The antics, quirks and other endearing qualities of my animals: Part 1

Since the day I was born I've been around animals. Apparently, at the ripe old age of two I chose our dog, Sally, from the animal shelter. The fact that this dog turned out to be borderline psychotic, chasing cars, eating snail bait and almost poisoning herself, biting anyone my dad got mad at, did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm and love for animals. Despite her crazy tendencies, that dog was the most loyal, gentle and loving friend any kid could hope to grow up with.

But it does seem that my first choice has set me up for a lifetime of selecting pets with weird quirks. I'm not sure if everyone's pets have similar strange tendencies, but mine have all had very strong, very individual character traits. Anyone who thinks animals don't have their own personalities should, quite frankly, be shot. Repeatedly.

If I went through every animal I've ever owned, these posts could be endless, so I'll stick with those who are currently part of our family. This post is devoted to Wednesday, the first pet in my collection after I'd moved out of home.

Wednesday

She turned up on the street outside my friends' place as a three month old kitten, a little black stray with vivid yellow eyes. She came into my life at precisely the right time, as I was about to spend a year living by myself, a move that turned out to be a challenging one for me, but one that I only got through with the company of my little black cat. George named her Wednesday, but for some unknown reason, we have only ever called her The Kitty.

Wednesday is the sweetest, prettiest cat you can imagine, and she's been a charmer from the first. One day my neighbour confessed to me that, on her day off, Wednesday had been coming over to visit her for a few hours. This habit had begun when her young daughter said to her: 'Mummy, the cat got in!' As she held the door open for her.

Despite being almost 12 years old now, she still has a penchant for those little toy mice you can buy from the vet, scurrying around after them and doing backflips to try to catch them if you throw them over her head. She almost never drinks out of the bowl set aside for her and the other animals, but every night she tries to drink out of George's water glass when we go to bed. He's now taken to putting a beanie over the glass until he's drunk enough that she can't reach it.

Despite being almost excessively timid of every movement, loud noise, person or animal, Wednesday is very fond of our dog Jedi, who is at least ten times her size. Whenever he's near her, she licks his ears and his face. Sometimes she'll bat him on the nose if she believes he's being impudent.

Our other, younger cat loves to terrorise her, and she is appropriately frightened by him, but when it's time for them to be fed, she takes advantage of the distraction to sniff him all over and lick his face. She runs from him if he tries to chase her, but whenever he actually approaches her politely, she'll glare at him and then give him a few slaps around the head.

She is obsessed with heat. She loves to roll in the driveway in the sun and catch cockroaches on warm evenings. Years ago she used to lie in front of the bar heater until she got so hot she'd get up, whimpering, turn around and bake her other side. She even enjoys licking our bowls when we've been eating something spicy.

She loves to be outside, but for some reason our backyard fills her with terror. Out in the real world, however, she'll go anywhere. We used to go on midnight walks around the block with Jedi, and she would always follow us. Even now, when I bring her inside every night, she forces me to go through an elaborate game before she'll allow herself to be caught. She always hangs out around the units next door, but if I walk straight up to her, she'll skitter away at the last minute. Again and again. So if I 'pretend' that I'm just going for a walk, she'll start following me up the footpath until we've gone an appropriate distance before I'm allowed to turn around and pick her up.

She has the softest, most pathetic meow - in fact, it's more a 'meep' than a 'meow' - and yet somehow she manages to channel all the pain and despair of the world into it when she wants something. She's got George wrapped around her paw, and where I'll just ignore her until she gives up and finds somewhere to sleep, he gets all cut up by her apparent distress and does whatever she wants. I can just imagine what it's going to be like if we have a daughter...

All our animals have their own distinctive voices, and Wednesday sounds just like the Queen of England. She doesn't like to be disturbed when she's made herself comfortable, even if she's sitting on your chest two centimetres from your face and practically suffocating you. She never bites or scratches, but has the most effective expression of disdain I've ever encountered. May the gods save you if you ever dare to spray deodorant within a 10 metre radius of her.

She only likes the expensive-type food in the little tins, and within that narrow criteria, she prefers anything with fish, and definitely nothing that's too chunky. She also likes the fresh meat you can buy in individual packaging, but she reserves the right to go on a hunger strike at any time. She also must eat in solitude, preferably in the bathroom with the door closed, or she spends 80% of the time looking over her shoulder to make sure no one is trying to kill her while she eats. No matter how much or how little I give her, she almost always leaves a bit in the bowl.

She finds cat litter demeaning and avoids using it at all costs. I think this is partly because she has a bit of a mental blank with the whole thing. Outside, she copes just fine, but put her in a litter tray and she doesn't know how to cover it up. She'll paw at the wall, at the ground outside the box, anything but the actual litter, all the while looking terribly confused about the whole affair.

Above all, Wednesday loves to sleep, in the warmest spot she can find. She's been known to curl up in drawers, in the washing basket, inside bags or open suitcases, in the cupboard, on people's chests, under the covers in our bed, on my pillow, on the laptop.

Wednesday - or, should I say, The Kitty - is the longest serving member of our household. She has the least demanding personality, but she nevertheless asserts her importance on a daily basis. Hoping she'll be around for another twelve years.

One ending, another new beginning

Tonight, I completed the final draft of one of my three manuscripts.

It's been three months since my last blog post, mostly due to the fact that I didn't really have anything new to say about my writing. This last draft has taken me a little longer than I'd hoped, and a big part of me is glad that it's done. Completing a story to the point that it's ready to go out into the world (well, as ready as I can get it on my own, anyway) is a big achievement. And I've done it in four drafts, an improvement over my first, of which I am about to commence draft six.

I can feel my skills improving with each edit. I'm better able to visualise the story as a whole before I delve into specific chapters, phrases, words. I've even got a somewhat realistic hope that I'll be able to get my third manuscript finished in only three drafts.

I don't fool myself that it's really really finished. I know that if an agent or a publisher picks it up, there'll be plenty more work to do. But I've got it to the most polished point that I can without professional advice.

I should be happy. Ecstatic, even.

But, after racing towards this goal for the last five months, I feel strangely empty. I'd expected to feel upset to be letting it go, to saying goodbye to my characters. I am pregnant, after all. A particularly shiny teaspoon makes me teary, for Christ's sake. But I don't feel much at all.

I know it's ready to go. And I've got my first manuscript to work on, and a clear vision of what I need to do with it. Tonight, I'm going to rest, and tomorrow morning I'm going to sleep in. I don't know how many days I'll take off before I get back into it.

But I do know that when the time is right, I'll sit down with that dog-eared manuscript I sent off to Brisbane last year, and which has since travelled to Sydney, then to Brisbane again, before coming home with me to Adelaide. I'm not ready just yet, but I suspect the time will be here before I know it. I'm looking forward to it.

At the halfway point

It's been exactly a month since my last blog post, and I'm almost exactly halfway through editing my second manuscript. I'll keep this brief, as I mustn't procrastinate too long from actually doing it (yeah right).

It's been a bit of a hard slog at times, but overall I've been enjoying the process. Some pages have been a lot like pulling teeth. I keep using the same bloody phrases and words over and over again, and I can't for the life of me think of different ways of saying it. I've even used a - *gasp* - thesaurus once or twice (or 500 times). There are whole weeks when it feels like I've had a wit-ectomy and everything comes out sounding flat and lifeless.

But then there are big sections - chapters even - where the writing is taut and snappy, and it just works. These bits allow me to think, just for a second, that perhaps it might actually be publishable. Once I've fixed up aforementioned hopeless bits.

My writing friend, Sam, has been going through it with a fine-toothed comb as I finish each chapter, and she's not letting me get away with anything. She's pulling me up on sentences that I just couldn't get right and allowed myself to conveniently forget about. She's ruthlessly culling my excessive adverbs (every time I comment about my excessive use of adverbs, I always seem to include an adverb in that sentence - you see, I have a problem). She's telling me all the things I need to hear, whether I want to hear them or not. Sometimes I feel like bitch-slapping her for it*, but it's all invaluable feedback that will force me to make it better. And no doubt she feels like bitch-slapping me every time I send one of her chapters back.

So I'll keep pushing on through the wooden sentences and repetitive phrases and slowly perfect it to a level where it might actually be ready to submit. And I haven't gotten over my addiction. I still have an obsessive compulsive need to do something on it each day, even if it's just reading through what I edited the day before.

*I was kidding about the bitch-slapping. Sort of. ;)

My name is Rebecca, and I am addicted to writing

It's time to face up to the fact that what started out as a hobby has developed into a full blown obsession. Over the last 5-6 years, my periods of not writing have been far longer and more frequent than my productive times. I've taken six months off, or more, with barely a thought. But something has changed this year - when I'm not working on something, I find myself thinking incessantly about it, and my only cure is to give into it.

Last Saturday I finished the first draft of my third manuscript. I celebrated by giving myself a day off on the Sunday before going back to work the following day. But it didn't feel like much of a reward. All day I was itching to get started on the third draft of my second manuscript. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Finally, on Monday after work, I got out my notebook and the printed copy and I started reading through it again. As always happens when starting on a subsequent draft, I was both horrified and pleasantly surprised by what I found in there.

It needs a lot of work. Some of my plot lines are still not entirely believable. I still use too many adverbs (there are five in this post alone, and that's me restraining myself). I've discovered another annoying habit in my writing that I need to eradicate. My protagonist needs to be less bitchy and more gutsy and resourceful. I need to be more effective in showing surroundings.The chemistry between my characters that's crystal clear in my head isn't coming across on the page.

At the same time, a lot of the changes I made in the second draft that I'd almost forgotten about were a huge improvement. The writing is a lot more taut than it was the first time around. And having written the second in the series, I've got a better insight into my characters that will help me to flesh them out in this one.

This was the first time that I've written notes before starting on a new draft. I was dubious about the process, as I'm a horrendous note-taker, but it's been enormously helpful. I haven't marked up the manuscript at all, which has allowed me to look at the story as a whole rather than line by line.

At around 1pm today I finished my read through, and I've filled 39 hand-written A4 pages with things I need to fix or change. I feel good about it - some bits are going to be tricky, but generally it'll just be a matter of tightening up the prose and getting rid of some of the repetition. Satisfied with my progress in less than a week, I instructed myself to spend the rest of the day relaxing and start on the real work tomorrow. I got out my book and plonked myself on the couch for an afternoon of shameless sloth.

I lasted about four and a half hours.

I couldn't help myself. I've just opened the document and re-saved it as Draft 3.doc.

My name is Rebecca, and I am addicted to writing.

69 days, 76,800 words, another manuscript finished

Today I finished the first draft of my third manuscript, ending a frenzied 69 days of flat out writing. When I began this marathon I'd only written the first chapter, so essentially I've written an 80,000 word book in two and a half months. I have mixed feelings about this.

Obviously, I'm proud of the achievement. I probably averaged six hours' sleep a night, so I'm looking forward to re-programming my body to sleep past 5am again. I can give my brain (and my fingers) a break for a while. I'm now free to devote my time and energy to editing my other manuscript(s). I can once again have a conversation with my husband that goes beyond 'Can't talk; writing'. This is all good.

But all these benefits can't quite make up for the weird sense of loss I feel. It's like when you get to the end of a great book, only you created the characters, so they're like your kids. I'm going to miss them. Some days they seemed more real to me than real people. I spent hours of time thinking about what they were going to do next, and now I have to let them go. The good part about writing a series is that I can go back to them again when I write the third book, and in the meantime I can make them even better in the two I've already written. But their next adventure is already beginning to percolate in my head. Luckily, I've got plenty of time to let it simmer, because next on the agenda is editing.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm not quite sure which manuscript is going to be up first. I hope it's the first in the series, because that's the one I really want to work on. Editing can be fun, but it's nowhere near the high of the raw writing. There's nothing like the feeling of the words flowing from my brain through my fingers and onto the screen as I create a world and manipulate characters within it. It's like a drug; the more I do it, the more I want to do it.

So I've got the day off tomorrow. I don't know what I'm going to do when I wake up at 5.30, as I do most mornings now. Normally, I'd lie in bed for a bit longer, thinking about where I'm up to in the story and where I'm going to go. Then I'd get up and start writing. It's going to be weird to not have anything to do.

The ups and downs of the 2010 Hachette Manuscript Development Program

OK, so I should really be using these last few days before going back to the real world to work on one, two or all three of my manuscripts. But after the ups and downs of the last five days, I have to get my thoughts down now before the whole episode becomes a series of fuzzy and half-remembered impressions.

I'm not quite sure how to describe what was one of the most intense experiences of my life, so I'll start by recounting each day.

Friday
I arrived in Brisbane on Friday afternoon and checked into the apartments we'd been booked into and met up with my longtime friend, Bek. Bek and I have been friends since we were twelve years old. She moved to Brisbane just after we'd finished Year 12 and we've caught up only sporadically since. We're both married now and she has a couple of kids, and yet whenever we see each other, it's like we automatically revert to our immature high school selves. It's awesome.

Later we were met by one of the Queensland Writers Centre staff, who escorted us the 10 minute walk to the State Library where the program was being held. We had a quick intro session, where we met each other and the publishers from Hachette, and each of us had the opportunity to say a bit about our manuscripts.

We were having drinks and canapes when the literary agent arrived and we were all introduced to him. He'd read the first 50 pages of each of our manuscripts, and in the middle of conversation he said: 'There was one I was particularly interested in...'

He paused and you could feel all seven of us holding our collective breath and thinking please be mine, please be mine. Then he said 'the Indian one', and I almost dropped my glass in shock as I indicated that it was mine. This was easily one of the coolest moments of my life, and it lasted approximately half a second before he followed up by saying he'd been expecting to see an Indian migrant among us.

Heart drops. Back to reality. This has been something that's worried me about this manuscript ever since I started it five years ago. You can't write a book from the perspective of another culture and not expect the questions to come up. Fair call.

We ended the night with a quick meal at a pub on the way back to the apartments.

Saturday
This was the day of truth: where we each had an hour-long consultation with a publisher who had read our full manuscript, and I was up first.

I'm not precious about being critiqued. Let me make it clear that it was an honour to have my work evaluated by a publisher of this calibre and reputation, who actually thinks my writing is worthy of consideration. I fully expected to find out there were numerous plot, structure and technique flaws that needed to be fixed. What I didn't expect was how much it was going to affect me.

The feedback wasn't too bad - there's stuff to fix, of course, but not as much as I'd expected. The biggest issue, and the one I'd always feared, is the one thing I can't change - I'm not Indian, and this could be a big marketing problem. And a marketing problem inevitably means a barrier to publication. I can still edit the manuscript and submit it to Hachette for their consideration, but the problem is still going to be there. So I have a big decision to make about whether I persevere with it or consign it to the drawer of unfinished manuscripts and concentrate on other projects.

When I walked out, the other six participants were all waiting with friendly smiles, eager to hear how it went even as they were probably going internally berserk worrying about their own sessions. I'd like to think I was mature enough to put on my big girl pants and count my blessings to even be there in the first place, but I kind of felt like I'd been kicked in the guts.

I spent the rest of the day wallowing in self-pity. I didn't do any writing. I didn't read over my manuscript to start thinking about how to fix it. I just wanted to go home and back to the safety of not really knowing what I had.

But we had a group dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant in West End that night, so I got dressed up, painted on a smile and forced myself to interact with everyone. By coincidence, I ended up sitting next to aforementioned literary agent, who gave me some good feedback on my first 50 pages. He didn't seem to think the non-Indian thing was such a big deal, and he referred me to another book written by an Australian from the perspective of a different culture. So things didn't seem quite so bad after all. And a few glasses of wine didn't hurt either. We ended the night with the seven of us participants all cramming into my apartment for more writing chat before we passed out.

Sunday
The morning session was all about the publishing industry, the role of agents and publishers, and how bloody hard it is to get published. It was great to learn more about the process, and to find out that the industry isn't the shark-infested ocean that I'd imagined. On the other hand, it was truly depressing to know how hard it really is to get a manuscript to publication, no matter how good you are. There are so many different elements the publishers need to consider before they'll give it the go-ahead, and most of them are out of the writer's control. Big reality check.

After lunch, I had a consultation session with Kim Wilkins, author of 21 books and mentor for the duration of the program. By this time, I was pretty low and starting to wonder what I was even doing there given that I was such a shithouse writer, but this session was a real turning point for me. Kim helped me to see that, while I was reluctant to let go of something I'd put so much into, I wasn't passionate about the manuscript any more. I've moved on, and there's no shame in having manuscripts that never quite made it. Most writers don't get their first project published - Kim wrote 10 manuscripts before her first published novel (to the writing gods - I would like for this to not happen to me, please). Being able to acknowledge this without feeling like I'd failed in some way was huge.

That night a few of us gathered in one of our apartments for take-away Thai and yet more writing talk. You'd think we'd get sick of it, or run out of things to say, but not so. On this night we got an education in genre fiction, care of Charlotte, and I finally found out what steam punk is (and a few others I'd never even heard of, such as cyber punk and clock punk - the list is seemingly endless).

Monday
The morning session was on participating in writers festivals as an author, which was interesting, but I think all of us were feeling a bit gloomy about the prospect of ever making it to one after the previous day's session. The afternoon was all free time, so I tried to write for a while, then gave up and went to the mall for a spot of shopping, followed by a bit more writing in my apartment. That night four of us went to a ramen noodle place for a quiet dinner.

Tuesday
This morning session was on book sellers and their relationships with publishers and authors. Again, interesting from an information perspective but seemed a little remote at this stage in our careers. After lunch, we each did a reading from our manuscripts, with the help of a glass of wine. I was quaking in my thongs at the prospect, as I am terrified of public speaking of any kind, let alone reading something so personal. But it was actually really good to hear the others' work, and to realise how privileged I was to be there in the company of such talented writers. And I managed to read mine without making a fool of myself, so all good.

I went back to my apartment after this and did some more writing before getting ready to go out to dinner with the other participants. We all piled in a maxi taxi (love the term, wish they called them that here) and went to Kapsali's, a Greek restaurant in Southbank, to celebrate our final night together. The food was good, the company excellent, and the main topic of conversation - writing, of course. After feeling homesick for the last few days, the thought of returning to the real world the next day was bittersweet. After dinner we went to Max Brenner's, a chocolate lover's paradise, where we drank Italian hot chocolate and sank into a chocolate coma.

Wednesday
The final session was on being a professional author, including building networks, finding agents, how advances and royalties work, and just generally not being a crazy person. It was all really interesting.

After lunch it was all over and time to go home, and suddenly the five days seemed to have flown by. While the whole thing was a bit of an emotional roller coaster, I definitely feel the better for it. It's confirmed to me that I really can write, and that I'm actually quite good at it. And anyway, I couldn't stop if I tried.

It was a fantastic experience, and the industry contacts I've made will be invaluable. And it was such a pleasure to spend five days in the company of other writers at a similar level. We've set up a Google group so we can stay in contact, and I look forward to hearing about their successes in the future, and hopefully be able to share some of my own!

So now I have a plan - pitch my other project to Hachette, and if they like the idea, I'll work on that first. If not, I'll go back to the other and make it the best it can be, knowing that anything that hones my craft is not wasted.

I still have this weird sense of unreality, like I've been in another world for the last five days. I'm struggling to deal with the idea of real life concepts again, like work, or walking my dog, or talking about other topics. It felt ridiculously self-indulgent to devote such a lot of time to learning about, thinking about and talking about...oh, and actually doing...writing.

It's made me realise that this really is what I want to do. I'm not silly enough to think I can ever do it full time, but I can at least dream of the day I can devote at least half of my time to it.

Now, as I have spent far too long on this, I think it's about time I went back to writing my novel, and finally finish the scene I started before I left...and hopefully the whole manuscript, so I can start the editing process.

You can't force creativity

Here we are on day three of what has become our annual holiday to Yondah on the Yorke Peninsula, and I've got a lot to live up to since our inaugural visit last September. Back then I was on my second consecutive month of writing 1000 words a day, and in a tremendous burst of inspiration I wrote something like 10,000 words over the five days of our stay and finished the first draft.

The surroundings are certainly conducive to creativity - a luxurious 'beach house' with a wall of windows looking out over the sea towards Kangaroo Island, situated on 300 acres of farm land, with no neighbours for literally miles. Plus I'm most of the way through my first month of 1000 words a day on my next manuscript. I know exactly what's going to happen with my characters, if not with the exact details of the plot. I was pretty confident that I'd get the stream of consciousness thing happening and hopefully double my daily word count.

But it's not happening, god damn it. On our first day here I managed a whopping 318 words, but since we didn't get here until 4.30pm I let myself go on that one. Yesterday was much better - I wrote more than 1500 words. That sounds good, but the writing has felt forced. The narrative is not flowing and I'm not happy with where it's going. I feel like I'm doing my characters a disservice. I'm just marking time and writing shit until I get some inspiration. I know that's what I have to do sometimes to keep the propulsion happening, but I'm not feeling good about it.

This is the third day now and I'm still not inspired. I probably shouldn't be putting so much pressure on myself, considering this is supposed to be a holiday and I'm supposed to be relaxing. But I can't help comparing this with my last visit when I was on literary fire. I'm not sure whether I should keep forcing the words out or just go with the flow (when there is one) and only write when the inspiration is there.

I know I'm not going to finish this draft in the next three days, so there's no real hurry. The sun has just come out again after a morning shower, so maybe I'll put the computer away for a while and get outside for some fresh air. Maybe later I'll be ready to write again.