Happy Dancing!

I've been a little absent lately - but it's only because I've been using every available second to finishe my current WIP.

And now it's done!

I can’t tell you what a relief it is. I’ve learned so much writing this book. I know I say this with every book, but really – SO MUCH.

Firstly, I started out trying to give my characters some ‘complex conflicts’ rather than a complex plot - a la the Nadia Cornier and Simone Elkeles theory from their workshop at the 2006 RWA conference.

I really love this way of thinking about a book – that if you just set your characters up with complex conflicts they can’t resolve, the plot considerations seem to take care of themselves.

Somehow, of course, in the midst of all those conflicts, I’ve managed to end up with Plotty McPlot anyway, but I’m sure I can balance it out. If I haven’t already.

Secondly – I bought in a few more characters than I’m used to dealing with and that put me on a great learning curve. In my first couple of books, I kept my cast of characters small, because I really couldn’t deal with too much more than that. But this time I’ve got sisters, step brothers, friends, parents of friends all mingling together.
Honestly I’m so immersed in this book that I can no longer see it clearly – so time to put it aside for a few days and play with something else.
Now there’s a sentence that brings a smile to my face – SOMETHING ELSE!

It’s back to that magical time at the start of a novel when anything is possible, everything glitters, and this is going to be the best story I’ve ever written. Sound familiar?

For me it means lots of lazing around, sleeping and napping. Because that’s where I can find that twilight place between awake and asleep where my most creative ideas come from. In fact the idea for THE YEAR MY MAGIC BROKE came on a warm spring day when I kicked back in my car at lunchtime with the sun shining through the windows and half fell asleep. Half fell asleep and dreamed of a girl who discovered her magical powers by a hot guy’s life (and subsequently turning him into a cat).

Mmmm starting a new book. It's better than chocolate.

They're just a pair of socks.

They were just a pair of socks, but they were handmade from the softest angora wool with fine straggly white hairs all over, and they were a pretty purply- grey that you wouldn’t normally associate with a man's sock.

They sat in my sock drawer, third one down, valiantly swimming their way to the surface amid the sports socks and tired old printed socks. They were determined. Determined and three times the size of any other pair of socks in the drawer. They begged to be worn.

But no matter how cold my toes were, or how long I’d looked in vain for my left slipper, I could never bring myself to put them on. Even though part of my crazy mind remembered how I thought I'd love to wear them, how I envisaged wearing them all through the winter, knowing it would make me feel closer to him.

Or something.

Winter went, spring, summer and another autumn and still they never made it out of my drawer. In fact, I could barely look at them, much less pick them up.

That is until tonight when that nasty little voice in my head said that if I didn’t start wearing them soon, I should throw them out. THROW THEM OUT?? Then of course I had to put them on because no way Jose were they getting thrown out.

So I put them on.

And promptly started crying when a hundred and one forgotten pictures of Big Al sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee balanced on the arm rest, and these very same angora socks bunching around his ankles flicked across my mind like a slide show I couldn’t turn off, and I realized these tears are the very reason I left those socks in the drawer for so long. Smart girl.

Because even after a year and a bit these tears are hot and hurtful, sticking in my throat and making me remember. The tears tell me I was stupid to think I was so much better for the past few months. They tell me that I'm kidding myself, that they are just under the surface waiting to jump out whenever a little angora fluffiness comes my way.

Stupid socks. I sit at the computer and look at old photos and new photos and get sadder and sadder, crying quietly so TJ won't hear me from watching the equally sad Richmond football game in the next room.

Then i get up to go and check on the lemon delicious pudding, and whaddaya know the socks make me glide like an ice skater across our polished floor boards, something my dad, with his ice hockey past, would've greatly approved of.

That made me smile and suddenly everything was more than ok.

My brain confuses me.

What is it about grief that only tears can make it better? Whether it's one year or five or twenty, you just have to cry when the tears are there. If I cry, like a good soaking rain, everything appears a little bit brighter and cleaner.

Maybe I'm a lot better than I thought.

Rest in peace Big Al. I miss you like crazy.

Hey, you've got a stick up your ass!

Okay, I’m packing up this little caravan and I’m running away with the muppet circus.

This will all make sense when I tell you that last night, as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, we went to see Puppet Up - Uncensored with Brian Henson and crew. To make it even funnier, the venue was the Princess Theatre which is about as close as you can get in real life to the plush muppet theatre of the 1970s show.

We walked in to see a plain black stage with a tiny camera trained on the puppeteers and big-ass flat screen TVs on each of the stage.

So you have the choice to watch only the puppets, if you look at the TV, or how the whole thing works if you watch the stage directly.

Then the host, Patrick, asks for some audience input – e.g. “give me a place” and the audience scream out suggestions until something sounds like fun, e.g. “star trek convention”.

Patrick tells the actors to ‘Puppet Up’ and the troupe pick up their puppets and swing into action giving us an hilarious Star Trek send up with their own muppet flavour. And because it was an over 18 audience, they could say what they wanted, when they wanted, which took the muppets right out of being kids entertainment into something far more mischievous.

Like when one muppet looks at the other and says “Hey, you’ve got a stick up your ass.”

Hilarious, way cute, smart and just a heap of fun. I sat there like a little kid with a wrapt expression on my face for the entire two hour show. This is the first time I’ve been to a show and had serious job envy. How cool would it be to work with that kind of creative energy every day? You could literally feel it in their interactions and the fun they had together. What a cool bunch of people.

Of course it was only as I was lying in bed, four hours after the show finished that I thought of some good suggestions to yell out.

Typical.

Golden Days

Sending out gallons of cyber champagne to Melanie who rocketed her way into the finals of the Romance Writers of America Golden Heart competition with not one manuscript - but two!

This isn't a little three chapter competition either - it's the whole MS. There's no hiding there. If you've got a sagging middle, a black moment that's more a pale puce colour or a few things that just don't quite gel - it's preeety unlikely you'll make it to the finals. After all, they get over 1000 entries every year.

So congratulations you clever thing, and wishing you everything good for your trip to Dallas in July :)

Breakfast Fiend Mark I

I am one of Melbourne's biggest breakfast fiends, I'm sure of it.
I've been obsessed by the whole breakfast out thing for about five years now. Every Sunday, sometimes Saturday, and even during the week if someone is crazy enough to give me the day off.

I'm ashamed to say it all started with McDonalds and a particularly tasty Sausage and Egg McMuffin, but it has progressed a LOOOOONG way from there and totally with the help and inspiration of Jamie Wodetzki of The Breakfast Blog .

This guy ROCKS at the whole breakfast thing, and TJ and I have been shamelessly following his lead when it comes to all things of breakfasty goodness.

Without him we would never have found:

Mart 130
The Green Grocer
or
Replete Providore


All places where I've spent many mornings noodling on my alphasmart while my coffee goes cold.

And we certainly would never have stumbled over Balzari, where this morning I had a pesto and egg dish made that almost made me cry with the way something so simple was made with such panache. I'm sure those herbed tomatoes were picked off a vine in the chef's backyard on his way to work, they were so tasty and fresh.

Coffee = strong and yum
service = friendly and professional
ambiance = mellow


And the mellowness was exactly what I needed after being chief mocktail maker for my lovely niece's 16th birthday party.

SisterL and I came up with our own concoctions of mocktails called The Pink Tutu, the Sunset and the Cococobana that after

• crushing the ice
  
• sugaring the rim
  
• chopping the mint
  
• blending the raspberries
  
• adding the passionfruit
  
• whizzing it all together; and
  
• placing the sweet plastic monkey on the rim
  

the kids gulped down in one swallow and held their plastic martini glasses for a refill. Ha! I needed something stronger than fruit juice by midnight, I can tell you.

There were sixty-five fifteen and sixteen year-olds running amok and dancing like there was no tomorrow. They had an absolute ball and my only regret was that adults weren't allowed to join in. I mean, come on, anyone who knows me even slightly knows I'm 100% capable of being in the thick of this:


Which is perhaps the heart of the problem and the reason for the rule. After all, fifteen year olds who spend 4 nights a week in dance class look a lot different dancing while foam is being sprayed all over them to a thirty-five year old with a jumbo sized muffin top and jeans that don't quite do up.

But I would've given it a red hot go.

So I had to content myself with adding to said muffin top by dipping a few marshmallows in this:

Which I can tell you was both extremely messy and totally yummy.

It was a fun night that left me wishing I was sixteen again :)

Which probably explains why I love writing about being sixteen! The universe certainly has a way of making sure you're in the right place, sometimes.

Peace, love and fruity sweet mocktails.

Rob

LOVING the revision

I thought I was being sarcastic with the 'loving the revision' title because it's so often a hair pulling, ARRGH kind of process.

In fact, even a week ago, I was feeling jacked off with the process, as my revision page count climbed oh-so-slowly and it was feeling like the same story with a few words changed around.

That's not my idea of a good revision.

But I've gotta say, it's all turned around (which it invariable does) and now I really am *loving the revision* of my current YA. Scenes have moved from the back of the novel to the middle, from the middle to garbage bin and new scenes have wiggled their way in. That's exciting!

It's taking shape, it's finally taking shape. And it's such a freaking relief.

I'm well over half way through, and aiming for being three-quarters by the end of this week. Or maybe even the end of today. LOL, yeah right.

But it's a process.


First, I surround myself with the pictures that make the story come alive for me like the one to your left.

Then I crank up my music compilation for this manuscript which is a mix of stuff by Pink and take it word by word, page by page and scene by scene.

Scenes have moved from the end to the start and from the middle to the end, some scenes are just GONE and new ones have taken their place.

And it's so satisfying. And the more surprises I find about the characters in the pages, the more satisfying I find it.

First draft is both fun and torture. Fun because the words flow and you write as fast as you can and don't look back, and torture because the pages you end up with seldom resemble the shiny goodness of the original idea. But in revision it can become whatever I want it to be and finally I get to try and fix the problems that got me down after I reread my first draft.

Now, if only I could come up with a way to make it a bit faster :)
Oh, that's right - BUM IN CHAIR.

I've heard it works like a charm.

Calling Thailand!

Nothing makes me ignore my bank balance faster than one of those glossy little holiday brochures with page after page using words like 'resort' 'spa' and 'located on a private peninsular'. And if there's any mention of FREE BREAKFAST I've got my cheque book out before you can say 'banana waffles'.

So when TJ and I realised we were coming up on a big anniversary - we thought 'what the heck - let's go!'. I mean really, who needs money anyway, right? Paying the rent is grossly overrated.

We're thinking Thailand, because it's beautiful, close to home, the food is freaking AMAZING and it's where we spent our first honeymoon all those years ago. That time, feeling young and adventurous, we took the train up to the Golden Triangle and did the whole jungle and hot-tail- up-the Mekong River thing. This time, ten years later, it's Southern Thailand and places like this:

AGGGH! That just looks so amazingly beautiful that I can't imagine not spending ten days of my life wondering how the heck that palm tree got all the way over there and if I could possibly rouse myself off my deck chair to swim over and check it out. It's called the Evason Six Senses Resort. What the? I thought I only had five senses! You mean if i come stay at your resort I get an extra one? How cool is that? What would the extra sense be? Psychic ability to know which deck chair will have me in the shade all day? Handy.


Then, of course, the pesky bank balance rears it's ugly head and I realise what we can afford is probably something more like this:


Where the only extra sense you get is the second coming of the dodgy PadThai you had at the hotel restaurant the night before.

Whichever way it goes, there will be swimming, eating, sleeping and a resumption of my love affair with green curry. Here's hoping I can resist having it for breakfast.