Dear readers, I hope you and your families are well. I really appreciate all the comments you leave on my posts and the emails you send me – it’s lovely to know that our words are connecting us.

This week, I bring you a review from one of Australia’s great fiction and non-fiction writers – Kate Grenville. Kate has a writing career spanning decades and has recently published her 16th book.

Her latest novel is A room made of leaves, a historical novel set in Australia in the late 18th century. Kate positions herself, Kate Grenville, as the editor of Elizabeth Macarthur’s secret diary, which is a fictionalised account of Elizabeth’s story of moving to Australia and surviving life there despite her husband’s bullish behaviour and actions.

Kate wrote a letter to readers on the Text Publishing blog, explaining that she had her idea when she read five words in a letter from Elizabeth – I blush at my error. The words were so unlike the restrained, bland and polite letters which Elizabeth usually wrote home. Kate knew she had a story here.

And she does. It’s a wonderful, immersing read.

While A room made of leaves is all about Elizabeth McArthur with a scattering of minor female characters, it made me think about all the stories of other women who made a new life in Australia in the 1780s.

There’s a fabulous interview with Kate Mildenhall and Kate Grenville on The first time podcast. Kate will also appear in an interview this Sunday with the Yarra Valley Writers festival.

Happy reading and listening!

Maya Angelou defines success this way – Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it. Note that her definition doesn’t include wealth or power!

In recent months, I’ve had more freelance editing work than I’ve had in the past sixteen and a half years since I left my full-time publishing job to look after my first baby. (That baby is now six foot two!)

I was ready to leave – I’d finished some interesting projects and would have been ready to work somewhere else had I not been pregnant.

I hung on to my freelance editing skills by my fingertips while I looked after three small kids, with a hands-on but often work-travelling husband. Sometimes I’d get up at 5am to do two hours before the kids woke up. In the afternoons, I’d put the baby to sleep and let the toddler watch a movie, while the oldest was at kinder or school so I could work for two hours in the afternoon. There were huge periods of time when I didn’t have a project and wanted one.

But now, probably thanks to COVID-19 where more people have time to write books, I’ve had a lot of editing work. And my projects are so interesting! I love reading so many varied stories and working with an array of talented writers, as well as the wonderful team at Publish Central. This year alone I’ve edited a book written by a mystic, a book on raising resilient children (many notes to self!), a children’s novel/self-help guide and a book on wellbeing among other projects. Now I’m deep in a book about self-fidelity at work, which has me thinking about myself back at work sixteen years ago and my working self now.

I’m not sure that I liked myself all that much, back at work in the late 90s, early 2000s. I liked the work I did but I didn’t like how I did it, giving up too many weekends to meet deadlines, being around managers and co-workers with different values to me.

But now, as a freelance editor, I love working from home. I’m set up in my home office, surrounded by books, plants, cards from friends, seen in the photo above. Thanks to my lovely friend M for the beautiful flowers which have kept me company all week!

Pre-COVID days, I could attend a school assembly or take a round of kids to basketball training without having to account for my absence. And now I can cook up a quick omelette or salad for lunch, take a walk, do some yoga stretches, chat with the kids in their breaks. Often I start our dinner in the slow cooker after lunch.

I think I’ve now achieved Maya’s trifecta of liking.

Sometimes editing is like cleaning your house – when the floor is vacuumed and mopped, the washing folded and the bathrooms cleaned, the effort involved is almost invisible. But when the bins overflow or the washing piles up, it’s noticeable. With editing, no one ever reads a book and exclaims, ‘My goodness, every word was spelt correctly and look at that perfectly punctuated dialogue!’ But if there’s one typo, there’s a complaint!

Of course, there’s a lot more to editing than spelling, grammar and punctuation. And most authors will thank their editor profusely in the acknowledgements because the editor usually understands exactly what they’re trying to express and helps them to realise their vision for their book.

I proofread a manuscript on social media this week. The book was well-written and needed little correction, except for inconsistent bullet lists. Perhaps no one would notice whether one page had bullet lists with fullstops and capital letters because each bullet point was a complete sentence and another page had lists with lower case letters and no fullstops because each bullet point completed the leading phrase. But consistency is important and visual elements like lists do help the reader to focus on the text.

Just like housework, there are many invisible jobs to do with editing but there’s a sense of satisfaction in having a clean bathroom and a neat set of bullet points! And as I’ve spent more time editing than cleaning in the last month, there’ll be a little cleaning catching up to do (for the whole family) this weekend!

What editing mistake or cleaning job frustrates you the most?

There’s a chapter in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler where aging Pearl Cody, almost completely blind, asks her son Ezra to go through her boxes of photos and diaries as a young woman. It’s a chapter that doesn’t have much tension, doesn’t advance the plot, doesn’t make readers want to turn the page, other than to develop the characters further. But yet, years later after reading the book, I can still remember this insignificant yet poignant moment. Ezra reads out to his mother a diary entry from 1910 – baking Scottish fancies which weren’t good enough for company, brown silk gloves – Pearl tells Ezra to read on.

‘Early this morning,’ he read to his mother, ‘I went out behind the house to weed. Was kneeling in the dirt by the stable with my pinafore a mess … and all at once thought, why I believe that just at this moment I am absolutely happy.’

Last Saturday, 25th July, our family of five had a Christmas in July dinner. We’ve never had one before but we decided to do it to break up the groundhog day nature of Melbourne lockdown 2.0.

We drew KK names out of a hat, and everyone had a small amount of money to buy a present. No online shopping, all local. Miss 13 pulled out a few decorations. I cooked a roast pork with red onions, apples, roast potatoes and sticky date pudding for dessert. I even found a local shop which sells nuts, spices and lollies that had some leftover Christmas chocolate! No one was allowed to exchange presents or eat unless they were suitably attired for dinner – no shorts or track pants allowed. We hung stockings over the fireplace – which was warm, unlike its usual cold version in December – listened to carols, cracked open last year’s leftover bon-bons, wore silly paper hats and ate dinner together.

Mr 11 said it was the best July Christmas ever!

We took a family selfie. Mr 11 wore a red and black patterned vest over a yellow and grey check shirt. ‘Nice pattern on pattern!’ noted Miss 13. I squashed between Mr 16’s tall frame with his magnificent mullet hairstyle with my husband on the other side, holding out his phone to preserve ourselves at this moment.

This might be the photo I want to see again in forty years time, when I want to remember a tiny moment, unobserved by anyone in the outside world, but important to us.

Wishing you memories for this weekend.

I am so late to the party with this book – Where the crawdads sing by Delia Owens. So many friends have read it and loved it – I don’t know anyone who said they didn’t enjoy it.

Kya has lived alone in the marshes on the North Carolina coast since she was small. She didn’t learn to read or write until she was a teenager but her knowledge of the marshes and her talent in documenting the birds and shells around her is as extraordinary as her resourcefulness in finding food.

Two teenage boys come into her life and the imprint they leave on both her heart and life is lasting.

This is Owens’ debut novel but she has written non-fiction books as a wildlife scientist, and her observations of Kya’s marsh life was written with an authentic and poetic tone.

It is never too late to read a popular book!

I’m planning on reading Newbery Medal winner Hello, Universe by Erin Estrada Kelly, a middle-grade novel with Mr 11. I loved it – a story about four children who cross paths one day early in the summer holidays. The characters were unique – my favourite was Kaori, a fortune-telling psychic of a girl. She has one client, an anxious and shy boy called Virgil with a storytelling grandmother. Virgil has one school class with Valencia, a fiery deaf girl. Then there’s Chet, a basketball-playing bully. And let’s not forget Virgil’s guinea pig, Gulliver. While the ending was a little predictable, I’d have followed these quirky characters anywhere.

Two books from the US – enjoy!

It’s an odd thing to imagine, how one would edit an illustration. But readers, particularly young readers, need the illustrations to read meaning into the text.

I checked some illustrations yesterday for a middle-grade novel. There was the odd punctuation mistake in the first round of illustrations, easily fixed. But then there was an incorrect date in the next round of final illustrations. The date appeared on an envelope, and it didn’t match a letter which appeared in the manuscript, about 30 pages earlier. It would take an astute, detail-orientated middle-grade reader to notice this but still, it’s incorrect. Sometimes it’s easier to change a word in the manuscript than an illustration but it wasn’t too late in our case so the illustration will be changed. Good to realise this now rather than later!

I edited a nursery rhyme book about a dozen years ago. I compiled all the rhymes, checking for the correct versions and wrote all the art briefs. One of the rhymes was about Hector Protector.

Hector Protector was dressed all in green,
Hector Protector was sent to the queen.
The queen did not like him,
no more did the king,
So Hector Protector was sent back again.

Can you predict the colour I suggested for Hector Protector’s clothing in the art brief? Correct – green!

Can you guess what colour his clothing was in the draft illustration? Nope, it was blue! Poor Hector – unwanted by royalty and dressed incorrectly!

Almost twenty years ago, when I worked as an editor for an educational publisher, I edited a language series. The illustrations were essential to teach kids new vocabulary. You can’t have a young learner confused as to whether le chien is a dog or cat because the illustration isn’t clear enough.

In children’s picture books, middle-grade novels, non-fiction books and education books for all ages, the illustrations are just as important as the text.

Even in year 12, English students are often expected to analyse a cartoon when responding to media for one of their assessment tasks.

So here’s to the unsung illustrators who blend equal parts talent with patience for fussy editors!

A newsy post today for you, dear blog readers.

Reading – The dictionary of lost words by Pip Williams. I loved immersing myself in this story about a young girl who grows up in the workplace of her father, a lexicographer in Oxford in the 1880s. I found myself bewailing the limitations of women in both their personal and professional lives, and wanting so much for the main character, Esme.

Story by Robert McKee. It’s mainly about films but there’s so many insights for novelists as well. I like his philosophy that ‘Story is metaphor for life’.

Writing – I’m working on the first act in my middle-grade verse novel, polishing this final draft before I send it out again. After having a break from it while I wrote a young adult novel, it’s so wonderful to be working on it again. I feel like my mind is skipping from one scene to another, making connections, tightening the threads, fine-tuning the subtle nuances of emotion.

Teaching – I taught a writing workshop in a school holiday program early this week, a lucky three days before the second Melbourne lockdown. The kids were enthusiastic with vivid imaginations and we had a great time making up quest stories in writers’ notebooks. They created an oral story so epic my assistant and I decided it needed to be a trilogy!

Editing – I finished up another round of a fiction book for children, and started taking in corrections to a non-fiction adult book. Both books are well-written, and will be much appreciated by their different audiences. I love the variety!

Eating – I love all the slow-cooked winter dishes – we’ve eaten slow-cooked lamb in a tomato sauce to have as open sandwiches with red capsicum, rocket and feta, plus an Italian sausage soup with beans and parmesan grilled croutons. I’m thinking we might need scones for afternoon tea or a pudding for the weekend ahead.

Sewing – I’ve been quilting a butterfly quilt for a few years – pulled it out twice because it puckered so badly I couldn’t bear it. But now thanks to some quilting advice from friends and a fabric shop, it’s starting to come together and it’s the perfect winter craft, especially while watching the footy on television.

I hope your week has been fulfilling, too!

Numbers that end in a zero are so neat, aren’t they? Turning the big 40 or 50 or 60, making a million, wrangling a deal under so many thousand dollars …

Writing a novel in 90 days has the same ring. For me, at least. At the writers’ retreat at Springfield I attended earlier this year, our wonderful teacher, Sarah Selecky, mentioned a book by Alan Watt called The 90 day novel.

Well, I am proof that it can be done! This week, I finished my young adult verse novel about a street artist and a violinist. What I loved about Alan’s book was the balance between writing exercises that tap into your subconscious and structural questions that help you work out the three acts of your book.

This style suits me beautifully because I lean on both my right and left brains, switching between both the creative and linear processes. I’m an editor so I use my left brain mostly to check minute details such as hyphens, timeframes, consistent end-of-chapter questions, with a little bit of right braining to help develop characters and move the plot along. But I’m a writer, so I use my right brain mostly to daydream, make connections, create, with a little bit of left brain to assess the pace or rearrange the structure.

In my personal life, I rely on my left brain to organise our home and the kids, but I love to relax by turning on my right brain with sewing, cooking, painting.

Alan’s book – I’ve never met him but seriously, I could write him a love letter! – is the perfect blend for me. I don’t go too off-tangent because I have a framework to work within but his prompts give me lots of space to daydream and imagine.

So I now have the first draft – so rough it could be used as sandpaper, so full of plot holes you could hide the Titanic in them, such thin, underdeveloped characters you could see through them like tracing paper. But it’s a completed first draft, and I love the premise and my two protagonists.

I’m putting it away for now, because – drum roll – Alan also has a book called The 90 day rewrite! And I have a very polished manuscript, a middle-grade verse novel, that I want to revise quickly before I send it out on submission.

I’ll check in with you in 90 days time!

I went to the Emerging Writers’ Festival a few years ago – I caught a tram into the Melbourne Town Hall, I sat next to people I didn’t know and I could see the speakers – in real life! This year, the same festival is online – and most of it is free.

The best thing about festivals like this is that it introduces you to different writers and also different forms of art.

Have a look and listen to this poetry, made so wondrously into tiny films. Listen to these poets introduce themselves and their poem, read it aloud, and then you can read the downloaded version for yourself.

So far, I have immersed myself in poetry, as well as a story about a ‘vindictive mermaid’. Tomorrow, I’ve signed up (and paid) for the National Writers’ Conference.

The Yarra Valley Writers Festival also went online a month ago – it was online for a whole day (which could also be viewed later). I drank many cups of tea – then not quite as much red wine – as I listened to a talented group of writers discuss their books and writing.

These two festivals alone have given me a big enough reading list for a year!

And don’t forget that the Melbourne Writers Festival will also be online this year.

Even if we can’t sit next to a friend or a stranger, and even if the panellists are extra polite so they don’t talk over one another through zoom, we can still support new and experienced writers from home.