Karen Comer

Collecting Stories

Fabrics to break up the words

by 3 Comments

I’m in the middle of three editing projects. I’m in the middle of editing my young adult verse novel. I’m in the middle of explaining two Shakespeare plays, one for Miss 14 and one for Mr 17. And I’m deep in the middle of the ABC website, following their coronavirus blog like many other Victorians.

I need a break from words!

So I’m going to immserse myself in a different type of material. Fabric!

Ever since our family friend C (long-time blog reader!) gave us a wedding quilt (23 years ago!), and then helped me make my first one, I have dabbled in quilt-making. I made one for each of my three babies, plus another couple. I finished the bugs and butterfly one above during last year’s second lockdown.

I have a few boxes of my kids’ baby clothes that hold many stories. I did give away most of the clothes to younger cousins and friends but there were a few special pieces I wanted to keep. Mr 17’s green checked shirt that he wore on his second Christmas. Miss 14’s red gingham dress with the white pom-poms. Mr 11’s blue linen shorts that are almost threadbare because he wore them so often. Some pieces I’ll keep as they are – too beautiful to cut up – but there are so many pretty patterned fabrics that will most likely never see the light of day unless I repurpose them.

I’ve washed the baby clothe and have drawn up a rough design. I know quilting is an accurate craft and I know I have a tendency to dive headfirst into projects but I’m going to wing this one. It’ll look good in my head! My husband always reminds me, ‘Measure twice, cut once!’

A couple of friends are going to make a quilt, too, in this, our winter quilt challenge!

I am hoping that while I cut and sew this quilt made of my children’s stories, that some of the tangled storylines in my verse novel will loosen themselves while I give my mind a rest.

A beautiful question

by 2 Comments

I recently finished reading Sarah Wilson’s This one wild and precious life, a book on climate change and activism. Her title comes from Mary Oliver’s poem, The summer day, which asks us to question what we will do to make the most of our brief, wonderful life.

Wilson’s book is full of a range of sources from conversations with the Dalai Lama, interviews with Bill McKibben, phone calls with Sister Joan Chittister, books from James Hollis. Her book alone could give you a reading list for a year, and she has many resources on her website here. She also wove in personal stories and accounts of her hikes through different parts of the world.

It would take me quite a few blog posts to discuss her ideas, so I’ll focus on just one. She quotes David Whyte, the Irish poet, who asks – but what is the most beautiful question here?

‘I’ve heard David explain that asking the more beautiful question (invariably the courageous one) delivers us the answer we seek. A question can often be laced with blame or rage. (‘Why did he do that to me?’ ‘Why won’t she just learn to recycle properly?’) But when we dig a few layers deeper to the more delicate, beautiful question (‘What need in me is not being met?’ ‘How can I better connect with this person?’), we find ourselves going to a kinder, more considered place in ourselves and each other.‘

Wilson also frames it this way later in the book when she quotes Jungian psychologist James Hollis who suggests asking:

‘by way of a technique for living a true life: ‘Does this choice enlarge or diminish?’ Now that is a beautiful question. Hollis added that in most circumstances, when we ask this question, we should know the answer immediately. We do, don’t we, when we’re brave enough to put things through this simple lens.

What is the most beautiful question you could ask yourself right now? Will your next choice enlarge or diminish?

Blood moon – the book and the event

by 1 Comment

Reading a book called Blood Moon during the week there was a blood moon is definitely synchronicity!

The title of Lucy Cuthew’s young adult verse novel is so apt – it’s about British fifteen-year-old Frankie, who unfortunately gets her period during an intimate moment with a boy she likes. Frankie is a science nerd who works at the planetarium and spends every full moon night with her best friend Harriet in their old treehouse. The poem below comes at the end of the book, when Frankie and Harriet watch a blood moon.

We set up the telescope,

watching red

seep into the moon

at its edge….

Blood red,

impossibly lustrous,

suspended over us

three hundred and eighty-four thousand

kilometres

away.

The beauty of the blood moon

reminds me that

the universe is huge

and we are tiny,

but so lucky,

because we get to

witness its beauty.

On Wednesday night, my family watched the moon rise over our back fence. My phone pinged with messages from friends in Victoria and other states – photos of their russet-red moon risings.

So wonderful to watch a beautiful moon from your backyard.

Take care, Victorian readers – I hope you feel the moon’s calmness over the next week.

Second drafts

by 3 Comments

Second drafts are wonderful to work on because there is so much that is wrong with them and therefore, they are infinitely improvable! At least, that’s the case for me.

I’m editing the second draft of my young adult verse novel. It’s still very loose at this stage, so I’m focusing on the big picture rather than the smaller details. I’m thinking about:

  • would my characters really do this?
  • is the pace too fast or too slow?
  • is there tension in every scene?
  • what is the balance between my two protagonists?
  • how are my characters working to achieve their goals?
  • is the antagonist believable, with a strong enough motivation to stop the protagonists from reaching their goals?
  • and always, always, always going to back to the theme of my book – how do my characters belong in their worlds, yet still express themselves to honour their authenticity?

I’m using Alan Watt’s The 90 day rewrite as my guide. He outlines the main plot points, with lots of key ideas to discover what your story is really about in this draft.

My second draft is full of predictable mistakes. I’ve changed a couple of the characters’ names. I’ve wandered down a rabbit hole, and need to delete that hole entirely. I’ve moved scenes around because they were in the wrong order. I’ve merged two characters together.

I love working on a second draft because it’s so satisfying to fix. The mistakes are so glaring and the solutions so obvious, that the manuscript improves every time I breathe on it.

I’m trying to finish this draft in an impossibly short self-imposed deadline of a month, so I can send it to a friend who is equal parts critic and cheer squad. This means she will rip it to shreds but will tell me I can fix it.

So the third draft will be equally satisfying because I’ll have her notes to help me.

It’s the fourth draft, when I need to focus on developing the emotions of the characters, the nuances of the plot and the subtleties of language, that it becomes hard. It’s not quite singing yet, but it’s not so obvious as to how to elevate my writing so that it does sing.

But that’s at least three months away… nothing to worry about now!

Elsewhere girls – book review

by 1 Comment

Last week, I went to the book launch for Elsewhere girls, a middle-grade novel by a pair of well-known Melbourne writers, Emily Gale and Nova Weetman.

Their book was launched at Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy Library by Leesa Lambert from The Little Bookroom, with sparkling wine and cupcakes, beautifully decorated with images of the characters.

Jane Pearson from Text Publishing introduced the writers. She told us it was a publisher’s dream to have writers of Emily and Nova’s talent approach her with a ‘thing’ they’d written, wondering whether Text would be interested.

Emily and Nova gave us a glimpse into their collaborative writing process with the way they laughed and chatted together. They spoke of their different approaches – Emily’s organised approach versus Nova’s wing-it ways – and their research trip to Sydney, which involved swimming in Wylie’s Baths.

Elsewhere Girls is the story of two swimmers living in different times. Fanny Durack is from the Sydney of 1908 – she lives over a pub with her parents and eight siblings and regularly escapes the chores of skinning rabbits and washing bedlinen by hand to swim instead. Cat Feeney lives in Sydney, 2021, getting up early every morning for squad training, even though she’s not as committed as she should be. Thanks to an old timekeeping watch, they somehow swap bodies and timeframes. While both are swimmers, their lives are different and each girl has a greater understanding of her own life while living someone else’s.

The story is told in first person with alternative chapters from Fan and Cat. Often a dual narrative means a reader will like one character over another. I loved Fanny and Cat equally! Fanny’s general all-round-loveliness and her kind, loud, hard-working family were delightful company and Cat’s uncertainty about her swimming future, and her courage in facing a new home, school and friends makes her an endearing character.

While I am in no way, shape or form a swimmer (I used to pretend to be sick on swimming days at primary school, thanks to a nasty, inappropriate male swimming teacher) I did enjoy all the swimming threads – the beach swimming, Wylie’s Baths, squad training, early starts. It was told so vividly, I could almost smell the chlorine!

This would be a perfect book for a 9-12 year-old reader, particularly sporty kids or those readers who love a time-slip story. Happy reading!

Blessings for mothers

by 4 Comments

Soulful, deeply-connected mothering isn’t really talked about, even in this week leading to Mother’s Day. There’s a profusion of pink cards in supermarkets, glossy magazines with beautifully curated gifts and sentimental advertisements on television but not much about how mothering requires every emotional fibre of your heart, and then some.

This week, I’ve immersed myself deeply in my current editing job, a slim sixth edition book on childbirth, as well as a friend’s beautiful heartfelt book on parenting and three school masses celebrating motherhood.

The childbirth book has made me feel queasy at times – so many potential interventions! So many things to think about for first-time mothers! So many new things to learn while recovering from the birth and learning to care for a newborn baby! But the sheer miracle of creating and nurturing a new little life is so beautiful and hopeful an act of love that I am in awe again at this miracle.

My friend is a psychologist and a mother of five adult daughters. Her book is part memoir, part parenting guide and I so wish I could have read it while my children were young. The section on listening deserves to be distributed to every new mother in hospital. My friend’s gentle, wise words on using reflective listening to truly connect with your baby, child or teenager comes deep from her experience of mothering and providing psychology sessions. I’ve carried her words around deep inside me.

I’ve attended two school masses for Mother’s Day, with one more to come today. And oh, the music – teenage boys singing You raise me up, teenage girls singing psalms. And the blessings – because mothers need blessings. Oh, we need the blessings for the times when the baby cries inconsolably at three in the morning, when the toddler won’t get in the car when we’re running late, when the seven-year-old doesn’t get invited to a party, when the teenager won’t do their homework or stays out too late.

And we need to remember my friend’s suggestions to listen – not only with our ears – when they won’t tell us about their feelings of loneliness or not-enoughness or social media angst.

And we need to remember our feelings of love when we first gazed at their wonderful unique selves after the ordeal of childbirth. Soulful mothering – it takes everything we’ve got.

This weekend, there are families missing their mothers, mothers missing their children, childless women enduring a day of celebration that doesn’t acknowledge their choice or loss, mothers who don’t quite feel their own enoughness. Blessings to all of us.

Fleishman is in trouble – book review

by 4 Comments

Fleishman is in trouble by debut novelist Taffy Brodesser-Akner is the sort of book you want to discuss with someone – as you’re reading it, as soon as you’ve finished reading it – perfect bookclub material.

Toby Fleishman is a New York hepatologist with a recently separated wife and two children. The story begins with a newfound sense of sexual freedom for Fleishman – he’s free to indulge in all sorts of sexual encounters – online, in person, dates that work, dates that don’t work. He’s almost giddy with it – as a five-foot-five Jewish man who was overweight as a child, all of a sudden there are women who want him.

But his ex-wife Rachael goes missing. She’s dropped the kids off a day earlier than expected without telling him, gone off to a yoga weekend retreat and hasn’t come back.

Fleishman navigates the difficult world of his medical work, his two children (thank goodness for summer camps), his missing ex-wife and his forays into dating.

Brodesser-Aknew explores relationships not only through Fleishman’s marriage but through the stories of the women he dates, as well as his two best friends, Libby (going through her own existential crisis in her marriage to a perfectly nice man) and Seth (never committed, constantly dating, recently engaged). Fleishman becomes ‘the wife’, as his divorce lawyer tells him – he earns less money than Rachael and he has more responsibilities with the kids.

it was interesting to observe the gradual decline of Fleishman’s interest in online dating apps, once his twelve-year-old daughter received her phone. There’s a small incident with her and a photo, which shocks Fleishman and makes him question his own obsession with the photos women on dating apps have sent him.

The narrator is Libby, Fleishman’s friend from college days. She appears and disappears, leaving the reader a tad bemused that she pops up out of nowhere to insert herself in the story. I did wonder how Libby could possibly know so intimately Fleishman’s thoughts and feelings, let alone the nuanced and detailed encounters with Rachael, his kids, his co-workers?

And yet her invisibility in parts of the novel echo not only Rachael’s disappearance but also the general theme of women’s invisibility throughout the novel.

…whatever kind of woman you are, even when you’re a lot of kinds of women, you’re still always just a woman, which is to say you’re always a little bit less than a man…

Rachael is only seen through Fleishman’s eyes for the majority of the novel – it is only towards the end that we catch a glimpse through Libby of Rachael. While Fleishman is an empathetic character, a doctor who ‘sees’ his patients, an involved and tender dad, we realise at the end of the novel that perhaps his view of his marriage (and his friendship with Libby) was not entirely accurate.

See – so much to discuss!

A writing retreat with Eliza Henry Jones

by 6 Comments

Eliza Henry Jones is one of my favourite Australian authors – so prolific, so talented! She opened up her flower farm to a bunch of writers last weekend, and I drove away well-fed, with a bunch of beautiful flowers and several exercises to boost my writing. I interviewed her a few years ago about her novel Ache here.

Eliza talked with us about her own writing journey, her four books (two adult fiction, two young adult fiction) and her tips and tricks for developing characters, understanding the difference between plot and structure and persisting when writing becomes challenging.

One of her exercises involved a tour of her farm in the Yarra Valley, with an invitation to collect something that caught our eye – perhaps a flower, a stick, a stone.

After meeting Ferdy the duck and looking at the laden avocado and lemon trees and the sprawling sweet peas, we headed back into the barn to write about our object. My leaf sparked a poem for my current verse novel, set during Autumn and Winter last year.

Our afternoon tea was delicious – muffins, cookies, brownies! – and at the end of the retreat we were invited to gather flowers from the buckets lining the back wall of the barn to create our own bouquet to take home!

I have been to many writing retreats and workshops but I’ve never gone home with flowers before! Nor have I done a writing exercise which involved cliches and a Shetland pony!

Choose your own village

by 6 Comments

I’m lucky enough to be part of many villages – my Easter crew, writing group, school communities, bookclub group and of course, family groups. Not only do the lovely humans in these groups care for me, but they are also wonderfully interesting people with a variety of skills, talents and occupations.

I’ve been musing on the idea of creating your own old-fashioned fantasy village, full of people with different occupations. (Every now and then I dabble in a fairy-tale/myth type of story.) Who would you choose if you had to people a village of ten occupations?

Here are my choices:

  • writer/librarian – to record the stories for prosperity and provide old knowledge and wisdom, to offer words for the unsayable
  • cook/forager – to gather food, grown from the surrounds, and prepare it to feed the crew
  • builder – to provide shelter and homes, fix things
  • scientist – to research, experiment, offer news ways of thinking
  • doctor – to heal, care, advise on all health issues
  • artist – to provide colour, tell stories through art, provide beautiful objects of meaning
  • teacher – to teach the young, guide their ways
  • environmentalist – to care for the land, manage our resources
  • psychologist/wise person – to look after our mental health, provide wisdom
  • musician – to sing stories, reflect our feelings, create community.

Who would make your top ten? Would you choose two cooks or two environmentalists? Would you skip the artist but add a trade/barter specialist? Maybe you’d choose someone with a boat or wagon as a travel guide? Perhaps you need a spiritual adviser?

And who would be the leader? The doctor? The teacher? Or would your village value music so much that the musician would lead?

Would your village have been different before Covid? It begs the question of who is an essential worker!

Tell me about your village of choice – I’d love to know.

Memory stories

by 8 Comments

We celebrated twenty years of spending Easter together with three families at the beach – technically it was nineteen because we missed Easter last year due to Covid – but that’s a minor detail!

We started with eight adults, and now we have accumulated nine children between us, ranging from ten to nineteen. We’ve stayed at a few different houses as our crew has grown.

Looking at these beautiful kids and some of our oldest friends filled me with a hundred stories. The play the kids put on one year where Miss 14, then Miss 3, was too shy to participate but ‘helped’ behind the scenes instead. The year we had an Italian theme based on the movie Big Night and ate way too much pasta. Twenty years of eating fish on Good Friday, with each fish given a different name – Percy Poisson, Sammy Salmon. Many, many craft activities to keep little people entertained. The annual Easter egg hunt, even for the teenagers now!

I attended a talk by psychologist Andrew Fuller a few years ago where he talked about the importance of memory for learning. This included not only tips and tricks for helping students to memorise facts and concepts but also the importance of remembering stories as emotions are tied to memories.

When I remember to remember this(!) I can bring up memories for my kids at dinner, in the car, walking the dog. During the lead-up to Easter, when we’re talking about what to pack, what we’ll cook, we often remember other Easter stories.

  • Remember when M played his guitar and we all sang?
  • Do you think L will cook tacos on our first night like she usually does?
  • Remember when we stayed at the other house and all the kids slept in one room?
  • Remember when we put on plays with the shadow puppets and torches?

By reliving memories, we create a strong narrative about who we are and what’s important to us – important enough to remember. I hope you created or relived wonderful Easter memories, too.