Little Ray of Sunshine

Isn't the autumn sun nice? That last little gasp of warmth before winter comes along. This is a little patch of greenery I go through when I take the dog for a walk. It cheers me up to get out in the sunshine. There are days when I realise I've barely been outside all day. I've been in the office writing or doing housework or transporting children to an assortment of activities. I have make myself get outside to feel the sun on my face. It makes the rest of my day better. 

It's smoky outside today because they've been burning off around Sydney so we had a short walk. That's a another feature of Autumn. The smoke hangs around in the Sydney Basin, in the morning it looks like fog in the backyard but the smell of smoke lingers when there's no wind to move it on. A reminder that we might be going into winter but summer will come again and maybe bushfires. Until then: Autumn sun feels great.

A Heslop Moment

I have a new book cover! This is exciting. And unexpected.

I wasn't planning on buying a new cover. I thought the one I had was just fine. I hadn't looked at it for a long time and I'd bought it in a bit of a rush. I was sure it was fine, though.

Then I popped onto Amazon to do something else (stare hopefully at my sales reports, probably) and noticed it again. And it wasn't fine. It was awful. I'd made a terrible mistake. 

I couldn't even fathom what made me choose it in the first place. It was just... wrong.

This isn't the frst time this has happened to me. A year ago I went to the shops thinking I looked just fine. "I don't need to get changed or fix my hair up," I said to my self, "I'm fine."  I was very confident about the whole thing. I thought I looked pretty spiffy. Then I passed one of those mirrors shopping centres put everywhere in order to cause despair and panic buying to enter the hearts of their customers. I didn't look fine. I looked like the mum in Muriels' Wedding when she had sore feet and got arrested for shoplifting. That was a let-down and a half. 

Photograph of me shopping Betty Heslop about to be arrested (Note to self: rewatch Muriels' Wedding, it's awesome).

Seeing my old book cover on Amazon was the same horrible realisation. My cover was the book equivalent of Betty Heslop stealing a pair of thongs at the supermarket and I did not like it. 

So I spent some time searching for a new cover. I wanted something brighter, more obviously fun and romantic and I'm so happy with the way it turned out. Here it is:

Not a Heslop in sight and no more horrible realisations. I love the colours, the humour and romance of the balloons. It makes me happy to look at it. Better yet, I have a cover for the next one that I love as well. 

Heslop moments. They're a force for good. Eventually.

"Muuuuuuuuuuum!", or Writing While Parenting.

I’m going to give you my number one tip on writing while parenting small children. It's rolled gold, this one. Guaranteed. My absolute best advice, honed to perfection, after years of thought and experience.

 Here it is:

Don’t do it. It's really hard.

No one wants to hear that. I don't want to hear that. But I have another piece of advice to go along with the first one:

If you must write, if you just have to do it, then do it when the kids are somewhere else or asleep. No other time.

I genuinely believed that I was going to be one of those mothers who write a series of epic novels while my baby napped. "Oh, I just ran out of things to do, so I thought I'd try this," was what I would have said if I'd had a baby who napped. I didn't, though. I had angry insomniacs who thought sleep was for the weak.

I've tried so many things over the years. Occupying my kids with other activities while I write. Doesn’t work. They only want to know what’s on my screen and then complain that it isn’t Paw Patrol. I’ve tried drifting into my office for ten minutes at a time to get a few words down when I can. Doesn’t work. They follow me in to roll around on the floor like puppies or burst in to announce that they’re “sooooo huuuuungry!” even though they were fed  0.5 nanoseconds before I left the room..

Most of my first novel was written at the library. My husband would look after the kids one afternoon each weekend, and I’d furiously write as many words as I could sitting in a corral in the study area of our local library. I loved writing there, and I was productive because I was surrounded by high school students studying for their exams. I didn’t want to look like a slacker. I was secretly hoping they were looking at me, thinking, "Wow, look how amazingly productive that tired-looking woman is. I feel so inspired to study for this Ancient History exam now. I wonder if I should ask her what life was like in classical Greece? She looks so old, she was probably around then."

Also there was nothing else to do there but work so I got a lot done.

Later on, I tried writing early in the morning before the kids got up or at night after they went to bed but I was too tired.

Now my children go to preschool and school. I have three days a week where I can write in that slice of time between drop-offs and pick-ups. It’s marvellous.

Here’s my third and best tip: sometimes you have to wait until life gives you a break and that's okay.

An abundance of Jacks. It is done.

After a million years of writing, rewriting, giving up, starting over, typing while half-asleep after being awake with a baby/toddler/school kid, then trying to figure out what this nonsense is that I wrote, then finally getting back on track and inching towards the end… I finished my second book.

This book has taught me the importance of starting a novel in the right place. And that outlines are far more effective than just flapping my hands at the keyboard and hoping for the best.

It also taught me the importance of a story bible. Or, at the very least, a character list. Without those things, especially if you’ve worked on a book for a long time, you might start with a character called Andrew, impulsively change his name to Jack for a few thousand words, then decide Jason works much better. Not that I would do that. No.

Let's just say editing is a brave new adventure, trying to figure out what my sleep-deprived brain was doing and where all these Jacks came from. They're harder to get rid of than cockroaches. They get in everywhere.