Back home

 


These are some feather posies I made while away. We were staying on a rural property in the Strathbogie Ranges, beautiful countryside.

P is flying now, on her way back home. We texted when she got to Istanbul airport and she checked in, all smoothly. Texted again when she arrived in Dubai but plane was late and looked like she might miss her connecting flight. But all was fine. So now, she's headed back to Melbourne with 'lots of stories' she said. We spoke once on the phone while she was away, and at the beginning of her trip there were several long texts back and forth but as she settled, they dwindled to maybe one brief exchange a day, in my evening when she'd just woken up. That everything was fine, she was going to be doing this or that.

Her last few texts she said she'd be sad to leave her dad but excited to come home. She said also she was 'so glad' she went, which is fantastic because she was highly ambivalent about the trip.

In other news, it's Christmas is upon us and I'm not a person who loves Christmas. I can, and sometimes do, but often it's all wrapped up (heh) with lots of scratchy feelings. This year Clokes is having his family here and P and I are shipping off to my sister's. Last year P and I boycotted the whole thing in terms of family and stayed here, ate nice food and watched lots of episodes of whatever it was we were watching at the time. It was certainly stress-free but not really *Christmas.*

So hope everyone has a good break. I'll be back in January I hope with more to say. I'm still coughing badly, but feeling so much better. It was a nasty whatever it was, annoying.

I've got lots of things to look forward to next year, including my trip west. And hopefully big publishing stuff in addition to the two smaller things that are happening in January and April.
 

Gone fishing

Back at the end of the week chickens. Stay safe.

Another Friday update

Well I'm SLOWLY starting to feel better. Went back to the doc yesterday and he gave me more antibiotics, different ones. I don't like to take them but I think I need it. It's good, my cough has started to dry up and I feel much better today.

No news on the book edits, I'm hoping they'll come through over the weekend.

I'm going back to bed now with breakfast, coffee and reading.

Hope everyone is well.

CROAK

Oh hai again. I'm still sick, worse than last Friday when I was on here, having a whinge. Went to the doctor yesterday, got antibiotics, have taken three and would have expected to be feeling a little improved today. Not so.

I sit/lie here in my bed, laptop on lap (hurr, hurr) writing like freaking Babs Cartland, except there is nothing pink anywhere near me, and no dogs are in here.

My voice is a mere croak; manly and deep, and it hurts. Nasty, yet 'productive' cough (as the doctor said) - I feel worse than yesterday but really I haven't been able to rest for the last couple of days and yesterday was a real race-around in the car, doing 'stuff' to get P ready for her departure tonight.

My mum is coming over in an hour before she goes to Ring #1, and daughter is on the way home. We are going to put up the Christmas Tree and pack. Flight is tonight at 3.30am, so at airport at 1.30am, so no bed I don't think, or if so, just for an hour or so. Blech.

This is just a quickie. No edits yet from agent but they will come through I'm guessing on the weekend or early next week. She said we need to move quickly. I love how exciting that sounds.

That's all for now. Sad about Mandela but annoyed at how everyone on twitter is bleating about him. Hope everyone is well, especially you Alex, haven't heard from you for a while. You might be on a trip but do hope you are fine!

Oh hay

It's Friday and I have a headache. Have had for a few days, and feeling a bit off. I blame the reduced dose of Vit D! I have to teach, will get through it, and then tonight Clokes is taking me somewhere fancy for my birthday (which is next Monday, oh yay me.)

Tomorrow I'm hosting either a lunch or dinner for my birthday (time non-specific as I wait to hear back from my sis who is on school camp and without phone reception it seems, until maybe tonight when they are 'back at base'?) I'm hoping she can come and we'll make it dinner if so; if not go ahead with original plan of lunch. Reasons why: I can't be bothered explaining but be assured they are dull and not important.

I have no agent news yet, but today is Day 9 and tomorrow Day 10 - allowing for time difference - and she said it would take her a week to 10 days. I told her not to rush, so who knows? Maybe Sunday.

Princess has finished her exams and today has an oral presentation. She has results day Monday and Tues a Group 4 project (some IB thang) and Wednesday final assembly and then Prefect meetings. Did I tell you she is a Prefect next year for Year 12? And then she goes to Turkey next Saturday for 2 weeks. Did I tell you that?

It's all happening.

I'm planning a petite getaway with my mum, to Malmsbury to visit an old school friend of hers who is also my godmother - yes, this staunch atheist was christened and has godparents - unbelievable right? we'll stay one night there, and then the plan is to go to Ned Kelly country and stay 2 or 3 nights there. I can do some writing, mum can read and meditate. We can go for small walks, drive around. It'll help distract me while Princess is away. Make it less like the last Waiting for Princess Vigil. What a time. Here's the link for people who weren't around then. She was just-turned nine and went to the US on her own for three weeks with her Dad and her dad's then girlfriend. (I may have put some of the posts into drafts, they might not be there because at that stage I had this blog linked to from my public blog. I keep changing my mind about that too.)

So it's coffee time, I'd better go. Melbourne's weather yesterday was shit - rained all day. But today looks dry. Who the fuck knows.

I hope everyone has a good weekend.

The thing, it be done

 


Well, I sent off my manuscript to the agent. She said she'll take about a week to ten days to get back to me. Am I shitting myself? Yes. Do I feel relieved? Yes. Can I stop checking my emails? No. Will I die if she doesn't like it. Yes.

On another matter, the act of reading. I am learning more and more that reading is such an intensely personal thing. For a long time I didn't really think about it, or if I did, thought the above sentence meant that people will choose different books to read, and like different books, based on individual taste. What I'm learning is that even when people read the same book, it's a different experience for everyone.

Exhibit 1: all the reviews I've seen for Barracuda are either glowing (Peter Craven) or reasonable.

Exhibit 2: yesterday on twitter I saw a thread of people BAGGING Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. When the week before I'd said how much I ADORED it.

I told my mother about the second thing.

Oh you don't have to read all that, do you?

(Maybe she thought the twitter people were conversing with me, and disagreeing with my take on the book. I don't think she gets twitter. Fair enough, many don't.)

They weren't talking to me, mum, I said. They were talking to each other and I was eavesdropping. Twitter is public like that.

Oh, she said. (We had just been to a talk on the Cult of Wagner, ft. The Ring Cycle, more about that later) and I was in her place borrowing some hideous '70s stuff for a themed party coming up. I was also having two spoons of Maggie Beer's Passionfruit ice-cream, which mum had in the freezer and had mentioned as we were driving hom.

Back to the twitter thing. It's true that if I say I don't like eating fish, and you do, neither of us find it an insult. But if you say you hate The Goldfinch and I say I love it - because somehow it's connected to either intellect or judgement - it's possible to get your nose out of joint. Yesterday, reading the thread, didn't bother me but it did fascinate me. They used the word 'hate', they said it read like a first draft and was filled with 'howlers'. I was too scared to ask what a howler is. Is it a mistake? Is it something that is cringingly badly written? Both?

I wanted to intellectualise my response, and theirs. All of them were young, under 30 I reckon. Whereas me and Tartt are of a similar era. Actually just looked her up, I'm precisely 3 weeks older than her. So we're twins.  The books we've grown up reading, particularly the maximalist 19th century novels such as Dickens, whose works her book echoes and who she read as a child and young woman, and for John Irving, reading him as a teenager/young woman, and Irving was influenced by and loved Dickens, I wonder whether that context has something to do with it. We love to read what is familiar and comforting. If we can have comfort food, why not comfort reading? I like different and new but the books I can really get lost in and forget I'm reading, are books like The Goldfinch.


And so, to The Ring. Last night the Wheeler Centre hosted another event (I've been to a bunch lately) and it was Julia Zemiro talking to a bunch of people about Wagner's The Ring Cycle. (Bunch of people being director Neil Armfield, foodie Maggie Beer, poet and writer Peter Rose and arts-theatre person Robyn Archer.) It was a chat about the cult of Wagner and how some people (like Rose) are just nuts about The Ring Cycle. Mum is going, she got last-minute tickets after thinking it had all been sold out. So she's thrilled and excited and I'm wondering how she could possibly sit through 18 hours of opera when I have fallen asleep in a normal show (Carmen, late '80s, not my bag baby.) What fascinated me was the way people talk about this production, and the stories attached. Rose spoke of seeing it in Germany and the performers almost staggering around on-stage, swilling from water bottles as they performed. Archer spoke about the audience applause - for the performers, for the orchestra and also for themselves for enduring the thing. Characters like Brünnhilde and Siegfried, and Valkyries. Well, I do have a thing for German characters and the language, and while I don't have a thing for opera, I am going to find out more about it. It appeals.

If anyone is interested in reading more of what Peter Rose has to say about it, here is an article in the Australian Book Review. 

But it will have to wait, because for now I move onto the next project, a novella which is Bladerunner mixed with Helen Garner's The Spare Room. I'm excited because it's not like the previous two (let's call them my 19th century lyrical novels). This is realist and short and in the first person. As Borat would say, wa wa wee wah.

CONGRATULATIONS Sarah. How does it feel?

I've been thinking of you tonight, at your launch. I'm sure it went brilliantly, and look forward to hearing all about it.

Yay Salt Story by Sarah via A WineDark Sea.

Tim Winton's EYRIE

So what do we think of Winton generally and has anyone read Eyrie? There seems to be a bit of Winton-bagging that goes on in this country, I'm not wrong am I?

I'm trying to work out what it might be about him. Is it the ponytail? Is it the success? The blokeiness and the fact that he doesn't seem to give a rat's arse about celebrity and fame.

I'm wondering whether we need our heroes to be failures? A la Kelly, Burke & Wills, Eureka. Sports people who always come unstuck (off the ground is okay, on the ground is not.)

What is it about us as Australians that makes us want to tear successful people down? Are other nationalities like this?

What's the deal?

And in other news, went to the beach yesterday god it was lovely and quite surreal to be there in the warm sun, in bathers, while today back in Melbs it's cold, wet and 16 degrees.

Books

I went and saw Anna Funder talk at Melb Uni the other night. She was gorgeous, and I loved her story about a bear and a family camping holiday. She also talked about ex-Stasi men and how they use a lot of Brycreem. She also talked about imagination, that of the reader and that of the writer. I bought her book Stasiland and got her to inscribe it to my daughter. I told her my daughter is doing IB History - Oh, how is she finding it, she asked. I didn't tell her about my daughter's obsession with Nazis in general and Aryans in particular.

I just finished reading Toni Jordan's Addition. For some reason for a long time I thought this was a memoir or NF. It's a novel and a bloody good one I thought. It surprised me, I don't know why. I expected something light a la The Rosie Project, but it is much much better than Rosie. (I draw comparisons though because they each have protagonists with conditions - OCD 'counting' in Addition and a strongly-insinuated Aspergers in Rosie. While TRP, I thought was trite, lacked credibility in many ways and had unconvincing characters who you couldn't connect with or care about, especially Rosie I have to say, Addition was the complete opposite. The cataloguing of compulsions was fascinating but also sad, but the writing was matter-of-fact, never over-wrought. But the thing is, the important thing is, it's FUNNY. It's a while since I've read a book and been so compelled, laughed several times, grinned to myself a lot and cried TWICE towards the end. Jordan has also written Nine Days which is historical fiction, not my usual choice but I might have to check her out because I was seriously impressed with her style and management of her prose.

Now I'm back on HHhH (which I'd put to the side, and which my daughter consumed; see above reference to Nazi obsession.) I also have Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries which I started about three weeks ago mostly to see how she's constructed her form for the story (and it's since won the Booker Prize. Remember I said if she won I'd hate her because she's 28 and it's her second book. I may not have said that here.) Well, she won and I don't hate her, I think yay for her, yay for bigger books, yay for being experimental and writing what you love, not tailoring books to what you think will sell. So yay.)

Also Alice Munro won the Nobel and I had never read anything of hers so I looked up a few articles to get some info of how to work into her oeuvre, and came across a short story (she only writes short stories, but they're long) and it was pretty interesting. I don't think I've ever read a story like that and how she manages time shifts is interesting - she can pack a novel worth of stuff into a long story. She also breaks the 'rule' of show-don't-tell; she is pretty much all tell with some show. But who cares? It works. I look forward to exploring more of her stuff.

*

The last two weeks I've been teaching a lot and not doing much of my writing. But I have to finish my best version of the second book to get to the agent in November. I had said early, it might be mid. I'm getting it to my reader on Monday and that is a freaking freak-out sort of situation.

And then, and then I've been having thoughts about the first one. Once the second is off to Brooklyn I'll go back to the first and rejig. I have ideas, I have notes, and it's true as Tim Winton said in recent radio interview with Fran Kelly:

'You don't really finish books, you give up on them I suppose.'

I think they're aren't finished until they are published and then there's no more you can do. But you probably would if you could.

Sarah, how goes your book? I think it's out soon?

Thought it was time for a new post

But I have nothing. Seriously nothing.

I taught all day today so am knackered. It's windy again and it seems to be blowing the internet somehow. I cut my hair, oh wait, I already said that. Princess got a prefect position for next year, so that's pretty good. Um, Gigi is fine. I'm reading Eat Pray Love which is hilarious cause I bagged it when my sister was reading it in Bali two years ago, or not bagged it, poo-pooed it and rolled my eyes.

You know what, it's pretty good.

I bought for two bucks recently at Savers, along with a whole bunch of other two-buck, three-buck, four-buck books. All in good nick, all (apart from that one) books I wanted for my shelves. I watched Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk earlier this year - I don't know if she's done more than one or just one - it was really good actually, I was impressed. For some reason I expected her to be a bit of fluff but she's really not. The only thing with Eat Pray is the god stuff, I just can't come at it, but the rest is good. Apparently her next book is pretty good and I intend to buy it too. Apparently it shows she can write. I reckon already it was clear with EPL. Just a shame, maybe, that the movie turned it into something else? I know Ubud has been ruined by it, people say.

That's about it.