As In Egg

On Being Edited

2012-02-10T09:00:00.009+08:00

So this is the second post in the three-way blogapalooza I'm sharing with Anna Branford and Sally Murphy. Because it's part of a series, I've followed the same format for the title, but the first thing I should say is that I think it's misleading.

You don't 'get edited'. I've never 'been edited'. It's not a passive process in which the writer sits back and waits for the editor to tell them what needs to be done. It's a dialogue – a back-and-forth that begins with the text, moves to the editor, bounces back to the author, who returns to the text, then bounces it back to the editor, and so on thusly for the term of your natural life (or so it can seem).

When I show people the six-page editorial letter for Annabel, Again, or a marked up draft of Surface Tension I get some interesting reactions. Some people actually draw back in horror. But isn't it your story? How can you let them? From time to time I hear people - often aspiring writers - talking about the way publishers insist on 'changing' people's work, to shape it to fit their own set of parameters.

But really, that's not how it works. Or at least, it shouldn't be. If a publisher were to take this approach, I too would walk very quickly in the opposite direction.

My experience of 'being edited' has been that in every single case, my manuscript has emerged from the process as a stronger, more satisfying version of itself. Editors, in my experience, are the savvy, objective readers who guide your manuscript towards becoming the best version of what it is already trying to be, rather than steering it towards being any kind of version of something else.

The truth is, I love editing. I love everything about the process. I love taking the lump of clay (what we so often optimistically call 'the final draft') and seeing it get flattened and kneaded and hammered into shape (for more gratuitous pottery-writing metaphors, click here). Of course, I'm the one doing the flattening and the kneading and that's a confronting and difficult thing when you thought your beautiful sculpture was already finished, but it is also very satisfying when you have confidence in the process and the endpoint you're working toward.

I didn't always feel this way, though.

My first experience of being edited was something of a shock, actually. It was many moons ago when I was being mentored on a YA manuscript. This was really the first piece of fiction I'd ever written and I thought it was brilliant. It got me a mentorship and I thought I was on my way and many accolades were just around the corner (publication would happen first, of course, but I knew I had that in the bag).

Then I got the first part of the manuscript back from my mentor, a well-known YA author, and it looked like this:

It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but I would estimate that close to 70% of it was highlighted in yellow. And when I uncovered the colour-coding key, cunningly buried a few pages into the manuscript, I discovered that yellow did not, in fact, mean, "Alert! Awesome writing!" but rather, "You could probably cut this bit."*

Going through that process unstitched me and then put me back together again. I learnt so much. I learnt not to be precious about what was on the page. I learnt that it was raw material, to be flattened and kneaded and slashed and burned and various other agrarian metaphors.

And I learned something else, too.

Because my mentor and I were very different writers. At one point, I began a chapter with the line, "A bomb went off at school today" and my mentor wrote, "Oh, thank Christ! Finally something is happening."

Unfortunately, he had commented before reading my next line, which read, "Oh, not really. That kind of thing only happens on Home and Away."

To be honest, my first reaction to his comment was, "I can't work with this guy. He seriously thought there might be an actual bomb? I don't write like that. I … I… I… mememe mybookmybook blahblahblah."

Then I took a step back. Because it wasn't about the bomb. I didn't need a bomb. And he wasn't really suggesting I did. What I needed was, exactly as he said, something to happen.

I had not actually realised that I'd written approximately 50 pages in which nothing at all happened outside of my character's head.

I'm not saying you can't write a story like that. Maybe you can. But at the very least, it needs to be a conscious choice. You need to know that you're doing it. And why.

That's part of what editing has done for me. It's helped me understand that when I write, I'm making choices. And that there are other choices, other possibilities; that the way things are is not the way they must be.

It's made me realise that I do have a voice, that what I think of as simply writing the story the way anyone would write it, is actually me writing the story the way only I would write it.

It's helped me own that a bit. To be aware of the choices I've made. To interrogate them and be open to alternatives. To defend them when necessary.

I would never have put a bomb in that story. And no editor would ever ask me to. But they would certainly point out that nothing had happened yet, and ask if that was what I had intended, and was I thinking about the consequences for the story, and my readers, and were there perhaps alternatives that might be considered? And yes, I know, Meg, that you want to write a 'quiet' story but there's 'quiet' and then there's dead, you know? Food for thought?

Food for thought, yes. Suggestions, possibilities, guidance. These are all part of the process. But no one tells you what to do. It's always your story. Editors know this. And what they are really good at doing is working out what the story is trying to do, and helping you find ways to do it better – in the context of your story, your style, your voice.

On a couple of my books, I've done what I thought were close to total rewrites during the editorial process, stripping them back and rebuilding them from the ground up. But when I put them back together, and sat back feeling satisfied with what I'd achieved, I realised that the seeds of everything that made the final version stronger were there in the first version, sleeping quietly. Waiting for a canny editor to come along and tease them out, to guide me towards them.

This in itself is a spooky art, I think, and I suppose all editors are different in terms of how much guidance they give, how directive they are. And perhaps that varies depending on how they read the author.

Personally, I don't like an editor to be too directive. I don't particularly want suggestions on how to fix things, possible directions the plot might take, and so on. I'd rather just have the problems laid bare, maybe get a nudge this way or that, but essentially find my way to the solutions myself.

At the same time, I recognise that's a bit of a tightrope for an editor to walk, and they can't know what my particular preferences are, so I try not to be too much of a delicate flower. If an editor says, hmm, what about this? and it seems like a sensible suggestion, I'll explore the idea. Even if the impetus comes from elsewhere (and doesn't everything, anyway?), I'm still going to make it my own in the writing of it.

Along the way there is much discussion. Debate. Disagreement. You can argue. You can fight. But it's not a battle of wills between two opposing sides. It's both of you fighting for what you think is best for the story.

I like to fight. And I'm kind of stubborn. I tend to think I know best. It's my story after all. But that's not what I meant! She just doesn't get it!

But here's a thought: If she doesn't get what I mean, maybe I'm not saying what I think I am. Maybe what I meant hasn't actually made it onto the page. Maybe I've got some revising to do?

I'm stubborn, but I've finally learned something very simple. I cannot see my own blind spots. They are, by definition, blind spots. I think I'm getting slightly better at avoiding certain things – 'being' edited feeds ideally back into self-editing, after all – but I still need my editor to thwack me every now and then and tell me to just stop it. Stop overwriting. Stop telling endless, quirky anecdotes that slow the pace at crucial moments. Stop circling and circling around the point and just explain what you mean. Sometimes exposition is good. TELL, DON’T SHOW!

And so on.

I've lamented my particular writing tics in other posts. If you're interested, you can read more here, here, and here. Did I mention I have a particular weakness for overwriting? For rambling? As demonstrated in all those places, and also here.

The final thing I'll say about editing is that I don't think it ever really ends. Even after a book is published, I'm still editing it, in a way. I'll change things as I read, to smooth them over, to shift emphasis. I'll wonder why on earth I did this and not that.

The French critic and poet Paul Valery once said, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned." That feels particularly true of poetry to me, but to a certain extent I think it applies to all writing. We shape and tighten and remix and unpick and rebuild and at some point we have to say enough! and then the binding goes on, setting everything in stone, and on we move to the next shiny thing.

And having said that, I have said more than enough and hereby abandon this post.

* If you're wondering what green means, it means "This bit is actually quite good." See those two-and-a-half lines in the middle there? That bit.

On Being Reviewed

2012-02-02T09:15:00.001+08:00

I've been thinking lately about what it means to be reviewed. Partly in response to recent conversations with some other writers, and partly in response to, well, being reviewed.

The result is a three-way blogapalooza in which myself, Anna Branford, and Sally Murphy, decided we would gather, and post, our thoughts on this topic with a view to starting a conversation between ourselves, and perhaps others. So after you've read this, it might be interesting for you to head over to their blogs, too. I know I'm about to. I haven't read their takes on the issue, and I'm sure we've all taken a very different approach to things.

To begin with, I suspect I'm not alone in having a somewhat ambivalent relationship to reviews. Writers need them, of course. We need people to notice our work - to read it, engage with it, hold it up to the light for others.

Maybe I should re-frame that: to pass judgement. Isn't that what a review does, after all? Isn't that what a review is for?

I actually don't think so. I don't see reviews like that. To me, a review is not an endpoint. It's part of a dialogue about a text, one of many voices. And I love dialogue. I like to talk. I particularly like to talk about books. I have, in fact, a PhD in talking about books. I spent years at various universities sitting in small, airless rooms, encouraging others to talk about books. If it weren't for the interminable marking, there's a good chance I would still be doing that in some form.

To the extent that reviews are part of that process, that broad conversation, I love them.

But what I love is a particular kind of review. And it has nothing to do with whether the review is 'good', 'bad', or somewhere in between in terms of its 'judgement' of the text. A review I value is one that has substance, one that has carefully and thoughtfully engaged with the book, which supports its own assessments rather than simply making sweeping assertions. If a reviewer does that, then I want to hear what they have to say, no matter how critical that might be.

I'm not suggesting that an unfavourable review doesn't sting a little. Of course it does. We're all vulnerable in the face of feedback. We want people to like us, and we invest a lot of ourselves in the work we do. There's a TV production company that used to sign off with the tagline, "I made this!", read in the exuberant voice of a little boy. That always appealed to me, and I'm reminded of it now. Because what we're really doing in putting our work out there is saying, "Hey, I made this! What do you think?" And that's at once a very simple thing and a very complex one. It exposes us in all sorts of ways, and negative reviews are just one possible outcome among many.

But even if they sting, I think it's important that there's room for negative reviews. I wouldn't say that I like them, but I certainly value the role they have to play in the process, and if their criticisms are explained and supported, I want to hear them. I've heard some reviewers say that if they don't like a book, they won't review it, that they prefer to only review books they can be positive about. I'm sure there's a charitable basis to this approach, but it's not a position I have any time for. Call me crazy, but I think criticism should be critical. Without it, the review process becomes anemic at best, meaningless at worst, a kind of empty noise. To be honest, I'd rather have a less-than-complimentary review that really engages with my work, than a flattering one that lacks critical substance.

If a reviewer doesn't like my book, let them review it anyway. Let them explain why they didn't like it, where they perceived its flaws to lie. I want to know why they formed that judgement, and I think readers value that, too. It's not about me, of course, but I think it's reasonable to expect a reviewer to be critical about their own response and to find a way of articulating that for prospective readers. I expect the same process to take place in a positive review. Tell me what worked and what didn't, and most importantly, why you came to that conclusion. Then we'll talk.

Metaphorically, of course. We won't actually talk. Conventional wisdom is that you should never respond to a review. I never have. But I've been tempted, from time to time. Because as I said, I love talking books - whether they're mine or someone else's. And by the time a book is published, I've probably taken it apart and rewritten it six different ways from Sunday. Most likely, over a year has elapsed since I submitted the final draft. So I have a decent amount of distance from the work, and although I'm still invested in it, I trust myself to have enough objectivity about my own books that I could be a reasonable participant in such a conversation.

And the truth is, being reviewed is nothing new, really. I've been reviewed for my teaching, my parenting, my appearance, my speech, my choice of cheese. In some sense, we're reviewed all day, every day, by the people around us, by the codes of the society we're part of. We live in a constant feedback loop, making endless, tiny adjustments in response to what we get back from others. Or perhaps choosing not to adjust, to remain exactly and absolutely the way we are. Learning who to listen to. Learning how to be reviewed.

Because here's the thing - so simple, so important. In the end, we can't control someone's else's response - to us or our work. In any reader's reaction to a book, there are many factors in play, and the work itself is just one. In the end, all we can do is be ourselves, write the books we want to write, and then hand them over, into the conversation that goes on largely without us. Then we can decide what we're going to do with the criticism we get. For me, that decision hinges on the nature and source of the criticism itself. Not about whether it's good or bad, but whether it has substance. That's what determines whether it's worth my time, my emotional energy.

So I guess I approach the process of being reviewed with some trepidation, but I also approach it critically. Not all reviews are created equal and for a writer, there's a kind of internal reviewing of the review that needs to take place if we're to survive the various slings and arrows.

There endeth my thoughts on being reviewed, at least for now. And it seems that, good intentions notwithstanding, I've rambled, and will be duly savaged by the critics. Oh, well.

The Truth Is Still Out There

2012-01-19T11:52:00.007+08:00

As many of you know, I have been working for some years to dispel the many myths that circulate about penguins. My book The Truth About Penguins was an important step in this process.

Since its publication, I have gone into schools, libraries, festivals - wherever they will have me - presenting the facts to children young and old. Some of my audience, I find, are more easily persuaded than others. Some are downright stubborn.

Earlier this week, to kick off the National Year of Reading, I went down to Kwinana Library. There I attempted, mostly in vain, to preach my penguin-y gospel.

Audience feedback went something like this.

But penguins don't eat pizza! They're not funky! They don't go to the beach! They're not colourful! YOU'RE JUST BEING SILLY!!

It really is hard work, sometimes.

Here's something I found interesting, though. Following my talk, there was a craft activity. A penguin-based activity. Wherein stubborn children who know everything about penguins and think I'm JUST BEING SILLY made snowglobes. With penguins in them. And I watched as

they stuffed handful after handful of glitter into those snowglobes, as they dressed them up in stickers and sequins and colourful ribbon and glitter glue.

Because argue as they might, deep inside themselves, they know that what penguins really love is colour - spots and stripes and great snowing sparkles of it. They know that every penguin's fondest wish is to be as funky as possible.

Thanks for your help in my quest, Kwinana Library. Slowly but surely, my message is gaining ground.

For those still sceptical, I offer this recent news item, from the local shores of Denmark, WA. Two salient details from the article:

The northern rockhopper penguins arrived on Parry and Ocean Beaches early last week ...

Denmark's two penguin visitors were released into the wild last Thursday after a surfboard ride to an island off Walpole.

Beaches! Surfboards! I rest my case.

Career Highlights

2011-12-02T09:46:00.000+08:00

Last week I was interviewed over at Books for Little Hands. One of the questions asked what had been the highlight of my career so far and I found it a little difficult to answer, partly because of my maddening tendency to want to unpack the nuances of every word put before me.

I wanted to wrestle for a while with the word 'career' and what that really meant for me and whether it was the 'right' term for what I'm doing with this whole writing thing. And the highlights I arrived at had nothing to do with 'career' really and more to do with small creative satisfactions. So it may be that my response was a bit disingenuous. Possibly even pretentious.

And then the very next day something happened. I had a genuine career highlight, and it was this:

In April this year, my book Duck for a Day was adapted for musical theatre by Tony Bones Entertainment.

Since they only tour on the east coast, I didn't get to see the show, but last week, the lovely Tony himself sent me a DVD of one of the performances. And I feel a little ridiculous, but watching it made me a bit teary.

Firstly, it was gorgeous. It was so well done - so cleverly adapted, so professionally and engagingly presented. The kids in the audience were clearly completely absorbed by the show. Then at the end, Tony talked about the book - why they chose it and how they adapted it, which I found really interesting and which in fact taught me a bit about narrative structure, and what I was doing without even realising it.

Secondly, it made me remember the few shows that I got to see when I was a kid, when performers came to our school, or we walked into town in a long crocodile line ("Just remember who's in front of you and who's behind you and we'll all be okay"). Those experiences have stayed with me. They have a certain glow that persists to this day. And I can't help but be moved by the possibility of that being true for some of those kids, that my story, brought to life so wonderfully, will stay with them. I know that books can work in the same way, but having Duck adapted feels different somehow. Which brings me to my third point ...

Seeing other creators adapt my work

made me feel like my story was becoming, in a small way, part of the fabric of things, becoming more embedded in the creative landscape. It's hard to articulate what I mean, but it's something I found enormously satisfying.

Fourthly, and finally, Max as a marionette. Just saying.

So, there you are. A career highlight. A real one. Thanks, Tony.

Everything Old Is New Again

2011-10-24T11:20:00.007+08:00

Or at least one thing. Specifically, this:

It's my new book, The Truth About Penguins. And my old book, The Truth About Penguins.

Confused? Don't be.

If you look closely, you can see differences in the two books - in size, font, and other small elements to do with presentation.*

I'm delighted to announce that The Truth About Penguins will be out in paperback in December, just in time for Christmas. It's lovely to see my work getting a new lease on life like this, and I can only hope the new format helps it find its way into the hands of even more readers over the coming months.

* For the eagle-eyed reader, there is another crucial difference. If you have access to both copies, the last page of text will reveal all.

Out and About

2011-10-13T10:00:00.001+08:00

The last couple of months have been a busy time for me. As other writers will attest to, Book Week seems to have turned into Book Month somewhere along the line and I've only just finished a steady stream of school and library visits. I could give you a bunch of stats here but I'd rather sit down and get some writing done, so instead I'll just say that I drove a lot, talked a lot, listened a lot, and laughed a lot. It was energising and exhausting, all at once. And bookings are coming in for 2012, which is lovely, but also a little alarming.

I am always amazed by the creative and insightful ideas kids come up with. There was a great wealth of these this year, but I have to say that my favourite comment from a student was: "Meg, you are the most expiring author I have ever met!" Coming at the end of a long day, this was at once motivating and accidentally apt.

I also spent some time at Beaufort S treet Books, a beautiful little bookstore in Mt Lawley (which features a vaguely menacing chef-mannequin - see left). I went along to read and sign and somehow ended up buying books as well. When staff are passionate about the books, they become irresistible.

And back in July, I headed down to Balingup for "Telling Tales", the most beautiful little festival with what feels like the whole town behind it. Balingup was cold and crisp and sunny and absolutely beautiful. Readers came from far and wide. There were workshops and talks and readings. There was even a parade. Telling Tales is worth a mid-winter weekend trip from Perth for anyone into children's books.

In September, I headed for the hills as part of the HeARTlines Festival of Children's Literature and Book Illustrations which took place at Mundaring Arts Centre. I presented as part of both the schools programme and the public programme and was also thrilled to see the originals of some of Leila Rudge's gorgeous illustrations for Duck for a Day and No Bears, which were there throughout September as part of the gallery exhibition.

In the midst of it all, I'm working on two new projects - one junior fiction and one lower YA - and aiming to have first drafts on both by the end of the year. I suspect this will be something of a challenge, but I do love a deadline, even an artificially imposed one.

One final image to leave you with: towards the end of my Book Week travels, I visited a gorgeous little school in Floreat. I spoke to three classes of Year 2s, all of whom had read/heard the complete story of Duck for a Day. They helped me come up with some fantastic ideas for the sequel(s). And they knew all about ducks, because they had some. In preparation for my visit, they had set up an incubator in the library, where they had hatched ducklings - ducklings which waddled about cheeping on the edge of my sessions all day long. It was quite simply too wonderful for words.

Duck Season

2011-08-19T13:37:00.008+08:00

Last week I posted about having submitted the draft of a follow-up to Duck for a Day.

Just after that, I experienced another of those curious alignments of which I am so fond.

It was about two years ago that I finished the revisions on the first Duck and the day after sending those off, I woke up to find a duck on my doorstep. At the time I wondered:

Is it a sign?
And if so, what does it mean?

But now I don't need to wonder. Because the day after I finished the draft of my follow-up, I woke to this lovely crew crossing the cul-de-sac at the foot of our yard.

Not just a duck, but a duck with ducklings -- not unlike a book which spawns a sequel (or three?).

So it seems that these visits must be a sign, one that's giving a clear and very duckish nod of approval to my work.

Either that or I've inadvertently timed my duck-related writing cycle with hatching season. I suppose that might also be possible, although as a theory it seems decidedly less charming.

The other reason it's duck season is that Victorian theatre company Tony Bones Entertainment is currently touring a musical theatre adaptation of Duck for a Day in venues across the east coast. As I live in WA, I'm unable to attend a performance myself, but I'm thrilled at the thought of my characters and story coming to life for kids in this way. Max as a marionette! Just thinking about it makes me smile.

A Not-so-tiny Thing

2011-08-08T10:59:00.008+08:00

I've been sitting on this news for a while, waiting for an illustrator to be confirmed, but now that all is signed and sealed, I can announce that I have a new picture book forthcoming in 2012!

This one is with Fremantle Press, which is fitting as it's a 'very Freo' book in many ways. It's called Ten Tiny Things and it's inspired by something my daughter and I often do when we go out walking, an activity we have cleverly named “Things We Would Never Have Seen If We Had Been Driving”. As you can see, I have a way with words …

I've seen early sketches and am very excited about what's to come for this book. The illustrator is this guy. He's a little creepy but there's not much I can (or would) do about that. Click on the "Secrets" link on his site to see why he's perfect for the book. You've probably seen his work in the city, possibly without even realising. You would probably have seen more of it had you been on foot ...

Watch this space for more details. Watch the secret spaces all around you for random flashes of loveliness. Go out walking. See if you can spot ten tiny things.

Clean Slate

2011-08-03T12:54:00.017+08:00

Today I moved from one state to another.

Today I moved from this ...

... to this:

From a whiteboard covered in scenes and scribble to one covered in nothing but possibility.

Today I sent the draft of a new manuscript off to my editor. It's a sequel to Duck for a Day and I've been working on it for far too long, as is the way of these things from time to time or perhaps more accurately, always. But the main thing is that the draft is done and it's off my desk for now and onto someone else's.

And circumstances have conspired to mean that I don't yet have the editorial report I'm expecting for another book, which means I can't start edits yet and have some clear space. Which means I can dive into thinking and pottering about with a new project, at least for a little while. And if I do enough thinking and pottering, it may grow legs quickly enough that I can start working on it, and that will be my project for the second half of the year.

Of course, there is another duck book percolating, thanks to a stray remark from the always-inspiring Deb Fitzpatrick, but I suspect that can wait a bit, at least until the duck's stern, flinty gaze becomes too difficult to bear.

There is other news on the horizon and in the wings and in the many and various crannies in which news is wont to lurk, but that is for another time.

For now, I shall stare at my clean slate and perhaps begin to scribble a little.

And yes, I am aware that the slate isn't entirely clean. Those things you see on the right are magnetic buttons. And also a couple of geckos. Obviously. Every writer needs a gecko or two.

At the Zoo

2011-06-20T19:14:00.012+08:00

Just a fine and fancy ramble
To the zoo.

But you can take the crosstown bus
If it's raining or it's cold,
And the animals will love it
If you do.

Somethin' tells me
It's all happening at the zoo.

It wasn't cold or raining. It was fine and sunny. I didn't have time to catch the bus but that was okay because my thoughtful hosts had reserved a parking space for me.

But it was most definitely all happening at the zoo.

I spent this past Friday at Perth Zoo as a guest of their wonderful A to Zoo program, which is aimed at children aged 2-5. Each week they focus on a different animal and last week - can you guess? No, not bears! - they were learning about penguins. So naturally they invited me along to tell the children the truth.

The kids were great. We did craft and sang songs. I took along my story pot to show them all the ingredients essential for a story about penguins. We read The Truth About Penguins and certain unruly 3-year-olds heckled me from the floor - That's NOT RIGHT! They DO NOT!

Ahh. I love it when they do that.

It was a lot of fun. It was a particular kind of chaos. It was, in fact, a zoo.

And to make things even more awesome, the zoo shop did this:
Thanks, Zoo-people. The only way you could be more fabulous would be if you got those few pesky penguin-related facts straight. Remember - it's party hats, all the way!

Bearly Launched

2011-06-03T09:24:00.006+08:00

So while I was off in my head musing about curious connections and astonishing alignments, I managed to overlook something kind of important.

It's here! Or there! It's in bookstores! And other places!

And next weekend it will be launched in a ceremonial sense at the third annual SCBWI Rottnest Retreat by none other than Sarah Foster, Managing Director of Walker Books.

Here's the blurb, to give you an idea of what the book is about.

Ruby is in charge of this book. And she’ll tell you something right now. There are NO BEARS in it. Not even one.

Ruby wants to tell you a story. A story with absolutely no bears. You don’t need bears for a book. You need pretty things like fairies and princesses and castles. And maybe funny things and exciting things – but definitely no bears!

I'm thrilled with this book, which despite the absence of ducks, has turned out more beautifully than I could ever have imagined, in large part thanks to the guiding hand of editor Sue Whiting and the gorgeous work of illustrator Leila Rudge. I particularly love the bear (even though there isn't one, of course). But I also love the monster, and Ruby, and so many other things besides.

People have been asking me where the idea came from, as they are wont to do. It's a particularly interesting question in the case of this book, I think. How do you decide to write a story about not writing a story about something? The short answer is here.

There will be many bear-related things happening over the next few weeks, I'm sure. But for now, here's something that made me smile this morning, when I remembered that a book had launched, and clicked over to the Walker Books site to see if they had remembered too.

My bear is on the front page! But not only that - look how cunningly they've incorporated the Walker Books slogan into the image: For the best children's books, look for the bear. Ruby would not approve.

Imaginary Connections

2011-06-01T13:01:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I wrote about creative 'coincidences', perhaps more aptly described as a certain kind of alignment. Anna Branford, author of the gorgeous Violet Mackerel books had an interesting take on this in the comments, in response to which I will simply nod my head and refer you there.

If you want to see a really interesting example of how this sort of thing might work, check out this Derren Brown experiment in subliminal communication. It's fascinating stuff.

But to the point I was writing towards yesterday - Surface Tension and the oh no! moment. Here's what happened.

There's an online community I frequent from time to time, where writers gather and talk about all sorts of things. Late last year, Nova Ren Suma posted the cover of her forthcoming novel, Imaginary Girls. It was beautiful We oohed and aahed. Then I noticed the strapline:

Secrets never stay below the surface.

Nice, right? Eerie, atmospheric, makes you want to read on.

It was also one of the lines we had been tossing up for Surface Tension.

That didn't matter, of course. It was just a strapline. And in any case, we had decided to go with something different: What secrets lie beneath?

But it did make me curious. What was this book that could be straplined so similarly to mine? What was it about? I had that crawling feeling under my skin that I was about to encounter another 'But that's my book!' moment. I clicked over to Nova's site, and was reassured. Her book was about someone who drowned, about sisters. It sounded nothing like mine.

I forgot about it.

Then a few weeks ago, Nova posted again, this time to let us know that her publisher had made the first few chapters of Imaginary Girls available online. I clicked over to read it, not because I was concerned, but because I'd read an excerpt of Nova's earlier novel Dani Noir, and remembered loving the writing.

I started reading. I loved the writing. I thought wow, this is great.

And then I thought wait, what?

There was a reservoir. I had missed that when I read the synopsis earlier. It probably didn't seem important in and of itself. But now it did. Now I was reading the line Most people weren't aware of our reservoir's history; they didn't think about what had been here before. I was discovering that Nova's book was set in and around a drowned town, just like mine was, that her female protagonist was swimming the reservoir, wondering about the lives sunk below her, just like mine did. That this was a book that engaged with history and the construction of story, but that the protagonist's stories were written by her sister rather than herself.

I was freaking out, just a little.

I read Nova's blog. I discovered that Imaginary Girls was going to be published in Australia.

I may have freaked out a little more.

Then I went back and read her chapters - all of them this time, more slowly and with less freaking out.

It's a different book. It's for an older YA audience, whereas mine is junior fiction, pushing into lower YA. And after that first chapter, it's clear that the narrative heads in a very different direction to mine.

I sent Nova a message, just to give her a heads-up, so she wouldn't run across my book one day, just before her Australian publication date and have her own temporary freak out. She replied with surprise, and admirable calm. She reassured me further. Her book is magical realism. Mine is a realist mystery. The atmospheric setting of the drowned town, with all its metaphoric possibilities, is the same, but it's not the heart of the book.

They're very different books, though they come from a similar place. The setting for Nova's book comes from the area she lived in as a teenager. The setting for mine comes from a place I visited as a teenager. It's hardly surprising that the image of what is a singular sort of location lodged in our imaginations, to erupt years later as part of our creative lives.

I'm so glad I got on and wrote the book when I did. The image of the drowned town is something I've wanted to work with for years - I just didn't know how. Had I not already written the book, seeing Nova's, as different as it ultimately is, may have given me pause. After all, that's my setting, my idea. And based on what little I've seen of Imaginary Girls, the way Nova writes about the submerged town has enough in common with my own preoccupations that, having seen her book, I suspect I would have felt odd about continuing down the path I had planned.

One final odd coincidence: Nova posted on 8 April that her book will be published here in Australia. I learned on 9 April that mine will be published in the US. A book exchange across the ocean.

So all is well, in the end. Better than well. Imaginary Girls is out here in Australia with Pier 9 on July 1. And it's stunning. I can't wait to pick up a copy from the "Drowned Towns" section of my local bookstore.

Imaginary Connections

2011-05-31T14:20:00.000+08:00

Ever had this happen? You're working on a project, or thinking about a project, or you've just sent something off to a publisher. And it's so distinctive. It's an idea that's specific to you, emerging from your own personal history, and you've attached to it all the other little bits and pieces that accumulate during the writing process, bits and pieces which, again, are idiosyncratic, part of your own subjective experience.

And then all of a sudden you see something similar in Bookseller+Publisher, or at the library. Or you tell a writing friend, hey, I'm working on this thing and they look at you oddly and say but *I'm* working on that thing or oh, you mean like that book by suchandsuch.

It happens all the time. More than you would believe. Sometimes the reasons can be traced easily enough. Maybe there was a quirky story in the news last year. We all heard it. It lodged somewhere in our imaginations. It grew into a story, multiple stories, about the same topic. Or maybe, as was the case for Julia Lawrinson and me, your daughters are at the same school, on the same chess team and you both at some point go hmmm, chess? Chess vs sport? Sporty kids who end up playing chess? and you start fiddling around with ideas. Then one day you realise you're both doing the same thing and the person who isn't actually married to the chess coach from whom she was stealing many useful anecdotes decides that perhaps she'd better bow out and find herself a new project. And the other one goes on to write a fabulous book.

But sometimes the reasons are less obvious. Sometimes they're downright inexplicable. Sometimes you write a picture book called There are No Ducks in this Story! You write it because you've found yourself obsessed with ducks and they keep insisting their way into everything and one day you find yourself typing that very sentence just to make them back off.

You send the manuscript to your publisher and then a few days later you're idly thumbing through picture books at your local library and you come across Barbara Kanninen's A Story With Pictures, which contains the line There are no ducks in this story. And you freak out, and wonder if quickly marrying a duck would somehow give you a stronger claim to the story. But Kanninen's book is already published, and in any case, when you stop freaking out long enough to read it, it's thankfully quite different.

This is the party line, always, when writers worry about this kind of thing. We say Oh, write your book. You'll make it your own. There are no new ideas, anyway.

And yes, this is true, to some extent, and it certainly applied in this case, where, as odd as it was, the similarity really was just that one line. But there are limits, too. When I was working on a picture book entitled Let Me Sleep, Sheep! about a boy counting sheep who is faced with their inconvenient appearance in his bedroom, and The 108th Sheep came out, I shelved the project. When, the next year, The Eleventh Sheep came out, I thought, hmm, maybe there's room for more materialising sheep books after all, and picked it up again. When the following month, I saw a review of It's Time To Sleep, You Crazy Sheep, I put my head down very firmly on the desk. I suspect we've reached critical mass for "materialising sheep" books in our rather small picture book market, at least for now.

Reading members of the public might wonder why all these writers are copying each other. But people who know how publishing works know that each of these projects has been in the pipeline, in the various stages of production, for several years. And sometimes there's no good explanation for why so many people should hit upon the same thing at more or less the same time.

It's mysterious. And a little crazy-making. And it's happened to me many, many times, to greater or lesser degrees, sometimes in ways so specific that I've felt compelled to abandon an idea or a character trait or a sub-plot simply out of anxiety that it would have the appearance of copying. I'd love to know if it's happened to you.

You might be wondering why I've titled this post Imaginary Connections. There's a reason for it and it has to do with my latest novel, Surface Tension. But as usual, I've overwritten already, finding my way towards the point. So consider this a prologue. And tomorrow I'll tell you about Surface Tension and the recent moment when I stopped in my tracks and said oh, no - not again!

Duck FAQ

2011-05-06T13:26:00.008+08:00

Since the CBCA shortlisting of Duck for a Day, people have been emailing to ask me things.

They have been asking things like:

Why did you write Duck for a Day? Where did you get the idea?

Where are the teaching notes for Duck for a Day?

Is there a book trailer for Duck for a Day?

Has it been published overseas?

Where is this sequel to Duck for a Day you have been promising us?

And I have been sending answers. But now I'm going to post the answers here, and then maybe I'll get fewer emails.

The very beginnings of Duck for a Day formed when I saw an interview with the cartoonist Michael Leunig, who draws lots of ducks. He was talking about how people are sometimes confused by his ducks, wanting to know what they're about, and he said, "I thought everybody would understand what a duck is about, and it's just ... there is the duck". That line stayed with me and one day the line "The duck was different. The duck had demands" came to me and I knew I was going to write a story with that line in it. I had no idea what it was going to be about, other than that there would be a rather glorious and stubborn duck in it, but eventually other ideas came along and attached themselves to it and slowly, the story began to form.

The teaching notes are currently in production and should be available very soon. When they are, they'll be posted here and also here.

The book trailer is in my head and that may be where it will stay. Book trailers are fun but they take a long time to make and that's time I have to take away from writing. I'm not sure that's a wise thing to do at this point. If I find myself between projects later, I may make one then. A couple of people have told me I should 'strike while the iron is hot' but I think that applies to writing too. And a trailer may still be useful later, given my answer to the next question.

No, Duck hasn't been published anywhere but Australia/New Zealand, but that is going to change. In January, I learned that Candlewick have picked it up for US publication in February 2012. Exciting!

I'm working on the sequel at the moment. I think I'll have it done in a week or so, subject to the many demands of email and book trailers. I don't have a title yet, which worries me a little. I usually have a title before I start - not by design but just in the way of things - and feel a little rudderless without one.

And to reply to a few repeating comments I've also been receiving:

There are some broken images on your website.

I know, but it's not something I can deal with at the moment. I do it all myself and have so far been unsuccessful in working out why these few buttons aren't reproducing properly. This suggests it's the kind of fiddly thing that's going to take me hours to track down and you know, I'd rather be writing.

You should update your blog more regularly. That's how you get more readers.

Sorry, but I'm not going to do that. Or at least, I'm not going to commit to doing it, although there might be accidental regularity from time to time. I update the blog when I have both something to say and time to say it. It's just that simple.

Having said that, there are many pieces of news to be posted, and that will happen soon. Here's a question no one has asked me yet, but which may be answered shortly, and surprisingly:

is there a music theatre production of Duck for a Day?

Stay tuned!

Duck!

2011-04-13T09:53:00.015+08:00

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 Award s. 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

2011-04-11T11:20:00.011+08:00

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.

It Is The Words During Which Spout Out

2011-03-30T09:25:00.001+08:00

In an earlier post, I mentioned having been told that Surface Tension had apparently received a "cracker of a review", but that I hadn't yet seen it. I've now seen it, and a couple of others too, and am so thrilled with the response this book seems to be eliciting so far.

So this is a wholly self-serving post to gleefully report on those reviews and bombard you with my favourite pull-quotes from same.

#1 From Bookseller+Publisher:

Surface Tension is a wonderfully layered story—reading it is like being gradually immersed in a pool of water as each layer of the narrative slowly washes over you. The writing is so gentle that the mystery at the heart of this book is as much a surprise to the reader as it is to Cassie, our protagonist, when piece by piece it floats to the surface before her ... There isn’t a dull moment in this book.

-Bec Kavanagh

#2 From Kids Book Review:

This is most definitely on my list of favourite kids' books so far this year.

Original, gripping, poetic, authentic - these are the words that spring to mind during and after reading Surface Tension, a book that kept me reading far longer than I should have at each sitting.
...
McKinlay - novelist, picture book author and poet - has created a stunning novel ... I almost can't wait for my toddler to grow up so I can share this one with her.

- Megan Blandford

For the complete review, visit Kids Book Review

#3 From the West Australian:

This well-plotted and engaging novel covers terrain not usually found in junior fiction, and will appeal to readers wanting something different, deep and satisfying. As well as writing for children, Meg McKinlay is a fine poet, and this is evident in the lyrical and accessible images that make Surface Tension such a pleasure to read.

For the complete review, visit writingWA.

#4 From The Book Griffin:

Meg McKinlay made me nostalgic for the days when I loved reading Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden ... [the author] has done a wonderful job of inventing a fresh, original, suspenseful and intriguing story in Surface Tension, that will have you hooked to the very last page.
For the complete review, visit The Book Griffin.

And finally, my absolute favourite, which I think I can feel free to quote in its entirety, given that the 'reviewer' seems to make their living from a total disregard for copyright. This is taken from one of those sites which trawls the web for content and aggregates it into one place in an attempt to draw traffic and thereby earn $$$$ for doing absolutely nothing at all. In this case, the 'writer' seems to have lifted the Kids Book Review piece and jumbled it up a little to cunningly avoid detection (and coherence, it would seem). The results are very amusing, though. Behold:

It is most certainly one my list off the books off the children off favourite up to now this year. Original, taken, poetic, authenticates - it is the words during which spout out to occupy itself and after the surface tension off reading, has book which maintained reading to me much to skirt than I should cuts with each meeting. Cassy feels one the peripheries off all. Its family, her life, even its city. Supported in has very new city, the day that the old village was dammed up, Cassie always felt drawn with the lake. There has whole city to the bottom there; the houses off the people, to their lives and died and the memories all extend below. When Cassie gives up the local swimming pool to achieve its daily ritual off swimming to the lake, it does not curry out what it and her friend Liam is butt to discover. It seems that with differently, nap people cuts secrecies hidden below the surface. McKinlay - novelist, author off book off images and poÃ¨t - created year astounding! Novell which east duty-read for girls (although it is not â€œgirlyâ€� has book, the history, the characters and the model off writing will attract girls). It off the words inspires the thought, the question and the emotions which will remain with the long readers then who final page. I almost boat await my infant to grow thus I edge divide this one with it.

Thanks, "Mickey". That one is going straight to the pool room.

And the next time someone asks me what I do for a living, I shall reply, enigmatically, "It is the words during which spout out to occupy itself".

Everybody wins.

Fragments From a Coastline

2011-03-15T17:27:00.001+08:00

Last year, I spent three months in Japan. I've lived there before but I'd never travelled the northeast coastline. I leapt at the chance to catch train after train all the way up from Tokyo through Sendai, Matsushima, Hachinohe, Hakodate, deep into Hokkaido, and along the way, a clutch of fishing towns whose names are now all over the news.

Just last week, I picked up the verse novel I started writing in Japan, thinking it was high time I got back to it. This morning, trawling through the stream-of-consciousness jottings I made on my travels, I came across these fragments:

piles of coloured balls – fishing floats. The beach is grey and stony, no sand as such. dotted with colourful balls that look like baubles, decorations, children’s toys, as if some party has left its detritus – colours are bleached, faded, the jaded aftermath of a party somewhere far out at sea, washed up on this lonely shore.

There's no surf here, no waves, – the ocean lies flat and docile – here and there ‘be careful of tsunami’ signs seem almost cartoonish, their over-excited exclamation marks jarring in this featureless grey. what a shock it would be if something were to rise out of this.

There seems no clear division btwn land and ocean – sand the colour of dirt as if the ground simply continues – no waves and no change in level. It doesn’t feel like a different state, just a continuation. Water, land, water land, a line that might blur at any moment, a line that isn't a line, always this lapping, the gentle knocking. The signs speak of a different insistence but could it really turn, this present calm?

At times, the train runs right along the coast, the water only a few feet from the window and nothing else in btwn, you could dive from the windows if you wanted to. I want to. But also want this, this journey, this onward and onward carrying away of self into elsewhere. From here, you can see the seawall – a series of jagged cement blocks, like unstraightened teeth, piled upon each other – black, wild, bleak. Some are patterned, others in random piles, bits of broken stones like they will throw whatever they can at the barely perceptible border to keep the unconcerned sea in its place. As they break down their edges wear so they become rounded, look like dissolving, pockmarked starfish.

With every shift of light, every promise of ocean, every head tilts subtly sideways. People will always turn to look at water.

There are no words for what has happened. Checking in with one of my host families, I felt perversely that this was the most important thing for me to be able to say in Japanese. That there are no words. That they are not up to the task.

I'm wary of feeling connected. It's not my tragedy. I am not suffering. I recognise, and despise, that impulse to insert oneself sideways into it, to lay claim to a personal stake. I don't mean to do that. I'm not sure what I'm doing, exactly. It may be as simple as All I have are these words. Here.

And I don't know what to say about the media, about the endless bombardment of images, the piling of video upon photograph upon 'miracle' upon 'tragedy'. There's a part of me that wants to say, stop! and to what purpose? and enoughenoughenough, that says it's not about information or education or bearing witness, at least in any productive sense. There's a part of me that can't help quoting Sylvia Plath, yet again:

'Aftermath'

Compelled by calamity's magnet
They loiter and stare as if the house
Burnt-out were theirs, or as if they thought
Some scandal might any minute ooze
From a smoke-choked closet into light;
No deaths, no prodigious injuries
Glut these hunters after an old meat,
Blood-spoor of the austere tragedies.

Mother Medea in a green smock
Moves humbly as any housewife through
Her ruined apartments, taking stock
Of charred shoes, the sodden upholstery:
Cheated of the pyre and the rack,
The crowd sucks her last tear and turns away.

Dash of Random

2011-03-04T11:35:00.010+08:00

I did promise the occasional dash of random and I'm not sure I've really been delivering. To rectify that, here are two completely unrelated things:

Random Item #1

Surface Tension came out this week. This is excellent and I'm thrilled to see it on shelves. I'm told it received "a cracker of a review" in Bookseller + Publisher, though I'm yet to see it myself. As you do when you have a shiny new book, I've taken to picking up a copy, opening it, reading a few lines, sighing, and putting it back down.

Shall we call it Shiny New Book Syndrome? It is an identifiable disorder - I'm sure of it.

But in the course of my illness, I've realised something about my first line, which reads thus:

The day that I was born, they drowned my town.

Firstly that I love it.

And secondly that it owes a debt to Sylvia Plath. Because when I read it, something strange happens. I read it like this:

The day that I was born, they drowned my town.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry/Took its place among the elements

The following lines aren't mine, of course. They're the second and third lines of Plath's well-known poem "Morning Song". But for some reason, they got attached to my line and I couldn't seem to separate them.

I finally worked out why. To begin with, there's a similarity in subject matter - a birth - and along with that, a similar rhythm, the cadence of the lines. Here's the first line of "Morning Song":

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

It has the same number of beats as mine and to some degree a similar sound quality. The way the last three words fall upon the ear. It's a thin relationship, but it is one, at least in my head. And realising this answered another question for me. During editing, I considered taking 'that' out of my first line. It's one of those words you can often lose without much impact on the surrounding text.

But in this case, I wanted to keep it. I kept taking it out and putting it back in. I wasn't sure why. I just felt the line sounded better with it. And every time I repeated it to myself, Plath's lines followed it, much to my exasperation, and it took me this long to work out why. The slightest of connections - the subject, the rhythm - and our work was connected in a way that affected what I wrote and how I wrote it.

I love this stuff. I love that a poem I read years ago can seep into my own work. I know it's imperceptible to anyone but me. I know there's no real relationship between our work. But it just brings home to me how all of our writing is the outcome of a complex web of highly personal, idiosyncratic associations and image repertoires and relational frameworks. And that everything I write emerges from everything I've been and done and seen, in tiny, secret ways I can't possibly be awake to.

I always say this to kids during workshops. No one sees the world the way you do. No one will write the story you'll write, the way you'll write it. This is just, for me, a really cool reminder of how that can work on the most micro of levels.

For the curious, here are the actual first lines of Surface Tension:

The day that I was born, they drowned my town.

The mayor flipped the lever and everybody cheered. There were streamers and balloons and a really lame brass band. The people of Old Lower Grange ate sausages and potato salad while they watched their lives sink beneath a wall of water.

And writing that, I've realised how much the second line owes to Plath's second line. I'm sure the similar structures are no coincidence. Ahh, I find this stuff so interesting.

Random Item #2

I'm working on a duck book, a follow-up to Duck for a Day, a chapter book which featured a duck with attitude. I'm not always making the progress I'd like to, for all the usual reasons. Now, thanks to Leonie at Walker Books, if I feel like slacking off, I just look up at my corkboard, shiver a little, and get back to work:

Here endeth the random, at least for now. I must shiver a little and get back to my duck book.

* Image copyright Gary Larson.

Penguins in Japan

2011-02-25T10:40:00.013+08:00

After the book trailer workshop I did in late 2009, I had the best intentions of putting together trailers for my 2010 titles. However, life and busy-ness overtook me and that didn't eventuate. I was very excited to see recently that my penguins nonetheless have an international video presence. Skip ahead to 14:50 in the video below (original version here) and you'll see what I mean.

This guy Kazuoki Ueda seems to be some sort of penguin researcher who is fond of picking up representations of penguins in literature and popular culture. On a visit to Melbourne last year, he came across The Truth About Penguins in a bookstore and decided to pick up a copy for his discussion group back in Japan.

Here's a loose translation of the video dialogue:

Ueda:
This is a picture book about penguins that came out this year in Melbourne, Australia - The Truth About Penguins.

There's a rumour that penguins are coming to the zoo and various animals spin tales as to what kind of creatures penguins are.

And there's a banner like this put up "Welcome Penguins" and lots of different animals spread rumours and say things like apparently penguins fly through the sky and penguins travel all over the place with their luggage and penguins hang out at the beach. They say all kinds of things.

Then the zookeeper comes along and says no no, you've misunderstood. I'll tell you the truth about penguins. He tells them all about penguins and it's like, oh, okay, so that's how it is ... but then when the penguins do come, what are they really like ... ?
[shows last page]
It's so fun!

Hiraka: Wow, that was like kamishibai just now.

Ueda: Yes, this is really popular in Australia, in Melbourne. There were rows of them out front in the bookstores [or possibly 'a bookstore'. Japanese is happily ambiguous on this point, thereby enabling my dreams of bookstore domination].

Then he gives it to her as a present and moves on to talk about phone cards featuring penguins.

************

I had the biggest smile on my face when I saw this.

And now I want to go to Melbourne, land of milk and honey where my books may possibly be taking the city by storm.

Or maybe I should just get on and make that book trailer?

At the very least, I will write to Mr Ueda and say thank you for taking my penguins back to Japan.

Cover Me

2011-02-10T13:24:00.012+08:00

I have a new cover.

I've liked all my covers well enough - some more, some less, as is the way of things.

But this cover? I love it. And in a curious kind of reversal, in some ways the cover is responsible for the book.

I wrote this book in 2009 and it was a bit of a mess. I would probably have given up on it but for the fact that I had a grant from the kind people at the Department of Culture and the Arts, and felt beholden to actually produce something.

I wrote it and rewrote it and moved scenes around and moved them back again and deleted them altogether and stepped away from the manuscript and started over - again and again. I tore out metaphorical chunks of hair and really thought the whole thing was dead in the water.

I left it sitting for a while. I'd lost all sense of whether it was any good or not. I felt odd about sending it to my editor. I feared it was still a mess.

Eventually, I shrugged my metaphorical shoulders and decided I may as well just send it and see what she thought.

In July last year I got an email saying they liked it, and wanted to publish it. In February this year. Which is very fast.

Because it was so fast, I thought, well, for once in my life I've written a book that doesn't need a lot of editing. I was relieved but also vaguely uneasy, because I'd thought the book had problems, and if it in fact didn't, then I had no barometer at all for such things.

Both luckily and unluckily, I was wrong. The short lead time was no indicator of the quality of my manuscript. It was an indicator of there being a slot in the publishing schedule that my book would fit nicely into, if only I could get it ready in time.

'Ready' in this case, meaning substantially rewritten, rather quickly.

I almost lost courage. I was sick of the book. I had lost sight of what I was doing. I had no real feel for the characters. I had no faith in my ability to recognise what was wrong with it or how to fix it.

Then two things happened.

The first was that I had a fantastic conversation with my editor, who nudged me gently towards a vision of what the book could be, if I could only find a way to get it there.

The second was this cover, which, because of the tight schedule, was sent to me in draft form quite early in the rewriting process. When I saw it, I may have gasped. It was a cover for the kind of book I love. It was a cover for the book I wanted this book to be.

I converted it into wallpaper for my desktop so it was there every morning, every evening, every everytime I turned my computer on, and I set off, at once inspired - to write the book that would live up to the cover - and anxious - that I couldn't, that the cover would end up being gorgeous packaging for a lacklustre story.

When the going got tough, I set the writing aside and just stared at the image, reminding myself of what I was writing out of and towards. I watched that figure plunging down and down towards the drowned town. I reconnected with my character. I found the heart of my story. And now, finally, it's a book.

I'm hoping I pulled it off, but I guess time, and readers, will tell.

Through a Glass, Darkly

2011-01-21T13:05:00.013+08:00

Although I haven't had much writing time of late, I'm always thinking about it - about stories and writing and the way words hang together. And in the midst of all the things that have been keeping me from writing - among them copyediting and proofing a forthcoming novel and continuing the grind of renovations we've been doing on the house - something occurred to me.

You see, I like these pavers.

I'm not housey. I'm not decoratey. I've been driven to the depths of frustration over having to make so many banal choices during the renovating process. I don't care about tiles or paint or - god help us all - grout colour. But at the same time, you have to choose something. There's a process you have to move through and perhaps not caring should make it easier, but it doesn't seem to have worked that way for me.

Anyway, I like these pavers. I chose these pavers. There are altogether too many pavers - too many choices of every kind - in the world, or at least in our privileged Western version of it. But when I saw these, I actually went ahh.

So maybe I'm being disingenuous, with all this ostentatious not-caring. Maybe it would be more truthful to say that I so rarely see things that make me go ahhh, that make me feel like putting my hand up and actively choosing them.

But I chose these pavers. I like them. And that's saying something.

But what I like more, is this:

I keep coming in from outside and saying, You know, I really like those pavers.

My husband gives me his little smile. Because he knows what I'm really saying is "I like these pavers when they are obscured by all sorts of things that have fallen upon them randomly." "I like catching glimpses of these pavers behind the detritus of life." "These pavers make a fine backdrop for the chaos which is in fact my first love."

And it reminds me of when we used to look at houses. We would be driving around and something would catch my eye and I'd say "I like that one!" and we'd slow and then my husband would sigh and say, "You mean the one we can't actually see?"

He was always right. It was the houses that were obscured that I liked, the ones where only glimpses of brick or roof could be seen behind thick forests of foliage or dense banks of shadow.

It turns out that what I like is glimpses, vagueness, ambiguity, the suggestion of something rather than its actual shape. The act of seeing through a glass, darkly. And I remember this, from Sunday School, from youth group, that whenever that verse would come up - For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face (I Corinthians, 13:12) - as if this were something to look forward to, that something in me would rebel.

It turns out that this is fundamental to the way I see the world, the way I want to be in the world, apprehending things in a kind of sideways fashion, valuing 'gist' or impression over clarity. It affects who I am as a reader, and as a writer. It quite probably has a lot to do with my love of poetry. And as I've moved through the editorial process with Surface Tension, I've realised it's at the root of some of the issues I always have to deal with at this stage.

A while back, my editor said to me, "You know, you often write in a kind of circular way, not saying things directly." She said there was room for this, if I wanted to generate mystery or uncertainty, but that I tended to do it all the time, to never quite pin things down. I could be more direct she said, get to the point, explain some things rather than hinting mysteriously at everything.

I had no idea what she was talking about. But I do now, thanks to the pavers, and the leaves which will never be swept up because the pavers come into their own, at least for me, when they sit behind them.

A few years ago, I took some sample pages of Surface Tension to a manuscript critique with an editor from a US publisher. She liked the pages, loved the voice, wanted to see more. But she had some issues. Certain things, she said, were confusing:

I reached for the wall, slapping the tiles with both hands the way I’d learned in swimming classes.

“Exactly level,” Mr Henshall always said, leaning over us with a stopwatch like we were in the Olympics or something. “Or – bam! – disqualified!”

Who, she wanted to know, was Mr Henshall? And why did he have a stopwatch?

... how Dad piled Hannah and Elijah into the Valiant, spinning the tyres as they took off and taking a big, wounded chunk out of the instant lawn.

Who are Hannah and Elijah? Why is it instant lawn?

But have no fear, she said. Some of this is easily fixed:

Mr Henshall, our PE teacher.
... my sister, Hannah, and my brother, Elijah.

See? And the rest just needs a line or two of explanation somewhere. Not a problem. Easily dealt with. And the voice is great. She loved the voice. And voice, after all, is so important.

The problem? What she called confusing, I called my voice. Or part of it, at least. And voice, after all, is so important. And adding those bits and pieces in felt clunky, heavyhanded, exposition-y, to coin a term. Couldn't readers cope for a paragraph, or a page or two without knowing exactly who all the players were and why things were a certain way? That seems like a natural process to me. It's how we move through life, after all. I'm not trying to be mysterious. I'm trying to drop you into the narrative as it unfolds, equipping you to navigate it along the way, rather than handing you a GPS the moment you arrive.

Perhaps that does make my writing confusing. I'm not sure. I like to think readers can sit with some uncertainty for a while, that they can muddle their way through. That the process of doing so is a kind of discovery of the narrative world. And that in engaging in this process, they take on a kind of ownership of, or participation in, that world, that's more active.

In any case, it's been interesting for me to realise all this. Among other things, it explains why the copyediting stage is always peppered, for me, with comments like "Clarity?" and "Smoother?"

I don't like clarity. I don't like a smooth surface. I like to see things through an oddly refracted prism - through a glass, darkly. And it's interesting to me that, in some ways, Surface Tension is about these very things.*

*It's also interesting to me that the point of this very blog post itself is obscured by so many things, stealthily and repeatedly deferred behind a series of digressions and tangents and pieces of random foliage. You can hardly see the wood for the trees. It really, probably, needs a damn good editor. It's also absolutely and exactly the way I like it.

Goodnight, Book

2011-01-12T10:19:00.009+08:00

A book has gone to bed.

It's been a crazy season - of eleventh-hour renovations and far-flung family and 18 people and three dogs under one sweltering roof for the craziest Christmas ever ... and in the midst of it all, copyediting and layout and proofreading and all the associated insanity that goes with sending a book (or two) to press. The endless quest for less looking and staring and gazing and all of that. The growing realisation that a proofread completed in the midst of all of the above is not the thorough proofread a book needs. The last-minute panic of trying to change things I should have changed earlier - much earlier - approximately 5 minutes before (after?) we should have gone to press.

I may have broken my editor.

But the book has gone to bed. And it's beautiful. Its title is Surface Tension and it's my longest work to date (and therefore has much more scope for looking, gazing, nodding and staring, much to my chagrin).

There will be more posts soon, but for now, the book has gone to bed and it's as beautiful as it can be at this point, which is quite, I think, and that is more than enough.

And now I may go and have a lie down myself.

The What Now?

2010-11-15T10:55:00.006+08:00

I'm starting a new novel. A chapter book, to be precise. To be even more precise, a follow-up to Duck for a Day, whose characters I love altogether too much to leave alone.

When I wrote Duck for a Day, I knew it needed to be around 8000 words (ish). So of course, I wrote 15000. Then I pruned it to 12000. Then I sent it to my long-suffering editor, and she wrote back to me and said, altogether unexpectedly, "I love this, but it really needs to be around 8000 words."

Eventually, we got there.

This time, I have a plan. A plan to avoid writing way too much and barrelling off in the wrong direction and causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth for both my editor and myself.

A plan to make a plan.

I'm not a planner, generally. I like to just get writing and see where I end up. And that's not going to change. But this time I'm going to at least attempt to rein in my rampant overwriting by setting off with some sort of outline and a general word count firmly in the front of my mind. There's a handy little program called Scrivener, now in Beta for Windows (yay!) which is going to help me in this quest.

A couple of months back before everything got crazy around here with revisions for Surface Tension and insanely deadlined copyediting jobs, I began my planning for Duck #2 (*title may change). So this morning, it was with great confidence that I opened the document optimistically entitled "DuckPlan". I had a day before me. I had a plan behind me. I could write Chapter 1, couldn't I? I could get it done. 800 words? Easy.

What was it about again, Chapter 1? Let's see what the plan says. Ah yes, here it is:

chapter 1 the thing happens with the ting

Good grief. Can anyone clarify?

I suspect 'ting' is a typo. Which means that my plan for Chapter 1 consists of "The thing happens with the thing".

It's a start, right?

Yes, Misinter

2010-11-12T10:40:00.010+08:00

I'm a recovering pedant. I try not to let my work as a copyeditor/proofreader spill over into my daily life. I know how annoying it is to have someone gleefully pointing out errors, not least because there are so many of them all around us that once you get started, there's scarcely room for anything else. And to a certain extent, as long as the communicative intent is clear enough, what are a few stray apostrophes or typos between friends?

But yesterday I broke my rule. Yesterday, I found myself compelled to send an email that began "I'm sorry to be a pedant, but this seems like the sort of thing you would want to know."

See below, and weep. I'm sure many of you received the same email. If you had images enabled in your mail reader, you are probably blissfully unaware of what was lurking beneath them. I envy you.

Through the Looking Glass

2010-11-09T11:03:00.006+08:00

No, this post has nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland. It has to do with editing, and my exasperation with my own verbal (textual?) tics. I know we all have them - those words and phrases we use over and over, that we rely on lazily as filler or meaningless 'beats' to break up dialogue. But having done a fairly quick couple of rounds of revision on my 2011 title Surface Tension, I've realised how pervasive some of mine are, to the extent of feeling embarrassed at what I put my poor editor through.

Late last night, in a fit of frustration with myself, I composed the following blurb for Surface Tension. I think this sums it up nicely:

Once, there was a girl and a boy and a lake between them.

They looked at each other. They looked up. They looked down. They looked out across the lake and the water and the smooth, still surface. They looked to the horizon and the distance. They looked back at each other.

They expressed their mutual affection for words such as though, actually, just, you know, somehow and anyway.

“Anyway,” said the boy, “The lake is actually just smooth and still.”

“Yeah,” agreed the girl. “Though it’s somehow not, you know?”

They did some diving and discovered they were both right.

And they looked at each other.

What else was there to do?

The end.

The book is actually moderately more interesting than this. I swear it. And now, after vigorous editorial intervention, it features 50% less looking. Though the eagle-eyed reader may spot some staring, gazing and peering.

You have been warned.

Three More Things on Thursday

2010-10-14T22:00:00.000+08:00

I am still in the trenches. Last week, I said I would pop my head up again, "all things being well".

That may be something of an overstatement. The novel goes slowly, more slowly than it needs must (is that an actual sentence? It sounds like it should be. I guess this sort of digression has something to do with why the novel goes slowly. If I'm having to ask what constitutes a sentence, I am clearly in trouble).

But today was better than yesterday. There is progress. And that is a good thing, on a Thursday, when the book is due on a Monday.

And three other good things, on this Thursday, are:

1. Seeing a display of The Truth About Penguins, complete with large poster of my smiling face, in the window of The Singing Tree in Albany, right next to that little-known author Stieg Larsson. I have a photograph but it is being held hostage by my phone.

2. Having the opportunity to talk picture books recently with an editor who has the wonderful insight of someone who clearly loves what they do. I feel very lucky to be part of this field.

3. Seeing an early cover idea for my forthcoming novel, Surface Tension. I have set it as the wallpaper for my monitor and it is spurring me on through my rewrite. Though I have to admit that I love it so much I fear any book I produce won't be able to live up to it. It's quite the paradox.

And with that, I return to the trenches. This time next week, the battle will be over (but not the war, I am sure. Somehow, there is always more rewriting to do. It's just that when I submit a draft, I like to pretend, for the briefest of times, that I am that most slippery of things - finished).

Three Things on Thursday

2010-10-07T11:08:00.012+08:00

It's been too long between posts again and that may continue for a while. Sometimes there is a limited number of words to go around and I have to use them all for the more important stuff, being the books themselves.

I have my head down on a deadline at the moment, which is equal parts energising and terrifying. If you had told me a couple of years ago that in October I could strip back and rewrite a book scheduled for publication in March, I would have laughed.

I'm not laughing now. In a secret place, I may be weeping. But I'm writing, and that's good. It's the main thing, after all.

So it's a quick post from the trenches, to poke my head up briefly and share three things that have made me smile mightily over the last few weeks of bloggy silence.

1. Seeing The Truth About Penguins face-out in bookstores all over the place.

2. This review of Duck for a Day. I've had many satisfying reviews lately, but in this one I particularly I love that the reviewer foregrounds the last line of the book and its metaphorical capacity. I was so happy when I hit upon this line; it felt like the perfect ending, as if it had been waiting there for me all along - more discovery than creation, somehow, in a way that was very satisfying.

(oh, and I also love this informal review, offered by a friend who also happens to be an editor at a local publishing house:
"Never has the duck been so lovingly rendered in contemporary literature. Roll over, Ping.")

3. This "Duck Full Body Child Costume". Firstly, I love that such a thing exists. Secondly, I love that underneath the description of the costume are the following lines:

Bookweek Suggestion:

- Duck for a Day by Meg McKinlay

If ever a child should go to BookWeek wearing a duck costume on my account, I shall consider my work done.

And with that, I am back to the trenches. All being well, I will poke my head up again next week for another three things.

お久しぶりです

2010-08-12T19:28:00.001+08:00

Ohisashiburi desu.

In Japanese, that means "It's been a long time", and it has. I spent some of the last month travelling in Japan, some of it travelling home, and the rest of it trying to get used to being in Australia again and catching up on the many jobs which seemed to pile upon me the moment I touched down.

I should do a post-Japan wrap-up, but I'm not quite in that space yet. And I have a formal Asialink report to write which needs to take priority.

So it's the briefest of updates this time - to report that I'm writing - putting the finishing touches on a new Nathan, Ronnie, and Weasel adventure I hope will become my next novel in the Lightning Strikes series for Walker Books; that I'm getting ready for Children's Book Week - when I'll be visiting libraries in Nedlands, Rockingham, Fremantle, Subiaco, and Kwinana - and for the Sprung Festival in Albany, where I'll be visiting schools and reading poems and leading workshops; and that I have just signed the contract for a new junior novel, working title Surface Tension, which is scheduled for release in February next year and which means I'll be spending the last part of the year down the dark rabbit hole of revisions.

Here's a word cloud I made for Surface Tension. I love plugging my manuscripts into Wordle for a bit of fun. Take a look and see if you can hazard a guess at what it's about. And if you work it out, let me know. It will make those revisions go a lot faster!

The Penguins Are Here!

2010-07-01T11:17:00.002+08:00

It's launch day at last! Following relatively hot on the heels of the publication of Duck for a Day, I'm very excited to announce the launch of my first picture book, The Truth About Penguins, featuring illustrations by the copiously talented Mark Jackson.

There will be no official launch as I am still in Japan. This is perhaps fortunate as it has made it easy for me to resist the temptation to hold a joint launch party for both books under the banner "Two Birds, One Stone", a slogan which may have traumatised small children.

The official blurby thing is copied below and you can visit my website for more book-related details. This book had an interesting path to publication and I can safely say it would still be a pile of disconnected notes stuffed in a drawer somewhere if it weren't for the vision of my editor, Sue Whiting, and the wonderful team at Walker Books Australia. Thanks, all!

Penguins?

Everybody knows penguins ... don't they?

The penguins are coming and there is great excitement at the zoo. But what’s a penguin? The animals don’t quite know what to expect - but they all have an opinion, each more outlandish than the last. When the truth about penguins is finally revealed, everyone is in for a surprise!

The Truth About Penguins is a zany romp that plays with the fine line between fact and fiction in the animal world.

The detailed, expressive illustrations by Mark Jackson will have children searching each page for added fun.

Throwing Plots

2010-06-28T20:59:00.000+08:00

On the weekend, I went down to Kakamigahara, in Gifu Prefecture. I was doing research for my novel, The Last Wild Thing, but while I was there, I was able to catch up with one of my host families, from my time as a high-school exchange student. In the usual spirit of Japanese hospitality, they treated me to many things, among them participation in a pottery class, a hobby my host father has recently taken an interest in.

When the class began, I was asked what I wanted to make. During the class, it was suggested that I begin working the clay only once I had a clear idea of what I was aiming for. After the class, I was asked what I had made.

Thinking about all of this later, I realised something interesting - that without thinking about it, I had approached the clay exactly as I approach the writing of a novel. That I had set out without any idea of where it was I was heading. That when I had stopped and tried to be 'sensible' and do some advance planning I had been completely at a loss. That there was no way I could make a plan without actually beginning the process. That what I needed to do was begin, to get my hands moving and the wheel turning and see what happened.

This is how I write. I cannot plan. I cannot form any real idea of what a novel is about until I am in the thick of writing it. As I do so, a shape slowly emerges and I realise what it is I'm heading towards. Or I don't, but I continue to work, enjoying the feeling of the clay beneath my fingers, the words upon the page. Slowly, the work unrolls itself in front of me. I lean back every now and then to make sure it isn't leaning too far to one side, that the cracks aren't too large to fix up later. And once finished, I sit back and look at what I've done. I wet my fingertips and smooth down the ridges and dry patches and cracks that are only too visible to me now.

And when someone asks me what it is that I've made, I suck in air through my teeth, Japan-style and say, "Well... it's ... you know. It's this thing. I made this."

And I hope that my editor has room in her kiln.

The Duck Is Not Amused

2010-06-23T11:10:00.000+08:00

We were walking, the duck and I, on our way up the hill to work on campus. The duck was riding, as he always does, in the mesh outer pocket of my backpack, the source of occasional stares, giggles, and some interesting conversations. If you want to break the ice in a strange place, I heartily recommend the "duck in pocket" strategy.

We were walking up the hill when we stopped in our (my) tracks. There were beady eyes upon us. Two pairs.

It looks like the duck is going to have to waddle aside for a time.

It looks like the penguins are coming.

No Ducks in This Book (no, really ...)

2010-06-14T17:10:00.000+08:00

My fondness for ducks is no secret. Neither is my tendency to find spurious reasons to write books about them. I've talked here before about how Duck the First is out in the world, Duck the Second is on is way, and Duck the Third is pecking at the thin walls of my writerly sanity, begging to be next.

Now I can officially announce that Duck the Second really is on its way. That it has a contract and an illustrator and pencil sketches and a projected publication date and all of the things that mean it is really, truly, going to be a book.

And I'm sneaky, you know, because I didn't want my publisher to catch on to my nefarious plan of becoming the leading duck-related author in the Southern Hemisphere, so when I pitched the manuscript, I cunningly titled it No Ducks in this Story!

Somehow, though, they saw through my schemes. After much discussion and gnashing of teeth (mine) it was decided that there would be - quite literally - no ducks in this story and with a little rejigging of the text, the manuscript was re-titled No Bears in this Book!

It has since undergone another small title change, for additional teeth-gnashing reasons I won't go into here, and is now titled, simply No Bears!

It is still, however, the same quirky story I originally pitched and if the speed of the amazing Leila Rudge is any indication, will probably be out some time next week . I have seen early sketches and they are beautiful. I'm not going to give away anything about the story at this point, but what I can say is that it is clearly destined for great things because despite not yet being published it has already won the most prestigious prize of them all - the inaugural Rottnest Retreat Pitch Award, given to the first writer to secure a contract for a manuscript pitched at the annual SCBWI (WA) Rottnest Island Retreat.

I was unable to attend this year's retreat, due to my inconvenient location in Nagoya, Japan, but Sarah Foster, Walker Books publisher and fellow duck-lover, accepted the award on my behalf.

Meanwhile, the Duck and I continue our travels in Japan, though our time is drawing inexorably to its end.

Travelling the North Sea Road

2010-06-09T22:12:00.001+08:00

Last week I took off on the trail of a verse novel. I caught six trains for fifteen hours, going north to Tokyo, then north to Hachinohe, then north to Hakodate, then north to Sapporo. Hokkaido.北海道. The north sea road.

There are few things I like more than settling onto a train (or six) and letting them carry me away and away and away, especially when every degree of away means further and further from cities and noise and rush hour subways.

From Sapporo, I hired a car for a few days and went further - first north to Daisetsuzan National Park, where I walked through knee-deep snow to the lip of a bubbling volcano, then east, with the aid of a well-intentioned but largely misguided GPS system which allowed me many more adventures than I would otherwise have had, to Kushiro-Shitsugen National Park, where I drove gravel roads through marshland, bushwalked many a mountain trail to the top of the hill and back again, spied on the endangered red-crowned Manchurian crane, ate the freshest of fresh seafood, bunked down in tiny little youth hostels on the edge of nowhere.

I found my verse novel. I also found deer, foxes, thick banks of late-night fog, driving rain, clear skies, a bear, and a charming young policeman who sent me on my way with the words "Hokkaido is big. Drive safely."

I did. Despite the exhortations of a Japanese authored guidebook I recently read, whose "Driving in Japan" section consisted of "We recommend foreign tourists enjoy our excellent rail network", I drove far and safely and at times, perhaps, a little too quickly.

I am off again tomorrow, hunting Basho in Matsushima and then on to Yokohama for some research and a SCBWI Japan event. After that, I will be bunkering down here in Nagoya for the home stretch to write, write and write some more.

Not Exactly Disneyland...

2010-05-29T16:04:00.002+08:00

Well, it took me twenty-five years, six trains, a funicular and a bus, but I finally got to visit Koyasan.

Back in the day, when I came to Japan as an exchange student, I was asked to give a talk to my class about Australia, my family life and so on, and do a general Q&A. One of the questions was which place I most wanted to visit in Japan. When I replied "Koyasan", the class burst into laughter.

Apparently, exchange students are not supposed to hanker after places steeped in history, religion and natural beauty. My class recommended Disneyland. I haven't been there yet, though.

I stayed overnight at a temple in Koyasan last week, enjoying communal bathing and traditional temple food in the evening.

In the morning, I rose early to chant with the monks before heading off to trek around the town and surrounding hills, which are filled with breathtaking sites/sights.

It was peaceful and calming and absolutely unforgettable and I hope it won't be 25 years before I get to go again. On the train on the way down I had an epiphany about my verse novel, which will now include Koyasan in some interesting ways. Perhaps I can use that as an excuse to head back.

I am off to Hokkaido on Monday, coming back via Basho's old stamping ground of Matsushima and will be offline until Saturday. I will no doubt have more raving to do on my return.

PostScript

2010-05-20T19:35:00.000+08:00

Okay, that was a little mean. So here's a rough English translation:

What set Yutaka Sawada, a doctor's son, on the path to circus life was his excitement and fascination at seeing the Yokoda Troupe perform in Asakusa. Abandoning the path towards becoming a doctor, he left home in pursuit of the Yokoda Troupe and found himself on a boat, crossing the ocean to perform in Russia.

It was 1902 and he was sixteen years old.

Hence my glee. It's spookily close to the backstory I was imagining for my Mr Moriyama, whose name may yet change, though probably not to Sawada.

In other news, it has occurred to me that the first new term I learnt upon arriving in Japan as a high school student 25 years ago was hōkō onchi (literally meaning "someone with no sense of direction"), closely followed by doji ("a person prone to foolish blunders"). This time around, it was kanen gomi ("burnable rubbish"), followed quickly by tenkōfujun ("fickle, unseasonable weather").

Make of that what you will.

Domo Arigato, Mr Sawada

2010-05-19T19:06:00.006+08:00

While I forge ahead on the verse novel, I've also been doing research for the adult novel I'm in the early stages of developing. One of my tasks has been to nut out details of the background for my main Japanese character, a circus performer touring Australia during WWII. It's fiction, so I have a lot of license, but it's historical, so I want to get the details as 'right' as possible so the story rings true.

So I've got this circus performer - an acrobat - and I've been asking myself what kind of background such a person would come from in 1940s Japan? I had this idea that my character would be from an educated family, someone who's expected to go on to higher education and a 'respectable' profession but is so drawn by the lure of the circus that he turns his back on all that. I've been reading and reading and talking to people and following tiny snippets of information down neverending rabbit holes and the clear consensus seemed to be that this was not realistic, that those who ended up in the performing life were either born into it, sold into it, or stumbled into it out of poverty and necessity, that a well-bred son in this era would not-could not do such a thing.

So I had a quandary. Do I stick with what I think will make a really compelling backstory for my character but is completely historically wrong? Or do I re-think everything?

I hate quandaries. And I hate it when my best-laid fictional plans are rent asunder by pesky reality (about which, see also Ducks, Diet).

So in an attempt to avoid facing a decision I didn't want to make, I kept reading.

And I found this:

Isn't that incredible? I know you're as excited as I am. Just try to contain it. I'll be over here in the corner, writing backstory.

Motoyama Daze

2010-05-09T15:57:00.004+08:00

Well, it's been almost three weeks since I arrived and I am feeling well and truly settled into a happy balance of writing, reading, tramping about and random other stuff. My neighbourhood of Motoyama has turned out to be very congenial indeed - urban and convenient but with regular pockets of green and stillness in the form of local shrines and other 'time out' spaces, something I find very necessary living in such close quarters with others. I find myself enjoying the more communal sense of space in Japan, the constant awareness that there is only a thin layer between your own space and that of many, many others, but as it is at such odds with what I'm generally used to I do need regular respite from it as well, and to actively seek out open space around me.

Writing-wise, I'm making good headway on my two projects. My adult novel, The Last Wild Thing, is still in the research and development stage at this point but I figure I have one last major burst of reading to do and can then start to make some real inroads into the writing. My YA project, a verse novel, is steaming ahead in a very satisfactory way and getting my teeth stuck into some poems in a wider narrative context is giving me a lot of pleasure.

Language-wise, I've been relieved to find that my Japanese, although very rusty, is still basically okay. I went through an interesting phase about a week into my stay where I found myself caught between languages - beginning to lose my easy facility with English but not yet really able to draw on too much Japanese. For a few days there, I just had to shrug and smile. Happily, that can also work (of course, it is also how I found myself a key player in a cheerleading team when I went to high school here, but that is perhaps a story for another time. Thankfully, I am now past the age where people are likely to thrust pom-poms and pleated skirts at me!). Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at a poetry symposium at Nagoya University and was pleasantly surprised to find I was able to keep up quite well with the (often quite academic) content of the discussion.

Of course, shrines and parks and universities are not the only places I've been visiting. I've also been checking out some bookstores. At some point, I hope to find Japanese translations of some of my favourite poetry collections, as well as some local work (though poetry here seems to be as scarce a beast in bookstores as it is in Australia), but in the meantime, I've been haunting the children's section. Where's Wally?, anyone?

The Duck Has Landed!

2010-05-02T16:31:00.009+08:00

It's official! Duck for a Day launched yesterday, 1 May. Since I'm in Japan, which makes it difficult to serve hors d'oeuvres and sign books in Australia, it launched not so much with a quack as with a whimper, but nonetheless it should be waddling its way to libraries and bookstores near you very shortly.

As it happens, there are two ducks in my life at the moment. There's the aforementioned Duck, quacky visage brought to you by the wonderful Leila Rudge ------------------------>

<------------------------------- and there's also this little guy, brought to you by my wonderful crocheting mother. He hitched a ride in my backpack in the hopes of seeing the world and has been my faithful companion over the last couple of weeks. He has a habit of sneaking into my photos and you can see him below in a variety of poses. I have no doubt you'll be seeing more of him over the next couple of months as he travels the length and breadth of Japan with me in search of stories, ponds, and duck-friendly chocolate.

Oh, Wow!

2010-04-19T18:03:00.003+08:00

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

2010-04-15T10:19:00.005+08:00

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.
the glorious, soaking rain, even though it complicates things somewhat when one has half a roof and no gutters.
soup weather! Big pots of steaming stuff!
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.
a new picture-book contract, about which more later.
Spring in Japan! I'll be there in five days! Hang on a bit longer, cherry blossoms!
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!
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.
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!
Julia Lawrinson and Anita Heiss, for reminding me to be awake to the abundant yayness of the everyday.

Tales From Inner Libraria #2

2010-04-11T17:54:00.008+08:00

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

日本に行くことになりました！

2010-03-25T11:04:00.000+08:00

Hey, my blog speaks Japanese!

If you can read the title of this post, come and meet me in Japan, because that's where I'll be very soon.

Over the last few months I've used various euphemisms to allude to this news: "something else exciting, yet to be announced"; "a forthcoming writing-related trip"; "a bunch of other bits and pieces"; "other news on the horizon which is the current source of both excitement and blind panic".

It is still all of those things, the last one most acutely. But now there has been a formal announcement, so I can at least spill the edamame:

I am thrilled to be the recipient of an Asialink Literature Residency and will be spending three months in Nagoya from April-July.

Here's an excerpt from my official bio which explains what I'll be up to:

During her residency at Aichi Shukutoku University, McKinlay will bring together her academic and creative interests, researching and developing a novel for adults centering on Australian-Japanese cross-cultural negotiations against the backdrop of the Second World War. She will also establish links with Japanese poets and children’s writers.

And if you'd like to learn about Asialink and the various programs on offer, you can visit their website here.

I am indebted to the WA Department of Culture and the Arts and the Australia-Japan Foundation for making my residency possible.

Tales From Inner Libraria

2010-03-24T13:42:00.005+08:00

Although I work at home a lot, I don't always work at home. Sometimes I take my laptop down to Fremantle and park myself in a cafe. Sometimes I head up to my local library. It helps to have a change of scenery, to avoid the many demands of an insistent house, and there's something satisfying about writing surrounded by books and readers.

Because my house is currently an inviting combination of bomb-site, dust bowl and storage facility, I've been doing this more often lately. And because I've been doing it more, I've broadened my reach. In the last couple of months, I've sampled over a dozen libraries. And I can't help noticing that although some features are common to most - from the expected (books!) to the less-expected (flat-screen TV!) - each also has its own idiosyncrasies, its own particular culture.

So I bring you the first in an occasional series: "Tales from Inner Libraria*". Reading these entries, perhaps you'll nod, because you recognise your library here. Perhaps you'll shake your head because you think I'm making it up. I won't be.

Today's library is a small establishment, south of the river. Despite its small stature, it has not been left behind in the flat-screen television arms race (and honestly - is it just me? Why do we need TV of any description in the library? I guess the argument is that they're a library gateway drug of sorts, a drawcard for kids, who will then somehow absorb the reading bug just by virtue of being near the books? Or perhaps that they are simply alternative sources of information/education, though the one at my local library is in the YA section, conveniently positioned near a vending machine from which teenagers may purchase bags of chips to scoff on the overstuffed couches, and appears to play only sport or cartoons. When it first appeared and I asked whether there had been some debate over the merits of its installation, I was met with a blank stare).

But I digress. Back to today's library.

At today's library, the flat-screen television was so large relative to the library itself, and positioned so high on the wall that it was like a kind of altar, overseeing everything. And it was on, loudly so, playing some sort of obnoxious morning tabloid program peppered with infomercials for ab-crunching devices and toxins for the skin. As is my wont, I approached it with the intent of turning it off, but the controls were cunningly sealed inside a locked cabinet. So I approached the desk. "I wonder," I said mildly, "if that could be turned off?"

The librarian raised her eyebrows. "Off?" She tasted the word as if it were some kind of strange foreign fruit. "What if someone wants to watch it?"

"There's no-one else here," I said. And it's a library, I did not add. "Only me."

"Someone might come," she said. "And want to watch it."

"Then you could turn it back on," I suggested.

She shook her head. "We always have it on."

This, of course, is not really an argument. I raised my own eyebrows, by way of pointing this out.

The librarian sighed heavily. "Well, I suppose I could turn it down."

She turned it down. It was a compromise. Such things are good. I returned to my table.

Then the librarian picked up the phone. She called a friend. And proceeded to discuss at great length and volume a recent trip to the doctor and the results of various intimate medical tests.

I worked at my table, raising my head only slightly from time to time to offer a bemused smile, to remind her there were people here, in the library. And I wrote for two hours/1683 words. Not bad.

I like that library. It has a nice, community feel to it. I may go back next week and toy with the librarian. Plus I'm keen to find out whether the antibiotics do the trick.

* with apologies to Shaun Tan

None of Your Business

2010-03-13T12:43:00.005+08:00

Well, I did warn you this would be the title of my next post. It's prompted by an email I received recently from a writing friend, with the subject line "Business". And by the last couple of months, which seem to have been incredibly busy somehow with a bunch of things which, while writing-related, are not actually writing itself.

A couple of weeks ago, frustrated with my slow progress through the various WIPs, I decided to take a good hard look at where my days are going. Of course there is a slew of other bits and pieces crammed into my day - house, family, exercise and so on - but here is the graph that represents how the time I had available for work was divided over a two-week period.

A little alarming, no?

The category "Writing-related-but-not-actually-writing" covers a grab bag of bits and pieces, including:

* preparing talks for industry events

* preparing workshops and presentations for school/library visits and residencies

* liaising with schools and libraries on admin/technical details for same

* managing the SCBWI mailing list, dealing with enquiries, attending meetings etc

* attending various launches and other industry events

* writing letters of support for other writers' grant applications and the like

* filling out questionnaires from my publisher for my forthcoming books

* working on final edits/jacket copy/teaching notes for same

* updating my website so my new work is represented there

* trying to learn website-design software so I can fix my broken website

* starting advance promo for the new books - sending information to places like SCBWI/Varuna

* ordering books from my publisher for my own use at school visits etc

* answering correspondence from readers

* designing and ordering new flyers and business cards

* organising head shots and seventy-five different versions of my bio for various purposes

* booking flights and insurance, planning itinerary and making contacts for a forthcoming writing-related trip

* doing poetry readings

* selling my poetry book

* preparing and sending submissions

* dealing with things like the Google Book Settlement, PLR/ELR, CAL and various other potentially income-generating acronyms

* keeping up with industry newsletters, review magazines and other channels of information

Ah, so that's why I wasn't getting much writing done!

People warned me about this before my first novel was published, in much the same way they admonish expectant mothers to "make the most of this time, before the baby comes. It will never be like this again". And in much the same vein, you never believe them. Because you've been waiting what feels like forever for this and you just want your baby to hurry up and be born already. So you think what do they know? It'll be fine! I'm going to love it!

And you do love it, of course. This is not intended to be a litany of complaint. I know how very very fortunate I am to be in this position. I once dreamed of going to launches and writing blurbs and doing promotion and school visits. I love all of it. And I know that in my struggling-to-get- my-foot-in-the-door days, if I'd I heard a writer complaining about the terrible toll having these many books published was taking on their writing, I would have had to resist the urge to smack them firmly upside the head. In a writing sense, these fall very squarely under the category of what we at our house like to refer to as "first-world problems".

But they're real, nonetheless. And I guess what I'm saying is that I need to be aware of all this and of the very real chunk it does take out of my writing time. And move to mitigate that if necessary. Which it may well be. Because the writing is the point, first and foremost, and when it gets squeezed into the cracks of the "business" side of things, there's something rather topsy turvy about that.

Of course, I'm thinking about all this and how I really need a night at home to try and get some words in on the WIP, when all of a sudden two delightful gentlemen announce that they've scored a new book contract and are getting together that same evening to celebrate and would I perchance like to come along? And of course I would, because this is the absolute best stuff of all and what it's all about, in the end, and sitting at the Windsor on a balmy Perth evening eating pizza and drinking champagne and grinning broadly from ear to ear has absolutely nothing at all to do with business when you really think about it.

Congratulations, boys!

In closing, I leave you with my favourite pie graph of all time, altogether more satisfying than my own.

* I'm not sure where this image originated, but I've taken this version from Boing Boing.

Back From the Moon (and the stars)

2010-03-05T09:49:00.001+08:00

Yes, I've re-entered the atmosphere.

Last weekend, I read at the Moon Cafe. I scrambled to stitch together some poems that had been lying in pieces for far too long - one a day for the eight days leading up to the reading was my goal, but in the end I managed seven. Which is pretty good, I think. What's that old saying - "Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars?" Lately, I have been feeling rather more like the more recent re-working - "Reach for the stairs; they're closer" - but either way, I got seven new poems out of it, so I am very happy.

It was a lovely afternoon - stinking hot on the Moon but I like the heat. I like the weather, actually, and do not like the way we seem to increasingly avoid it via the so-called necessities of air-con and so forth. I do like it when the air is moving, though. An oscillating fan will do me most of the time. It was almost tropical at the Moon, with the humidity and the closeness and the overhead fans and the languid couches, and I loved it. And I think there might be a poem in there somewhere - "Give Me Weather"? Perhaps I'll scratch that down shortly.

For now, seven poems. I teased you last week with a couple of opening lines. One of those openers turned into a more complicated poem than I was able to finish in time and will have to percolate a while longer. But for now, here are the opening lines of the ones I did complete:

They're renovating in the oncology clinic

Tonight, the room is thick/with the smell of boy

It's how we were raised, on the logic/of gold

Above all, you must remain/with the vehicle

You can't tell/from the outside what the flesh/will reveal

In the waiting room, my daughter plays/with transparent syringes

When I ask for seventy cents/worth of suburbs

While I was getting these poems ready, I realised many of them have something in common: there are lots of knives, blades, cutting, that sort of thing. And when I think about it, I have more fragments that share similar qualities. It makes sense, if you know me well. Which I do. And I love the way life's undercurrents sneak into poetry unbidden. I love the way a poem lets you know what it is that's on your mind, or perhaps just underneath it.

So that was the Moon. And last night was the stars. There were no knives there, at least not that I recall. And no poetry either. I'm fairly sure I would have noticed that. Jon Doust was there, though, and I promised him a Cat in the Hat sock for his fence installation. There's a kind of poetry in that, I reckon.

That's all for now. The WIP beckons, and the editing job, and a bunch of other bits and pieces I probably shouldn't continue to ignore. My next post will be none of your business.

Family Day, Perth Writers' Festival

2010-02-28T18:37:00.003+08:00

It was hot. It was humid. It was fantastic.

Let's just say I was there from start of day until close of business and I do not do festivals/large gatherings of people well at all. I'm the hermitty type most drawn to Michael Leunig's favoured "...Festival of Clouds/the festival that doesn't pull the crowds", so for me to put in eight solid hours at a festival says something about the event.

We spent the day outside under the trees, as writer after writer appeared before us on the Kids' Courtyard Stage (I presented there last year, at midday, in similar, soupy conditions, and let me tell you it is much more relaxing lying back on cushions on the grass, in the shade).

We saw Richard Newsome (laid back, funny, and entertaining), Kirsty Murray (thought-provoking, scientific, and entertaining), Kate De Goldi (reflective, charming, and entertaining), James Roy (hilarious, hilarious, and entertaining), Sally Murphy (poignant, verserrific and, yeah, you get the idea; I'm not going to repeat it any more), Dianne Wolfer (informative, intelligent ...), and finally, Julia Lawrinson in a double-act with repeat offender Richard Newsome to talk about the writing and publishing life (funny, eye-opening and, yes, you know the drill).

It was in a word - blissful. Grass, trees, cushions, writers, books, kids. During the fifteen-minute breaks between sessions we rushed out to the bookstore and the signing table and the cafe and the drink fountain, squeezing these extra bits in as quickly as possible so we could get back to the heady business of lying on our backs under the trees.

These photos give you a sampling of what we saw, but of all of the pictures I took today, my very favourite is this one:

Already looking forward to next year and another slow, soupy (and entertaining!) day beneath the leaves.

Reading on the Moon

2010-02-24T10:40:00.000+08:00

Or rather, at the Moon. If you grow weary of the international excellence and convivial literary atmosphere that is the Perth Writers' Festival, come up to the Moon Cafe and enjoy the local excellence and so-called 'op-shop decor' (to quote the West) of Perth Poetry Club.

I'll be reading on Saturday 27 Feb, in two slots from around 2pm and there'll also be open mic for those of you so inclined.

I hope my legs don't break/reading at the Moon.

Perth Poetry Club: "Where Slams Meet Sonnets".

The Moon Cafe: 323 William St, Northbridge.

PIPs

2010-02-22T20:56:00.006+08:00

Three days in and the poem-no-longer-in-progress-but-now-declared-finished count is two. That's not bad, given that I've also managed a daily minimum of 1000 words on my novel-in-progress as well as various other bits and pieces that have been clamouring for my attention. And also given that my house currently looks like this:

So there is a lot going on here, about which more later.

Meanwhile, there are three hours remaining until midnight, and therefore still the chance I might increase my PIP count to three for three.

For now, I'll leave you with the opening lines of the two I've completed.

From "Welcome Stranger":

It's how we were raised, on the logic
of gold: all those men just a pickaxe away
from the earth's rich blaze.

(or - now that I read that again - should I break after 'pickaxe'? Do I really need 'away'? Decisions, decisions! So maybe it isn't finished after all. Damn poems, damn them all!)

From "Naming the Beasts"

Tonight, the room is thick
with the smell of boy. He is blueness and
newness; she is caution
and calm.

Tonight's poem is as yet untitled and currently begins with the lines:

There is something sure about a horse
until you're on it.

Though any and all of that could change and it may yet end up being a poem about vowels and misconceptions, drive-ins and/or steamships - that sort of thing.

As you can see, I'm all over this poetry malarkey.

Poetry Week

2010-02-20T12:31:00.006+08:00

Bet you didn't realise it was Poetry Week, did you? That's because i) poetry-related events tend to pass most people by without notice; and ii) it's only at my house, or more specifically, in my brain. Yes, it's a self-declared Poetry Week in which I undertake to gather together the fragments of the many poems-in-progress (PIPs?) scattered here and there on my computer and my desk and in the dusty corners of my mind. I'm reading at Perth Poetry Club next Sunday and am weary of cracking open my little book Cleanskin to read the same poems over and over.

So I hereby resolve to complete one new poem a day between now and then. I know I can do this because I have so many poems that are 'almost there', that need just that final push of commitment to bring them to completion. And I've been resisting it - partly because I have a lot of other things going on and partly because bringing something to completion implies a sort of satisfaction with its final shape, a letting go I've found myself reluctant to participate in. It's not quite a lack of confidence; though it can be confronting to declare something 'finished', laying it open to review, I don't think that's it in this case. I think it has more to do with enjoyment of the process. I like the openness of a poem in process, of the sense of possibility. Once it's done, it's done, and it feels like a kind of abandonment, a shutting down of the process of exploration and association I find so appealing.

But I often find too, that some of what is shut down breaks off the original poem to form its own work. And this can't happen until the first poem is formed. So in that sense, failing to bring a poem to completion means forestalling the beginnings of the others. So somehow, in a circular fashion, I've managed to co-opt the basis of my resistance into a justification for its defeat. How very tricksy of me.

Today's project will be 'Welcome Stranger', which is the closest to completion of any of my fragments. So I'm easing my way in and will report back in a few days, when I have some poems to show for my labours.

For now, I leave you with this:

It's fridge poetry, which was one of my Christmas presents, and to which, via the crafty goodness of magnetic sheets, permanent marker, and a sharp knife, we have added our own personal touches - family names, idiosyncratic phrases, specific buzzwords and so on, but also, unexpectedly, hyphens. Did you know there are no hyphens in fridge poetry? Clearly these kits are not put together by poets! Any poet knows that hyphens are absolutely essential. I didn't realise how essential they are to me until I started trying to make poems without them. In fact, I've been going over some of my work and noticing how ubiquitous hyphen-based compounds are. In looking at just four short poems, I've found:

moth-dust

flesh-wounded

rock-cheeks

stalled-dead

squeeze-box

snake-slick

far-flung

star-strung

night-young

wave-drunk

salt-spray

sand-stagger

Maybe I overuse hyphens? Maybe they are a crutch of sorts? It's eye-opening to find things in your work you weren't aware of. And interesting to think about the ways in which you can adopt a kind of formula, a set of pre-choreographed moves, without really thinking about it. Good to become aware of these things so you can write against that lazy grain and open your work up in new directions.

Poets Elisa Gabbert and Mike Young have a funny, and somewhat confronting, article about this entitled "41 Moves in Contemporary Poetics". Thanks to Andrew Burke for the link.

People of Perth, This is Awesome

2010-02-15T16:35:00.021+08:00

This post is not about writing or reading or books. But it is about art and creativity and bringing the audience to the work and the work to the audience, which is in fact not really an audience but a key part of the work, simultaneously constructing it as they consume it and performing various other acts of deconstructive postmodernist discursive etcetera.

Oh, and getting wet.

People of Perth, this is awesome. And not just because you can - nay, must - get really, really wet in the centre of the city. But because, delightfully, while it's about constructing walls, it's at the same time about breaking them down, not just in water and rooms, but in people.

We stopped in yesterday, to the Cultural Centre outside PICA, just down the steps from the State Library, where Danish artist Jeppe Hein's aquatic sculpture Appearing Rooms, is currently installed (though 'installed' seems the wrong word entirely somehow). We stopped past for a few minutes, just to check it out, to say ooh and ahh and I went and saw that Appearing Rooms thingy, kind of cool har har.

Over an hour later, we left, all of us wetter than we had ever expected to be. And considerably more relaxed.

It was fun being in the rooms, yes, but it was even more fun watching other people interacting with them.

There were people who came prepared - in bathers, with towels. They clearly had some sort of insider information.

There were people who came unprepared. Who came to see the sculpture but didn't quite know what they were getting into. Who tentatively stepped into a room trying not to get wet, avoiding the jets as the walls shifted. Who almost unanimously, within less than a minute, were grinning and letting themselves get slowly wetter and wetter until they were soaked to the skin and wondering how they were ever going to get home like this.

There were people who didn't come at all, who were just passing through on their way to somewhere Important. Who tried to be too cool for school, walking past, not being drawn. But it looked like so much fun and it couldn't hurt to stick a toe in, could it? Just to say they'd done it, that they'd been in a room. They weren't going to get wet, not really.

Heh.

There were kids playing chasey between rooms and kids launching themselves up and down the library steps, picking up speed to hurl themselves into the water. There were kids sitting quietly, playing with gentle jets of water that had popped up off to one side. There were kids sitting on wall spaces, waiting for not-at-all-gentle jets to shoot them up the bum so they could guffaw and leap up, grabbing at their shorts. There were kids angling arms and legs into the spray just-so to deflect robust jets of water at unsuspecting adults.

I saw a man in heavy black pants and a thick winter hoodie prowl the perimeter for ten minutes staring suspiciously at the water before launching himself headlong into the middle.

I saw a young Maori guy run through the middle like a linebacker to catch the ball his mates had hurled over the top, ducking and weaving his way seamlessly through the water, and the crowd.

I saw a herd of shirtless bogan youths stop dead in their tracks, their features coming the closest they may ever do to registering unfettered delight. Surely this is what their naked torsos had been waiting for all these years?

I saw so many parents whose kids clearly weren't dressed for saturation letting them get absolutely and unequivocally saturated. Great work, parents!

I saw so many people sitting and standing and leaping and running and grinning their silly heads off, having the best time ever with a houseful of perfect strangers, soaked to the skin in the middle of the city.

We're going back, with towels, and possibly a change of clothes. Or perhaps not. Perhaps we'll just pack light, catch the train in, let the chips fall where they may.

Get there, if you possibly can. Take the kids. Take someone else's kids. Go on the weekend when there are lots of other people around. Appearing Rooms runs Fri 12 Feb-Mon 5 April, 11am until evening. Hein's exhibition continues inside PICA as well; I recommend going in there first before you get too wet.

The Invisible Underside

2010-02-08T13:50:00.007+08:00

I'm deep in writing mode at the moment. I'm also deep in re-writing and proofing and a range of other things. And reading, always reading. I've been reading Eireann Corrigan, an author I discovered by accident when I inherited the Writing for Children course at Curtin University from Georgia Richter. Readings from the course's previous incarnation included a short excerpt from one of Corrigan's books (a YA poetry memoir titled You Remind Me Of You) - just a few poems but enough for me to immediately see that this was great stuff, and wonder why I hadn't heard of her before. I haven't managed to track that book down yet but I did find Splintering - a YA verse novel - and was reassured that Corrigan is as fiercely talented as those first few pages - even the first line, which made me stop in my tracks - had me believe.

Here is that rarest of things - a verse novel which doesn't sacrifice the focus and richness of language poetry demands in the service of narrative, which achieves, effortlessly it seems, that precarious balancing act or fusion in which both elements pull equally together.

Effortlessly.

It seems.

The writers reading this are smiling their wry writerly smiles right now. Because they know exactly how much effort goes into effortlessly.

I know that too, but had forgotten, being so caught up in the rolling sweep of the work, which makes you feel somehow that this is a writer who thinks, talks and dreams in poetry. So I was reading and my head was playing out its own delightful narrative, which goes a little something like this:

ah, this is amazing. wow. oh, this is a writer. i wish i had written this. i wish i could write like this. call myself a poet! call myself a novelist! can't do either as well as she is doing both at the same time. i want to read this over and over i want to stop reading this right now.

You know how it goes. Inspiration. Deflation. One smooth package.

And then I saw this:

Do you see it? the his car? As a proofreader, I can't help noticing it. As a writer, I can't help feeling happy because of it. Not because I found a 'mistake'. I don't care to gleefully track down errors in other people's work (unless I'm being paid, that is, when my glee knows no bounds). It's not that I get a kind of bitter thrill because despite the work being so stunning it still contains a typo, so there! It's not about the typo.

It's about the invisible underside. It's about all the not-there lines and words and images and phrases. The ones that were rejected. The ones that were endlessly tweaked and hammered into shape. That were deleted and restored, then deleted again. The ones that make the deceptively effortless surface so, well, deceptive.

It's simply that the his car makes me see the writer at work behind the poem, pushing to make every line the best it can be.

And when I'm deep in writing and re-writing and proofing, it helps to remember that eventually, at the end of it all, there will be a smooth surface, of sorts. And maybe someone will read what I've written and say ah, i wish i had written this.

But if they don't, it won't matter. Because I'll be glad I did.

In closing, may I just add:

i) check out Eireann Corrigan's work.

ii ) please, Eireann Corrigan, don't write to me and say actually OMG it just all came to me in a big rush, you know? Well, I doubt there's any fear of that. You do not strike me as an OMG-er. This is one of many things for which I have been thankful lately.

iii) many things for which I have been thankful lately will be covered in a new post soon. I am feeling rather gluttonous in my good fortune.

Duck for a Day

2010-01-29T10:30:00.000+08:00

Okay, I know I talk a lot of talk about ducks, about Duck the First and Duck the Second as if they are actual books, rather than just ideas quacking softly in a corner of my brain.

But over the last few months I have been watching quietly while Duck the First came into being. I have seen pencil sketches of a little girl working at her desk, of a slightly grotty boy hanging over her backyard from a branch. I have squeed over colour roughs of Abby and Noah and Mrs Melvino and most of all, Max - the ~~difficult~~ ~~demanding~~ different duck who takes up residence in Abby's class.

I have been thrilled and delighted by the work of the wonderful Leila Rudge. It's not that the characters are as I'd imagined them, that I feel satisfied seeing 'my' vision come to life. The truth is that I'm not much of a visual thinker and am not sure I had imagined them in any great detail at all. It's rather that they are just so absolutely right for the book. Illustrators are wizards, I tell you.

And now I have something marvellous. I have an officially approved and definitely final cover. Ahh. I love covers; somehow for me seeing the cover is the moment when the book comes into its true bookness. And bookness, as we know, is a very fine thing.

In related news, I have just learned that Duck the Second is also on its official way. But in an unexpected twist, it may end up being less about ducks and more about not-ducks, except not quite in the way I had planned.

Hold that bemused look for a while. All will be revealed at a much later date.

Premier's Summer Reading Challenge

2010-01-21T10:03:00.001+08:00

Over the last week I've visited libraries from Mandurah to Morley, with a Fremantle stopover closer to home, talking to kids about books and writing and the fantastic Premier's Summer Reading Challenge. I love carrying my little box of bits and pieces into the cozy corners of libraries and seeing who's waiting for me there, especially when they turn out to be as delightful and creative as the groups I met this year.

Thanks to everyone who came out on very hot days to hear me talk, and help me plot (in every sense!). I hope you were all inspired to take up the reading challenge, not just over summer, but always. Remember that you can keep reading until 8th February, but make sure your entries are in by the 15th.

Oh, and don't forget - that trip to Broome is mine!

Is a Poem a Frog?

2010-01-16T18:22:00.000+08:00

I've been thinking lately about poetry. I've been thinking about it and reading it but what I haven't been doing is writing it. In fact, it's been well over a year since I wrote a new poem. And I'm acutely aware that this is not a good thing, in ways which can be difficult to define.

In my rambling thoughts about poetry, and my own lack thereof, I found myself thinking about something Mark Tredinnick said at a workshop I attended at the Apropos Poetry Symposium here in Perth last year. I can't recall exactly the words he used but he spoke about the notion of a poem itself - the work that appears on the page - as being an indicator species for the whole landscape that is the poem. I found this idea immediately compelling, and true, and filed it away in my brain under 'quirky ideas I may return to later in unexpected ways'.

Now, in thinking about not writing poetry, and the malaise that comes with that, or of which it is perhaps itself an outcome (not sure yet of the slippery relationship between these two things), it occurs to me that for me, poetry itself is an indicator species of the whole landscape which is my writing. In much the same way that the presence of frogs indicates a healthy environment, so the production of poems, the delight in poems, is suggestive of the general health of my own creative life in a broader sense.

To stretch the analogy further than any reasonable writer ever should, clearly I need to rid the soil of chemical fertilisers and/or pesticides. I'm just not sure what they are yet.

In the meantime, I keep slogging away at narrative, trying to carve out a home for myself, all the while wondering whether I might not be better off just spending some quiet time in the garden.

Cracking the WIP

2009-12-30T22:39:00.000+08:00

I think every writer knows this moment, when the novel you've been wrestling with suddenly turns and rolls over, like a dog baring its submissive belly and says, "Yes, okay, you win. The way is clear. Go on, now."

Ahh, I do like this.

Of course, I suspect most writers also know the moment that can follow - when the dog, having given you your brief belly-rubbing moment, leaps up and locks your wrist in a death-grip, and the dance begins again.

But that's another story altogether (hopefully).

For now, back to work, with guarded optimism.

* WIP = Work In Progress

Leaf of My Senses

2009-12-14T11:26:00.000+08:00

So I've finished the marking and the copyediting and the translating and the accounting and most of the extension planning (take that, grout colours!) and some of the other random bits and pieces that were clamouring for my fickle attentions. And I've cleaned my desk. Not completely, but the thing is, despite my many friends who emailed me to say "Call that a mess? This is a mess!" it was never really about the mess anyway. It was about the fact that there were just too many different things in there, too many disconnected and sometimes competing demands on my time and increasingly limited brainpower. I can take the mess, as long as it's not pulling me in too many directions at once.

But that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is this:

In partially cleaning my desk, I found the leaf - whole and flat and entirely unbroken despite the chaos of its surrounds. That has to be a symbol of something, surely?

It's the return of the writing desk and it's just in time for the school holidays, of course, but that's okay. It seems to be how things work around here, but when there are novels brewing, they will make their way into the light, school holidays or no.

There is other news on the horizon too, which is the current source of both excitement and blind panic. But I can't tell you about that, not quite yet.

The Trailer is Parked!

2009-12-03T17:14:00.003+08:00

Remember Pile #4 from my last post? Wherein I vowed to finish my book trailer and upload it somewhere other than my desk?

Well, I've done it. It took a very late night and a certain quantity of hair-pulling but it's done and it's on YouTube and pretty soon it'll no doubt be a viral #1 hit all over the world.

Or not, but in any case, it will be done, and off my desk, and that is all to the good.

This is the outcome of a writingWA/ASA Book Trailer Workshop a small group of WA writers were fortunate to attend over the last couple of weeks. It was a lot of fun, and a bit of stress, as we staggered towards the deadline with only the barest grasp on what we were doing (or perhaps that was just me?), but I'm told it only gets easier from here. In fact, I'm actually looking forward to getting final images for my 2010 books so I can start thinking about trailers for those too.

Here's what I came up with for The Big Dig (let's see if I've learned enough to embed this without causing a rift in the space-time continuum).

According to YouTube, videos similar to mine include "Sea Lion Surfing" and "Sheep on the Roof". Intriguing.

The Not-Writing Desk

2009-11-30T10:05:00.000+08:00

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

2009-11-15T10:33:00.000+08:00

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

2009-11-04T13:25:00.000+08:00

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.

Krang!

2009-10-13T18:48:00.000+08:00

It's Kerang, really, but if you live here, you don't need all those pesky vowels. And I do live here, at least for now. I'm here for a few weeks, on a kind of writing retreat, for some much-needed head-space and novel-writing time, as well as visiting a few schools and some other random bits and pieces.

Yesterday, I spent some time at Kerang Primary, just down the road from where I'm staying. It's one of those gorgeous old country schools, not unlike the school I went to when I was growing up in Eaglehawk, near Bendigo (I'll be visiting Eaglehawk North in a few days, which I'm very happy about), so in a weird way, it feels like home. I talked about reading and writing and about some of my books (my favourite boys, Nathan, Ronnie and Weasel featured heavily in the discussions). I also talked about where stories come from and some ways in which you can turn your writer eyes on to see the ideas that are lurking all around you.

In Kerang, for example, not only are there fantastic wide roads and people who greet each other in the streets, there are also some seriously creepy water towers that no-one appears to give a second thought to (who knows what is going on inside those walls? Water storage? I think not.)

And as well as a curiously large number of off-lead dogs roaming randomly about, there are more elderly people on electric scooters than I have ever seen anywhere in my life. When you gather all these scooters together, along with some seriously competitive senior citizens, you get this:

It's the annual Kerang scooter race, which took place down near the clock tower at lunchtime today - best community event ever, and a story in there somewhere for sure!

I'm having a great time here, and even getting some good writing time in. It's an unusual place for a retreat, but the air and the space and the relaxing, slow pace really work together to clear my head.

Oh, and Kerang also has the best Annual Show ever, at which they have most excellent taste in muffins.

A Waddling Visit

2009-09-30T22:37:00.000+08:00

Revisions on Duck for a Day are finished. The book is done. Now is the time to sit back, put my hands behind my head and forget about ducks for a while.

That's what I think.

Then I open my door in the morning, and find this:

A duck. A completely random duck. On my doorstep.

Is it a sign?

And if so, what does it mean?

The Duck Has Demands

2009-09-15T21:52:00.000+08:00

In my 'Writing' folder there is a 'Junior Fiction' folder. In my 'Junior Fiction' folder there is a 'Duck for a Day' folder.

This is all well and good. This is the sign of an organised mind, an organised computer, a manageable filing system.

But what is inside the 'Duck for a Day' folder?

Eighteen documents, my friends:

Ducknotes
Duckplan
Duckpending
Duckrejects
Duckcurrent

Ducknewdraft

Duckasracingread
Duckasracingread2
Duckasracingreadfinal
DuckJuly
DuckJulyrev
DuckJulyrevSue
Duckfinal
Duckabsolutelyfinal
Duckevenmorefinal
Ducksubfinal
Ducksubnew
DuckOMG

This utter chaos, this mess of revisions and re-starts and absolutelydefinitelynodoubtaboutit final drafts, is the measure of how a book has toyed with me, of the many paths and laneways it has led me down, only to turn around and shake its head and blithely say, "Actually, no, I think we'd better go back the way we came."

When I wrote the lines, "The duck is difficult. The duck has demands", I didn't really know what I was getting myself into.

People think these little books are simple, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that writing simple is a very complex thing.

Lions and Tigers and Bears

2009-09-01T13:29:00.000+08:00

Book Week is over for another year, which is probably just as well, as I may need the next eleven months to recover! I had another jam-packed week of storytelling, talks and workshops, this year at libraries and schools in the Cities of Stirling, South Perth, Joondalup and Swan. It was fun using this year's theme of Book Safari to talk about tracking ideas: how do you recognise them as they flash past in the jungle? what do their footprints look like? what happens if you think you're tracking a deer and when you finally get a good look at it, it turns out to be an elephant? These are the questions that keep me up at night!

If you came along to hear me talk, thanks! And I hope you got something out of it beyond an hour off school. Remember you can always email me through my website if you want to get in touch. And a big thank you too to all of you who helped me brainstorm ideas for my next Nathan, Ronnie and Weasel Lightning Strikes adventure. Wait until you see what they get up to next; at this point, this may or may not involve:

dancing Santas
garden gnomes
the Google Earth satellite

I can't make any promises until I throw a few things into the mix and give it a good stir.

Really, Dymocks?

2009-08-22T07:47:00.000+08:00

I was thrilled today to overhear a staff member in the children's section of my local Dymocks enthusiastically recommending "classic Australian literature" to a stymied grandparent shopping for presents.

I was less than thrilled to hear that her suggestions were "The Naganun [sic] and the Stars, you know, by the author of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, as well as Picnic at Hanging Rock!"

Dymocks, might I suggest you spend a little less energy on the Coalition for Greater Profits and a little more on staff education?

Dig This!

2009-08-05T13:10:00.000+08:00

Beware of photographers, I tell you. They will say things to you like, "Yes, let's just take a few over there. Hold the shovel and smile. Excellent! Looks great!" ...[click] [click] [click] ... "Well, I think that's all we need, then." [feigned casualness] "How about one more? Just scream or something, make a crazy face - just for fun?"

So you scream and make a crazy face, just for fun, and then one day you wake up to this, on your doorstep, before you've even had your coffee:

And suddenly all your friends start looking at you sideways, as if they're beginning to see you in a whole new light.

** (Actually very fabulous) photograph by Marcus Whisson, in its original context here.

The Benefits of Messy Handwriting

2009-07-21T14:51:00.000+08:00

When I talk to school groups, I sometimes show pages from my notebooks, or bits and pieces of paper where I've jotted down story ideas. And in doing so, I often make the point that neat handwriting is a very good thing. Because sometimes - quite often, really - when I come later to read what it is that I've written down, I find that I can't, that the idea I remember as being so very brilliant is in fact a meaningless series of squiggles. Or I get to the shops and discover I can't decipher half the items on my list.

But sometimes things work the other way. Sometimes having terrible handwriting leads, accidentally, to all sorts of surprising connections. In poetry workshops, I'm always talking about making words jostle up against words they wouldn't normally hang around with. And sometimes this is what happens when I try to make sense of my own writing.

Sometimes thick black marker on the fridge admonishes me to **EAT THE YEARS!!!!**

Sometimes a note in my diary reminds me to "Copy the past into my notebook".

Sometimes a scrap of paper long buried on my desk tells me "Dogs should have electric cots and vests - VERY IMPORTANT"

Sometimes this is how poems and ideas begin to grow. And for all my Book Week warnings about the importance of good penmanship, I have to admit that this is how I like it.

What Do Ducks Eat?

2009-07-03T13:08:00.000+08:00

So I'm writing these duck books. Because I love ducks. But it seems that with duck-love comes responsibility. It seems that if you love a duck, you must not feed it Belgian chocolates. My eagle-eyed editor reads my manuscript and informs me that chocolates are not good for ducks and can actually be fatal. This is not good for my story-duck, Max, who is very fond of them. And whose fondness for said chocolates is very important to the story.

When my editor tells me of this unfortunate fact, I take a moment to pause. I say "Damn you, facts! Why must you always get in the way of a good story?"

Then I take another moment to pause again.

Because my editor tells me it is a Google search which has given her this information. And as much as I love Google, I am wary of relying on it as a research tool. So I climb aboard my high-horse, with my duck sitting side saddle in front of me, and tell my editor I'm going to look into this 'more deeply' before I make any drastic changes.

But I am pressed for time. And I hate talking on the phone. And I don't know any duck experts.

What can I do?

I use Google. Of course. Only 'more deeply' and with additional Google-fu.

This is what I tell myself.

What does Google tell me?

It tells me that chocolate is not good for ducks. It tells me so in many, many pages.

I do what any deep researcher would do. I decide to try a different search string, one which will perhaps yield me more ~~convenient~~ accurate results. I type in "What do ducks eat?"

And lo! The page of my dreams, it appears before me, or at least a summary of it, in my search results. It appears like this:

What do Ducks eat? ... low-fat chocolate milk .. orange juice... white bread ... Bowl of grape jelly ... large bowl of dill pickle spears ...Peanut butter

At last!, I think. I have found a kindred spirit. I have found someone who does not mollycoddle the ducks of this world. I have found proof that ducks can enjoy all kinds of weird and wonderful things if they are only given the chance.

Then, because I am researching 'more deeply' and with maximum Google-fu, I decide to click on the page itself. And I discover this:

Recently at University Catering on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, the crew has been forced on short notice to prepare for the Oregon Ducks football team a daily late-night buffet spread for their team meetings. With all the items being cold, the kitchen crew is not required to stick around to fire any hot items, though students must be scheduled to deliver the cold smorgasbord to the opposite side of campus every night for a 9:30 pm start. So the question remains to be asked -- What do Ducks eat?

Then I beat my head against the desk, Dobby-style, and call the wildlife sanctuary. "What do ducks eat?" I ask them. "Not the Oregon Ducks, but actual, you know, living ducks. That quack. Can they, perhaps, enjoy the occasional Belgian chocolate?"

"Oh dear," they say. "Oh dear, no. You must never feed chocolate to a duck. What are you thinking?"

"I am thinking," I say, "that I have some re-writing to do."

Handwriting

2009-06-24T17:14:00.000+08:00

Note to self: always always always have a notebook by your bed. Still, at least I had a pen. And a hand. There are three different story ideas on this hand. All I need now is the time to write them, right after I finish this rewrite, and the next one, and the next two novels in the queue, and that grant application, and this editing project, and the academic semester.

Hmm. Must sleep less, write more. Preferably not on hands, though.

Welcome Home!

2009-06-10T17:19:00.000+08:00

When I got home from Rottnest, I found this:

It's The Big Dig - my very first copy and it looks great! And oh yes, I know you've seen the cover on here before, but this is the book, the actual book, and there's nothing like it, nothing like seeing that actual package with the little bear and knowing your book is inside and that it weighs exactly 230g.

Coming to a store near you from July 1st!

SCBWI Rottnest Retreat

2009-06-08T17:46:00.000+08:00

Ahh! A glorious long weekend of writing, chatting, bikeriding and occasional dancing. Stats below:
Days: 3
Average Temperature: 23
Drops of Rain: 0
Words Written: Plenty. Beyond that, I can't say, as I resolved not to take my laptop, which turned out to be a very good decision.
Novels Planned: 2
Kilometres Cycled: 67
Quokkas Sighted: 29
Speed at which I want to turn around and go right back again: Lightning

Thankfully, we are already calling it the 'first annual' retreat, so perhaps I only have twelve months to wait before we can do it all again.

Internationally Published

2009-06-01T14:21:00.000+08:00

While I wasn't watching, this happened:

Old news, you say? Isn't Going for Broke just so very last year? Well, yes, I suppose it is, at least in Australia. But look closer, if you can.

Look at this:

Pounds! UK only!

On 4 May, Going for Broke was published in the United Kingdom! Somehow, I seem to have slept through it. But no matter. I am awake now.

More information here. I wonder what they'll make of my boys?

Regenerate Poetry Reading/Fundraiser

2009-05-18T14:40:00.000+08:00

Dear poets and friends,

Recently the poetry community was struck with some terrible news. As a result of the bush fires in Kinglake our dear friend and sister poet Ella Holcombe lost both of her parents.

We are holding a fundraiser here in Perth to support Ella. "Regenerate: The Greening of Kinglake" will be an evening of poetry and song, featuring poets such as Kevin Gillam, Andrew Burke, Lucy Dougan and Sarah French, together with a silent auction of donated goods.

I will be reading at the fundraiser and would love to have your company on the night. As suggested by the venue and timing, this is an event for adults, rather than children.

The Big Dig Is Dug!

2009-05-13T18:20:00.000+08:00

As you would know if you've been paying attention, The Big Dig is my next book in the Lightning Strikes series. I've been madly going back and forth with my editor trying to finalise the manuscript for the last month or so (it is more important than you can possibly imagine to make sure all the commas are in the right places!) and now it's finally done. And even better than that, I have a cover, which is fantastic. By which I mean that it is fantastic that I have a cover, because the book would look naked without one, but more importantly that the cover itself is fantastic (see how important those commas are?). The real thing will be even more sparkly and fabulous, but for now, here is a taste:

When I get time (ha!) I will add a page for The Big Dig to the Books section.

In other news, I have completed the manuscript of Duck the Second and sent it off to my editor. Cross your webbed digits for me!

Broome Time

2009-05-04T18:25:00.000+08:00

If you're wondering why I'm looking so tanned and relaxed it's because I've been in Broome! Okay, it was only for three days and there wasn't much time for lying around in the sun, but it was a fantastic trip nonetheless. I spent time with Years 8 and 9 from Broome Senior High School, then an afternoon with some keen readers and writers from Cable Beach Primary School. We talked about how stories get started - about images that fall into your head and priests on oceanic balloon flights and chihuahuas that get blown away in storms and about ways in which you can take all your wild and crazy ideas and turn them into stories.

During one of my sessions, I had the best feedback ever from a reader. Here's how it went:

Reader: Yeah, I read that book, Annabel, Again. Half of it, anyway.
Me (laughing): What, did you get bored and give up?
Reader (shrugging): Yeah, basically.
Me: Oh.

Note to self: Make stories less boring.

I also spoke at the NorthWest Expo and read some poetry there, and on Sunday before I came home, I did a workshop for some local writers. It was a flying visit, but a good one, and I managed to squeeze in some wandering around time, during which I took myself up to the Japanese cemetery, among other places, and found the beginnings of many poems.

Duck the First

2009-04-25T18:28:00.000+08:00

It's officially official! The contracts for Duck for a Day are signed, sealed and delivered and at this stage, the book is scheduled for publication in 2010. Duck for a Day is an illustrated chapter book for ages 6-9 and it's about a girl who has to contend not only with a new teacher but also with a duck named Max who is most definitely not your average class pet. The entire manuscript grew from the words "The duck was different. The duck had demands", which popped into my head one day and refused to leave. I have seen some early sketches by the illustrator and they are simply gorgeous. I can hardly wait to see the finished product. But I will, of course, and while I'm waiting, I will write more books.

About ducks.

Sadness

2009-04-15T21:19:00.000+08:00

Apparently, 'unco' is no longer a word. I have had to pull it from The Big Dig at the eleventh hour, having been confronted by a sea of blank faces when I tested it out on some readers.

The closest one of them came was a very tentative, 'Umm, uncool?'

Come on, people! Save this word! We need unco. How else am I going to describe my dancing?

(also no longer meaningful - 'tanktop'. Eh, no great loss there).

That Was The Year That Was

2009-04-02T21:24:00.000+08:00

It's been another year since I started this site, and this 'notablog' thingy, so here is my annual recap with some stats:

1) The Good:

books published: 1
books contracted but not yet published: 3
poems published: 2
school presentations/workshops: 36
poetry readings: 3

2) The Less Good:

books written but not contracted: 2 (these are manuscripts which made the list last year; I'm still planning to revise and resubmit, though. Just as soon as I have time ...)
poems written: 3 (nowhere near enough, and I have a folder full of fragments I can't seem to see my way clear to working through to completion. This must change, soon).
unbidden thoughts about turning these semi-regular updates into an actual blog: too many

3) The Utterly Random:

references to my dog and/or breakfast cereal choices: 0
days I missed having to get up in the dark and take the bus to 'a real job': 0
duck-related books written: 2
duck-related books under contract: 1
duck-related books remaining to write: 1
number of days left until duck obsession is officially over: absolutely no idea

So, that was the year that was, that was. It's been another fun year of writing and reading and talking about it all to anyone who'd listen. My challenge for this year is to complete a couple more full-length junior novels and maybe another Lightning Strike, along with my portion of a poetry collaboration I've been working on, then sit down and take stock of which direction I want to head in next. Being versatile is a very good thing, but sometimes the competing voices in my head become a bit overwhelming. This year I will be seeking clarity. Clarity, I tell you. And serenity. Now!

The Big Dig Is Not About ...

2009-03-24T22:27:00.000+09:00

* filling in a backyard pool with cement so you can have a bigger yard to play in.

* a boy who wins a backyard pool in the Westpac Maths Competition but has to pay for his own fence so he sells the cement his father has left in the shed which was supposed to be used for the driveway.

* a boy whose fence is too small for his pool so he has to put it down the middle but it all works out well because it means he has half the pool and his annoying sister has the other half.

* a boy who builds a solid cement wall around his pool, like a castle, with turrets.

* a boy who tries to dig his own pool but it's too expensive and there are too many stupid rules so instead he decides to focus on studying maths.

Though I have to say, I like your style, all of you!

Of the suggestions I received, Max, aged 11, was the closest, with:

* "Maybe some boys (is it Nathan and Weasel again?) try to dig a pool in their backyard (probably Ronnie so they don't wreck their own yards) but they don't have enough money for all the cement and plus they get in trouble or something. I can't work out how it ends though. I hope I'm right."

Max, you are not quite right but you are the rightest. Yes, it's our old friends, Nathan, Ronnie and Weasel, and they do try to dig a pool and there is some wrecking and some trouble and some headfirst diving into rapidly setting cement off a broken plank of wood. I'm not surprised that you can't work out how it ends; I had a fair amount of trouble with that too.

That's all I'm going to tell you for now, but Max, if you send me your address (ask your parents if it's okay first), I'll send you a copy of the book as soon as I get one (probably June). The rest of you will find it on the shelves in shops and libraries some time in July. Once I have a final cover image, I'll add a new page in the 'Books' section on this site and you can check out more details there.

One final thought - I find it intriguing that somehow, all of you, even the girls, thought the story must be about boys. Is it because of the title? Does it sound more like a 'boy book' to you because it involves digging? Or is it the 'bigness'? Interesting.

The Price of Cement, Swimming Pool Fencing Laws, and Year 6 Mathematics

2009-03-10T22:30:00.000+09:00

These are some of the things I've had to research while finishing up my latest novel The Big Dig, forthcoming in July this year (if I can get it done in time!). Anyone like to guess what it's about?

Email me with your ideas and I'll post them here when I have a few. If anyone gets close, there might even be a prize!

Hint: if you live in the City of Melville, you may have something of a head start. In a curious alignment of planets, I am writing this from Civic Library in that very city. More on that another time.