Our family has just finished an intense period. We need a little breathing space. Perhaps you do, too? We’ve spent the last few Sunday and Monday evenings, sitting on the couch, eyes glued to the television, watching Lego Masters, a reality tv show where eight pairs of contestants followed a brief to build lego in order to win the title of Lego Masters. Dinner and dishes were completed before the show started, the ad breaks were spent discussing the merits and failings of each build and Mr 10 started to use Brickman’s (the judge’s) lego lexicon. It’s intense, I tell you.

Imagine if there was a reality tv show for writers? Each piece from the contestants would be read out – a lone writer standing behind his/her words in front of a solitary microphone. Can you see the response from the live crowd and the publisher judges?

The show would surely have to include a background look around the final contestants’ favourite writing environment. Perhaps a study, a kitchen table or a cafe? Plus there’d be an in-depth interview about literary influences, beginning with Beatrix Potter, Enid Blyton, Linley Dodds or Mem Fox perhaps?

Think about the potential for television tension when:

• contestant no. 5 reads out a harrowing account of a murder, the inciting incident for her crime novel

• contestant no. 3 performs a spoken poetry piece as if she’s in a slam contest which has the audience up on their feet, punching their fists in the air

• contestant no. 11 can barely hold it together as he reads a memoir of his family’s journey from poverty to riches

• contestant no. 8 makes the judges laugh with an amusing picture book story, complete with funny voices

• contestant no. 16 reads, almost acts out, a steamy love scene from her romance book so hot the audience start fanning themselves with their programs.

Imagine the judges’ comments – ‘your writing transported me back to medieval France and took me away from this tv studio’. Or, ‘after hearing you read your literary novel on a dystopian world where there were no supermarkets, I wanted to read more’. Maybe, ‘I would love to work with you to help develop your voice in your essay collection about collecting spoons’.

What of the judges’ post-show, supposedly off-camera discussions?

• I define his work as young adult, not middle-grade.

• Contestant no. 2’s piece shone with originality.

• Contestant no. 9 uses an omniscient narrator perfectly.

• Contestant no. 6 really needs to prune back her writing.

• Contestant no. 9 should change her novel from third person to first person.

• Contestant no. 6 should devote more page time to develop her characters.

• Contestant no. 2 let us down with her latest piece – it’s not up to her usual standard.

• His work could only be appreciated by middle-grade readers.

The reality is, that writing is often a solitary art, and a writer typing furiously into a laptop or handwriting messily into a notebook, debating internally whether her character feels adored or admired, would be about as exciting as colour-coding lego blocks or practising vocal scales or whipping cream.

Channel 9, let me know, I’m ready!

Synchronicity – this week I read a children’s novel and listened to a podcast about the art of the apology. Actually, most of the time it’s not an art, it’s an awkward, sometimes heartfelt, often nervous bumbling through the spoken word.

Rebecca Stead’s latest book, The list of things that will not change, is just as good as all her previous novels. Twelve-year-old Bea is looking back over the summer when she was ten, when she is about to have a new sister because her dad is marrying again and his new husband has a daughter. Only child Bea thinks this will be everything she’s ever wanted – now she’ll have a mum, two dads and a sister. But not everyone is open to gay marriage and Bea will revisit some of the mistakes she made in order to resolve or move on from old friendships.

I think I adore Brene Brown as much as I do Rebecca Stead! Brene has a new podcast called ‘Unlocking Us’. Her latest episode is with Harriet Lerner about how to apologise. Harriet Lerner is a psychologist and writer with a great sense of humour – her story about being shamed publicly for eating too much cheese at a function made me laugh.

Lerner tells us to leave out the word ‘but’ in our apology. ‘I’m sorry I forgot your birthday but it’s been crazy around here.’ Any apology with a ‘but’ in it isn’t an apology.

Stead gives Bea a few apologies. Bea writes a note to the girl she sits next to in class.

Dear Carolyn, I’m really, REALLY sorry that I bashed your nose in the lunchroom. You hurt my feelings and made me angry two times this week. You laughed at Jesse during the colonial breakfast. And then today you said I would never have a real sister. That’s a sore spot, because I always wanted one more than anything. I was seeing red. But I shouldn’t have hurt you. I hope your nose is okay.

Also, I forgive you for stabbing me with a pencil in second grade. Bea.

A pretty decent apology, even if it does have a ‘but’ in it!

I think it’s tricky to be a child when an adult shames you. Often the focus is on the child lashing out, as provoked by the subtle shaming language from an adult. When Bea doesn’t behave so well at a ten-year-old party, her mother is told to buy a book as ‘this kind of behaviour doesn’t usually get better on its own.’ Ouch!

The list of things that will not change is a wonderful read for 9-12 year-olds, and Brene Brown’s podcast is essential listening for all adults. There’s not many of us who go through life without needing to apologise.

However we used technology in our lives before COVID-19, we are more dependent than ever upon it now! Here’s a quick list of the digital world I’ve loved this week, with a literary theme, of course.

• K. M. Kruimink won the Australian Vogel prize this week for her debut novel, A treacherous country. I read the first chapter available through Allen and Unwin here – and want to read more!
• I’m listening to this violin soundtrack while I write my next middle-grade verse novel – one of my characters plays the violin.
• Thank goodness for Readings, our wonderful Melbourne bookshop who have closed their shop doors but are still open online. They are indeed busy – I ordered some books around Easter and found out yesterday they’re on their way.
• Dani Shapiro, New York bestselling novelist and memoirist, has a new course available through Skill Share on creating the writing life.
• My new writers’ group, formed through a retreat I did earlier, is now meeting through Zoom.
• Jess Hill recently won the Stella prize. You can see her interview with Louise Swinn when the recording is available.
• Yale University has made their most popular course, The science of wellbeing, available for free online – it’s about happiness. It’s free but you can pay around $70 to receive a certificate of completion. If you’ve always wanted to see Yale University and your name on the same piece of paper, now’s your chance!
• The Yarra Valley Writer’s Festival with big literary names such as Charlotte Wood, Alice Bishop, Clare Bowditch and many more, is now online. Tickets start at $35 with the opportunity to watch live on Saturday 9th May or watch the recordings later.
• I’m really enjoying listening to Brene Brown’s new podcast, Unlocking us. 
• How perfect is Lego Masters right now? It is the perfect family-friendly show to find some light relief from COVID-19 anxiety and stress. It might not be about books but I’m admiring the blend of creativity and architectural precision needed. Mr 10 is a big fan, and is disappointed that it’s only on for two nights of the week.

And to balance out this heavy digital week, there has also been scone-baking, dog-walking, book-reading, yoga-exercising and quilt-sewing. I hope you’ve had a wonderful week, too!

I thought I would try reading a poem to you and post it as a video clip, but unfortunately the file was too large to post here. I tried to save room by speaking a little more quickly but still no use! The two teenagers running the IT Helpdesk did their best to assist but ran out of options. I’ll post it on Facebook so you can see it there.

The poem is ‘Zero Circle’ by the Persian poet Rumi, who lived at the beginning of the 13th century.

I recently listened to a talk by Martha Beck, an American writer, who mentioned this poem and it reminded me that it’s one of ten poems in Roger Housden’s Ten poems to change your life. Housden has an insightful essay on all ten poems.

‘Zero Circle’ by Rumi

Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.
If we say we can, we’re lying.
If we say No, we don’t see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Beside ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.

While the poem has no doubt been read in many different ways since the thirteenth century when Rumi wrote it, it seems particularly apt now during COVID -19. To me, reading it now, it’s about uncertainty, being ‘dumbfounded, unable to say yes or no’. And even though we’re ‘mute’ or ‘crazed’, once we surrender to the unknowing, then ‘a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up’, and transform us into ‘a mighty kindness’.

This poem doesn’t rhyme not does it use any particularly complex vocabulary. Instead, it’s the combination of concrete words that stand out – mighty kindness, stretcher from grace, tremendous eloquence – that paints evocative pictures in our minds.

Let me know what you like about ‘Zero Circle’ by Rumi.

Last weekend, I read the newspaper from cover to cover, noticing the slimness of the sports and real estate sections and the absence of the travel section.

And I tidied up Mr 10’s bedroom while listening to a podcast and put a lamb shoulder in the slow cooker and found several vitally important pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and wrote a few notes for my novel, while listening to the rain.

By the time it was evening, the lamb smelt savoury and Miss 13 started making a rhubarb crumble and Mr 16 got ready for his evening supermarket shift, and I realised it had been a really good day. Wonderfully cosy to listen to the rain while good food cooked and there was the possibility of a movie or book after dinner.

And that’s the paradox of COVID-19, that I can have a good day while someone else makes funeral arrangements for a gathering of ten mourners and someone else showers off the remains of their hospital shift and someone does their budget for the 11th time and realises their life has shrunk even more and someone else curls up in a ball and sobs with anxiety because they’ve lost their job.

And while that is probably the case all the time – someone has a promotion, someone loses their job, someone has a new baby, someone buries a loved one, someone spends the night with 100 of their closest friends at a party and someone aches with loneliness – this pandemic has heightened all of the feelings.

In a recent podcast, Brene Brown spoke about comparative suffering. It’s okay to feel upset if you can’t go on an overseas trip you’ve planned for six months, while your neighbour is upset because she’s lost her job. It’s okay to feel upset because your kids are home with you all the time while your friend can’t go to her aunt’s funeral. It’s okay to feel upset because your golf club or hairdresser or favourite restaurant has shut while your neighbour is working long shifts at a hospital and is self-isolating so she can’t hug her small kids.

It’s okay to grieve for everything you’ve lost. And it’s also okay to take pleasure in a tidy cupboard or a completed jigsaw or a delicious meal. Because not taking pleasure in a walk on a sunny day doesn’t help your friend to get her job back.

Put it down to the pandemic paradox.

There’s a beautiful loving-kindness meditation I’ve been practising on Insight Timer, a free meditation app. It’s a repetition of a few phrases – the words below come from Sharon Salzberg’s meditation.

May I be safe

May I be happy

May I be healthy

May I live with ease.

You begin with focusing on yourself, then think of someone you love, then someone you know, then someone you don’t know.

At the moment, I think this covers everyone – the busy, stressed essential workers, the ones who have lost their job, the grandparents and grandchildren missing each other, the kids who have lost their friends and sport and freedom, the bored ones at home and the policy-makers. Loving-kindness to us all, especially over this Easter weekend.

I have a mixed bag of books to bring you this week – fiction, non-fiction and young adult fiction – all fabulous reads, all by Australian writers. Remember, even if your local bookshop and library has closed due to COVID-19, you might be able to access your library’s e-books, order online from your bookshop, listen to a book in Audible or buy an online version from Booktopia, Kindle or iBooks. Even in isolation, we can still read and support authors!

• The mother-in-law by Sally Hepworth – this is the perfect book to read at the moment. It’s light enough to take your mind off your worries but the characters have so much depth that you will stay up late reading to find out what happens to them. The book has two narrators – Lucy, the daughter-in-law and her mother-in-law, Diana. It’s told in two timeframes – the past, when Lucy first meets Diana, marries her son and has young children and the present when Diana is found dead with a suicide note. I also enjoyed Sally’s book, The things we keep, and will hunt out her other ones, too.

• This is how we change the ending by Vikki Wakefield – it’s such a powerful title, isn’t it? This young adult book is gripping as it takes us through sixteen-year-old Nate’s life. He lives with his father who is usually drunk, doesn’t work and turned Nate’s bedroom into a hydro crop so he shares a room with his three-year-old twin half-brothers, Jake and Otis. Jake is turning into a mini-version of his father and Otis can barely talk and can’t walk. Nate’s stepmother Nancy is only eight years older than him. The support characters include a mate who isn’t so much a best mate but merely around, an English teacher who is trying to encourage Nate and his classmates to see other possibilities for themselves and a few people who work at the youth centre which is the only place to hang out. I’d love to see this book as a movie!

• Night fishing by Vicki Hastrich – Vicki lost her way writing a manuscript when she realised she needed a fallow year. Night fishing is the result of that fallow year, when she wrote a series of essays on art, fishing, using a thesaurus, her grandfather’s welding shop, her life before writing as a camera operator, her childhood holiday house. It’s a lovely slow read to savour this memoir as Vicki delves with great detail and phenomenal observational powers to remember poignant moments from her life.

Happy reading!

I’ve written in journals and diaries on and off for over 35 years. I’m sure I started in one of those small diaries from the newsagency with a lock and tiny key. I have a vague memory of a glossy black one, maybe with a white Pierrot clown on it and a silver lock and key. No idea where it is now!

I do have a purple exercise book which I used as a journal when I was in grade five, hiding it carefully in the narrow gap between my desk drawers and my desk. Clearly it’s very valuable, it was marked down from 60 cents to 49 cents! And clearly I had a tenuous start as an editor – I couldn’t distinguish between dairy and diary! I started a new blank journal yesterday, which I bought from the Bespoke Press in Bowral. It’s a gorgeous grey linen book with patterned endpapers and gold embossed letters.

I write in my journal to make sense of the thoughts swirling around in my head and to empty my mind so that I can see clearly. I write a lot of lists so that my words can be at their most basic and concrete – this is at odds with my literary writing where I’m writing free verse poems.

I keep all my journals but rarely read over them, only occasionally pulling out one from years ago to compare the me from then to the me now. Same-same, different.

In these uncertain times, journal writing is a lifeline to me. I wonder whether it might be to you, too, or whether it’s a chance to discover if this is the case?

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big magic, Eat pray love, The signature of all things and City of girls, recently posted a talk on Insight Timer, a meditation app. She talked about living with fear – she says she has a lot of experience. Every morning, she writes a letter to herself from love in order to calm the fear. The fear doesn’t go away, she says, but writing a letter from love calms it down. Her talk is incredibly wise – please listen.

Sarah Selecky, the Canadian author who ran the writing retreat I recently attended, is running a free writing prompt workshop, Writing through uncertainty. If you don’t like the idea of writing personal journal entries, you might like the idea of writing to a prompt each day for 30 days. Today’s prompt was to write ten random sentences that aren’t connected to each other. Sarah suggests you set aside ten minutes every day to write to the prompt.

Julia Cameron, who has written too many books to mention but is most well-known for her book, The artist’s way, introduced a practice called morning pages. Artists from all disciplines use it. Every day, as early as you can, you write three pages by hand. Anything and everything. It clears the mind, filtering out the negative thoughts and worries, the nagging should list, the inner critic so your mind is clear for creating. Or in today’s world, clear for not worrying.

I have been using the app Curable which helps users to manage and decrease chronic pain – I have migraines. One of the four activities Curable provides is writing exercises, usually a twenty minute process. I am always amazed at how insightful my writing is after doing an exercise. I can’t recommend this app highly enough, and at the moment they have a 50% price reduction.

Let me know in the comments if you are a journaller (consistent or not so) or if it’s something you’d like to try. It is an excuse to indulgence in pretty stationery!

In a past life, I was an after-school-care coordinator while I studied at university. And in the not so distant past, I tried to do a little freelance editing while at home with a school kid, kinder kid and baby. You could say I have had some experience in entertaining kids…

In case you have kids or grandkids at home with no school due to the coronavirus or are starting to think about the school holidays with more time at home, here are a few suggestions to keep them entertained – and provide sanity for you. Believe me, I’m writing this as much for me as for you!

Some of the activities will suit primary school kids, others are better for secondary school students and all of them can be adjusted for your own needs.

• Literary day – ask each kid to choose their favourite book for a day. On that day, the whole family eats like the characters in the book, dresses like them, acts out a scene, makes props such as newspaper hats, cardboard swords. Perhaps the favourite book is the gorgeous picture book, My mum and dad make me laugh by Nick Sharratt, where the mum loves spots, the dad likes stripes and the little boy loves grey elephants. Imagine the possibilities for food and clothes with spots and stripes! Perhaps your teenager loves Twilight – what smoothies could you make for a vampire? Who does the best Bella impersonation? And if your book has a movie, you definitely have permission to watch the movie!

• Make a mini concertina book – instructions here – and sketch out your favourite story with stick figures. Everyone else in the family has to guess the title.

• Make a book using a stick from the garden or park and rubber bands and turn it into a botanical masterpiece with botanical illustrations of leaves and flowers or draw pictures of the characters. Instructions here.

• Design a poster for a book as if it were going to become a movie. Decide on your cast and the tagline. Mr 10 recently read Crossover by Kwame Alexander and he decided that he’d play the main character (a kid passionate about basketball) and the dad character would be played by Le Bron James. Teenagers can do it digitally, young kids can do it with paper and paint.

• Make paper dolls of your favourite characters – look at this website for ideas. Think about how Katniss or Harry Potter would look like, as well as all the other characters. Younger kids might like the picture book Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson. Older kids might prefer to make individual ones like the ones from this art book The black apple’s paper doll primer by Emily Winfield Martin.

• Have a look at this clip about the hero’s journey. Make a clock, perhaps out of a paper plate, and track your favourite character’s journey. You can simplify this to four plot points for younger kids.

• For half an hour after lunch, play DEAR – Drop Everything And Read. You, too – I give you permission.

• Write a blackout poem, using an article from a newspaper or magazine – example here.

• Think of your favourite picnic scene in a book – Picnic at Hanging Rock, Wind in the willows, Famous Five – and recreate a picnic scene in your back garden for lunch or dinner.

• Your kids are going to come across Shakespeare at school if they haven’t already. Let them watch a few modern films such as 10 things about you, She’s the man, Shakespeare in love, Romeo and Juliet. Suggest they read a simplified version first, such as Leon Garfield’s Shakespeare stories so they know the story.

• Follow Miss Thirteen’s example (when she had chronic fatigue) and watch the entire series of Gilmore Girls – this catapulted her into reading classics like Moby Dick, and books by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Jules Verne.

• Make some peg dolls to recreate nursery rhymes – I have made these with so many kids and everyone loves them! Margaret Bloom has a wonderful book, Making peg dolls and there are  supplies here.

• After dinner or while washing the dishes, create a story together. Everyone has to contribute two words, and go around and around the table – There was …. a man …. who liked…. to paint… his letterbox … with pink…

• Use lego figures, action figures, dolls to make up stories and film them using iMovie. Add music.

• Read your kids a poem every day. Ask them to find a different one from books like The Waldorf book of poetry or websites like this one.

• Print out photos of when the kids were little and help them to write their own story about themselves.

• Ask the kids to write a journal of their time at home to record for their grandchildren. Remind them they are the hero of their own story, they are the protagonist. Do not be surprised if they cast you as the antagonist!

• Older kids could write a dystopian story. Perhaps they could set it in the future, and have the character look back fifty years ago to 2020, to the year of bushfires and coronavirus. What has changed? What do we do differently? What is the technology like?

• Encourage the kids to write emails or letters to their grandparents or relatives who are isolated.

• Make a family time capsule – this is who we are at this moment in time, stuck at home because of the coronavirus. We ate, we studied, we read, we watched, we loved, we feared, we found this difficult, we found this fun. Open it in two years time or ten.

• Put a sheet of paper on the fridge to tally up the number of books everyone in the family has read. If you need to bribe, do it with chocolate or pocket money or a future excursion.

• Play libraries and make borrowing cards or alphabetise your books.

• Read a story to an audience of teddies and dolls. Film your kid reading and send it to a relative. Mr 10 and I – when he was four – filmed ourselves reciting The owl and the pussy-cat. (Note to self – find that video!)

• Make bookmarks that match the books and give them to neighbours and friends.

I know for sure that my kids will roll their eyes at some of these activities. But the point is, a few of them will stick. So keep trying. Let me know if you have any more ideas in the comments. We’re all in this together.