prize winner

I won an award, my first.
It was feckin awesome. Seriously. Awesome. Not the story you understand, the feeling. It was the QUT writing prize for postgraduate students 2009. I even got one of them giant novelty-sized cheques. In my celebratory cavorting I spilled red wine all over it. At first I thought,
‘Ahh shite. I’ve ruined it’. Then I thought, ‘Bollix to it, it’s still going up in the office.’

We writerly folk have a hard enough time gaining any ground on our confidence as it is. What difference will a wee bit of wine make? It’s nothing to the blood I’ve spilled on the floor trying to put a story together is it?

The prize winner, a story called Slice, came together in bits. An odd pizza fact, Norman Mailer’s book The Fight, a love of soul music, wishing I could dance and bumping into a guy I hadn’t seen for 20 years. The driving force was curiousity. How would this collection of things sit on paper? Ye have to see to find out don’t you? Isn’t what makes us what we are?

Well I did, I am and the curiousity’s paid for itself. As it turned out, among the spray of blood and letters the judges found something. Made me happy. Made me care less about the red wine stain let me tell ye.

Someone burnt my safari suit…

I’m gutted. When I went looking for my crimpolene safari suit, I was told it’d been burned. While I fear for the baby crimpols whose lives will be sacrificed in the name of bad taste (Thanks Billy) for the replacement, there is nothing I could have done for the original. It took seconds to melt into a ball hard enough to derail a train if left on the tracks.

See a blog tour is like a wordy safari without the guns. The chances of coming across scary animals are just as high, but the inhabitants are generally far more entertaining and thankfully, for us all, the suit is surplus to requirements.

Through my good luck or your ill fortune I’ve been drafted onto the enlightened and enlightening Queensland Writers Centre’s blog tour. The link to look at other, far more worthy, contributions is at the bottom there. They’re well worth a look, by the way. My answers to the questions, devised by the good and kindly Lisette Ogg at the bold and golden QWC, follow.

Where do your words come from?
I’m not sure myself. I’m driven to write. I need it like William Burroughs needed a fix. Nike Bourke once wrote that, for her, writing was akin to breathing. I can relate to the deeply etched nature of that notion. If I didn’t write the inside of my head would be like a bowl of breakfast cereal – handfuls of dusty freeze dried fruit desperate for hydration. In other words I’d be feckin nuts. The words themselves are secondary. It’s the movement that’s important. As long as I’m writing I’m happy.

Where did you grow up and where do you live now?
I was brought up in Stirling, Scotland. Growing up is a different story altogether. I live in a sleepy Brisbane suburb, I like it. I’d prefer to be somewhere near a beach though.

What’s the first sentence/line of your latest work?
Danny Irons knew taking his ball to the park was a bad idea.
It’s the opening line of a YA novel I’m currently redrafting. It was inspired by Jackie French, she told me I need to introduce the character and the setting in the first line if I could. I should know this but seriously I’d never thought about it. So I spent some time doing just that. I looked at a feckin great pile of YA novels and this line is what I came up with. It’s maybe not the best, but it is excellent advice. Jackie French is a diamond. And I’m very grateful for her help.

What piece of writing do you wish you had written?
Like most readers, I stand in awe of a great many writers. Bukowski, Auster, Hemingway, Miller, Steinbeck, Didion, Mills, Proulx, Welsh, Kelman, Munro, not to mention close friends who are unaware of how talented they are or just how good their work is are all at the top of this scratched surface. The breadth and depth of writing or writer’s which inspire is, well, too lengthy to be putting in here innit? For fear of sounding haughty or even just having a wank, I do not wish to have written any of it. I am happy, grateful that they have. I get to read it. That’s enough.

What are you currently working towards?
Short term, my PhD. Long term, becoming comfortable enough to call myself a writer.

The future of the book is… much steadier than we have reason to believe. Sure it’s shaken a bit by parallel importation and ugly digitisation, but we will always want books. Finishing a good book, like actually physically turning the last page and then closing it and sighing and having a wee think about it, has to be one of the best feelings ever. That’ll never change. To echo Bob Sessions – electronic books are convenient and the internet is, eh, powerful and all, but they (the powers that be, the forces of greed and evil) can never replace the book. When the CD was invented we were told vinyl was dead. Ask any DJ if that’s true? Look about you, there are eedjits everywhere. Anyone saying the same thing about the book should find a tall mirror and take a few moments…

This post is part of the Queensland Writers Centre blog tour, happening October to December 2009. To follow the tour, visit the Queensland Writers Centre blog, the Empty Page

the secret is there is no secret…

It’s no secret that there’s no secret to successful relationships. Keeping the emotional credit good with the wife is, for me anyway, not that difficult really. You don’t even have to understand the great mystery that is ‘woman’. If there is one of course. When I told someone my theory recently they told me I should write it down. This is a wee bit of a whirl to see what it looks like on paper.

A close friend put me onto the simple formula and for over ten years it’s held me in exceptional stead. I go and get bevvied when I want or need to. I get to spend time with my mates, she shows me great patience (most of the time) and I get a boating trip and a football trip away a year. I know. Hey my wife’s no door mat. She’s a fiercely strong, independent, intelligent, shining example of a good person. I stand in awe of her ability to run a business and a home. I don’t need to suck up her arse either. I’m telling you this same as I tell her. So what about this secret stuff?

It’s simple, I appreciate her. And I tell her. She’s amazing. She should know. So every few weeks I buy flowers. Not for any other reason than she’s a wee sweetie. I never apologise with flowers – it removes any goodness in them. If it’s not the flowers it’s a tub of her favourite of the 31 flavours or a wee CD I know she fancies. Here, this is no sucking up, it’s much less peurile and far more constructive. When I roll in from the casino at daybreak on a schoolnight – it’s only happened once this year so far – and wake her up breaking open the fridge to make a buffet breakfast, she doesn’t even bat an eyelid. She sits back and laughs at me. The credit’s in the bank innit? I’m good for it. She’s happy that I’m happy and I’m happy that I put the effort into keeping things right in the first place. I even get to mong on the couch and give my hangover a proper nursing in peace. Or a sore knee and a torn pair of jeans if we were to take my latest falling over into account.

When I come good, I tell her thanks and she say’s no problem and we resume the patterns of our busy days. Like I said, it’s hardly the makings of a secret formula or some kind of world turning revelation. There’s no doubt my life could be simpler, but it’s not. What I do, with a wee bit of effort, is make it easier.

As for getting yer Nat King Cole… the same rules apply. Were you expecting me to say, that’s a different story?

Postcards

My Icelandic friend. I think I can call him that, he’s the only one I have of the icelandic persuasion anyways, and we get on well enough to warrant me calling him a friend – we’ve bought each other beer on a number of occasions.

Here, I’m getting away from my point. He’s a very clever bloke. PhD qualified, Uni lecturing, travel memoir writer among many other things. It’s probably enough for you to know that he’s one of the good guys. Well he started a blog a while back. Loads of people have contributed. I wanted to show you mine. Have a look. Let me know what you think. Or not.

It’s called Postcard from Stirling

rare haggis sightings…

My spell as a chair at the bwf went as well as I could have hoped for. The first and only real difficulty was the elevated stage. Having the kilt on meant audience members potential for beneath tartan glimpses ran high. I apologised just in case. Everybody giggled. It was a starter for ten. It put a crack in the dam. It didn’t take too much more for a very generous audience to pour their laughter all over the panellists.

Nick Earls steamed in with a steady flow of frothy anecdotes full of writerly wisdom and easy humour. It was quality. It’s why festival peeps love him. Disco Boy and Chaser original, Dominic Knight gave the waters of authorial comedy a stir of his own and the session rapidly turned into a rush of unadulterated entertainment. I laughed my way through it. I even managed to float a couple of questions.

The boys performed like gentlemen and as the chair I had very little to do. You could say it was plain sailing.

A wee seat at the bwf

It’s on innit? The writers festival’s started. Fully swinging. Not a single South Bank car park to be had. Writers and readers wandering round, bumping into each other, spilling words all over the place.

If you see me say hullo. I’ll have my head down with the tunes on. I’m nervous see.  I’m doing a wee bit. Event 68. A quiet affair on the Queensland Terrace. Saturday 11:30-12:30.

I’ll be asking Dominic Knight and Nick Earls ‘What’s in the Name’ of their new books. I’ll be a chair. Hopefully a sharp edged glittery one with clean lines and a sleek cover. But more like the fat auld stinky number with burst cushions and a wee rip across the back that’s been lying on the deck in the weather too long.

It’s the audience I’m nervous of. All them people. Looking at us. Listening. Aye and probably laughing.

Which, of course, is what we’re aiming for. Nick Earls has some lovely stories and Dominic Knight was one of the Chaser originals. He’s bound to have a story or two.

Maybe see ye there.

Here’s a wee link to the bwf thing… so you can have a look over shenanigans planned for the weekend.

hands like a buffalo’s hooves

Some days I just can’t pick things up. Not physically, mentally. Like if my brain had hands, they wouldn’t have fingers, they’d be hooved stumps. 

It’s because I’m oh so very busy. Writing, reading, teaching. It’s mental. Variety is the spice of life, but too many flavours can turn the soup to paste. Which is where my wee brain is at. A thick bookish paste.

It’s because of the books see? Reading them for friends, for the BWF (post to follow shortly), for work and sometimes if I’m lucky, just for fun. And then there’s the writing of them. My own in particular. I’ve started into a more structurally sound draft of the two-week manuscript. I’m enjoying it. But all this book business is too much for my wee brain (I’m really not very clever). It’s been working at maximum capacity for too long. And it’s a wee bit tired, ye know stretched. So I’m having a job gathering new info and keeping it there. I keep falling over myself. It’s harder to break the fall with buffalo’s hooves for hands.

Keeping up with the blog is another thing that’s been getting missed. In a vain effort to regain some normalcy in the places where electronic interaction can go beyond giving a messy inbox a good seeing to, I have (all puns and innuendo aside) found a way to explain myself. Even if it’s not very clearly.

This is only the beginning.

Writing a book in 2 weeks.

I’ve written a novel. My second. I wrote it in 15 days. 55,000 words. Started on July 16. Completed on July 30. It would have taken the best part of 200 hours. So I didn’t see much of my kids. I only managed it because my incredibly understanding wife gave me the invisibility coat we keep for this and similar adventures.

I have to say I’m pleased with myself. It was a slog. A brutal, coffee-wired, head-bending, eye-burning slog, but I’m here, sitting with a manuscript in my hand. In the few days afterward my brain would drop out like a wonky dial-up internet connection. I’d be having a conversation with someone and my mind would just fall away. Not just miss a beat; I’d miss the verse, the chorus and the bridge.

But the book’s done. Better still, it fits together. Obviously it needs a wee edit. First drafts always do. I’m not so worried about the editing. If I’m honest, I’m looking forward to it.

Since then I’ve also written a short story – based on ideas that bounced off each other in my head and landed on the paper. The ideas popped in there mid book, while I was busy tiptoeing the line separating madness from ordinary nonsense. Oh aye, it was a fair old ride.

Postscript to my holiday mindfulness:

Brisbane is much brighter now, but it’s because I know that one day I must and will return to live in Scotland.

I understand that being at home wherever my family are is essential to my well being; living in another country for the good of those closest is fundamental to my soul’s wealth, health and happiness. But being a part of something as colourful, cultured and comical as Scotland is having the sun in my heart, not just on my face.

Sláinte

away home with the unachieved

Last day of the holidays. There’s more shopping and a list of a million other things still to be done. There’s even more things we haven’t seen, places we haven’t been and a hundred people we need to say goodbye to. We’re never going to make it of course. When we get on the plane, we’ll still be saying – we should’ve took the wee yin to the castle, we should’ve seen young Michael, we should’ve headed to London and Leicestershire. We keep telling ourselves we’ll be back next year and we’ll have more time then. If we’d had more time this time, we’d have an even bigger list of unachievements. 

I’m shattered. The time I’ve spent relaxing could be balanced on the edge of the wife’s superheated credit card. Like the card, I’m in need of a wee rest. Time for a breath and a few slow moments. I knew coming home to Scotland would be a bruising affair, emotionally and physically. I didn’t expect to feel quite this battered. Now, I’m looking forward to returning to Brisbane, which only leaves me with another mouthful of questions around where we should be in the world.

Scotland – home and away

I’m in Scotland. It’s brilliant. Rolls n Sausage, Fish Suppers, pickled onions, Irn Bru, warm family, drunk aunties, rainy barbecues and filthy kids. It makes me homesick. Homesick for Scotland. I live in Brisbane now. Have done for the best part of 11 years. But I miss my home land. I really miss it. Coming back makes me realise just how much. This is summer here. It’s holiday time and the family have made an extra effort for us. We really appreciate it too. It’s humbling and exciting and fun. I realise it’s not this brilliant or even welcoming all the time. I also know, before long, I will be hankering for the wide open skies and swimming pools and sunny heat of Brisbane. I realise with no small amount of fear that Scotland may never be home again, I realise with even more fear that Brisbane might never be enough. I’m not sure where it leaves me.