toast for tea

I am on my own in a villa by the sea on my first writers retreat. How to capture the essence of what makes up the moments of my days here? Plod around in vignette, recount snatches, sketch impressions… It starts when I pen a ‘poor me’ entry into my journal. I need a holiday . Two days later I win one. We all enjoy the winnings for the first weekend. We drive to the surf beach, play rummikub, sleep in bedrooms with our own ensuites. Then it’s time for them to leave. All too soon. But their weekday lives beckon, as does the manuscript I’ve come here to revise. As their car rounds the corner and disappears from view, my stomach lurches. I feel the two emotions in equal measure: elation at being on my own, to write – and a panic that claps hold of my body, sending me running for the toilet, as my aloneness threatens to fold in on itself and become the most desolate feeling of loneliness. I plug the portable speaker into the notebook computer and play The Prayer at full volume. I join forc...

It’s tricky navigating through life being a writer. There’s never enough time and there are always too many interruptions. Here’s the quandary. Scenario: you’re in Sydney, on holiday with your family. You’ve been to Sydney before, on your own. You loved it. At the time, you breathed in the atmosphere of Circular Quay as you looked out at the Harbour Bridge and Opera House; let it fill your lungs with vibrant life, as office workers and tourists tussled for a place in the queue for a cappuccino or ferry. You sat on a seat and took it all in. You watched people walk past, drink their coffee, take photos. You listened to their conversations. You noted what they wore. And every now and again you saw how the sun glanced off the water, the bridge behind, standing there like a wise old man. You could hardly breath. You wanted to capture this moment – so you could always relive it – not let it slip away. You took a ferry to Manly. You sat outside on the top deck. Your hair flew behind you as ...

Out at the shops today, she was everywhere. I watched her painfully negotiate the pedestrian crossing – bent over her walking stick – as I sat in the car and listened to Bryan Ferry on the radio. She was the woman in the wheelchair, sipping a cup of tea at the table next to mine in the food court. Later, I saw her hunched shoulders in a green cardigan in the queue outside the butchers. The last memory I have of my mother was when I visited her in hospital. I sat on her bed and watched helplessly as she struggled to support herself in a chair. They won’t let me get in to bed , she’d said. I can’t take much more. I didn’t know what to say. I remember looking down at her bare legs, slippered feet, and thinking how shiny the skin on her shins was. I remember thinking that life could be cruel. When my mother died, in the small hours of the following night, seven years ago, I lost a source of love that was bottomless and unique. A mother’s love is irreplaceable. Small wonder that so much han...

Here's an interview I did with Ursula, earlier in the year, not long after her Word Spy came out. It's done the rounds of all the reading mags and I have a little pile of very beautiful and encouraging rejections to prove it! Jackie Hosking saved the day, though, and published it in Pass it On. Here it is again. * ‘I always want to spend more time with Ursula Dubosarsky’s people. They’re wise, awkward and funny, and they give off sparks of insight that I want to read aloud to whoever’s near…’ Margo Lanagan (back cover of The Red Shoe) When multi-award-winning author and literary alchemist, Ursula Dubosarsky , breathes magic into her stories, it’s easy to find yourself tumbling helplessly into a world of fiction that feels so real, you forget who you are and become one with the characters. How does she do it? Ursula shares some of her writing secrets and tells about the challenges of writing her latest book, The Word Spy. One of the great strengths of your writing is your a...

Who Nicked the Dog? has been given the flick. Sounds like a title for a quirky, fluffy sort of story without a lot of depth. Which this book is not . The plot, subplots, themes and characters in this story need a more substantial title to sit on the front cover. See – I should pay more attention to my nearly-fourteen-year-old-daughter editor. The new proposed title is Lucky or Not . It works on a number of levels: Was Mum lucky, after all, to win the competition, when she ends up in hospital, instead of riding camels around Mongolia? Is Brody’s new dog really Mr Ironclad’s Lucky? Will Ish and Molly get to the farm in time to save Lucky from Uncle Vinny’s schizophrenic rampage? The big question is whether Lucky or Not is enough of a hook. The questionnaires are coming back with very positive responses from my group of ‘readers’. So far, people have told me they can’t put it down. Yippee! That the ending works. Yippee! That there is enough depth. Yippee! That they like the characters; ...

I push past rows of tee shirts emblazoned with “The Bitch is Back” and “I’m too pretty for homework”. The music is so loud you can’t hear yourself say, ‘the music’s loud in here, isn’t it?’ My thirteen year old is looking impatient. She’s standing at the back of the shop with one hand on her hip and a dark look on her face, and I still have to get past three racks of leggings, a table of see-through cardigans – surely they don’t wear these for warmth – and a row of skirts decorated with skulls and daggers. I dodge underneath a rack of singlets just like the ones my mother made me wear in winter, except these are fluoro coloured – mine were Omo white. And I’d worn mine under my clothes to keep me warm, not like the shop assistant, who’s made a feature of hers, wearing about five at once. A girl with incredibly shiny hair and a spotty face pushes politely between me and a row of jeans. Their legs are so narrow, you’d be hard-pressed to squeeze your arms into them. The noise of...

Haven’t posted for a few weeks – sorry! I’ve been flat out with my novel. The first draft is finished – hooray – and I’ve nearly finished revising and tightening it ready to send off for a formal assessment. Then there’ll be more revising and tightening and rewriting – not too much rewriting, I hope! – before pitching it to a publisher. That’s when I’ll ask you all to start crossing your fingers and toes and anything else you can think of! In the meantime, here are a few snippets to give you a taste — When Ish goes looking for a lost dog, he ends up searching for his father’s love, and finds more than he expected along the way. A story about a boy, a ghost, adventure and acceptance. The sky looks like my sister’s doona cover – black, dotted with stars and a misty moon in the middle. The tops of the gum trees, bending in the breeze, are casting scary shadows on the tombstones around me. It’s as if I’m watching giant grey ghosts creeping out of their graves, one by one. * Two sets of fo...