The Not-Writing Desk

Is a picture worth a thousand words? This one, sadly, is worth very few, at least not the kind of words I'd like to be generating. Incredibly, the photo has the effect, at least to me, of making the desk appear less chaotic than it is in real life. The piles look smaller some how, and less likely to topple and swamp all in their path.

If you knew what you were looking at here, you would be able to recognise:

* Pile #1: the marking pile from hell. This pile has curious magic pudding-like qualities, something I would applaud in any other context

* the slanty writing board which makes working my way through Pile #1 marginally less painful (at least physically).

* Pile #2: the copyediting job from hell, "almost finished" for about five weeks now.

* a Japanese-English dictionary I'm using in some ongoing translation work (from 地獄). There should be a pile for this job, too, and its absence is worrying...

* Pile #3: the accounting for my husband's business (I'd add "from hell" here, but this is mostly what pays our bills).

* Pile #4: book trailer notes and resources from an ASA/writingWA workshop I did over the last few weeks. Now I just have to finish the actual trailer and upload it somewhere other than my desk.

* Pile #5: clippings and plans and brochures and catalogues and a random block of wood, all relating to the house extension we are planning for early next year and which is definitely going to do my head in at some point. Are there people out there who really care about tiles? Yesterday, I had to choose what colour grout we wanted. I'm sorry, but "want" and "grout colour" simply do not belong in the same sentence.

* Pile #6: bills and bank statements and phone numbers of people I should have called last week and to-do lists dating back to July.

* the blue lunchbox in which I am gathering school supplies for next year (am determined this time to do a sweep of every cranny in the house rather than rushing out at the last minute to buy new stuff only to discover we already have six packs of everything buried in the chaos) 

* a calendar stuck on May (part wishful thinking, part not wanting to clamber onto the desk with my increasingly dodgy back).

* notes from my daughter's school inviting me to help at Big Week Out, the dinner dance, the canteen, and the library, as well as donate to the raffle and come along to the Edu Dance concert, cabaret, choir performance, dinner dance, volunteers 'thank-you' morning tea, and Christmas assembly. In my free time.


* copies of various books I'm supposed to be reading for different reasons, most of which have been lost in the mists of time. 

* an Ikea catalogue with the strapline "The Organised Home". 

* the very corner of my sewing pile, beginning with the soccer shirt I should have had ready for last Friday ("luckily" my daughter was too sick to play). 

* an empty vase. I like minimalism. Also, air is easy to look after and doesn't dry out, drop its leaves everywhere, then slowly rot, and stare accusingly at you for weeks every time you sit down. 

* a monitor, sans computer. The laptop is elsewhere, on the kitchen table, whence I have decamped, in flight from the various piles. 

* somewhere in there is a single leaf - perfectly round and flat - which I happen upon at various intervals while hunting frantically through piles, and which makes me stop, smile, and say 'ah!', and remember that one day, there will be time for things that just are, for no good reason.

And perhaps the time of the writing desk will come again.

Premier's Summer Reading Challenge

For as many years as I can remember, my daughter has done the WA Premier's Summer Reading Challenge. Last year for the first time, there was a Parent Challenge too, where parents were also encouraged to read books and win prizes and that was a lot of fun, too. This year, they've upped the ante again, by making me a featured author. I wonder what they have in store for me next year?

As part of the Challenge, I'll be appearing at libraries in Mandurah, Bayswater, and my home turf of Fremantle. Details can be found here. If you're in the area, come along and say hello! And if you're not in the area, join in the Challenge anyway. Your local library or school will have all the information you need and as well as the fun of reading itself, there are always some great prizes to be won.

Happy summer reading!

On the Shelf

Writing is not on the menu for me at the moment. With teaching and marking and copyediting and any number of other little jobs all demanding attention nownownow, I don't have the time or the headspace that writing requires. I can potter on smaller projects, like picture books, but it's busy work mostly; it's tiny gestures towards writing so I can tell myself it's okay, that I'm still doing it - look, see? But the truth is that I can't really make any creative progress until I move the other piles, and to some extent, myself, out of the way.

So in the meantime, I'm reading. All sorts of things. Here's a snapshot from the last few weeks:

It's kind of all over the place, really, but I guess in some ways it's a snapshot of me. There are kids' books in there partly because I write for kids and partly because I have a new nephew and partly because I like to keep up with what my daughter is reading. There's poetry in there because I am, or have been, a poet, and somewhere in the midst of all the skateboards and the exploding hoses and the difficult, demanding ducks, that side of me has slipped quietly away. And I need to have it back. The adult books are mostly recommendations from friends - thanks to Julia Lawrinson for The Vintner's Luck, which I finally got around to after only five years. And Art & Fear is there because, well, you know.