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.

Mr 10 had a nightmare last week and called out in the early hours of the morning. It’s so unusual now for me to be woken up like this!

In my sleep-foggy state, I remembered my old standby for all sorts of child fears – the rainbow wrap. I used to do this for all my kids, often as part of their bedtime rhythm, often in the middle of the night or even at the beginning of a tough primary-school day.

The idea comes from Petrea King’s picture book, Rainbow kids. It’s a gentle story about different kids of different nationalities sending rainbows to the people they love. She explains it here –

Every night, before I go to sleep, my mother wraps me up in all the bright and beautiful colours of the rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. I breathe them in and imagine the colours gathering in my heart then I send rainbows to everyone I love.

It’s a beautiful way to remind children that they can send rainbows to people they want to be connected with – relatives in hospital, a friend who has moved to another school, a parent who is away from home. Such a lovely image to think of two people at either end of a rainbow, connected with love.

The wonderful thing is that it’s so customisable. I used specific objects for different colours – red is the colour of strawberries on your pancakes, of your favourite t-shirt, of Grandma’s red jelly slice, your footy.

When Miss 13 was in prep, she struggled to leave me in the mornings at school. She wanted to take her favourite teddy, Barry Bear, to school but also didn’t want to look too babyish as she already started all her school days in tears. So I took a photo of Barry Bear, wrapped in a rainbow silk. I printed multiple copies, in many sizes and had them laminated. There was a tiny one hole-punched with a keychain and attached to the outside of her schoolbag. There was one in her lunchbox, one stuck to the inside of her school desk and a tiny one in the pocket of her school dress. Every time she felt a little wobbly at school, there was a reminder that she was connected to Barry Bear – and me – and she was always wrapped in a rainbow of love. She knew that Barry Bear and I were always sending her rainbows.

Barry Bear and his rainbow silk are pushed to the back of Miss 13’s wardrobe now, and she laughs at her little five-year-old self. And Mr 10 didn’t mention his nightmare the morning afterwards – there was no need, he had been scared and he had been soothed.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Rainbow Kids is still available. But Petrea King’s website has other rainbow books and meditations.

Sending you all rainbows of love today!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve read a couple of wonderful non-fiction books. It always takes me longer to read a non-fiction book than a novel, and often I read fiction at night and non-fiction during the day. (Now I’m thinking of the scene in Harry Potter and the philospher’s stone where Hermione drops a doorstopper of a book in front of Harry and Ron and calls it light reading!) I love a non-fiction book where the author brings in their own stories which adds meaning to all that knowledge. The books below have certainly done this!

Phospherence, on awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark by Julia Baird – hailed as the book for covid times, this book of reflective essays range from a personal letter to Baird’s teenager daughter to musings on the benefits of ocean swimming to reflections about imperfection. My favourite pieces were always the ones which had more of Baird’s story in them – her friendships, her dog, her activism. I had just started reading the first essay when my well-read sister messaged me to recommend this book – snap! This book is also a beautiful object to cherish – the cover is so tactile with a deep navy backdrop and shiny foil font and accents.

Meander, spiral, explode, design and pattern in narrative by Jane Alison – I found this book absolutely geekly fascinating – the idea of different patterns in fiction. Alison devotes chapters on spirals, meanders, cells – all of these literary patterns are found in nature and are often absent from more chronological literature. My favourite example was Eucalptus by Murray Bail – can’t wait to reread this book now! Think back to the loopy, meandering journey of the daughter who must be wooed only by a man who can name all of her father’s many, many eucalyptus trees on his property. I loved the idea of both deliberately structuring a piece of literature in this manner, as well as the possibility of seeing patterns after the first draft has been written. I always think of my writing as a kind of patchwork, with many different fragments stitched together, and similar fabrics holding the pattern together. If you do read this, please let me know! I’d love to discuss it with someone!

Untamed by Glennon Doyle – I’m reading this one as a mini bookclub book with three friends. We send each other texts with our favourite quotes, lots of them starting with wow! This is the story of Glennon’s closure of her marriage to a man and her new marriage with a woman. It’s about the effect on her children, and her struggle to break free from old patterns and ways of thinking to live an untamed life, unsullied by cultural expectations. I started to flick through this book again to find a quote to share, and found so many I could have typed the whole book here! How about this description of women:

Selfless women make for an efficient society but not a beautiful, true, or just one. When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who have detoxed themselves so completely from the world’s expectations that they are full of nothing but themselves. What we need are women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done. She lets the rest burn.

Happy reading over the long weekend!

Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it.

Meet Ana, a young woman living in Galilee in the first century. She feels compelled to write down the lost stories of women, and begs her father for parchment and ink.

She writes the prayer above into an incantation bowl given to her by her aunt, the only educated woman she knows.

Sue Monk Kidd wrote one of my favourite books of all time, The secret life of bees. And now she’s written what may well become ‘the’ favourite book of all times, The book of longings, published this month.

Not only is Ana from The book of longings a bright, rebellious and brave young woman, she is also the wife of Jesus. Let me share with you the beginning …

I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth. I called him Beloved and he, laughing, called me Little Thunder. He said he heard rumblings inside me while I slept, a sound like thunder from far over the Nahal Zippori valley or even farther beyond the Jordan. I don’t doubt he heard something. All my life, longings lived inside me, rising up like nocturnes to wail and sing through the night. That my husband bent his heart to mine on our thin straw mat and listened was the kindness I most loved in him. What he heard was my life begging to be born.

I’ve listened to and read a few interviews with Sue Monk Kidd. It took her four and a half years to write this book – and a lot of audacity. Who would dare to write a novel about Jesus’s wife? She read a tonne of history books for research. She put a lot of herself into Ana – her longing to write, her anger at women’s treatment (historical and current).

I read this book in a day and a half – I couldn’t put it down. And contrary to my need to finish it, I didn’t want it to end.

Bless the largeness in Sue Monk Kidd.

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.