Fiona Wood

congratulations for turning up at the page

In the spirit of Steven Soderbergh’s gorgeous acceptance speech from many years ago, this post sends love and congratulations to every writer who keeps turning up at the page (Julia Cameron’s beautiful, trusting phrase, which has held my hand so many times). To everyone writing poems, scripts, novels, plays, lyrics, short stories, creative non-fiction, memoir, reportage – and any other thing that requires the courage to tackle blank pages – congratulations! To unlisted, longlisted, shortlisted, winning, published and yet to be published writers who keep doing that great thing – to writers who are spewing out huge daily word counts, to writers who’ve thrown it all away and started again, and again, to writers who’ve survived the battering of another rejection, and lived to face the page again – to writers who are enjoying success and those yet to share their work with other readers – congratulations, stick with it, you are amazing, and thank you,

yours sincerely,

A reader.

ps. Moira Buffini, thank you for the perfect screen adaptation of one of my favourite books, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, serious legend.

yum

Teeth chattering in Melbourne again, so here is a perfect wintery desk-side lunch recipe from Charlotte Wood-no-relation for spinach dahl. Charlotte’s blog ‘How to shuck an oyster’ is compulsory reading for anyone interested in food. She posted this recipe a few months ago – it’s simple and completely delicious – although I confess to skipping the step giving stems special treatment. (I don’t think they deserve it.)

remembering

My reading group has been meeting once a month for about twenty-two years – I remember, because when we had our first meeting – at Annicks, a small French restaurant in Brunswick Street – I’d just had a baby, now a lovely 22 year-old woman, who is for the moment cranky at the tone of voice I used when imparting ‘everything I know about making truly delicious minestrone’ (too bossy). I’m hopeless at remembering unless I have something like this to anchor an event.

My husband is (usually)(quite) amused at my complete inability to remember our wedding anniversary – but how on earth can I? I know it is either January 29 or 30 – but, come on – they are extremely similar dates – nothing too distinctive about either of them…and it only comes around once a year (plenty of time to forget). Of course I remember our real anniversary, December 18, the first time we went out – to that restaurant with the Basil Fawlty-like waiter – because it was the day before my then not-husband’s birthday. And I remember that date because it’s compulsory to remember immediate family birthdays, isn’t it?

At reading group – it’s no doubt one of the reasons for our longevity – we never have set texts; we just bring along whatever we happen to have been reading. Except occasionally. Like now, at Philippa’s suggestion, we are (re)reading the first volume of Proust’s ‘Remembrance of Things Past’, in the new translation, ‘In Search of Lost Time’, which I hadn’t read for about twenty-five years. I’d remembered Proust was funny, but not quite how funny: I’ve been laughing out loud. And I hadn’t quite remembered the high-wire risks he takes in leading the reader along a drawn out and many times qualified and re-qualified and refined and polished image in his perseverance to ensure he evokes something with sufficient precision. It’s not an anodyne read. Entering this reverie requires concentration. Sitting up in a chair, properly awake, not sliding down the bed, slipping towards unconsciousness.

Proust’s famous memory-jogger is a piece of madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea. I want to mention three memory-related events.

The first is a creative journaling workshop I went to in Castlemaine several weeks ago – there will be others, and I can recommend it wholeheartedly to anybody interested in writing. Run by Simmone Howell and Lisa D’Onofrio, the workshop was a day of playful engagement in writing and memory. It was thought-provoking and enjoyable. There was no pressure to share work written during the day, but lots of people felt comfortable enough to do that. We could draw and paint and talk and even walk as well as write. A big sign for me that something is fun is that time flies by, and this day disappeared in a flash. Simmone and Lisa alternated the exercises, each one introduced in an inviting, well-considered way. One of my favourites was the writing that followed our mapping or drawing of a house or place from childhood.

The second is a blog post I read here a while ago at Baxter Street, writer Jen Storer’s lovely blog, which, in mentioning certain cosmetics, pulled me back into the seventies so fast I had whiplash. Pot’o'Gloss, Prue Acton Navy Blue mascara and Mary Quant crayons. That yellow tin box with the black signature daisy on the lid was in my hands. Favourite colours worn to stumps. Those crayons come pretty close to being my madeleine. I can smell them. And they peel memories.

The third thing was Terence Malick’s utterly gorgeous film ‘Tree of Life’ a confronting, beautiful, demanding film that asks us to consider memory, and humanity, and the nature of existence, and death, and which constructs the most luscious imagined ‘memory’ of the central character’s childhood. It’s Proustian; and it is a film that requires something of us. Some chewing. Some digesting. Hooray! Not everything needs to be pureed to death. There were lots of walk outs in the screening I went to. And my post-film bedazzled state was bitten into by the mutterings and grumblings of people who did not like the film leaving their seats with hurrumphs – ‘that wasn’t a film’, ‘who was Sean Penn meant to be?’.

In Jake Wilson’s review of the film in The Age 2/7, he recalls the Paul Eluard line used by Patrick White as the epigraph to ‘The Solid Mandala’ – ‘There is another world, but it is in this one.’

‘Find me.’

‘Follow me.’

I loved it.

six unrelated things

1.

TV shows often depict one step in emergency resuscitation as an almighty punch in the chest. I have this exact feeling – in a figurative sense – with my children from time to time. This week I read essays they have recently written, one on constitutional law, and the other on Yeats and modernism, and felt that bang, that thump into consciousness: these children are adults, articulate, independent and so smart. The shock is repeated from time to time in the whiplash fast forward effect of their growing up. When did that happen? It’s one of those things you know and understand, and at the same time, cannot quite believe.

2.

‘Six Impossible Things’ was shortlisted for the CBCA (Children’s Book Council of Australia) Award for older readers – YAY! – with ‘Graffiti Moon’ by Cath Crowley, ‘The Piper’s Son’ by Melina Marchetta, ‘About a Girl’ by Joanne Horniman, ‘The Midnight Zoo’ by Sonya Hartnett and ‘The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher’ by Doug MacLeod. I am really thrilled, and have once again had the weird sensation of feeling happy for Dan, (my protagonist). I do know he’s a character, not a person, but that is the way it feels.

3.

Toffee glass is always a good idea – it looks beautiful, eating toffee reminds you of being a kid, and it’s so easy to make. We had a birthday here recently and I made a plum and fig and hazelnut and dark chocolate cake with toffee glass.

Put one cup of castor sugar and one quarter of a cup of water in a saucepan. Stir over low heat to dissolve sugar. Turn heat up to medium – high enough for rapid bubbling – and stop stirring. Let it bubble away for about four or five minutes, till it turns golden and smells like toffee. Pour onto a foil lined baking tray and spread quickly with a knife. Cool. Break into shards.

4.

Walking with the old doggie takes forever these days, so you get to stop to look at stuff like this -

and this – for a long time…

I love the secret signs that are plastered all over the place; they remind me of ‘Down Below the Street’, from Sesame Street.

5.

I preserved some lemons. We had lemons, because of the rain, unlike last year. One of my favourite ingredients for middle eastern dishes. Apparently delayed gratification is good for us. And you can’t eat these for a month, because that’s how long the preserving takes. Strange fact of preserving: you go through all the palaver of sterilising the jars, but then you jam the lemons in with your (washed, but not sterile) hands. Squeezing them down to release juice is part of the deal: you can’t just tip them in. And into the jar goes (washed, but not sterile) lemons, cinamon, cloves, fennel seeds, bay leaves. And salt – who knows how clean that is? I know it’s a preserving agent, but who’s to say rats haven’t just had a party on it before it’s packed?

6.

Sad, sad news – even for distant fans, Gerard Smith, TV On The Radio bassist, died on Wednesday. I’m linking a song, Killer Crane, because I’m guessing musicians might like to be remembered for the music they made, and this clip has some nice photo montage material of the band. The idea of someone dying of lung cancer at the age of 36 is heartbreaking.

grumbles and asterisks

Depending on how my brio levels are, or how impatient I’m feeling, I have occasionally given the old chestnut response when someone says, ‘I’m going to write a film script one of these days – when I get some spare time’, or ‘I’m writing a book when I retire’…which is to say that I will also adopt their profession when I retire. A writer at lunch earlier this week told me that it was Margaret Atwood who coined this response. Innumerable writers have shared the sentiment.

Why is it so annoying? Because it casts writing as something akin to recreation, the writer as a dilettante, and the whole difficult, wonderful, badly paid and time consuming endeavour as nothing more than an interesting hobby, one in which the interlocutor may join you for a dabble one day, when they have nothing else better to do.

‘How do you get into TV? I’ve got a great idea for a series’ is another one that can, on the right – or wrong – day, make my blood boil. And here is the answer: ‘You take the second corridor, then third door on your left, and don’t forget the secret knock’.

When I talk to school groups, I do tell people how you actually ‘get into’ TV. Similar to the requirements of many other jobs it involves study, lots of hard work, talent, persistence in the face of many knock-backs and a willingness to forego the idea of job security entirely. And getting your great idea for a series made? It’s not too far removed from camel and eye of needle territory.

Underneath these blithe and innocent remarks is the lack of understanding of how hard it is to write, to get something published, to get something produced. And how much good work gets very close but for various reasons doesn’t ever make the cut*.

But no one is forcing writers to write, right? So why do so many of us turn up at the page** day after day, year after year.

For me it is, despite its many frustrations, amazingly satisfying work, work that consumes me and feeds me in a way no other work can.

And this is true of every stage – in the before, at which point characters and ideas are gathering and thickening. And you are working just by staring into space, or cooking, or walking.

During the during. A sentence feels complete***, and ‘right’, a metaphor, original. You put something on the page that makes you laugh, or cry, or gives you goosebumps. Or an edit starts giving you the flow you were looking for way back in first draft days.

And in the afterwards, when a book leaves you and starts its own life, it is a seductive idea indeed that your book may land in the lap of a reader who needs it. Just this book at just this time. For me, writing for younger readers, there is inside this notion also an element of writing to my younger self. It is so lovely when a reader gets in touch to tell you how much they enjoyed the book. It is the very definition of job satisfaction.

*Different entirely is the person who has written a manuscript or a screenplay. They’ve done time – fellow inmates.

**’Turning up at the page’ is Julia Cameron’s great description of the work: this act of faith that you’ll have something to put on the page.

***Yeah – I know – ‘During the during’, for example, is not a complete sentence. I like little unsentences, too. And I have my own ideas about complete.

(I was really in the mood for a bit of grumble and asterisk, and I think it was because builders’ noise woke me up at 7 o’clock. And that’s not the time for a Saturday to start. The photo was taken after Christmas in Prague)