time
on having time to think, create and write, and on my sneaky three week road tip coming up
Dear Musers
I am writing to you a few days before you receive it as the next few days will be too busy with flying home, flying to Darwin and setting off on a road trip.
Right now, I’m sitting the Clarke cottage at the KSP Writers Centre in the Perth Hills. It’s the second last day of my two week fellowship and it has flown so fast. I wish I could pause time and stay here for another two weeks. Years ago, I believe the fellowships here were for a month. That would have been such a treat.
These two weeks have been an enormous gift. I have sat at my desk working most days from dawn to dusk. Outside my window, the wild bees buzz in and out of the hollow at the base of a tree. Occasionally, a honeyeater or silvereye feels brave and goes in for some of the gold but the bees won’t have any of it and scare the birds away. The 28-parrots fly in loudly, followed by the ravens.
Sunsets have been one of the incredible delights here. I have probably taken more photos than I should. It’s a mixture of the incredible western view, the trees framing it, and the sun setting over the water on my beautiful day out with Tracy.
As the lovely
said to me recently, sunsets are ceremony. Since she read a piece of her writing about this to me, I have taken note of the ceremony of that time of day, the birds, the air, the people, the light. When Tracy and I stood on Port Beach after I had a joyous dip in the ocean, I noticed all the people who stood to watch the sun sink over the water. Ceremony, indeed.My manuscript has progressed so much over this time. I came with what Jaci Anderson termed a vomit draft and will leave on Sunday with a clean structure, understanding of the moral premise, and part one of seven edited. It gives me energy to keep working through it and to know what I need to do with it. Solid time working on writing provides space to hold the manuscript as a whole.
I have attended a number of the writing groups while at KSP Writers Centre. It was great to be invited to be a part of their writing groups and to see how encouraging and supportive they are of each other’s writing. I’d forgotten how good this is to have people in your camp, people who know your writing and can offer great critical feedback. Two groups invited me to read a section of my writing and it really buoyed me on hearing them laugh at all the points that I had hoped. When one said at the end that it reminded her a little of Bridget Jones and another said Muriel’s Wedding, I couldn’t have been happier.
When I head home tomorrow, I will have a sense of sadness at leaving this place of natural beauty. I have gotten to know
and so well and really enjoyed the collegial space, the sharing of meals and stories, the friendship. Jaci took me out for walks and on a tour of the Perth Hills. I will go home with their friendship and for that, I am all the richer. I have also been so blessed to have a friend in Tracy Peacock who not only picked me up from and dropped me back to the airport, but also took me out for a beautiful day right in the middle of my fellowship. The candle she gifted me is nearly done, another sign that it is time to begin packing the bags.Unfortunately, timing of everything meant I missed seeing some other Perth people (*wave*
) but I hope to come over here again. Perth, I suspect, is one of those cities that gets under your skin.My plans
I’ll be home on Sunday (the one just gone as you will be reading this a few days after I have written it), then M and I will fly to Darwin for a two-week road trip to Broome and a few days to rest in Broome to celebrate our birthdays and our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
When we were last there, we were on our epic 2010 family road trip (have a read about our remarkable year). We got stuck in Broome when my eldest sliced his leg open up on the Dampier Peninsula (an event that has since formed his career choice of rural medicine). It was a marvellous six weeks there, despite nursing F through the healing of a horrendous wound, with running the busiest pre-polling booth in Australia, so many sunsets, a trip to Derby, ice cream, swims and more.
As we drive through the Gibb River Road for the second time, we are hoping to visit places that we couldn’t/didn’t last time like Mitchell Falls.
Road tripping is our love language and I can’t wait to be on the red dirt, swimming in gorges and watching the sunrises, sunsets and stars. We’ll (hopefully) be out of coverage for the most part, and that is such a salve.
Reading
The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding by Holly Ringland (divine)
No Church in The Wild by Murray Middleton (interestingly set in the school that I used to work in and I know who some of these characters are)
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au (stunning)
Our Strangers by Lydia Davis (a master of the short story – every word works so hard in this incredible book)
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Watching
Not much watching has gone on over the last fortnight, but I couldn’t resist the new season of Bridgerton (I call it research). I can’t believe I have to wait for the rest of the episodes to drop. Episode 4!!!
I started watching The OA last night (and promptly fell asleep). It seems good to start (spec-fic) but it will need to wait until I am no longer watching the stars at night.
I’d love some more romcom suggestions if you have them.
Five things
Great tips from Cecilia Lyra on writing romance and romcoms
My paid subscribers will have discovered that I am now sending out writing opportunities and competitions. For years I have gathered these in a spreadsheet and I want to pass on these to you. You can find the latest one (sent yesterday) here
In the early days of my relationship with M, he said that I think too much and at the time, I was struck with the idea that some people don’t spend their whole time thinking. If you don’t think, are you even alive? Since then, I have come to understand it as overthinking or ruminating rather than thinking. This is something that many of us do and something I hear a lot from my coaching clients. This article Learn how to break your addiction to thinking, may resonate with those caught in the overthinking/ruminating trap.
Want to write funny? When I did my improv course through The Improv Conspiracy, one of the great things they taught us was trying to be funny, isn’t funny. Instead, dial up the character quirks. Think about something your character believes and then ask what other whacky things might they believe. Let them commit to it and see what happens.
Email will be the death of all of us. I am using a Pomodoro approach to my emails now: 25 minutes only and make fast decisions (respond, delete, extract [information], forward, file). It seems to be helping keep it down. What’s your approach?
Thank you dear Musers for reading, and I hope you have a lovely time over the next month.
Til next time
x M
Huge congrats on the work on your ms, Meg xx Sounds wonderful. And enjoy that road trip and those big skies xxx