Writing, Rewriting, Writing, Rewriting

I wasn't expecting it to be like this.

It's bedlam at the airport.

It was long ago, but not so far away.

I'm a Territory kid.

I step off the plane at Jackson's Airport and the heat hits me like a furnace blast.

I stepped off the plane at Jackson's Airport and the humidity hit me in the face like a hot wet towel.

This is my sixth attempt at beginning Independence (which may not be called Independence any more, by the way), my "New Guinea" novel. Some writers spend days on a paragraph and don't continue until they've got it exactly right. In this way, their novel falls from their fingers like a heap of perfectly formed leaves.

But when I get stuck, I start all over again. I am a chronic re-writer. And even after I get a whole draft, I will cut and paste and type it out all over again, tinkering as I go, three, five, a dozen, twenty times over, poking and moulding and tweaking, shaping and trimming and layering.

There is a Jorge Luis Borges short story in which an author strives to understand the mind of Cervantes so well that he can rewrite Don Quixote word for word -- yet it is not the same book, though the words are the same. Sometimes (though I ain't no Cervantes, nor Borges either) that's how I feel when I type out the same words for the twelfth or thirteenth time. They are the same words, but the story is not the same, because of the those twelve or thirteen versions that have gone before.

The Party's Over

Sorry for my long silence but I spent most of last week on the Gold Coast, at the Somerset Celebration of Literature. I've just discovered heaps of photos and a much better description of the event than I could muster here at Camille Santiago's blog -- she was the official photographer and her photos are a lot better than mine! (If you scroll right down to the end of the post there's even a picture of me.)

If I said I'd never had so much fun in all my life that would sound a bit tragic, so I won't. But it was really, really good. I got to hang out with a gang of lovely, funny, sweet, droll and clever authors and illustrators (downside - had irresistible urge to blow all my earnings on all their works, conveniently located at the festival bookshop. I may have come out in front, but it's close...) And I got to sit in on many sessions and hear them all talk about their work with such passion and humour and love and energy. It was inspirational for me, I can only imagine how it affected the thousands of kids who attended.

Highlight of the festival was the last night, when we all let our hair down, elbowed the other guests at the literary dinner aside, and took over the dance floor. The band (Somerset students) were all about sixteen, but they belted out "Blister in the Sun" and "Throw Your Arms Around Me" as if they were ooh, at least two years older, and us authors were loving ourselves sick as we partied like it was 1999 and as if we didn't all have to go home tomorrow.

But it was really all about the books -- and it's confirmed to me just how lucky I am to be surrounded by people (alas, not often enough!) whose main aim in life is to bring the joys of reading and writing to kids of all ages. What a great business to be in; what amazing, generous, gifted people you all are; what a privilege to meet you.

Thanks, Somerset. If only the festival could run all year round. But then I guess it wouldn't be so special.

* I'm labelling this post as "work." Hah!

Advice From My Daughter

Alice: Mum, you should write a series called "The Bum-Droppers" -- you'll laugh so hard, your bum will drop off. This will improve the money you earn and the prizes you win. Every child will know your name. You must aim to beat Andy Griffiths. People will be screaming for your autograph! They'll be hilarious books that will catch the tweens. The tweens are the starting point. Andy Griffiths will have only a handful of admirers, you need a bagful, you have to make them love you.

This thing needs to be hilarious. You have to make your reader believe there is an actual fight in there. Give them a turnover, give them a hit! That's the kind of children this world needs. They'll fall on the floor and laugh their heads off. You need the exact right peppermint of violence -- too many and you feel sick, not too less, give a teaspoon of violence, 1% of the whole book is violence.

The tweens love good hilarious books, that's practically all they read these days. Catch the boys: whole schools, packs, countries of boys! Andy Griffiths has that. Throw him out of the way! You can do it! Also you have to beat Zac Power.

Put letters in, telegrams, more describing words. Super Gun Ball, come home immediately, your father's had a heart attack. They'd find that hilarious! You must express anger -- maybe a few swear words, but they have to be beeped out. Everyone loves a good swear word. Cars exploding! Maybe a murdering footy player. If you don't grab these teens and tweens, who knows what they're capable of!

Me: So what should these books actually be about?

Alice: (gives me a withering stare) I don't know. At the moment we're just talking about marketing.

Seven Things That Have Inspired Me

Sandra Eterovic has inspired this post, by tagging me to reveal seven things about myself. (She looks at seven aesthetic themes that inspire her visual art, here.) (You can also find seven sources of inspiration for Christine McCombe, a composer friend, here.)

I thought I might share one source of inspiration for some of my books -- of course every novel has too many seeds to count, or even remember, but here are some that sprang to mind.

1) Blake's 7This dystopian British sci-fi series ran from 1978 to 1981 and I used to stay up late in a darkened house to watch it. The sets wobbled but the dialogue sparkled with wit and moral complexity. I developed a hopeless crush on Avon, the darkest and most cynical of all the characters, played by Paul Darrow. The character of Darrow in The Singer of All Songs was named in his honour, but the notion of a roaming band of outlaws, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, was the ultimate inspiration for Calwyn's motley band of chanters. (Blake's 7 was itself inspired by Robin Hood, Westerns, and South American revolutionaries.)

2) The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon


I read this thousand-year-old Japanese notebook of personal reflections, observations and poetry as I was beginning work on The Waterless Sea, and something of the atmosphere and rituals of life in the ancient Japanese royal court seeped into the culture of the Palace of Cobwebs in Merithuros - elaborate wigs, poetry tournaments and strict rules of etiquette, as well as political intrigue.

3) Belly dancing classes
Bless my friend Heather who persuaded me to join her in a belly dancing class at our local Neighborhood House. For six weeks we self-consciously tried to shimmy our post-baby hips, convinced the instructor was staring pityingly at our pathetic Anglo attempts to gyrate and undulate. But Ozlem's instructions turned up in The Tenth Power as Briaali's encouragements to the stiff priestesses of Taris to shake their booty for the final dance of Becoming that heals Tremaris.

4) Kissed a girl
The story of Jem and Mackenzie in my first Girlfriend Fiction title, Always Mackenzie, was inspired by two (girl) friends who had conducted a passionate affair at school and attended their school formal together. Still the closest of friends, one is now good-as-married (to a bloke) with two kids, while the other is good-as-married (to a lovely lady) with one daughter. Love you both.

5) Quakers
While I was writing Winter of Grace I remembered attending a meeting of Quakers in North Carlton, and how deeply impressed I was by the silence and stillness of their communion with God. In the first draft of the book, Bridie ended up joining the Quakers, but in the final version I decided to leave her still seeking. I think their mediatative approach to worship and their staunch social activism would appeal to her, though.

6) Burnham Beeches

This beautiful old house in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne was the model for Eloise's enchanted Art Deco house in Cicada Summer. Though as far as I know there's no swimming pool.

7) Tarot cards
I've told fortunes since I was at school, but never found a way to include the tarots in a book until Penni suggested that India in Dear Swoosie should share my psychic gifts! India is a bit more psychic than me (though I have had some startling successes). For me the attraction of the cards is more the psychology that lies behind them, and the seemingly magical way that they elicit confessions that wouldn't appear in any other context. Hmmm.

If you've read this far, consider yourself tagged!

Happy Sad

Big sobs in our living-room last night as the delectable David Tennant signed off as the tenth Doctor Who. Despite my lifelong loyalty to Tom Baker (no 4) and Peter Davison (no 5), DT takes out my award as Best Doctor Ever. The perfect blend of intense, funny and drop dead gorgeous, he's going to be a hard act to follow. Good luck, Matt Smith - you're going to need it. Though I have to say, I'm slightly disturbed that the Doctor is now being played by an actor who was born a couple of years after I started watching the show... But hey, that's the paradox of time travel, isn't it?

And also much happy this weekend when Penni and I visited The Younger Sun bookshop in Yarraville to talk about Dear Swoosie (and sundry other topics). We got the girls to guess which of us wrote India and which wrote Poppy (they got it right). The cupcakes were delicious, the girls were delightful, and Kate was very welcoming. It was so lovely to meet a bunch of keen readers who were so enthusiastic about sharing their love -- not just for our books (though, hey, that was nice, too!) Thanks for having us!

Wicked Sisters

Confession time: I love the Mitfords with a passion. For the last week I've been utterly lost in this mammoth book of letters between the six sisters, spanning almost eighty years of hilarious, poignant and always fascinating correspondence.

For those who aren't familiar with the Mitford family, a quick summary:

1) Nancy
Witty, biting comic writer; author of The Pursuit of Love and Love In A Cold Climate, lightly fictionalised and screamingly funny accounts of her own youth as a daughter of a shabby, quite mad English aristocrat (he used to hunt the children with hounds). (These were the books that made me fall in love with the Mitfords.) After an unhappy marriage, moved to France to be near the love of her life, Colonel Gaston Palewski. Tragically, he didn't love her back as much as she loved him.

2) Pamela
Known as "Woman." An accomplished cook, she could recall in smallest detail meals she had eaten fifty years before. Became an expert on chicken breeding.

3) Diana
The acknowledged beauty of the family. Left her first husband in a huge scandal to marry Sir Oswald Mosley, then leader of the British Fascist movement. When war was declared, they were both thrown into prison for years (Diana's baby was only eleven weeks old). After the war, more or less ostracised from public life, they moved to France, where they became friends with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, also exiles.

4) Tom
The only brother. Killed in the last days of the war (sob).

5) Unity
Gawd. Big, bold and generous, she developed a huge crush on Hitler of all people (!), and pretty much stalked him until they became friends. When war broke out, she went to a park in Berlin and shot herself in the head, but didn't succeed in killing herself. Brain damaged and much altered, she was nursed by the Mitfords' mother until she died a few years later (sob).

6) Jessica
An avowed communist (she scratched hammers and sickles on the nursery windows; Unity scratched swastikas), she eloped with her Spanish Civil War-fighting cousin Esmond at the age of 17. They moved to America after the death of their baby (sob), Esmond joined the Canadian Air Force and was killed in the war (sob). Jessica remarried and became a civil rights activist and very effective muckraker, writing exposes of the funeral industry (The American Way of Death) and prison system (Kind and Usual Punishment), and also a memoir, Hons and Rebels. Often feuded with other members of the family, especially Diana, for obvious reasons. (Jessica regretted that she never took the opportunity of going with Unity to meet Hitler, whipping out a pistol and assassinating him -- she could have done it quite easily.)

7) Deborah
The youngest sister and the only one to be always on speaking/writing terms with all the others. Married the Duke of Devonshire, restored his gigantic ancestral home, Chatsworth, and ran it as a business. Hobnobbed with JFK (his sister married her brother-in-law). Amazingly, she is still alive at 89, the last surviving sister.

What fascinating lives!! Though all of them knew misery and tragedy, the predominant note is one of amusement; sentimentality is sternly banished and all their writing is lively, witty and utterly engaging, the greatest fear that of being a BORE.

They are so English, so repressed, hardly ever saying how they truly feel. The letters are peppered with slang and in-jokes, salted with wicked humour and stabs of glorious bitchiness. And yet, the enduring bonds of sisterhood can't help shining through (how they would all loathe such a sickly sentiment). Oh how I adore them all.

But all the same, I'm quite glad that they aren't my sisters.

PS If the person who stole my two volumes of Nancy's letters from my East St Kilda flat in 1998 is reading this, I would like them back -- no questions asked.

Call Me Old-Fashioned

I remember when school book clubs sold, you know, BOOKS.

Back when I was a kid in New Guinea, the book club was practically the only way to get new books. I'd spend hours agonising over my selection, and then when the parcel of three or four books arrived, exuding that special new-book smell, it was better than Christmas.

But now there seem to be hardly any actual books in the catalogues. It's all kitty pendants, and movie tie-in calendars, and lockable diaries with "free" electronic pens, and puppy posters, and spy kits with voice changers, and mosaic makers. I get that all these add-ons are probably intended to make kids excited about the books. But it seems to me that ultimately what all these bells and whistles do is make the books themselves appear less exciting.

Bah humbug.

Grandfather William

One of the unexpected joys of having children has been watching my father flower into a superb grandfather.

He was always too busy working to spend much time with my sister and me when we were growing up, though I do have cherished and vivid memories of building Lego, doing jigsaw puzzles, and listening to the Goons together.

But as a grandfather, he has come into his own. Now he has plenty of time. Infinitely patient, he will spend hours stapling and transcribing miniscule picture books with Evie. He explains the principles of flight to Alice and teaches her the controls of light aircraft. He will watch them throw a glider in the garden all afternoon, and retrieve it from the roof when it goes astray. He understands clouds, and coins, and model trains, and gravity, and how clocks work. He can mend broken toys with his special glue. He will help them build houses out of toothpicks. He picks peas, nets the apple tree, digs caverns under the house. If you have a job that's fiddly, or complicated, or painstaking, Papa is your man.

"Papa knows everything," sighs Evie contentedly.
"Yes," Alice agrees. "He should run the government."

I always knew my mum would be a wonderful grandmother. But Dad has been more of a surprise. He seemed almost shy of my sister and me when we were little.

But now I know he was only practising.

Not JD Salinger, Actually

Catcher In The Rye wasn't one of my favourite books. Maybe I was too young when I first read it, and too old when I read it again. Maybe I was never a rebel. For whatever reason, it wasn't the novel that pierced my heart and made me gasp, this book is all about ME!

For me, that book was The Millstone by Margaret Drabble. A slim volume about a twenty-something student in 1960s London who finds herself pregnant and decides to have the baby on her own, it may have been an odd choice for a 15 year old Australian girl who'd never even kissed a boy, let alone gone further. But Rosamund Stacey spoke to me in a voice that I recognised as if I'd known it through a hundred lifetimes. Despite all the superficial differences between us, I knew Rosamund; she was me.

Diffident, bookish, always tightly controlled, Rosamund would almost literally rather die than ask others for help or be a nuisance. One of the themes of the novel is how the arrival of her baby, Octavia, splits open the shell of determined solitary independence that has grown up around Rosamund. Babies have needs that cannot be denied; she has to ask for help now, she is forced to rely on other people, to beg for favours, to hand over control, for Octavia's sake.

At the very end of the book, Rosamund is briefly reunited with Octavia's father, another diffident solitary type (almost certainly gay), and recognises that whatever vague yearning she might have felt for him is dim and wavering indeed, compared with the radiant pearly all-consuming love she feels for her daughter. I was a long way off being a mother then, but the truth of that acknowledgement stayed with me. The Millstone told me that ultimately it's impossible to preserve your isolation from the rest of the human race; having a child is the quickest and most devastating way to learn that lesson. But all that didn't mean much to me at 15; I was focused on the way Rosamund was in the world, delighted and a little bit shocked with the recognition.

Rosamund Stacey's story was written just before I was born; I could have been baby Octavia myself. But Rosamund remains my very favourite literary heroine, because she helped me understand myself before I even really knew who I was.

Thank you, Margaret Drabble.

Schoolgirls

Alice presented herself, fully dressed, in the kitchen at 7.30, then took Evie off to her room to help her get dressed, too. This enthusiasm is unprecedented. I'm pretty sure it won't last. There was a (pedestrian) traffic jam outside our gate as all the parents and kids hurried along the street for the first day of school; I've never seen the schoolyard so crowded.

I didn't shed a tear, I swear; but I do feel a little wistful. Now it's Evie's turn to enter that big wide mysterious world without us; to begin the slow, certain process of leaving us behind.

Three More Days, Three More Days...

The alert reader of these musings may have noticed not much talk about writing lately. Particularly since the summer holidays started. Even as I type this, a child is calling impatiently for me to play Go Fish with her. But frankly, the whole of last year (apart from Swoosie of course!) was a bit of a write off (ho ho) on that front.

But THIS year is going to be different. Oh, yes. Child no 1 and child no 2 will both be at school. A-aaall day. That's right, from 9 till 3.30, my time is my own. Okay, from 9.15 till 3.15, to allow for drop off and pick up travel time. So say, six hours. Subtract 45 minutes for yoga, that leaves 5 and a quarter hours. I guess I will have to do some minimal housework - just the usual bed-making, laundry, shopping, tidying up, washing the dishes, cleaning the toilet - not cooking - I can cook when the kids get home. Let's say half an hour a day?

That leaves 4 and three quarter hours for work. Oh, wait, what about a lunch break, better give myself 45 minutes for a sandwich and a cuppa. Okay, four hours a day for writing.

Oh, hang on, there's all that businessy stuff I usually do while Evie is playing in the background - answering emails, blogging (ahem), googling myself (ahem). Hm, I can fritter away a couple of hours a day on that stuff normally. But the New Me will cut it down to half an hour. So I've got three and a half hours for creativity.

But I will need to feed my brain as well as wringing stuff out of it, won't I. That's the joy of being at home, right, the freedom to read and think, uninterrupted? Is an hour a day reading time too much to ask? But that only leaves two and half hours for writing...

And what if I want to chat to my mum on the phone, or walk down to the shops, or hear the preppies reading, or cover some books for the school library, or go to the library myself? What if my friend makes good his threat to find me a part-time paid job this year? What if I want to go out for coffee with my husband, or join a choir, or a book club? Where's that time going to come from?

Suddenly my long free day doesn't feel so luxurious after all.

(Ha ha. Just kidding. It's going to be great. I have three books to work on this year, and I'm itching to get started. Three days to go, three days to go.)

Through The Wardrobe

I just finished reading this delightful book about C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia, and it reminded me just how much I adored these books as a child (and still do). From the first thrilling, eerie moment that Lucy steps through the wardrobe and finds snow, not mothballs, crunching underfoot, I was enchanted. I didn't own them until later, but I read and re-read the copies from the Mt Hagen library until they became talisman books - to be borrowed and stowed under my pillow at night, without any longer needing to be actually read.

My particular favourite was Voyage of the Dawn Treader, with its sublime ending where Reepicheep the chivalric mouse paddles his coracle toward the green glassy wall of water at the edge of the world. The one book I loathed was The Last Battle, which seemed to strike false notes from the opening scene and ended, unthinkably, with the destruction of Narnia. Tears streamed down my face as I read it and I slammed the book shut, vowing never to reread it, pretending that I'd never read at all. Because as long as that story remained unread, it meant that Narnia still existed... didn't it? It was the equivalent of shoving my fingers in my ears and shouting "La, la, la!"

Many years later, reading about C.S. Lewis's philosophy, his spiritual vision, and his faith in the unique power of the imagination to grasp, and communicate, great truths, I can discern a straight line running from my deep and wordless love of Narnia to what I try, in my own feeble way, to achieve as a children's writer. To write books that aren't just about the surface story; to write books that comfort and inspire, that provide a glimpse of the mysteries of the universe; to write books that have a spiritual dimension, however deeply buried; to write books that might be loved, and stored in the heart forever.

Adventures in Hair

My hair has had many incarnations. It's been white-blond and curly, straight and mousy-brown, pony-tailed, plaited and cropped super-short. It's been orange and frizzy, black and bobbed, and poodle-permed. It's been hidden in turbans a la Simone de Beauvoir, fringed, scraped back with combs, and piled in a messy bun on top of my head and secured with a thousand bobby-pins.

Ultimately, nothing could disguise the disappointing genetic fundamentals of thin, limp texture and boring brown-ness, and I settled for a no-nonsense, no-fuss bob.

Then, a couple of years ago, my hair took control. It decided to turn grey - inexorably, steadily, irrevocably grey. And to my surprise, I'm rather liking it.

My head is turning slowly silver, in slender streaks. It actually looks kind of stylish. I've always loved the look of proud silver-haired women: Helen Mirren, Betty Churcher, Robyn Nevin, Judi Dench, two mothers at our school, one of the yoga teachers at the ashram. They look strong and confident, unapologetic and serene. Unashamed grey hair is becoming rarer. I always notice other women with grey hair; I feel drawn to my silver sisters. I don't mind looking my age, I hope I'm comfortable in my skin. I don't want to rub out the lines I've earned in my forty-something years with Botox, I don't want to pretend I'm still twenty when I'm clearly not. Not that I've transcended all body anxieties, I have plenty of other imperfections to fret about.

I've been thinking about this issue a lot lately, as I'm planning to write part of a book set in the 1970's. That decade might have been the last time in Western culture when women were truly encouraged to celebrate the huge variety of natural beauty we're endowed with - buxom or skinny, hairy, fleshy and glorious, we could let it all hang out, whatever shape we happened to be. "Natural" was gorgeous. (Of course it couldn't last because no one could make any money out of "natural.") How wonderful it would be if we could all feel comfortable and confident with our bodies. How much energy we would free up for creativity and action and enjoying life, if we didn't spend so much time worrying about what we look like. Hardly an original observation, I know, but one that's on my mind.

Our Holiday



All photographs by Alice (except the one of her smiley-sunscreen legs, which was taken by Evie)

Lost

A sad thing happened on our holiday: we accidentally left these little guys behind on the front beach at Sorrento. Though Evie has a vast collection of Littlest Pets, these two were special, her "babies." They were called Sugar and Nuttlex.

We were all culpable. It was Alice's fault, because it was her idea to bring them to the beach; Evie's fault, because they belonged to her, and she should have looked after them; Michael's fault, because he arrived with kites at a crucial moment and we think that's when they were dropped in the sand; and my fault, because I'm the mum, and it's my job to keep track of everything, isn't it? Anyway, I feel really bad about it. Ridiculous, I know, but it does feel as if Sugar and Nuttlex were part of our family, and I hate the thought of them, so small and helpless, abandoned on the beach, as we gathered up our towels and strolled away forever.

It's absurd to single out the loss of Sugar and Nuttlex when you think of all the toys that drift out of our lives - left behind, broken, thrown away, lost in the garden, sifted to the bottom of the toy drawer, marooned in the attic. I remember other objects which were once precious and have now disappeared from my life - a ring, a book, a photograph - and I mourn them vaguely, but because I can't pinpoint the exact moment of their loss, the grief is blunted. I can let them go. But I almost felt Sugar and Nuttlex slipping from my grasp, and the pain is small but sharp.

Evie cried. I said, don't be disappointed if Daddy can't find them. She said, are you kidding? I'll disappoint my head off!

Daddy couldn't find them.

So we hope that means that some other child has picked them up and put them in their pocket, that they've been carried away into a new life, with a new family and a whole set of new adventures. They won't be Sugar and Nuttlex any more. But we hope that someone loves them.