The Incredible Rambling Elimy

How to Read in Wet Places Part Two: The Swimming Pool

2012-01-18T20:36:00.000+08:00

When I was younger, I liked to pretend that I was a mermaid. I've always loved swimming pools because more often than not they are shaped like lagoons out of Peter Pan, and also, there are no sharks. I would dip under the water and butterfly kick with my arms outstretched. Mostly, I loved the way that my hair became silky and animated under the water- the same way it felt when I put my hair under in the bath.

What better way to relax, then, than to combine two of my favourite summer pastimes and read in the pool? I had a go at it recently, and here is what I discovered.

* Be Not Afraid of Wetness

As Ford Prefect taught Arthur Dent, never go anywhere without a towel.

Place said towel at the edge of the pool, where you can reach it, and use it to dry your hands if you need to. Sometimes getting comfy will require this.

For what happens to wet books, see Part One.

* The Bare Necessities

You will need: An Aquaduck or similar. A cute bathing suit and accessories (I went with Kate Moss Lasting Finish Lipstick in Shade 11 and a pair of retro sunnies from Forever New). A great book.

Somewhat ironically, I am reading Robert Drewe's The Bodysurfers

* Relaxation Station

Being outside is sometimes relaxing enough on its own. In the pool, floating on my aquaduck, I could look up and see the clouds moving. The gentle turning of the thing itself was also rather soothing, as was the temperature of the water. Pick a quiet time of the day. The time that your neighbour usually mows his lawn is out, as is the time that the neighbour's five year old has her birthday party. You may also want to have music playing, or a glass bottle of cider handy. But remember, broken class and pools don't mix, so I had my cider after...

* Get Comfy

Put the Aquaduck in the pool, then climb in, leaving the book on the side of the pool in an easily reachable place where it will not be knocked or blown over board. When climbing in, don't worry about wetting your hands. You will need to in order to get comfortable. Make sure you are lying longways and that your neck isn't in an awful position. Float around a little, cool down and relax. Then use the sides of the pool to get back to your towel and dry your hands. Add book, and enjoy.

How to Read in Wet Places Part One: The Bathtub

2012-01-13T00:00:00.000+08:00

For Deblina

There are certain places one should never read if one is afraid of damaging their books. The shower is one of them, but the bath is not. Here are a few simple tips and tricks for scrumptious tub time reading.

* Be not afraid of wetness.

Unless, God forbid, you drop the entire book into the bathtub, you are not going to damage your book beyond readable quality. Water will warp the pages and in some cases make the paper more susceptible to tearing. Some inks may run, although I have yet to encounter this. Books which have been thoroughly enjoyed in the bath should expect to turn out like this:

As you can see, Kaitlyn has been a very clever little porcupine and chosen to read Popular Penguins at tub time. These only retail for 9.95 AUS and make a perfect, stress free aquatic read.

*The Bare Necessities

If, like me, you tend to be on the OCD side of things when it comes to taking care of your possessions, there are a few precautions that you can take. These are not foolproof, but help a great deal.

Line up your bath time accoutrements along the lip of the tub, if it has one, or on a little table at arm's reach. Soap, check. Duckie, check. Razor, check. Exfoliating mits, check. (What? You don't own those? Dude, you're missing out.) Dry hand towel or flannel. VERY VERY IMPORTANT! This can be used to dry your hands AND FOREARMS should you get them wet. Do this before touching your book and you will minimise water warpage.

Either, read until the water gets cold and then scrub yourself in the tepid water like some medieval wench, or, attend to your toilette, dry your arms and settle down for a good old read. It's up to you.

* Relaxation Station

If this were purely an exercise in cleanliness, we would have just had a shower, wouldn't we?

You know your needs best. Do you relax best with music playing? I like to listen to She and Him, Clare Bowditch, Boy and Bear or Josh Pyke personally but maybe Panthera is more your thing... Set the volume on your CD player so that you can hear it, but not so loud that it will break the fictive dream when you are reading. Another great tool of the relaxation trade is a scented candle. You can often find little tealights for about a dollar. I'm using Jasmine scented ones at the moment, to match my soap. Just make sure you're using a candle holder to catch the wax, and make sure that your firelighter is safely in the off position when you're done.

* Get Comfy

You may like to use a bath pillow, or if you're lazy like me, you can use a folded up beach towel. My bath is built into the wall in my bathroom, and it has a lip behind that great back shaped curve. I place the towel here and it gently cradles my head.

Generally I sit up, but if I concentrate, I can lie down and hold the book above my head. Make sure you have a good grip on the book if you try this!

That's all I can think of for now, folks. I hope this helps. Success will be its own reward!

Notable Quotables

2012-01-12T00:00:00.000+08:00

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw.

"Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect." - Margaret Mitchell.

"I would always rather be happy than dignified." - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

For more quotes, click here.

Keep Killing Those Darlings

2012-01-11T12:44:00.001+08:00

Kill Your Darlings, Melbourne based literary magazine enters its third year of publication this month, leaving devotees such as myself sniffling slightly and saying "Awww, they grow up so fast!"

Issue Eight delivers KYD's usual high quality of commentaries, reviews and stories. Sexy but not slutty, the magazine strives for an honest, intelligent and relevant viewpoint in every issue and never fails to deliver. It is smart without being arrogant and inaccessible (there is nothing I hate more than a literary review that screams 'look at me, I can use a thesaurus') and well written, but humble. I would call this magazine a must-read for the lit-savvy of Gen Y and beyond.

This issue opens with Maria Tumarkin's account of the role food has come to play in our culture. Gentle in her criticism, Tumarkin explores the topic from multiple angles, from wondering why Masterchef Julie Goodwin's cookbook can outsell prize winning novels, to contemplating the ways that we use food to relate to each other. A poignant article, it will leave you both enlightened, and hungry.

Regular contributor Clementine Ford (yes, I hope that is her real name too!) gives an account of her experience as a phone sex worker. Her confident, sassy prose will have you laughing rather than cringing. My favourite commentary for this issue.

The fiction segment of the magazine, as has been the case for the last few issues is woefully short. Three pieces per issue seems to have become the norm, where earlier in KYD's life, there were five or more. Jessie Cole's The Wake which is second of the three stands out as both an emotional and a realistic piece that, like life, has no absolute closure.

The January Issue also features an interview with Summerland author Malcolm Knox. Any would-be interviewer should look to KYD's interviews for inspiration; the editorial team know how to ask a question that will elicit an interesting, thought-provoking answer. Knox talks about his books, about his balancing act between Fatherhood and Novelist-dom, and about his process of writing and researching. Far more than the usual spiel of "Writer's are meant to be alone, you should write every day, if you don't constantly think about writing you're a hack, blah blah blah", Knox truly lets us take a glimpse of his life, and gives a dose of world wisdom when he says "I would rather be a good father than a good novelist."

Reviewed this month are Breaking Bad and Justified- morally ambiguous but Westerns at their core, concludes Anthony Morris, regular reviewer for the magazine- and Siri Hustvedt. Natalie Kon-Yu (to name drop, she was a tutor for Introduction to Literature in my first year of University.) takes up the line of thought that KYD has been very passionate about for its last few issues, that is the plight of women writers in a male-centric publishing world. However, the review is actually about a discussion of Hustvedt's work by Lionel Shriver, another female writer. This is a refreshing idea with which to approach an issue which, while never becoming less important, has waned in my interests since it was first raised. (After all, where words fail actions should speak, not more words.)

I give this Issue of Kill Your Darlings four out of five, and I'll give you a smack if you don't read it.

Perth: A Scavenger Hunt

2012-01-02T19:08:00.002+08:00

Today, one of my dear dear friends is leaving on her Paris adventure. We gathered at her place this afternoon to wish her well, and ended up making her a list of 25 things to do and see in Europe, awarding points for each activity.

C then asked, "If I am getting points, who am I competing against?"

Thus, the Perth version of The List was born.

1. Ride the Ferris Wheel on the Esplanade in Fremantle. (6)

2. Get your eyebrows threaded. (4)

3. Eat at Chez Pierre. (100)

4. Paint your fingernails as the French flag. (2)

5. Road trip. (2 points per destination)

6. 'Chuck a shrimp on the barbie.' (2) If you EAT said shrimp, 20 points.

7. Say G'day to someone. (2) Say G'day mate. (4)

8. Have drinks at: Ezra Pound, 1907, The Aviary (5 each)

9. Read a book in a cafe. (1)

10. Go to the cinema wearing red lipstick. (2) If it is a foreign film, 4 points.

11. Window shop at: Gucci (4) Louis Vuitton (2) Burberry (6) If you buy something, double points.

12. Have breakfast 'at' Tiffanys. (4) To clarify, buy breakfast foods and eat outside Tiffanys, or sneak food in if you can. Bonus 2 points for eating inside.

13. Go to a gig. (6)

14. Spot a celebrity. (100) Autograph (200) Picture (300)

15. Leave smiley faces/ inspiring messages on post its in 10 bathrooms. (1 point per post it)

16. Dress in vintage florals to go to the night markets. (4)

17. Have someone else order their favourite dish for you in a restaurant (and do the same for them.) (4)

18. Go to a burlesque show. (20) Specifically, this was D's idea!!! :P

19. Win a game of Monopoly. (10)

20. Pat a kangaroo or cuddle a wombat at Caversham Wildlife Park. (6)

21. Go to the races. (4) In a fascinator. (10) Triple your points if you bet on a horse that wins.

22. Go to a sporting event. (10)

23. Go to a ballet or an opera. (20)

24. Go wine and cheese tasting in the Swan Valley. (5 plus a point per item tasted.)

25. Make a wish in the fountain at the Bell Tower for something that you really, really want. (10) 100 points if your wish comes true!!!

D., M., and I, (and J., when she gets back from Japan) will complete this list together over the course of 2012. C. will complete her list over the next sixth month, while she is on exchange at university in Lille. Her list can be found here.

Chelsea, I will miss you very very much, and I hope that you have an amazing time. See you at Chez Pierre in June!!!

Christmas Manicure

2011-12-23T21:00:00.003+08:00

Seeing as I had flowers painted on my nails in Bali, I am clearly a nail art expert...

No but seriously, I didn't think painting holly on my nails would be very hard and lucky for me it wasn't. My sister even let me do hers for her the other day. I've just done my own. I used Maybelline Mini Colorama in Green Park and Urban Turquoise, and Rimmel I love Lasting Finish in Double Decker Bus.

Can anyone guess what I have been listening to? :)

Contract for Rewriting

2011-12-22T09:34:00.001+08:00

I have been rewriting a novel. I have not been rewriting this novel alone. Members of my creative writing group are ALSO rewriting their novels, or writing their novels for the first time whilst keeping an eye on material about rewriting.

Laura Jane Cassidy very kindly wrote this blog post for me.

Just because I am a little bit crazy, I created a contract for my writing group to sign so that they would work hard over the summer and reach their goals, although so far I am the only one who has signed one. It's just for a bit of fun, and I thought you might like to look at it, download it, sign it, share it, use it, etc.

How do YOU rewrite?

Merry Christmas and Happy Scribbling.

I,______________________, writer, being of sound mind and body, pledge to begin aperilous journey of rewriting which will begin on Friday the 2^nd ofDecember, 2011 with the signing of this contract.

Bysigning, I am also agreeing:

1. That I willnot belittle myself, even in private.

2. That I willnot belittle my novel. I am banned fromreferring to it by demeaning nicknames such as the pile of crap.

3. That I willtake my time editing. It is worth doing,and it is worth doing well.

4. That I willnot go more than a week without at least thinking about my novel and I will notgo more than a fortnight without working on it.

5. That whenpeople ask me what I do, I will not say student or retail assistant or dolebludger, but writer, author or novelist.

6. That I willcarry a notebook with me, and view the world like it has something tooffer. (OR that I will use my skills ofobservation and amazing memory.)

7. That I willfrequent coffee shops, book stores and other writer friendly places as well asbecoming an occasional hermit.

8. That I willuse colours other than red to mark up my manuscript.

9. That I willwork on both hard copy and digital.

10. ThatI will rely on my writing circle for support and talk to them before any majordeletions or restarts.

Havingtaken all of this into account, I hereby sign this contract and know that I maygive up at any time but will only be letting myself and the future readingpublic down.

Mygoal is ________________________________________

Signed___________________________

Dated___________________________

Witnessed______________________

Thoughts on... One Day

2011-12-17T00:31:00.001+08:00

One Day is a book written by a man who is very good at writing the beginnings of stories but not so skilled at ending them. Each chapter for 'twenty years' Nicholls restarts his story with minimal info dump (barring some exceptions which become more frequent as the book goes on). His prose is clever, and original. The idea of making Brechtian love was to the drama student in me a phrase to steal and cherish.

However Nicholls can tend to wax wordy and will at times rephrase the same sentimental idea twice in a chapter. As they say, it takes one to know one. At the moment, I am revising a novel and I do this OFTEN.

If I had written this book I would have ended it in Paris; I am aware that changes the tone of the novel entirely. As it stands, the ending is more like the story's excess baggage for which the reader has had to pay. It seems to me a better idea to write a fantastic romance story than to write an average story in the literary fiction genre, even if your value judgement is that literary fiction is BETTER than romance. (Also: it's not. It's just different. There is good and bad writing in all genres.)

(If you haven't read the book, stop here. Spoilers coming!)

Killing off Emma Morley, to be frank, appears to have been the solution to the problem of how to end a novel in which plot is essentially life. Life ends by death. However, the death itself will have you rereading, scratching your head and saying "wait what?"

What comes after us the convenient and largely unbelievable tying of loose ends, bar one.

Why did Dexter never go to AA?????

The last four or so chapters essentially demoted what was a five star book to a three star one.

Three out of five empty wine bottles. Brilliant phrasing can never in a million years cover up a dud ending.

Thoughts on... The Lady of the Rivers

2011-12-12T13:12:00.001+08:00

I've long been a fan of Phillipa Gregory. I started, as most readers would, with her novel The Other Boleyn Girl in 2007- before it was made into a film starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. I believe that this was the beginning of my love affair with Tudor history.

In 2008, after reading nearly all of Gregory's Tudor Court novels, I wrote an Original Solo Peformance for my TEE drama exam in which I portrayed all six wives of Henry the Eighth. In 2010, I watched all four seasons of Showtime's The Tudors. I read Booker Prize winning "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel.

But what is it about these long dead royals that have us so captivated? And why, in our modern representations of them, do we feel the need to make their lives so... sexy?

I believe there are several factors, first among them being that sex sells. Of course, movies like the Other Boleyn Girl and shows like The Tudors show us a clean, exorbitant world in which sex is pleasurable for everyone and not just for making babies. There is no reference to the fact that people didn't necessarily bathe or wash their hair regularly, or that the woman's role was to please the man in many cases.

Another factor, I believe, is to use lust to explain the turmoil of the times. There was a lot of fighting in the periods I have read about. There were wars, usurpations of the throne, infidelity, witchcraft, people burned and beheaded... the list goes on. Playing this chaos against a backdrop of lust is a way in which we can explain the frightening uncontrollable nature of the times.

Finally, I believe that writers like Gregory give women a stronger focus in their histories, where the historians who have gone before them have largely ignored the roles that they played. Yes, Henry the Eighth had six wives... but what influence did each wife have on Henry? What role did these women play in the decisions that he made?

Phillipa Gregory is a talented historical fiction writer. In The Lady of the Rivers, she writes about the Plantagenets, the predecessors of the Tudors, and does so in a way that is beautiful and relatable without being cheapened or sexualised. She does not attempt to impose control over the chaos, but rather uses it. And she researches the women, the observers, the silent partners, and gives them a voice they have otherwise been denied. Jacquetta, the dowager duchess of Bedford, has appeared in her previous two Cousin's War novels. In The Lady of the Rivers, she is both the same character and different. The reader is allowed to get close to her in a way that was deliberately denied in both The White Queen and the Red Queen. Gregory gives you a history lesson without putting you to sleep. But facts are there for the aware reader to garner. History and magic mingle in a delectable fashion. And if you want to read this book now, can't wait for paperback... Big W has the hardback out cheap.

I give this novel four out of five slumbering Kings of England.

Turkish Delight Cheesecake

2011-12-11T21:14:00.001+08:00

The first attempt... made with the help of the wonderful, irreplacable Barbara J.

Baby's First Woody Allen Movie... Midnight In Paris

2011-12-09T19:47:00.001+08:00

If you don't go and see this... I will cry.

I don't normally like Owen Wilson in anything. Not in Wedding Crashers, not in.. whatever else he was in... with his "Look at me, I'm so awkward, I have a really badly broken nose" mainstream playful man boy thing going on. The idea of Owen Wilson in an indie film about writing made me skeptical.

But if you do not see this movie, I will cry. There will be tears on my pretty little face and it would break your heart to see. If you are a writer, or a painter or a singer or a... shoe maker.... see this movie. See it now.

This is the kind of movie where the dialogue is intelligent enough for you to feel cultured when you understand the jokes but not so aloof that you feel excluded occassionally and just have to pretend. It's the kind of movie that immediately has your mind made up about characters like Inez and Paul, but lets you watch Gil grow, and lets you grow to love him, so that when he finds... no, you know what, I'll let you watch the film and see what adorkable (yeah I said adorkable) things he does.

It's a story I can relate to. I too have yearned for other eras. I yearn for inspiration that is transcendant. I yearn to meet my idols. I yearn for romance and beauty and artisticness.

Rachel McAdams, as per usual, is beautiful and her acting is subtle but good. There are cameos by the stunning Carla Bruni among others, and the ethereal Marion Cotillard plays Adriana, 'the muse'. It is a love story of sorts, but more of a story that teaches you to love yourself, and love your dreams.

And now, after watching it, I have to go and write. A good writing movie will do that to me. How about you?

What movies inspire you to write?

Location, location, location.

2011-12-08T17:58:00.001+08:00

Today, I was reading on my lunch break in the back room at my job. The back room is also a jeweller's workshop. One of our jewellers was singing. The other one was sawing or grinding something (whatever it was, it was noisy).

My 3IC manager came in. She said to me "How can you read out here?"

I shrugged, and said "I can read anywhere."

It's true. I can.

Where do you like to read? Some of my favourite places are: In the bath, on the lollabout on the balcony, up a tree, in my bed, under a shady tree at uni (so long as there are no birds above me that might poop on my head), and in my boyfriend's room while he plays Call of Duty. Seriously, if you can read while your boy plays Call of Duty, you can probably read on a construction site, at a rocket launch or during lazer tag.

Thoughts on... Memoirs of a Geisha

2011-12-06T17:08:00.001+08:00

Happy Birthday, Arthur Golden, I just finished your book.

That is, if your wikipedia page is correct and it is in fact your birthday.

I have a lot of respect for this book. First of all, it seems authentic to me. I did ten years of Japanese language study through school, none of which has survived three years of non-practice except perhaps a few very basic phrases. And last year, I did a Modern Japanese History unit at Murdoch which was actually wonderful context for reading this novel. The author says in his acknowledgements that any errors are his own. I like that. I like that he's covering his bases, just sticking it out there and saying "hey guys, I did ten years of research for this book, talked to everyone I could, but just in case I got it wrong, oops. And Sorry." Particularly considering my own research looks something like this.

> Goes to Library. Searches 'Perth social history.'
> Results... one book found. Checks out said book.
> Flips through said book. Writes down a single sentence. "Nothing much happened."
> Writes from what she's seen in movies and then goes back to fix it later.

I know, I know, it's bad, and maybe that is why I'm not published. It's not that I don't like history per se, it's just hard to structure a huge research project for yourself when you're also doing a degree that requires you to do other research projects. I'm hoping Honours next year will teach me good habits about Historical Fiction.

But this article is not about me.

The other thing that I really loved about Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha was its interiority. How does a thirty or forty something year old American man write in such a way that makes me believe that he is a teenaged/ early twenties/ thirties/ elderly Japanese woman raised as a Geisha? HOW? Tell me the secrets and I'll follow them to the letter because I always seem to be drawn to writing male characters who...er... aren't typically masculine. Which is fine. But it's not challenging and I do like a challenge. Sayuri's story is framed as memoir, as the title would suggest, which is one of the best ways to break the classic 'show don't tell' rule. You HAVE to tell in memoir. But you have to do it in a way that shows. And Arthur Golden certainly can. His pace is natural and yet not to slow or wordy. His prose is clean but there are no cliches. His supposedly translated style comes across as... other culture-ly. I honestly feel like I have been to Kyoto and back. If only. My experience of Japan in 2008 (around the time I started this blog) looks something like this:

Oh yeah. Hotel yukata, green fingernails and mid-calf height Cons. I was cool. Serious.

But Memoirs of a Geisha makes me want to go back and see Japan in full technicolour. Perhaps that is the value of a good novel. The ability to transport its reader in a metaphorical enough way to instil a literal longing for a time or place they've never been.

Five our of five politely blushing geishas for this one.

A Bloggy Advent Calendar.

2011-12-02T18:58:00.001+08:00

One link for each day until Christmas, for your viewing, doing and reading pleasure.

Now that my Christmas Tree is up, I'm really in the mood to be jolly.

December First

December Second Put some colour in your life this summer...

December Third

December Fourth

December Fifth

December Sixth

December Seventh

December Eighth

December Ninth

December Tenth

December Eleventh

December Twelfth An interesting take on an amazing song... look up the album version too! This band is up for a Grammy in Feb.

December Thirteenth

December Fourteenth

December Fifteenth How cute are these?

December Sixteenth

December Seventeenth

December Eighteenth Courtesy of Simon.

December Nineteenth (This is because I told Shane I needed a few more links. Funny guy...)

December Twentieth

December Twenty-first

December Twenty-second

December Twenty-third

December Twenty-fourth

December Twenty-fifth

BONUS: December Twenty-six

Thoughts on... Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

2011-12-01T10:31:00.001+08:00

You may remember that I did a series of not-quite-book-reviews at the end of 2010. If not, let me refresh your memory by linking you to one of my more popular reviews (meaning more than just myself and my grandparents read it...) here.

Because this year I pledged myself to read 100 books on Goodreads, and then when that was too hard and obviously not going to happen, lowered that number to 60, I thought maybe I would review a few of the books that I read this summer. Any of you looking for something to read, or looking for a debate are welcome to weigh in.

Last night I finished Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm, which was given to me by my grandparents a few Christmases back. Having just finished The Help, which was amazing, I was feeling that floundering falling without a net sensation of weaning myself away from a very good book. I had no idea what to read next. I didn't want a heavy classic. I didn't want fluffy romance. I had no idea what I wanted.

This is going to sound stupid, but I picked Cold Comfort Farm because its cover has a cow on it.

Moo.

So, here's brief run down of the book. Q: What do you get if you take an orphaned Londonite and strand her in the country in the middle of the 1930s on the worlds strangest farm? A: A tale of meddling and pastoral satire, of course.

From page one, Gibbons' prose is witty and quotable. On several occassions, she had me running for my notebook to write down my favourite quotes.

"One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a familiarity with one's favourite writers. It gave one a curious feeling; it was like seeing a drunken stranger wrapped in one's dressing gown."

She is both clever and pleasant, whilst all the time being extremely judgemental of the world she writes about. It is clear she finds D.H. Lawrence (her contemporary) ridiculous, as personified by the way she pities the sex obsessed Mr. Mybug.

But here's the thing that bugs me about the protagonist, Flora Poste. She's too normal. She doesn't really seem to have emotions at all. Both her parents die, she doesn't grieve at all. And she goes about meddling in other people's lives without trouble. Her plans always work. People always fall in love with her. She doesn't appear to have a single flaw. Were this another novel, perhaps Flora's meddling should have bitten her on the bottom.

The effect of this is eerie. It doesn't take away from the book, but as I read, I had an inkling that something was not right. Normally, you have a character, they're average, relatable etc., but they have one huge unoverlookable flaw to overcome in the course of the novel. That drives the story. Flora has that... in that she is the world's biggest control freak... but it's not presented as a flaw. In fact, it drives the story by being the saving grace of all the other characters. Bit by bit, she imposes order on Cold Comfort, and then once it is perfect enough for her to live in she leaves.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Anyway, you should read it for yourself. Get to know Flora Poste and Stella Gibbons, get inside the witticisms that will have you screaming "Yes! This is how I feel too!" And you should tell me what you think.

A must for fans of D.H. Lawrence, but only if you're willing to have him mocked.

I give Cold Comfort Farm 3 out of 5 mysteriously disintegrating cows.

I'm craving...

2011-11-30T20:28:00.001+08:00

I'm craving a good book to read, and the world around me is conspiring so that I get off my bottom and find one.

First, I watched all of Castle Season 2 over the last couple of days. And in one particular episode, a copy of Catcher in the Rye was stolen. I love that book.

Then, some excellent book deals showed up in the latest Big W catalogue. I spent some time today ticking some of the titles I lust after.

And then, I knew I needed a night with a good book or two when even Two and A Half Men (Sheen, not Kutcher) featured a book related plotline. Jake was writing a book report on Lord of the Flies. My sister had to read that in Year 12, she wondered why 10 year old Jake had to read it... I wondered why I hadn't read it...

Winning!

2011-11-30T10:40:00.001+08:00

Last night, at approximately 10.15, the word count on the novel known as The River limped over the 50 000 word mark.

To celebrate, I was given a shiny Winner's logo. Check it out, it's under my profile there!

Here are a few things I learnt while writing a novel in a month:

1) You cannot resist the will of your characters. Even if their will extends to semi-incest and kidnapping.

2) You cannot censor yourself just because your grandparents may be reading.

3) You must force yourself to write on the weekends. You must force yourself to write at your Boyfriend's. You must force yourself to write when drunk (a little...) You must force yourself to write after lunch. You must force yourself to write overseas.

4) You may have to swap writing time with reading time if you have a job in retail, as November is close to Christmas. This also applies to exams.

5) Never put off until tomorrow what is coming to you in today's writing rant.

I am rewarding myself today with a Castle Season 2 Marathon, and I just ate my way through an entire box of Pocky. Regular blogging will resume from tomorrow. I'd love to do a Question and Answer blog... Maybe you guys could ask me some questions in the comments section.

Nanowrimo 2011 Week Three

2011-11-24T08:43:00.001+08:00

If you've read yesterday's post, you will know that this week, I spent five nights in Bali. Let me tell you a little something about writing while on Holiday. (It's a capital H because it's not just "oh, school's out, cool, let's have a Buffy marathon" it's, "hey, leave your mobile phone in a safe place because we're leaving the country.") Writing on Holiday is HARD. Here's why:

1) My beloved laptop Cedric has decided to chuck a few tantrums lately. I switch him on. He works for about 90 seconds and then switches himself off, swallowing any progress that I made. Cedric was therefore NOT invited on Holiday. I am currently working on my Dad's laptop, seeing as he now has an iPad and barely ever uses it. Hooray for family!
2) When you go on Holiday with someone, you are expected to pay attention to them.
3) If you DON'T pay attention to said person, and instead write in the huge king size bed while said person is forced to watch Man vs. Wild repeats on a couch made of stone, you feel a tad guilty.
4) You are a bit busy seeing the country you have paid to go to.

I actually did pack my compendium with THREE legal pads, and my journal. I spent the days leading up to the trip catching up on words I didn't write while studying for my exam. And I made a promise to myself that I would come home with enough new material to take me to 36000 words.

I did not do that. Considering one of my characters hates it when people say they are going to do things and then don't, I'd say she's pretty mad at me. My word count looks a little something like this now:

Bad, Elimy. BAD.

Now, No Plot? No Problem! by Nanowrimo creator Chris Baty says that you should never ever ever neglect your novel for more than a day, or you will lose momentum/ get addicted to a TV show/ pick up a bad habit that prevents you from getting near computers/ get a new hobby/ boyfriend/ pet or something else disastrous. I thought that was silly. I thought; No, if I don't write for a few days, I'll just pick up where I left off. Now I'm back, I'm wondering where I left off. I don't keep comprehensive notes, so I am wondering what I named my protagonist's father in law, what my protagonist's son's middle name is and I don't even really feel strongly about what characters to kill off anymore! Plus, I am addicted to Castle.

To be fair, watching Castle does inspire me to write. Watching other writers, even fictional ones, is always inspiring for me. Another thing that inspires me is to find a book I hate by an author I think is ridiculous and then I get so mad that this person can be published and not me that I write for DAYS. I won't name names.

But seriously, I should have forced myself to write everyday.

Sorry novel!

That's all from me today; I'm only about a day and a half behind now, so I am off to rectify that.

Elimy in Bali

2011-11-23T09:53:00.001+08:00

I've only ever read two novels about Bali. The first was Sustenance, by Simone Lazaroo. The second was Eat, Pray, Love. Neither prepared me.

Books like those ones want you to think that Bali is a deeply spiritual place, full of rich culture and beautiful sunsets. And maybe it is, if you are Balinese. But if you are Australian, Bali is about three things: Crude souvenirs, semi-nudity and bintang singlets.

Going to Bali made me a little bit ashamed to be an Australian. And so, for a while, I wasn't. But every now and then, a little bit of the Australian Bali DID sneak its way into my citizenship-less Balinese experience.

Let me show you the highlights reel.

We arrived late Thursday night. And I mean late. I don't just mean the plane was a late flight, I mean WE GOT DIVERTED TO A WHOLE DIFFERENT ISLAND OF INDONESIA BECAUSE OBAMA WANTED TO TAKE UP THE WHOLE OF DENPASAR AIRPORT. We're talking something like more than an extra hour circling in the air above Bali, and then being sent to Surubaya before we ran out of petrol. At least the lady sitting next to History Boy and I was nice. She lent us trashy magazines. Score.

Just FYI, Obama, you're totally off the woman behind us's Facebook likes. Ouch.

We arrived at our VERY OWN PRIVATE VILLA late Thursday night, smelling just lovely, I can assure you.

The next eight hours were spent sleeping.

Friday we went out and explored Bali. i.e. We were introduced to the trifecter of Aussie behaviour in Bali. As we walked around Kuta, near Matahari's department store, we discovered two things. 1) If an Indonesian hears you are from Australia, they automatically assume you are from Sydney, even though I am pretty sure the majority of Australian tourists who go to Bali are from Perth. 2) If you walk around in a couple, people offer you "good price for honeymoon couple." I wanted to exploit this misconception. History Boy was not so keen.

Of course, this was the day we ate the obligatory MacDonald's. The Fast Food Gods were pleased.

And then, we came back... to this....

You can be jealous. It's okay.

The whole trip was pretty much punctuated by swims in this pool. Everyday we would wake up, swim, eat, go out come back, swim, eat, go out come back swim, go out, eat, swim, sleep. There was also a lot of showering and bubble baths. It was nice not to have the water run out on me for once!!! I've never been so clean as I was for those five minutes after each shower in Bali. But do you know what we missed? Being able to open our mouths. Hooray for safe water!

The best part of the trip was DEFINITELY the Saturday because we went to the Safari Park. You know. The Safari Park. Oh, what's that? You haven't heard of it? Well it's pretty much the most awesome zoo ever. It's on about 45 hectares of land, and driving around it in the safari tour was very similar to driving around Jurassic Park with Sam Neill that one time except there were no dinosaurs.

But there were Leopards.

And owls.

And elephants....

...that sprayed everyone in the crowd at bathtime!

TIGERS...

A cheetah named Sabrina...

Mufasa...there was a Simba too and I got to cuddle him!! Yes, I still have all my fingers.

It was VEEEEEERY hot that day, so we didn't stay a long time at the Safari Park, just long enough for some lions to make us tasty burgers for lunch and me to buy yet another stuffed animal for my collection of stuffed animals from zoos and aquariums world wide! Can you guess what I bought??? I'll give you a hint; it has a trunk.

As for writing... well. I DID intend to write in Bali. I took over my compendium and my journal but aside from chronicling the day's events....

I did get my nails done though!

Are you distracted by the pretty??

Anyway, schoolies starts this week, and luckily we only overlapped with all them for about a day. It's okay, because it is easy to spot a schoolie. The difficult part is crossing the road to get away from them. If you've ever seen a Bali street between two and three pm, you'll know what I mean.

Travelling tips from me? If you take taxi's in Bali, take the light blue Bluebird taxis... we had a couple of drivers do loops of the city to get more money off of us. Wear sunscreen. Don't bother with lots of make up, it just melts anyway.

That's all for now folks. I've left a lot out but you probably don't care about me walking around looking at stuff.

I'm off to catch up about 8000 words for Nanowrimo by the end of the day. Have a good one. Any questions, hit me up in the comments.

Nanowrimo 2011 Week Two

2011-11-15T13:12:00.001+08:00

"There are some things (like first love and one's first reviews) at which a woman in her middle years does not care to look too closely." - Stella Gibbons

This morning, I dropped a pile of books on my face. I was trying to decide what to read, and I sometimes find rearranging my massive (but ever smaller) to read piles helpful in that kind of pursuit. As I moved one pile, standing on tip toes and reaching for it precariously as it would happen, several books decided that they did not want to live anymore, and took a swan dive to the floor. Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for me, my face broke the fall. I fear I shall have a black eye. I fear I am being overly dramatic. For those of you who care, the books were P.D. James' Talking about Detective Fiction and Gift of the Gob by that woman who used to be on Can We Help? on ABC, whatever her name is. I would go and look at the book to find out, except presently we aren't speaking.

Last night I came down with a bad case of novellus unputdownabilitas which was brought on by Kathryn Stockett's The Help, as well as the fact that I have a history exam tomorrow. I read until well after midnight. I shan't apologise. If anyone was thinking of reading that book and couldn't decide, let me decide for you. Read it.

But despite all this reading and clumsiness that is going on, you may be surprised to hear that YES, I am still working on my Nanowrimo Novel for 2011, entitled The River. The novel has taken some rather strange twists. Last night, one character threw an orange at her sister.

Other things which have happened this week include:

* The beginnings of a Buffy the Vampire slayer marathon
* Lychee martini's... which for the record, have proven to me once and for all that I could never be the functioning alcoholic type of writer. At least not when History Boy is making the cocktails.
* The repeated deaths and reincarnation of my beloved laptop, Cedric, who is currently banished to the top of my writing paraphernalia box, under my desk. Not because I am mad at him, but because I fear for his health. IT Guy Brother may have have to rip his brains out so I can put them in a new body. Which means I need to think of a new laptop name.
* I got made over for Jade Goes with Everything.
* I saw a fantastic student production of As You Like It at Murdoch University. If you didn't go and see that, you really missed out. If you were in that, I salute you.
* I found a floppy hat! It's rust coloured and I never want to take it off.

Seriously, you're thinking. When did she have time to write???

I did, trust me.

Word count currently at 26 500 words. Aiming to be at 30 000 by tonight... in which case, why am I still talking to all of you???

Wish me luck. And take my books away. (Don't really, I'll cry.)

Elimy

P.S. Comet November went live today. If you're missing me at all, head over tomorrow because I have a fictional piece going up at midnight.

Nanowrimo Sneak Peak

2011-11-08T15:58:00.003+08:00

Hey all. Just a quick note before I put up a little something of what I am working on. This exerpt contains some crass language, and I was conflicted as to whether or not I should put it up. I don't know if I mention this often but I have a two person grandparent fanbase who support me every step of the way and read my blog. I love my Grandma and Grandpa very much. They believe in me so much and that is very touching. Out of deference to them, I usually make sure I keep my language PG on this blog. But I don't always in my writing. Because I am so proud of last night's segment, I am going to bend that little rule of mine today. If I apologise profusely, perhaps I will be forgiven.

On that note, FOR THE LOVE OF CHERRY RED LIPSTICK, never ever ever censor yourself. Don't ever feel like you can't write something because it might offend someone. Writing is for yourself. And if you turn the muse away when she knocks on your window, she might try the house next door.

If you're reading this, Grandma and Grandpa, I love you! :)

***********

Bundles of joy.
There was something growing inside Catherine that made her hungry and tired and fat. It was like a little tumour, except she wasn’t allowed to think that. Every time she thought that, she felt bad. She hadn’t told Peter yet, but surely he had noticed that her belly was thickening, or that her skin was worse, or perhaps he’d just noticed that her breasts were bigger. That she had breasts, for once. Maybe she wouldn’t ever have to tell him. Weren’t babies the desired outcome of a coupling? Wasn’t it more appropriate for wives who had not conceived to be the ones breaking news to their husbands?
Catherine took to walking about the house and jiggling, hoping that the thing might slide out of her. It wasn’t that she wanted to harm the baby. If she’d wanted to do that, she might have done something more excessive. She’d read that there were certain things expectant mothers could eat to bring on miscarriages. Or she could drink excessively. At a stretch, she could try falling abdomen first down the front steps.
The foetus in her made her crazy. There were always bags under her eyes. She kept on working, like a zombie. By night she cleaned and cooked. By day, she worked at the post office, selling stamps. At one point, a customer asked her opinion on two different books of stamps. One set had Queen Elizabeth on them, with various coloured backgrounds. The other set had pictures of buildings in Perth.
“Excuse me,” said the man. He was wearing a neat grey hat, and Catherine noted irritably that it didn’t cover his bald testicle of a head. She blushed. She’d never said the word testicle out loud before, and this was the first time she’d thought it. Then the image of Peter naked came to her mind, and the blush cleared from her face with clinical precision. She adjusted her pony tail.
“Yes?”
“Which book of stamps do you like better? I’ve had the Elizabeth’s before, but they’re classic, aren’t they?”
“Certainly sir. And she is a lovely looking woman.”
The man sniffed, and scratched the hollow of his nose. She could tell he desperately wanted to pick inside his nostril, but refrained out of deference to her.
“But the ones with the Perth buildings on are better for sending to my friends in England, who’ve never been here before. They’ve seen the Queen lots of times.”
“Sound logic.”
Catherine leaned forwards on her little white counter to see the stamps closer. She saw so many stamps a day that they’d ceased to be something that registered in her thinking. To Catherine, a stamp was a stamp.
“But then again, I don’t know if he collects stamps you see, and then the effort would be wasted.”
“It’s up to you. Which ones do you prefer?”
The man took off his hat. There was not a hair to be seen under it, but there was a little sunburnt patch. Catherine pinched at the pressure point between her thumb and forefinger. She had a headache. Her ankles were hurting too. She was only three months pregnant, and under her red Australia Post smock, no one could tell anyway. But the foetus wouldn’t let her forget.
“Oh. Well. They’re just stamps, really, aren’t they?”
Catherine sighed. She opened her little white gate and came out from behind the counter. Smartly, she walked over to the customer, her neat little court shoes going clack clack clack. He smiled at her brightly, expecting her to do something that solved his problems. Instead, she reached out and took the books of stamps off him, first snatching the Queen Elizabeths, and then snatching the City of Perths. She dropped them in the pocket of her smock. Then, she went back behind the counter, and opened the drawer, her face like a thundercloud. In the drawer was another book of stamps. This one with tropical fish. She pulled it out, rang it up on her little cash register and then slipped it into an envelope.
“Five pounds, sir.”
“But I don’t know what you even put in there. Which one was it?”
“You’ll see when you get home and open it.”
He frowned. “This is highly unusual.”
“So is wasting energy deciding which book of stamps to buy. This is a lucky dip. Like in school. It’s fun, sir.” Catherine said all this with a bleak look on her face and a droll note in her voice. Bottom lip jutted out in a sulk, the man fished a handful of coins out of his wallet and dropped them on the table. He snatched up the envelope and put it into his pocket.
“Keep the change,” he said.
A few moments later, the phone rang. Catherine waited the obligatory three rings, and then picked up.
“Post office,” she said.
“Hello,” said a male voice. “I was just in your store a moment ago. Could I speak to the manager please?”

Peter was waiting for her when she got home. He hadn’t taken his mackintosh off yet. He was sitting on the arm of the couch. She hated when he sat on the arm of the couch.
“Cathy,” he said, the end of her name with a downward inflection. There was a hint of disapproval in that. “Cathy. You should have told me you were pregnant.”
The foetus made her want to say something absurd. She took her shoes off and kicked them into the middle of her room. The carpet felt luscious through her stockings. She smiled and closed her eyes.
“You must be tired, Love. Come, sit down, and tell me how long you’ve known,” he said. He didn’t sound excited. Wasn’t he supposed to be excited that he would be a father?
“I suppose I’ve known two months.” She didn’t go into details of why. Men hated it when women talked about their monthlies. Women hated it when men talked about their ailments, but it didn’t usually stop them. Catherine smirked at the thought. She was becoming cynical in her pregnancy.
“You could have come to me. We have some money saved. You didn’t have to keep working.”
“I like my job,” she said. Then she coughed as the taste of cigarettes filled her mouth, like it always did when she lied. What she meant was, I need something in my life that is not here and is not you and is not my depressing, invalid father-child.
“It’s no place for a woman in your condition.”
She smirked and crossed one leg over the other. “In my condition,” she repeated.
Peter put his hands on her shoulders. “Cathy, you’re exhausted.”
“Exhausted.”
“I think we should hire a maid.”
“A maid.”
The words were going into her ears but coming straight back out through her mouth. Peter used his thumb and forefinger to swivel her face towards him. “Cathy? Cathy are you alright?”
Catherine went to stand up. There was something she was supposed to be doing. Laundry to be put in the oven. Dusting to be mended. A roast to be ironed. But it was like someone had found her switch and flicked it off. She felt the steady power down of her body, and then her eyes closed like shop shutters, and Catherine fell back into Peter’s arms, unconscious. Her body had forced her to sleep. The foetus had made its presence felt.

As Catherine got more and more pregnant, Don called her Jane more and more often. Every time he did it, Catherine felt a little sick. She started to feel as if she needed to hide from him. When they walked together, she would walk behind him. Even needing such a wide berth herself, it annoyed her how slowly he walked. His back was like a big, heavy upside-down U shape, and his legs were skinny and too weak to move his body forward any faster than the speed of someone learning to waltz. She took to counting as he moved. One two three, left foot, one two three right foot. Eventually, she would breathe to this rhythm too. When her child was born, she would breathe to this rhythm without thinking twice about it.
Things that it was okay to get Peter to do— taking in cups of tea, waking Don when he fell asleep by the radio— she delegated. Catherine still did all the heavy labour. She was the one who had to help him when Don was too dazed to shower himself. But Peter picked out his clothes. Catherine dressed him, but Peter sat with him and ate breakfast over the morning paper. It was like shift work.
Catherine found that she missed her father, but spending time with him when he thought she was someone else did not really count as spending time with him. So she continued to miss him for six more months, and pretended that she was practicing for when she had her baby.

It always seemed like the washing grew exponentially. The mound that was her stomach prevented her from lifting up for very long, because her back muscles all folded up on themselves like an accordion when she tried. Peter bought her a little washing line that folded out like a trestle table. It was only for sock and underwear, but she sat on a lawn chair next to it and pegged out one load at a time. The washing took five times as long but at least she was in no pain.
While she pegged, she’d devised a little game to pass the time. It was called The Alphabet Name Game and in it, she listed a strange and vaguely erudite name for her baby, one for every letter of the alphabet. Albert, Bertoldt, Chester, D’Artagnon, Emil, Franz, Gunther, Harold, Isaiah, Jenevieve, Kingsley, Langford, Maynard, Nathaniel, Oliver, Prudence, Quentin, Ramsdale (which she wasn’t even sure was a name, but it sounded nice), Scarlett, Tobias, Umberto, Victoria, Wallace, Xanthia, Yorrick, Zachariah. From the percentage of names that were male to those that were female, Catherine could tell that the foetus was mostly sure it was going to be male. It was usually the same list of names, and after a while, it became a remembering game rather than a creating one. When she couldn’t sleep one night, she got up and wrote them all down on the back of a receipt. The next morning Peter found it and thought that she had become clucky. She told him it was a poem.

© E.P. 2011

Nanowrimo 2011 Week 1

2011-11-07T09:54:00.003+08:00

Been a very busy girl this week.

For those who don't know, Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month. I've challenged myself yet again to write 50 000 words in a month, and by now I am one fifth of the way there.

Things that have gone into this week's nano effort:

Monday: Attempted to stay up until midnight. Was disgruntled once I realised that I cannot merely stay up til midnight, I must actually write once that time comes.

Tuesday: Writing club. Took my first couple of pages and my friends very kindly pretended to like them. Also, I was interviewed by my friend JH for his radio assignment. It was fun to pretend I was an important part of the local writing community.

Wednesday: It was really hot but really overcast. Promised myself I would work on my homework. Did a solid day's effort, culminating in studying with a friend at uni...but got my official Honour's Acceptance Email (capitalised to stress importance) and gave myself the night off to celebrate.

Thursday: Worked. Studied. Wrote.

Friday: Not one but TWOOOOO in class tests. Then Tav with a whole bunch of neat people. Spent the night writing. Got to 10 000 words!!!

Saturday: ...did not write as was being Batgirl at a belated Halloween party.

Sunday: Tried to write but sleepy. Managed 300 words.

If you're doing Nanowrimo too, you can find me listed under Elimy. I don't really know what my novel IS yet but...

A Note from Dr. Lit

2011-10-30T19:59:00.002+08:00

I have discovered a new kind of reading related injury. Having never met another person who has suffered an injury of this kind, I have taken it upon myself to name the phenomena. I have called it: GoneWiththeWind-Arm. It is somewhat like Ulysses Strain Injury, but manifests itself in a somewhat less pretentious manner.

Symptoms include a soreness in the left arm (or less predominent arm/ both arms should one be ambidextrous), distinct lack of swelling or bruising and occassionaly random throbbing.

At first, one may mistake this injury for another kind of injury. One will think: now when exactly did I hit my arm? One may consider that this was done lifting boxes at work, but will then wait for the accompanying swelling and bruising. One will be disappointed in this regard. Then, seeing as it is one's left arm, the thought may cross one's mind that one may be about to have a heart attack. Subsequently, this will be dismissed as utter stupidity as heart attacks do not affect the wrist. At a loss, one will assume it has something to do with either blood loss from sleeping on the arm, or the fact that over the course of one's life, said wrist has been broken twice.

Then, one night, as one lies on her side in repose, with Gone with the Wind in one hand, held out attractively at arms length, one will realise that the muscles of the left forearm are feeling that lactic acid strain which accompanies exercise. What an alien feeling... one thinks.

With a laugh, one then realises that the injury to her arm has been procured reading Margaret Mitchell's weighty 1011 page tome. One realises that it is the largest book one has ever read, and that longer than four weeks of one's life have been spent holding this book up in such a way at various times.

After finishing the book, one is relieved to realise that the sensation of strain disappears from the arm.

Dr. Lit's diagnosis? GoneWiththeWind- Arm is totally harmless. If the pain bothers you, try sitting up whilst reading, or switching arms. A bearable side effect of reading such an amazing book.

Film Review: The Three Musketeers

2011-10-19T21:30:00.005+08:00

I would just like to inform you all that I am taking up sword fighting and moving to sixteenth century France.

Yep. Those are my plans for the summer. Because, you see, I just got home from the preview of The Three Musketeers, and I don't know if I have told you this but I am incredibly susceptible to exciting films and books.

SOURCE

This movie has pretty much every ingredient for a good couple of hours of viewing pleasure. Beautiful scenery? Check. Witty/ Corny one liners? Check. Historical intrigue? Check. Big-ass flying ships? You bet. Okay, so there is a fair bit of the willing suspension of disbelief needed to watch this film. The integration of a femme fatale style double agent who abseils down the side of a palace in her underwear, whilst amusing, does perhaps induce an eyeroll. But Milla Jovovich as Milady is so good, I just didn't care. In fact, the entire cast was superb.

What the film makers have done is very cleverly brought a classic novel into a more fashionable context. The use of steampunk style elements makes it just exciting enough, and like all pieces about this particular period in history, it is highly stylised. (Don't even get me started on the sexualisation of the Tudors. Please.) There was also a hint of Pirates of the Caribbean in there, but that may just be because Orlando Blood + Eyeliner + Boats + swelling string music = Pirates sequel. But I wasn't alone in thinking that Orlando was channeling a bit of Captain Jack in his portrayal of Buckingham, was I Lauren???

It was funny because while the ads were on, the two of us girls were trying to cast a better Catwoman for the new Batman movie (because seriously Princess Mia = Andie Sachs = Jane Austen =/= catwoman. Just no.) and then Milla came on screen, and oh my gosh, why hadn't we thought of her before???

There is really very little in this film that I can find fault in... mostly because I was so entertained, I don't want to look for historical inaccuracies or deviations from the book. Besides, I haven't read the book. And seeing as I don't see Dr. Who dropping by later this evening in the TARDIS, maybe I should settle for planning to do that this summer, instead of learning to fence.

See this film. That is all.

All Quiet on the Western Front

2011-10-18T17:26:00.003+08:00

Dad comes home from work, so I know that my afternoon has been officially wasted. I stare at the cursor, that taunting, dancing cursor, and at the words I just wrote. "YOU SUCK, WHY DON'T YOU JUST GIVE UP NOW AND FLUNK OUT?" Encouraging, I think to myself. It's all uphill from here. Up-mountain. Up-vertical incline. There is a sick feeling in my stomach, like I need to throw up or eat something. Possibly at the same time. Yet another impossible feat to add to the list of things I must do.

When Dad knocks on the door, he doesn't wait, he just opens it. "Hello" he says, and I reply "I am going to fail uni." "Why?" he asks. "Because this essay is making me physically sick and I can't write it and I want to smash my head into the wall!" I say, forcing the words out violently and feeling the tightness of my own jaw. I hastily delete the swearwords that I have written on the page. "Oh," he says sarcastically. "That will help." He leaves the room then, and I hang my head. You win, I think, and delete the derogatory comments I have written about myself. I think of writing something encouraging instead, but that seems very sappy, and instead I write a loose theme for each remaining paragraph and click save. 834 words out of 2500 on that Nazi no one really cares about anyway. And where is that girl who outlined her argument off the top of her head in conversation last week? Why has she gone away and left me to write this alone!? Cow.

I know I have to leave this room. This room smells of discomfort. This room looks like poor lighting and frustration, and over-organisation to the point that I cannot move. I look longingly at the copy of Gone with the Wind I am partway through. What would Scarlett do? But that's not helpful, all she ever seems to do is steal other girls' beaux.

Tomorrow is another day, I think, and close the document.
**************

It's that time of the year again. You know, the part of the year where I literally have to sit on my hands to stop myself from tearing all my hair out. Yep. It's the end of semester. But this time, it's a special end of semester. It's my last semester as an Undergraduate.

Unfortunately, that means the pressure is on, and I haven't been writing much lately. I have still been going to writing group meetings, however, and last week, Issue 2 of COMET all went online, and if you haven't checked it out, you should. You can do that at http://cometwriting.blogspot.com

Live an Inspired Life #2: Just Say Yes

2011-10-07T19:35:00.003+08:00

Just say yes. Just say there's nothing holding you back.

The theme for this week is JUST SAY YES.

Stop putting off until tomorrow the things you could be doing today. If you say no too many times, maybe the opportunity will go away. Say yes to going out in the middle of the week. Say yes to going for a drink after class with people who make you smile. Say yes to a new kind of food, or a song, or a colour for your fingernails.

See how much more fun you will have. And let me know how it goes.

10 Life Lessons from Jane Austen

2011-09-26T18:42:00.004+08:00

1. Never trust a man who is too charming.

2. If you wish to explain yourself, write a letter.

3. Never trust the one you love around actors.

4. Sometimes, the child must parent the parent.

5. Age is just a number.

6. Jealousy is never becoming and often unfounded. (It's also a useless emotion)

7. If you go looking for scandal, you're likely to create one.

8. Happiness is never far from home.

9. Not all women turn into their mothers.

10. Affection is born of compassion.

And a bonus one for luck:

11. Shallow relationships will come to shallow people.

Thanks to Elisa for helping me make this list.

Introducing COMET

2011-09-18T21:46:00.002+08:00

Some of you may know that I am a part of a Creative Writing group at my uni. I started it with my great friend Jade Carver late last year and we have more than 20 online members through Facebook. We meet weekly at a cafe on campus to discuss writing and related topics. And most of all, we have a lot of fun.

I am very proud to announce that as of this weekend, our very own Blog has gone live. Each month, COMET will showcase a selection of work from the group including poetry, fiction and non fiction writing of up to 3000 words.

Please support my talented, talented friends, and my dream to revive and improve the literary community here in Perth, Western Australia.

http://cometwriting.blogspot.com

Live an Inspired Life #1

2011-09-07T13:10:00.008+08:00

For Sharron.

Yesterday, a friend of mine from Uni began speaking to me about what it feels like to run out of motivation. I don't believe she expressly asked for my advice, but I gave her some anyway. (I hope that wasn't too forward of me.)

What I told her was this: The best way I have found to motivate myself is to remind myself why I am doing this. Why am I at uni? Why do I write stories? Why do I enter competitions which I never win? Why bother?

Some days, the answers that you come up with sound a bit hollow. And some days, The Big Bang Theory is on TV and it is so much more interesting than America between the wars.

When the answers can't come from you internally, it can help if they come from you externally. This is why I have an Inspiration Wall above my workstation. It's the little visual clues and support that I give my future self on the days I feel inspired.

I've collected quotes, nice wrapping paper, post cards of places I've been and want to visit, and I have even drawn the cover for my own novel, albeit badly.

What kinds of things would be on your wall?

Film Review: Jane Eyre

2011-08-31T09:33:00.004+08:00

Image from IMDB

"Sir, you are the most phantom-like of all."

Director: Cary Fukunaga
Starring: Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender

I don't really know how to start this review. The first time I ever came into contact with the story of Jane Eyre would have been in 2006 when the BBC version starring Toby Stephens screened on Channel 2. I remember they split it into two parts so that they could tell the whole story in detail, and in the interceding week, I bought the cheapest copy of the novel I could find and tried to speed read it because I HAD to know what happened. All in all, that version would have been about four hours long. This movie was not, it was about two hours.

The film starts in the middle, with Jane fleeing Thornfield and falling in with the Rivers' family. She relives her life in flashbacks, first to Gateshead, then to Lowood and then Thornfield, thus neatly splitting the stages of Jane's triumph whilst simultaneously minimizing the boring bit at the end before she is reunited with Rochester. But not only has the structure been changed from the original novel, a lot has also been either cut or severely curtailed. Blanche Ingram plays barely a passing role. There is no scene in which Rochester pretends to be a fortune teller. St.John Rivers is not in love with his benefactor's daughter because she does not exist. I found the pace of this movie incredibly strange. At times, the scenes were so short and expedient. At others, there seemed to almost be this 1960s perfume ad quality to it, in which Jane wanders through the garden and looks over her shoulder at the camera and touches the pretty flowers. In fact, if you ask Elisa, of the JustElisa blog, she would tell you that the movie is Pretty itself.

The scenery really was fantastic. I had flashbacks to the Secret Garden. And I think they used the same Thornfield exterior as in the BBC version.

Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre was... well let's put it this way, it's very hard to identify with Jane anyway because she is not cuddly. You don't want to be her best friend and stay up all night giggling and plaiting her hair. But in a movie, where there is no interior monologue to help you get to know an unemotional character it's even harder to love her. I think Wasikowska did a very faithful representation of Jane for that reason. But she's not my favourite. Nor was Fassbender my favourite Rochester, because that's still Toby Stephens. At times, his Rochester was not only grumpy and changable, but violent. The scene in which he begged Jane to live with him in sin almost seemed like a rape scene. I didn't think she was crying because she loved him, I thought she was crying because she was scared.

And this is the first adaptation in which I have thoroughly disliked Mrs. Fairfax at times. She could be a downright b-i-t-c-h sometimes. At others, you could feel sorry for her, like when Rochester insults her while she's still in the room. But she almost seemed creepy when she turned up in the ruins of Thornfield in time to meet Jane.

I was also extremely disappointed that Eliza and Georgiana never had their big blew. While a lot of the more comedic moments (i.e. when Jane tells the man from Lowood that the way to avoid Hell is not to die) were kept, and faithfully kept, some of the most memorable moments were slightly off.

All in all, I think it's probably not a fantastic version if you are a purist...

Saving the Children One Box of Books At A Time

2011-08-22T10:27:00.002+08:00

Look at the top of this webpage. You might notice something is missing. It is the ten to one rule tab! That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I have officially fallen off the non-book buying wagon. (I should really be in BBA...)

But in my defence, it was for a very good cause.

All this weekend and also Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday too, Save the Children have been and will be set up in Winthrop Hall at the University of Western Australia. If you live in Perth or if you happen to be stopping by, give it a quick peruse through. I can reassure you, there are a lot of Jane Austen novels, for a start. Too bad I own all those already, huh? I managed to pick up 9 books at a stealish price of $41. That should keep me busy for a while!!

[Thanks very much to Debbycakes for letting me know this was even on! And thanks to History Boy for going with me and carrying my box of books even though he was clearly bored out of his mind!]

Find out more.

Why Write?

2011-08-19T20:17:00.005+08:00

It's been a rather uneventful August.

I've just finished my third week of the Semester. This time around, I am doing three history units rather than two literature and only ONE history. This means it is the first semester that I haven't had around ten novels to read and report on. It also means it is the only semester where I have been surrounded soully by academic writing.

For me, this is somewhat overwhelming.

However, after a bit of grumbling (read: a lot of grumbling...) I have decided to use this to my advantage. I have decided not to just LIKE being a history major, but to LOVE it.

The three units I am doing this semester are all very different. One is about power; it is about the fall of various regimes and rulers, and is organised down thematic lines. One is about Twentieth Century America but it uses Hollywood films as a way to make it a little more fun. Today we watched Birth of a Nation. This is actually about the opposite of my definition of fun, but we'll let it slide just this once.

Another requires me to be a detective and 'solve' Historical Mysteries. We've just covered the Franklin Expedition, which has actually given me an idea for a story that I am rather excited about.

But all that doesn't really leave a lot of time for writing. Each week I have to do a lot of reading, and true to nerd form, I also take notes and answer study guide questions. THAT'S RIGHT, I SAID I ANSWER THEM. Luckily, I am a member of a very supportive writing group. But lately, since around about July the 31st, I have had rather crippling writers' block. (Or is it writer's... i can never work that one out.)

There are a number of possible causes.

1) I have burnt myself out like a lightglobe. Peaked too young. I will now descend into hack-dom.

2) History lessons have sapped my creativity.

3) There are no good ideas left in the world, or good sentence combinations that haven't already been used.

4) I am full of hot air and spend more time talking about writing than doing it. (Likely, I fear)

5) I never had any talent in the first place and a lot of people have lied to me.

6) I am so nervous about hearing back from a particular publication that stated that if I hadn't heard by Aug 31, I am not in, that I can't bear to try another piece or my little heart will break.

OR

7) I have started writing for the wrong reasons.

I think it's probably a combination of all those reasons. Sad face.

So for now, I have decided to take some time to reflect on the process of writing, and why I love it. I am going to write some really bad fanfiction style stuff in my journal. I am going to take barefoot strolls on the lawn. I am going to read, read, read. And hopefully, I am going to cure myself. I don't want to be the kind of writer Proust was, rolling on the floor in agony because he couldn't think of a good synonym for nostalgia or something like that.

Most of all, I need to remember that I love to write. Writing has been the way that I have taught myself to be my own best friend. It's also been the way that I have taught myself to look at others. And it's important to me. I told a lot of people (tearfully) that I was going to quit this month and to those people, I would like to say thank you for your patience, and for not letting me give up. I also want to thank my Mum for her PERSPECTIVE, which she is never short of.

It's time to rest. But you'll hear from me again soon.

The Final Jane Austen Book Club: Pride and Prejudice

2011-07-29T15:25:00.008+08:00

Hello!

Wednesday night was the final meeting of the 2011 Jane Austen Book Club, and a big thank you to all who participated. It's been a lot of fun, and I think we've learned a lot.

I made the above cake in honour of the occassion, copying the picture from the sketch done by Cassandra, Jane Austen's sister. I'm not very good at drawing, and as you can see, I did take some liberties with her facial expression. I've made her smile!

We saved the best until last, choosing to do Pride and Prejudice in the last week. However, we did find that it was mentioned nearly every week!

Hopefully, you all know the story... It's a plot I've always likened somewhat to Beauty and the Beast, but perhaps I would be one of the few people who could understand that comparison.

Interestingly enough, we started the night's discussion with a question: Why Charlotte Lucas and not Mary? I have a vague memory of them playing on this very question in the Keira Knightley version of the the film and that may possibly be where I got the idea from. Collins comes to the house determined to be, what is by his standards, agreeable. Of course, he is by everyone else's standards, a pain in the you know what. He wants to make up for some of the hard feelings that may be caused by his inheriting Longbourn by marrying one of his fair cousins. Immediately, he settles on Jane. Why wouldn't he? Jane is so very good and so remarkably beautiful. But, he is warned by Mrs. Bennett, she is already soon to be engaged to the lovable Mr. Bingley. So, his choice skips to Lizzy Bennett, the protagonist. But she knocks him back, and so he marries their neighbour Charlotte Lucas.

Why Charlotte though? Charlotte is said to be very plain and she is quite old for an unmarried woman, something like twenty seven or twenty eight I believe. It seems to come down to the fact that she listens to Collins when no one else will. I'll just say, she must have a remarkable amount of patience in her. But I believe that Mary could have been just as good if not better for a wife. She would have youth and accomplishment to her name. While she is nothing to look at, she is extremely musical and very well read.

But the strength of my feelings on this subject are just testament to the strength of Jane Austen's minor characters, I suppose. This is actually one of the few novels where everyone doesn't end up paired off. The world of Pride and Prejudice is much like the real world, in that there are more women in it than men to marry them. This is exactly the problem facing the Bennett family, who have five daughters and no sons. And when it comes to the mother and the two youngest daughters, they also have no sense.

It is interesting to note the authorial devices at work in this book. For example, those true, good characters like Jane and Mr Bennett call Elizabeth Lizzy, which is her 'true' name in the mind of the reader, if you would. Those less likable characters (Mrs. Bennett, Caroline Bingley) all call her Eliza. And this is how we are let know that they are not in the same class of person as the very much liked Elizabeth.

Although, at risk of facing the literary firing squad here, I must make a note that we have a similar situation to that of Persuasion here, what with so many men all falling for Elizabeth. Mr Collins, Mr Darcy, there is some discussion the Colonel Fitzwilliam might fancy her, although that might be wishful thinking on her part.

There is lots I could say about this book really, but it's so much more magical for you to discover it yourself. I am indebted to CH for bringing a list of discussion questions to the session compiled from here, here and here, as it prompted much debate.

Happy reading, everyone. I would love to read your thoughts on Pride and Prejudice in the comments section of this post.

Welcome to the Sausagefest

2011-07-23T08:00:00.001+08:00

Earlier this year, in Sydney, the shortlist for the 2011 Miles Franklin Award was announced- and suddenly, my Twitter account was on fire. It was perhaps one of the shortest shortlists ever, including only three books and overwhelmingly, without a woman’s name to any of them. The response from the online literary community was near-immediate, with one contributor to the Melbourne-based Kill Your Darlings blog referring to the list as a literary ‘sausage-fest.’ It is the second time in three years that the shortlist has been devoid of female writers, according the Meanjin blog ‘Spike’, leaving the blogger wondering if we still see our quintessential Australian experience as being a rural male one.

While there has not been any deliberate attempt to serve an ‘anti-female agenda’ in this short-list or the 2009 one, many critics are left scratching their heads.

As a young woman with lofty aspirations to one day win the award myself (perhaps even multiple times), I am left wondering who my own role models are. A scan of my shelves provides the answer. I can list perhaps only a handful of women writers still writing today that I’ve paid attention to. This is worrying. And perhaps it is a condition shared by many others like me; readers who have admired the Austens and the Brontes and the Whartons and the Plaths and the Alcotts, but have ignored those newcomers who deserve our attention.

So who are the contemporary women writers who warrant a place in our waning collective attention-spans? Does women’s writing still suffer from pigeonholing? Why do some people think that women write only for women readers, and men write for all?

Walk into any creative writing class (or literature class for that matter) and the presence will overwhelmingly be female- or at least, this has been my experience. Where do they go after graduation? (Is there a sequestered island somewhere for women writers? And if so, why haven’t I received my invitation?) There is no simple answer to this question, and no logical explanation that I can see. Does it boil down to the fact that we really are still living in a man’s world, at least when it comes to our conception of ‘literature?’

If you’re a woman writing today, you’re more likely to publish within four genres: romance, ‘chick lit’, mystery/crime or speculative fiction. The assumption seems to be that if you’re a woman writing, you’re writing about women’s concerns- something that will only interest other women. Moreover, you’d be most likely to write about WASPy twenty or thirty-somethings who just want to have a baby. (Thank you, Bridget Jones.) In 2010, I was lucky enough to see a panel at the Perth Writer’s Festival entitled ‘Escaping the Pigeonhole’ in which my eyes were opened by three very inspirational women. Local writer Liz Byrski defies the idea that books need to be about young people- and she does it with style; Dr. Anita Heiss challenges the white domination of the genre with her “deadly” indigenous heroines; Sara Foster’s books integrate marriage and child-raising with reality, albeit through her compelling mixture of crime and ‘chick lit.’ While each of these women are inspiring in their personal lives, and have certainly made some success for themselves as writers, I challenge you to find a man out there who would list himself as a fan. To quote another ‘chick lit’ writer, Lisa Heidke, “[A fellow writer] exasperated that I was sticking with the novel idea, asked me why I was writing chick lit. ‘You should write a real novel.’ And a real novel would be?”

Speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy, for those not in the know) seems to be a much more forgiving genre, but if you thought that it was free of gendered concerns, you were wrong. Many authors revert to using androgynous sounding nom de plumes in order not to discourage male readers from picking up their books. To quote one reader it “took me ages to click with the fact that Robin Hobb is a woman!” Ever wondered why J.K. Rowling didn’t publish as Joanne? It happens in the crime genre too, although nowhere near as much. (Heard of P.D. James?)

It’s all so very... backwards. One is inspired to think of the Bronte sisters publishing as Ellis, Acton and Currer Bell, or Jane Austen publishing simply as ‘an author.’ There’s got to be more than this. There’s got to be more to it than write for women, or write as a man.

We’re heading that way already. Think of the Lionel Shrivers of the world, the Donna Tartts, and the Alice Sebolds. But until we no longer need to make a distinction for ‘women’s writing’, until we no longer need panels about escaping the pigeonhole, and until woman writers stop feeling the need to conceal their gender, we’re not there.

If you’re hearing me, raise your glass. No, better yet, raise your pen, and get scribbling. Be a Melina Marchetta, or a Honey Brown, or a Kirsten Tranter (or a Helen Garner, or a Helen Oyeyemi, or a Jhumpa Lahiri.) And who knows? Maybe you’ll make the shortlist one day.

Because, after all, an all-sausage barbeque is no fun.

She is indebted to Shaneyah Galley, Christopher Grierson, Elisa Thompson, Kash Jones and Deblina Mittra for their help with this article.

AND CHECK OUT THE FOLLOWING
Killings, The Kill Your Darlings Blog

Harry Potter

Southerly's July Guess Blogger

The coverage on this issue in the Meanjin blog, Spike, is also pretty great but I can't find the exact article that I was thinking of... so here's a similar one.

And finally, Lisa Heidke:

This article originally appeared in Murdoch University's Metior Magazine during Semester 1, 2011

The Jane Austen Book Club Week Five: Emma

2011-07-22T10:18:00.007+08:00

This picture was done at the most recent book club by the lovely Lauren! Isn't she super talented? If we're lucky, she may post you all a link to her deviantart portfolio in the comments. Come on Lauren! Pretty please? :)

With all the recent hooplah about women in writing, I think it's kind of great to be re-reading Emma.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Emma's not exactly out there saying men are the root of all evil or anything. In fact, she's kind of doing the opposite. While she vows never to get married herself, it is only to take care of her elderly, miserable father. And her one joy in life is marrying her women friends off. She's got a Noah's Ark view of the world. It must go two by two.

We all have that friend, don't we? I fear, in my group, it may occassionally be me.

But the book is named after her. She is the only Austen heroine who has that after final publication. And the story is her coming of age.

The Emma plotline, that of the "humbling of a pretty, know-it-all girl" (Jocelyn, the Jane Austen Book Club film) is supposed to be one of the most popular of all time. Published in Decemeber 1815, it was reviewed favourably by Sir Walter Scott, and was dedicated at his own request to the Prince Regent. Pretty cool, hey? But there is another plotline to the story as well, and that is the story of Jane Fairfax. Someone at my book club on Wednesday night actually said that it could be argued that it is the parallel story of Jane which is actually the more interesting one.

Jane Fairfax (and here the author does what any confident writer would do in naming an accomplished character after herself! ha!) is an orphan who has been taken in by a family friend and has grown up to be an accomplished young lady. She occassionally visits Highbury to visit her grandmother and aunt, Mrs. and Miss Bates. She 'belongs' to Highbury. And being Emma's exact age and everything, she is also unwittingly Emma's rival. I see some structural symmetry here between the stories of the two girls, or at least some sort of authorial device. Being the only two women of about 21 in Highbury who warrant a mention aside from Harriet who I think must be younger, I see Jane and Emma as akin to Bertha Mason and Jane Eyre- arguably two sides of the same coin. I see Jane as a lesson to Emma, foreshadowing the kind of person she will become over the course of the book. Perhaps Jane is Emma's rival but she is also not attempting to be and by the end of the book, Emma feels sad that she never tried to be better friends with this girl.

This novel is the first time we have encountered the high end of middle class British society. Well. I think thats where they would be. The Woodhouses are landed gentry and most importantly, they still have their money and their house. The Dashwoods WERE landed gentry. The Eliots still are to a degree but they're strapped for cash. The Morlands certainly aren't and Fanny Price is not but her cousins' family is. But Emma is still very much assured of her station. And rank is of utmost importance to her. Now listen carefully because I am going to tell you the best kept secret of the novel.

Emma is a snob.

Ha, you say. I already knew that. So how is it that Emma is a snob and we still love her? I think the answer there lies in the fact that we see the world through her eyes. We see the absurd little world of Highbury in Emma's very judgemental black and white way and we laugh at it, but we also laugh at her somewhat. We find her lovable in her oh-so-very-wrong-about-everything way. Because she's mostly harmless in it. Mr. Knightley on the other hand is pretty much right about everything, as is his brother. They see when people are lying before anyone else. George Knightley (Emma's Knightley) is the first to suspect Frank Churchill of carrying on with Miss Fairfax. And it is he that guides Emma. When she is wrong about things he is the only one who tells her she is wrong and then she corrects her ways, such as when she is cruel to Miss Bates at Box Hill and he scolds her. She then goes to make amends. I think because Emma Regards Donwell Abbey, Randalls and Hartfield as the height of society, it is really only the Westons and Knightley who could have this effect. She doesn't listen to anyone else. When the Coles presume to have a party, she wants to say no outright just on principle because they think they are high society. But then she is not invited and its a huge slight. And she hates that Mrs. Elton presumes herself to be the first lady in every room even when Emma is there too. But then again she hates Mrs. Elton and so do I.

If you've ever seen the version with Juliette Stevenson playing Mrs. Elton in it, you'll know what I mean. Ugh, horrid woman. There are no words.

We see in some of the male characters a few archetypes that Jane Austen goes to again and again. First of all, there is Mr. Elton. He is a clergyman, but for the first time he is not the love interest. He is not Edward Ferrars or Edmund Bertram. At first, he is seen to be a potential love interest by Emma for Harriet, and she convinces her protegee as such, but then it turns out he loves Emma. And suddenly she is no longer seeing him so favourably. Because it turns out that Elton is a worse snob than Emma. He believes, possibly, that to attract a snob, one must be one. And this is true when it comes to Augusta, his disgusting bride. But Emma's snobbery is a facet of her youth and in a way this story is her coming of age. Snobbery in others eventually teaches her to abhor it in herself.

Then there is Mr. Frank Churchill. Another example of Jane Austen never trusting men who are too charming. Like Willoughby and Henry Crawford except it is not the heroine who rejects Frank but Frank who cannot attach himself to Emma. And Emma is impervious to his charms because she really loves Knightley and can't realise it until she is in danger of losing him to a Mrs. Knightley who is not herself. Yet Frank does not end up hated, and therefore he is more like Willoughby than Crawford. He writes a letter and explains himself, and Emma finds that she cannot stay mad at him, just like Jane has been magnanimous in not blaming Emma for her flirting with Frank. Which is really very big of her when you consider how cruel Frank is to Jane.

I haven't said much about Harriet yet, and really there isn't much to say. Emma likes Harriet because (as the Josh character says of Cher in Clueless) she never had a mother and needs a human doll to play with. It is very much like that. Emma needs to be adored and Harriet hangs on her every word. In the end, however, Emma could not truly dispell the true feelings between Robert Martin (a non character in that the letters he writes are only ever paraphrased by others and he only occurs as an off the page character) and Harriet. Which is excellent because by the time his second proposal occurs, Emma has changed and wants her friend to accept. Also, it is convenient because Emma has accepted marriage from the man Harriet loves, i.e. Knightley.

When one really takes into account the lying, backstabbing and manipulation, it's no wonder the story was so easily adapted for a teenage drama like Clueless.

What do you think?

Next week we read Pride and Prejudice. Finally! Mr. Darcy!!!

The Jane Austen Book Club Week Four: Persuasion

2011-07-14T13:18:00.006+08:00

Ahhh the long suffering Anne Elliot. Like Cinderella in muslin.

Book club last night was... somewhat serene. There were two of us in attendance. I didn't even need to use the teapot. And in fact, we didn't discuss the book at all, considering CH got back from New Zealand just in time to make it to Harry Potter Tuesday night and didn't finish the novel. Mores the pity.

I shall continue nonetheless with regularly scheduled blogging. Without further ado... Persuasion by Jane Austen.

The story begins with a little bit of family history. Sir Walter Elliot, the proud fool, unaware in fact of how foolish his pride really is, becomes a little less rich than he would like to be. He is advised to let his house, Kellynch Hall and retire with his eldest daughter the beautiful and equally insipid Elizabeth. His second daughter, Anne, is an infinitely helpful girl who never asks for anything. Perhaps her one fault is that she would rather please others than herself. So, when her father DOES go to Bath with Elizabeth, Anne is not to go too because she won't be of any use. And yet, Elizabeth's horrible divorced/ widowed (can anyone clarify why she's not with her husband?) friend Mrs. Clay IS to be useful, despite Sir Walter at first thinking Mrs. Clay a total waste of space. Which she is.

Kellynch is let to Admiral Croft and his wife Sophia. Sophia's brothers used to both live in the area and it just so happened that eight years previously, Anne had been engaged to her brother Frederick Wentworth. He is now CAPTAIN Wentworth and has become accordingly dishy and eligible. But Anne broke up with him because he was not good enough for her in the eyes of her family and great friend Lady Russell, and therefore when he comes to stay with his sister, and she meets him at her Brother in Law's parents' place for dinner, he won't give her the time of day. Rightly so really. Even she knows that she was wrong.

Anyway, Anne is staying at Uppercross in the house of her younger sister Mary and her husband Charles, who proposed to Anne first but married Mary after she refused, which frankly is a bit strange. I see Anne as a bit of a Mary-Sue in this book at times, simply because she is so good and misunderstood and everyone falls in love with her. Charles Musgrove does, and later so does Captain Benwick. Charles Musgrove has two sisters, Louisa and Henrietta and for a while they both throw themselves at Captain Wentworth but eventually Louisa gains primacy and Henrietta goes back to her old flame, her first cousin Charles Hayter the future-clergyman. (Oh look, Jane Austen has written yet another clergyman in her novels. What a surprise.)

They all go to the seaside at Lyme because Captain Wentworth is to go and see some friends, and while they are there, Louisa falls and hits her head and is slow to recover. She is thrown together with Wentworth's friend Benwick and soon falls for him, leaving Wentworth unnattached. Some people posit that Wentworth's flirtation with Louisa was an artificial one anyway, because he wanted to make Anne jealous. Personally, I think he was so hurt by seeing Anne again that he was desperate to feel loved, and he didn't even know he was using her.

Anne eventually heads to Bath to join her family, only to discover that it seems like Mrs. Clay has designs on her dad (ew) and her cousin, William Elliot has arrived (he is the heir to Kellynch) and is paying great attention to her sister. His affections soon transfer to Anne herself. Sir Walter and Elizabeth are grubbing as much attention as they can from anyone in a high place including some very rich so called cousins of theirs. Anne, meanwhile, spends some time with Mrs Smith, who is poor and widowed and was a friend of hers at school, proving she is more kind hearted than her awful, awful family. Wentworth shows up. They have a few awkward moments. Wentworth becomes jealous of Mr. Elliot. Anne is appalled that he thinks she would even be considering Elliot. Mrs. Smith reveals Mr. Elliot as a low disgusting slug creature. Wentworth writes to Anne to say he loves her still. Anne returns the sentiment. Happily ever after, The End.

Basically, that's what happened, but I do hope you pick up the book for yourself because it is actually much better than I made it seem. I left a lot of good little details out, and the details make all the difference in novel writing. No one can write an English village like Jane Austen. She treats her minor characters like her primary ones.

For example, Mary Musgrove. She's both annoying and amusing at once! She's always whinging about how put upon she is, and really she's just stupid and lazy. But oh, she makes me laugh. In a way, Elizabeth is the same, only less comic. But of course, she's not supposed to be funny. She's sort of an ironic character because here is this person who is so awful that if you don't laugh you may cry. And of course, people like that truly existed. Poor Jane Austen. She saw things so differently, she must have been appauled at people's behaviour every day.

Persuasion was Austen's last novel, written while she was quite ill. It has a much more mature tone than any of the other novels and is indeed more mature in theme. To quote Prudie again, it has an 'Elegiac Tone', which as my Grandpa says, means it is pervaded by a great sense of loss. I know want to include some thoughts from Elisa of I'mJustElisa.

"I did think it was quite a mature novel in a lot of ways which kind of makes sense as it was the last complete one she wrote, and I myself find it quite relatable because unlike a lot of romantic novels it's not like a misunderstanding or mistake that causes the drama. Rather it's a timing issue, and i think that in life this is often the case."

Couldn't have put it better myself.

What are your thoughts? Did you like Persuasion? Did you hate it? Why or Why Not? Drop me a comment and tell me your thoughts, or even just tell me you were here.

See you next week when we read Emma.

Harry Potter Freaks

2011-07-13T12:22:00.003+08:00

As I am waiting on the couch for my ride to get here, my phone beeps. It is not the friend who is supposed to have picked me up ten minutes ago (and to clarify, if we’d been going to any other movie, I probably wouldn’t have been so on edge) but another friend who is going to a different session at the same time. “There are so many Harry Potter freaks here, lol” she says. I look down at the robes I borrowed from my boyfriend’s sister and suddenly feel a little ill.

At the cinema there are many more dressed like me, or worse, but it’s hard to see them because Hoyts has us all sitting in the foyer and it looks like they’ve tried to cram the 300 Spartans into that tiny space. The whole room smells a bit funky. On the opposite side of the room to where my friends are, there are some girls dressed as house elfs, although I’m not sure the word ‘dressed’ applies here. There are also quite a lot of Luna Lovegoods. You can tell who is dressed as Luna because they mostly have Dame Edna glasses on. From where I’m standing, I spot several people in robes like mine, but a little better even because they have a crest. I join my friends, but the one who texted me is absent. And then we wait.

In fact, we’ve been waiting about a decade for this, so a couple of hours in a lobby shouldn’t be much. I got my first Harry Potter book in ’97, as a reward for going to the orthodontist to talk about getting two plates for my killer overbite. We’d gone to the clinic, and then gone to Dymocks before I went back to school. Dymocks looked different back then. The top ten section was on a different wall, and the carpets were oh so very nineties. It was the era of awkward clothing, and glasses that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Professor Trelawney. My mother still had a ponytail, I think. The book I got that day was The Chamber of Secrets. It was shiny and blue and sat on that top ten wall innocently unsurrounded by all the hoopla that now follows it everywhere. All I saw were two boys in a car, and an owl and some bags. And my mum said she’d heard the book was good on the radio. So we bought it. And then I went back to school. I didn’t touch the book for a while, not until after I’d been given the first one by Santa later that year.

From that moment, I’d been hooked. I remember ordering The Goblet of Fire through the bookstore at the uni where mum worked. I remember reading all the letters from fans printed inside the back of Chamber of Secrets. I remember getting to school the Monday after book five came out and hating this girl in the year below me for blabbing that Sirius had died. Likewise arriving the day after The Half Blood Prince came out, and those two friends of mine who never stopped talking Harry Potter spilling the beans on Snape and Dumbledore. Vowing never again. Taking the day off work when The Deathly Hallows came out, and leaving my friend’s sleepover just before eleven to go and pick up my preordered copy, so that I could spend the rest of the day in bed. I barely stirred to go to the bathroom. Mum brought me an emergency ham and cheese toastie at one point because I hadn’t eaten, and she was worried. But I finished it. I was triumphant.

I’ve always been more of a reader than a movie buff, but the Harry Potter movies became, for me and many others, somewhat of a tradition. Those same two diehard Harry Potter fans who gave away the ending to Book Six have become some of my oldest friends simply by being around every time a new movie in the series comes out. (And in one of my old journals, I have an essay that one of them wrote about why she couldn’t believe Snape was evil. So I’d like to say publically to her, you were right.) I don’t remember going to the first few movies, but I do remember huddling on the couch at my old house with the other one of these girls watching the first three movies. That was the first time I saw Prisoner of Azkaban. Playing the clinker game while we watched, asking “Will Harry marry Ginny?” and getting a green clinker for no; asking “Will Ron marry Hermione?” and getting a yellow clinker for maybe. Asking “Will Ron marry Ginny then?” in a fit of giggles and the clinker being pink, for yes.

The first time going to the film was a big to do would have been around June of Year nine. Eleven of us went to The Goblet of Fire for my clinker-eating friend’s birthday. I remember we went to the film on a Thursday night, thinking we were obviously very grown up, and then walking through the shopping centre connected just before nine to pick up the friend who’d been working. Going back to Clinker-girl’s for a sleepover. Positing what would come next.

The next big milestone for me was movie six. We went for the Snape-Essay friend’s birthday this time, totally on a whim, during the day on the first day it was out. We saw someone from our school there, and hid in the big crowd to not have to sit with him.

Then, finally, last year I dressed up for the first time. My very first midnight screening.

It wasn’t the best costume in the world: dumpy old school shoes, knee high socks, a black skirt, a blouse and a vest. I looked a little more like a badly made-up Gossip Girl character than a Hogwarts student. My friends all had scarves in house colours and things like that. We arrived early and sat in a line that snaked down past all the cinemas. Someone was dressed as a Golden Snitch and a boy dressed as Harry put a broom between his legs and chased her up and down the corridor while we all laughed and cheered. The manager had to tell us all to behave. I wished I’d brought cards.

Perhaps I will never again don a silly costume and wait around in a cinema lobby talking about Horcruxes and House-Elves. Perhaps I will never again see a movie at midnight. But it is the future generations that I feel sorry for, the kids who won’t get to grow older with Harry Potter, waiting for his next adventure to be published. The kids who won’t be disappointed when their Hogwarts letter doesn’t come on their eleventh birthday. The kids who won’t whisper lumos into the end of a torch as they read under the covers past midnight because they’re terrified of snakes and the basilisk has Ginny and their mum said time out but they’re so wired they can’t close their eyes because they just know they’ll have a nightmare... anyone else? No? Just me? There will be future generations of Harry Potter lovers, but only mine will be the true Harry Potter freaks.

The Jane Austen Book Club Week Three: Sense and Sensibility

2011-07-06T21:53:00.007+08:00

To quote Emily Blunt's character, Prudie, in the film of the same name, Sense and Sensibility is about "two sisters moving separately towards what they each believe to be the perfect love." Well. I can certainly relate to the two sisters moving separately part.

At the risk of sounding like a nerd here, allow me to suggest that Jane Austen does in Sense and Sensibility what D.H. Lawrence would do on the topic of sisterhood nearly a century later when he wrote Women in Love, which I studied this semester. There are, of course, several very important differences, such as, you know, the entire themes and points of the book not being at all the same. But both novels feature two very different sisters each working out what it is to be in a relationship with another person, and those departures very much represent the gap between Realism and Modernism, in a way.

One thing about the book that really struck me was the significance of the title. I discussed this with my group tonight (the group consisting of LP and DM, because lucky CH is in New Zealand!) I didn't quite understand what Sense and Sensibility were supposed to mean; certainly not in the same way that one understands what Pride and Prejudice mean instantly. But it appears to be all about context. Sense is rationality and responsibility and control, prudence etc. Therefore, Sense is Elinor. Elinor almost seems to be the minor character in the novel because she is so reserved. Her story is less told and therefore not as romantic. One is almost inclined to feel that it was less important to Jane Austen herself, and yet at the same time, Elinor is clearly more the protagonist than Marianne. We often see things about Marianne from Elinor's point of view, but that role is seldom reversed. This is much due to Elinor's feelings of responsibility towards her sister, which at time tend to be even maternal. That two sisters so opposite should get on so well astounds me. Marianne is the Sensibility of the book, meaning in this instance to experience everything fully... with all five sense, feeling all, and expressing all she feels. If she is sad, she weeps, if she is happy, she laughs. She enjoys cavorting about with Willoughby and ignores the impropriety of their doing so in the absence of a formal engagement. I guess this is why her relationship to Col. Brandon almost seems like that of daughter and father. Plus he's 20 years her senior. But I'd still go there.

That was a rather large paragraph, so here's a picture to look at while you rest your brain.

Now, let's talk about some boys.

I'd have to say, Willoughby showing up through the rain to rescue Marianne after she falls is akin to Darcy coming out of the lake... but then again, Austen never trusts the 'pretty guy.' In a way, it was the same with Henry Crawford last week. Too good looking, too charming, too easy a conquest to be true love seems to be the right way to think about it. And she turns out to be right. Shame.

Colonel Brandon on the other hand seems very... okay so he's kind of doting in that he takes an interest in what Marianne does, and he listens to her play music and stuff, but does anyone else think that it's quite... wrong... for him to be pretty much seeing a relationship with her as a do-over for missing out on loving Eliza? And also, if I were Eliza Williams the younger, and my dad married a woman who was younger than me, AND also a woman who had been attached recently to the man who'd knocked me up and run away, I might be a little annoyed. Just a little. Yet, I am whole heartedly on the Colonel's side. Who doesn't want a man who is faithful, and strong, and loves them ferociously? (And who doesn't want the first declaration of this to be to their mum? Awww.)

Finally, Edward. Egh. Boring. The special features on the 1995 film version DVD have Emma Thompson saying that Edward is funny in the book, but I must have missed that. Edward is almost as bad as Edmund Bertram except that he is also deceitful. And foolish. And Elinor is probably going to wear the pants in THAT relationship. Also comparing him to Edmund Bertram, I am inclined to wonder whether Jane Austen had a thing for men of the cloth.

I'm actually with Mrs. Jennings on this one, much as I loathed that character. I would have loved to see Elinor end up with the Colonel and Marianne living with them like their grown up daughter. She was quite resigned to living out her days divided between books and music, and she has to pretty much change her whole personality in the course of the novel just to justify the match. Plus, the elopement of Lucy Steele with Robert Ferrars (even more snorey than his brother) is so ludicrously contrived that I must condemn it as a transparent deus ex machina. Bad form. It's set up much nicer in the film that Emma Thompson wrote because at least it is foregrounded.

But please, for your own safety, do not get me started on Lucy. I may accidently wound you with the harsh things I have to say about her and her insipid sister.

I hope, after all that, that you don't mistake me for hating the book. I actually loved it. There was such a liveliness in the prose, and after struggling through Mansfield Park, that was very refreshing.

What did you all think?

Next week, we cover Persuasion.

Jane Austen Book Club Weeks One and Two: Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park

2011-06-30T11:30:00.008+08:00

It's holiday time, and if you're a book nerd like me, that means it's time to lay around endlessly, reading books.

But what's even better than just that is the opportunity to talk about those books later with friends you love over tea and tasty treats. Thus, the Jane Austen Book Club was born. Or rather, the idea of the Jane Austen Book Club was appropriated by myself and the friend my father calls The Loud Girl from the movie based on the book of the same name by Karen Joy Fowler. (Big deep breath. Golly. That was a long sentence.)

Book club has been going for two weeks and already I feel the need to declare it a rip roaring success. :)

Here is a picture of the aforementioned tasty treats. I made the Florentines with the help of the lovely History Boyfriend.

In Week One, we tackled Northanger Abbey.

We talked until our voices gave out. This book is very clearly a first novel, it is all about sounding out the process of writing a good novel. Austen spends a lot of time defending the novel form, and writing about what makes a good protagonist.

What we didn't like was the fact that Henry Tilney proposes to Catherine because he knows she likes him and he can't think of any reason why not. Heroes should have passionate feelings for the heroine.

A lot more was said, but give me a break, it was a week ago. Here are some more photos instead.

mmmmmm.....

This is my attempt at doing something I saw on the Alien Onion blog, and failing. That's my gal pal C.H. behind the book.

Week Two, i.e. last night, we talked about Mansfield Park, which I have *ahem* yet to finish. Although... to be fair, I did read it in year ten. I don't remember much about it though, only that Billie Piper was in the movie version and that I didn't like her in it. But don't even get me started on Fanny Price. Dear god, what a terrible excuse for a heroine. She's a sickly, pathetic little thing, isn't she!?

I also decided that Filch's cat in Harry Potter is named after the Aunt in this book. Nosy, not very nice... they share many traits. Mrs. Norris (of the Mansfield Park variety) is a very well developed villain. I love the way that Jane Austen is able to make you hate Mrs. Norris and Mary Crawford even while they are saying nice things and being perfectly rational. My favourite bit thus far has been when Maria Bertram accuses her Aunt Norris of spunging because she's managed to con the housekeeper at Sotherton into giving her a whole lot of free stuff. I also like it when she takes the curtains from the cancelled play. No wonder she insisted on their being green, she wanted them after! What a cow.

Anyways, here I would like to invite you all to participate in the JABC with me through this blog. In the comments section, talk about any of the books covered thus far! :) And next week we tackle Sense and Sensibility.

Happy reading!

Em

Trove Launch (Volume 2, Issue 1)

2011-06-28T12:41:00.004+08:00

On this grey, rainy day in Perth, I am pleased to announce that I have been published in Trove!

Trove is an initiative out of UWA which publishes creative arts projects on a twice yearly basis. It started in 2010.

The process from submission to launch has been an extrememly rewarding one and I hope that you enjoy my story, which you can find here. (And remember, I always love to hear feedback, even if it's constructive criticism!) Please also check out the other fantastic work which has been put up on this site, and consider entering yourself for Issue 3. Entries close October 28.

Is it just me... (with spoilers!)

2011-06-05T17:38:00.003+08:00

Or is the ending to Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate incredibly strange?

She's going along, writing this book with characters who eventually grow on me as a reader, and I'm listening to the narrator (Fanny) and growing very attached to her, and hating Lady Montdore as well I should, and wishing I had a pair of goggles like Cedric's and then suddenly, WHAM. Two of the male characters run off to be a happy little couple together in France, along with the heroine's mother, and the heroine hooks up with a Duke character who has conveniently appeared in the last two or three chapters. And it all happens in about a sentence.

Me: Wait, what? *Reads the paragraph again* Yep. That just happened.

I'm going to put my reaction down to a few points. Number one, according to reference site of all reference sites, Wikipedia, Boy Dougdale is sexually ambiguous.

Sexually ambiguous??? The man has slept with everyone. He's slept with his wife's sister in law. He's slept with and married his niece. He hits on underage girls. The only thing that I can think of that might make him sexually ambiguous is the fact that he sews. Excuse me for living in 2011, but I think it is neither relevant to a person's sexuality, nor deplorable for a man to sew. In fact, I think it's pretty neat. But I guess in 1949, it could be called queer.

Number two: I've realised that perhaps Love in a Cold Climate is one of those rare elusive classics that has managed to make it into popular accord without necessarily having a plot. If there is a plot, it is certainly not conventional. What drives the book is its superb supporting characters. The book should be all about Lady Montdore, not her boring, surly daughter.

If anyone else has read it, I'd love to know if you agree with me.

Does it seem like Nancy Mitford suddenly got bored of her book and just tried to end it?

Perhaps it IS just me. Perhaps I can't appreciate the finer delicacies of the English wit.

A New Editing Process (Part 2: Characters)

2011-05-22T16:30:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I think writing a story would be so much easier if you didn't have to have characters.

Other than my main characters, a non-stereotyped but still 3D (AND INTERESTING) cast of characters is something that I seem to struggle with. And I also have problems writing characters that are not me. (I never write Mary Sues, but I still use myself as an easy template, I think. I don't bother going the hard yards to really get inside another character's perspective.) Or at least, this is how I USED to approach characters.

Here are some fun characterisation techniques that I have adopted to help me improve this part of my writing.

* What kind of coffee does your character drink? What kind of tea? DRINK IT YOURSELF. I've switched from Earl Grey to Black tea and I've stopped drinking sugar in my coffee. Who knows what I'll swap to when I next write.

* Play the Sims. Not the lame building the house bit but the building the Characters bit. What size are their noses? What do they wear to bed? To swim? Do they wear jewellery? What are their defining attributes. The Sims 3 Amibitions is a must have tool for consolidating the parts of your characters that are BASIC and CRUCIAL. Also, you get to play Sims.

* Start a file of your characters. Use a rolodex, or use a computer. Have one character per page. Write down all your thoughts about them, or scenes from their p.o.v., or 'diary entries' by them.

*MOST IMPORTANTLY, don't be lazy. Do your research. This one I've learnt the hard way. And I'm still learning. It can be boring sometimes but then again, if researching it is boring, then writing it might be and then reading it definately will be. So if it's so boring you can't make yourself do it, you're writing about the wrong topic.

If you characterise just right, you should be able to imagine your characters having a life off the page. You should be able to answer questions about them the way you can about your best friend.

How do you get to know your characters?

Happy Scribbling!

Em

Moved to Tears

2011-05-11T19:59:00.004+08:00

What was the last piece of literature that made you cry?

I've just read some excerpts from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safran Foer, and that did it for me. There is a tear mark in my book to prove it and everything.

I remember when I was younger, I had this best friend- you know the type- who seemed like the epitome of cool to me, and when she said that Checkers by John Marsden had made her cry, I thought that this would be some way of measuring how intelligent I was. Of course, I must have meant emotionally intelligent, but I was to young to have known I meant it. I went out and borrowed the book from the library and I read it. I focussed really hard, sucking the marrow out of each word, and (I kid you not) even pretended to cry in sad bits, hoping that real tears would follow. I knew where I was supposed to be moved/shocked/whatever. But I was not.

That's not to say that Checkers wasn't a brilliant book. But I wasn't my best friend; it was her personal context that had made her react to it that way. This girl lived in a menagerie of sorts- at that point she had a dog and a cat, and heaps of goldfish and rabbits and maybe even a bird or two, although they might have come later. And in the book, animal cruelty is quite a major theme. Me, I'd never had a pet. In fact, animals kind of worried me. I was terrified of being bitten and I couldn't hold an animal calmly to save my life.

I think what makes a book most moving is that vicarious experience. Never having had a pet at that point, I couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose them, or even to love them. Now I do have a dog, and I love him in that embarrassing, obnoxious treat-your-animal-like-a-human-infant way. (I'm actually not ashamed of it either, come to think...) I wonder, if I read Checkers again, would I be more moved?

If you've read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close you'll probably be able to guess why I was disturbed by it. It was clever, poignant and heartbreaking, to use an overworked set of compliments in this industry. I recommend it to you, and I'm sure that Kleenex will too once they realise how high their sales will go because of it. (Oh gee, that was a really terrible joke...)

But make sure you have someone you love on call to give you a hug after. I know I needed it.

The Truth, In Poetry

2011-05-01T17:48:00.003+08:00

341 by Emily Dickinson
After great pain, a formal feeling comes-
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round-
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought-
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone-

The is the Hour of Lead-
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the snow-
First- Chill- the Stupor- then the letting go-

From the Norton Anthology of Poetry, New York: Norton, 1975 (Written in 1862 (?))

Do you find a truth in this poem, like I have?

A New Editing Process (Part One)

2011-04-29T15:13:00.003+08:00

CHARACTER

There are two problems that I consistently have with my writing that I am aware of. The one that is seriously affecting me at the moment is my inability to create consistent characters. Maybe it's because I have my fingers in so many pots right now, but I have trouble thinking of my characters as real people rather than 2D entities.

The Sol Stein 'Triage' Method, which I am roughly using for a guide while I edit my latest work has inspired me to ask questions about my characters. How old are they? What do they do for a living? Where do they live? What would it like to go on vacation with them? How do they feel about money? I have now created a new Word document for each character that appears in my story. Each time I clarify some detail about my character, it goes in there. Fingers crossed this will work.

I'm also in the process of asking myself whether or not I would be able to write the story from another character's point of view. Perhaps if I feel so inclined, I might try that with my more difficult scenes.

Also, to make my minor characters more real to me, I am making sure I know as much about them as all my other characters. Just now, I've spent a good 45 minutes on The Sims 3 Ambitions just making the characters- how they dress, their make up, their hair... everything down to the shape of their eyebrows. Now if only I could print photos of them, I'd be pretty set.

This level of detail is really making me feel bogged down but I hope it will help in the long run. Will let you know.

Film Review: Post Grad

2011-04-22T17:05:00.002+08:00

Last night, I realised that someone had tried to make a movie about me, and that movie is called Post Grad.

Total bookworm style over-achiever girl graduates Uni. Has a contingency plan that includes working at a publisher. Wants a loft apartment. Plans to cover entire walls in floor to ceiling bookshelves. In other words, me. Or perhaps not... observe.

Ryden Malby, played by the stunning Alexis Bledel is mostly a likable character, except for the fact that she regularly asserts that books are all she knows, because you actually never see her pick up a book. The movie basically follows her journey as she experiences the pitfalls of (shock horror) not getting everything that she wants. When she loses her dream job (as- get this- assistant to the editor, which if the movie is anything to go by includes shoe to gum ratio maintenance in its job description) to her foot-faced rival Jessica Bard (or some similarly forgettable name) Ryden's life is turned upside down. To add to her frustration, her family is nuts and her best friend is conveniently in love with her. I say conveniently because he seems to spend the whole movie chauffeuring her, rubbing her feet, buying her things and generally flattering her ego.

The movie starts to deviate from my own life in several key ways before the first half hour is even up, much to my disappointment. For a start, my father doesn't act like a four year old, or think selling belt buckles out of a van is a career. (Poor, poor Michael Keaton. He'll be looking back on this one in a few years time and cringing.) Ryden is so unbelievably arrogant that she assumes SHE WILL GET THE FIRST POSITION SHE APPLIES FOR. Then, she feels put out when she receives a less than lukewarm reception from some random Happerman and Browning (fictional publishing company) employee in a big scary office. Who is she kidding? The publishing industry is in decline and there were like 80 000 other applicants, including someone who beat her to the role of valedictorian and won't let her forget it. Insert job related stress (been there, done that), a fun but substance-less affair with hot Brazilian neighbour (sadly, not done that), a brief stint as the world's worst friend (more on that later) and then cheesy movie finish straigh out of the Hannah Montana storyline. Yawn. A good one to watch while you're ironing.

Sue Lynch is a sadly un-utilized part of this movie. Aside from coddling her weird son and bitching at her mother in law, she makes perhaps one joke in the whole film. There is also no chemistry between her and Keaton; they act like a married couple maybe once. This is unsurprising. I don't mean because Lynch is gay; if my husband acted like he needed to repeat preschool, I'd act like I didn't know him either.

Strangely, the movie is not only about me, it could have been written by me (if I had eaten way too much cookie dough/ other substance)- the scene where Ryden doesn't make it to Adam's first playing gig as a musician even though she is his muse is directly out of one of my own stories... also featuring a character called Adam. Either I am psychic or I'm just not as original as I think.

I really wanted to like this movie, simply because I could relate to the situation and to the character, initially. Had the writing and the characterisation been stronge, it would have been passable. On the whole, I would have to give this movie a D.

Sorry!

Long Distance Phone Call

2011-04-15T21:20:00.000+08:00

I said, the news that you are married is the tsunami after the earthquake. A fire, standing inside a kick drum at a rock concert. Eating chalk. He said, that’s very poetic. And topical. And tasteless. The operator said, to continue your conversation, please insert one euro. She said it in Catalan. Then in Spanish. Then in English. I yelled. He lectured. But but but, I said. What you did to me, I said. The lack of passion, we said, the eyes glossy like fishmarket cod. Your lecherousness. Your manipulation. Your superiority. At least wait until you come home. I can’t trust you anymore. You’re making a scene, lower your voice. Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t you remember the beach house? Don’t you remember how quiet it is there? Books about birdwatching. Mismatched plates. Video tapes and a sand-filled VCR. Let’s go back there. The wife never mattered there, you didn’t know she existed. She matters now. She doesn’t have to matter. She matters.

How to Feel Happy (When you Can't Get Out of Bed)

2011-04-10T19:41:00.001+08:00

Step One: Put on some headphones.

Step Two: Start the video.

Step Three: Close your eyes and sing.

Hope you feel better. (Hope you felt amazing to start with.)

And Then the Rains Come.

2011-04-07T14:52:00.003+08:00

My facebook page has been in a frenzy. All day, people have been getting excited about the rain. And with good reason, too! Today marks the end of a very long, very warm dry streak.

Just before, it started to absolutely bucket down. There was a solid wall of water cascading down the outside of my window. I could imagine the seals around the glass not being quite good enough, and water starting to spurt in. Drenching me, drenching my furniture, drenching my books, and maybe washing everything away. But probably not.

Perhaps it's a bit sad that I can be so excited simply because it is raining.

Just for fun, here is a list of my five favourite things about when it rains.

1. Snuggling up with a good book
2. I sleep better because of the constant, soothing patter
3. Cute rainy weather clothes. Boots. Hats. Umbrellas.
4. I don't have to wash my car as much
5. Writing until late at night. There's something very Wuthering Heights about it all.

What do you like about rain?

Rain rain, come again.

What A Very Special Person Made Me For My Birthday

2011-03-31T11:18:00.003+08:00

Someone who likes you will buy you a diamond pendant... girls like those, right?

Someone who loves you will customize you a typewriter.

(Obviously, I have removed my nameplate from the image and replaced it.)

To Pushing Forwards...

2011-03-30T17:13:00.002+08:00

It was more than three years ago now that I set down my first words on this blog.

"I have been told that the beginning of a piece of writing is the most important...that some editors and critics will stop reading your work simply based on how boring they find your work. But beginnings are hard... sometimes i even like to write beginnings at the end of a story.

Here i have no chance. Here i begin my journey to publication. I intend to be published before i turn twenty. The definition of published here extends to magazines and journals but not to the school magazine, although that would be fine too. I have three more birthdays until that day. If you have opened this blog because you are genuinely interested by my progress, I thank you. If this is a pure fluke, please feel free to check up on me. Any kind words of encouragement would be much appreciated."

I can see myself back then in my minds' eye... a little less self assured, a little less book-snobbish, a little less grammatically correct.

Yesterday was my twentieth birthday, which was the deadline that I set myself for becoming a published writer. The parameters that I set myself were clear. There is no way I can use clever rhetoric to get around it. So did I achieve my goal?

I think I will leave that up to you. I have logged all my publications under the tab of that same name.

In my head, when I wrote that, I remember that I wanted to say purely that I would have a novel in print by my twentieth birthday. While I have worked very hard at that goal in particular, I am now a lot more informed on the process that is involved and the trials and tribulations of the young writer. I've had countless rejections for my short work alone. I've also had some success, but not as much as I would have liked. I don't want to be famous. I just want some kid or some adult to pick up my work and feel something. I just want to tell stories, in the words of a very wise young man who was kind enough to have coffee with me this January.

I need a new goal. I want to be bold here and say a novel in print by 25. But I also don't want to set myself a goal that I cannot achieve. Suggestions?

Emily of the Bronte Persuasion

2011-03-23T08:19:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I don't like my name. I think to myself... it's not very literary. It's the name of a song by Bowling for Soup about cheating on your girlfriend. It's the name of an accident prone little girl in a book I used to love as a child, (Oh Emily, that book was called). I can't think of any really inspiring characters in books I have loved who share my name either. There's a prostitute in Dangerous Liaisons who gets used as a writing desk? (Emilie)

And then I remember that one my favourite authors shares my first name. That would, of course, be Emily Bronte who wrote Wuthering Heights.

I've actually just read Jane Eyre, followed by Wuthering Heights, and I feel as though maybe I should now attempt to read some Anne Bronte, just to be fair. None of her works are on the uni reading list but Agnes Gray is short and I am about two weeks ahead. Dilemma...

The thing about reading Wuthering Heights again is that it seems like an incredibly fast paced book now. When I first read it, in year 10, I didn't get it at all. There were too many Cathy's. I enjoyed it more the second time. This time around (the third time) I actually understood everything. That's a pretty awesome feeling. And, to make things even cooler, there's a new movie in the works. Or maybe it's soon to be out, I don't know. I found this cool article. What great timing, considering I have a powerpoint presentation due in a few weeks time. Huzzah! (Revenge and Passion in Wuthering Heights, how does that sound for a title?? Pretty good, I'd warrant.)

Here's the article.

Three quick things I love about Wuthering Heights:
* The characters are thoroughly wild.
* The strange, northern English accents, i.e. that of Joseph (although my edition was printed cheaply and sometimes they typo his name to Jospeh. hehe)
* Heathcliff. Enough said.

On the not so good side is the polyphonic nature of the book. I don't understand why the tale is told from so many points of view... or rather, I do understand that it is a commitment to realism that makes it so, but I don't like it. It can be rather a cacophany at times. And Mr Lockwood is annoying. I wish he wasn't in it at all. But that is the power of the story; it outweighs the faults of its mode.

Okay, I'm going to go hunt for my copy of Agnes Gray before work. Have a good day!

What are you all reading?

Honey, that's Fantasy, not Realism

2011-03-18T12:54:00.003+08:00

You've all heard of Mary Sue's, right? I'm sure you've read stories where they've appeared before. Hell, I'm sure you've met one. They exist in real life, I assure you. Mary Sue's tend to write stories which contain Mary Sue's, and the cycle goes on and on and on.

And it's this kind of writer I want to have a little whinge about today. The Mary-Sue type.

I believe that (well in the case I am referring to anyway) the cause stems from two reasons.

* Number One: The writer does not believe that anything that has actually happened to them is worth writing about. They do not believe THEY are worth writing about, or that any facet of their personality is worth writing about, and so on and so forth. (And yet, strangely, they seem to like the sounds of their own voices, and using these voices to go on and on and on about how they are not worth writing about, all the while laughing in a faux-self-conscious manner that makes the average class member want to commit Hara Kiri with a plastic ruler.)

* Number Two: The writer has a certain idea of what writer's SHOULD be like that has come from God Knows Where (that magical place lots of bullshit comes from) and they either try in earnest to become this person, or they fake it.

[As a segue, one of the things I personally believe about writing is that you definitely should fake it til you make it. I think it's pointless to say "I wish I could write like X writer but sadly I never will be able to." That is a complete turd of a thought and shame on you for giving up so easily. I was thinking to myself today of an example of near perfect writing that I came across in Creative Writing class last year, and I have decided to hold that piece up as the be all and end all of what I aspire to. And until I realise I have actually become the type of writer that the author of that work was, I am going to PRETEND to be that kind of writer. But I am going to do it badly, most likely. And when people give me criticism, I am not going to defend the drivel by making a santimonious speech about my INTENTIONS.]

So in other words, they lie about what sort of writer they are and they lie about what sort of person they are. And as someone who has recently come to value honesty as above all the most beautiful quality in some prose (honest writing is raw emotion without raw writing, as I have heard a wise, wonderful person say) I can't stand people who write absolute verbal vomit and then hand it to me expecting a cookie.

The result of this is a new genre in student writing. It's a hybrid of Realism and Fantasy, but really it's just Fantasy. I'm going to call it Frantasy though because I have to give it a cool name.

Let me give you an example of Frantasy.

Joan stepped off the plane. She smelled bad, and she knew it. Plane rides did not agree with her. Getting through customs made her head pound. She wondered what people were doing back at the firm. She wondered whether anyone would remember that tomorrow was her twenty fourth birthday, or if any of them would care. In truth, she would much rather have been at the firm, arguing with the partners than back home in Hicksville explaining to her mother why she still wasn't married.

Okay so I could have done better there. But I hope you get the point. Straight away we have been given a strangely overachieving twenty four year old lawyer with stereotypical mother issues. Snore.

Everyone has a narrative constructed of where they want to go. Without this, we lose focus. But writers need to be realistic. And to truly grow through your writing, you need to be honest with yourself. If you're not, don't expect anyone else to be. Or, expect them to be brutally so. Expect ME to be brutally so, if you ask for my advice.

Believe in your experiences. Believe that there is some story in you worth telling. Believe that honesty is the best policy.

Quotables

2011-03-17T08:46:00.003+08:00

"You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don't, probably no one else will."

- Flannery O' Connor

"I recognise that I have made a whole career out of making my anxieties get up and walk around, not only in my own mind, but in the minds of readers."

-Peter Carey

"To write is to sit in judgement of yourself."

- Henrik Ibsen

Just some thoughts for the day. What are your favourite writing quotes? Can writing be taught? What kind of a writer are you, are you neurotic like Peter Carey (and like me)?

A pointless blog post to work through my writers block. (Or is it writer's?)

2011-03-03T22:31:00.002+08:00

Sometimes I sit down to write something and it just flows. It's just right. Now is not one of those times.

I recently looked at an old story, one I wrote about something that happened to me which was a big deal at the time. And I turned it into some sort of revenge thing, I think.

I'm not entirely sure that's healthy.

But I mean, I write for a lot of reasons and today I am wondering if writing for the wrong reason is what's causing this story to stagnate? Or is it a combination of the things?

Is it that when my boyfriend asked me how I imagined my male protagonist to look physically, all I could say was forty?

Is it that I really want him to be the bad guy, but he's GOT to be the good guy, and as much as I love my female character, she's got to be the bitch?

I think this calls for a strong dose of re-writing. And re-structuring. And re-planning. Because there is a story to be told. And there is a deadline to be met. And there is a personal standard which will NOT be disappointed.

I'll keep you all posted... (unless I don't.)

Character Sketch

2011-02-28T17:18:00.002+08:00

Just a teaser of something I am working on...

Grace is standing by the fountain at Placa Catalunya. She is holding a book, as usual, but she isn't reading. She's waiting, holding her sunglasses in one hand, partly leaned against her lip. She needs to reapply her lipstick. Usually that's the only makeup she wears-- she has a baby face and can't carry off eye make up. Also, her jawline is too strong. Dutch, they call it. And her eyebrows are so dark, they're almost beautiful. Almost, though. Not actually beautiful. The kind of girl you could mistake for beautiful if you were too far away. She's one of those annoying independent girls. She wears clothes from vintage stores rather than op shops, as if it makes any difference, as if it somehow makes her a better person; smarter, cooler. It doesn't. It makes her pretentious. It makes her act superior. It makes people dislike her, as people tend to when someone is obviously a snob.

She's the type who says her favourite band is The Beatles, even though she was born in the nineties and only bothered to buy the greatest hits (and not even on vinyl) and she likes to pretend she's read all of Dickens. And maybe she has. But none of these things make the slightest difference. None of these things mean anything to anyone other than Grace, try as she might to persuade them.

Why Everyone I Know Is Getting a Book For Their Birthday This Year.

2011-02-22T11:30:00.002+08:00

I'm getting a little bit sick of the harsh truth about the publishing industry's current state. I've read some articles in the last two months that have really opened my eyes to the ramifications of the e-book revolution on writers. I mean, I guess we should have seen it coming. After all, it happened to the music industry first. And I guess saying that 'there is nothing like holding a paperback or a hardback in your hands' is kind of like being one of those hipsters who insists that nothing will ever sound as good as vinyl. Yet I find it hard to believe that I am the only person out there who will miss the concrete sensation, and the beautiful smell of a real life bound book.

Here are a few articles for your perusal:

One from Sara Foster's blog.

And one that makes me worry that I will soon be hearing from less of my favourite authors. (This one comes to you from Saundra Mitchell's blog but I heard about it through EgobooWA) Just as a side note to this blog, I'm aware that it's not the E-book that is causing the problem in this case, but the reaction of people to the availability of the E-book... that is, those people who steal 'free' copies of E-books.

I'm sure there are heaps of other eye opening articles out there and hopefully when you read them, you'll feel as inspired to action as I am. If you have a birthday coming up and you're due a gift from me, IT WILL BE A BOOK. Most likely it will also have come from an Indie bookshop.

Shout out to my favourite Indie, Crow Books in Vic Park.

My Favourite Book

2011-02-21T14:24:00.003+08:00

It was pointed out to me today that I frequently refer to several books as being my favourite. This has got me thinking. What book would actually be my favourite? And by what criteria do I define it as thus?

I think it would be reasonable to say that a favourite book should be one that you've read more than once. Of those that I say are my favourite, that leaves me with Cloudstreet, Jasper Jones and Wuthering Heights. That being said, there are many books which I would gladly read again had I the time, and had I not eleventy-million unread books and unwritten stories on my mind. (Which reminds me of the scene in Gilmore Girls where Rory steps into one of the giant libraries at either Harvard or Yale- possibly Harvard during season...err.. three- and immediately berates herself for being such a slow reader, because she will never read all the books housed in that library, never mind those housed in the many others at Harvard. This is, of course, absurd, as the girl reads everything.) (And yes, I still like Gilmore Girls. I like picking the references, and sometimes copying the outfits.)

So, criterion number two: Favourite books compel me to contact the author/ see the author live. Obviously, I could try to contact Emily Bronte but I haven't demonstrated any clairvoyant abilities to the present day. That leaves me with Jasper Jones, Cloudstreet, The Shifting Fog and Remember Me. Yes, I am a fickle creature, and how much I like the author as a person is very much a factor in how long my favourite book may stay my favourite.

Criterion number three: Favourite books keep me up all night reading. This leaves me with Jasper Jones, The Distant Hours and The Woman in White. It's probably also a good idea to keep in mind the fact that my memory comes in drips and drabs. I can only really remember those books I have continued to love in the last three or four years. And I've loved a lot of books.

Finally, I think that in order to define a particular book as your favourite, you need to want to narrow it down to one. Personally, I'm really liking having several favourites. I am liking the variety this is demonstrating about my personality, and about my interests at different times. Obviously, there is one book that has appeared in every category and yes that would probably be the current fore-runner... and not just because an essay on it got me an HD in first semester last year.

So yes, if we're ever speaking and I start talking about "my favourite book", perhaps for confusion's sake, it may be wise to ask me of which book I am speaking. Or maybe, you can see if you can guess. 99% guarantee that it won't be one of the ones listed in this post.

Catcher in the Rye does not appear, for example.

Just something I was struck by...

2011-02-15T18:06:00.002+08:00

On Monday (by which I mean yesterday), as I sat in my only Creative Writing lecture for the semester, I was struck by the oddest sensation. It was a sensation in the form of a realisation, more specifically, and that realisation was as follows.

I am not the same writer I was last year.

No, indeed I am NOT the same writer when you consider the things I have done in the latter part of 2010 and the earlier part of 2011. I have...

*Met my favourite local author for coffee.
*Met my other favourite author at a book signing.
*Come second in a competition.
*Run my own fiction segment.
*Written a terrible query letter.
*Redrafted a terrible query letter and used connections to get it in the hands of someone who can actually do something with it.
*Emailed (read: harrassed) published authors in search of advice.
*Finished the fifth draft of my manuscript.
*Wasted a tree by printing that manuscript double spaced and with 4cm margins, and spent a tenner mailing it.
*Worked out (although who knows how successfully) what a note on the author's view of potential readership and marketability probably should look like.

And a lot of that was really only in the last month or so. I guess that's why on Monday, or 'Yesterday' as you regular people would say in this situation, I was struck by a sense of separateness. I felt like the teacher was talking to me and expecting me to nod knowingly. I don't know whether I liked it or not.

Freewriting.

2011-02-11T16:13:00.002+08:00

***I've been wrestling with writer's block now for... perhaps nearly a fortnight? Since I got back home, anyway, although daily scribblings in my notebook about how we did this that and the other hardly count as holiday writing.***

It's morning, Saturday. The throes of a deep sleep still hold onto me and even with my glasses on, it's hard to see the screen. To my left, I can see that I didn't bother to close the curtains all the way. A thin sliver of bright light peeps in. And I am still in my clothes, from last night. This how I can tell that I needed to sleep so badly. I needed to relax.

I can hear the dull whirring of my pedestal fan but it's hardly stirring the air. Perhaps it's because in the night all my blankets migrated to the end of the bed and formed a barrier that the cool air could not break through. Some nights I move the fan close to the bed so that this cannot happen, but not last night. I wonder what my hair looks like.

There are three things I can safely assume about the day: One, that it will be hot. Two, that everyone will be home or at least around. Three, that today I will feel restless.

It's how I've felt the past two days. It's been strange. Boredom has nearly brought me to tears. I'm finding no pleasure in reading or watching movies. I tried baking. I tried seeing my friends. That, at least, was fun for a while. Then they had to go, to work, to see their significant others, to their lives. So it was back to being restless.

I am restless, because now that my novel is effectively 'finished' (for it will never be done, it will always be imperfect to me) I am emptier than empty, I am dryer than dry, and I am boreder than bored.

So bored that I post freewriting on my blog and inflict my boredom on all of you.

Having Trouble With...

2011-02-06T11:59:00.003+08:00

Covering letters. Not for jobs, although those are hard too. Just ask my blogger buddy Jade. I'm talking about writing ones. I am talking about Dear Publisher, my name is X and you should most definitely want to publish my stellar book.

Specifically, I'm finding synopses difficult. I know my story inside and out like the back of my hand. How am I supposed to be able to decide what a publisher will find the most intriguing about this story that has been well and truly in control of my life for nearly three years now??? Just how?

But, as difficult as I find it, I must persevere. And so, I wrote this charming little piece... sarcasm intended.

"A young boy captivated by the romantic history of his parents sets out on a search for love in the summer of 1937. The love of his life turns out to be the daughter of the town bully, and her cold aversion to his advances sends him looking for answers in battlefields on foreign soil. While a prisoner of the Japanese in Singapore, the boy learns that growing up is something one must do on their own. He returns to Fremantle later in the war only to find that everything has changed— especially his own heart."

Now don't get me wrong. For all intents and purposes, that IS my book. But I'm not selling it right, if you know what I mean. I'm not mentioning that my book has bullying, licentious women, blackmail, attempted rape, a prison break, 'ghosts' and a 90 year old man going into cardiac arrest at the sound of his first love's name.

I've since rewritten this synopsis, mostly for the purpose of sending a letter of introduction to someone in the biz... it's a complicated situation but when opportunity knocked, suffice to say, I answered the door. And I thought the letter was okay, and so did the person who proof read it, but I am a realist and I am not getting my hopes up. But in between writing these two synopses, I came across a great little blog that helped me at least build a template to work on. Find a near perfect example of a cover letter here, if like me you are struggling.

Has anyone else been in the same boat? Any tips or suggestions? Much appreciated everyone.

Coming to you live from my home, back in Australia and back at my desk...

Elimy.

Elimy in Singapore

2011-01-23T16:21:00.002+08:00

Well well well, look who it is. Fancy seeing you here.

What am I up to? Oh, you know, not much. I've been snoozing since we got in from our long flight. The bed's deceptively comfortable. I'm in one of those moods where if I lay down long enough my eyes might just happen to drift closed and the next think I know, it's hours later. Oops.

What else? Well currently, I'm sitting in a tenth storey bay window, watching traffic. There's a storm brewing. I'm trying not to think about how hungry/tired/sore I am.

Mum's just asked me when the latest time I have to post my parcel is. That's not a stupid metaphor. I actually have to fork out some cash and send a story all the way back to Australia in time for the 31st. It's going to be expensive, but worth it. I'm making a public promise to myself here and now. This year I will be the best that I can be and I will send my work anywhere that will take it. I plan to have at least two competition placings or magazine publications under my belt come December 31st. Metior does not count.

Also, I've been reading The Woman in White. It's fantastic. Wilkie Collins is very witty and his characterisation is amazing. I'm tearing through it.

But I am still being a very neglectful writer and this feels bad. I miss my laptop. I need to train myself to handwrite again. That is, after all, what my journals are for.

Hoping you are well. I will talk to you again soon, I hope.

EM

Sometimes I Feel Like I'm In Barcelona...

2011-01-13T14:24:00.006+08:00

Or rather, sometimes I dream I am in Perth, and I wake up in Barcelona... surreal!

The architecture here is amazing, from Gaudi to Gothic.

I'm always up early so I get to see the sun rise...

and set!

And in between there is a lot of opportunity for taking amateur photographs!

But not a lot of time to write :(

Musica!

2011-01-12T01:09:00.002+08:00

Our television is stuck on RAC105. Every day is like getting up early on a Sunday morning to watch Rage. Over here, they seem to love Justin Bieber's Smile, Bon Jovi's keep the faith, anything by Cher, Rhianna, Lady Gaga etc. What I wouldn't give to hear some Vampire Weekend!!!!!!

Anyway, the official clip for this song... sadly not the one I have been able to embed, but here is the link so you can have a look... reminded me of OkGo! Also, even though I have no idea what he is singing, the song seems very happy and I just liked it. One day, I hope I know enough Spanish (or Catalan... geez how bad is that, I don't even know what language it is!) to tell you all what he's singing about.

Have a lovely day, where ever you are :)

Elimy in Barcelona-land

2011-01-09T14:05:00.004+08:00

Where on Earth is Elimy?

Well, she's in Barcelona of course.

It's seven in the morning, but where I'm from it's about two pm. So naturally I have been awake for hours. Mr Jetlag wants to be my best friend. You should read my journal; if I publish that ever, it shall be titled Ramblings of an Exhausted Four Year old With a Crayon. I shall reread last night's entry later and cringe, for sure.

It's been a turbulent trip so far, and I am not just referring to the killer headwinds that we encountered on the thirteen hour flight from Singapore to Milan. Can you imagine being 19 and travelling in VERY close quarters with your entire family for nearly an entire day, trapped in a flying tin can that smells of pickled meat? Not pleasant, I can assure you. At least I managed to sleep a little on the plane.

The place that we are staying is a serviced apartment, and let me tell you that it is NOT what I expected. It is small, slightly stingy, the walls are thin and I can hear what our neighbours are up to at all times pretty much. Hooray. People fighting while I'm in the bath. Oh well, at least the bath tub is big...

Also, I've heard Justin Bieber's Smile about 4 million times since we arrived. Cannot escape the Bieb.

Anyway, I am determined to make this city my own. I am trying to pick up as much of the language as I can, and having a Catalan aunt and cousins really helps there. Yesterday we went to Park Guell, which is the Gaudi Park and it is AMAZING. The houses look kind of like gingerbread... It was designed by Antoni Gaudi for the rich and famous but bought by the council in 1922 and opened to the public. People like to take photos with the dragons on the great steps in the entrance to the park. And all through the park, people sell jewellery and knick knacks off blankets. There was music, and bubbles and bird whistles... you know, the annoying kind they have at the royal show!

Until next time, avid readers (and that is a joke, by the way)!

New Year's Resolution #1

2011-01-02T14:40:00.004+08:00

You may find this hard to believe (or maybe you won't), but I have 70+ unread books in my room. I can't stop buying them. It's a bit of a problem.

Which brings me to resolution number one. I am implementing a ten to one rule... for every ten books I read, I may buy one more. Something tells me this is going to be a hard rule to enforce... I should get reading.

Haha how's this for irony... I was just listening to some lyrics that went "Life's temporary like New Year's resolutions." You said it Blink 182.

Life

2010-12-29T18:28:00.004+08:00

You were that kid, weren't you? That kid who always secretly kind of liked doing their homework. Especially if it was for English, or SOSE. (You were probably one of the only kids who knew that SOSE stood for Society and Environment... and the fact that the acronym was a phonetic one rather than one letter standing for one word each really burnt your waffles.) You relished being given the chance to show your teachers that YOU listened. YOU heard them when they showed you how to use all the correct terms for things. You loved that first-time feeling... that is, the first time you correctly used a compound word in a sentence. You got mostly A's all through high school. If you got a B, it was usually in maths or science, and you felt like a failure. You didn't get dux of your high school, but you were friends with the person who did. You probably still are. You aced your TEE; didn't really even have a legitimate cause to think you wouldn't, but you fretted about it all the same. When you saw your score, it STILL could have been better. But it was enough. It was more than enough. You'd known for months where you wanted to go to University, and it suprised you because it wasn't where all your friends were going, and it wasn't the Uni with the highest estimation in most peoples' thinking. You got there, and you loved it. You started to go out to places, do things other than read. Your friendships strengthened. You learned what was important to you. You met someone. It didn't work out, and you broke up with them. You felt like no one would ever love you again, so you threw yourself into your work. You spent time with different people depending on the mood you were in. You found a dress style you liked. You started liking caffeinated beverages. You started liking alcohol but not as much as when you were sixteen. You finally felt comfortable in your own skin, and you got to keep that eager, academic part of you. You met someone else. So far it's worked; more than worked, you're the happiest you've ever been and so is he.

Somewhere along the line, you decided to write a novel. It's nearly finished.

It's like homework, only better.

Some days you just need a little happy.

2010-12-20T21:39:00.002+08:00

Dancing to this barefoot in my room after a stupid dumb bad dumb day at work. There almost seems to be magic in this song... I want to feel inspired enough to write before I go to bed.

When You've Got a Navel as Pretty as Mine, Of Course You Want to Gaze at it.

2010-12-12T21:57:00.006+08:00

Navel-gazing... Excessive introspection, self-absorption, or concentration on a single issue: "The optimistic trend masks a looming problem, which has sent the travel industry into a renewed bout of navel-gazing" (Financial Times).

Apparently this is the plight of creative writing produced by people in my age bracket, and people in my situation (That is, students of Creative Writing) in general. It is the creative equivalent of dipping your toes in a freezing ocean but being too cowardly to dive in and swim towards the horizon.

Let me just stop right here and say that the only reason I even care about "the direction of creative writing produced by people in my age bracket and situation" is because of some feedback. Last Friday, in the mail I received a certificate telling me that I had placed second in the Katharine Susannah Prichard Short Fiction Awards for the under 20s category. And that was pretty awesome. I got a little happy out of that. Won $25 and I got a nice gold piece of paper to tell me I'd done well, so that was nice. But on reading the judges comments that buzz died a little bit. The judge, who shall remain nameless (but he knows who he is), in his general comments, blathered on about the overall poor literary standard of everyone's work, and about how language use and length were neither experimental, nor fully utilized. Now, being general comments, I have to remind myself that this person was not calling me into the Principal's Office, sitting me down and yelling "YOU SUCK" directly into my face. But it was disheartening nonetheless, and several of the comments brought me back to the whole navel-gazing argument.

I recall reading an article in Kill Your Darlings Issue Three by Emmett Stinson which talks about the growing trend in criticism to label works being produced in such a way. Stinson, as far as I can tell, made the argument that this should be applied perhaps more to the American journals than the Australian ones. He also concludes by saying that to insist on all writing having some sort of political agenda or deal with a political issue at least, is an unrealistic notion.

So how can we not navel-gaze?

As a CW student, I am constantly told to write what I know. So largely, that would consist of: working in retail, going to uni, driving around the same old suburbs to hang out with my friends. But apparently, to write about my life is to navel gaze.

Perhaps what all writers should do from now on (in fact, it should probably be made a law) is log onto their twitter accounts and take all the trending topics for that day, and make a story about them. Write about stuff people really care about, like Chuck Bass having survived the season 3 gossip girl finale, and Oprah's tour of Australia. Who cares about the trials and tribulations of leaving home? Oprah climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge! And she's got a Book Club, so she's better than the rest of us humble peons.

It's a post modern thing, guys, that's what it comes down to. Navel gazing is a fact of life. Reading is about interiority and the subjunctive a lot of the time, and perhaps that's what writing is about too. Imagining what it would be like to be someone else. I think I'll leave all the political writing to people who actually understand (read: like or care about) politics.

Congratulations to all the winners of the KSP Short Fiction awards, even the 15 year old who beat me (because you must be really goooooood girly) and especially to my friend Elisa!

And to the judge of the KSP thingy.... THE YOUNGEST PERSON WHO ENTERED WAS TEN. FIND SOMETHING NICE TO SAY TO BALANCE OUT YOUR HURTFUL WORDS.

To see the Judges Report and Winners for the competition, Click Here.

The Tudors...

2010-12-01T21:28:00.007+08:00

I sit writing this post having just watched the final episode, and all the special features of the final season of Showcase television show, The Tudors. I discovered this show about a year ago, but my fascination with the Tudor dynasty goes back further. For anyone who is an avid reader of the novels of Phillipa Gregory, the period was a time of wonder and enchantment, but also of fear;her books are written from the point of view of those women most known and descriptions of violence are kept expedient. The Tudors series creator Michael Hirst puts a different interpretation before us in showing us the 'real' Henry, subtly taking us on a journey from fun loving young king to tyrant.

Here are a few points of interest about the show.

1. Henry Cavill

I must confess that Cavill became my favourite cast member because I developed a slight crush on him... that being said, the show has overall a very attractive cast, and the first two seasons of the show at least were devoted to making England seem like a very sexy place to live (but also a cleaner one than I know it would have been.) But what amazes me about his character, Charles Brandon, the first Duke of Suffolk is his longevity in the cast. While other characters come and go, often without explanation, the Duke remains King Henry's oldest and truest friend. The pair grow old together, and it seems that as Henry's wives come and go, Charles remains a testament to loyalty. (How's that for 'bro's before ho's'?) Brandon's fealty to his sovereign costs him his faith, the love of his wife Katherine Brook, and his youth. His death in the final episode was to me far more touching than the King's final moments, proving to me that my affection for Henry Cavill had developed from a silly girlish crush into respect for the attention devoted to the role.

2. Sarah Bolger

I was delighted to learn that in the fourth and final season of The Tudors, Sarah Bolger had finally been given an opening credit. There is something very human about Bolger's portrayal of the young Mary Tudor that I have found lacking in other presentations of her. She is much more relatable than the old, cruel spinster she is often known as; her hurts are real, she loves, she is strong and she is true to her beliefs, making her a very strong female role model of the period, despite what would happen during her reign (1553-1558). I attribute this humanity to Bolger's charms and her talent.

3. Alan van Sprang... because no TV series is complete without a character who resembles a pirate

This point should not entirely be devoted to van Sprang, but rather to the league of temporary core cast members like him, who often disappear without explanation (and in the case of van Sprang's character, Sir Francis Bryan, appear that way too.) The show is so intriguing that my cries of 'But whatever happened to Sir Anthony Knivert?' (Callum Blue, season one) are forgotten in due time. Other characters who disappear without much explanation include lady Margaret 'Madge' Sheldon. How a man like Francis Bryan could have come into the King's good graces is completely beyond me, seeing as he is immensely immoral.

But also, he's a pirate. It's just funny.

4. The plethora of terrible accents, first and foremost in the acting of Gabriel Anwar

Try as they may, they cannot cover up that a lot of the cast is Irish. Even the King's voice changes and becomes largely false sounding as he tries to make it sound gruffer and older. But it is Anwar's English accent, in her role as the Princess Margaret, that is most laughable. Good times.

5. The host of Harry Potter guest stars

Just an interesting little point; when the King goes into seclusion after the death of Queen Jane, he is entertained by his fool, Will Somers... played by Argus Filch, or in any case the man who plays Argus. And in season four, the Earl of Surrey appears... only it could very well be Harry Potter because David O'Hara was also in the most recent Harry Potter Film (Deathly Hallows Part 1) as Runcorn, the man Harry changes into when he partakes of polyjuice potion to get into the ministry.

Also as a HP related segue... Fleur Delacour was in Gossip Girl the other night. Does this mean HP is really nearly over??? Everyone seems to be working on new projects.

In truth there are many reasons why I love this show, and this period, but it would take me a whole book to write them down. It took me a week and a half to get through all four seasons of the show, and it has been a nice little holiday from being a writer, but I shall get back to work on the Compound now, with fresh eyes and a re-invigoured approach... that is, as soon as I can stop speaking and thinking in Early Modern English.

Why I did not complete Nanowrimo this year, and other tall tales...

2010-11-26T20:41:00.003+08:00

The dog ate my manuscript.

Just kidding. For a start, I didn't even print it.

Look, this blog post is not for me to justify what I am doing, and it's not really to explain it, but it's a simple way of letting you all know that my mind has been elsewhere this month. Namely, it's been in 1994, when Winston Keller is old and having a heart attack in his woodworking shed. (If that doesn't make any sense to you, don't worry, he's not a real person.)

I am inspired to continue work on my Magnum Opus as my primary goal for the moment, and Love this City has consequently been shelved.

Seriously though, cut me some slack, I got to 35000 words despite not being finished uni for the semester until yesterday, and I managed to get pretty great marks in my final assignments too so I wouldn't say I failed.

Pulling an All Nighter...

2010-11-17T11:08:00.003+08:00

Have you ever been so caught up in a story that you will do anything to stay awake long enough to read it?

Last night I think I washed my face about six times because my skin was growing tight around my skull and my eyes were drooping painfully out of their sockets... but not literally of course. Fatigue had me in its grips. Its bony talons pulled my eyelids shut forcibly. I drank a tonne of water. I washed my face. I got up and did a little dance, jogged around the room, anything to stay awake.

I haven't had this stay-up-all-night feeling for a while. I think the last time I did I was reading... either Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey or Sustenance by Simone Lazaroo, but Sustenance doesn't really count because it was for school. Both great books though.

Last night, my victim... er... I mean choice of book... was The Distant Hours by Kate Morton, who I had the pleasure of meeting last Friday morning at a Dymocks Morning Tea event. Can I just say, the woman is an inspiration. She has my life. She's gorgeous, she dresses the way I like to think I dress when I try hard enough, she has a family, she's an amazing writer and she's smart and funny and... I think I have a girl crush. Hehe.

While we were at the event, mother said "I think you're got yourself a new idol" or something along those lines, and I had to explain to her that Kate was already my idol, but that it was nice Mum had picked up on it. (Mum also said "One day it will be you up there" and that gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. Thanks Mummy, I love you!) But yes, for a budding historical novelist, Kate is a dream idol and I learned a lot from her. I've emailed her once before, I think I mentioned this in my previous post, and she emailed back. Lovely, lovely woman.

And her book is lovely too. It's the kind of book that I dismiss when I write them myself because they are fanciful and unrealistic. But I realised last night that if I love them when Kate writes them, why can't I love them when I do?

The Distant Hours is a beautifully crafted book, much in the same vein as her other two novels, The Shifting Fog/ The House at Riverton and The Forgotten Garden. I recommend reading them in publishing order, so that you can have Kate grow in your estimation and you can watch her go from first novel to mega star.

It was well worth staying up until 3 am to finish, and now, even though I only had a little sleep before Mum woke me up to say goodbye before she went to work... (don't worry, I fell back asleep again, I've had my ten hours)... I'm plenty ready to take on the day. Exam study is needed before HARRY POTTER PREMIERE TONIGHT!!! And yes I am dressing up. As Ginny or Hermione, haven't decided yet. Yes, I am a geek.

Have a nice day.

:)

Since it's November and All...

2010-11-14T21:17:00.003+08:00

I figured I'd save myself some time here and write a post so that everyone who wants to know how Nanowrimo is going can find out. I also have a recently attended author event to blog about.

It's the end of Week Two. People on the Nano site often talk about getting "Week Two'd", which I understand as being that feeling of complacency which comes from succeeding on riding the novelty of the project in Week One, and therefore deciding it is okay to rest on your laurels for a week because there are still two more to go after it.

Can I just say, that's a really bad idea? I've been told write every day a lot in my life, and while I'm not a religious follower of that, if you're trying to hash out 50 000 words a day, write every day already. Don't complain. Don't push yourself for that 1667 that's recommended. Don't even worry about plot. Just write something. Open the word document and write "man this character is starting to annoy me..." That's what I love about Nano. I could easily be writing a letter to myself (a 50 000 word letter) documenting how much I think I suck at writing this month. I'm not. But I could be, and I like that idea. Or I could be writing a really, really boring account of the things I think while I stare at that little blinking cursor. But that would probably go something like this: "My eyes hurt. I should get them tested. Nah, I got them tested in March. Maybe my glasses are dirty. Maybe I'm tired. I should have coffee. Nope, too late at night. Tea it is. I'll try the English Breakfast. Or just stick with Earl Grey, no point stirring the pot too much. (Bit of tea humour for you there.)" And while no one would want to read that, I would have gained the practical experience of sticking to a goal that I set out for myself.

Of course, it is much more satisfying to write an actual book. Now, let's put aside for a moment that the week after next, I have two exams to write, and that they both look really hard. Let's forget about those. Let's pretend they don't exist really hard, in case that might make it true...

And let's say I have limitless spare time, and I can get up every day, and write from 11 til 1... you may remember that's the time I do my writing if and when I try scheduling. I've got this whole plot set out. And I've got inspiration, and encouragement. Why shouldn't I actually try?

So, I've actually been giving it a fair go, although more often than not, I skip a few days and then spend one day a week madly catching up. So far, my characters clearly have ideas of their own.

On Friday, I went to a morning tea with author Kate Morton, who's newest book

The Distant Hours I am currently reading. I met lots of lovely people, encouraging, friendly people who genuinely pretended to be interested for at least a little while. Thanks to them, if they ever stumble across this blog, and it was lovely to meet you. I've actually emailed Kate before, all the way back in 2008, asking her for advice about sticking to strict historial accuracy. And she eventually got back to me, wrote me a lovely email.

Well, because I'm a nerd, I saved the email, and I printed a copy to take with me to the talk. I queued up for 40 minutes to get all my Kate Morton books signed, and I proudly presented her with the email and asked her if she remembered sending it to me. And she said she did, which was so so so lovely. I hope she knows that the reason I asked was because it meant a lot to me to receive it. Asking people you admire for help is incredibly inspiring, especially if they write back. (Oh and during question time, I also asked her what her views are on literary agents. She's pro them, if you're interested.) So she signed all my books, told me to keep at it, and when I asked her if she would like to keep the copy of the email, she said yes.

Simple pleasures. That night I wrote a lot. I was feeling pretty motivated. But I'm still behind on my Nano stats.

Thoughts on: Neuromancer (William Gibson)

2010-11-08T17:50:00.002+08:00

Hmmm did I tell a fib yesterday when I said it was my last thoughts on... I think I did. Oopsy.

Bear with me for one last post on my uni books? Pretty please? I'll be your friend.

And I'll keep it short and sweet.

First of all, I really liked Neuromancer. It was edgy and it was young and fresh, and minus all the high teck jacking in and stuff, it was sort of what I want my Nano novel to be this year, although I have already given up on making it work the way I want, seeing as the scene in which Dean discovers The Shakespeare has already turned into something of a Magical Realist scene. If you have no idea what I am talking about, but would like to, click here.

Henry Dorsett Case is a really good example of an antihero. He likes drugs. He likes them a lot. He's not all abstinence-guy, "oh no, I couldn't possibly, my body is a temple." And that makes him likeable. I think if anyone is doing research on Anti-heroes, look at Case, because it's really difficult to put your finger on the reason you acutally do like him. I think for me, it was because he was actually a really soft, caring person even though he couldn't admit it. I mean he was tender, emotional, loyal, that sort of stuff. He couldn't admit his own grief about Linda Lee to himself, and he couldn't admit that he was sad when Molly left but it was no secret to me. Trust me to find the romance in Cyberpunk, hey?

And how cool is that genre name? Cyberpunk. Cybernetics and the Punk aesthetic. Love it.

Seriously, are any of you as freaked out as I am that I am saying I really liked a Sci Fi book? No? Still with me? Good.

All that being said, I can't say I really understood a lot of it. Especially towards the end. This is a bit of a spoiler, but in the epilogue where they explain that they failed in their mission, I was thinking "really???" because I'd been so confused by the climax that I'd just assumed their plan had worked.

But that's just me. As Molly would say "that's just the way I'm wired."

Actually had a look for the second one, Count Zero, in the library today but couldn't find it. If anyone has read it, I'd love to hear if it's any good.

AND MURDOCH STUDENTS! Take Popular Literature, Science Fiction and Cyberculture with Prof. Frodsham, you WILL NOT regret it. The man is a legend. He tells amazing stories, gives writing tips, and has obviously had an amazing life. Well worth it. Loved the course, and if you have happened to stumble across this post, Professor, thank you very very very much.

Thoughts on: The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. LeGuin)

2010-11-07T16:07:00.004+08:00

Hey again.

There are just a few little things I have to say about this book, and it is my last thoughts on for a while because the semester is over, so it's writing time... and then Barcelona time, which will be amazing!

The Left Hand of Darkness is one of those books that even if you DO NOT like Science Fiction and Fantasy, you have at least heard of it. I think I'd probably seen it for the first time in the library at my primary school because for a while people were constantly telling me to read LeGuin but I was never into it. And aside from a few favourites like Tamora Pierce, I never really jumped on the Speculative Fiction bandwagon. I've always been a realist novel kinda girl.

So needless to say, The Left Hand of Darkness kind of knocked me for six. First of all, it completely wrecked my reading schedule for the semester. I didn't finish it in time for the lecture OR in time for the tutorial the day after, which is just not me. I'm queen of the nerds usually, particularly when it comes to reading. But the theoretical side of the book was so intense. I struggled with the idea that the people on the planet Winter had no sexual characteristics at all. I kept imagining them as like people in morphsuits, or like people in bald caps painted as alien, but basically essentially male. It didn't help that the main character, Genly Ai, constantly referred to other characters by the pronouns "he" and "his". It's hard not to picture something masculine when the description is saying His face, His hands. And as a sometimes very outspoken young woman (ha! sometimes.) the fact that I couldn't imagine a world without gender was quite unsettling for me.

Maybe that was the point of the book. Maybe LeGuin wanted her readers to think about how much of the way they think about their identities is based on gender. Maybe she wanted to show us the way our world is split into all these binary oppositions. Dark, Light. Male, Female. Rich, Poor. Because at the end of the book, when Ai's own people come down in the rocket ship, he realises that he sees them as the ones who are not human, and the Gethenians who are both sides of the human binary at once, as the true humans. And I like that idea. I like it a lot. But even LeGuin has said she copped a bit of flack for the use of he, and the not completely realised notion of ambisexuality. Still, a lovely effort.

And speaking of *ahem* lovely efforts, this is me trying to draw a Karhidian... but I realise that it looks like a cross between a monk and the Last Airbender.... it was an exercise purely to see if i could draw someone neither male nor female. What do you reckon?

Halloweeners...

2010-10-31T22:34:00.003+08:00

This has possibly been the most boring Halloween since I bothered to start recognising it as a fun day to celebrate... Usually my friend Austen (he likes zombies) throws a Halloween party (and when I say usually, I mean he did it last year) but this year I think he's a bit stressed out, which is a shame. But if you look at some of his artwork, it's pretty amazing, the outcome of that stress.

So today wasn't really Halloween for me, it was like the countdown to Nanowrimo... a scary prospect in itself. I'm staying up to midnight to launch this thing.

So heres my blurb anyway, for anyone who's interested:

" Love This City

When Dean Godfrey's life takes a turn for the unsatisfying, he turns to alcohol. And when his favourite bar closes for construction, he's forced to find a new place to drink. He finds himself at The Shakespeare, a super exclusive underground club disguised as a public laundry. Inside are some of the weirdest, meanest, sexiest people he will ever meet.

And if satisfaction is what Dean's looking for, he's got a good shot at finding it there."

Hopefully your Halloweens were better than mine!

Thoughts on: Sustenance (Simone Lazaroo)

2010-10-24T17:30:00.002+08:00

As I write this, I am trying to think back to Wednesday night when I stayed up past midnight finishing this book. I remember that it was unusually warm considering that the day had been so rainy, and I remember that my bed and its usual mountain of pillows was very comfortable. I remember turning page after page of this book and being fascinated by the things I recognised from my own life in the story.

Because, you see, Simone Lazaroo, author of Sustenance, teaches at my university, and her daughter is my age. I went to school with her daughter. And the Perth in this book was my Perth, so that was pretty amazing.

I have to keep this Thoughts On (the third last) short and sweet because I only have two weeks left of uni until the nuclear apocalypse also known as the day all my assignments are due happens. I have been writing a plan for a History essay all day and its longer than the actual essay is supposed to be, so that's a bit annoying. Plus it's all quotes. You know how they say work smart, not hard? I think I'm doing that wrong.

But I digress.

Sustenance moved me to tears. The book was beautifully put together, insightful, touching and honest. And it did something I have been trying to do with my own book. It ended realistically without leaving the reader disatisfied. I am flabberghasted, and I will read this book again. And so should you. Just look at its pretty cover!

Thoughts on: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

2010-10-18T15:12:00.003+08:00

What if your life is an illusion? What if your life is a myth? What if your entire life has been predestined for you, written in letters that look like clothing on a washing line by an aging gypsy magician who dies not once but twice? What would you do then?

Aureliano Buendia never has to contemplate the answer to this. He doesn't have time. The manuscript, which after 100 years can finally be read, tells of his imminent destruction; seconds later, the village of Macondo is wiped from the memory of the Earth by apocalyptic winds.

This may be one of the most important books I have ever read. It raises several issues which I will briefly outline.

1) History.

I'm not only a student of English Literature, I'm also a History student. It makes for an interesting point of contrast, when I realise under the influence of discourses like New Historicism and Post Modernism, that OFFICIAL HISTORIES do not exist. And just like a novel, history can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. While many read Garcia Marquez's work as the history of the Latin American people, others argue that this is precisely what the author intended not to do. I don't know what the official line is, but by using Magical Realism, perhaps it was his aim to show us that History, capital H for the official versions, is just another fairy tale.

2) Solitude and Love

Being alone, truly alone and isolated from those around you, like Colonel Aureliano Buendia in his silver workshop, making and remaking gold fishes and like Jose Arcadio Segundo Buendia, forgotten in Melquiades' workshop with some fifty plus chamber pots, is like living your death. The line between the living and dead is constantly blurred. I cannot pin point the part in the novel where the original Jose Arcadio Buendia, tied to the chestnut tree, stops being a corporeal being and starts being a ghost. And the only remedy for this living death is love. Lovers in this novel take on almost divine significance. Love has the power to turn sisters against each other, and estrange mothers and daughters. It knows no boundaries, and leads to incest, bringing the novel full circle just in time to obliterate Macondo forever.

3) Disorder

Many of the supernatural events in the novel struck me as not supernatural at all. This is my own interpretation and not based on anything I have read. Rebeca's eating of non food items like dirt and plaster could easily be Pica, an eating disorder that appears to be on the obsessive compulsive spectrum. The birth of children with "pig's tails" to parents from the same blood line could be spina bifida. Even madness is viewed within the context of magic. Thinking about this novel in the context of the late 1960s, when it was written, it becomes clear that these sorts of things were not widely known about or discussed. And literature's purpose is to make sense of our lives; look how far we've come. Depression is a theme used by every television program aimed at teenagers. Asperger's Syndrome appears to be the popular disorder of the time, appearing in countless books and movies and TV shows this year.

I've written an article on Pica with this in mind for the next issue of Metior (themed Disorder) which should be on stands come exam time.

So those were just a few thoughts of mine. I'd like to end with a quote from the end of the novel, which I thought was perhaps the most amazing ending sentence I've read yet.

"...races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth."

Thoughts on: The Hunt for Red October (Tom Clancy)

2010-10-11T16:02:00.002+08:00

I don't think that it's for no reason that there is an essay question option for my class that claims the characters are less important than the technology they use. Had the manuscript been rejected by the publishers, the rejection letter might have read something like this.

Dear Mr. Clancy,

It is my regretful duty to inform you that we will not be optioning the publication of your manuscript "The Hunt for Red October." As you know, we only take on a small number of new options per year, and your work narrowly missed the cut.* Your writing shows great determination and commitment, but is not what we are looking for at the current time. We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours.

Sincerely,

Joachim Bennett**
Big False Publishing Company, Elimy's Desk, Australia

P.S. You might consider sending your submission to the United States Navy, as many of your passages read EXACTLY like a technical manual. If fiction is definitely the course that you would like to pursue however, you might want to try a) having a plot and b) not hiding it under the world's most comprehensive list of acronyms which may or may not actually exist.

Notes on the above fictional letter:
* Have you noticed that rejection letters and emails nearly always tell you that you narrowly missed the cut? I sometimes wonder if this is even the truth. Would they say that to me if I submitted the dietary information from the back of a box of corn flakes? Or am I always NEARLY good enough, because where I am sitting, that seems to be worse than being told I totally suck.

**Aren't I good at making up names? And Perth-ites, if you're listening to Hamish and Andy right now, isn't it funny that Andy pronounces this name Huck-eem rather than Waaack-eem?

Anyway, regretfully, back to Tom Clancy.

Can you tell I didn't like the book much? It took me way too long to read, considering I had about a week to do it in. Now I have 8 days to read 100 Days of Solitude! EEK.

Also, the movie of this book is funny in its complete suckiness. When Sam Neil dies, his dying words are "I would have like to have seen *death rasp* Montana!" *Dies*. Oh the hilarity, oh the kitchiness. And how funny looking is Tim Curry! Grow your hair out, mate, and put the fishnets back on. Rocky Horror forever!

I hope I never have to read another Thriller. Way to ruin the Cold War for a history lover, Mr. Clancy.

It's the Most Won-der-ful Time of the Year!

2010-10-08T19:51:00.001+08:00

That's right! It's almost time for Nanowrimo 2010. Who's excited? I certainly am!

E-Books

2010-10-05T20:08:00.005+08:00

Some of you may know of my fellow blogger Jade Carver. If you don't already, I suggest you get acquainted.

This morning, she posted a short blog about why she likes what she has come to experience of e-books. I would like to do a brief counter-point to her argument, all in the spirit of lively debate.

I do not own an e-book reader. And while I like the novelty of new toys as much as the next girl, I am all for preserving the print industry. After all, it is my industry of choice. If we all take up reading e-books, this will reduce the demand for print books. While in some cases, this will be a blessing... just think, fewer books about sparkly vampires on the shelves!... in others this will be a problem. Jade talks about the fact that her e-book reader gives her access to books which are out of print or not available in Australia. Well. It is lack of demand which makes these books not available. And if people use their Kindles and whatever elses to read these books instead of buying them, demand obviously goes down. So yeah, it's cheaper. But if you work in publishing, it's actually a lot more expensive. I think in the long term (and sadly, despite my own feelings, this is the way we are headed) the e-book industry is going to severely damage the publishing industry. We will probably see the demise of the small independent publishing houses, although I most certainly hope not.

When it comes down to it, ordering a book doesn't take all that long. And when you receive that book you found on Amazon, or where-ever (The Book Depository is also good), it makes you smile, doesn't it? Simple pleasures in a brown paper envelope.

I'm being a bit dramatic here, but imagine a world without books! And yes I mean to say without books, because novels on screens are not BOOKS in the thingness of them. I don't honestly know what they are, but I'm reminded of that paper that used to come out of fax machines that was all joined together sheet by sheet like a concertina, and had the perforated stuff down the sides that I used to love stripping off. Except in pixel form.

On a more personal note, I don't like e-books because like a lot of people, I wear glasses to read, and I don't think that staring at a screen to read is particularly good for my disintegrating vision. If I sit at a computer at length (and I frequently do), it can make my vision blurry for a little while afterwards.

I want to appeal to the public here and ask you what you love most about books in their coporeal form (hehe)? I love them for the simple reason that they smell comforting. The smell of inky pages (even second hand or from a library) has always been one I associated with parts of my childhood.

Jade's reasons for liking e-books are very good. And I think she certainly has a fair point to make. But there are always going to be some people, like me, who resist. I like being the weird chick on the train with the bag so full of books she can barely carry it. I take a book with me everywhere. And some day I want to see my own novel bound and in the hands of a person not unlike myself. Or even totally unlike myself. I don't think I would feel the same sense of accomplishment if you could buy The Compound only as an e-book. E-book readers probably mean that in the future, it will be possible to self publish on the internet and sell your own novel. And that's going to give rise to the praise of a lot of mediocrity. It's going to blur that line between the true craftsman, and the one who takes the technological shortcut. That's actually probably very hypocritical coming from a blogger...

Look, when it comes down to it, make up your own mind. Yes, e-books will save you money. Yes, they are convenient. Yes, they are snazzy. But some things are worth preserving.

So many books... so little time...

Thoughts on: The Rights of Desire (Andre Brink)

2010-10-01T17:11:00.003+08:00

Don't ask me why, but when I bought this book ($10 at the guild second hand bookshop), suffice to say I was less than enamoured with it. For some reason, I looked at it and it seemed thick; the other thing that struck me was that it seemed like a depressing French book. Is that just me being culturally ignorant about the name Andre? Perhaps. More than perhaps. I kept thinking about it along the same vein as the book Perfume. How stupid I was.

The Rights of Desire is a charming, deep novel set in South Africa, around the time of Mandela's long walk to freedom. I think the historical setting tells you a lot about the tone of the book; the weight of history hangs low throughout the lives of the protagonists, and the sadness and futility of the way they live their lives immediately puts me on their side even though the things that they have done, and continue to do I sometimes find reprehensible.

Although by the final section I found that I could predict what was going to happen, for the first time this was right. There really was only one correct way to end this book, and the fact that Brink chose to end the book the way I would have had him end it (albeit not a happy ending, but what is these days?) was heartily satisfying.

Please, please read this book. Maybe then you might understand why I read it in cars, at parks, in bed, out by the pool and every other place I went. This book, to be sentimental, was a friend to me.

Thoughts on: Dr No (Ian Fleming)

2010-09-26T11:42:00.003+08:00

I would like to introduce you to some friends of mine. Not close personal ones or anything, but people that I've spent some time getting to know over the last week or so. You're probably going to say "That's Sean Connery and Ursula Andress." Well, actually you'd be wrong. Because I'm not talking about the actors. I'm talking about James Bond and Honey Rider. Or if you read the books rather than just watch movie versions, Honeychile to be perfectly accurate.

I'm not exactly a Bond fan. But I've watched a lot of the films. Dad and I went through a phase of watching them when they were on foxtel. I may have been in year 12 at the time but it could have even been last year. My memory isn't the most reliable, and therefore it won't surprise you if I say I don't remember much of the movies. I can tell you that the first one I saw was one with Connery in it, and there was a shark, and it may have been... no I was going to say Never say never again, or Die another day, and I think those are both Pierce Brosnan. I've never seen any of the Pierce Brosnan ones I don't think. I've seen the Roger Moores, the Sean Connery's, the George Lazenby (which is fun to turn the sound off on and redub over with friends, if you're looking for a party game. Alternatively, 10 points to anyone who invents a Bond drinking game. Perhaps every time he says a cheesy line...)

I'm a little off track. So for class I read Dr. No. And in the middle of reading Dr. No, I watched Dr. No. And is it just me or is the movie villain a) up to a lot more bad stuff than the book one and b) a lot more sadistic. Also, I wouldn't thought this possible, but the book is overtly... kind of romantic, aside from the whole fact of him moving on to a new girlfriend in the next book. In the movie, Bond has... 3 women that he uh... hooks up with... and in the book there is only Honey. And the way he thinks about her is as more than an exploit, which was nice.

I can't say it was the best book I've ever read because the language was a bit over done and sensationalist, but hey, it passed the time.

And oh my god, I love Ursula Andress in that film. I love the way she talks. It makes no sense at all.

Shall I Map My Influences? I Think I Shall.

2010-09-24T17:19:00.003+08:00

This was done at the request of the lovely L.

There are many things which are not on that list; to name a few, One Tree Hill, Gilmore Girls, The Young Ones, Phillipa Gregory Novels, John Hughes Movies...

And If You Edit When You're Angry, You Only Wake Up Sad...

2010-09-22T22:26:00.002+08:00

My year ten teacher used to say that in writing it is necessary to kill your babies, which I can only assume is an approximation of the well known phrase kill your darlings. What she meant was that you can't let your own feelings about a piece of prose stop you from editing it for the better.

I can see the merit in that.

Well, tonight I am in a bad mood. I won't make excuses. I am just in a bad mood. I came home from uni today wanting to write and I spent about half an hour writing something and then deleted it all because it wasn't going anywhere. Then I did some laundry etc, came back and tried to write something else. And I started off really well. But that sort of faded when I realised I have NO IDEA how it feels to be someone's step father. Plus the story had a bit of a Lolita vibe going on.

And I sent it to a friend, so if I do get grumpy and delete-button-happy, it won't be gone for good.

What really frustrates me is that I haven't had anything published except in Metior for maybe more than a year. And that makes me almost want to pack it in and get a real job. (See? Bad mood.)

But because you can't do anything about that at 10 34 pm, I did something else instead. I took a story I've been sitting on for ages and deleted a huge part of it.

And it really does feel like committing a murder.

Thoughts on: All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)

2010-09-16T11:11:00.003+08:00

That's right... I finally finished it. And this edition of Thoughts on contains SPOILERS.

Those of you who know me, know that I was struggling to get into this one. I carried it around a lot, but often I would read only 3 or 4 pages every few days because it was driving me crazy. McCarthy kind of has an aversion to using the same punctuation as normal people, but I guess that's his style. I can respect that. Everyone has their own style when they write and I'm sure I manipulate the rules of English in ways that annoy everyone. For example, I use way too many commas. My motto when it comes to grammar is "Commas are a Priviledge, not a Right."

This book really didn't make sense much in the first section. I couldn't work out who was being talked about sometimes; was it John Grady Cole or his father (the places where I wasn't sure, it was usually his Dad), and Lacey Rawlins was a character which I expected to be female. Oops. The fact that there are no quotation marks when people speak is difficult to get used to (but hey it happens in Cloudstreet too) and when Spanish is used, it is not translated. I could guess at some of it, but most of it I just had to pick up the tone. It was that or have a Spanish dictionary with me and even working out each individual word wasn't guaranteed to give me the meaning of each sentence. On the plus side, I think I have learned that Caballo is Spanish for horse.

I'd read reviews of this book on Shelfari, and people were saying things like "if you just get through 50 pages, it gets interesting". Because more than one person said it, I wanted to think it was true. Generally, with reading, there is a 50 page rule anyway; if you don't like something after 50 pages, stop bothering. Being a uni text, that rule alters slightly and becomes if you don't like it after 50 pages, suck it up Princess. So I kept reading, even though page 51 came and went and I still wasn't sucked into the world of the book. I would say I really started to love the story in the middle of section 3. And that's more that 150 pages in. These last two days I have been reading it voraciously. I don't know whether the text got better or my attitude did, but it was nice to be really into a book like that again, even if it was preceded by a big gap in reading caused by the same book.

What I liked about it most was the depth of characterisation. And what he did with tying up the loose ends of the romance. He did what I do, he wrote an anti-romance. I like that. I like non endings. They make me feel more in the world. Escapist literature is good for on planes and in the holidays and stuff but if a book has "One of the greatest American novels of this or any time- Guardian" written on the front of it, I don't want it ending all "and John and Alejandra got married anyway and had lots of really attractive children, and Lacey met someone too, and they got to keep Blevins's horse, plus it turned out he wasn't dead anyway and neither were John's father or grandfather, and the prison thing was part of a reality TV show."

That would really annoy me.

But a lot of things about modern writing do.

Competitions update

2010-09-14T14:56:00.002+08:00

Today is a lovely sunny day, and I am in a good mood. I just took a drive down to my local Australia Post to buy stamps and an envelope so that I could send in my entry for this year's Katharine Susannah Prichard Short Fiction competition. I'm so glad I'm not over 20 yet because I can still enter for free. Hooray. Cheap thrills. (Although the envelope and stamps cost me about $8.70....) It would be really nice to place this year... last year I didn't (and rightly so, I wrote something in about two hours and just sent it off... and it included an intertextual link which was really important but to a book I haven't even read) and the year before I came second.

I didn't end up entering the Wet Ink competition but I did enter the John Marsden Short Story Prize, so I'm still waiting to hear on that... in the meantime I think I will go and sit on the lollabout chairs in the backyard and read some Cormac McCarthy for class...

"It just doesn't feel like a night out with no one sizing you up."

2010-09-09T10:53:00.003+08:00

I've had a song stuck in my head for days.

More specifically, a few lines of Panic! at the Disco's (before they dropped their exclamation point and two of their members... so the first album)song "There's a good reason these tables are numbered Honey, you just haven't thought of it yet". For the record, I haven't thought of it either. And I've always suspected that the long abstract title thing was an attempt to be like Fall Out Boy. But who knows who's copying who anymore?

The lines in my head goes as follows "I'm the new cancer, never looked better, you can't stand it, or so you say so under your breath, you're reading lips, when did he get so confident?"

There are other bits (The title of this post for example...). I'm listening to it now. And I'm trying to work out why it's in my head. It's not on my iPod. It hasn't been on the radio. No one I know was talking about me. And it's so bizarre that it probably didn't come up as a result of someone talking about something else that was vaguely related.

Sigh.

This is definitely not getting my novel written.

(But to clarify, I did work on two short stories last night.)

Oh and Happy Birthday STC, you are now officially old.

Thoughts on: On Chesil Beach (Ian McEwan)

2010-09-01T13:29:00.002+08:00

You might recall that some many moons ago, I said that Ian McEwan was one of the writers I aspire to be like. Well. The man has been nominated for the Booker prize umpteen times, plus his stuff is very entertaining, so can you really blame me? I've read Atonement (finished it within minutes of having to go and meet friends at the cinema to see the film), Amsterdam and as of a few hours ago, I've also read On Chesil Beach.

Let me tell you the best thing, in my opinion, about Mr McEwan's books; He makes the little nothings of life seem like everything.

I find myself always able to relate to his characters, even when they are so far removed from my own situation that without his help, I would not be putting myself in their shoes. I am Briony Tallis; I amFlorence Ponting. I am even a little bit of Edward. It makes me wonder if I am little bit like McEwan myself. Does he wonder about the same trivial things that I do? Does he search for significance in every thing he does?

I find myself amused also by this quote: "There were rumours that in the English department, and along the road at SOAS and down Kingsway at the LSE, men and women in tight black jeans and black polo neck sweaters had constant easy sex, without having to meet each other's parents. There was even talk of reefers. Edward sometimes took an experimental stroll from the History to the English department, hoping to find evidence of paradise on earth, but the corridors, the notice boards, and even the women looked no different" (McEwan, 2007, 40).

I guess that just tickled my fancy, being both an English and a History major. I don't know how much truth there is in it, even in my own time and location, let alone London 1962.

The other theme that always strikes me about McEwan's work is that of communication and understanding. His characters can often misunderstand each other and take years to truly come to grips with what was meant. I recognise that in daily life too. Old events take on new significance in time. I respect McEwan's ability to recognise that.

He remains on my list of those I aspire to be like. Others will not be so fortunate, I fear.

Those old familiar places

2010-08-30T21:35:00.002+08:00

Some days, you would be forgiven for not knowing that I am a writer. I don't act like one. I act like a student most of the time (that is I procrastinate and spend a lot of time on Facebook). And it's actually been a really long time since I worked on the current manifestation of The Compound. But yesterday, I watched Atonement, you see, and it reminded me of my book, it reminded me of the kind of writer I want to be.

If only I knew how to end this damned thing.... I know what I want the outcome to be but I can't make it happen...

All of this makes me think of Marcel Proust, writhing in agony on his office floor (much to the alarm of his housekeeper), just agonizing over one sentence or one word. And Swan's Way is really wordy so he must have done that a lot I think. I haven't quite gotten to that stage. To be honest, if the words are not coming, I go to something else. I know that's not really a way to meet a deadline but, well, I haven't got one, have I?

Perhaps I should set one.

Perhaps I should say that from now until the end of this draft, I will complete one chapter a week. That should help me finish within the next few months, in time for Nanowrimo...(I will do that again this year but I think I will write the same story as last year even though that is kind of cheating. It unsettles me to have so many unfinished manuscripts.)

There is a touch of darkness in my current draft. Perhaps this ending around I will not be so nice. One thing I have learned is the best writing comes from making your characters as miserable as possible.

On the topic of misery, I am going to watch Phantom of the Opera. Gerard Butler makes me smile.

Thoughts on: Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)

2010-08-25T15:27:00.005+08:00

I read this script in about two hours last night.

As far as screenplays go, this was a super readable one, but I would not recommend tackling it without seeing the movie first. I found myself remembering the scenes and imagining the actors in their roles and things.

Isn't it funny how you associate a particular movie with the first time you watched it? Isn't it even funnier when you think back to that day and feel nothing; no nostalgia, no sense of lost. Looking back on watching that film with a boy I used to date, I realise that I am a different person now. That girl in the memory reel I am watching is not me, but she sort of looks like me.

I digress.

I like Tarantino films because they deliberately fly in the face of taboo. Adultery, drugs, sex, gangsters etc. all feature in Pulp Fiction in a round about sort of way and yet it manages to remain remarkably kitsch, rather than deep and meaningful. I remember when I was small, seeing the movie poster framed in someone's playroom and thinking that because the movie was rated R, it must have been pornography. How naive I was. I also remember being shocked to see the video on the shelf of a family member. (I guess these are more just thoughts than thoughts on the movie itself...)

After I finished reading it, I lay in my bed in the dark listening to my iPod and trying to have deep thoughts about what I had read but I couldn't really come up with any. I guess that's part of Kitsh though... superficial, aesthetic entertainment value, with no hidden meaning or existentiality or whatever. I was disappointed though. There would be brag value to actually understanding a Tarantino flick on a deeper level probably. But I guess that's what we want in this Two Minute Noodle world. We want a visceral experience to entertain us and take us out of ourselves for an hour or two. We don't want to have to work and dissect this experience, we just want it to come to us.

I started to think about my own novel too. There is a lot of difference between the two stories, that is for sure. And I really wanted to write. But that drive has gone again. Perhaps it will be kind enough to return for the weekend.

Thoughts on: Curtain; Poirot's Last Case (Agatha Christie)

2010-08-24T13:48:00.002+08:00

Just a quick post... I must say that I am growing somewhat tired of blogging about Uni stuff all the time. On Friday, I did try to work on the Compound, but I was so incredibly tired and brain-sore that I only managed to write about one hundred words about Winston's first shower on the ship that rescues him. Well, no actually, I managed to write a bit more than that but I suddenly realised the impracticality of writing about a warm shower... it would have been a fairly cold one probably. I will try to finish off that chapter this week though because my lack of writing is fairly ridiculous.

Anyways, on to our main event. Poirot.

What comes to mind when I say that name? He's one of Agatha Christie's most famous creations, the 1930's detective from Belgium with the adorable curliqued moustache. And I must say that reading his last adventure was much like playing a game of Cluedo. Or Clue, if you happen to be American, I suppose.

We are given a series of old murders. We are told that a person who shall not be named has been present in each case. And then we are told that another murder will be committed. All the possible suspects, victims and weapons are available within the house and it is up to the reader, and the protagonist Captain Hastings to guess what will happen.

And I did have a theory. I had a theory about who would be killed, by whom and why. I didn't give much thought to how though, because I would like to think that I do not possess a criminal mind.

Well, I was only a third right. I guessed who. I did not guess how, although it was fairly obvious once it happened. I incorrectly guessed who had done it. But the thing occuring in the life of my suspected murderer was true, if that makes any sense... I am trying not to give away spoilers.

What I really liked about this book was the way the clues were given quite regularly, but were disguised as non clues. Now that I have read the end of Poirot's adventures, I should like to read the rest of them. Perhaps in the right order though, haha.

And now, I go to write an essay, and possibly some novel.

Adieu.

Thoughts on: 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane

2010-08-20T16:37:00.003+08:00

I had been dreading reading this one. Drama? Gag me. (And yet ironically I have somehow ended up friendly with a lot of people who LOVE drama. Weird.) And then weird, freaky, shock you to your senses until you fall out of your socks kind of drama? Double gag me. But Sarah Kane is fortunate that I was being made to read her book for uni, because I actually really enjoyed it.

I don't know if you remember, but I read the Monkey's Mask for Australian Literature and Film last semester, and I really liked that. It was great because it was so precise, all these pretty images/ not so pleasant ideas were put forth in a lovely, concise, understandable way, and I was able to just read and read and read... 4.48 Psychosis was like that. I'm definitely going to need another read of it to get my head around some of the core ideas but as a work of art, it just really spoke to me. My interpretation is probably wrong, mind you. But what I got from it was a sad, lost, lonely person searching and searching for themself/ someone to love and to love them back/ absolution etc and instead finding disappointment at every turn, someone who was told they were crazy because they couldn't just be happy, and someone who was plonked in front of a psychologist who didn't quite get that they were talking to a person and not doing a case study. I love the way that it's the disenchantment with the confidante/ psychologist that is the real trigger for conflict, as usually they are characters who are simply vessels for moving the story along.

But this is a play... and I have no idea how it would be performed... hmmm.

Seriously, read it.

Thoughts on: Bridget Jones' Diary

2010-08-18T21:22:00.004+08:00

It's really, really hard not to think of the movie instead of the book version of this, but the book came first. Bridget probably was never supposed to look like Renee Zellweger, and it was a bit of laugh to have Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy no doubt, but as is the case with novel adaptations which enjoy considerable success, the sad fact is that most people now can't separate the two.

There's a rule I tend to respect, which was (I think) probably taught to me by my Grandpa: If you see the move first, you hate the book and vice versa.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet.

Bridget Jones' Diary is basically Pride and Prejudice and I cannot believe that I never noticed that before. I think it's probably because Bridget is infinitely LESS likeable than Elizabeth Bennett. (Seriously, chain smoker, obsessed with dieting and appearance, believes perfect boyfriend will mean ultimate life happines... what kind of a role model is she trying to be?) Yet despite this I have read this book twice now, and both times with ravenous intrigue because it is very entertaining. The book is written in diary style and afterwards I find myself typing to my friends on messenger like this:

"Feel v. hungry. Might make snack."

Like most work that would fall into the category of "chick lit" (I used inverted commas to show my lack of faith in this label) BJD aspires to be... funny, uplifting, empowering etc and to a certain extent, it is. It has the familiar tropes (which might have started with this text perhaps in a way) of the group of girlfriends/ token gay guy who deconstruct emotional eff-wittery on a regular basis (their term, not mine), the meddling but clueless mother who causes problems but sometimes also manages to help without trying, the sexy but emotionally unavailable love interest etc. etc. etc.

It's not exactly a favourite of mine but I did enjoy it. I hope I am managing to sound like I enjoy it even though I am focussing on the critical side of things.... anyway, it was a nice flipside of the coin to Devil's Cub and I will hopefully now write a prizewinning essay on the two... or at least get myself an HD on it for class. Also, this morning, finished 4.48 Psychosis (gosh that spelling always looks so wrong) in about 20 minutes but I think I want to read it again before I post my thoughts.

Entry has been sent off to the John Marsden awards. Have also resolved to get physically fit again to improve self confidence and stop being so tired all the time. (See, there's the Bridget speak.)

Too-raa everyone.

Thoughts on: Slowness (Milan Kundera)

2010-08-13T17:03:00.003+08:00

I do not speak French.

Well. I do not speak much French. Like most of my generation, I know the lyrics to Art vs. Science's 'Parlez vous Francais' and also that bit from 'Lady Marmalade' but those sorts of phrases are hardly the sorts of things that you can walk up to a normal French person and say without either being slapped or lead into an inappropriate situation.

Nor do I speach Czech. (I actually don't even know what language they speak in the Czech republic...)

One person who would definitely speak both of those languages is Milan Kundera, prolific writer of modern literary fiction. And for my World Writing Today course, I have been asked to read a little novella of his called "Slowness."

First, an overview. Milan Kundera and his wife soujourn to a chateau (see I can use French words)in the French countryside which has seen two instances of... shall we say corporeal expressions of spontaneous love. Each of these events is one hundred years apart from the other. The first event takes place in France's decadent past... Mme de'T takes a lover for the night, a Chevalier who is already the paramour of a Contesse. Their lovemaking is an expression of daring and slowness. But come the following morning, the Chevalier learns of its farcical nature. He was only invited into Mme de'T's bed in order to throw her husband's suspicions aside as to the identity of her true lover, a Marquis. What the Chevalier must determine is whether or not to remember the moment in all its slowness as a beautiful thing, or to be ashamed that he has been had. The second event happens seemingly in the modern day. A young political commentator (I think that's what he is, anyway) attends some sort of political event in which he is made to feel impotent by the men he associates with, and so he picks up a young woman in order to prove to himself, and all of them, that he is more of a man. But in his haste to do so, the moment is spoiled and the woman leaves without a trace. Vincent feels worse than before.

The beauty of this book is in its simplicity. Everything Kundera says is so obvious. He picks up on the little truths of life that the rest of us overlook and points out to us all that in our "2 Minute Noodles" lifestyle, we focus on the end result and ignore the beauty of the process or the journey.

It really was a clever little book although I failed to see the outright comedy I was promised by my lecturer. And even better still, it fits perfectly into even the fullest bag. Perfect train or bus reading material.

Thoughts on: Devil's Cub (Georgette Heyer)

2010-08-04T20:16:00.005+08:00

I think I probably owe Georgette Heyer a bit of an apology.

The other day I was at work, sitting in my boss's comfy chair and eating some lunch while reading Devil's Cub and our Jeweller asked me what I was reading. I said "The kind of novel you buy for five dollars at an airport and then throw out when you reach your destination." You see, in my head, the works of Georgette Heyer were much akin to Mills and Boon novels. I think this largely comes from an earlier reading of a book called The Fiction Class, in which the main character has been named after a Heyer book by her vapid mother.

Well. At the time of making those comments, I was fairly sure I was right. I'd only read the book a chapter at a time and it seemed to be all heaving chests and duels. And then of course, I started to like it. I found that I really connected with Mary Challoner, being the older, less... popular sister, and even though I could predict the ending, I wanted to watch it all happen. It was a little more realistic than I had expected even. And I've spent the past two days lolling about in the sunshine finishing it.

Basically, the book is about Dominic, the Marquis of Vidal, who by today's standards would be deemed something of a "player". He's the son of the Duke and Duchess of Avon so naturally every local busybody wants their daughter married to him and while he 'enjoys' feminine companionship (if you get my drift) he's not ever met anyone who he respected enough to marry. But, as is the womanly way, most girls believe they will be the one to change him. In the novel, his latest pursuit is Sophia Challoner, a blonde... well lets just call her the Barbie character. Sophia likes pretty clothes and to be flattered and flirted with. And then one day, Dominic has a bit too much to drink and shoots a man near-dead for insulting his honour. So Dominic writes to Sophia and tells her to run away with him to Paris. But Mary, the plain, bookish older sister (think... librarian type but feisty) gets the letter by accident and she decides to save her sister's reputation by going in her place. No prizes for guessing what happens.

The ending does seem somewhat rushed however, and Mary DOES run away an awful lot. But as an aspiring historical novelist I have to commend Georgette Heyer for her ability to make me speak very formal English for the next half an hour after I finished it.

Also, I found a small typo in my copy of the book.

"Mr Comyn said sarcastically that he was happy to be a source of so much interest, but since he spoke no English, no one understood him." (p.230)

I had a bit of a giggle at this. Mr. Comyn speaks English very well, actually, and other characters remark on it often. It's French that he has no grasp of. And the idea of an Englishman being unable to speak to French servants because he can't speak English is quite funny. Oops, Avon Publishing.

I've only just found out that it is part of a trilogy, and not the first part either. I think it's great that it stands alone, although I did expect that perhaps there was some volume to come before it about the courtship of the protagonist's parents. I suppose that is all gobbledegook to most of you though...

Well, I just hope that I enjoy the rest of my uni books as much as I enjoyed this one. I shall endeavour to review them all on here for... ahem... research purposes.

Glimpses of Inspiration

2010-08-03T13:16:00.003+08:00

Last night I had one of those moments.

I don't know if you've ever had one yourself, but its that want that bubbles up in you when you read a story or see one acted out that you wish with pretty much everything in you that you had written. And don't laugh, but this metaphysical yearning in me was caused by an episode of Cold Case.

At my house, watching Cold Case on a Monday is just something we all do lately. It's right after dinner, it's the only thing on, etc. etc. We've had the same thing happen with Bones on Tuesday nights, or CSI on Wednesday. What can I say? We all have a penchant for formulaic crime drama.

Last night we were watching an episode with a murder from 1945. As I said to my mother, that's a really really REALLY cold case. But as some of you may know, the 1940s are probably my favourite decade. It's something about the way people dress, the quality of film, photos and artwork and also the way the world was just changing from a super innocent place at the turn of the Century to a place that had seen more evil and destruction than anyone could have ever imagined 45 years later. That's one person's lifetime. And this episode of Cold Case really captured that for me. And it did what I've struggled to do with my novel. It spread the word... take notice; True love does not conquer all.

I won't go into detail of what happened in the episode because I know that some of you might not have seen it. But that final scene, on the platform at the train station when the ex-Nazi who had been impersonating a Jew begged his American journalist girlfriend to say that she could still love him though she knew what he had done? It took my breath away. There was such intensity, such... realism. And I wanted to write it but the moment passed too quickly.

Plus, I am pretty sure that is plagiarism.

The End of JulNoWriMo

2010-07-30T22:46:00.003+08:00

With a superhuman burst of strength, the final 6000 words have been written. (I am referring to the last 6000 words of my JulNoWriMo quota though, and not of the novel itself.) I think I will be very happy to have my life back... although now I think about it I believe I have had more of a life these last two months than ever before. How odd.

In case anyone was wondering, I am almost three quarters of the way done with this draft. Things currently stand at 101 pages (sadly not dalmations. That was for you, Lauren.) and 50 144 words, although I think that counts the fake jacket review I put on the cover page I made that says "More fun than a barrel of Monkeys- E.P." I have also made a few changes layout- wise, including splitting the whole book into not two but four sections and trying to make each section a fully realised mini journey. I am getting encouraging reviews from my friends.

As I have met this month's goal, tomorrow night I will celebrate my progress by dressing as a little sailor girl and partying with some friends.

I think my goal for next month shall be to finish reading up about World War Two era Japanese occupied Singapore. It's really quite a fascinating subject; heartbreaking, inspiring... these are the first hand accounts by the way.

I am also going to make it my goal to stay very positive about the endeavour. Or maybe about things in general might help.

Uni starts again for me on Tuesday... (I don't go Mondays this semester).

Sigh.

Writer’s Retreat

2010-07-23T20:31:00.001+08:00

What do you get if you lock five people all interested in Literature(or six depending on the day of the week) in a house by a beach and tell them to write?

(In case you were wondering the answer is bad amateur photography.)

In all seriousness, I think that the little break from the norm was exactly what I needed. I would (and frequently do) describe myself as a somewhat uptight person. I live by the mantra of “What Would Mum and Dad think?” and when I usually go away to my Grandparent’s beach house the week can have the effect of turning me into Scary Prison Guard Dragon Lady. But so far, every time I have taken people with me down there without parents, I have managed to become a little more laid back and enjoy myself a little more.

Every night this week, The Writers did some cooking. (This was a nice break from consuming a lot of raw cookie dough/ chips/ chocolate and in some cases wine.) Every day, there was much lying on blankets on the lawn in the blissful sunshine, enjoying the fact that Mandurah refuses to recognise the concept of Winter. I think I must have gone for about fifteen walks, including one night time one. I also tried to finish Eat Pray Love, but I didn’t quite manage, what with all the beautiful nature and inspiration. (But I did spend the whole week spouting cosmic wisdom and saying things like zen and chakra.) At times, with all four of us curled up over our laptops at the table it did tend to look a little bit like a LAN party or a hacking operation.

I climbed a tree, also. It may or may not have had footholds nailed to it… (but any small victory over vertigo is one I will take.)

There were even some silly boys going body surfing at one point, that’s how nice the weather was.

We discovered this architectural gem on one of our walks. It’s practically inviting you in! (The second time we looked for it, I swear it was GONE. And then I found it again, so I took a picture… ghost shed?)

Being back in Perth is much less inspiring but I will soldier on.

How bummed am I that Uni is starting again in a week???

Blank Pages

2010-07-18T11:02:00.001+08:00

Is this not just the most beautiful sight you have ever seen?

Okay, well maybe that’s just me then.

New notebooks have always felt like new chapters in my life. When I start a new notebook, I feel like maybe I am not tied down by what I wrote in the old one. All the whinging and pining and the rants (my gosh, the rants!) are closed up. They are over. They are stuffed into a pile of old notebooks.

I actually have a lot of notebooks. Waiting. Waiting to be used. People give them to me for birthdays and stuff like that, and I’m rather behind on using them. I really miss being able to just buy a fifty cent composition book and cover it with pictures as I go on, but I understand that buying me notebooks is how the people around me try to say that they “get me.”

Front view. Do you like my funky calculator?

Back view. When you put them together they actually say Know Your Rights. And the words are the Declaration of Human Rights, if you are wondering. My friend Jess got it for me to go with my 18th birthday present. (Yeah, it took me a year and four months to get to the notebook!?)

So I’m going to take it with me everywhere for a while and break it in. Because notebooks are a little bit like shoes in that way. You reach into your bag looking for your old notebook and come up with the new one. “Oh yeah!” you say, remembering that the old one is gone.

Now if only I could find some space in my bag…