Author Archives: Meg McKinlay

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About Meg McKinlay

Children's Writer & Poet

PIPs

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Three days in and the poem-no-longer-in-progress-but-now-declared-finished count is two. That’s not bad, given that I’ve also managed a daily minimum of 1000 words on my novel-in-progress as well as various other bits and pieces that have been clamouring for my attention. And also given that my house currently looks like this:

So there is a lot going on here, about which more later.

Meanwhile, there are three hours remaining until midnight, and therefore still the chance I might increase my PIP count to three for three.

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Poetry Week

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Bet you didn’t realise it was Poetry Week, did you? That’s because i) poetry-related events tend to pass most people by without notice; and ii) it’s only at my house, or more specifically, in my brain. Yes, it’s a self-declared Poetry Week in which I undertake to gather together the fragments of the many poems-in-progress (PIPs?) scattered here and there on my computer and my desk and in the dusty corners of my mind. I’m reading at Perth Poetry Club next Sunday and am weary of cracking open my little book Cleanskin to read the same poems over and over.

So I hereby resolve to complete one new poem a day between now and then. I know I can do this because I have so many poems that are ‘almost there’, that need just that final push of commitment to bring them to completion. And I’ve been resisting it – partly because I have a lot of other things going on and partly because bringing something to completion implies a sort of satisfaction with its final shape, a letting go I’ve found myself reluctant to participate in. It’s not quite a lack of confidence; though it can be confronting to declare something ‘finished’, laying it open to review, I don’t think that’s it in this case. I think it has more to do with enjoyment of the process. I like the openness of a poem in process, of the sense of possibility. Once it’s done, it’s done, and it feels like a kind of abandonment, a shutting down of the process of exploration and association I find so appealing.

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People of Perth, This is Awesome

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This post is not about writing or reading or books. But it is about art and creativity and bringing the audience to the work and the work to the audience, which is in fact not really an audience but a key part of the work, simultaneously constructing it as they consume it and performing various other acts of deconstructive postmodernist discursive etcetera.

Oh, and getting wet.

People of Perth, this is awesome. And not just because you can – nay, must – get really, really e08ff-p1030446wet in the centre of the city. But because, delightfully, while it’s about constructing walls, it’s at the same time about breaking them down, not just in water and rooms, but in people.

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The Invisible Underside

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I’m deep in writing mode at the moment. I’m also deep in re-writing and proofing and a range of other things. And reading, always reading. I’ve been reading Eireann Corrigan, an author I discovered by accident when I inherited the Writing for Children course at Curtin University from Georgia Richter. Readings from the course’s previous incarnation included a short excerpt from one of Corrigan’s books (a YA poetry memoir titled You Remind Me Of You) – just a few poems but enough for me to immediately see that this was great stuff, and wonder why I hadn’t heard of her before. I haven’t managed to track that book down yet but I did find Splintering – a YA verse novel – and was reassured that Corrigan is as fiercely talented as those first few pages – even the first line, which made me stop in my tracks – had me believe.

Here is that rarest of things – a verse novel which doesn’t sacrifice the focus and richness of language poetry demands in the service of narrative, which achieves, effortlessly it seems, that precarious balancing act or fusion in which both elements pull equally together.

Effortlessly.

It seems.

The writers reading this are smiling their wry writerly smiles right now. Because they know exactly how much effort goes into effortlessly.

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Duck for a Day

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Okay, I know I talk a lot of talk about ducks, about Duck the First and Duck the Second as if they are actual books, rather than just ideas quacking softly in a corner of my brain.

But over the last few months I have been watching quietly while Duck the First came into a1050-cvrduckforadaybeing. I have seen pencil sketches of a little girl working at her desk, of a slightly grotty boy hanging over her backyard from a branch. I have squeed over colour roughs of Abby and Noah and Mrs Melvino and most of all, Max – the difficult demanding different duck who takes up residence in Abby’s class.

I have been thrilled and delighted by the work of the wonderful Leila Rudge. It’s not that the characters are as I’d imagined them, that I feel satisfied seeing ‘my’ vision come to life. The truth is that I’m not much of a visual thinker and am not sure I had imagined them in any great detail at all. It’s rather that they are just so absolutely right for the book. Illustrators are wizards, I tell you.

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Premier’s Summer Reading Challenge

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Over the last week I’ve visited libraries from Mandurah to Morley, with a Fremantle stopover closer to home, talking to kids about books and writing and the fantastic Premier’s Summer Reading Challenge. I love carrying my little box of bits and pieces into the cozy corners of libraries and seeing who’s waiting for me there, especially when they turn out to be as 7f268-psrcfreodelightful and creative as the groups I met this year.

Thanks to everyone who came out on very hot days to hear me talk, and help me plot (in every sense!). I hope you were all inspired to take up the reading challenge, not just over summer, but always. Remember that you can keep reading until 8th February, but make sure your entries are in by the 15th. As well as reading some great books, you’ll have the chance to win some amazing prizes (just and don’t forget – that trip to Broome is mine!).

Is a Poem a Frog?

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I’ve been thinking lately about poetry. I’ve been thinking about it and reading it but what I haven’t been doing is writing it. In fact, it’s been well over a year since I wrote a new poem. And I’m acutely aware that this is not a good thing, in ways which can be difficult to define.
In my rambling thoughts about poetry, and my own lack thereof, I found myself thinking about something Mark Tredinnick said at a workshop I attended at the Apropos Poetry Symposium here in Perth last year. I can’t recall exactly the words he used but he spoke about the notion of a poem itself – the work that appears on the page – as being an indicator species for the whole landscape that is the poem. I found this idea immediately compelling, and true, and filed it away in my brain under ‘quirky ideas I may return to later in unexpected ways’.

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Cracking the WIP

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I think every writer knows this moment, when the novel you’ve been wrestling with suddenly turns and rolls over, like a dog baring its submissive belly and says, “Yes, okay, you win. The way is clear. Go on, now.”

Ahh, I do like this.

Of course, I suspect most writers also know the moment that can follow – when the dog, having given you your brief belly-rubbing moment, leaps up and locks your wrist in a death-grip, and the dance begins again.

But that’s another story altogether (hopefully).

For now, back to work, with guarded optimism.

* WIP = Work In Progress

Leaf of My Senses

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So I’ve finished the marking and the copyediting and the translating and the accounting and most of the extension planning (take that, grout colours!) and some of the other random bits and pieces that were clamouring for my fickle attentions. And I’ve cleaned my desk. Not completely, but the thing is, despite my many friends who emailed me to say “Call that a mess? This is a mess!”  it was never really about the mess anyway. It was about the fact that there were just too many different things in there, too many disconnected and sometimes competing demands on my time and increasingly limited brainpower. I can take the mess, as long as it’s not pulling me in too many directions at once.

But that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is this:

In partially cleaning my desk, I found the leaf – whole and flat and entirely unbroken despite the chaos of its surrounds. That has to be a symbol of something, surely?

It’s the return of the writing desk and it’s just in time for the school holidays, of course, but that’s okay. It seems to be how things work around here, but when there are novels brewing, they will make their way into the light, school holidays or no.

There is other news on the horizon too, which is the current source of both excitement and blind panic. But I can’t tell you about that, not quite yet.

The Trailer is Parked!

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Remember Pile #4 from my last post? Wherein I vowed to finish my book trailer and upload it somewhere other than my desk?

Well, I’ve done it. It took a very late night and a certain quantity of hair-pulling but it’s done and it’s on YouTube and pretty soon it’ll no doubt be a viral #1 hit all over the world.

Or not, but in any case, it will be done, and off my desk, and that is all to the good.

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