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NaPoWriMo Wrap-up

02 Thursday May 2019

Posted by in Art, Writing

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I made it through the challenge of NaPoWriMo again for April 2019!

It is always a struggle to feel that my poems are any good when I do this challenge, I seem to churn out so much rubbish, but as with NaNoWriMo, the point is quantity over quality.

I will have to set aside some time to revise and review the poems I’ve written this month, although I did publish one poem here and one poem on a couple of Facebook groups for life modelling. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

The art studio

1 convener
5 minders
9 artists
21 models

A room full of nude bodies
Holding perfectly still

The sound of one voice
And scratching on paper

The knowledge that in a few
Minutes we break to eat

Working to create great art
Together sharing our vulnerability

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Seven poses over four hours by a Monash University student (April 2019)

It was written on the last day of the challenge, close to midnight, after a full day of work at the day job, followed by a four hour life-model training session. I am not particularly good at drawing, but the act of performing as a model to be drawn has been something I’ve enjoyed for over five years. 

The Life Models’ Society is having an art competition at the end of the year. I’m helping to organise it and we’re finalising details now but I may even submit a work to the competition. I’ve been thinking about something like a charcoal drawing, perhaps several figures all together, with my poems about life drawing printed on transparency over the top. I think it could look quite good – obviously dependent on the quality of the drawing(s) I manage to produce.

I spent a little less than a week over Easter with my beautiful friend Cathy and her family in New Zealand. It’s been difficult the last few years as a number of my close friends have moved away from Melbourne. It’s not the same as having them here, but knowing I can pop over and visit and have their love and warmth on tap 24 hours a day is a great comfort.

My next projects are going back to some of my incomplete prose manuscripts; I wrote 1500 words in one today despite my procrastination!

Thank you to all my friends, family and supporters – I wouldn’t be here without you, and I hope that I support you in return. Big love.

What’s Happened: This Year in Review

18 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in My Journey, Writing

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Since I finished NaNoWriMo on 30 November this year I’ve done very little writing. I think my writing-brain has gone into hibernation, or possibly it’s just getting to the end of a pretty intense year.

I was looking at the goals I set for myself for 2016, here, and thinking about whether I’d achieved the things I set out to achieve. The goals I set for myself this year were split up into three groups: writing goals, concrete goals, and vague aspirations.

Looking at my writing goals, I’ve only really done one of the four: win NaNoWriMo. I have partially edited two of my previous manuscripts, but neither of them are in any kind of polished state, ready for submission. I’m striking the last one off, pitching a script for a sitcom thing. I don’t want to spend a whole bunch of energy learning a new set of rules and techniques to pitch for television. It seems to me that surely that would be an even more competitive market than fiction. I may choose to do some serious rewrites on the manuscript to sell it to a publishing house, but that seems less daunting.

I do have one of thing I can add which was not on the list, but which was an amazing achievement none the less: writing, producing and performing in my own Melbourne Fringe Festival show Fleur and Alexandra Save the World. This took up almost all of my creative bandwidth for six months, March-September. It was a massive project, and while my show partner had done it before, it still took an enormous about of work and energy to make it happen. In the end we didn’t quite make our money back, but we had over a hundred people come to see our show, and we were listed in The Age entertainment guide. I count it as a success, and who knows, maybe I’ll do another show in the future.

The next category was concrete goals. I’ve only done one of these as well; perform with the band. Hello Volume has been practicing almost every week for all of this year, and we’ve done a couple of live performances. I had hoped to get a few more lined up by this stage of the year, but we have plenty of time for that. Yesterday we went up to a recording studio in Central Victoria to put down some tracks possibly for an EP. It was a surprisingly painless (although exhausting) process. The sound engineer was knowledgeable and created a great relaxed, low-pressure atmosphere. We won’t know for sure how it went until he sends us the mixed and mastered tracks, but listening to the rough cuts I’m super pumped to hear them.

As my second concrete goal I had set myself the goal of planning another big trip. I haven’t done that, for a variety of reasons. A large part of it is because I have so much going on here at home that I sort of haven’t wanted to leave.

The last category is the vague aspirational goals section. The problem with this section is that they are, by nature, sliding and slippery. One, eat well, is so subjective that there is no real way to measure whether I’ve done it. I mean I have eaten a lot of good things, I’ve cooked healthy things for myself and been conscious about what I eat, but only some of the time. Other times, especially when I’m running around like a mad person doing all of the stuff I try to jam into a normal week, I occasionally have chips for dinner. When we were performing the Fringe show I was so nervous before hand I couldn’t eat properly and then afterwards I was so hungry I just scoffed huge handfuls of chocolate and muesli bars.

The same is true of exercising. If I looked at the number of times I actually went to the gym this year, as compared with last year, I’m sure I would have performed significantly worse. There was a period where I was sick for a month, and then there was the Fringe show, and then there was NaNoWriMo, when I prioritised getting my words done over going to the gym. I have tried to maintain a commitment to moving my body and being active, so I reckon I can count that one as a win.

The goal of ‘get a job’ can be ticked off, however I don’t know if I’m entirely happy with it. The job I have is working in an area of business where I haven’t had much experience. Granted, it’s mostly just a case of applying common sense, and having a consistent approach, but I still feel quite unstable in the role. Not to mention the contract I’m on is still a casual one, and I’ve had a new manager start about six weeks ago. Work is an area of my life I’ve found stressful this year. The creative projects I’ve worked on have been stressful in a sort of positive way, but my day-jobs this year have been full of uncertainty and difficult personalities. It’s not my favourite.

In terms of my social life, I’ve had some amazing ups and some lows too. I’ve started a relationship with someone I’m incredibly impressed by, who cares for me in a beautiful way I haven’t experienced before (and am therefore just a little bit freaked out by). It’s glorious and terrifying, and I hope that person knows how much they mean to me.

On the other hand, I had two very dear friends move away, and one more who is going at the start of next year. I’ve struggled in my adult life to create caring, reciprocal relationships (both romantic and platonic). I’ve ended up in situations where I play a counselling or parenting role, and these relationships are very one-sided. I’ve been consciously trying to seek out and nurture fulfilling, reciprocal and supportive friendships for a couple of years, and I’ve found it incredibly difficult. I guess it just means I have to keep trying.

I feel like I’m a person who is able to adapt to a lot of new situations. I like to take on new challenges and learn new things. In looking back at this year I feel like I’ve done a lot of really amazing things, I’ve done them pretty bloody well, and if I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed and tired right now then maybe I should just go with that feeling and give myself permission to take a break. I have a tendency to set unrealistically high expectations and then be so stubborn that I try to achieve them anyway. Mostly it means I get a great deal of work done, but sometimes it means I beat myself up because I can’t do everything.

I’m thinking of what goals I want for next to set for next year. I think I’ll aim for stability in at least one aspect of life. I’ve had a lot of balls in the air this year and I think it would be easier in 2017 if at least one moving part was not moving quite so much. Maybe my day-job will actually be what I want it to be: a financial support for my other endeavours, and not such a drainer of my mental resources.

Once I figure out what I want to put on the list, I’ll do a post on my 2017 goals in early January.

How’s that working for you?

23 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by in My Journey, Writing

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Right, so, about three weeks ago I put up a post about making time for the business of creating. At the time it seemed like a totally achievable, realistic plan; just spend one of my days off paid work to work on writing.

Seems simple, except that it doesn’t work.

A full day working from home, for me, is awful. I can get probably four hours of productive work done in the morning, but coming back to it after lunch – NOPE.

I find myself hard pressed to clear a whole day for writing. I come up with excuses, other stuff I have to do immediately, like go to the gym, or get coffee with someone, or visit a friend. Even read a book or stare into space.

Meiki, a friend of mine, talks about having a ‘people bath’ every day. For extroverts, or even partial extroverts, having conversations and interactions with other real life humans (online doesn’t count) is super important to motivation and happiness. For Meiki, that means bathing in the presence of other humans for a minimum period of time every day.

I am a pretty extroverted person. I love a good old chat, I like meeting new people, and nurturing friendships. So sitting on my own, at home, typing, for a whole day, is painful. Especially if my housemates aren’t home. I need alone time too, but a daily dose of people is definitely required.

I feel a revision of the goal is in order, just in time for New Year’s resolutions, too! At the moment I have three days per week of paid employment, so that means I have two weekdays available for sitting down and writing. I’m going to try using the mornings or evenings of both days to work on writing and schedule other stuff in the afternoons. Stuff like exercise, catching up with friends, generally getting out into the world.

The other road block that’s coming up is editing. I have a project from last year, my NaNoWriMo for 2014, which needs some serious rewriting. The only problem is actually starting it – it’s daunting to open up a hundred-odd page document and start fiddling. I suppose, if I’m honest, I’ve never really rewritten any long stuff. It feels like a really big task and I can’t quite work out where to start.

What I need to do is re-read the manuscript and work out what areas need the most attention and then just do one chapter at a time. Break it down into bite sized chunks which don’t seem so overwhelming.

The new plan for 2016, then, will be two chunks of three or four hours each week for writing. One for editing, and one for writing new stuff for competitions and magazines and blogs and stuff.

Next week I’m going to do a review of my 2015 goals and I’ll also be writing another New Years resolutions/goal type post too.

I hope you all have a lovely festive period, if you celebrate Christmas, I hope it’s full of delicious food, laughter, and love, and minimal bickering. And actually if you don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope that you have lots of food, laughter and love and not too much bickering.

Some thoughts about failure and inspiration

14 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by in My Journey, Writing, Writing101

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So, I got a little behind with my Writing101 challenge because I had to do an assignment at the last minute and have it done by midnight last night. This was difficult, because apart from having had several weeks in which to do the aforementioned assignment, I basically procrastinated it until there were just over three hours in which to write, reference, proof read and submit the thing. It was, I will freely admit, a very poor effort. I wouldn’t be surprised if it brings down the grade for that subject significantly.

Instead of doing the day nine prompt, about taking perspectives, I’m going to write about misdirected energy. I procrastinated that assignment because I was afraid. I didn’t really know how to approach it, I didn’t feel confident that I could answer the question. I had been to the library (as in actually physically attended it, and borrowed real books) and got out a selection of relevant texts. I had had a cursory look through them, I’d done a bit of online researching, but all of that didn’t really help when it came to writing the essay. I’m not even sure I understood the question correctly. But for some reason the idea of putting it off was much, much more attractive than starting to write or asking for help, or choosing a different topic. I redirected my energy and my focus onto all sorts of other things, mainly watching and rewatching TV series on my computer.

I felt like I didn’t have control and that scared me, so I did everything I could to avoid thinking about it instead of doing something useful. Any that has prompted some pretty strong feelings of disappointment with myself.

Consequently, I spent quite a lot of time over the last few days thinking about anger, and in particular my anger. I don’t deal with anger well. I seem to be incapable of expressing it usefully, and so instead I internalise it, or I redirect it at something else. Especially when it’s a friend who says something that really gets under my skin, instead of saying, ‘hey that’s not very fair’ or ‘I don’t agree because…’ seethe internally and say nothing. It becomes very black and white, I start thinking I can’t be friends with that person anymore and I feel sad, like I’ve failed.

I don’t want to be the sort of person who is constantly filled with a big ball of fury (and guilt), but that’s what I feel like sometimes. There is a quote that’s made the rounds on the internet a bit that has been resonating with me.

“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

From what I can find it’s attributed to Carrie Fisher. I know that holding onto my anger is hurting me and that people are not black and white, they’re a beautiful spectrum of everything in between. I know that I need to either my resentment go, or find a way of constructively letting it out. Sometimes the object of my anger is not an object with which I can safely or usefully engage, and so I have to learn to let that go. Other times, I can engage, and don’t because of a fear of conflict, or more likely, an inability to ask for what I need. Times like this make me wonder what the point is of trying to change, they make me feel like all the therapy I’ve been doing is not helpful, it just keeps bringing up different shit that I have to deal with; a constant treadmill of self doubt and pain.

I guess I could also mention that since I quit my job, a stable and secure, but ultimately unfulfilling and frustrating job. I’ve been feeling like I’ve walked straight off the cliff and into the abyss. I’ve leapt out without any real safety net (again) and I’m terrified. I know it’s the right thing to do, no one grows without challenge, but god damn it’s hard to remember that when you’re worrying about where your rent money is coming from.

Maybe I’m just having a particularly challenging week and I should just give myself a break. I’m pretty good at catastrophising and making stuff into more than it really needs to be. If I try to think about the changes I’m about to make as correcting myself back onto the path I want to be on, rather than as having to start again that might be helpful. If I try to remember all work I’ve done over the last few years to get me to where I am today, that will help. If I try to focus on all the amazing opportunities in front of me, like all the writing and performance I’ve been doing, and about the great people I’ve met through it, about the encouraging and kind feedback I’ve had that helps.

So to conclude, having gone almost all the way around, I will leave you, and myself with two things to think about. One is from Yoda:

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

I am going to try to be fearless, or at least, more fearless, because I’ll never be a famous writer if I’m afraid. The second one is from a speech Jim Carey gave to a university management class, it’s just an excerpt, but it’s powerful:

“You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance at doing what you love.”