The week that was…

…awesome? Surprising? Unusual?

Monday I had frantic conversation, lovely coffee and handmade chocolates (the remainder of which I took – with permission!) at the home of Gillian, my mentor and fellow blogger/writer/foodie…three words which you can use in any combination:  foodie writer blogger, blogger writer foodie, writer foodie blogger, bloggie fooder writer, blooger, writie, feeder….KIDS STOP ME!  I’M ROLLING! Isn’t it funny how someone who has known you for a short time can boost your confidence and clarify your path with a few words?

Wednesday I watched my middle child graduate from Grade 5.  Succesfully (as in he graduated successfully, not having been told to sit on his hands until the ceremony was over.  But also successfully as in I didn’t melt into a flood of tears preventing me from actually seeing him graduate.)!  Well, successfully until he won the award for Best Achievement in Technology (he was right, all those hours on the PS3 did pay off!) then there were no tissues to contain my tears, my snot, and stifle my sobs of surprise!  My pride in my boy was like an ocean filling my skin.

  Well done Ethan. You’re a brilliant kid! 

And my favorite, but don’t tell the other two.

Thursday My book Chooks in the City was announced as one of two books shortlisted for the 2008 ACT Writing & Publishing Awards – Non fiction Section!  I get gold medal stickers to put on my books!  I shook Jon Stanhope’s hand!  And unfortunately I photographed badly as usual – this was a gift from the wicked fairy at my chirstening no doubt:  “She will be tall, she will have a great sense of humor BUT…once she turns 13, she will never photograph well for the rest of her days MWAH HA HA HA HAAAAAA!”

Photographs aside though, it was a week….without suitable verb.  An amazing week.  An awesome week.  Hopefully, an unforgettable week….cause the things I remember are actually dimishing at a rate of knots…but you guys will remind me, right?

Wishing you all weeks of surprise and blessings!

Confessions of a naughty writer

(First of all let me say, that title is going to attract some interesting terms in the seach engines – stay tuned!)

Writing is great if you love it, which I do.  Writing a book and seeing it published is brilliant and ego-lifting and fun and a dream come true.  Marketing it, selling it, promoting it – sucks, quite frankly, if you are not that kind of person.  I am not that kind of person.  I don’t do self promotion, which unfortunately is vital for book selling.  I could sell your book, don’t get me wrong – I could sell fleas to dogs with my gift of the gab.  It’s my book that I struggle with.

Once you have published a book, it is a shock to realise that bookshops don’t actually call you and say: ‘We just sold out of your book, could we have another 50?’  Instead, you have to check that they have enough of your books in the hopeful case they may have sold out of them.  Booksellers tend to make contact only if a customer has made a request.  Of course, otherwise the stores would be on the phone all day for the thousands of titles they contain on their shelves.  Sorry to burst your bubble.

Unfortunately I have a little phone phobia: cold calling makes me sweat and feel nauseous.  I take notes before I call most people I don’t know and even a few I do.  Stop laughing.  It is a little weird, I’ll grant you that, and I can’t explain it but it’s true.  I would rather pop into a shop and casually ask face to face if more books are needed, than call on the phone and wait to be put through to blahblah, who in turn will check with her manager ‘Smithy’ who is confused and could she call me back?  This alone is enough to have me rocking in a quiet, dark corner.

When the wonderful Murrumbateman Field Days were on over the weekend, Stepford Husband and I took the opportunity to go without kids (we can clean out our own wallets at the Field Days thankyou very much!), and we walked up and down the rows slowly because my back still hurts, and quietly because we had no kids.  We even held hands.  Once. And we came across a bookstall that has been well loved by the people of Canberra for decades, and there was my book.  ‘Chooks in the City’ sat next to another poultry book in a display that was designed to offset the rural attractions that the Field Days represent.  An older man was browsing the books in that section, and I watched.  He picked up the other poultry book and had a flick through.  He put it down and picked up my book.  My heart leapt and before I knew what I was doing, I snuck up behind him and whispered in his ear “That’s a great book,”  !!  I don’t know what came over me.  He didn’t even look at me.  He flicked through it, and paused; flicked through it, and paused.  And then he bought it. 

Stepford Husband witnessed the whole thing and sidled over to me.  “What did you say to that man?” he asked.
“I told him it was a great book,” I said, red faced.
“Well done,” he said.

I am a bad, naughty writer.  Kind of fits really, doesn’t it?

Writing things I should know by now

Procrastination and me are like this X .  And I have been pondering how a writer goes about doing the blog thing and getting on with their work as well, because I haven’t been.  Ask me for an article and I’ll write you an article, no probs, but when it comes to my own writing – the follow up book to the one I published last year (Chooks in the City) or the fiction idea that I’ve travelled with for a long time, I’ve been very limited.  And it isn’t because I’ve been bereft of ideas.  Far from it.  I’ve been flooded with the bloody things, but I’ve used that as an excuse NOT to start anything, because I didn’t know where to start.

Finally, the Stepford Husband offered me a book of his to read called ‘The War of Art’…that’s why he is the Stepford Husband…always coming up with what you need, when you need it.  And it smacked my arse.  In a nice way.  As a result, I’ve had blinding moments of clarity and the worst thing is, all these lightbulb moments are things I already knew.

Like:

The most productive writing I’ve ever done was longhand in a book, with no back glances to fix or edit or change grammar – because those things can be changed later, when the story has come.

Sharing an idea can dilute and diminish the story and give your procrastinating monster a reason not to then spend the time writing it down.

Stop thinking about it and do it (you bloody idiot)

If you are procrastinating by using the computer, (and legitimising it by saying to yourself that you are writing, after all, a blog) then turn your routine upside down.  Don’t get online until you’ve spent X hours writing…even if you’re writing the reasons you can’t write….remember that old writing exercise?

BUT beware of old writing exercises unless you trying to unblock…because they can themselves be tools for procrastination, as can reading writing workshop books.

Be nice to yourself and stop beating yourself up all the time (fool!).

Feel the fear and do it anyway!

Wish me luck.  No, I mean it!