Oh, Wow!

I have been planning a post with this title for some time now. I want to talk about the reactions people have had to discovering that I'm going to Japan to write a novel for adults. Oh, wow.

But the truth is that I'm leaving today - in a few short hours in fact - and as expected, all my preparations have taken much longer than expected (yes, it's a paradox, but a good one, I think), so those thoughts will have to wait. For now, I must eat, pack, and freak out just a little, then haul myself to the airport.

So I will leave you instead with this most wondrous of things:

A new journal, from my sweeties, to fill with Japan musings. What could be better - a trip elsewhere, a long stretch of writing time unrolling ahead of me, and a brand spanking new journal?

Oh, wow.

Things That Make Me Go YAY

Today, I'm taking a leaf out of Julia Lawrinson's blog, which took its own leaf from Anita Heiss (for such is the way of the madly intertextual interwebs), to talk about things I've been grateful for lately.

It has been a tricky couple of years for me on some fronts and there has been less writing and relaxation and metaphorical lying on my back looking at the clouds than I would have hoped. Very often, I have felt as if I am simply scrabbling to keep my ground, rather than actually making any progress. But good things have happened. Many good things. And I am very fortunate. Mostly fortunate, in fact, and it is too easy to lose sight of that.

So, here's what I've been grateful for lately. Here are the things that have made me smile:

• the rapidly firming plans of my scattered family to trek via train, plane and automobile across the Nullarbor to stay with us at Christmas.
• the slowly-but-surely progressing extensions to the house which mean we will be able to accommodate them all, kind of sort of.
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• the glorious, soaking rain, even though it complicates things somewhat when one has half a roof and no gutters.
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• soup weather! Big pots of steaming stuff! 
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• the utter, intractable, unstoppable mess of the building process, which has enabled me to relax and let go of my need for order, something which is very timely just now.
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• a new picture-book contract, about which more later.
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• Spring in Japan! I'll be there in five days! Hang on a bit longer, cherry blossoms!
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• Research. Wow, I love research. I'm not sure why this should be a surprise to me, given all the years I spent at uni, but it's not something I've ever had to do for my creative work. I've spent the last week running in and out of libraries all over Perth gathering information on WWII and circuses and internment and kamikaze and big cat sightings across Australia and trying to work out how the pieces of all of this are going to fit together to make the novel I'll be working on in Japan. And I finally understand what writers mean when they talk about disappearing down the rabbit hole of research. I want to live down here!
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• Going for Broke has been nominated for a Western Australian Younger Readers Book Award. I love these awards because they are nominated and voted on by kids themselves.
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• This week the mailman brought me the first copy of my new book, Duck for a Day. There is nothing like holding the actual book in your hands. Ahh!
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• Julia Lawrinson and Anita Heiss, for reminding me to be awake to the abundant yayness of the everyday.

Tales From Inner Libraria #2

I pause in the midst of my pre-Japan madness (visas! not visas! travellers' cheques! cashcards! JapanRail passes! car rental! contact-making! research! endless, endless lists!) to bring you instalment #2 in the occasional series, Tales From Inner Libraria*, if only because if our esteemed government has its way, said Librarias may be unrecognisable in the not-so-fullness of time (40% funding cuts? Can you  be serious? And if so, may I humbly suggest you begin with the plasma TVs and leave the books alone?).

Today's library is a rather less humble establishment than that featured in Instalment #1. It has high ceilings, excellent natural lighting and an overall feeling of space and muted elegance.

It is not the kind of library where you raise your voice. Story time takes place in a dedicated room, behind closed doors and some kind of advanced soundproofing technology.

I don't entirely like this, I must admit. I like some buzz in my library. Not the buzz of a plasma TV or a librarian chatting altogether too brightly about her anatomy.

And I would much rather have the melodic strains of barely subdued book-related excitement than some of the other noises peculiar to this particular library, namely:

#1: floor-scraping chairs.

This library has a reading room. It is a delightful space, detached from the rest of the library (and curiously so, I think, as if a 'reading room' were somehow something apart from a library itself, rather than in fact being the stuff of the library; as if the library were not itself a reading room, plain and simple). It is filled with newspapers and magazines and tiny carrels in which to sit and read them.

The floor is tiled. The chair legs are metal. Need I say more? The slightest shifting of weight in said chairs is enough to elicit a screech that resembles the cry of a prehistoric raptor.

In this reading room, raptor cries appear to go unnoticed by everyone but me. However, the too-loud tapping of laptop keys is frowned upon, repeatedly. After my third caution by two different gentlemen, I became reluctant to hit the space bar. My WIP now looks like this:

"I am a girl on a wire** and thewireisthinandsilvery.Itunrollsahead (orunderneath me??Imagineshe’sholdingabendbackonthe wire– is this possible?) ofmelikea shimmeringribbonandIpointonefootandsetitslowlydown, like I’mdippingmytoesintoatoo-cold lake."

Do you think it could catch on, this unspaced writing? It seems to work for the Japanese.

Exhibit #2: the beeping of doors.

I'm not sure what they keep out the back in the staff quarters of libraries but so many of them seem to be accessible only by loudly beeping swipe cards. I have no idea what the function of any of this is. Would the patrons storm the area if it were left unsecured, hoping to grab that newly minted Jodi Picoult or Stieg Larsson before the teeming hordes in the reservations queue can get their hands on it?

Plausible, actually.

But why the beeping? Why the constant "I'm coming in!" "I'm going out!"? For the love of libraries, just come and go (talking or not of Michelangelo) and be quiet about it.

Perhaps I have become too curmudgeonly. I did not find this library's combination of sterility and screeching appealing. I lasted 45 minutes/400 words. 400 words is better than nothing, of course. Unfortunately, most of them are stuck together in an illegible mash. Still, I'm sure my editor can sort that out ...

I must return now to my pre-Japan madness. There will be two libraries between now and departure, but I may have to hold my reports over for a later date. Meanwhile, I will be sampling the delights of Japanese libraries, including the National Diet Library, which, the last time I visited, was a startlingly anachronistic law unto itself, but strangely soothing for all that.

* with continuing apologies to Shaun Tan

** with new apologies to Jon Doust