Journal

Perspective

Leave a comment

We are at the tail-end of daylight savings, so the mornings are starting to be pretty dark when I walk down to the bus in the morning. Besides the odd funny encounter with possums that I mistake for the neighbourhood cats, the other pleasant side is that I now get to see the whole dawn show from last stars to first heat.

The other day, as the bus crested the hill and Adelaide opened up before us, I was struck by how similar the dawn sky behind Adelaide was to the dusk sky I spent so many photos on up at Lake Argyle. I remember the wonder and amazement I felt looking at the ever-changing hues of pink on that day on the lake, and yet I nearly let this Adelaide dawn go unnoticed. It was a beautiful sky and equally as beguiling as that Lake Argyle sunset.

Sunset over Lake Argyle. I have not fiddled with the colour in this picture at all. This is what it looked like!
Sunset over Lake Argyle. I have not fiddled with the colour in this picture at all. This is what it looked like!

I think the biggest difference was I was not looking with my tourist eyes, but my work-fatigued eyes. As soon as I started appreciating the beauty of the moment I felt my spirits lighten. I then got off the bus a stop later so I could walk through the mall and appreciate the dawn light in the city; something I rarely get to see.

And just for a short while, I felt like I was on holidays.

Adelaide's famous 'Mall's balls' at dawn.
Adelaide’s famous ‘Mall’s balls’ at dawn.
Writing

Waiting

Leave a comment

I thought I was getting better at waiting. I’m really not. I’ve got a few pieces of writing out for consideration and they have all run overtime on the deadline for responses. But all I can do is wait. That is the lot in life for an unpublished writer.

I can’t help but feel that if I was a more dedicated writer, I would just get on with the business of writing so that I wouldn’t even notice the waiting. But I do notice it. Every day. At least three times a day.

In first year Uni we did an experiment on rats either reinforcing, extinguishing or irregularly rewarding a press on a button with food. The reinforced rats just tapped away casually getting fed, the extinction rats tapped for a while, then gave up and got on with something else. The irregularly reinforced rats madly banged away at that button trying to work out what was the secret combination to get that food reward. I feel like one of those rats.

So, I guess my mission this week is to find something (besides work) to distract me from my email so I don’t keep checking to see if anything has come in yet. And I’m going to try really hard to make sure that thing is not TV.

It really is time for me to start working on a new novel.

 

Writing

Transformative Creativity

Leave a comment

I was getting coffee with my work colleagues the other day when a song came on in the café that totally ripped me out of the here-and-now and dragged me back in time for just a moment. I’m sure my colleagues didn’t even notice the rip in the time-space continuum that gobbled me up and then spat me out. But I did. Those memories sat on my shoulders for the rest of the day.

Then on the bus I was transported to a fantasy land with a bunch of people I think of as close friends, despite having never met them. They don’t even know my name or what I look like. Of course they are characters in a book that I’m reading and they took me away from the congestion on the roads, for which I was truly grateful.

The arts really do have the power to take us somewhere else, to feel something else, to stop us in our tracks and make us suddenly see with different eyes and ears and senses. It amazes me how little time I make for revelling in other people’s creativity given how wonderful it can make me feel. I’m going to make a point of listening to more music and reading more books in the coming weeks. Maybe it will help with producing my own works of creativity.

Writing

Adelaide Writers’ Week 2019

Leave a comment

I’m back, and how appropriate that it is Adelaide Writers’ Week weekend. I must confess that I didn’t go down to Saturday’s session. 2019 has seen record-breaking heat in South Australia and coming off the back of the hottest March overnight temperature on record, Saturday promised to be windy and a little over 40°C. There was no way I was going down the hill to sit in that sweltering heat after so few hours of sleep the night before.

But today (Sunday) promises to be much cooler (yes, apparently we now consider 31°C a cool day in this part of the world) so I’m going to head down and check out the Young Adult authors provided I’m not too old to be let in (I hope there isn’t an age limit for the audience).

Anyway, my own writing has slowly started to gather a bit of momentum again. I wrote another very short piece last week and have toyed with editing a few of my longer stories over the last month. I can’t help but notice that I’ve also gotten back into reading my book on the bus . I’m sure there is a direct correlation with how much I read to how motivated I feel to write.

So if you are in Adelaide this week, and you aren’t into super cars, check out Adelaide Writers’ Week in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden near the festival centre. It runs until Thursday, and it’s a totally free event with well-known authors from all over the world.

And if you see me there be sure to say hi!

Photos

Short break

Leave a comment

Yet again I have a lot of social, work and other events on the horizon, so rather than keep admitting to making no progress on the writing front over the next few weeks, I thought I’d take February off. Rest assured, I will be back in March as I have a lot of writing activities planned so I should be back into the swing of things.

In the meantime, here’s some pictures taken at the Brighton Sculptures by the Jetty – which finishes up tonight, so get down there if you can.

Brighton Jetty
Brighton Jetty
Round sculpture
Round sculpture
Glass Flower
Glass Flower
Metal bird
Metal bird
Brighton beach at sunset
Brighton beach at sunset
Writing

Creature of Habit

Leave a comment

I tried to turn my laptop on today and it wouldn’t come on. I pressed the button a couple of times and then sat there, looking at my blank machine, wondering how it could break down with no warning?

My laptop at work has the ‘on’ button on the right side, in almost the same place that my home laptop has its volume buttons. I think you can see the punchline here. It took a lot longer than it should have for me to investigate the faulty ‘on’ button to discover I was actually just playing with the volume.

The computer is on now (button on the left side did its trick), but it made me realise how much we function on habit. Don’t get me wrong, habit is handy, it lets you do things while freeing up your mind to wander elsewhere. But I wonder if sometimes we let it limit us, because we believe we are doing the right thing, but there is actually a better way.

I think I’ve got to the point in my writing where doing things the same way is not going to take me where I want to go, so I need to do something different. I need to start a new habit. I don’t know what that habit should be, but I’m going to try and look at each decision from all sides, and work out if there is a different way.

Just an aside; we had the hottest day on record on Thursday, and nearly every day this week has had an overnight minimum in the mid-twenties – so sleep deprivation might also have played a part.

Journal

Still off balance

Leave a comment

This week I didn’t find the solution to my working/writing conundrum, but I did continue to take lots of walks to the botanic gardens, despite the heat. In fact, if I’m honest, a little bit because of the heat. There is a little part of you that wants to pit yourself against that 40°C day, just to see how you’ll go.

So here is a selection of flower shots from the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, and maybe next week I’ll find a way to convert this creative stroll into something that generates some words.

Echinacea in the medicinal garden.
Echinacea in the medicinal garden.
Lotus flower - close up
Lotus flower – close up
Lotus flowers
Lotus flowers
Bee about to dine on the lotus flower pollen.
Bee about to dine on the lotus flower pollen.
And this is the end game: lotus seeds nearly ready to plop out of the pod into the pond.
And this is the end game: lotus seeds nearly ready to plop out of the pod into the pond.
Writing

Work and Play

Leave a comment

I’ve recently started a new job and I have to admit I’m really struggling to manage the juggle with work and writing. My office is very tech-heavy, so they have covered all the windows to minimise reflections on people’s screens. The result is that it feels a bit like you are sitting in a cellar, and your eyes never get to focus further than the length of the room.

Now, I know I’m getting older, so I probably notice this more than others, but my eyes are exhausted at the end of the day. There are only so many walks you can take to the kitchen to look out the window there. As a result, in the nearly three months I’ve been working there I haven’t written a creative word on my work days.

This has been highlighted with the recent Christmas break, where I got right back into the swing of writing. I thought I was on a roll, but now that I’m back in the office, my attempts at writing during the week have turned into a quick game of solitaire, checking my emails and then closing down.

After my brief burst of productivity, I’ve realised I need to find a solution to this. I don’t want to limit my writing just to days that I’m not in the office. I’m a big believer in work-life-balance, so when I’m not at work I want to be doing what I want to do, and that’s writing.

I’ve started talking lunch time walks as well as the many sorties to the kitchen for peppermint tea, but I think I need to find something more, especially with nearly a week of over 35°C on the horizon. Any suggestions will be gladly welcomed!

Writing

Publication!

Leave a comment

This one slipped past me because I wasn’t expecting it until 2019. It was published last Sunday, but I didn’t check my email soon enough. This story, Bleed, is quite dear to me. It has a very personal meaning and was inspired by something in my life. Anyone who has read the story will be a bit confused by that, I’m sure, because the story is set in a time and place that is clearly not our earth.

It is a horror story, but only insomuch as there is a bit of gore, and bad things happen to people. It actually feels a bit more magical realism to me, but there’s not quite enough ‘real’ to truly fit into that category.

I’m not going to tell you the meaning behind it because, firstly, it is a stand-alone story and the meaning is not required to enjoy the story, and secondly, because this twice got rejected, once with the comment ‘this is good, and it will get published, but unfortunately not with us’ – and I wonder if it was because I told them what inspired it, and maybe it hit a little too close to home? The third time I subbed it I left the inspiration story off and it got accepted, so I think there is a lesson in that.

It’s published in Midnight Echo Issue 13 (which I was desperate to get into) which is the magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association – of which I am a member. It includes some other great fiction, so you would do well to get yourself a copy.

I hope you enjoy Bleed, and if I see you face to face, I’ll tell you the story behind it.

Writing

Back on the wagon

1 Comment

A funny thing happened on Saturday. I was lounging about, stuffing my face with enough chocolate to make me wonder if it is possible to get diabetes in a single week of poor diet choices, and I suddenly got up, came into the study, and turned on the computer. More amazingly, I opened a writing project I last worked on in October and I started editing it.

This is was a very rough first draft, so I needed to write new words and everything. Within the first sentence I felt like I’d never been away. Next thing I knew nearly two hours had disappeared and I came up for air, leaving the world in my story behind and finding myself again in the study.

It was wonderful.

This is such a nice way to end the year. It gives me hope for a more productive 2019. I have my list of writing projects I want to complete, and now it seems I have found the motivation to get back to putting words on the page instead of just watching my own private movies.

I hope you all have a very safe, relaxing and fun New Year. I’ll see you all back here next year!

The journey of a spec fic writer.