I love school holidays

I love school holidays. 

This may sound like a strange thing to say for someone who hasn’t been a teacher for ten years and whose kids are well past their school days.

But school holidays are wonderful.

Because school holidays mean delicious cocooning silence for the first half hour of my morning train commute.

Now please don’t think that this is a rant about the youth of today and their disrespect for others. It’s not. It’s just that the first half hour of my commute is the tiny bit of time that I have carved out for me to write. And for exactly sixteen minutes of that time the local high school kids surge into my carriage and command centre stage.

They don’t do anything wrong (mostly). They are just LOUD. Exuberant. As you should be when you are a teen. The carriage fills with their energy: sudden shots of laughter, high-pitched squeals, the click-clack of skateboards, the bouncing of soccer balls, shouted conversations about assignments, or exams or TV shows. Sometimes there is even singing. (I love the singing.) And dancing. And acrobatics. (True.) They are highly entertaining - and extremely distracting - but only once have I felt the need to say, Oh, come on, guys, keep it down. Please. Which they did immediately with red faces and swift apologies.

Funnily enough it wasn’t until midweek last week that I noticed their absence, that I snuggled into the silence of my empty carriage and immersed myself in the voices of my characters. It was nice, I have to admit.

And I have another whole week until the sixteen-minute daily circus returns. 

Writing makes me happy

I have been writing professionally for fifteen years. So you'd think I would have worked it out by now. But in the last few weeks, more than ever before, I have come to the simple realisation that writing makes me happy. And that when I'm not writing, I can get a little cranky with life.

The past twelve months have been tricky. And life, as is often the case, has been getting in the way of my writing. This, coupled with several failed attempts at starting new novels, a cranky parrot on my shoulder, in full voice, telling me how rubbish my writing was, and inspiration and motivation as capricious as Sydney weather, meant that I was starting to question whether I even had another story in me. Perhaps Portraits of Celina was going to be my last novel.

http://mansquito.com/pages/giant-squid.html

Then, when my guard was down (and my spirits too), by chance I saw a video of a giant squid. This resulted in a light bulb moment, which led to others, and soon I was connecting several (quite random) ideas and, before I knew it, I was at the computer, with a new way in to one of my false start novels.

And I am so HAPPY. I feel like I am BACK. My characters are chatty and demanding and constantly charming the socks off me. And I am glad to be charmed again. I am glad to be writing.

Because writing makes me happy.

Time to beach party

Well, the sun is shining, the weather is warming and the gorgeous blue sea is twinkling at me. And it is almost exactly the same sort of day when about ten years ago I was filled with a scrumptious child-like excitement as I headed down the cliff track to the beach to have my first swim for the season.

But as my bare feet hit the still coolish sand, a refrain started to play in my head:

I'm going for a swim in the sea, the sea, the big blue sea. 

The refrain persisted as I garnered up my courage, closed my eyes and plunged into the still coolish water.

I'm going for a swim in the sea, the sea, the big blue sea. 

It continued as I floated in the current (briefly - the water was actually rather freezing!).

I'm going for a swim in the sea, the sea, the big blue sea.

By the time I had plodded back up the track, showered and made some lunch, the refrain had become a poem - a poem that over the next few years would nudge up against a couple of other ideas and eventually morph into a story -  A SWIM IN THE SEA.

And this week, with the red and yellow flags standing sentinel on the beach, marking the beginning of the summer swimming season,  A SWIM IN THE SEA is now officially a book, illustrated by Meredith Thomas and published by Walker Books.

So I think it is time to PARTY! You can read about the launch here.

Beach party launch of A Swim in the Sea at Austinmer Public School.

And, as you can see, I am once again filled with a scrumptious child-like excitement as A SWIM IN THE SEA hits the shelves in bookshops around the country. Yip-ee!

Start something, stick with it, finish it … or start something new

Last Saturday I spoke on a YA panel with Lisa Forrest and Rebecca James at the Southern Highlands Writers’ Festival. It was a fun, relaxed session and I enjoyed the company of Lisa and Rebecca immensely. 

During the session Lisa gave an aspiring young writer some sage advice about writing. It went something like this: Read lots. Write lots. Start something. Stick with it. Finish it. Nothing startling, but well stated in a way that was easy to remember. And it provided a timely reminder for me.

So after my stern talking to self on Sunday, I started the week with a new resolve. I was going to get back to my YA WIP; I was going to stick with it and finish it. No matter how long it took.

I started out by reading through what I had written thus far (about 3000 words), poring over the pages and pages of character notes and ideas, trying to get back into the heads of Shay and Riley. There was some surprisingly good stuff here, much of which I had forgotten about. But I knew I had a lot more “thinking” to do, and that I needed to go slowly, think deeply about my characters and take the time to get to know them properly. It was going to be a long process. But I was excited. That was Monday.

On Tuesday I woke thinking about a junior fiction idea I had years ago. A comic adventure idea that was very character driven and filled with much silliness. Ideas were zipping around my head, and I had to get out my notebook to take them down before I forgot them. And before I knew it I was scribbling scenes and working out plot ideas.

So after only one day into my resolve, I have started something new. But I am positively buzzing, the voices of my characters chattering away endlessly in my subconscious. Is this just classic avoidance behaviour? Am I just putting off delving back into my YA because I know that it is going to be hard? Who knows? But right now I am going to combine two of my favourite sayings and go with the flow and do what makes my heart sing.

Start something. Stick with it. Finish it. Great advice – if only I would follow it. 

A stern talking to self

Okay – enough is enough, Susan. No more excuses.

Portraits of Celina has been out for three months. It has been read, reviewed and reprinted. You have received wonderful notes and emails and FB messages, and you have done what you can to promote it: school visits, library visits, festivals, panel sessions, conferences, interviews and articles. You have blogged and facebooked and tweeted.

There will be more opportunities – and they will be wonderful and appreciated – but it is time to let go. To stop being that helicopter parent hovering over and worrying about your latest little book baby and how it is doing in the big bad world. Slash the apron strings, Susan. Let Bayley and Celina tell their stories to whoever wishes to listen to them. They are no longer your characters. They belong to your readers, and you must move on. You have a new novel to write and it is not going to write itself. It requires time, effort – and in the (paraphrased) words of Ernest Hemingway “you need to sit at your typewriter and bleed”.

Remember Shay? And Riley? Remember that image you have of them: torn, crying, bereft, but loving each other to bits? Remember Shay touching Riley’s face and telling him she will fix it, fix him? That she would never leave his side no matter what he’s done? Remember your blog post about Dad and those tangly webs? Remember that?

You have another story to tell. And I think it could be a good one, one worth telling. And, yes, it is going to be hard. Really hard. It is going to take a long time. You are going to doubt yourself and at times you will feel as if you are writing nothing but rubbish – and maybe it will be, just that, rubbish, but maybe it won’t. But, Susan, you have to give it your best shot. Come on, put a lid on those doubts, silence those excuses and, please, please, just get on with it. 

Like now.

Walking and writing

Recently, it was my daughter's 21st birthday. To celebrate we headed down the coast with a small group of her friends to a cedar cabin in the wilderness. There was much eating, drinking, surfing, swimming, laughing, swinging in hammocks, sitting around camp fires - it was a great weekend. A wonderful celebration.

Over the summer, I had been working diligently (and wrestling often) on my second draft of my WIP, and with about a dozen people to cater for and entertain over this particular weekend, I welcomed the chance to leave it at home and party for a while.

But I don't seem ever to be able to do that! Not completely anyway. I may have left the manuscript at home, but the story is always in my mind and no matter how hard I tried to push it out of my thoughts, it always pushed its way back in. (I don't think it helped that the property we were staying on was very similar to the setting of my novel.)

Every morning and every afternoon I headed off up this road for a bit of a walk. And this is where I rediscovered the power of the walk. And even more so, the power of letting your mind wander aimlessly.

Each time I walked up the road and back, I returned with some new insight. Some tiny detail to add to the fabric of the prose. An interesting sentence. A snippet of dialogue. A plot flaw revealed. The place where I could add some emotional depth or further characterisation. Magic.

The manuscript is now "complete". And today I am going to send it to my publisher. Deep breath. Fingers crossed. Wish me luck.

What inspires you?

Last week I did an author interview for Bug in a Book. You can read it here. One of the questions they asked was whether I had any role models who inspired me during my journey as a writer.

This really got me thinking. It got me reflecting on all the wonderful people who had supported and/or mentored me over the last dozen or so years. The friends, colleagues, relatives, writing buddies, acquaintances who read the many drafts of my early manuscripts, offered advice, gave feedback, shared my passion, listened to me vent my frustration and on occasion provided a shoulder for me to have a cry on. Then there was those whose courses / workshops / events I attended, who inspired me by their passion, enthusiasm, intellect, skill, talent, their willingness to share the lessons they had learnt along the way. Wow. I owe so much to so many. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

But I also came to a bit of a realisation about what inspires me most these days. And that is good writing: carefully crafted words on the page; elegant prose; vivid imagery;  clever storytelling that evokes strong emotions; stories with shape and verve and originality; characters that have blood coursing through their veins, that leap off the page and demand my attention. That's what gets me going, what motivates me to keep writing.

What inspires you?

Sorry, I've been writing

It has been a while since I posted, but I have an excellent excuse. The best excuse for a writer, actually.

I'VE BEEN WRITING!

This might sound rather weird. Isn't that what a writer is meant to be doing? A writer writes, right?

Well, a writer should write, but this writer over the past few years has found it increasingly difficult to find the time to write the story she really wanted to write: a YA thriller.

Like many writers, TIME has been my greatest enemy. And my writing time has been whittled down to tiny snatches squeezed into a busy schedule of full time work, school visits and speaking engagements, family commitments and the need to eat and sleep occasionally! And these tiny snatches weren't enough for me to be able to make any significant progress on my novel, which of course has been very frustrating.

So what's changed?

Firstly, I made a commitment to myself. This year was going to be my YEAR of WRITING. Writing was going to take precedence for a change. And I was going to FIND the time. (Easier said than done. I can see you all nodding!)

But then the planets aligned and some things changed that have enabled me to honour this commitment.

Due to change in an employment situation, I now have a house-husband. My wonderful Pete has taken over most of the household duties, and suddenly my weekends have freed up and much larger snatches of writing time have appeared, which has been great.

But even with this extra time on the weekend, I still found it hard to make progress with my novel. It seemed that I spent most of the weekend trying to get back in the headspace of the story, to hear my characters and find my voice, and by the time I actually got going it was Sunday night again, and I'd only just begun. A lot of energy spent with very little gain.

Then the second thing happened. I had a birthday and received a very special life-changing present. A new laptop - a MacBook Air. Now I know this is going to sound like an ad for Apple, but this little beauty is the main reason for my renewed writing vigour. It is so light and portable, I take it everywhere with me, and if I have a few spare minutes I flick it on and get going. Even if I have a bag full of manuscripts to cart back and forth from work, it is so light, I can still take it with me on my long daily rail commute.

And to be honest, I don't add hugely to my word count, during my commute, but it doesn't matter. I read back over what I have written, make notes, edit, fiddle around the edges. But all of this allows me to stay in the headspace of the novel and when the weekend arrives, I don't need to claw my way back in. I'm there. Ready to go.

Can you tell I'm excited?
Must fly - I have a new chapter to write.

I did it!

Oh the power of making a promise in writing  for all to read on one's blog. Yesterday, I vowed to change my wicked ways. I vowed to put my head down, apply superglue to my backside and get stuck into my writing. And, what do you know, I did.

It wasn't easy. I resisted. I struggled. I complained. But I persevered. And I made a vital discovery.

I was working on a chapter book that I was asked to rework. The editorial feedback was spot on - it all made perfect sense, but every time I came to one particular section of the plot, I became stuck. I couldn't find a satisfying way forward. I studied my characters' motivations, their actions and reactions. I tried a dozen different approaches, but I just couldn't crack it.

It was time for some drastic action. So I gave the whole story an almighty shake up - rearranged the order of events, changed the focus of the story slightly and voila! My problems were more or less solved.

I have had a wonderful weekend of writing. The story I have been agonising about for months has been reworked and polished. Tomorrow I may think it all sucks - but regardless, I have made REAL progress.

Thank you, oh blogosphere. Probably no one even read yesterday's promise to myself - but it doesn't matter, it did the trick. The drought is broken. And I am thankful.

A promise

This year I resolved I was going to focus on two things. One: do what I can to continue to promote Get a Grip, Cooper Jones. And two: work on the craft of writing and write as often as possible, hopefully completing the reworking of a chapter book, long overdue, and also my YA novel that has been gathering dust for longer than I care to admit.

Well, it is almost March and while I have lots of festivals and school visits coming up to promote Cooper, YAY!, I have fallen very short on the developing my craft side of my resolve and have only reworked two lousy chapters of my chapter book and done nothing with my YA or my "craft" so to speak.

But this is about to change! Today. Really.