Waiting… with bated breath

I am due to have this baby any day now, and to be honest – I need to. It’s too hot, uncomfortable, and I just think it would be better to carry this child in my arms now, rather than in my body. I am completely over the fact that I can no longer move properly, my muscles don’t seem to work the way I want them too, and the fact that I need to use the step ladder just to shave my legs at the moment. And while pregnancy and I haven’t agreed much with each other… I probably wouldn’t have it any other way.

I guess this is a little like waiting to open a Christmas present, (only you know what it is.) The major difference is that you don’t know what it will be like. You don’t know how it will eat, sleep, cry, or even what features and traits it will inherit from us. This is not like designing a character. It’s predetermined by mother nature. And not knowing these things is just like unwrapping a present at Christmas – although – you don’t know when the present will arrive.

Anyway, while it’s kind of exciting, because little Bump could arrive in any day at the moment, it’s also nerve racking for both of us because this is a new adventure for us as parents. Neither of us have had children before, so it’s going to be an awesome journey that we’ll be sharing with little Bump. When it decides to make its long anticipated appearance – that is!

Every little twinge or pain makes me wonder if it’s Bump coming or not. This is only to be expected at this stage though, considering Bump was ready for hatching a couple of weeks back. The days seem longer now that I am not working, but my husband seems to be rather pleased with himself now that he has a dedicated housewife. Haha. (Dreams are free, dear husband, because when Bump arrives on the scene I highly doubt the house will be nearly as spotless, or that dinner will be on time each night.)

So here I sit in this little house, writing away, and waiting with bated breath for our child to arrive on the scene.  One day soon, Bump will embark on its journey.

 

Parchment Place Celebrations!

I have been meaning to post this post for THREE WHOLE days… however, life just kept getting in the way. This is what happens when you are heavily pregnant and wrapping up your professional work life (EDJ)… and just trying to generally keep everything together. However… Today is my first day on Maternity leave, so I have a few spare minutes to think clearly.

First of all – I would like to say:

Yes – Parchment Place has officially turned 1.

It has been a hell of a year for Parchment Place. I have never run a blog before, so this has been a completely new experience. There have been times when it has been slow… and then even more times when it has been like driving a fast car. I have loved meeting people through this blog, and getting to know them. I have loved hearing everyone’s feedback. And it has spurred me into a different type of creativity… more of an entertaining ‘snippet’ type of writing, which uses a completely different set of writing skills. Some days I ramble on about writing (go figure…)… some days I ramble on about my work… some days I’m musing over Mondays… some days the posts are about me and my life or journey… but all in all – some form of it has to be entertaining.

Not only are we celebrating Parchment Place’s first birthday – but this celebration post is the 100^th post for this blog. So it’s a double celebration! And had I been a little more organised, I would have sorted something like a giveaway or presents for readers or something equally cool. But maybe that’s something to organise for another day.

And finally… there has been a lot of readership of this blog. Some days it has had larger than life hits on it.. other days it has been nice and quiet. But overall – this blog had more than 20,000 hits on it in its first year. I have absolutely no idea if that is good or bad – but it works for me. That’s 20,000 more clicks to a site related to me and my writing – so I’m quite chuffed with that result. Who knows what year two will be like!

So I guess this post is a triple celebration for this blog. 1^st Birthday, 100^th Post, and a 20k hit rate in the first year.

Cheers everyone …. I raise my Mocktail to you! *clink* I wouldn’t be encouraged to write this blog if it weren’t for the encouragement and love from all you readers and subscribers out there. You guys are the ones that keep Parchment Place alive.

 

2011 – Over and Out

Goodbye 2011!!

A friend of mine wrote a ‘wrap up’ blog for the year, and I thought it was a great idea – so here is my wee wrap up blog post for 2011.

This has been an awfully big year. I started the year forming a new team at my work, to take over all of the contract management and technical responsibility at my Evil Day Job. While it’s been full of huge challenges, it’s been great. Our team is humming along, and standing strong.

My husband and I at my 30th birthday

Then I turned the big three-oh. This meant having my enormous immediate family staying with us for a week, drinking a heck of a lot of booze in the hot summer sunshine, and generally having a blast. To top it off, we had a big garden party that raged throughout the night and into the late hours of the morning. It was a hell of a bash, and an awesome way to end my irresponsible 20s, and enter the 30s.

Straight after my 30^th birthday, I thought that I better get a little more serious about building my authors platform online. So I started my Parchment Place blog.

The big Christchurch quake rocked our entire world in February. Many dead, many grieving, and many homeless – including my friends, and members of my family. Some of whom are still suffering, due to another series of quakes that hit again on the 23^rd December.

When the February quake struck, two very special people had a big idea. Cassie Hart and Anna Caro put the word out on Twitter to compile a charitable anthology for all proceeds to be donated to the Red Cross Earthquake Appeal. So while our friends and family were trying to sort out their issues in a quake stricken zone, I put my hand up to help them find authors, rally support, and generally be supportive to them throughout this enormous task. And so – Tales for Canterbury was born. Eventually Cassie said that she expected me to submit a story into the Anthology as well… so before I knew it I was dragging an old story out of my dusty and very musty literary drawer, cleaning it off, and sending it through to her. And to my greatest surprise… they accepted it. So then I was officially published along with some pretty incredible writers.

The last time I had a hangover was in May, when I drank a little too much gin and tonic with my father when he was staying with me. Then I found out that I was pregnant, and so I stopped all intake of alcohol and nicotine immediately. Pregnancy wasn’t an accident… but I didn’t expect it to happen so damn quick either. I thought that it would at least take a few months… but I guess our little Bump was in a hurry to get the show on the road.

In the meantime on the writing front, I was busy trying to finishing off a novel, and start the editing of another one. But during this time, I was also quite unwell with the pregnancy, and that seriously hindered all writing ability… and eventually I stopped trying. They say that every single pregnancy is different – and no two are ever the same. It was a bad time for me. Emotionally, I was wreck… physically, everything was changing, and in the middle of all this I felt enormous pressure from my family. Each of them trying to give me advice… ringing/emailing me constantly… and with each passing day, I was becoming more and more reclusive.

Bumpkin's Big Foot

In the end, I didn’t want to talk to any of them at all. I just wanted to hide in my little hole, and wish like hell they would all piss off and go away. I just wanted them to let me be pregnant for a moment and get used to the whole idea that my life was irrevocably changing, and that both my husband and I had to get mentally used to it. But that’s not what families do. Apparently.

So you know what we did? Under the best advice given from friends, and our medical professionals – we ignored them. And this is the same advice I will give to all pregnant women who face the same issues in the future. While family is important… we are growing our own now, and it’s entirely up to us to walk our own pathway when raising a family, not the paths of those before us. I have learnt throughout this time that my wider family are never going to listen to me, since they will always know better (older and wiser, perhaps?), so I will just do my own thing, and learn from my own mistakes. This is the only way I’m only ever going to be fully satisfied as a parent, so this is how I’m going to do it. (Bugger the rest of the world. I no longer give a shit about their grand opinions and ways of how to do things. This is our family, and we will do it our way.)

When I finally realised this, my creative mind started to kick back into gear. I now know that it was the stress and pressure that stopped me from writing… and until I had actually dealt with that, I couldn’t release my mind from its little box and back into the creative world. But I eventually got there, and devised a NaNoWriMo plan to get an old manuscript – The Mediterranean Source edited into a more publishable state. (Don’t get me wrong, this book still needs further work, and hopefully over the next few days while it’s forecasted to rain, I’ll be able to do some work on it.) The point is… I managed to get there, and send it out to three amazing friends in early December for their final opinions on potential changes. It was a big goal, and while I ripped and shredded out more than twenty odd thousand words from this manuscript, I also rewrote just as many in some incredibly major plot alterations.

So here I am now, nearly 33 weeks pregnant, with not far to go. I have just managed to get through Christmas, which we were completely unprepared for… however, we managed to sort it out. Both Mike and I were totally distracted by the fact that Bumpkin will be born very shortly. We are mostly organised now and pretty much have everything that we need (if Bump comes early!). Bump’s room isn’t finished yet, but it’s not far off. Mike and his dad are currently building the wardrobe. The ceiling went up yesterday. And before long, it will be plastered, painted, and ready to rock and roll. Then I will have somewhere to put all of Bump’s stuff, which is currently stored in boxes all over the place. It will be good. A great start to the New Year, and new beginnings in 2012.

Here are some things that I learnt in 2011 that I never knew before:

• Turning 30 wasn’t actually a major. It was more of a great milestone, and one that I have great memories of.
• I never thought that my 30^th year would be such a rollercoaster of a ride.
• Getting pregnant was easy. Being pregnant is hard. Older people forget what pregnancy is like.
• Being published is not a life changing event… but it’s a pretty good one.
• The world is no longer an enormous place. Two of my best mates have also moved to Australia this year as well… and despite them now being in another country – I’m not sad! Well… not really. I’m so damn chuffed that they are living their own lives and dreams, and I’m even more chuffed that by having the internet… it’s almost as if they are sitting in the next room.
• I can do anything as long as I block out the bullshit and focus.
• Stress and pressure are only good in small amounts.
• I no longer have any tolerance for bad or rude behaviour. This is not a tolerance that I ever want to rebuild either.
• My job has been really good this year. I’ve really enjoyed the challenges, and the new team we have. I no longer tolerate the rubbish behaviour from my colleagues either, and they quickly know when they have overstepped the line.
• The hormone – Relaxin – is a total bitch to deal with.
• Taking everybody’s advice so you don’t offend people is impossible. Picking and choosing what advice you take is much more effective.
• It’s lovely getting to know your child as it grows inside of you.
• Three of my unborn child’s godparents now live overseas, and I’m okay with that. I know that this will be a good thing in the future, as the child will have supportive people in its life who live their own life, according to what they want to do.
• Pregnant women are hilarious. They no longer hold back, or have any qualms about saying it like it is. I’ve met some pretty neat people though our parenting class, who I never would have met if it wasn’t for Bump.
• Owning a Kindle has revolutionised the way I read.
• I have met writers who have deeply impacted my life in ways that I never could have imagined. By being with these amazing and incredible people, it has seriously helped solidify the fact that I am on the right career pathway in my life.

So… I think that’s probably it for this year. December has been a slow blogging month for me. I have no doubt that with the continuing distractions of the final stage of this pregnancy, etc, it could get even more sporadic. But I’ll try and keep it up.

In the meantime… I’m really looking forward to starting a new book in the New Year, editing another… and writing on. On the other side of life, I’m really looking forward to meeting our child.

Remember to set goals, not resolutions. J

2011 – Over and Out.

 

Procrastination

There is just so much that I could say right now, but once again – that would be procrastinating.

A lot has been happening in my life lately, some things that I just wasn’t prepared for, and other things that I have been avoiding. Like finishing this book, for example. Never fear – it’s so close, I could almost touch it. In fact, if I knuckle down today – I might just be able to finish it now.

But, since I haven’t blogged for a while, I may as well catch you up on everything that has happened over the past couple of weeks.

1. My house is warmer due to all the underfloor insulation that has been going in over the past three weekends.
2. My house is now spotless, because I have been refusing to clean it with all the fibreglass crap that has been all over my house – and knowing that more will be distributed with the next lot of insulation going in. All the washing has been done, as well as the dusting, and I have bought new linen for our bed because the other stuff was pissing me off. I couldn’t understand why I was putting up with it, until I realised that I am not actually poor… so there was no reason why I shouldn’t just go and buy something we liked.
3. One of our cars is getting fixed. This car has been seriously broken for a while now. Six months. It’s only costing me $1000 bucks to fix it as well. *choke*
4. The other car has cost us $600 to get it to a warrantable standard, or else that was going to be an epic fail as well.
5. I have been to visit all of the family that live in the region over the past couple of days, because I have been avoiding them and living like a hermit. Including visiting my grandmother, who I haven’t seen in a month. Not cool. Usually I see her at least once a fortnight. Bad granddaughter.
6. Oh, and I have watched a lot of movies lately. Mostly good ones too.

So… that’s where I am up to. Fingers crossed that I can finish up this book today or tomorrow. It’s been going on too long now, and I just want to put it aside and start editing.

And everything else that I wasn’t prepared for can go on the back burner for a few days until I work this book out. Then I will sort the rest of my life out. Book first, life later. Everything else can shove it. Writing is what is important to me and my happiness, and I think that it’s about time that some people just figure that out.

Oh, and one last thing. I’m really looking forward to the final instalment of Harry Potter this week. The end of an era, and the conclusion of one. Ciao ciao for now.

 

Quitting the Evil Day Job

One of my good friends who is also one of my critique partners, is leaving her Evil Day Job this week to write full time. I have three critique partners, and they are all now full time writers. (One has three children, so she’s also a full time Mum.) I personally think that this is totally wonderful, and it means that these inspiring women can tap into some serious creative potential to achieve their dreams. They even have the time to achieve their dreams.

But for my friend who is leaving her job this week, this is where the story unravels a bit. Apart from her husband and children, she is lacking support with the real humans in her life (not the writers). Her friends and real family are criticizing her for her decision to leave work, refusing to even talk to her about her creative endeavours, and this is right royally starting to piss me off. The audacity of these people. They call themselves her friends and family? But where is the support? Or the love? Or the shoulder? No where. They appear to be more worried about how she will make money, or the recession, or things like that. Personally – it is absolutely none of their business to what arrangement she has with her money situation. What business is it of theirs? If she has some sort of way to pay the bills and live, then that is her business and hers alone.

This decision that she has made is primarily about her happiness, and her goals in life. Life is what we make of it, and if you are happy sitting around working a 40 hour week in a job that you don’t like, and getting paid sweet F.A. to do so – then fine. That’s your life. Be happy with what baskets you put your f*!king eggs in. But if you see someone taking a risk with their own life to make their dreams come true? Well – that’s just inspirational. Be inspired by this. Do not be jealous, or worry about their potential money problems!

I can’t wait till my friend has more time on her plate to create her worlds. It’s very exciting for her, and I am more than willing to give her as much support as she needs to make her dreams come true. What goes around, comes around.

So, let this be a warning to those who are not creative or to those to have no idea what being creative means. If someone is quitting their day job to pursue their dreams, then support them in achieving that. Be their shoulder to cry on, and be there to talk to them. That’s what friends and family do for each other. It is not about how much money you earn, or what you spend it on that shows your quality of life. It’s how you feel within yourself.

 

Mental Feng Shui

Some of you may or may not know what I mean when I say ‘Mental Feng Shui’… but I know what I mean. For me, one of the hardest things about being a writer is maintaining the mental feng shui balance within myself.

I find that writers are creatures of habit. Cups of tea and coffee are poured as part of the writing ritual. Chocolate is devoured. And every now and then we head towards nature to renew the inspirations. I also believe that we are a superstitious lot. An example of this is when I’m having a downright rotten day, and I decide to write – I light a candle to banish away all the negative energy that is circling around inside me. 

But each of these little habitual rituals is part of what balances our mental feng shui. It’s a bit like tuning a radio to get a good signal. You have to hit the right spot first before you will hear any clarity of sound. With us, it revolves around coffee, chocolate, or even lighting a candle to help us tune into the creative airwaves. This is a fine balancing act.

Sometimes, though, static gets in the way, and therefore throws out all sense of balance that we strive to maintain. This can come in an array of different forms. Some days, we just don’t feel like it, and suddenly the TV seems so much more interesting. Other days we pick up a really good book to read, and can’t seem to keep our noses out of it till we finish. And as much as we absolutely adore our friends and family who support and love us constantly, they get in the way as well. 

Invitations to parties, dinner, movies, lunch, anything… If we writers are in the middle of some sort of creative winning streak – we start turning down those invites. I know that if I drink too much alcohol, then the next day I will be completely incapable of anything creative. Some friends understand, which is wonderful, but others can start to get a bit fickle about whether or not they will continue to invite us to spend time with them. My Dad who was staying with me last week told me that my Mother has been complaining to him about not being able to get hold of me. This is probably because I turn all the phones off if I’m in the middle of writing new worlds, and the characters that live within them. I just can’t afford to be distracted by the phone.

Two weekends ago, we had a bit of a graduation party at our house for one of my closest friends. Did I get any writing done that weekend? Erm. *blush* No. Why? Because I was busy entertaining, chattering away, and when the people had left, I then cleaned, and put everything back together again. Then that same friend had an issue on the road about twenty kilometres north of where I live, and we had to execute a rescue mission. My father then arrived to stay a couple of days after that. Needless to say, that was a solid week where absolutely no writing work was done. Zilch. My feng shui has been right royally screwed with.

This coming weekend is a long weekend in New Zealand, where I would normally be very excited to be able to spend three consecutive days writing… however we are off to work on the holiday house. Some friends are even coming to help! Gah! It needs to be done, and believe me, I wouldn’t be miserable about it if I had some decent writing miles behind me for the month of May. But I don’t, and it’s seriously upsetting me.  I’m hoping that I’ll be able to rise early to get in my writing mileage without distraction. However, today is a new month.

Now, if I had the luxury of writing full time at home, then I could probably sort this mess out. Speaking of home, I have been getting more and more upset with my favourite room – my library. It’s a beautiful room, but it’s in such a pigsty. I can’t cope, and yet I don’t want to deal with it either. Some of the mess actually isn’t mine, but I’ll leave that ‘particular subject’ alone. But I will say one thing… When that ‘particular subject’ steps into my library, and proceeds to mess up this beautiful space that I have carved out of our house for myself, I get extremely pissed off. Yeah, I’m talking about the amount of crap that’s left lying around, equipment left on, dirty coffee cups, books moved about, or whatever. So, over the past few days I have been thinking very hard on my library, and the current tip that it’s in. And I think that I need to move it around to get a better sense of actual feng shui balance in there. I’m not happy about the state that it’s in, so therefore I would like to do something about it. If possible. Wish me luck on that one! I’m hoping that once I am happy with the room again, it will assist with getting my mental feng shui back in alignment.

In winter I am a hermit, and I’m happy like that. Even in the summer, I can be a bit of a hermit. I enjoy my own company, and I enjoy chatting to my characters in my head. And I love writing, because it makes me feel such an awesome sense of elation when things seem to be falling into place. It’s the way I have chosen to live my life. Friends and family are extremely important though, as they are the people you turn to when you need them. I think that I just need to find some sort of way to balance out my mental feng shui with those people included in there.

 

Nurturing creativity

I was talking to my Dad the other night about this exact subject, and felt that it was relevant to talk about it here as well. There is so much that I could say about on this subject, but I’ll keep it short.

My siblings and I were lucky enough in our childhood to be raised by parents who celebrated creativity. Every creative endeavour that we undertook was nurtured, grown, and raised to maturity by us and our parents. We are incredibly lucky. Our parents told us that we could do absolutely anything in the world that we wanted, and that it was up to us to make that happen. They never dreamt of us being ‘realistic’ and becoming an accountant, lawyer, or doctor. No, they encouraged us to ask the questions, to think right outside of every realm, and they knew that we would choose the right things that made us happy.

Each one of us is now working in our own creative endeavours. My brother is an organic gardener, and builds sustainable housing. My sister is at Art School, creating her life away. And I have done the whole design thing, the painting thing, and music in the past … and I now sit here tapping away on my computer dreaming up new worlds to mentally play in – 90 odd thousand words at a time.

I am one of those people who believe that every human being is born with an artist inside each of us. I think that this is because of the learning and development that our brains undergo as we grow.

I have met some truly incredible people through creativity. Some are from my tertiary education days, and are still in my life now. But even more so, I continue to meet these creative people. Do creative people recognise other creative types and draw them to themselves? I think that they probably do. This simple act of surrounding yourself with like-minded people nurtures your creative soul. I talk to other creative people about things that they are working on, their thoughts and opinions on different things, and just life in general – every single day. No, I am not kidding. This is because I no longer have my parents to help nurture my creativity every day. Now I have people surrounding me that help me with that, on a day to day basis – just as I help them. And the foundations of our friendships – apart from the creativity we share are: encouragement, love, laughter, celebration, and being who we are.

There are those people who profess to not have a creative bone in their body. But if that really is the case, then how do they ever think outside the square, or how do they come up with solution focussed ideas that they supposedly use in their corporate worlds.

Creative people don’t see the world as a black and white object. They see world in swirling shades of grey. They see colour. And they use those variations in their everyday lives to nurture their creativity. They ask the questions like: “Why does it only have to be black and white?” “Why do I have to do it this way?” and finally, they ask the question, “Why not?” (Oooh, I think Edward De Bono would probably be quite proud of me right now!)

This is a really interesting presentation by Sir Ken Robinson. He said something that really rang true in me:

“We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather we are educated out of it.”

I thought that this message is something that everyone needs to hear – regardless of if they are a creative or not.

 

Life or something like it

The Death of Marat, by Jacques-Louis David (1793)

Call me crazy, but I have been thinking a lot about death recently. I put this down to reading a whole heap of books that focus a lot on death and killing. Morbid, I know, but there is just something that gets my adrenaline racing by reading this stuff. One of the books was actually a romantic comedy… but it’s the pivotal view of the family’s grief of their daughter’s death that got me thinking a lot. Another book I have just finished reading was about a fight to the death, and the incredible relationship that the character has with her mother, sister, and dead father. This is one of the driving forces that helps keep her alive.

Family relationships are complicated, no matter which way you look at it. How do we, as writers, translate these dynamics on the pages? I have no idea. I can only use my own experiences in my family to try and explain this. Each member of the family is unique, and each has their own passions and interests. I know that with me and my siblings, we have a few things in common. (These interests include surfing, environment, and making total fools of ourselves.) But we each have incredible passion for something individual to each of us. My brother is really passionate about sustainable building, and community gardening … he even has a five acre area in the middle of paradise to make this community garden work for him and his friends all year round. My sister loves art and design (much like I used to) but she is so passionate about it, that she lives, breathes, and studies it, constantly expanding her mind to take in the unknown. And this is where I fit in. My passion in life is writing, and much like my brother and sister with their passions – I live it, breathe it, study it, and produce it.

We are by no means the perfect family. We fight, argue, laugh, and act the goat. But if anyone comes against us – including our parents, by golly, look out. There is no taking sides, it is complete defending against all that threaten us. I know that I can count on those two for anything, whether it’s a shoulder to lean on in times of strife, or someone just to laugh with. I am lucky.

My characters in my books are not lucky in this respect. I have only ever built two families in my novels that were similar to mine. Why? Because I could directly relate to them. The rest of my novels and work are nothing like this. There are huge family divisions in the books, a lot of anger, hate, and god only knows what else that arises. But it’s in writing these lives that helps me engage with my characters, and to gain a clearer understanding of what it’s like to come from families like these. And, as morbid as this may sound… I have come to realise that these characters are just that little much easier to kill if I have to. I am going to explain this a little more, if you can stand it.

They are easier to kill, because there family make up is not like my own. If either of my siblings died, I seriously do not know what the hell I would do. Would I sit there and write a book like I did when my parents split up? No, probably not. But in terms of my characters dying, the detrimental rifts within my characters families allow me to be more impartial about it. Now just imagine how strong and emotional my writing could be if I killed a character with a family like my own.

One day I should try it. But right now I am still too afraid to try.

 

My mother is a verbal Ninja…

I have never told a story quite like my mother… or grandmother for that matter. But in saying that, the stories that those women tell, are their life stories. They are the stories about themselves, their spouses, their experiences, or even some amusing stories about their friends or mutual acquaintances.

Mother - Reincarnated...

I don’t know how they remember these random and riveting stories, as I can hardly remember what I had for breakfast this morning. But they somehow manage to verbally hold their audiences for hours.

I have just had my 30^th birthday, and have had the whole family around for the past five days staying with us at our house. The torrents of stories that flooded into the midst staggered me. People afterwards said to me “Wow, your mother tells the most amazing stories!” … “She sure does,” I always respond, smiling – especially if I have heard the same story about ten times before.

Someone once told me that by the time you tell a story about fifteen times, by then the story will be ingrained into you, allowing you to recall the memory of the story at any old time. So, I figure that my mother must talk a lot! Actually, she never stops talking. Not even for a minute. But when I get emails and letters from her, the grammar and spelling is shocking, but the story is still good – even if she does have the refined British accent of the queen, but the cutting verbal edge of a ninja sword.

So why is it that some people can write really good stories, but not speak them, and others can just ‘tell’ really good stories? Is this factor to do with ‘showing’ the story through the written medium, or through the oral ‘telling’ of speech? I find that when I try and tell someone a good story, I shove so much detail in the story that it becomes completely distracting, whereas when I write a story – the detail in necessary to paint the literary picture. Needless to say, I feel that I make a better writer than a town crier, office gossip, or general storyteller using verbal advantage. Nor do I believe that I could actually repeat off the same story fifteen times to even remember it!

So I pose the question…. Are you a verbal story teller, or do you embrace the writer within you to tell the stories that you want the world to hear?