch, read) porn and raunchy books.

Something tells me Michelle will approve of Losing It.

3.  For Perth people who might have missed this, it's true: I'm totally moving to Melbourne.

Coming in 2012

1.  Forgive me banging on (yes, this is the post of double entendres), but on 28 March 2012, Losing It will make its way into the world.  Penguin has been doing some great pre-publicity and whipping up anticipation (see here and here), and I can't wait.  It seems an interminably long time since I started it, back in 2008, to now.  It's had three editors, and been rewritten, restructured and re-edited so many times I've lost count.  It's taken in the stories of so many friends who have, for years, been saying, 'So where is it?'  Now, finally, I can say: here.  Nearly.

2.  I loathe this time of the year.  I know I'm Grinchy, but I have yet to live through a year where I don't wash up after Christmas a wreck of exhaustion and wanting nothing more than to lie in a darkened room alone with a bottle of white and a pill to take me to mid-January.  Until I was 12 I loved Christmas and the smell of wheat dust on the easterly and playing chasey with my cousins, darting in and around the shaded paths my grandfather had built in his backyard.  After that, something happened, perhaps a new awareness of the gap between who I was and who some of my family wanted me to be, and Christmas made me feel the objectionable weight of their disappointment.  And now, though Christmas is now filled with civilised lunches and spending time with family and friends I love, I can't shake the dread of it.  Anybody else with me?

It does, however, cause one to reflect on the year that's passed: this year has been a mixed bag, to put it mildly.  I haven't had any publications out, apart from this republication, but I've done a lot of writing, having finished a project for Penguin and almost finished my junior novel, and am excited about the writing (and publications) to come.  And next year there will be lots of festivals I will be appearing at: more news on those as confirmed.  I am extremely happy in my new job, in contrast to this time last year.  So these positive things are an antidote to other aspects of my life, which are difficult and bound to become ever more so.  (My summer reading program is going to include Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking.)

3.  It's been a sad week for the world of literature and ideas: Russell Hoban died, followed by Christopher Hitchens.  My summer reading program will also include more of Hoban's work: I fell in love with Turtle Diary when I was 17 and have re-read it every few years since.  I admired Christopher Hitchens' robust intelligence, erudition and gusto for debate: although I did not agree with some of his opinions, I always respected the sheer weight of information and scrutiny that went into making those opinions.

4.  The garden is an extravagance of produce: corn waves at us through the window each morning; I bite into squirty cherry tomatoes hot from the sun, munch on crisp peas, suck the juice out of sweet strawberries; there is enough rocket to feed a middle-class army.  I've also grown enough garlic to knock out all the characters, major and minor, in Twilight.

5.  I wish you all a productive, happy and uneventful (in the Chinese sense) 2012.  I leave you with one of my favourite Blackadder quotes: Needs must when the devil vomits into your kettle.  Make of that what you will.

New in November

1.  The irony of November being National Novel Writing Month is striking this writer's anvil once again as we speak (pardon the questionable image, it's been that kind of a day).  For me, November is always frantically busy with non-writing-related activities, although lately I have paused to give thanks that I am in a different dayjob to the one which consumed vast amounts of my time and energy twelve months ago.  So I watch my fellow writers' word counts increase through their NaNoWriMo efforts, while the only thing that increases for me is the distance between what I thought was the end of my work-in-progress and the actual end of said WIP.  But what used to be snarkiness re NaNo has transformed into something more gentle: I consider the vast amounts of creative effort being expended by others, and think that this can be no bad thing.

This benign view is probably fuelled by my excitement about my upcoming YA project.  I have tried and failed to get Ozco funding for a couple of years running (close but no cigar), and now I've decided to just Do It.  It's writerly, it's edgy, and I have no idea how I'm going to put it together.  I'm stupidly excited.  And therefore excited about everybody else's creative work.

2.  It is spring, finally.  Here in Western Australia the weather wasn't sure for quite a while, but now days are more blue than rainy, buffeted by pre-summer winds.  The wild fowl on the lakes are followed by their offspring, bottlebrush shrubs (bushes? trees?) are being set upon by squawking parrots, and red-tailed Carnabies are flying regularly overhead, though not in their former numbers.  I've planted spring onions, tomatoes, various greens, capsicum, cucumbers.  A few weeks ago, a complete stranger on a ride-on lawnmower, with a fanatic glint in his eye, levelled the weeds at the front of the house unbidden.  I'm going to plant a row of sunflowers there, and hope that next time he might mow around them.

3. My daughter is studying Bye, Beautiful at school.  That's one way of getting her to read it!

4.  My junior novel is edited, rearranged, fine-tuned.  I'm on the home stretch, but facts, as they are wont to do, are getting in the way of a good story, so I've had to go back to the drawing board for a few things.  And I've just received the blurb for Losing It.  So things are in motion, after feeling like I was running on the spot for quite a while.

5.  I'm writing this on my iMac.  I've never had a computer of my own before (I know, I know), and I'm in love, and jealous as all get-out.  Now I know what all my writer friends have been going on about all these years, and no, this is not a sponsored post.