More pics of Balcy
Here's Balcy at about 4 months, 2 months and a close-up of his feet. His Granny is mad on taking pictures of his feet. This one's for you Granny!

Balcy's photo

Here's a picture of Balcy -- about 4 months old. We think he's adorable...

Right now it's 6.15pm. I put him to bed at 4.00pm and guess who's still awake and balling? Ah, parenthood. Even with the tears, I tell ya, there isn't a better gig.

Tom Keneally on writing a novel

Not sure if you've heard of Tom Keneally? What if I told you he won the Booker Prize for Schindler's Ark, which Steven Spielberg would make into Schindler's List? You can hear Keneally talk about Schindler online.

Keneally has brought out a memoir about his experiences with both the book and the film called Searching for Schindler a memoir. While the title appears to borrow from Kate Grenville's writing memoir on The Secret River, Keneally's is more wide ranging. If anything, although very accessible, Grenville is writing for an audience that is interested in the process of writing.

Keneally is writing for a more general audience. How did he come across Schindler's story? Was he involved in writing the screenplay? These are the type of questions that his book answers.

Keneally is Australian--and a national treasure! As an Aussie myself, I it's fun to read his descriptions of Australia aimed at an international audience.

Liz and I were talking about how writing a novel takes incredible stamina. Now, Liz has a true writer's stick-at-it-ness or tenacity, and it reminded me of something Keneally wrote in the memoir. He was speaking to graduate students in a writing workshop (pp. 190):

I told them that short of bereavement, famine, war, disease, or the violation of love, the novel was one of the great tests of the human soul. It could be as hard to write even a bad novel as to run a marathon for a year. Yet the process of writing could also generate exhilaration in the writer, that exultation at the good passage, the realised character--indeed, that's what we did it for. There were many crises of faith during the writing of a novel, and some novels died under their writer, like a horse giving up, or like a connection with another human that reaches a stage where it can no longer be mended--irretrievable breakdown, as family law puts it. The novel, like marriage, should not be lightly abandoned, not on the basis of merely one or two dark nights, anyhow.

Tom Keneally knows about the writing life, having published around 40 books and supported his family including two children as a full-time writer. I also liked this advice from him (p.191):

...Don't get it right, get it written! The vacuum is what is abhorred. To have nothing on the page--that's the problem. Once the vacuum has been defeated, then you can make something worthwhile out of what has been written.

Another glib aphorism: Don't let the fact that you can't write stop you publishing literature. The people who get published often do so because they are hungry to write and be heard, rather than because they have all the gifts of imagery and stylishness.

A slightly different view on being published by the Perth Novelist and academic, Brenda Walker, appeared in The Australian newspaper recently (Review arts section, 5-6 November 2007):

I see extraordinary writing all the time... There are a lot of people writing a lot. I don't see people whose life was destroyed because they haven't been published. If something works, then there's a good chance it will be published.

As fledgling writers, I think we're also finding that if something works--perhaps it needs some tweeking--and if we show it around, then there's a good chance that someone will see the promise in the work and help us to the next stage. It's thanks to Liz that we can see this is true.

I've just got to keep putting those words on the page!

New mum's writing

Now I'm a new Mum! Our son was born at Easter. In this blog I'll call him Balcy. He'll be seven months old next week and his Dad and I are both infatuated.

It's great to be able to fit in a small blog entry.

Hello to all the new mums out there! I'll get my head around how our digital camera works and post a photo soon.