Category Archives: waiting

Smelling the roses

Hello, all you lovely people. I hope today is a good day where you are and that you get a chance to stop and smell the roses. One of the upsides of my current writing spot is that I get to watch passersby literally doing that. I want to tell each of them how much I love that they stopped to appreciate a Just Joey or a Mr Lincoln, but that would be creepy and annoying so I restrain myself. Fortunately, there is also a window between me and them, so I have help in the form of a physical barrier.

Anyway. Thank you so much to those of you who have asked for an update on THE WRITING! (Also to those of you who did not lest I fall into a pit of despair and proclaim that it was all too hard! It is hard, but that’s okay and expected.) It’s been a while since I blogged because, frankly, I’m not sure how interesting I could have made numerous posts about waiting. Huh. How interesting that only one letter in that word is different from ‘writing’.

I did promise I’d share the up and downs, so I should have filled you in on my grumpy, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-with-my-life days – which there have been some of and it would be dishonest to tell you otherwise. But, generally, I continue writing furiously and with great joy and am learning to live with the realities of the creative world.

I am lucky enough to be working on three projects at the moment. Two of my Young Adult manuscripts and a new adult contemporary fiction novel. Squee, I’m really enjoying writing in an adult voice again! (Haha the ‘squee’ is so very adult!) I am 50 000 words into the first draft and it is a ride! There’s a lot of autobiographical aspects to the story. The protagonist is a teacher turned writer. She is dealing with a heap of loss at once and is in a long marriage to a good man. However, the story is set around a twenty-five year school reunion on the NSW Coal Coast, there’s a dead body involved, an old mystery and an ex-student with a crush. I hope one day you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I am enjoying writing it. Of course, there’s been tears too, as comes with writing about grief, but that is life, is it not?

In the meantime, I also continue to put some final touches to my YA manuscripts Treehearts and Paddling. The former is my story about a 17 yo trying to save the remnant banksia woodland next to her family’s dog shelter while trying not to fall in love with a Deaf boy who doesn’t date hearing girls. It covers a lot of themes very close to my heart: how we learn to communicate when we don’t share a common language; how we can’t fix everything but we can impact our immediate surrounds; how sometimes, when it matters, we can be braver than we thought we were.

I have chosen to employ a sensitivity reader for Treehearts, to be sure I portray the deaf/Deaf elements of the story as accurately as I possibly can. The feedback is beginning to come in and so far I haven’t made any major blunders so phew! Also, my reader is ‘loving’ it. Woohoo! I don’t want to name her until she has formally okayed associating with the book, but it has been lovely getting to know X through our email exchanges. (She is a West Australian living overseas.)

I’m also continuing to work with the amazing Kristina Schulz through my mentorship via the FAWWA Four Centres Emerging Writers Program. She is the perfect foil for my inevitable insecurities, so kind and complimentary about my writing. With her I am tweaking Paddling, the first YA I wrote about feisty, ambitious Year Twelve Ellie Bennett. Ellie is horrified when the smartest boy in the school thinks she’s romantically interested in him instead of just trying to improve her chemistry grade. And yes, there is a reason her name is Ellie Bennett, if perhaps not the reason you might expect!

On a more philosophical note, writing these stories and others has helped me finally understand all that stuff about life being best lived in moments. It’s taken me a while to get here, but maybe, at last, I am making a reasonable fist of it. I am as active and concerned about the world as always. However, I am better at focusing my energies and that, in turn, gets the books written! Most days!

In other news, another lovely writer, Karen Hollands, recently asked me to respond to some questions for her blog. She is interviewing writers who have been at it for a while, had some success but are not yet published. The questions were quite wide-ranging, so I will link to that post when it comes out for those who are interested. Meanwhile you can see her interviews with Lisa Kenway and Tina Cartwright here.

I will finish today by wishing you all access to books any time you want them. Happy reading everyone…and writing if that’s your thing. But, most of all, happy living. Many are going through difficult times and I sincerely hope your obstacles today – or in this moment of today – are well and truly manageable. x

The Books That Make Us

Dear friends, old and new

It’s cycled around to the first day of the month again and I am still in this wonderful space where I’m waiting to hear back from publishers. It’s as if I am poised, teetering, on the edge of so much possibility and it’s not such a bad place to be. It’s statistically likely that I will need to pick myself up from disappointment, but that knowledge still loiters around the corner, so for now let’s bounce onward – by going backward! Back to our younger selves.

I’ve been listening to a lot of online wisdom lately. Many festivals and workshops have gone digital for the obvious (hint Covid..well that 19 is misleading, huh?) reasons, and I’ve been able to listen to talks given in NSW in the morning and Queensland in the afternoon, all without leaving my home in WA. It’s a silver lining to what is a tough time for many. These talks, and several social media chats I’ve had recently, have reminded me what a shortcut to friendship-land it can be when you find someone who liked the same books as you as a child. 

If you’re a parent, perhaps, like me, you’ve been befuddled by the reading habits of your children. My daughter often has multiple books on the go at once, a concept that nearly makes me break out in hives. Is it her early exposure to modern tech that allows her to keep several storylines running in her head at once? Or is that something other people in older generations could do too – just not me? Meanwhile, my son prefers to read the same books over and over. This worried me for a while, until I thought about how many times I read my favourite series when I was younger. Those of you who know me well, or knew me way back when, will immediately know I’m referring to that series so many of us bookish types found comfort in: Anne of Green Gables. 

My mother worked in the library at my primary school, and I can still remember the sage green, hard-backed copy of Anne that I first discovered there. It had black and white photos in it of a movie version that I have never seen. I’ve never seen that edition since. I loved that book. I read it and the entire series over and over again. I caused my moustachioed Grade Four teacher some concern when he found me weeping in class over Matthew’s death…which taught me not to read books under the desk…and I still remember that Anne’s son (Walter)’s dog howled when he died, away at the front. Luckily, I was at home for that one. But, most of all, I remember that Anne loved words and names and making happiness out of sadness. Something little me liked too. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Gilbert was in there as well. The kind of hero I could respect. He liked smart, loud Anne , something that girls of my generation, and perhaps my particular persuasion, needed to hear.

There were other books too, many of them, but none ever took the place of the Anne series in my heart. I haven’t read them for ages, I think because I almost know them too well and there are no surprises left. But they have left an imprint on my soul, so much so that when another claims a similar love, my warm feeling of Hello! A kindred spirit! has to fight with an instinctual bristling of What? No! Excuse me, I’m sure you didn’t love Anne like I loved Anne! Oh, you did?!

And, of course, that is the thing about books. They belong to no one, not even the author really. They arrive to patch us up or fill us up or inspire us. And at the same time, they may be patching up or filling up millions of other people. It’s humbling and delightful. 

If you have time and inclination, tell me about the books that made you.