The Lunar Writer: 10 Tips for Using the Dark Moon Energy

This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Anything website last month. The original text can be found here. Today and tomorrow are the darkest parts of the moon!

As a child my Uncle worked on a horse stud and the phases of the moon were listed on the calendar that hung on their toilet door - new moon, full moon, quarter moon and so forth. The same calendar adorned the back of my grandparent’s door, so I stared at it quite a bit, intrigued, wondering what it was all about.

It was only after my son was born and I had a friend who was interested in astrology, especially the influence of the moon, that I got to understand better about the cycles of the moon and those horse stud calendars all made more sense to me.

That’s all good and fine for horse breeders, star gazers and company, but what’s this got to do with writing?

Working with the moon is a great way for writers to attune themselves with the natural world, to work with the ebb and flow of energy and to create thirteen unique project pockets (unlike 12 month calendars, there are thirteen lunar months in a year). As someone who is rather useless at personally creating deadlines that are meaningful, working with the moon phases gives me a framework that resonates.

This week begins with the dark moon before the moon is new midweek. Mystic Medusa suggests it is a good time to relax, apply some productive nostalgia and declutter.

Declutter? And it’s not just about shifting all that crap off your desk!

Nury Vittachi, author of the Feng Shui detective series shared at the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival last year how easily writers collect clutter around themselves in the form of dead energy and why it is so important to shift it.

Each piece of correspondence we receive is an energy transaction. Once received we need to do something with it. What do we do with each piece of paper we receive? We file it in a pile on our desk, and when the pile grows unweildly, we take the pile and put it under our desk.

No wonder writers working in such an environment, with so much dead energy around them, struggle to find inspiration. In this age of the paperless environment the 2500 emails in our inbox cause the same congestion of energy on our computers”

Following are my 10 tips for clearing the space - physically, mentally and energetically during the dark moon.

1. Clear, Clean and Reorder your Work/Creative Space

• Dust and run a damp cloth over your desk (mine is always inch thick with dust and cat hair)
• Check and clear whatever has accumulated under your desk during the month - both a scary and fun task
• Empty the overflowing bin
• Take any cups, plates and glasses back to the kitchen
• Return whatever doesn’t belong to you or in your space, to who or where it does belongs (this is usually my son’s toys, especially lego)

Ask yourself what works and doesn’t work in your space. Do something to rectify the situation so that your space is somewhere you love being in. If your dedicated space is an unmanageable mess (as mine was just a few days ago) you will seek out other places to work — and those we live with can be less than tolerant of our writing when we’re claiming the master bed, the couch or the kitchen table as work areas.

2. Repatriate your Books

My books tend to congregate on the bedside table and in random piles on my desk, until it reaches crisis point. Attending to them each month makes the piles manageable and allows the books to live where they are best cared for - away from spilt drinks, cat hair, dust, the direct sun and so forth … and where you can find them!

3. Clean your Computer

This means in inside and out, and also applies to your peripherals and hand held devices.

• Dust down the key board and clean your computer screen
• Defluff and dust your mouse
• Run a cloth over your printer
• Run a defrag
• Dump those temporary files that are clogging up your hard drive
• Resave or delete all the things you saved to the desk top in lieu of a better place
• Do a virus scan

Create some order on your C Drive. It’s the appropriate time to organise your folders (whether that is to create more or delete unnecessarily ones) and refile stories/articles in a logical place. For instance I have two folders that cover all the material for Reclaim Sex After Birth and the associated website but I never go to the correct folder first! This month I’m combining them all in one place.

4. Back Up your Work

Use the dark moon to back up your files monthly - preferably in two places. It is something we all mean to do and put in the ‘to do later’ pile, which incidentally is the same mythical place missing socks wash up! We’ve heard too many horror stories of writers losing work, not to be terrified of the same thing happening to us. I admit to being horrendously slack at doing this and intend to do it as part of my cleaning ritual from now on.

5. Empty your Inbox

Seriously - how many emails have you got in your inbox right here, right now?

Decide what can stay and what can go

• Keeping emails is basically welcoming dead energy, therefore be frugal. When I first started doing this it took more than three hours to go through my two email programs. I was ruthless and thorough!
• Consider all those emails (a friend of mine admitted to over 3000 in her inbox last week) as tiny potential blockages to your creativity. If you doubt me, re-read the wisdom of Vittachi above and tell me it doesn’t resonate somewhere in you?
• If you insist on keeping them ask yourself - what are you really holding onto all those emails for?

Create rules to file your email

• If your email program/client allows for it - do it!
• Rules reduce the amount of email clutter in the generic inbox and help you when trying to track down a specific correspondence.

6. File

If you have any papers lying around - file them. If like me, the filing draw is stuffed full of other miscellaneous items, (reams of paper etc) clear it out so there is room. ‘Papers’ include:

• Drafts that have been critiqued or marked up that are now gathering dust on whatever horizontal surface you can find for them
• Bills that you may have paid or are meaning to pay
• Newspapers or magazines
• Information or research you’ve printed out
• Emails you’ve printed out

They all need a home - or they need to go to the bin (not your drafts of course!)

7. Check your Pens

Are you my scary twin? Do you seem to horde pens that never work? Consider the fact that we’re not always attached to our computers, lap tops, blackberries etc. Go through your pens and jettison any that don’t work. There’s nothing worse than grabbing for a pen and you’ve got to try half a dozen before you find one that works. If the mood takes you - sharpen your pencils.

8. Revisit your Blog/Website

• Is there anything that you have been meaning to update?
• Is your profile information up to date?
• Do all your links work?
• Are there links in your blog list that you no longer visit? Links that you’ve been meaning to add?
• Is there anything you want to get rid of?

Spend ten minutes running through your online pages to make sure your blog/website is working just the way that you want it to work.

9. Write Down your Ideas

Write down any ideas that you have been carrying around in your head

• Always waiting for the right time to space to put them down - do it now! While I am reasonably good at ‘holding that thought’ often phrases of prose and snippets of conversation that come to me, don’t stand the test of time mentally filed. I found this weekend past that I was livid with myself for not having put down a particular conversation. This month I’m downloading to paper.

Take an inventory of your notebooks that you store your ideas in

• Do you know where they are?
• Are they in their appropriate homes (the glove box, your bag/back pack etc)? If not put them where they are meant to be!
• Have you got a functioning pen or pencil with them?
• Do you need a new book or pen?

10. Reflect, Renew, Refocus

Productive Nostalgia

Mystic reminds us that the dark moon is a productive time for nostalgia. I love the notion of productive nostalgia! Take time to think about what’s played out over the month:

• What have you started?
• What have you finished?
• What have you edited? What did you want to edit but never got there?
• What fantastic ideas were you gifted?
• What concepts fell on their face? What got up and ran? Any idea why?
• What people did you met and who did you say good bye to? What impact might they/did they have on you?
• What progress have you made?
• What opportunities were presented and what did you do them?
• What work was rejected and what was published? What never made it that far? Why not?

Purge so that you can renew

If there’s anything you really desperately want to get rid of (a bad habit, criticism, feeling towards a piece of rejected work, writers block) I have this great little trick. Write on a piece of paper what it is your want to get rid of and burn it. That simple. I use the mortar we grind our spices in to do this, on our back verandah. It is both cathartic and a wonderful way to release unproductive energy - literally watching it go up in smoke and drifting off into the ether.

Refocus

• Consider what you want to manifest in the following month. It’s the perfect time to think about what goals you want to work towards in the coming month (wait for the new moon to begin them though!)
• Check your diary for up coming dates - critiquing circles, deadlines for competitions or submissions, workshops, courses or talks.

Paul reminded us a few weeks ago, about the importance of simplifying and downsizing, to focus on what is important. That’s what a monthly clutter can achieve- clear the forest to see the trees so to speak.

This is a long list - lots of ideas. You don’t have to do them all - but try a couple. Different things work for different people. Experiment and share. I’d love to here your experiences.

For the new comer, the mere suggestion of working with lunar cycles can sound like hocus pocus, yet it is the way our ancestors got on with life before the advent of clocks and calendars. While I’ve always said someone with a tidy desk has far too much time on their hands, I now have to admit that keeping my creative space clean and ordered is a way of honouring and respecting myself as a writer. If I can’t honour and respect myself, I shouldn’t expect anyone else to.

The attribution to the beautiful photo has been lost in the blogosphere - and yes, I realise that it's not a dark moon, but a full moon. Dark moon pictures seem to be few and far between! I originally found it at Iris 39

The Stamford

[Fiction] Friday Challenge for March 13, 2009:

During the third night out of town, a travelling businessman discovers a voodoo doll in his hotel room.

Her voice trilled in his head as he rode up the elevator and his face loosened into a smile. There was a definite musical quality to the upward inflection when she was speaking to him. A tinkling if one listened hard enough. Yes – he decided that was the case after being unsure on his other visits.

The classical music seeped into his thoughts as the elevator rose from the ground floor. It reminded him of the Crowded House lyric: “I don’t know what tune that the orchestra plays, but I find it sickly sentimental” and this place was stifled with a romantic ambience of a bygone era. It could easily have gone with something chic and post modern minimalist. And the elevator muzac said it all. Cloyed, last century.

Why bother build something new if you just want to emulate the old?

He’d always wanted to hack into the hotel mainframe and reprogram the elevator music to something inappropriate for a high class establishment such as The Stamford. The Sex Pistols. The Living End. Nine Inch Nails. He’d lie awake at night stretched out fully clothes on the King bed, trying top his previous mental suggestions. Imagining the outraged looks of sixty year old business women when confronted with the invitation of being fucked like an animal.

He grinned a twisted smile and watched the numbers above the doors light up one after another.

Ahh – but Katrina.

He’d observed her conducting business with other guests and noted that only with him, was there a flirtatious underpinning of her uber professional but friendly demeanour. Only a consummate professional such as himself would note the subtle shift, the slight voice modulation and the thinnest of sheens on her brow. She would gently rub at the same right hand side point of her jaw bone when she processed his booking and asked him to sign the credit card. An almost unperceivable tremor of her hand when her manicured hand brushed against his.

Once, arriving late and alone with her in the foyer she’d gambled on asking him for his business card … a slow creeping rose hue spreading across the upper reaches of her elegant cheek bones. Without missing a beat she’d qualified that it was to put on file – obviously. He’d played along, reaching into the breast pocket of his suit coat, then wallet, coming up empty handed – then asking her if company policy allowed employees to join guests for an after work drink. He knew full well it didn’t, otherwise he would never have asked. She’d never mentioned that night but always singled him out for special treatment, as a ‘high rotation guest’, despite the fact he would never qualify as such.

As the elevator doors slid open, with a style and grace that could only be afforded to a mechanical process within somewhere like the Stamford, he stepped out, inhaled and smiled. Clean and with the lingering scent of honey suckle. No harsh cleaning chemicals here or cheap air fresheners that made him sneeze.

He had to admit, as he swept the keycard through the lock and entered the spacious room on the 21st floor that Katrina was the lure that kept him paying outrageous nightly charges here. It went against standard operating procedure to stay in the same place more than once. Dangerous. This was his sixth visit in the last two years.

A city like Brisbane afforded plenty of places for an itinerant to stay. To be just another businessman passing through. If anyone ever asked questions he was sure that Katrina would know the correct thing to say. That’s what he told himself anyway.

He looked forward to the rush of blood, when he caught sight of Katrina behind the huge oak concierge desk, especially when she was in profile with her strawberry blonde hair twisted into a French roll, exposing the length of her alabaster neck. But it wasn’t really Katrina that he wanted. Why he continued to torture himself he had no idea. Katrina was really just a poor substitute that could never be completely or perfectly replicated.

Placing the retro leather overnight bed at the foot of the bed he pulled a pair of soft leather gloves from his pocket and made a sweep of the room. With meticulous and careful attention he ran his fingers over every surface, including opening the toilet cistern. One could never be too careful. Just tearing the drawer open as housekeeping probably had, would shown just the Gideons.

His fingers grazed the small lump of material, pushed up the back of the top drawer of the bedside unit – in behind Gideons.

That made him laugh. He imagined the person who placed it there had a similar wry sense of humour as his own.

Gideon’s try to squirm away from the thing but locked within the four walls of the drawer, wanting to emancipate itself from the taint of voodoo that was brushing against it. Infection and poisoning the good word.

Obviously he was not the only person to have stayed in the room with an interest in pest control. He picked up the voodoo doll and took it over to the window, casting a look out over the river before turning his attention to the doll now he had better light.

It was one of the better made ones that he had seen. Each long, honey brown strand of hair had been sewn individually into the scalp of the doll. He gave up counting after 50. Meticulous and in no hurry. The doll had a full head of hair. Pressing at top of each hand he could feel a nail clipping. The feet were the same. Whoever made it knew exactly what they were doing.

Perusing what was on offer in the mini bar, he was thankful that he chose to come here. The scotch was always good and it meant that he didn’t have to seek out a bottle shop. And the little voodoo doll. It seemed to bless this assignment – if he allowed himself a moment of superstitious hypocrisy.

It lay beside the condensating glass on the table – looking both evil and beautiful in the muted afternoon light. The ice cubes melted fast in the close humidity and he drank faster than he would normally.

After two scotches he sighed, feeling at peace with the world. He hauled his feet, still in their expensive leather shoes onto the outdoor table resting them beside the doll.

A storm was building in the West. Another good omen – not that he was in the business of counting signs from a God he didn’t believe in. He made a mental bet with himself at what time the first rain drop would fall. It was a bet he never lost.

He loved strolling through the streets when the storms broke here and was glad that he’d been assigned to the Easter Seaboard Clean Up. The Autumn rain here was preferable to the Spring rain in St Petersberg. Plus Brisbane had one other advantage that no other city in the world had.

Aurellia.

Maybe this time synchronicity would bring her back into his life. But he’d been hoping that for the past ten years.

This is a pre-story to something that I've been in the process of writing for almost a year. A short story based on the Liam Finn song Second Chance.

For more Fiction Friday fun check out the other entries at Write Anything.

Picture This #10: Sandals

This was an entry written for Write Anything's
Picture This #10 and is currently being reworked for entry in a flash fiction competition.

[Fiction] Friday: Don't Tell, Alice

[Fiction] Friday
Challenge for October 10, 2008

Start your story with this line: Alice tried to remember who had given her the key.

Alice tried to remember who had given her the key. She really did. And she tried to remember who and what the page of numbers was all about, but it had got too complex for her.

“Tell us. Who gave you the key?” The voice tried to sound authorative – to scare her, and she was scared, but trying hard not to show it. She was going to be tough. They wanted her to be tough. She wanted to tough. If only they had not blind folded her, she might have been able to sit there and look fiercely at them, to try and make a show of not being scared. She was good at looking fierce.

“The numbers. Are they coordinates … a code?”
“I don’t know,” and it came out of Alice as a whimper.
“If you don’t tell us what we want to know, we’ll be sending you to room one-oh-one.”
“What’s room one-oh-one?”
“Yeah … what’s room one-oh-one?”

Alice could hear the two of them whispering, ending with a snigger.
“Yeah we’ll be sending you to room one-oh-one Alice … and you wont like that.”

Alice didn’t know what Room 101 was, or what it meant other than it made her feel like she was going to wet her pants. If she peed herself it would be the end, there would be no going back from that. She bit the bottom of her lip and willed herself not to pee and not to think of Room 101. She’d think of something else – something .... she would, she would ...

“There’s my locker key,” boomed a third voice, a familiar voice and Alice smiled. She was saved. “And my stats homework sheet. I’ve told you two to stay the hell out of my room.”

The light hurt Alice’s eyes as the blindfold was roughly pulled off her. She squinted and saw Peter and Paul kicking at the grass with the toes of their shoes, identical evil pouts on their faces, glaring at her as if it was all her fault, because no matter what they did, it somehow was always blamed back onto her when she joined in. Meg, her big sister looked like a giant and for a moment she wished that Meg would crush both of them for being mean to her – like Veronica in the Archie DVD the twins loved.

They’d said she could be a Princess. Peter and Paul said they’d come and rescue her, they’d be super heroes. But they tied her up and started yelling at her about the key and the piece of paper, calling her a spy. She looked down at her bare feet. And they’d stolen her favourite Princess shoes from her feet.

“Where’s my Princess slippers?” She felt braver now Meg was here, even though she still couldn’t move off the chair. The twins laughed and ran off.

“Alice you have to promise me you won’t let the twins tie you up.” Alice looked down at her wrists that Meg had freed. They were red and sore from where Peter and Paul had tied her hands up with an old pair of panty hose from the rag bag in their Dad’s garage. “I’m going to have to tell Mum about this.”

“Please don’t.” Alice was the youngest and she just wanted her big brothers to let her play with them. She didn’t like being all by herself. “There’s no one else to play with.”
“You’d be better off playing alone, than playing with them.” Maybe so – but she didn't really understand. Meg all those nice friends who in black like her

Meg picked Alice up, letting her carry the locker key and the homework sheet upstairs. Sitting Alice on the bed, Meg pulled out at piece of paper and a large black marker pen. She drew three numbers on the paper, big and black.

“Do you know what numbers these are Alice?”
Alice nodded, a sunny smile brightening her face.
“One … zero … one. What does 1-oh-1 mean?”
“It means keep out or else. How about you stick this up on the door for me?”

A while later, as Meg was reading Alice her favourite book, Alice in Wonderland, Peter and Paul crept back up the hallway, the half hour time-out in their room already a forgotten piece of the past. Peter looked up at the sign on the door.
“I don’t think we should go in.”
“Meg’s rooms fair game. You’re not scared of her – all that goth stuff?"
“Look.”
Paul looked up and saw the sign, his smooth forehead crinkling.
“It’s only a sign.”
“But you told me bad things happen in Room one-oh-one.”
“I was just saying that to scare Alice.”
“But you said …”
Paul looked up at the sign, knowing it really was only Meg’s room behind the door – but?

Peter turned and walked away and Paul followed. Some adventures were just weren’t worth risking – even for them.

Dedicated to Miss Lilly-Lou for all the crap that she puts up with!

Happy Writing Anniversary To Me

Officially yes I am in an internet blackout for the next week ... but I will still be posting blog articles as they come to me, along with [Fiction] Friday, Musical Musings and a new installment of Captain Juan.

I wont be replying, commenting or answering emails until Thursday next week though. Thanks for supporting me in his much needed space of nurturing and reconnecting. Jodi xxxx

It’s a year today since I decided that I would “Just Write.” This was the culmination of three and a bit years (since becoming a Mum) of trying to decide what came next. I had tossed around the idea of returning to uni, as I was half way through a psychology degree when I fell pregnant with Dylan and we moved to Brisbane. At the time I went through a lengthy and stressful process to ensure that I kept my almost perfect Grade Point Average to gain me entrance into one of the prestigious unis in Brisbane.

I found that after the baptism of birth and early mothering, that my attitudes and my beliefs had shifted, that returning to study psychology wasn’t doable from either a practical position (I wasn’t going to put Dylan into care so I could study) or an intellectual position. I had moved on as a woman. I spent time considering different courses that I could study, but none of them rung true. Throughout this time I edited a magazine, did the layout and watched its distribution grow.

When I was having a big clean up at the start of the year I came across some exercise books from 2005. Inspired by an article I had read called ‘The Mother and The Muse’ I was trying to get back in touch with the part of me that loved to write. These were the books to capture my thoughts and story ideas ... not suprisingly other than a few pages that include my goals for the year - they are empty. While I was writing an editorial each quarter (which grew and became more controversial the more confidence I had in my writing ability) and aiming to have an article published ‘somewhere’ I wasn’t committed on any level to writing fiction.

In 2006 I came across the One Book, One Brisbane short story competition, a few days before the competition closed. I sat up late a few nights in a row pumping out a story that seemed to go no where. I never submitted it, but it was a taster … I could write fiction again, as well as my non fiction stuff. But I didn't.

2007 saw me join the ranks of those with a MySpace page. I did it while I was having a bit of an identity crisis. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to create there - who my online personnae would be. It was also my introduction to the blog phenomenon and the excitement of having others read your work. When I decided to just be myself on MySpace (what a shocking revelation that was) I slowly began to take baby steps into blogging. After a while, I began to set aside Friday nights to enjoy the process of writing. I was particularly productive during the Mercury Retrograde phases, spurred on by the Woolie’s soundtrack to my life that always seemed to be playing as I went in to buy groceries.

In August we took a week’s trip to the mountains. I took my journal and spent long hours, while Dylan and Dave were hiking trying to sort through how I felt about life. I came to the conclusion my life was out of balance and I tried to work out a way to get a balance between mind, body and spirit. Not long after we returned, on the Virgo solar eclipse, a year ago today, the conclusion to my dilemma came like a lovely afternoon breeze …. I could just write. How simple.

From what I remember it was a slower process between making the decision and beginning The Artists’ Way but it seems from reading back of journals from the time it happened far quicker than I remember. The 13th will be the anniversary of me beginning The Artist Way for the first time. And it was a fast and furious unfurling and discarding of all the things around me that did not support and nurture my creativity. Not only did I sign up with some new friends to do The Artists Way, I also discovered Write Stuff (now Write Anything) and began venturing into the realm of fiction, and away from the autobiographical essays I’d been writing.

Then came the moment of reckoning – did I have it in me to do NaNo? The two friends in my creative cluster were going to do it – why shouldn’t I. They each had five kids, one with a small baby. I only had one child. But when I looked at what I did each day, I wasn’t sure where I would find time to write 1667 words each day. It proved to be a pivotal moment. I decided that I would do NaNo and as a consequence I would cut back on all my volunteer work. I would start saying no to others, and start saying yes to me. A routine began to grow around me.

I got through NaNo, and learnt a lot about myself as a writer and where I wanted to go in life. A week later I had a huge break through – I was addicted to busy-ness. I realised that it was time to stop doing volunteer work and focus on my passion as a writer. After four years it felt as though I was cleaving off a limb … but I did it.

It hasn’t been all peaches and cream. I’ve written some good stuff, written some bad stuff, got myself caught up in great projects and difficult projects. Most recently I’ve been suffering a crisis … a crisis that went without a name until today. I’d been having a crisis of connection. It wasn’t doubt or a lack of confidence … I’d pulled the plug on my connection to the creative stream that had been nurturing me since those early days last year of The Artist Way last year.

I’m not sure when it happened, or how it happened, but it did. And it explains a lot. It explains my frustration with writing and the futility that I’ve found in trying to find new characters, new scenarios, new ways of looking for things. Rather than just open up and be a conduit for whatever was out there, I was searching through trying to find something. I’d closed down.

Now I’m trying to open back up again. Reading Julia Cameron’s biography has reminded me of some fundamental things that I either didn’t get in the first place, or that I had forgotten.

Trust in the Universe … if I take care of the quantity the Universe will take care of the quality. Basically it’s asking the ego to take a seat. So now, I’m committing to writing three pages a day (in preparation not only for NaNo but for the rest of my life as a writer) … and whatever comes out comes out. Today I discovered not just two brand new characters, a whole brand new sci-fi world .. complete with social systems, geography, beliefs .. just coming in from out there.

ASK and you shall receive ... It’s something that I’ve always had trouble with. I will never ask for help when I’m struggling. In my morning pages I’ve bitched, moaned, complain, wailed … and then beat myself up because I can’t find a solution to my problem, that seemed unsolvable. What I never considered was surrender … and to offer my problem up to the Universe and ask for help. To ask for guidance, wisdom … help! I have now, this morning and already I’m starting to see things a little more clearly.

Disconnect from distractions and toxic situations. For me it means taking time away from the internet and from life in general, to spend more time with my family, revisit some old friendships that have slipped through my fingers this year, get my old routines back on board. In disconnecting there is a natural affinity then to connect with the things that love, nuture and nourish you. Today I found that once my three pages of writing were done, and without the internet, I realised did a load of washing, put away the dishes, considered dinner. In the last few months these have all been areas of my domestic life that just wait for crisis point to be reached before anything is done about them. I also feel I’ve shrugged off the heavy shroud I’ve been wearing – weighed down by my connections to worry and anger.

Watch for synchronicity. The Universe has asked me, or told me to do some pretty bizarre things in the last year – one day I’ll share my business card story. The Universe had stopped speaking to me, or I had stopped listening. When I started to loosen up yesterday, a thought came to me about a problem I’ve had with getting a script up and running for my Demon Lover story. The worst thing about the whole thing – it was so bloody obvious the answer … and I imagined the fun and adventure that could be gained by having another person write this with me. Now I’m waiting to see the moments of synchronicity open up all around me. I feel as though I am connected and riding the river of creativity.

Get out and walk. Walking has always been a meditation for me. I’ve been having trouble getting out of bed and have been beating myself up for my slackness. How can I get my life back on track if I can’t even get out of bed? Answer: find a creative solution.Instead of trying for a 5am or 6am walk, I decided earlier on this week that Dylan and I could take a walk in late afternoon. Granted it’s not quiet, but it is leisurely and it’s something special for just the two of us – sticks, dogs, flowers, clouds etc. It’s a way of slowing the world down and getting back in contact with not just the natural world around with me, but with Dylan as well.

It’s good to reflect but it feels good to be reinventing myself over, reconnecting, reviving and renewing my resolve as a woman, as a mother, a partner and as a writer. Spring most definitely is in the air!

Where 100 Years of Solitude Leads

Paul concluded his Sunday column for Write Anything this week with:

"We don’t have an excuse to not look at good writing across all genres, just because it is unfamiliar to us or unappealing as a reader. Sometimes our best writing comes when we move out of our comfort zone. Perhaps we should move beyond our reading comfort zone once in a while too."

Part of the decision to write seriously this year, was to read seriously also. I began the year with the goal of reading one book a month. Wild Swans had been beckoning me from the book shelf, where it had been adopted from an old friend of ours so I chose to begin the year with that. I didn't get it finished before the end of January and realised it was a really bad omen not to get through my first book for the year in the alotted time. What January taught me (other than some amazing things about China and mostly awful things about Mao's version of communism) was that to read a book a month, I had to make time to read a book a month. This meant cutting back on the time I was spending at the computer at night (being not much of a TV freak)

In April I upped the anty to two books a month. This would give me a chance to read something I really wanted to read (and something I was likely to really enjoy) and something from my list of 'literature' - mainly books that I would never get around to reading given the option. The books I've read since taking on the two a month challenge have been East of Eden, 100 Years of Solitude and The Great Gatsby. Again last month, I almost didn't finish 100 Years of Solitude and I was up until midnight on the 31 August trying to get it done - reminded me of burning the midnight oil to get an assignment done!

100 Years of Solitude by Gabrielle Garcia Marquez (Nobel Prize winner for Literature in1992) isn't I would normally read, but was a book that Dave had read and spoken about, along with Love in the Time of Cholera (also now on my list to read!) I'd read Chronicle of a Death Foretold when I was pregnant and knew that I didn't hate Marquz's writing style - but I got such a delight when I finally got into the rhythm and style of his writing ... when I was able to suspend my rational mind and enjoy the banquet of magical delights (the moment when I realised that the gypsy's were really flying carpets past the window). I'm very glad that I did push out of my comfort zone to read this. You can see the legacy of having read it in my latest [Fiction] Friday.

After discussing with Dave how much I enjoyed 100 Years (and sadly he read it that long ago he doesn't remember much of it), he suggested that I give Midnight's Children by Rushdie a go ... so I have the second half of September slated for that. I'm certainly intriged to know more about magical realism and how other writers weave it through their narrative.

There were discussions about genre at the Byron Bay Writers Festival ... and how some writers just write without any real regard for WHAT genre they in. After all getting the words on the page are more important than getting the 'right' words on the page. I never gave much thought to what genre I wrote it ... though I was always drawn to some darker elements of humanity, particularly to terrorism (and this was before 9/11) and the twists of the mind. Since picking up writing again after a long absence I feel that rather than being drawn to one genre over another, I'm drawn to themes, and the exploration of the human experience through those themes. Perhaps that's what allows a good writer to write in any genre or across genres?

Writing outside of your genre is another example of dangerous writing, and as I have discovered with a number of my fellow writers this year pushing boundaries and finding those places of discomfort are when we produce some of our greatest work. For that reason I believe we should regularly choose to write something outside of our comfort genre. I would never have believed this time last year that I would be writing:

• adventure stories (I CAN'T do adventure) ... though I love it (#1 guilty secret of mine!)
  
• a pirate story (I WOULD NEVER write that - I only write literature with a feminist bent)
  
• write science fiction (I most certainly DON't write that)
  

It's a good thing I've become a little more open minded this year. As a writer, as soon as you say you 'can't', 'don't', 'won't, 'shouldn't' (you get the gist) accept it as an invitation to give it a go. You never know where the path less travelled may take you.

As professional development - what stories/books would you read to push you out of your comfort zone?

Knowing Your Style

Over at Write Anything a new writing meme has been posted, and Janie has asked for readers to respond on their own blogs, and post a link back. The meme itself was started by Becca at Write on Wednesday. What a wonderful way for me to break my five day writing drought ....

1. Do you write fiction or non-fiction? Or both?

Both! My first love is fiction, because your characters invite you to share in their world. It was also the first sort of writing I ever did. Non fiction writing is a little soul destroying I’ve decided after completing the reclaim sex after birth project. When you write non fiction, there is research often to sift through and synthesise, no one whispers secrets into your ear, or gives you the next plot development, it’s all up to you to bring it all together. Unless you write about something you know really well, or you’re incredibly passionate about, non fiction writing can be a little bland when stood next to fiction writing. I remain committed to writing non fiction though, to try and address the imbalance in the information that is available to women on a range of topics, and I guess to indulge that part of me that likes to educate and fuse ideas with information. It’s also a good balance for fiction writing.

2. Do you keep a journal or a writing notebook?
I keep a little note book with me to scribble ideas in (which I’ve normally left behind on my desk or on Annie’s table when I make the commitment to put it in the book) I try and file my ideas away in my head, hoping they will be there when I need them. I write morning pages, as per Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, every morning (well almost every morning) which doubles as a creative and personal purge point, as well as a personal marker of events.

My blog also tends, as Paul said, to function as a journal. I look back and can see the definite trends in what I’ve written and the subjects. I gifted myself a new blog for the last eclipse phase – but have yet to really give it a work out. I’m hoping it will be more of a creative journal.


3. If you write fiction, do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing? Do you find books on plotting useful or harmful?
I’ve never read a book on plotting – it seems like would be a rather mechanical and contrived thing for me to do. I believe that some goals, motivations and conflicts are revealed to you in the beginning (after all you have to start with something) and that as you go along other bits and pieces come into your consciousness.

For example: when I wrote Evie I had always intended for Sarah-Jane’s mother to be the villain, after all, she’s a woman who contrives to go and steal another woman’s baby. I knew what her motivations where to bring her to that point, the conflicts in her life. What I didn’t count on however was Sarah-Jane’s attitude to it all, and how one young woman’s words could transform the act of stealing a child into something almost any woman could empathise with. The definitely came from left of centre.

Another example is the Captain Juan epic. All I ever knew was the Ruby wanted to steal something from her husband and be free of him. I never thought in a million years I could begin to weave the plot lines of others into a semi coherent form in my head. While we do occasionally have a little plot setting succession of emails, just to make sure everyone is vaguely on the same page – anything can happen, and generally does. I imagine the Captain Juan, like any other story, would suffer from being plotted to death.

4. Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?
Lately I have been giving in to the itch to write. I used writing to procrastinate from cleaning my house. This was definitely the case last week when I re-wrote Evie. I think rather than being a procrastinator, I’m a bit of a time thief, in the sense that I don’t budget and use my time very well … and in doing so I don’t cut out sections of time to write, and as a consequence my writing is suffering at the moment. You can only plot so far in your head before you need to sit down and have a good purge.

I remember poignantly the very first day that Dylan had a whole day at kindy this year – the house was quiet, my desk was tidy, the house was clean and when I opened up my laptop, I went blank! The perfect setting, and I couldn’t write. It’s a good thing that most of my life is made up with imperfect moments.


5. Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?
I guess I’ve had to learn to be a short bursts writer – as motherhood only affords you soundbites of time and you have to make the best of them. When I am deep in a story, I could write for hours and hours – NaNo last year attested to that. While I would ideally like to be able to do that, you have to function as a writer in the real world, and for me that means continual interruptions, less than salubrious environs for writing and often writing when I’m very tired (either from having woken early or trying to write late at night)


6. Are you a morning or afternoon writer?
My body clock is so screwed at now that I don’t know if I’m a morning person, an afternoon person or a night person. I would say that I used to be a night person, and I guess I still do lots of writing at night, but I’m not sure if I am my most productive then (even if its quiet and there generally are no interruptions) I think I have to concede defeat now and say that I write best in the late morning and early afternoon … which only works five days a fortnight!!

I’ve come to learn that any time is a good time to write … being precious about the perfect everything when it comes to writing, is the death knoll of writing anything.

7. Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?
I love to write to music – especially if I am trying to evoke a certain feeling or atmosphere in my writing. My most poignant memory of this is writing a short story called ‘Hail Mary’ where I had the soundtrack of ‘In the Name of the Father’, as my story was set at the same time as the movie, and involved an IRA sympathiser. It also helps to drown out the noise around me.

But yes, I can write with the sound of children ‘playing’ in the background or in the café. Without harping on the same theme over and over again – I’ve learnt to make do. At the moment I’m writing with Tarzan in the background, but my favourite music is Snow Patrol and I’ve been dabbling back in a little Cat Empire and Mia Dyson which were the soundtracks to NaNo last year.

8. Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?)
Computer! I’m attached at the hip to my laptop. I find it difficult to keep up long hand with my run away mind. Though I do remember in the early 90’s when I was crossing over from long hand and into typing that I really struggled to make the creative connection. Thankfully now I am able to type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts … and well the conversations of my characters.

9. Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One? Or do you let the story evolve as you write?
When I began NaNo last year, Chapter One was actually the first part of the final chapter. I wasn’t sure where to start, as opposed to where to end, so I opened the book with an interview. I knew who my character was going to end up with by novels end (and of course never actually go there) but I had no idea what was going to happen between.

When it comes to short stories, I have a general idea I guess, but there’s always twists and turns that you don’t expect. When I do definitively know how it I going to end, there’s always a concern in me that the story comes across stilted. This was my worry when I wrote 24.

10. Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?
No – not really. I find that what I am reading at the time often influences the way I write, or at the very least the way I think about writing. I don’t think that I’ve read anything on the current bestseller list for years (if ever?)

I get annoyed and often a little spiteful about the market influence towards established authors or the endless succession of biographies of sports persons and celebrities .. and the fact that first time writers very rarely get a see in because of this trend.

11. Editing/Revision - love it or hate it?
Had I answered this question last week – I would have said dread it, hate it, absolutely in mortal fear of it – telling myself that you can live without it!

I was an editor for three years so I guess in some respects I do love the editing aspect, but the editorial love is usually reserved for the work of others. I’ve been living with this delusion that I can churn out the perfect story with next to no revisions or alterations. Last week taught me an important lesson about that. A good story can become a great story, even a brilliant story when the author approaches their work with a detached tenacity and a lack of preciousness when they come back to revise. You learn that you are able to you sift through the bits that are good and make them great, and jettison the bits that are just hanging on. Editing is best done in the cold – that is, once the story has cooled and you can look at it objectively.

Having said that, every writer (and especially us bloggers) need to maintain the practise of giving our work a basic perusal for minor spelling and grammatical mistakes before we hit publish.

Editing/revision far more time consuming, and in some respects less rewarding in the short term, than writing. But I believe it’s an aspect of writing that you’ve got to embrace, even begrudgingly. And like everyone – you do need a good third party editor. All writers need someone who can look dispassionately at a piece of writing and point out what works, what doesn’t work and give you some suggestions for making it work. And I do believe, that taking the time to critique and edit the work of others, does improve your writing and your own skills for self editing.

Can you be both an editor and a writer? I’ll get back to you on that!