And loving it. I’m averaging about 2000 words a day which is fantastic. I seem to write for about an hour and a half and get around 1500 very messy fast words down then I go back and fix it all up and add more. I’ve got a fairly detailed plan that I’m working from but it’s changing and expanding already. Writing young passionate love at the moment. Sexy sexy sexy.
Can’t tell you how much better I feel having started writing today. I had morning tea with Marion, one of my best writing buddies, first and she gave me some good background info on my main character’s studies (Christina Rossetti thesis) and some good quotes from Rosetti’s poem “Goblin Market” – pretty sexy stuff. So enjoyed writing. The first page was the hardest, fear and loathing rising up in my gullet, but once I just let go and let the world unfold, let the characters speak for themselves, I reached that point where it was just flying by itself and I was being carried along with it, watching it unfold.
Mick, the Maltese guy is gorgeous and sexy as hell and they’re on!
No actual sex scene as yet. Tomorrow!
Yep folks, writing is fun.
About to start in on the new novel. Feels a bit like standing on top of a cliff trying to gather courage to leap into the roaring sea below, staring at the waves crashing, trying to familiarise myself with them, reminding myself how to swim. But there’s only one thing to do. JUMP!
Michael Cunningham (author of The Hours) says,
“A writer should always feel like he’s in over his head. That’s part of what makes good writing compelling – the sense that as readers we’re in the company of a writer of vast ambitions, who is always trying to do more than he or she is technically capable of.”
Well, that’s me, vast ambitions and in WAY over my head.
Aiming for a thousand words a day and a full draft done by the end of June. Who’s with me?
Love to all,
Edwina
Well, the year is certainly starting with some good omens writing-wise. My story “Broken” is available online at http://www.asialiteraryreview.com/web/article/en/132>. Thanks to Chris and Tim at Asia Literary Review, a quality publication with fascinating stories, essays, poetry and reportage from our side of the world. Also exciting is the news that an excerpt from my story” The Raft” (itself an excerpt from my forthcoming novella Thrill Seekers) is going to be published in the QLD newspaper The Courier Mail tomorrow. This feels like a huge milestone for me. Some recognition in my home town. Thanks to Erica and Julianne at Griffith REVIEW for making it possible and helping me achieve a long held goal. Seems like my new year tree is flowering already. Thanks to you all for your ongoing support.
Lots of love,
Edwina
The other day at my mother’s house in Tamborine I found an ancient book The Sunday at Home 1888 cram packed full of uplifting moral tales and essays to be read aloud to the family on Sundays when no work was to be done. That’s where I found the following gem by a Reverend J. Monro Gibson, D.D.
“A New Year’s Word of Cheer 1888”
“Depression, depression, depression. (Yes he really started like that!)
How sadly familiar the word has been for many years. (Hmmm, sounding eerie yet?) It’s not an unfamiliar word at any time; but lately it seems as if it had come, not to visit, but to stay. The depression in agriculture and commerce has been so continued, that it is almost a weariness to speak of it…. (1888, not 2010)
Steam and electricity (substitute technology here) have accomplished all, and even more than all, that was expected of them; but is life very much nobler than it was? Is it so much easier to make a living? Is the living so very much better when it is made? Is the sum of human happiness so much the greater? Or of human misery so much the less? Now that nature does so very much of man’s work, and at so high a rate of speed is man’s labour so much the lighter? Is there more leisure to read, to think, to enjoy?
Of what great advantage is it to get such a wondrously energetic servant as steam (technology), ready to do anything, everything for us, in the shortest time, in the most efficient manner, on the largest scale, if the master has to work all the harder. How many are there who find it the most enjoyable thing in life to get out of hearing of the engine’s shriek, out of reach of the telegraph wire!”
The good reverend goes on at some great length, urging us to turn away from the demands of the material world and lift up our eyes and hearts to the heavens. He concludes by wishing us all “a year of faith and hope and love! – a year of life responsive to the call of heaven – growing larger, richer, fairer and more fruitful, ‘like the tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season.’”
It seems life is not so very different in the 21st century to the 19th. We are all still human, all still searching for a way to be happy and not finding it in the adoration of technology and the increasingly frantic pace of modern life. The call of spiritual teachers remains the same. Lift your eyes to heaven and open your hearts. Happiness lies within, not without.
Like the reverend I wish you a year of faith and hope and love, with a bit of good old fashioned fun thrown into the mix!
Here’s my Christmas wishes for all of you,
Lakshmi
CHRISTMAS WISHES FOR WRITERS
Wishing you the courage to pursue your dreams and the discipline and persistence to see them through, right till the end.
Wishing you beholders of your work who see the beauty and wonder in what you create.
Wishing you financial reward and recognition for your work.
Wishing you friends and fellow travellers on the writing path, who share disappointments and success with equal fervour.
Wishing you editors who understand what you’re trying to say and help you say it better,
Publishers who honour your vision and bring it to the widest possible audience.
Wishing you readers galore and letters of connection that move you to tears.
Wishing you the strength to endure the sting of rejection and the distraction of praise,
Patience, determination and the ability to get up and start all over again.
Wishing you all the time you need.
I wish you freedom from fear of the blank and empty page,
A peaceful silencing of the inner critic, and the death of all self-doubt.
I wish you a hide of leather and a heart of gold.
Most of all I wish you the joy of creation and the ability to stand aside and let the words find their own way.
I wish you characters who tell you their stories and speak for themselves.
I wish you plots that hold and won’t let go,
Scenes that fit and sentences that glow with perfection.
I wish you words;
An ocean of strong, expressive words pouring from your pen or onto the screen.
Words that sing the truth of this weird and wonderful human life.
Words of hope and despair, pain and pleasure,
Words that move others and help them know they are not alone,
That we’re all in this glorious mess together.
Words of wisdom and joy and love.
Words that only YOU can write.
Words that shine a light.
with love,
Edwina
OH THE PLACES YOU’LL GO
(0r some advice on life and writing)
by Dr. Seuss
You can get so confused
That you’ll start in to race
Down long wiggled roads at a break necking pace
And grind on for miles across wierdish wild space
Headed, I fear, towards a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
Or a bus to come, of a plane to go
Or the mail to come, or the rain to go
Or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
Or waiting around for a Yes of No
Or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
Or waiting for wind to fly a kite
Or waiting around for Friday night
Or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
Or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
Or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
Or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
NO!
That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape
All that waiting and staying.
You’ll find the right places
Where Boom Bands are playing.
With banners flip-flapping,
Once more you’ll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Hope that helps all of you out there waiting.
Waiting to hear back from agents, editors, publishers and readers about your work, whether it’s a yes or no, enthusiasm or polite dismissal, can be the most difficult part of a writer’s work. The trick is letting go of urgency, letting go of impatience and most of all , letting of any expectations for specific outcomes for our work. In order not to be endlessly distracted and hurt by the constant round of submissions and waiting we have to find a way to release those expectations and just keep on writing, because that’s what we do. Because we love it and find enough joy in the work itself to keep on going.
Easier said than done. But worth a try. Keep writing.
Even when we’re stuck in the dreaded “Waiting Place.”
“Writing is a second chance at life. Although we can never go back in time to change the past, we can re-experience, interpret, and make peace with our past lives.”
Jane Taylor McDonell, Living to Tell the Tale
Writing fiction has the power to transform even the ugliest of memories into something else, maybe beautiful, maybe funny, maybe hard and ugly too, but in a different way. Through changing the details of your memories writing stories you can free yourself from the pain of the past and create happy endings where perhaps none existed before. Trouble is (or maybe it isn’t a problem at all) when you write fiction based on the facts of your life, the memories get mixed in with the made up bits and you can’t really remember which is which.
Create something beautiful from your uglies and let them go forever.
Love to all,
Edwina
Bernie, youth worker and dog trainer extraordinaire has this to say about the writing journey, “It’s just like the jumping dogs. You need to: look up, aim high, believe in what you’re doing, and the reward is on the other side of the wall. No point looking
down at the ground when you’re on the way up.
Classic.
Back from retreat and ready to make a new start. Time to move on from angst about Thrill Seekers ever coming out (in my lifetime anyway) and make this blog more useful to those who read it by sharing hints and tips to nurture the writer’s spirit. Writing is a joy in itself but the path to being a recognised, published (and paid) author is long and often holds many challenges.
In the words of a song I heard once on Sesame Street, “It’s a long hard road, But I’m gonna make it. It’s a long hard road, but I’m gonna try. It’s a long hard road but I’m gonna get there. I’m heading for the morning sun!”
Keep focused on the work itself. Sit down every day and do your best. Feel the joy of creative expression, enter that zone where everything else fades except the words on the screen or page and the characters in your head. Become one with your story and let it do all the work. Then sit back and trust that the very same source your ideas came from will find the right beholder/publisher/readers.
Trust.
As one of my all time favourite writers, D. H. Lawrence said,
”The creative, spontaneous soul sends forth its promptings of desire and aspiration in us. These promptings are our true fate, which is our business to fulfill.”
So if, like me, the urge to write is strong in you, you get grumpy if you don’t write every day and depressed at the thought of ever stopping, then there’s your answer. Writing is not just a career. (All this hard work for, most of the time, very little return, you’ve got to be kidding!)
It’s a calling.
So, what are you waiting for? Write something!
Lots of love,
Edwina
