Duck!

Yesterday, I learned that Duck for a Day (illust. Leila Rudge) had been selected as a Notable in the Younger Readers Category of the Children's Book Council of Australia Awards. An hour later, I learned it was on the shortlist. Shortly after, my inbox looked like this:











Thank you, lovely, supportive writing friends. Thank you, Children's Book Council. I never imagined my duck might quack loudly enough to be noticed. I'm thrilled.

And I'm mindful, too, of the many books that didn't make it on to the various lists (Duck is my fourth book, my first listing). With every award, there's a chorus of excitement and head shaking. What about this one? And that one? Why that one?

I always think back to the time I entered a national poetry competition. I received a phone call saying my work had won a prize and asking if I could attend the announcement, which was local. I duly trotted along, not knowing where my prize fell on the spectrum that ranged from First and Second to a handful of Commendeds.

As it turned out, my poem was Commended. After the announcement, I was asked if I would read it. Since I didn't have a copy with me, the organisers gave me the one I had submitted, the one which, unbeknownst to them, had some of the judge's comments scrawled in pencil on the back.

They weren't comments about the poem as such, but about its placing. There was a number 1, circled, then rubbed out. Then the number 2 written, with a question mark. Then another 1, another question mark. Then, finally, a C.

This was a shame, of course, given that the difference between C and 1 was $850. But what it brought home to me was that there really wasn't that much space between C and 1, apart from the $$. That on a different day, I might have just as readily been 2 or 1. That today, not having seen these scrawls I should never have seen, I would have gone away not knowing that. And that there were most likely several other poets who only knew they had won nothing, who were a bee's whisker away from a prize.


There was only one judge for this prize. I can't imagine what it must be like when there are several.

I can't read too much into it, or too little. But I'm delighted, nonetheless.

Somewhat inexplicably, The Truth About Penguins failed to get a gong in the Information Books category, although it has been pointed out to me by Norman Jorgensen that it may contain some factual errors which knocked it out of the running. He wonders, for example, if penguins don't actually like pizza.

I ask you - does that seem likely?

A Wrinkle in Writing

I've been thinking lately about creativity. About the complicated relationship between humility, confidence, and arrogance. About the precarious balance between the conviction that we might actually know what we're doing and the gnawing fear that we don't which is required to produce anything worthwhile. Or at least that's how it seems to me.

I've been thinking about imposter syndrome.

And I've been ironing. Usually a school uniform, in the morning, at the last possible moment.

I hate ironing. Epitome of pointless pursuits. Can't we simply agree that the natural state of some fabrics is wrinkled and leave it at that? Sadly, my daughter's school handbook stipulates that uniforms should be ironed and as much as I'd like to storm the barricades of convention, it seems unfair to impale her on my ideological pitchfork.

So I iron. And I was thinking the other morning, as I did this, about how I really have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know how to iron. There was no passing down of ironing lore from my mother to me. I have no clue. All I'm doing is dabbing hopefully here and there, trying to get out enough wrinkles, to smooth things over sufficiently that no one will notice.

And this, I thought, is also like writing, at least for we imposters. The work is always falling apart. I have no idea how to plot. My characters aren't real, their dialogue not true. I don't know how to do this thing called writing, can't possibly put together a whole book, not a real one. All I'm doing is trying to string together enough acceptable sentences, enough lines that seem on the surface to be something like writing, that it will form a shiny enough patina to bamboozle the unsuspecting reader.

Ironing. Writing. I like these little ideas, these connections. And if I can't not be ironing, I at least like thinking about writing while I'm doing it.

But as I smoothed out another wrinkle, turning the dress this way and that, wondering if I'd done enough yet to keep the gatekeepers happy, something occurred to me that I liked even more. And it was this: that if you smooth out enough wrinkles, in the end that's what ironing is. It's not that no one will notice you haven't really ironed. It's that in the process of what you tell yourself is a desperate subterfuge you will actually have succeeded in doing the thing itself.

Maybe the problem is not that you lack skill, but that you don't recognise that skill for what it is. Maybe it doesn't matter how you feel in the doing of it; maybe all that matters is the thing you hold up to the light at the end of it all.

And maybe it's the same with writing. If, in the end, I string together enough sentences, enough paragraphs, enough pages. If, in the end, I put together a whole book that satisfies the reader, that's not bamboozling, is it? That's not a trick.
It's writing.