Tag Archives: writing

Creative Time!

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Hello Adelaide! Hello lovely studio! Hello long-awaited and twice-postponed May Gibbs Creative Time Residency!

I am so grateful to be here, to have the luxury of spending the whole of November ensconced in ‘The Burrow’, the cozy and beautifully appointed studio apartment owned and administered by the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust.

Since 2000, The Burrow’s sole purpose has been to provide a home-away-from-home for children’s authors and illustrators seeking time and space or a change of pace – an incredibly generous gift to our community.

On its website, the Trust writes:

Some Creative Time Residency fellows will spend the entire month working on their creative project quietly alone; some may have a mentorship component to their CTR fellowship; some may be provided with paid speaking, teaching and promotional activities by a MGCLT partner; and others may arrange their own speaking, teaching and/or promotional activities.

If you know me, you can probably guess which option I’ve chosen! What is a burrow for if not burrowing?

But perhaps you are wondering why I need this? As a wise woman once said to me, narrowly avoiding being punched in the face, “But, Meg, what do you actually do all day?”

In all honesty, I have asked myself the same thing. From the outside, my creative life looks pretty cruisy these days. I’m not working another job, I’ve pulled right back on speaking commitments, I have the proverbial empty nest. In that nest, I have a room of my own – a lovely, light-filled study that looks out on to my native garden, full of honeyeaters and cockatoos and the occasional glorious pardalote. I have time and space and loveliness.

But I have something else too.

I have a very messy head. And I’ve had a difficult few years. And somewhere along the line, this lovely light-filled space has become a place of avoidance and procrastination, of self-doubt and recrimination and wondering whether I’m even a writer any more or maybe this whole thing has run its race. The garden has become a place I decamp to, obsessively pulling weeds and trimming things because it is so immediately satisfying and so much easier than writing.

The thing is – it isn’t always about time and space, at least not in the obvious ways.

Still, as Covid restrictions eased, and my family issues settled to the point where I could commit to taking the re-re-scheduled residency, and as the date approached, and I said enthusiastic yeses and made plans, I did wonder what I was doing. Did I need this? Did I have the right to need this? Wasn’t I just being self-indulgent and should just give myself a good slap in the face and stay at home where everything was set up so beautifully for me if I could just get my messy head right? Which surely I could do by myself, being an adult person who’s always managed to do that in the past, and possibly even free up a residency for someone who actually, truly needed it!

Friends, I will just say this: If you find a good psychologist, hang onto them for dear life. And when they somehow manage to open up a space in which you can give yourself permission to stop trying to march doggedly onward, to stop treating creative work like some kind of battering-ram production line in whose service you must BUTT-IN-CHAIR WORDS-ON-PAGE DEADLINE-DEADLINE-DEADLINE, and instead send you right back to the heart of things, to the reason you started this writing thing, to just noodle about and play and see what shakes loose … when that window appears, open it. Climb through.

So here I am, in Adelaide, in a burrow. Noodling and playing and feeling more like myself than I have in a long time. I have a project but I’m not thinking of it in those terms, and I’m beginning by simply messing about, which right now looks a bit like this …

It is early days, but I’m not going to think about days for now; only moments. In this one, I offer a huge thanks to the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust. And if you need any proof that being here is surely my destiny, I offer these images from my distant past. The year: 1975. The occasion: The Decorated Bicycle Competition, Eaglehawk Dahlia and Arts Procession. The winners: ME AND MY BROTHER! (or, more accurately, our mother, who went above and beyond to make not only our costumes but also hundreds and hundreds of crepe paper flowers and cunning wire frames to weave them through. We won a transistor radio. What a time to be alive!)

Me on the right as Cuddlepie and my brother on the left as Snugglepot, his face cunningly concealed behind whatever that guy with the pole is meant to be.
Let’s just zoom in on that serious little face, shall we?

Welcome to the … aughhhhh

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Sometimes a book takes its own sweet time. I’ve talked before about the long journeys some of my work has travelled from the initial spark to the published story.

There was Bella and the Wandering House, which took 14 years, and which I wrote about here.

There was Let Me Sleep, Sheep!, which was 13 years, and which I wrote about here.

There was How to Make a Bird (17 years, here.)

And Ella and the Useless Day (17 years, here.)

There are many reasons why so much time can elapse from pen-on-paper to publication. Sometimes it’s about the idea percolating and sometimes it’s about the writer procrastinating … or perhaps pondering. Sometimes it’s about the publishing world needing to catch up to the concept.

For the most part, this slowness has served me well. If How to Make a Bird had been embraced by publishers when I was first sending it out, it wouldn’t have ended up in the hands of Matt Ottley. It would be nothing like the beautiful art object it is today. If Ella and the Useless Day had been published in its original form, I would always have felt as if I’d somehow missed the point, not quite got to the heart of what I was trying to say. And I could never have collaborated with Karen Blair, who has brought much more to it than I could ever have imagined.

I say “for the most part” because there have been downsides – sleeping projects I’ve had to shelve because someone came out with something that was just too similar. Still, though, the hits have been relatively benign. Like most writers, I’m sure, I have a whole storehouse of fragments and snippets, endless beginnings of maybe-possible future things. Some have a little more momentum than others, have gathered more thoughts around them, begun to take on a somewhat recognisable shape. But even so, they’re still just beginnings, formative, not too hard to be philosophical about when I’ve had to let go.

Until now, that is.

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Getting the Blog Back Together

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Hey. Hello. It’s been a while.

Three years, to be exact-ish. I do love a good ish.

Despite my silence, many things have happened. Writing things. Non-writing things. Big things. Small things. Hard things. Harder things.

In fact, when I look at the date of my last post – 3 May, 2019 – it’s immediately obvious to me why the silence began. It was exactly a week later that my father died, bringing with it the many things that loss does. And then, as my breath was starting to return, almost exactly a year later that my mother died, bringing with it the many things, compounded now and layered, and in the midst of it all I flew back-and-forth across the country multiple times, sorting and sifting through emotions and things and people and feelings, and walking and walking through the bush behind my childhood home, the clay of Bendigo feeling, as it always does, so firm beneath my feet. The metaphor that has struck me so many times over the years returning to me again, even as I wondered whether all that is now changed, whether I’ll keep coming back to this place, whether I’ll ever return to those scribbled notes, write that poem that’s been sleeping in the back of my mind for so long.

The thing is – one thing is – I talk too much and say too little. I ramble. I endlessly circle and get lost in metaphor. I start and don’t finish, can’t find a structure, resist it. Words have been difficult the last few years. Plot has been impossible. I don’t know yet if that’s going to change but I’m taking little steps. I don’t think we need the firmness of clay; I think we can learn to stay steady on sand, to soften ourselves as the surface shifts beneath our feet.

I’ve returned to this space several times since my last post, stared at the wall of white and the silence and wondered what to do with it. Who even blogs anymore anyway? Isn’t all this stuff on Twitter and Instagram and ye olde Facebook, served up in banter and small palatable bites?

The truth is that I quite like banter and palatable things. I’m even fond of a little biting. But I also like talking too much and saying too little. I like rambling and endlessly circling and getting lost in metaphor and forgetting all about structure and throwing words out into the white silence. I have things to say and thoughts to ponder and so I’ve decided to return to this little room of my own – sporadically, self-indulgently, possibly sometimes nonsensically. When I think about it, those three ‘ly’s sum up some really important things about my creative life. Random notes and scribbles, moments scooped up and stored, then set aside. Maybe they become something or maybe they’re already what they’re going to be, in all their mess and formlessness. Anyway. It doesn’t seem like a bad place to begin again.

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Sea Monkeys, Sunny Boys & Skylab: Writing the 1970s

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Just the title of this post makes me all kinds of nostalgic. This is because I was a childCoverfinalmedRES in the 1970s, which is when my new book, Catch A Falling Star, is set.

1979, to be specific. May-July 1979 to be specific-er.

And exactly that specific because it’s set against the backdrop of an actual historical event, the uncontrolled loss of orbit and eventual crashing to earth of Skylab, one of the world’s first space stations.

I’m told that the 1970s is long enough ago for Catch A Falling Star to be considered historical fiction. Luckily for me, though, having direct experience of that period, I didn’t need to do the kind of research this genre normally calls for. I grew up then! I remember stuff like sea monkeys and Sunny Boys and yelling SunnyBoyout “Spunk!” and lying on the warm concrete at the pool all day because skin cancer hadn’t been invented yet. The only things I needed to research were Skylab facts and figures – the exact timeline, direct quotes from newspapers, that sort of thing.

That’s what I thought, in the beginning.

Hahahaha.

Excuse me while I beat my head gently against this wall.

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Speaking Youth to Power

Many moons ago when I was teaching at UWA, I heard a creative writing lecturer talk about how writers often find themselves ‘worrying at a particular knot’. Maybe they’re writing all kinds of different things, but somewhere in the midst of each of them, if you look deeply enough, or from the right angle, you’ll find some version of this one theme or concern.

The writer, of course, doesn’t always know this. Slightly fewer moons ago, when I was easing out of teaching at UWA, I had a student say to me, “It’s interesting how so many of your poems are sort of about containment.”

And I said Huh?

And she said, “You know … how you’re always talking about borders and margins, inside and outside, about edges and stuff like that.”

And I said, No I’m not … am I?

And then she showed me. And lo and behold, I was. And still am. At least in my poetry.

poetry2 Poetryimage1

There are similar knots in my work for young people, one of which I became aware of recently because it features in both The Penguins Are Coming! and DUCK! Continue reading →

A Rhinoceros By Any Other Gender…

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As many of you know, I have a new picture book coming out very soon.OUASR_CVR_HR-RGB

Once Upon a Small Rhinoceros will officially hit bookstores on 1 September. I’ve blogged previously about the inspiration for the book, and a little about the process of writing it. During that process, many things changed. Some were big – like the title. Others were small – a shift in phrasing that made a line sing, an ellipsis that opened up the ending.

And there was one that was both – tiny but enormous.

Here’s the last line as it appeared in one of the roughs:

Rough4

If you’ve read the book, you should be able to spot the difference. If you haven’t, then know this: across many, many drafts, and until quite late in the process, my small rhinoceros was male. And then at a certain point, I said huh?

Because my small rhinoceros was male for no good reason. For no reason at all except that I had unconsciously defaulted to that without a moment’s thought. Continue reading →

Once Upon a Time …

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… there was a small rhinoceros.

It hung on the wall of an art gallery in Subiaco, all the way back in 1997. It was part of an exhibition entitled Three Narrative Artists.

And it looked like this:

intrepid-journey220-x-160_edited-1[“Intrepid Journey” by Sue Templeton]

It was right near the entrance, and when I walked in on opening night, it stopped me in my tracks. There was something about the image I found intrinsically appealing.  Or perhaps it was the combination of image and title – the word “intrepid” together with the rhinoceros and the boat.

It stayed with me, as things sometimes do unexpectedly. That’s something I love – that you never quite know what’s going to catch the light for someone. It isn’t always what you’d expect. In this case, it was a small rhinoceros.

But here’s where it gets interesting, because many years passed. Many, many years. And I guess my memory isn’t as good as I thought it was. Because when I thought about the rhino, I saw it as a tiny thing in a tiny boat on a very very wide and vast blue ocean. And I  remembered the title as being simply “Intrepid”. I told myself it was the perfect marriage of that single-word title and the image that lent it appeal for me. Except that it wasn’t a single-word title and it also wasn’t a vast open ocean. In fact, looking at it now I’m not even sure it’s an ocean. Maybe it’s a desert. Maybe it’s a lava field. Maybe it’s the surface of the moon. Continue reading →

The Year of Taking a Deep Breath …

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… and writing a great many things …

… is here. It’s here.

What is she talking about? you mutter.

Upon which I refer you to my earlier post, The Year of Doing Way Too Much and Nowhere Near Enough.

And then I say this:

In 1999, in an airport departure lounge, I scribbled the beginnings of what would eventually become my first poem.

In 2001, I said out loud to someone for the very first time that I was interested in maybe writing something one day. I remember this very clearly for reasons I will save for a future blog post.

In later 2001, I had an idea for a picture book, and thought it was excellent and bound to be published.

From 2001-2006, I collected approximately 762 rejection letters for that picture book, other picture books, chapter books, Young Adult novels, and novels of indeterminate genre and readership. I also published a few poems.

In 2007, my first novel, Annabel, Again, was published.

In later 2007, my poetry collection, Cleanskin, was published.

                     2782WALK_AnnabelFULL02.indd    Cleanskinhires

From 2008-2015, I published a further 11 books for children and a far-too-small handful of poems.

books

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The Year of Doing Way Too Much & Nowhere Near Enough

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So it’s come to this, November. Or perhaps I should call you by your real name — almost-December-dear-god-where-has-the-year-gone?

2016 has been a year of many things. But mostly of two things, which are subtly connected. For me it will go down as i) The Year of Doing Way Too Much and ii) The Year of Not Writing the Novel I Should Have Written Long Ago (subtitle dear-god-where-has-the-year gone-is-that-my-editor-coming-quick-everybody-hide!).

In 2016, I encountered a perfect and unrelenting storm of day job and volunteer work and family stuff and RSI and book-related commitments and assorted essential but fundamentally not-writing administrivia, all of which combined to leave me with an amount of head-space/writing time which can be best characterised as nowhere near enough.

Herewith a Twitter-ish chronicle of my descent into chaos…

tweets2

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Ten Years and Still Counting

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Last week, I posted a little something about where I was ten years ago versus where I am now.

It’s a post I almost didn’t write because I was worried it would seem braggy. CHECK OUT ALL MY SWAG! AND THIS IS JUST IN ONE WEEK! NEXT WEEK I’LL SPLIT THE PUBLISHING ATOM!

It wasn’t meant to be like that. It was intended as a kind of self-talk, a rejoinder to the messy stuff that goes on in my head, which seems to focus almost entirely on how I could be writing faster or better or differently or just plain more, and never mentions – hardly even seems to notice – the good stuff.

When I shared last week’s post, I prefaced it with the comment: “A few things have changed.”

And that’s true. But here’s something that’s even truer: most things haven’t.

Continue reading →