Flashback Friday :: olden day pictures

I was beyond thrilled the year that we finally got to have an "olden day picture" taken at the now out-of-operation Old Sydney Town. Friends had similar pictures hanging on their walls and I thought it was the best thing ever. You can tell by my gawky grin and my Foxtel-dish eyes that I'm pretty excited. My brother Nick, in the front with the fake gun, was just playing it cool. c. 1991.

A brilliant oxymoron

Sorry for the unpostiness! I have been:

a) unwell, followed by
b) excited about Things, followed by
c) trying to catch up on my monthly 20,000-word goal.

In lieu of real words, have this picture instead, taken at Byron Bay last month. Gospel graffiti? It seems like the perfect irony.

Saturday Inspiration #2

Today I stumbled across a delicious blog dedicated to recording the inspirations and delights of the day. Findings are assembled onto daily collage cards. Is this, or is this not a delicious idea?

Record the Day

Making words and toothache, and how they both hurt quite a bit.

Yesterday I pulled out my paints and made a big mess of colours. It was the first time in a long time, and it felt good. Also a little scary. Plus it gave me time to think.

That morning, I'd rather unsuccessfully squeezed out about 750 words (250 short of my daily required quota, if I'm to fulfill my writing pledge for this year, and let's not talk about the fourteen days I've missed writing already this month). Every one of those words was painful. Getting them from brain to fingers to screen felt rather like trying to run a marathon through quicksand. The sludge kept pulling me down.

At lunchtime, I took refuge in a little paperback mystery novel. The supposed powers of distraction only added to my misery. The book was nothing earth-shattering, certainly never destined to be a classic or even a top seller, and yet it was immensely more readable and more real than anything I've ever been able to shake from my pen.

That's an agonising realisation to make, but it was also strangely enlightening. I realised that the reason I've been finding my writing goals so hard to reach is not because it's hard to spew a thousand words onto a page every day (it's not; plus, a thousand words usually takes more than a page, in case you were wondering). Rather, it's painful because it's horrifying to write a thousand bad words a day. Bad writing is painful. Understanding that one is making bad writing is even more painful.

It couldn't have been just coincidence, then, that I read Justine Larbalestier's latest blog post that night. She said:

There’s a certain misery in the air right now. I’m reading it on other writer’s blogs. I’m feeling it myself. Seeing it in tweets. Hearing it in late night conversations in bars. It’s kind of everywhere. So many writers I know, or who I follow on line, or in interviews, are grappling with their own self worth as writers. If I’m not selling am I still a writer? If I can’t get published am I still a writer? If my contract got cancelled am I still a writer? If my next book doesn’t do as well as my last book am I still a writer? If I don’t win awards am I still a writer? If reviewers hate my books am I still a writer?

Obviously, she is speaking particularly to published authors, the people already considered by most of us to be already making good words. But her advice rings true for anyone. It rings true for me:

All you can do is write the very best book you can.
It will get published or it won’t. It will find its market or it won’t. It will sell or it won’t. It will win awards or it won’t. None of that matters if you’ve written the best book you can.

Every act of creativity involves taking a risk. We don't really know that what we're undertaking will turn out lovely and beautiful. Well, maybe Bach had that kind of confidence, but most of us don't. Most of us just jump out into the water and hope we'll remember how to swim. Not even gracefully; we just want to stay afloat.

All I can do is try to write the very best words I can. I might not make something brilliant, but the question at the back of my mind asks, "Will you be able to stop, even if you stink?" The answer is: most likely, no.

I take courage from that phrase about genius (was it Einstein or Edison who said it?): genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Since genius isn't what I'm aiming for (I gave that hope up long ago), I figure the equation for making something really, really good might be half a percent inspiration and 99 and a half percent perspiration. Inspiration is everywhere; the perspiration bit is up to me.

Two weeks in Tas: People

The penguin in the jumping picture is one of the only things I remember from the Tasmanian holiday our family went on in 1986. It was strangely awesome to get to see that beloved penguin again -- a lot smaller than I'd remembered. Oh, and the picture above is one of they very few with my Dad in it; others usually include him and a sticking-out tongue or similar. Nice.

This is my last post of Tasmanian pictures and -- shout hooray -- my hundredth post here. Throw some confetti!

Fabulous, dahling.

Rachael calls my blog a fabulous one -- daaahlings, I'm so honoured!

And since so many of you have been passing the torch of fabulousness around, I decided to step outside of convention and pick three people whom I don't actually know but whose blogs definitely fit the "fabulous" criteria:

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+ Hula Seventy's blog overflows with colour and beautiful, rich words. I experience a strange reaction when I read it: I'm simultaneously inspired to be a better blogger and to delete my blog and never try blogging again. But seriously. Read this lady's blog. It's gorgeous and a concrete realisation of the word 'creative'.

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+ Blaze Danielle would be cool even if she didn't have such a nifty second name. But as it happens, she is cool and she has a nifty second name. I stumbled across her blog accidentally one day and I keep visiting for more storybook, fairytale goodness. Lovely!

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+ Gluten Free Girl Shauna Ahern writes about food as though she is crafting a novel, each word beautifully selected to make the reader salivate. Her photography is amazing, plus: she is married to a chef.

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Know any awesome blogs I really should be reading? Do tell me.

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(And now excuse me while I go and eat Madras lentils and steaming rice while I listen to a black storm rage outside. Mondays don't get any better than this.)

At the end of a lovely weekend...

just an observation, originally uploaded by keri.

This is more true than I care to admit. Oh, how I love the cosiness of my comfort zone!

(with thanks to artist and writer Keri Smith for pointing out the painful truth)