Taking Sabbatical Part 2

Oops! I forgot to include the website address:
http://www.thehoopla.com.au

See you there! mxx

Taking Sabbatical

Hello world ( oh okay- hello my loyal small band of blog followers) It’s been all go since I wrote last. I know I appear slack but the real reason is that I have been asked to look after The Hoopla Bookshelf, a new page dedicated to books and their writers. It is a huge honour and an even bigger privilege that makes me feel very humble. Please drop in and visit me at The Hoopla and maybe even leave a comment. . Thanks you for your support so far, and as they say in the classics, I’ll be back. Mx

Confessions of a Literary Indian Giver

One of the things I love about Christmas is the once a year opportunity it represents to indulge my overriding passions: gluttony and greed.  Yep.  There are 2 tins of Quality Street chocolates on the very top shelf of the pantry and today is the day I shall devise my Christmas menu.  But even more fun than that is the chance to overindulge in books.

Once a year I can enter a bookstore (virtual or bricks and mortar- I’m easy) and buy up big on the basis that I am purchasing gifts.  Who am I kidding?  Buying presents for loved ones is a complete disguising of the facts.  I am there to buy books that I wish others would give me in the hope that the recipient will read it and “lend” it back to me when they are finished.  Two books for the price of one.  Yep, ladies and gentlemen, I am a Literary Indian Giver.

It starts with the catalogues.  Pages and pages of books.  I can’t help myself.  I’m intrigued by the present- for- every- member- of- your- family marketing of it all.  How can they cater for both eighty-year-old Great Uncle George who spends Christmas lunch drinking too much whiskey and dribbling onto his plate, your expectant sister-in-law or your cricket mad nephew.

Biographies, autobiographies and memoirs abound.  I am fascinated by glossy hardbacks about some heroic twenty two year old cyclist who once rode their bike on a stretch of road that forms part of the Tour De France.  What have they achieved, I wonder?  Does this mean that they will be dead (literally or metaphorically) in the next year thus making it a life lived full?

Or what about the amount of ghost writing work generated by semi literate football stars, celebrity wannabees and grandfathers of rock?  There is the latest crime novel, romance or page-turner from some mega author whose names appear on the Fortune 500 list and books are thick enough to be used as an interrogation tool in lieu of a telephone book.

“You vill talk!”  The villainous interrogator breathes fumes of sauerkraut in your face, his hooked hand glinting in the single shard of light that cuts the darkness.

“Never!”  You hiss, twisting your head and thus spinning around as you hang from your rope bound wrists.

Ha!  Ha!  Ha! Laughs the villaneous interrogator.  He reaches out with his hook, opening the claw to clench your shirt and stop your spinning.  “Ve haff ways.”

You watch him reach into the darkness.  In his claw he holds a book, a very thick book.  It’s not a hard back.  It’s not a torture manual.  You both know what this means.  The author’s name glints in raised type that you instantly recognize as Bookman Old Style.  The words send a shiver down your spine.  “You bastard.”

“Ah yes.” Sneers the villainous interrogator.  “I’ve always loved Danielle Steele.”

And once I enter a store I am intoxicated by the smell of new paper, giddy with choice.  My arms strain under the teetering pile.  I buy more than I need, more than I could possibly read in a year of summer holidays.  I care not for the heaviness of my load.  It ain’t heavy, it’s my books.

But home again, with a roll of wrapping paper and festive tape, my mood darkens and covetousness creeps up on me.  I pick up each book in turn, running my fingers over the cover.  A sharp thought punctures my brain.  Is Auntie Cheryl even going to read Animal People or is she more Four Seasons With a Grumpy Goat?  Will my uptight mother-in-law read anything into my giving her Room or Annabel or should I stick with something safe like the latest Number One Ladies Detective Agency?  Whichever book I choose, I can’t help worrying that I might be wasting it.

I know.  I’m a snob.  Some people don’t want to be edified when they read; they simply want to be entertained.  And just as not everyone appreciates or enjoys classical music, not everyone wants literature shoved down their throat either.  In the end I wrap hastily, eyes squinting sideways as I send the book to meets its fate in the hands of a stranger, perhaps a dilettante but as likely not to be.  What if the recipient hates the book or worse doesn’t even open it?  Thinks so little of my choice that the book ends up at a charity booksale having never been read.

Perhaps I should insert a small slip of paper with Return to Sender details.  That way, the book might find its way back to a home where it will be read, maybe loved and cherished, maybe not but a home nonetheless.  And at this time of year, the season of giving, when some of us may think of that baby in the manger and the kindness of the innkeeper in allowing his parents shelter in a stable, there is something fitting in this sentiment, don’t you think?

A very merry Christmas to everyone out there in the ether who has taken the time to read my blog in this, my inaugural year.  I shall leave you in peace to enjoy the festive season and the summer holidays for those of us Downunder.  May Santa bring you a bounty of books so that you too can indulge your reading passion.  I hope we catch up again in 2012!

The Book Club Blues

Two weeks ago, I joined my first online book club.  Not such a new concept except this one runs on Twitter.  Each fortnight, the Twitter Book Group selects a book for members to read and in return, readers post pithy comments (which let’s face it, with a 140 character limit succinct is the name of the game.)

Book clubs are a very appealing invention.  The work is selected by another group member, bookshop or library which means there’s a very good chance I won’t have read it or I’d never think to read it.  That’s kind of the point; broaden your reading palette, discuss the experience and be a better person for it.  Here was my chance to go global and share notes with readers from Tumbi Umbi to Timbuktu.

What a great idea! I proclaim, popping into my local library to borrow book number one, Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey.  I’ve read Fforde before, the Eyre Affair, and at 386 pages, Shades of Grey promised much.

Well, in the allotted two weeks I’ve read 169 pages.  I’m not a slow reader, usually averaging about 50 pages an hour.  Unless I am on a real deadline with interviews or book reviews, reading is an activity I do for pleasure not to be first past the post.

But when I logged on to Twitter this morning to see what other people have been posting, I discovered that everyone else has moved onto Book Two: The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein.

Yipes!  All of a sudden I’m in a time warp, at the back of the aerobics class, hopelessly out of time and unable to see most of the moves.  Gawky in lime green lycra and feeling less fit and fabulous than fat and flabby.

I’m sure the other 731 people in the bookclub must lead busy lives too.  And what with Christmas looming, Thanksgiving and other religious and secular festivals, time is of the essence.  How did they do it?

Maybe they are skimmers.  Maybe they said they read it just to be in the groove and disguise the fact they too have only read 169 pages.  Did they only read the first and last paragraph of each chapter, selected pages, or the blurb on the inside front cover?  Or maybe, just maybe, they put their lives on hold for two weeks; took annual leave, sick leave or went AWOL.

Because this book is not easy.  Dare I say, its slow going, hard to keep track of and full of details and injokes that bored the socks off me.

Naturally, all the tweeters are saying things like, loving it, great new universe and quirky.  Surely I can’t be the only person sweating my way through the experience on the metaphorical Stairmaster of Reading?

At last I find someone who tweets, If anyone is struggling to enjoy Shades of Grey~persevere.  I found it one of those books that suddenly ‘clicks’.

God I hope Mark from Devon is right.  But surely, and this is me wearing my writer’s hat for a quick moment, surely a book should click well before page 169?

Writing 101 tells us aspiring scribes that you must have a hook.

Page one, line one sentence one = hook.

Here’s Fforde’s opener for Shades of Grey:

It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant.

Now that’s a hook, a really great hook.  Read on it says.

Writing 101 follows up with more good advice such as introduce your main characters early on, set up conflict, maintain tension on every page, make sure it flows, pacing.

Aaah, there we have it.  For me devouring this book required the same intestinal fortitude as confronting a bowl of All Bran each morning and reminding myself it is for my own good.

Now the question is, can I tackle another one?  If Book One Week One didn’t have me switching off the phone and reading under the covers until the early dawn, what promise does Book Two hold?

Anyway, I’m already so far behind in my homework (because it does feel like homework) that every assignment forthwith will be late and I’ll always be the last person in the conversation.

And you know what I really want to know?  How come with a readership of over 700 supposedly real people (or perhaps they are fictitious members????) I’m the only one saying I hate the book, don’t want to finish it and that fabulous cliché Not his best work.

Is it possible that people are fearful of treating an online book club with the same fervour and chardy-fuelled debate of real book club, and if so, what’s the point?  I may as well walk into my local library and play eenie, meenie, miney mo, pick a book and off we go!

Its early days and the concept is so good that I do think The Twitter Book Club is worth persevering with.  Maybe you can all join and inject 140 characters of reality into the argument- chardy-fuelled or otherwise.  Then we might have an etherclub deserving of the title Book Club.

Neil Gaiman on ‘The Simpsons’; or, does authorship matter? :: Blog :: Nosy Crow

Neil Gaiman on ‘The Simpsons’; or, does authorship matter? :: Blog :: Nosy Crow.

I found this great piece on one of my favourite blogs, Nosy Crow.  I must say, when push comes to shove, selling books is an important affirmation of the appeal of a work.  But every writer wants to be considered a good writer too.  Problem is, I want to be lauded and commercially successful (in my lifetime, not when I’m dead and buried).  Mmm, horns of a dilemma that one.  What do you think?

The Chapter Book Milestone

Today was a milestone in the Jaffé family.  Our latest reader has begun her first chapter book.  Since yesterday, she has read seventy pages, which is a massive effort from a 5 ½ year old.

To see her lying on the couch engrossed in a book fills me with pleasure.  I love that she’s caught the bug.  For some strange reason I feel like I’ve done my job; infected another of my offspring with the love of reading.  And somewhat appropriately, Tilda is reading The Wishing Chair by Enid Blyton.

Why do I say “appropriately”?  Because even forty plus years after she died, Enid Blyton is a writer who resonates through generations and leaves an indelible mark.  Millions of us have read her books and, as we pass our love of Blyton on like a baton to the next generation, many millions more will come to know her too.

But appropriate too because so many writers, especially female writers, mention Enid Blyton’s name as the author who turned them from mere readers to passionate readers.  And anyone who writes is, first and foremost, an addicted reader.  Perhaps by choosing The Wishing Chair as my daughter’s first chapter book I have set her on a course for life.  Another Kate Morton, Charlotte Wood or Kate Forsyth in the making.

Whatever happens, there is no turning back.  She can’t un-learn to read and whether she decides she loves or loathes Blyton, it’s almost guaranteed that she will keep reading.

I wonder, do you have a favourite Blyton, or if not Blyton which writer turned you into a dedicated reader?

Ssshh! It’s a Secret…

As soon as I write the word diary I can see it.  A pink veleveteen cover, gold padlock, a tiny gold key with a tassel on it and the front cover embossed with the words Secret Diary.  It demands to be violated and so must be kept hidden from the prying eyes of parents, siblings and especially friends.  Its blank pages call to be filled with hopes, dreams, losses and self-pity.  They are the repository of angst and anxiety.  But how many of us keep them into adulthood and why?

I have memories of receiving diaries on various childhood birthdays and being thrilled.  Seven days to a double page filled with cramped handwriting in order to fit each exquisite detail of my exciting existence.

Until about Day 4 when the novelty wore off.  Oh, there’d be sporadic revivals when something noteworthy did happen in my day or because I felt the diary pulsating with neglect but the decline of interest was usually rapid.

Once I hit my teens, I replaced any pretence of diary keeping with writing bad poetry – when butterflies flutter by– that type of thing.  I had been writing poetry since I could spell and the primary school years saw me assemble a portfolio of modestly okay work.  But somehow when caught up in roiling hormones, the poetry become mired in fecal matter- if you catch my drift.

Of course, our teen years are precisely the moment when many of us seek and find consolation inside the covers a secret journal.  Within its pages are ticket stubs from a rock concert or a pressed rose bud, photos, a solitary Valentine’s day card, pages of our first name with his surname and of course, the ubiquitous bad poetry.  As a way of processing one’s life and sorting through emotions, the diary can be an effective tool.

But as an adult, keeping a written record of one’s life takes on a different meaning.  Some diaries are famous and some famous people keep diaries.  Surely famous people do so anticipating its contents will be broadly distributed, especially once they are dead and buried?  They must.  Historians and biographers are forever in the debt of diarists even the most humble.

But now we are all famous, or could be.  Social media is our diary and secrecy is passé.  Are we vainer and shallower than in times gone by, who knows, but its cheaper than therapy.

We also have new variations such as the food diary.  This is a tool for recording what you ate each day, how you felt about the food you ate, the exercise you did or didn’t do and what was behind the emotional setback which made you demolish an entire packet of mini Magnums in one sitting.  All of which assumes you are truthful enough to record for posterity your calorific indiscretions.  How did that make me feel?  Bloody fantastic.

But this week a special journal has caught my eye.  Not the genuine ones about a year living with cancer or being held as a hostage in some hellhole but one called The Gratitude Journal.  I find it ludicrous to suggest writing down every thing that happens in my life for which I am grateful.  But now the seed is planted, my list might look something like this:

6AM                There’s milk in the fridge- sniff– and it’s still fresh!

8AM                God I hate exercise but thank goodness I’ve done my squats, lunges and core abs and can face the day with a clear conscience J

9.10AM           Yeah!  The kids are at school.

9.45AM           Great parking spot at the shops

10AM              Tim Tams on a two-for-one deal- yum!

1PM                No bills in the mail.

2.45PM           Kids have a playdate so no school pick up for me.  I can just loll about on the lounge and finish the book I am reading

6PM                Gee that pile up on the news looks bad- glad its them not me

7.30PM           Awww!  Hubby has insisted on cooking dinner tonight and wants me to put my feet up and relax.

9PM                Mmm- now I know why.  Lights out and let the fun begin

Now isn’t that edifying?

That’s why God invented blogging.  Who needs secrets when I can share every idle thought that crosses my tiny little mind with the entire Universe without waiting until I die AND I get feedback.  I am overflowing with gratitude.  Now, where’s the Tim Tams.

The To Do List of Life aka Juggle or Die

 

Sometimes I wonder whether I will ever finish any task that I start.  It’s all very well to say multi-tasking is inefficient but I ask you, how else would we get things done?  Men don’t want to believe in the benefits of multitasking for a very simple reason:  they’re not great at it.  As the people who raise children, women have no choice; it’s juggle or die.

I consider myself to be a pretty well organized person, not to the point where I have alphabetized my spice rack but to the point where I write shopping lists, finish buying Christmas presents well before the end of November and keep a colour-coded diary on Outlook to keep track of my family’s comings and goings.  (Have I lost anyone yet?  Anyone laughing out loud?)

But I have to admit to feeling a tad overwhelmed at the moment.  Life has this knack of throwing one too many curve balls all at the same time and then stands back laughing as you dodge high and low trying to catch them all.  Here’s a snapshot and believe me, this does not include all my current commitments.

As I write this blog, the dishwasher is running, there’s a load in the washing machine, my son is completing a mummy-assisted Toy Story 3 jigsaw to my right, the novel I have been editing all year is to my left, I am reading a book which I have to finish by lunch time tomorrow when I shall be interviewing the author, there is a novel from my writer’s group to finish critiquing, short stories to edit, columns to write- I mean need I go on?

The solution seems to be to try multi-tasking with a twist.  That is, do one task at a time for a set time and then move on.  It means that at the end of the day some of those items on the proverbial To Do list of Life have inched forward in the vain hope that some might eventually be finished.  At least deadlines keep you focused.

This, of course, requires the use of the harsh red pen of prioritization to achieve any positive outcomes which is where this dodging curve ball concept kicks in.  Because, as soon as you have to start dodging curve balls and finish one single solitary thing on your To Do List of Life, things start turning to cow dung.

How I dream of a day when I can live the writer’s life.  The one where I have a studio with a leafy vista, the solitude in which to dream up stories and six uninterrupted hours per day in which to realize my creations.  Apparently there are writers in real life who do this but I am not sure who they are or whether the one who claim such an idyllic existence are just making it up to make the rest of feel like losers.

Don’t get me wrong.  I wouldn’t swap the life I have for this other life.  Without children, marriage and curve balls, where would I get my ideas from?  Watching my son complete his puzzle all by himself is its own reward.  And in the final reckoning, it won’t be the To Do List of Life I’ll be judged by, it will be the love of my family and friends.

And hopefully I’ll have finished the bloody novel by then!

This week on The Hoopla I wrote about hair

I CUT MY OWN HAIR. TOO MUCH?.

Halloween is just a horrible hoo-ha!

Sunday is here again and it is almost the end of October- that can only mean one thing- right?  No, not 55 shopping days until Christmas (aaagh!)  I’ve already ticked off Canadian Thanksgiving, Diwali was on Wednesday (Happy New Year to the Hindu world) and there’s still breathing space before Melbourne Cup and American Thanksgiving.  I’ve missed one haven’t I?

Of course, Halloween is tomorrow.  Happy Halloween everyone!

Actually, I don’t mean that.  I’m sorry but I grew up in a country where English people still called the British Isle home even when they had never lived there.  No Halloween.  None of this blarney about it being an ancient-Celtic-end-of-harvest-festival-of-the-dead ritual.  It might have started out that way but it is now just a brash commercial exercise AND a chance for the kids to dress up in scary costumes and make themselves ill on lollies.

But England like everywhere else, has taken to Halloween like a vampire takes to blood.  Supermarket chains, department stores and $2 dollar shops rub their hands covered in suppurating sores with glee as yet another opportunity to remove money from unsuspecting customers presents itself.  I bet you there is even a Hallmark greeting card wishing your nearest and dearest the most horribilist of Halloweens.

“Here’s wishing you’re scared witless!!

It’s bad enough that Christmas has been stripped of its dignity and one has to struggle to remind the kids that it’s supposed to be about the birth of baby Jesus and the joy of giving et cetera, et cetera.  Why do we have to succumb to this over the top schlock that is Halloween?

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I will answer those questions you have been begging to ask me.  (See?  I’m a mind reader as well as a writer.)

“How did I respond to the false cheer of Halloween?”

“What did I do when my own little darlings jumped up and down with excitement every time they passed a plastic pumpkin or a ghost mask?”

I capitulated of course.  Pathetic in extremis but I’m always the parent who metes out discipline and sets the rules.  For once, I did not want to be the evil witchy-poo of the day, I wanted a turn at being the Fun Fairy.

But I did it my way.  In a cunning act of deception, I gave my little ghostlings a tiny taste of Halloween without all the painful faux cheeriness of the real thing.  I took them to the library.

I know.  Pure genius.  May plentiful blessing be rained down upon the staff of Warringah Library for the effort and imagination put into their Spooky Halloween Party on Friday night.  (I know Friday- leaving the whole weekend free not to talk about Halloween.)

The kiddies watched a play performed by the local drama school with a cast of zombies, ghosts, witches, draculas and werewolves.  The play was a little hard to follow and I suspect the teenager actors were having so much fun being ghoulish that the play was more a workshop in ad-libbing.  But all credit has to go to the tall guy playing the zombie.  He appeared on stage and jumped into the audience sending an eight year old up the back running screaming for her mother.  (Poor kid but hey, great acting from zombie boy.)

Then there were massive craft stations.  Groups of kiddies rotated through tables so that by the end of the afternoon they had made Monster lolly bags, hats, were covered in tatts and had become dab hands at Toss the Pumpkin.  All this to soundtrack of all those Halloween classics- Monster Mash, The Rocky Horror Show and the theme from The Addams Family and of course, that classic from beyond the grave, Michael Jackson singing Thriller.

The clever librarians even made a game of who could pick up the most mess, awarding four lucky kiddies a book and alleviating themselves of the rather tedious job of removing glitter, glue and crepe paper from the function room of the library.

My little wretches were content to suck on a sickly lollipop all the way home.  My halo was a little shinier even though I knew what they didn’t.  Halloween is on Monday night.  Tee hee!  Happy Halloween everyone.

PS Here’s the link to my favourite seasonal blog.  Not for the squeamish.