I took some time off coming up to easter. I don’t know why but I felt like I needed a holiday from writing. I guess I’m still working on getting that need to put things down on paper. I’m still writing in my head, but still scared to put the words down. So I feel a bit like I’m back to square one. Today was taken up by applying for a couple of jobs and looking after my puppy but tonight I have started to write again. And tomorrow I will write some more.
I have loved not working. I have loved focusing on my writing. I have loved having time to get stuff done. But I need money. Well not need but I want money so that we can holiday and buy that unnecessary but great coffee machine, that gorgeous compact antique looking lounge in my favourite shop in the world. And also I don’t want to feel like the one not contributing.
So I look for work. And sometimes I apply. Today I had my second interview since I left my last job. The interview prior to this I really thought I nailed, I instantly fell in love with everyone on the panel and could see myself not only working there but making life long friends, having hand – bag parties and giving each other pedicures and manicures you know, just because we are that close. I did not get the job.
So off I go to this other interview for a government department today – how brilliant. But it was poo in every way. Firstly the panel didn’t love me and I didn’t love them. All seemed quite lovely, but my charm didn’t work on them. No one asked me what my favourite colour was, no one high fived me, no one gave me a cute nick name during the 20 minutes I was there. Also they gave me the questions 10 minutes prior to the interview and that really threw me. And there were only 4 questions and they were pretty crappy questions, a bit of an insult and an assault on the intelligence. Think: ‘you have been asked to type 10 letters and the printer is broken. You are the only one in the office. What do you consult? What do you do?’ – questions like that are almost too tempting. No one else is in the office? At all? Clearly before I can fix the printer I need to put my clothes back on, put the champagne back in the fridge and turn the TV off.
After all that, the jobs are down Canberra way, Bega, Yass, the closest being at Nowra. Why advertise in a Wollongong newspaper and not outline this. Plus they interviewed all yesterday and today… geeze. I don’t know. I want to not work and I want to write. But I also want to work because I like to do something productive and contribute to my family. I don’t want regrets. I don’t want to regret anything in my life, especially choices I have made. And that’s the tricky thing. I made a big decision to leave my last job. I was scared. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. And it was spur of the moment to a point. But I did it and I survived. Now to just keep pushing along, keep adapting, keep surviving.
Tags: unemployment
I started my day humfffing about a bit. I forced myself to write something, just anything for this blog.
I then got a call telling me I have an interview at DOCS next Tuesday (yes work= money, money would be nice) so that’s exciting. Then I went to pick up the boy from school and the words were swirling in my head so I took my laptop in the car so that I could continue to write – once again proving my best and most prolific writing is done outside of the house.
I then got feedback for my third piece of writing. The first two had been good but I really connected with this character and think that he has life in him, that his story is something I want to work with, and is certainly bending in the direction that I want to write – dystopian fiction, speculative fiction – along those lines. I really don’t think I could be happier now – a real life workable story, and the possibility of real life future employment.
This is the feedback: “This is a superb piece, it has haunted me in the days since I first read it. You have created a truly memorable character in Raoul. We don’t know what the New order is, or the Company, or who took him away from his old life but we feel his … I was going to say “fear”, then “sadness”, then “grief” but really it is more like disconnection. There is a sense of fatalism in Raoul’s acceptance that this is how it is now and he can’t go back.There is much power in your words, imagery and phrasing. I lovehis remembering of the small flying fox and its “frantic afraid eyes” and the screeching that has now been replaced by silnce and an absence of bats. Likewise, the waitress and the diner and the appearance of Raoul’s dog -small things but things that make up an existence. Your begniing and ending sentences are strong, although I have a suggestion to tweak the opening. Most of all, I’m glad you listened to Raoul’s voice and let him tell his story. It is one well worth telling, perhaps there is a longer piece here for you to write in the future.”
Tags: feedback, Gulp!Fiction, unemployment
arrgghh…haven’t been doing much writing again. I still haven’t gotten into the habit of writing each morning which I must. the words in my head have nearly dried up. just a moment ago I had a few thoughts come through for my next story that needs to get done and I rushed straight over to the computer – so that’s something.
I really like the character that I have been working on – so need to do more brainstorming and develop the society he is living in.
ok so I will commit to 500 words a day.
it appears i’m blocked. no great revelation there having not written on paper for many years. I don’t do my morning pages – being too busy or too stubborn. I don’t do the very thing that is there to unblock me, to help me to write when there is no inspiration, to teach me how to write above and beyond the ever critical voice and my god that voice is loud. I write a paragraph. I sit and stare at it. this is shit. this is absolute rubbish. this doesn’t flow. this doesn’t say anything. and the louder the voice gets the more the words retreat. and I know this is happening and yet I do not write my morning pages. i am a very stubborn girl. I have a long history of self sabotaging behaviour but this about takes the cake. why would i not do whatever is necessary to train myself to do the thing i love? because i am overwhelmingly afraid of failure – is the pretty simple answer.
i loved my dad and he died 18 months ago but i do hear him now. i hear him talking about a completely different subject. I hear him talking to me about singing lessons, something i desperately wanted when i wanted to be Madonna. i would sing and sing, in the car, in the house, particularly in the house, where i would add elaborate dance moves when mum and dad were out Thursday night shopping. and when i asked for singing lessons the answer was that you didn’t have lessons unless there was a natural talent there – and no I wasn’t going to have lessons. ouch. and so now I sit here wondering if there is any natural talent, anything to draw on and i know, i KNOW that i see things in the world, and I hear things and I know there are words swirling around and either way they need to get out of my head. and I need to take a big deep breath and be brave and just jump.
Tags: blocked
A brilliant start to the night. Went to see Richard Harland speak at Thirroul Library about his new book World Shaker. We topped up with a red wine on the way in and were nicely liquored up ready for greatness. And it really was brilliant. Richard was a uni lecturer of mine, many a year ago and it was exciting to see him having such great success. He has just had a big breakthrough with his steam punk inspired book being sold to UK and US publishers – perfect timing since steam punk is the thing at the moment. Better still was watching Richard jumping out of his skin with excitement over his success – it’s as if he can’t believe it himself. We were also fortunate enough to have Richard do a reading – there really is nothing like seeing an author read from their own work. Brilliant. He was even wearing a t -shirt with the cover of his book on it! Imagine the cover of my own book stretched across my boobs! – No really, imagine that.
He had great and interesting things to say about writing as a craft and as a profession and I could have cried I was that excited. He has a website of writing tips – 145 pages worth – at www.writingtips.com.au and has his first book The Vicar of Morbing Vyle for free down load until the end of the month at richardharland.net. This was his first novel published at the age of 45. And so I have some more tips to read tomorrow and like everyone he says that the main way to learn to write is to write. He starts everyday just after breakfast and writes and writes and writes. And most of the time it starts out pretty basically, pretty poorly but morphs. I guess it’s more of that writing to learn how to, writing until the ideas turn into something workable, and writing until you can block out the internal editor kind of thing. I keep reading this over and over again, the importance of writing even if it doesn’t feel like there is brilliance every time. More proof that I really do need to do my morning pages every single day.
Tags: richard harland, World Shaker
Three weeks into my course and I am real life proper writing. That is, writing whole paragraphs, writing characters, writing dialogue and writing (almost) daily. I am full of excitement and am so thankful I can type quickly because the words are pouring out. I’m not second guessing those words right now – that’s for later, just enjoying that things are finally kicking into gear.
Along with the Gulp! fiction course I’m doing (an online course that I discovered through the NSW writers centre and you can too – ) I am also reading through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron – another wife of James Cameron littered throughout history. Both courses highly recommend doing something called morning pages, or brain drain dependent on which course you are doing, but both are essentially the same. Julia gives a better explanation about morning pages than my course does – but either way I am too lazy to get out of bed and do three, yes only three pages. The idea is that you write about everything and nothing, and that you do it first thing in the morning before you have a chance to do anything else. The focus is not on good writing as such just writing – it gets you into the habit of writing regardless of your mood, and gets you writing no matter how rubbish you think your writing is. It’s a good exercise to deal with the internal editor or critic or the voice of your father or whatever you have going on that’s holding you back…I need to make this a priority.
But still the daily trip to the coffee shop is working nicely for me. Today I saw a rat. In the cafe. Ok it was in the courtyard but still that’s inside enough for me. And this is the same cafe where I was once served mouldy cheese. I had been umming and ahhing about ordering food when the table next to me saw the rat (a lovely brown rat, fat, healthy looking and I have to admit cute in a rat kind of way), commented on it and then ordered lunch. Nice.
Note to self: next time try new coffee shop.
I guess I should start with an explanation. A few words to explain the why and the how perhaps. Although that could prove tricky in the least or my undoing at the extreme end of the spectrum. You see, that’s what I’m struggling with. How on earth did I end up here – unemployed and embarking on an 8 week writing course ? I am always employed. Employment is my thing. Employed and complaining about it mostly. Running around like a crazy woman trying to get things done, get my boy to school and no time to do the things I love like write – except in my head in the car. And so it was this thing with this girl – the glamour- and this thing with the management – they were amazingly crap – and this thing with the clients who on the most part would get me down, using me as a free counselling service, and randomly yelling or sulking or crying. And then there was this thing with me. This thing I have been battling for years I guess, but most recently struggling with. Struggling but not winning.
So one day I resigned. Just like that. Oh it was after an argument when the glamour was particularly annoying and immature but it was sudden and impulsive and I rang my boss and did it right on the spot – threw in my job. And there were second thoughts and ‘please don’t go’s ‘ but something inside had clicked. I realised , even if not conciously that this was one of those now or never times and signed up to do this course.
I’ve always known but have found out ‘for sure’ in these last couple of weeks that I’m an amazingly lazy writer, that I have thoughts and ideas but can’t be bothered putting them onto paper or typing them up. But it’s not laziness really, more an overwhelming fear of failing. I am unbelievably critical of myself. I write a sentence. In my head it’s ok or good or great depending, but as soon as it becomes real, as soon as I can actually see the words, it’s as though only then can I see it for what it really is – and that is rubbish. And I delete it. I give up. I shut down.
And that brings me here, to Hello To Modern Living a gift from my beautiful husband to encourage me to write and have a place to say things. And onto my mac book another amazing gift again to encourage me to write, but which made me cry and afraid that I wouldn’t be able to and determined that I would learn how. So this blog, will be filled with words that are not well written, about not particularly interesting things but I will write everyday with the goal of learning to write without caring or listening to the censor inside of me, to write whatever the mood and to write, write, write until I get it right. To know that as I write it is out in the public domain. And to not care. Just to do it anyway. Because this writing, on this page, is really just for me.
Tags: Gulp! fiction, unemployment, writing