In a post a month or so ago I said that there was possibly another novel on the cards in August. Well the contract has been signed (by me anyway), so here's the scoop.
Martin's cousin Christine is a commissioning editor at Penguin. At the family Christmas party last year, Christine said, 'You should write a Chomp for us.' (yes, isn't it amazing, she speaks in hyperlinks). Anyway, being a suggestible sort and always one to succumb to peer group pressure, one smoky weekend a few weeks later, I did so. It took me three writing days. Once I got the voice and the idea, the writing flowed and because of my experience with editing and having already written three novels, I found that even the story structure was quite easy. I struggle with short stories, I think because I am so narrative driven and that can kill a short story to death, I end up forcing a fairly delicate singular idea onto the narrative freeway, like making an insect behave like a Mack truck, rather than letting it pool and swool about on its own currents of air. But a short novel seems to be something that I understand. It needs narrative drive and subplots and characterisation, but a light touch. The narrative needs to be simple, and any subplots compatible and able to direct the main narrative (so commenting thematically on the main storyline but also helping the action of the main storyline along). FI've actually had a go at a Bite as well (4000 words), and in that I didn't worry about subplots at all. It was all story. Characterisation was part of the plot exposition, there's no descriptions, well, only briefly. Only things that are crucial to the story are allowed to stay.
The Chomp is about 12000 words and it's mostly a story about girls and friendship. Josie moves house and has to say goodbye to her best friend Fee. In her new street there are new kids, but they miss Becca, who used to live in Josie's new house. The story is about letting go of the past, coming to terms with change and finding your place in a new situation. For Josie, there's a map, a literal map made by Becca that lays out Becca's memories and experience of the house. By experiencing the map, Josie becomes a part of these memories.
The way I came up with the idea for the story was actually by googling phrases like "the summer I was twelve" and came up with a brief anecdote about a family of kids who found treasure buried in the garden of a new house (not knowing if it had been left behind on purpose or if it was simply forgotten).
I've read some of the other Chomps, Bites and Nibbles, and I'll be in good company. The quality is high. Jane Godwin wrote a particularly moving one called The Day I Turned Ten about a boy whose little brother goes missing (temporarily) on his tenth birthday. Colin Thiele wrote one. Some of my favourite authors have written them: Ursula Dubosarsky, poet Bruce Dawe, Justin D'Ath, Thurley Fowler, David Metzenthen, Christobel Mattingly, Garth Nix...the list goes on. So I will be in good company anyway, sitting on the bookshelves. And Frederique will be thrilled about the little penguin logo on the book's spine - she just loves that penguin.
Incidently, Christine and I went for that Penguin job at the same time and it came down to the wire. I am glad things worked out the way they did - in the interview the publisher, Laura Harris asked me how I balanced being a writer and an editor. People do manage it - Jane Godwin, for example, or Margaret Wild. But I doubt I could be an editor full time and be a writer, or not the sort of writer I'd like to be. For me, I need to do the sort of editing I do - thinking about story and characters and that sort of thing (which is very helpful for a writer to do), without being 100% emotionally and professionally invested in the work, or I simply wouldn't have anything left for my own writing.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
2 new reveiws
Two more reviews of Breathe came winging their way through the post.
First from ALA Booklist
"Russon's bracing, poetic voice and earthy, likable characters ground the story's esoteric symbolism, and many readers will find their own fear and love reflected in the beautiful, open-ended metaphors."
Reviewed by Gillian Engberg
And from Horn Book Magazine
"[Breathe] is a fascinating character study, continuing to probe the allergorical connections between magic, female sexuality and sublimation of self while intorducing questions of predestination, indivduation, and a "multi-verse" of realities. Worth reading for the prose alone..."
Reviewed by Claire E. Gross
(P.S. There's a review of Bridge to Terabithia, the movie, on the Horn Book site. I'm a bit scared of it...the movie that is, not the review. 'Free the pee?' Puh-lease.)
And Lili sent me this link and this link today, in which a blogger talks in two different posts about her mixed reactions to Undine. Interesting. I understand that The Tempest references might seem a little overwhelming if you're not familiar with the play, but I wonder if Undine makes Shakespeare more accessible to kids? I didn't do it for that reason, mostly I used it as a starting point to give a thematic shape to my ideas about family and inheritance and identity and love (I never had an estranged father, but I did have long lost siblings come into my life when I was 18 so I think that's probably why the theme was one I was fascinated with).
First from ALA Booklist
"Russon's bracing, poetic voice and earthy, likable characters ground the story's esoteric symbolism, and many readers will find their own fear and love reflected in the beautiful, open-ended metaphors."
Reviewed by Gillian Engberg
And from Horn Book Magazine
"[Breathe] is a fascinating character study, continuing to probe the allergorical connections between magic, female sexuality and sublimation of self while intorducing questions of predestination, indivduation, and a "multi-verse" of realities. Worth reading for the prose alone..."
Reviewed by Claire E. Gross
(P.S. There's a review of Bridge to Terabithia, the movie, on the Horn Book site. I'm a bit scared of it...the movie that is, not the review. 'Free the pee?' Puh-lease.)
And Lili sent me this link and this link today, in which a blogger talks in two different posts about her mixed reactions to Undine. Interesting. I understand that The Tempest references might seem a little overwhelming if you're not familiar with the play, but I wonder if Undine makes Shakespeare more accessible to kids? I didn't do it for that reason, mostly I used it as a starting point to give a thematic shape to my ideas about family and inheritance and identity and love (I never had an estranged father, but I did have long lost siblings come into my life when I was 18 so I think that's probably why the theme was one I was fascinated with).
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Very uncharacteristic self indulgent whinging post
Weaning Una is a bit like the first trimester of pregnancy except you don't get a new baby at the end of it (you do however get new boobs. Or I live and dream anyway. More compact, less emotional ones). But these are my symptoms:
I'm cranky.
The sound of someone else's baby crying makes me cry.
If I watched tv with ads, they would make me cry. As I don't, then things on you tube make me cry instead.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is making me cry. And worry about Fred and Una being left to fend for themselves.
I'm hot (well, everyone in Melbourne is, but I am finding it hard to tolerate. I am particularly uncomfortable in my skin. My skin feels oily and weird).
I have a constant nagging background headache.
I feel oddly disconnected from Una (I know this goes away, Fred actually became more affectionate after I weaned her). But breastfeeding kind of connects you to the newborn stage, it reaches back to pregnancy, where your bodies are physically intertwined. There's so much about the psychology of separation from the mother, but so little written about the psychology of separation from the infant.
I've lost my writing mojo.
I've lost my cooking mojo.
I am incredibly, intensely clucky.
I want to look like I did when I was twenty-one for publicity shots I'm having taken next week. Instead I will look like someone's slightly frumpy mother. Because that is what I am. (ooh, now that was self indulgent).
I am waiting for a sense of freedom and self ownership to kick in. It hasn't yet. I don't suppose weaning means I can go disco dancing at a moment's notice or suddenly fly to Paris. Perhaps when I go and buy my first underwire bra since about July 2002 I will feel more self-ownering. An underwire bra is almost Paris. Isn't it? If it's red.
I'm cranky.
The sound of someone else's baby crying makes me cry.
If I watched tv with ads, they would make me cry. As I don't, then things on you tube make me cry instead.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is making me cry. And worry about Fred and Una being left to fend for themselves.
I'm hot (well, everyone in Melbourne is, but I am finding it hard to tolerate. I am particularly uncomfortable in my skin. My skin feels oily and weird).
I have a constant nagging background headache.
I feel oddly disconnected from Una (I know this goes away, Fred actually became more affectionate after I weaned her). But breastfeeding kind of connects you to the newborn stage, it reaches back to pregnancy, where your bodies are physically intertwined. There's so much about the psychology of separation from the mother, but so little written about the psychology of separation from the infant.
I've lost my writing mojo.
I've lost my cooking mojo.
I am incredibly, intensely clucky.
I want to look like I did when I was twenty-one for publicity shots I'm having taken next week. Instead I will look like someone's slightly frumpy mother. Because that is what I am. (ooh, now that was self indulgent).
I am waiting for a sense of freedom and self ownership to kick in. It hasn't yet. I don't suppose weaning means I can go disco dancing at a moment's notice or suddenly fly to Paris. Perhaps when I go and buy my first underwire bra since about July 2002 I will feel more self-ownering. An underwire bra is almost Paris. Isn't it? If it's red.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Yoink
Nicked from Lili Wilkinson's blog. (and hey looky what I found, you can download a sample chapter of Lili's book here).
This this this this this. Watch it. It's beautiful and exciting. It made me tear up but I'm fragile and interesting at the moment.
This this this this this. Watch it. It's beautiful and exciting. It made me tear up but I'm fragile and interesting at the moment.
Laundry
I have added Mrs Washalot to my list of 'on writing' blogs in the right hand margin. While it's not actually on writing, I think for me it falls into the category of Literary Nonfiction (a mystery genre, which seems to be the thing for people writing theses at Melbourne Uni and for people applying successfully for Australia Council Grants). It's a blog by Janet of Muppinstuff and I don't always remember to visit it, but she seems to update it with surprising regularity considering the apparent narrowness of the topic. The blog is part social commentary, part memoir and personal reflection, partly a critique of pop culture and gender roles and partly just a joyous celebration of a repetitive domestic task. Janet sources a lot of images associated with laundry from old and new advertisments, books and editorials. I've had two I've meant to send her for ages. A terrible picture book that used to be Martin's called Mrs Mopple's Washing Line (where laundry seems to the only chaotic force in Mrs Mopple's otherwise ordered life) and a Beth Norling picture book called The Stone Baby, where hills-hoists form part of a surreal landscape in a story about loss.
Laundry often falls to Martin in this house, but there is something immensely satisfying about hanging out wet washing and bringing it in dry. This is the first house Martin and I have shared that has had a decent washing line. The flat in Brighton (which we lived in in '98 as our first pad together and then returned to in 2004 for six months) didn't have one, so we used clothes horses. The house in Abbott Grove, Clifton Hill had an assortment of random lines strung around the courtyard with insufficient tension. The house in Park St, North Fitzroy...well actually i can't recall the washing line, though I'm sure there was something. In Alfred Crescent it was one of those retractable ones which, when pulled across, took up the best part of the tiny courtyard. We persevered with clothes horses for a long time after Fred was born, but when Fred became mobile she kept pulling all the clothes off. As cloth nappy users we eventually broke down and bought a dryer. The house we owned for a year in Mitcham had a clothesline attached to the raised deck but the deck itself was a hazard to life and limb for most of the time we lived there. The clothesline here is under the garage so unfortunately it doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight. But sitting under the tin roof, the clothes dry fast.
Still I long for a hills-hoist. The icon of the Australian backyard. Play thing of generations of children. Elegant skeletal creature, only half domesticated, dancer in the wild wind.
With two kids, one in cloth nappies at least 75% of the time, we can't afford to miss a day of laundry or it seriously begins to take over the house. We're stuffers rather than folders (Fred's clothes live in big buckets from IKEA and it is our long term goal to store everything we own in big buckets from IKEA) and we don't iron (we have a mini ironing board also from IKEA. We have ironed exactly one thing since Fred was born. Fred thinks it's some kind of wheel-less skateboard, or skipping board, as she calls them). But still its an arduous task. I don't know how people hold down jobs and deal with laundry, especially since most grown ups do iron, fold and hang their clothes.
Anyway, the point of this is, I love this blog. I like what it does. I wish more blogs were like it, so focussed and thoughtful and reflective. I like the Australianness of it, the dryness of Janet's landscape, the billowing white nappies on the old hills-hoist. The blend between personal and private, universal and domestic, the general and the intimately personal is immensely satisfying and successful.
The picture above comes from Melbournes Child, via Mrs Washalot.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Two books
I read two books in the last few day that I thought were worth mentioning here.
The first was Tuck Everlasting, an American classic written by Natalie Babbitt in 1975. It's quite a slim little book but extremely profound - how do these authors manage to load such slight texts with such laden meaning without overburdening them? So beautiful and elegantly sparse. The main theme is death and pretty much everything I wrote in my D post (written before reading the book) applies to this text. It is about a girl who discovers a family who have drunk from a stream of eternal life and are immortal. The novel explores whether or not this power is valuable or desirable. It's a book I've always been aware of but never got round to reading because I thought it might be twee or fey. It's not. It's quite understated though very sensory, and there's no jingle-jangling plinky music magicky bits - all the fantasy elements are written in a straightforward and seamless way. (How much do you bet that appears on the back of the book one day?)
The other was Coraline by Neil Gaiman. Gorgeous and spooky. Coraline discovers a door to nowhere in her apartment which ends up being to somewhere - a through the looking glass type landscape inhabited by her 'other mother and father' who want Coraline to live with them and be their daughter. Coraline's own parents end up trapped in the other world and Coraline must use all her wits to escape. The imagery is truly haunting and beautiful and (yes) melancholy - almost as if melancholy is manifested in the environment - the other parents' black button eyes, the fluttering paper butterfly, a dismembered hand as pale as bone, an elven child with cobweb wings, black beetles eaten from a paper bag like chocolate raisins. Well worth a read, but not straight before bed!
Is melancholy one of those ingredients that elevates a book into a classic? In both these books, melancholy is sited in the adult world, or more particularly in the child's gaze turned on the adult's world and in the tension of adult/child relationships. It is not the children who themselves are melancholic, it is the adults viewed through the child's eyes, it is the adult's world which the child is separate from but subject to (and they know one day they will enter it - perhaps this is the true source of melancholy, the death of the child, the loss of something childlike in the adult? Or is it the presence of something childlike, a kind of infantile greed? The incompleteness, the transition...) Perhaps if the children themselves are melancholic, are sites or objects of melancholy, then they belong in an adult book, because children don't see themselves as melancholic (whereas adults often see kids as melancholic I think, and childhood as a melancholic state).
The first was Tuck Everlasting, an American classic written by Natalie Babbitt in 1975. It's quite a slim little book but extremely profound - how do these authors manage to load such slight texts with such laden meaning without overburdening them? So beautiful and elegantly sparse. The main theme is death and pretty much everything I wrote in my D post (written before reading the book) applies to this text. It is about a girl who discovers a family who have drunk from a stream of eternal life and are immortal. The novel explores whether or not this power is valuable or desirable. It's a book I've always been aware of but never got round to reading because I thought it might be twee or fey. It's not. It's quite understated though very sensory, and there's no jingle-jangling plinky music magicky bits - all the fantasy elements are written in a straightforward and seamless way. (How much do you bet that appears on the back of the book one day?)
The other was Coraline by Neil Gaiman. Gorgeous and spooky. Coraline discovers a door to nowhere in her apartment which ends up being to somewhere - a through the looking glass type landscape inhabited by her 'other mother and father' who want Coraline to live with them and be their daughter. Coraline's own parents end up trapped in the other world and Coraline must use all her wits to escape. The imagery is truly haunting and beautiful and (yes) melancholy - almost as if melancholy is manifested in the environment - the other parents' black button eyes, the fluttering paper butterfly, a dismembered hand as pale as bone, an elven child with cobweb wings, black beetles eaten from a paper bag like chocolate raisins. Well worth a read, but not straight before bed!
Is melancholy one of those ingredients that elevates a book into a classic? In both these books, melancholy is sited in the adult world, or more particularly in the child's gaze turned on the adult's world and in the tension of adult/child relationships. It is not the children who themselves are melancholic, it is the adults viewed through the child's eyes, it is the adult's world which the child is separate from but subject to (and they know one day they will enter it - perhaps this is the true source of melancholy, the death of the child, the loss of something childlike in the adult? Or is it the presence of something childlike, a kind of infantile greed? The incompleteness, the transition...) Perhaps if the children themselves are melancholic, are sites or objects of melancholy, then they belong in an adult book, because children don't see themselves as melancholic (whereas adults often see kids as melancholic I think, and childhood as a melancholic state).
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Consulting the Mystics
This is another one from Janet. The game reminds me of a Richard Bach book (I went through a Richard Bach phase as a youth) where you hold a question in your mind, open a book (special ones were published with suitably deep thoughts within, but Bach's original point was that you could do it with anything - a newspaper, a dictionary etc) and then the sentence your eye/finger lands on is your big answer from the universe. For example my question might be: 'should we go to the shopping centre to escape the heat even though the shopping centre will make me feel cross?' and the response from the closest book which happened to be Meredith Kirton's Dig was a picture of a Jacaranda and the description: 'Adapted to all climates except very cold and extreme tropical conditions. Young trees may need protection...' which is oddly fitting, though equally interpretable to be yes or no.
Anyway, the Splinternet version is to type "penni needs" into the search box and see the top ten responses (obviously if you choose to try this, you might think your own name is more fitting).
Penni needs:
1. a pic so everyone can see how hot she is (yes, aren't I smashing?)
2. ideas of what to go as. (a bee? A liberal voter? A chevrolet?)
3. to write a blurb (as a matter of fact, right now, I don't.)
4. mellow. (that's a whole sentence. Penni needs mellow. I like it.)
5. love (a Staffordshire Bull Terrier - who describes herself, yes it is first person, as an unaltered female.)
6. to suck in her gut. (Well yes. Yes, i do)
7. a caretaker or foster (another dog. Part Australian shepherd, part Norwegian elkhound. Poor confused thing.)
8. to serve drinks with that great food of hers (well, how about a nice turkish apple ice tea?)
9. to come first (right after God) for now. (yes, remember that all of you. After god, there is me).
10. to know TODAY if you would like to attend the technology conference. (actually, I'm not that fussed. Attend, don't attend. There's no need for me to sound so grouchy about it).
In other news, Una is in the process of weaning herself. I got pregnant with Frederique in July 2002 and since then my body has been contribiting to the sustainment of life of at least one other person since Fred self weaned soon after I got pregnant with Una. So my body is about to be my own again. Bring on the hormonal cocktail. And then maybe, well, normality, for a spell. Who will I be? What's gonna happen? Who can tell? I am a bit sad, but I am also quite not sad too. Who knwos what I'm feeling really. Tired. Hot. Mostly.
Anyway, the Splinternet version is to type "penni needs" into the search box and see the top ten responses (obviously if you choose to try this, you might think your own name is more fitting).
Penni needs:
1. a pic so everyone can see how hot she is (yes, aren't I smashing?)
2. ideas of what to go as. (a bee? A liberal voter? A chevrolet?)
3. to write a blurb (as a matter of fact, right now, I don't.)
4. mellow. (that's a whole sentence. Penni needs mellow. I like it.)
5. love (a Staffordshire Bull Terrier - who describes herself, yes it is first person, as an unaltered female.)
6. to suck in her gut. (Well yes. Yes, i do)
7. a caretaker or foster (another dog. Part Australian shepherd, part Norwegian elkhound. Poor confused thing.)
8. to serve drinks with that great food of hers (well, how about a nice turkish apple ice tea?)
9. to come first (right after God) for now. (yes, remember that all of you. After god, there is me).
10. to know TODAY if you would like to attend the technology conference. (actually, I'm not that fussed. Attend, don't attend. There's no need for me to sound so grouchy about it).
In other news, Una is in the process of weaning herself. I got pregnant with Frederique in July 2002 and since then my body has been contribiting to the sustainment of life of at least one other person since Fred self weaned soon after I got pregnant with Una. So my body is about to be my own again. Bring on the hormonal cocktail. And then maybe, well, normality, for a spell. Who will I be? What's gonna happen? Who can tell? I am a bit sad, but I am also quite not sad too. Who knwos what I'm feeling really. Tired. Hot. Mostly.
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