Although I haven't blogged in a long time, it's been on my mind. This is a short entry to get back into it. Keep putting one foot in front of the other!

Back again

It's been nine months since my last entry. I haven't blogged since I started back at work in November last year, but that's ok. It turns out that I've been unwell, too. I won't make this into an ill-health blog; but it's good that the GP has identified the illness and I've started on medication that's making some head way.

I'm reading a wonderful book at the moment:

Writing from the Inside Out: Transforming Your Psychological Blocks to Release the Writer Within by Dennis Palumbo

The title sounds as if the book could be more technical (and possibly academic) than it is. The book is really about the psychology of writing: what makes us write? What helps and hinders our writing? What are useful ways to think about writing?

I like Palumbo's approach a lot. He's a straight talker. He cares about the writers he helps in his counselling practice. He's also a practicing writer, so he's practicing what he's recommending.

What got me out of bed early today was simply, "Writing begets writing."

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.

More on babies

Here's a post-script to the entries on writing and babies. (To be clear, I'm having only one baby, not twins!) Friends have been very kind and supportive. And at this time, with exactly four week's til the baby's estimated due date, I'm feeling optomistic that I will be able to write at some stage even after becoming a mum -- and before the child finishes high school...

I like some kind of structure, and the writing group will give me mini-deadlines and encouragement to help keep going. Phew!

Writing Group

One Saturday our writing group met for the first time. Three cheers for Pearl -- who organised it all -- Liz and Melinda! Pearl found us the room, got the key and to make sure we would all turn up. Groups like this doen't even get off the ground without someone driving them. Thanks for putting the key in the ignition and driving us out onto the highway, Pearl.

The other folks are also an inspiration: Melinda's work has a cheeky, contempory voice to it and makes me want to snuggle up in bed on a wintery night with the electric blanket on high and keep turning the pages; Liz has made so much progress with her historical work. It's wonderfully encouraging to see someone with such a full draft and she allows you to develop affection for her characters. Pearl is coming at historical fiction in a similar period, but with a unique twist. I won't give anything away but, it's not "who dun it?" but "what dun happen?" Looking forward to future installments.

Again, special thanks to the Victorian Writers Centre for supporting us with a room to meet. If you're in Victoria, Australia you've got to join.

Encouraging Words of Julia Cameron

Here are some encouraging quotes from Julia Cameron's The Right to Write (1998, New York: Putnam). I like Cameron's direct style. While she doesn't use the word, she's thought a lot about the psychology of writing -- and how wonky thinking can get us writers stuck in psychological traps!

Here are some of the lines my pen was drawn to highlight:

On how we think of ourselves as writers ~

• "...the act of writing makes you a writer..." (p.7)
• "If only we could give ourselves permission to write 'badly', so many of us would write very well indeed." (p.23)
• "...in order to be a good writer, I have to be willing to be a bad writer." (p.23)
• "We can either demand that we write well or we can settle more comfortably into writing down what seems to want to come through us -- good, bad, or indifferent." (p.11)

On our attitude to time ~

• "One of the biggest myths around writing is that in order to do it we must have great swathes of uninterrupted time." (p.13)
• "The obsession with time is really an obsession with perfection. We want enough time to write perfectly." (p.16)
• "The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you've already got." (p.16)

On silencing our internal critic ~

• "My job was to do the writing, not judge the writing." (p.19)

On being open to the mystery of creativity ~

• "I believe that what we want to write wants to be written." (p.18)
• "Writing -- and this is the big secret -- wants to be written." (p.20)