Stumbling Over the Finishing Line

So I've been a little quiet of late. That's largely due to the usual end-of-semester marking frenzy, and also a trip to Sydney last weekend.

But, that's not what I'm here to talk about. I've got bigger news.

About an hour ago, I FINALLY FINISHED MY NEXT BOOK!

Thank God.

Sure, when I started it, my plan was for it to take six months (it's only 55,000 words, after all, how long can that take?) and it's ended up taking almost bang on eighteen. And during that time it's felt like a complete monkey on my back.

But now, it's done. And I've got a nice warm pile of paper, hot off the printers, sitting here on the table beside me, just waiting for me to launch into it with a red pen, and start slicing the crap (of which there is an abundance) out of it.

This, for those of you who've been silly enough to hang around here for the last year and a half, is my action / adventure book. It's different to all my other stuff. It's faster paced. Sillier. And has been a lot of fun to write. It's also intended to be the first of a series of (probably) four or five books. Which means that I'm really going to have to speed up my output a little, I suspect.

It's a strange feeling, finishing the first draft. There's an odd mixture of elation and relief, in equal parts. I've now got this big blank(ish) space looming in front of me, which I can fill with all sorts of other projects and ideas. I'll be able to sleep at night without worrying about this book possibly never being completed. And, of course, I've got to start editing it, now, which is where the fun really starts. Particularly for a book that's been written in as many fits and starts as this one.

Still, it's done. And soon, I might need some proofreaders. 13 - 16 year old guys with a penchant for action would be ideal.

Volunteers, anyone?

Oh where, oh where did the last decade go?

So I turned 39 last Saturday. I've been meaning t0 put this post up ever since, but - and this pretty much sums up the topic of this particular post - I've just plain been too busy. You can see my space filler of a post last week if you want the details*

But, as is the way with these things, I did get a little reflective over the weekend. Not least because I read this column here, by Aussie author and all-round-nice-person Bec Sparrow, hard upon the heels of having a long conversation with Min along the lines of 'what the hell happened to my 30's?'

Because, I'll be honest, I feel as though my 20's lasted about a decade, and my 30's roughly 5 minutes.

Still, when you do some comparative analysis** I think there's a pretty clear answer as to why.

During my 20's I:

• Rowed Boats
• Did Triathlons
• Trained for rowing and triathlons.
  
• Taught
• Had relationships which lasted no longer than 6 months.
• Sailed on a tall ship twice a year.
• (Towards the end) wrote 1 book.
  

And that's about it, really. Now, let's look at the intervening 9(ish) years.

During my 30's I:

• Wrote a book
• Changed career
• Moved interstate
• Wrote another book
• Moved back interstate
• Got engaged
• Wrote another book
  
• Started a PhD
• Wrote another book
• Maintained a touring schedule which kept me away from home roughly 3 months out of every year.
• Wrote another book
• Got married
• Bought an old run down house
• Renovated old run down house
• Finished PhD
• Went to Antarctica
• Wrote another book
• Moved interstate.
• Wrote another book
  
• Bought another house
• Sold renovated house
• Wrote another book
• Changed career (again)
• Gave up touring schedule
• Became a father
• Wrote another book.

So, all things considered, I'm not overly surprised that I feel as though I missed a few years there. I've been - as has been mentioned on this blog a few times - rather busy.

It's really funny, though - I can remember being a teenager and wondering what my life would be like when I was 30. It's safe to say that I was pretty much incorrect on all counts. Now I'm 39, in the third year of my current career, and working incredibly hard to build up my research and academic profile. My writing career is ticking along nicely enough, even if I'm not getting nearly the writing time I'd like. And my family - both my immediate and extended family - continues to be the absolute joy of my life.***

Which is not a bad way to have spent a decade, in my opinion.

Even if I can't remember most of it...

* Nothing's changed...
** And let's face it, I'm a literary studies academic. Comparative analysis is what it's all about.
*** On that, I also became an uncle again last weekend. Birthday. Unclehood. A good weekend...

Just to Clarify...

...I'm not dead. Nor in a coma. Just horribly, horribly, horribly busy.

Last week I got to the point where I had so much stuff on my plate that I got a bit, well, I guess 'paralysed' is probably the best way to describe it. For a couple of days there, I felt like I was going backwards with just about everything, with the result that a lot of things got pretty much dropped from my agenda. Like blogging, for example.

But I'm slowly getting back on top of things again now - my marking is - touch wood - almost done* I've only got four more lectures and one more class to deliver, and that's my teaching finished for the semester. Then I've got another insane amount of marking to get through, but such is life... I've got a book chapter and a conference paper to get written before the 10th of June, when I head off to Perth for three weeks work at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre. Most of the papers for the journal I'm editing have come in, and so I'm in the process of chasing up peer reviewers for them. Three weeks ago, Melina Marchetta came and worked with our students at UC, and was *fantastic*. Last week we hosted Easter lunch for our extended Canberra family - all 11 of them - in our backyard. We also dyed eggs, using traditional wax and dyes, which was great fun. I'll admit that I watched most of the Royal Wedding, but went to bed before they went driving in Prince Charles' Aston Martin, which was probably the most interesting part of the whole thing. Toby is sleeping through the nights. Last night I cooked rosemary smoked ribs in the Weber. This morning I got to ride a nice little pony named Woody, and together we did some lovely canter transitions, and also trotted in spirals, which was a lot of fun. While I was doing that, Obama was announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden. I'm not unhappy about the fact that he's been chased down, but the degree of enthusiasm in some of the celebrations are making me slightly uncomfortable. I've never liked the idea of retribution as a cause for celebration. Not for anyone. Even Bin Laden.

Phew.

So, that's about that.

I'm hoping to have life more or less back under control by the end of this week, and so I'll hopefully have the energy to put a bit of time and thought into some decent blog posts.

In the meantime, thanks for your patience.

*this despite my stupid bloody version of MS Word for Mac freezing up randomly every couple of hours, and forcing me to lose up to 40 minutes of work at a time**
** Yes, I know about saving my work as I go. But, you know, sometimes you just forget. And those are almost inevetably the ones where my machine decides to give me the wheel of death...

On Being Notable...

Just time to bash out a quick post before the midday announcement of the Children's Book Council of Australia's annual 'Book of the Year' shortlist.

I found out about half an hour ago that my book 'Daywards' has made the list of 2010's Notable Books, which puts it in contention for the shortlist (though I'll be honest and declare that I think it's probably an outsider) alongside some lovely people and fantastic writers. Michael Pryor, Melina Marchetta, James Roy, Cassandra Golds, Kirsty Murray, Scottie Gardner, Cath Crowley, Randa Abdel-Fatah and lots of others. Whatever happens fifteen minutes from now, it's really lovely to see my book on the same list as all theirs and before they make the big announcementI just wanted to say congratulations to all of the notable writers. I couldn't hope to be in better company.

Happy Birthday to Us!

It might have been 20 years ago today that Sergent Pepper taught his men to play *, but it was 2 years ago tomorrow (which is, of course, a screen free saturday, so no blogging for me then...) that I sat down at my computer here at UC and decided, on a whim as much as anything else, to start a blog. And while my first post over at Goodreads wasn't exactly a work of online genius, more a tribute to my digital incompetence, at least it was the start of something.

And look at the dizzying heights the last two years have seen us soar to - 173 posts! (A good percentage of them about Toby) 27 followers! Occasional comments! Number 75 on the list of the Top 50 Australian Writing Blogs!** Entire fortnights passing with no posts! Months with posts every day! Strident criticism of the opposition! Strident criticism of the Government! Irritating Songs! Other Irritating Songs! Even Kevin Bacon! Goodness, what a ride it's been.

And of course, now that the blog is 2 years old, I can expect it to become recalcitrant, and to keep me up at nights, and to wake me up early in the morning, and to blow bubbles in its milk. Luckily I've had recent experience dealing with all those behaviours, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

In all seriousness, though, I didn't really start this blog with any plans or intentions for it. It was originally just a kind of idle curiosity which made me click the 'create blog' button on Goodreads. If I'm being honest I expected it to just fizzle out after a couple of months, as these things so often tend to do. But it didn't. Musings... has somehow managed to worm its way into my life, and despite my occasional long silences, I've got to say that I've gotten so much more out of blogging than I ever expected to.

It's put me back in touch with old friends. It's helped me to clarify a lot of my ideas about writing and why I do it. If nothing else, it's made me write regularly and (some of the time, at least) thoughtfully. Also, looking back across the last couple of years of posts - and this is something I didn't expect at all - it's become a sort of record of a fairly huge couple of years of my life, which is something I've never done before.

I'm not a diarist - never have been. Never really saw the point, to be honest. I kept a diary for about a year and a half when I was a teenager and then, thankfully, I burned it. Keeping a day to day (or, let's be honest, week-to-week) record of my thoughts and life always seemed a little pointless.

But reviewing the last couple of years of posts here, I'm actually amazed at how many things I've forgotten. In the last two years I've gone from itinerant writer to full time academic, and this place has recorded that. I've met some wonderful people in the last couple of years, and it's great having them dotted throughout here. Some of my friends have achieved great things, from having first books (or trilogies - Katie, I'm looking at you here...) published, through to winning quite incredible awards, and it's been lovely having a place to celebrate them. My own books have done some good things, too, and it's nice having a record of when and where, though I'm slightly worried about just how long I've been working on 'Orion'.***

And, of course, I'm grateful to have a sort of living record of Toby's first couple of years.

So anyway, there's no real point to this post, except to say thanks to those of you who take the time to read it. I'm sure you must have much better things to do with your lives, but I doubt I'd keep writing it if nobody ever looked at it, and I've gotten so much more out of the process than I'd ever expected to so.... you know... cheers!

*or, then again, it might not have been. I'm not massively familiar with the Beatles musicology, to be honest...
**Which is just the kind of statistical achievement that makes me love the internet.
***I know I keep saying this, but it's nearly finished now. Honestly. Less than 2000 words to go. I got some writing done this week, too...

Successful Friends.

I'm not sure if writing this particular post is a good idea, or if I'll be able to actually capture in words what I'm thinking about at the moment, but I think the subject matter is actually one of those really important aspects of being a writer which is rarely, or never, discussed, so I'm going to have a bash at it. I'm hoping it won't seem too self-involved or whiney. Please bear with me, if you have the patience...

It's a funny thing, this writing game.

When I first got into this business, just after UQP accepted 'The Darkness', but before it had even hit the shelves, I had a long chat with James Moloney. It was a great conversation, and one I remember to this day. We talked about all sorts of things - what I hoped to achieve, where I thought writing might take me, what type of writer I wanted to be.

Jim did me the enormous favour of asking me a lot of the questions which people new to the publishing business really need to be asked. Hard questions. Important questions.

He asked me things like; "How are you going to deal with bad reviews?" (not, you'll note, 'what will you do if you get some bad reviews?' but, 'How will you deal with it WHEN it happens?')

He asked me; "What will you respond when someone tells you to your face that they didn't particularly like your book."

We discussed "What will you do when you miss out on an award which you really thought you'd win?"

And he asked me; "How will you deal with other people's success?"*

It was, I think, one of the most important discussions of my life. I owe Jim an enormous debt of thanks for making me really confront some of these darker aspects of the relationship between writing and ego, early on in my career.

Because the answers to those questions can, in many ways, define the writer you become. So much of this writing world is about rejection, in some form or another - from the moment you get your first form letter from a publisher, to the moment you miss out on a shortlisting, or get overlooked in a writers festival program, or miss out on your fifth or sixth consecutive grant application**.

And it can be even more subtle, even more insidious: One of the conversations I hate the most in the world is when I'm out in company and someone mentions that I'm 'a writer'. Generally nowadays if people ask me 'what do you do for a living?' I just tell them I'm an academic, and try and move the conversation on as fast as possible. Often, though, it'll come out that I'm a writer, and the inevetable follow up question is 'What have you written?'

It's never the questioner's fault that they haven't read any of my books, or heard of me. There are millions of books out there, after all, and I'm the first to admit that mine aren't generally well known. And there are plenty of writers out there who I wouldn't recognise from a bar of soap. And, for all that, it's not like I feel the need for my work to be recognised by everyone. But I still really hate that moment; the blank look of 'failure-to-register' which usually flickers across someone's face when told a couple of my titles is, to be brutally honest, horrible. Crushing.

It's irrational, I know. Egocentric, certainly. But horrible nonetheless.

But it's something which - I suspect - every writer experiences. And with it comes the feeling that you're wasting your life. That you don't have any real talent. That the last thing you wrote was pointless, and that the thing you're currently working on will be worse.

George Orwell summed it up best. In his seminal essay 'Why I Write', he attributed his drive to be 'a writer' to four central influences, all of which - in different proportions - play a part in driving a writer to pursue his or her craft, often at the expense of other aspects of their life.

The first of these, he suggests, is 'sheer egoism'.

...Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc etc. It is humbug to pretned that this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristing with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, wiht the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition - in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all - and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self centred than journalists, though less interested in money... (1968:3)

I can't say that I disagree with Orwell's take on the role of the ego. (Though it's important to add that ego is only part of the mix. He also suggests that 'Aesthetic enthusiasm, Historical Impulse and Political Purpose are the three other driving influences behind a writer's writings, and this works fine for me. Although I also think you can make a pretty good argument for 'ego' being the driving force behind each of them, too...)

Every writer I know has an ego. It's not a bad thing. It's actually one of the tools of the trade and, as Orwell suggested, an essential one. It's ego which keeps you going in the face of the lukewarm or downright bad reviews - especially important in this age of 'Goodreads' and 'Amazon', where everyone has the right and capacity to publish their opinions on everything. It's ego that helps you ignore the little voice in the back of your head which whispers 'this is shit' in your ear as you write. It's ego that helps steady your hand when you click your Manuscript off to a publisher, or an agent, for the first time. It's ego that calms your nerves when you step on stage at a writer's festival, or just in a local library talking to a book club.

So yes, it's a tool. Part of the toolbox. But it's a tool which can get out of control and do a lot of damage. A little like an angle grinder. Your ego can also - if you let it - tear you apart, make you crave acceptance, make you expect certain privileges, make you view other people's successes as your own failings and, in short, can make you into a not very nice person to be around. It can make you say things you later regret, come off as arrogant or just downright rude. It can make you behave in ways you can't believe, looking back. I've been guilty of all these in the course of my writing career.

But - and this is the important part - it doesn't have to be all doom and gloom, and it's important to remember that. It's all a matter of perspective, which is why the questions that Jim asked me, way back in 1998, were so important.

Take that last one, for example. "How will you deal with other people's success?"

This one's a biggie. It can, I suspect, either make or break a writer, and it's one of those things you have to make a conscious decision about. You have to, I think, decide that you're going to celebrate other writer's successes, and not take personally the fact that your own works might not be getting the same recognition. That way lies madness. And the bottom line is that someone else's success, or talent, or ability, shouldn't (doesn't) have any impact at all on the value of your own work. I don't love my books any more, or any less when they win or miss out on awards. It's not like I'd have written them any differently (the book of mine which I think is one of the best stories I've ever written is also the one that never even got a shortlisting for a single award, is still on its first print run and which never really took off here in Australia, and yet I wouldn't change a word of it.)

When I started writing seriously, I made two good friends early on in the piece. (Actually, I made a lot of good friends, but I'm going to concentrate on two in particular). One was a young bloke named Markus, who was about my age, has a similar sense of humour to me, and who Imogen and I really clicked with during a literature festival out in Ipswich one weekend. The other was an illustrator- a guy named Shaun, who'd done a couple of books with my friend Gary Crew, and was - like me - a Perth boy. I actually bought a couple of Shaun's early artworks, because I liked them so much.***

A couple of days ago, Shaun was awarded the Astrid Lindgren prize, which is quite good. He also won another rather good prize earlier this year...

Markus, in 2005, penned a little book which, among other things, went to #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. A few weeks ago it was mentioned on the brilliant sitcom 'Modern Family'.

All of which, let's face it, is awesome. Shaun and Markus are two of the nicest people I know, and two of the most talented, and I can't think of anyone else more deserving of the accolades they've received. You'd have to be a fairly self involved tosser to say otherwise.

But - and this is, I guess, the point of this long ramble - I'd be lying if I didn't admit to a couple of moments of - not jealousy or envy - but wistfulness. A couple of moments when I've watched these mates of mine achieving the most incredible things and wondered if perhaps I should have done some things differently. Wondered if, perhaps, I'm not as good a writer as I think I am (I'm pretty sure I'm not, actually...)

Do I begrudge my successful friends their wins? Of course not. If nothing else, the 'trickle down' effect means that their success is good for every other YA and children's writer. Including me. And watching their achievements has made me reassess a few of the decisions I've made in my writing career, and decide to - better late than never - remedy them.

More importantly, it's much more fun being able to revel in other people's successes. Much, much more fun. It's much nicer at the end of the day to go to bed delighted for your colleagues than it is wishing it was you.

And when the little ego voice cuts in, it's also a vital skill to be able to silence it and, in my experience, one of the best ways of doing this is to make that conscious decision to celebrate your field of practice and everyone involved in it, and not to treat it as a competition.

Which is what I try to do nowadays, with everything. And it helps turn those wistful moments into something positive, something useful.

So big (HUGE) congrats to Shaun, for both his Academy Award (BTW, if you haven't seen his film of 'The Lost Thing', then you really need to do yourself a favour and get your hands on it.) and for his winning of the Astrid Lindgren Prize. I can't think of a more deserving winner.

*I should mention that I am, for readability purposes, paraphrasing his questions into neat little bundles here, but all this was discussed in a conversation that lasted more than a couple of hours...
** All of these are based on experience, sadly.
*** Which turned out to be a really good decision.

Throughness and Connection

Last monday night (yes, I know it's thursday already, and yes, I know I said I'd blog more regularly this week...) I was lucky enough to present the grand prizes at the annual ACT English Teachers Association Litlinks writing competition. This is the third year in a row that I've been lucky enough to be invited to be the final judge of this really fantastic writing showcase, and every year the job seems to get more and more difficult. This years entries were probably the most difficult I've ever had to decide between. Huge congratulations to all the young writers who entered.

But that's not really what I want to talk about today. Or at least, not entirely. Today I want to share some of the ideas I talked about in my speech at the awards ceremony, and one in particular, because I think it's a lovely writerly idea that is worth putting out there.

So today I'm going to talk about horse riding. I'm also going to steal shamelessly from another writer.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've recently taken up horse riding and it's quickly become the little pool of zen in the middle of my week*

The only way to act around horses is to stay calm and measured, and to exude a sort of inner peace and restraint in your movements and in your mental attitude. If you don't do this, the horse picks up on it. Then they kick you. Unless you're already up on their back, in which case they throw you off. Then they kick you.**

And even if they don't kick you, if the rider on their back is overworking them, or dragging at the bit, or slumping and throwing their weight around, or constantly kicking and poking with their heels, then horses get grumpy, and stubborn, and refuse to do what they're told. Which is fair enough. I'd do the same.

So it's a good idea, when working with horses, to really get yourself into a good headspace. To get into a mental space where you're working with the horse, rather than trying to impose your will upon it.

All this I worked out pretty early on in the piece. About three minutes into my first trip to the riding school, actually, as I watched a couple of other people having a lesson. And the result of having to get myself into that 'zen' headspace is that, at the end of the lesson, when I swing down off the horse, I find myself incredibly relaxed, calm and refreshed. And that feeling generally stays with me for the rest of the day. It makes work easier, it makes me happier and more fun to be around, and - best of all - it makes me write better. I've noticed this. Riding puts me into a really good headspace for writing.

And it's not just me, either.

Late last week, while doing some research for a lecture, I came across an article written by the fantastic British writer Meg Rosoff. It's (as you would expect) a beautifully written reflection on how she goes about the business of writing, and the forces that come into play, and - to my surprise - about the relationship between horseriding and the process of writing. You can read the whole paper HERE - it's in volume II, number I.

What particularly resonated with me in Rosoff's piece, though, was towards the end, when she talks about two of the central skills that horse riders strive for in their riding - 'Throughness' and 'openness'. I'm going to quote her directly here, because she expresses this idea much better than I can:

I took up horse riding at the age of 50. I hadn’t ridden in more than 35 years, and even then, not properly. For anyone who thinks horse riding involves sitting on a horse, kicking it to go fast, and pulling on the reins to slow down, may I begin by saying that it is fantastically more complex than that.

It involves great strength, balance, lightness, decisiveness, and humility. It requires a willingness to partner, to communicate, to trust -- but never to relinquish responsibility or trust too much. Two of the most important concepts associated with riding are ‘throughness’ and ‘connection.’

The United States Dressage Federation defines throughness as ‘The supple, elastic, unblocked, connected state that permits an unrestricted flow of energy from back to front and front to back. Synonymous with the German term "Durchlaessigkeit," or "throughlettingness.” ’ Connection is defined as a state “in which there is no blockage, break, or slack in the circuit that joins horse and rider into a single harmonious unit; the unrestricted flow of energy and influence from and through the
rider to and throughout the horse, and back to the rider.”

Now think, for a minute, of the subconscious mind as the horse and the conscious mind as the rider. If the rider is too strong, too stiff or unsympathetic, the horse becomes inaccessible and difficult to control, or dull and resistant. The object of dressage is to create a fluid exchange of understanding and energy between horse and rider; an advanced dressage rider is often described as asking questions that the horse answers.

In writing, this powerful flow of energy cannot be faked, any more than it can in riding. A book written from the conscious, controlled mind will feel as stiff and lifeless as an insensitive rider on a resentful horse. Or a singer’s voice coming from the head rather than the chest and diaphragm. Or a ball thrown from the elbow. Writing (like riding, or singing or playing a musical instrument, or painting or playing cricket or thinking about the universe) requires the deep psychological resonance of the subconscious mind. It requires connection and throughness, and only then will the reader feel the surge of power that a clever borrowed voice never achieves.

I love this idea. I love particularly the notion that when I'm writing, I'm trying not to impose myself upon the words, but to allow the words to flow through me. Some days I achieve this, some days I don't. I love the notion that a good dressage rider asks questions that the horse answers - (I spend a lot of time teaching workshops on the value of questions as a narrative driver, and so this also rings very true with me).

Throughness, and Connection. They're not skills that I have in my riding, yet. At this point, I'm still working at not falling off. But, all the same, I love the idea of them, and already they're skills I'm working towards, every single lesson. From the moment I walk into the stable to bridle up my horse, to the moment I put him away and untack him again at the end.

And they're not skills that I always have in my writing. But, just like in riding, they're something to strive towards, with every sentence, and every paragraph.

*technically, as my lessons are usually on Mondays, it's become a pool of Zen at the start of my week. Unless you count my weeks from Thursday, in the same manner as the financial year starts in July...

** Just to be clear, I wrote that paragraph for comic effect - in reality all the horses I've come across to date have been incredibly tolerant and not even slightly psycopathic. Which, given the rather un-coordinated way I ride them at this point, is a testament to their stoicism. I haven't been kicked at all.