It’s official! Duck for a Day launched yesterday, 1 May. Since I’m in Japan, which makes it difficult to serve hors d’oeuvres and sign books in Australia, it launched not so much with a quack as with a whimper, but nonetheless it should be waddling its way to libraries and bookstores near you very shortly.
As it happens, there are two ducks in my life at the moment. There’s the aforementioned
Duck, quacky visage brought to you by the wonderful Leila Rudge …
I have been planning a post with this title for some time now. I want to talk about the reactions people have had to discovering that I’m going to Japan to write a novel for adults. Oh, wow.
But the truth is that I’m leaving today – in a few short hours in fact – and as expected, all my preparations have taken much longer than expected (yes, it’s a paradox, but a good one, I think), so those thoughts will have to wait. For now, I must eat, pack, and freak out just a little, then haul myself to the airport.
So I will leave you instead with this most wondrous of things:
A new journal, from my sweeties, to fill with Japan musings. What could be better – a trip elsewhere, a long stretch of writing time unrolling ahead of me, and a brand spanking new journal?
Oh, wow.
Today, I’m taking a leaf out of Julia Lawrinson’s blog, which took its own leaf from Anita Heiss (for such is the way of the madly intertextual interwebs), to talk about things I’ve been grateful for lately.
It has been a tricky couple of years for me on some fronts and there has been less writing and relaxation and metaphorical lying on my back looking at the clouds than I would have hoped. Very often, I have felt as if I am simply scrabbling to keep my ground, rather than actually making any progress. But good things have happened. Many good things. And I am very fortunate. Mostly fortunate, in fact, and it is too easy to lose sight of that.
I pause in the midst of my pre-Japan madness (visas! not visas! travellers’ cheques! cashcards! JapanRail passes! car rental! contact-making! research! endless, endless lists!) to bring you instalment #2 in the occasional series, Tales From Inner Libraria*, if only because if our esteemed government has its way, said Librarias may be unrecognisable in the not-so-fullness of time (40% funding cuts? Can you be serious? And if so, may I humbly suggest you begin with the plasma TVs and leave the books alone?).
Today’s library is a rather less humble establishment than that featured in Instalment #1. It has high ceilings, excellent natural lighting and an overall feeling of space and muted elegance.
It is not the kind of library where you raise your voice. Story time takes place in a dedicated room, behind closed doors and some kind of advanced soundproofing technology.
Hey, my blog speaks Japanese!
If you can read the title of this post, come and meet me in Japan, because that’s where I’ll be very soon.
Over the last few months I’ve used various euphemisms to allude to this news: “something else exciting, yet to be announced”; “a forthcoming writing-related trip”; “a bunch of other bits and pieces”; “other news on the horizon which is the current source of both excitement and blind panic”.
It is still all of those things, the last one most acutely. But now there has been a formal announcement, so I can at least spill the edamame:
I am thrilled to be the recipient of an Asialink Literature Residency and will be spending three months in Nagoya from April-July.
Although I work at home a lot, I don’t always work at home. Sometimes I take my laptop down to Fremantle and park myself in a cafe. Sometimes I head up to my local library. It helps to have a change of scenery, to avoid the many demands of an insistent house, and there’s something satisfying about writing surrounded by books and readers.
Because my house is currently an inviting combination of bomb-site, dust bowl and storage facility, I’ve been doing this more often lately. And because I’ve been doing it more, I’ve broadened my reach. In the last couple of months, I’ve sampled over a dozen libraries. And I can’t help noticing that although some features are common to most – from the expected (books!) to the less-expected (flat-screen TV!) – each also has its own idiosyncrasies, its own particular culture.
So I bring you the first in an occasional series: “Tales from Inner Libraria*”. Reading these entries, perhaps you’ll nod, because you recognise your library here. Perhaps you’ll shake your head because you think I’m making it up. I won’t be.
Well, I did warn you this would be the title of my next post. It’s prompted by an email I received recently from a writing friend, with the subject line “Business”. And by the last couple of months, which seem to have been incredibly busy somehow with a bunch of things which, while writing-related, are not actually writing itself.
A couple of weeks ago, frustrated with my slow progress through the various WIPs, I decided to take a good hard look at where my days are going. Of course there is a slew of other bits and pieces crammed into my day – house, family, exercise and so on – but here is the graph that represents how the time I had available for work was divided over a two-week period.
A little alarming, no?
Yes, I’ve re-entered the atmosphere.
Last weekend, I read at the Moon Cafe. I scrambled to stitch together some poems that had been lying in pieces for far too long – one a day for the eight days leading up to the reading was my goal, but in the end I managed seven. Which is pretty good, I think. What’s that old saying – “Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars?” Lately, I have been feeling rather more like the more recent re-working – “Reach for the stairs; they’re closer” – but either way, I got seven new poems out of it, so I am very happy.
It was a lovely afternoon – stinking hot on the Moon but I like the heat. I like the weather, actually, and do not like the way we seem to increasingly avoid it via the so-called necessities of air-con and so forth. I do like it when the air is moving, though. An oscillating fan will do me most of the time. It was almost tropical at the Moon, with the humidity and the closeness and the overhead fans and the languid couches, and I loved it. And I think there might be a poem in there somewhere – “Give Me Weather”? Perhaps I’ll scratch that down shortly.
It was hot. It was humid. It was fantastic.
Let’s just say I was there from start of day until close of business and I do not do 
festivals/large gatherings of people well at all. I’m the hermitty type most drawn to Michael Leunig’s favoured “…Festival of Clouds/the festival that doesn’t pull the crowds”, so for me to put in eight solid hours at a festival says something about the event.
We spent the day outside under the trees, as writer after writer appeared before us on the Kids’ Courtyard Stage (I presented there last year, at midday, in similar, soupy conditions, and let me tell you it is much more relaxing lying back on cushions on the grass, in the shade).
Or rather, at the Moon. If you grow weary of the international excellence and convivial literary atmosphere that is the Perth Writers’ Festival, come up to the Moon Cafe and enjoy the local excellence and so-called ‘op-shop decor’ (to quote the West) of Perth Poetry Club.
I’ll be reading on Saturday 27 Feb, in two slots from around 2pm and there’ll also be open 
mic for those of you so inclined.
I hope my legs don’t break/reading at the Moon.
Perth Poetry Club: “Where Slams Meet Sonnets”.
The Moon Cafe: 323 William St, Northbridge.
Meg McKinlay 