Amra Pajalic

I’m at that stage in my novel where I’m struggling to find my groove. I’ve been thinking about writing it for so long that now that I have the time all the musings I had are a bit stale. I’m preparing for a school talk in a couple of weeks and was searching my old writing to include as part of the talk. Came across my first novel which I’ve always wanted to revisit. So of course I start thinking about how I would re-work this novel and now this is the idea that has my juices flowing.

This leads to a crisis. Am I struggling to find the story because it’s over, the moment to write that novel has been and passed, and it’s time to move onto something else? Or am I self-sabotaging with this shiny new idea that I want to dive into?

After some more reflection I think it’s the former. As writers we love to put up roadblocks for ourselves. Self sabotage by procrastinating. There is always a shiny new idea that we want to work on. I learnt that I had to decide on a story and then stick to it. Not go of on a tangent with every new idea that comes to mind otherwise I’ll never finish anything.

While I’m frustrated with my progress with the current project I have to keep remembering there are a few forces at work. Yes, the idea is a bit stale now, but that doesn’t matter. It always takes a while to write something and you keep going through the process of falling in and out of love with your manuscript. Eventually there is enough there that it keeps pulling you despite yourself and it isn’t such hard work, so I have to just stick it out until that happens.

But also I’m a bit rusty. Not writing on a regular basis has slowed my skills. My brain feels a bit slow and mushy. Words aren’t flowing, ideas aren’t buzzing in my brain. All I can do is practice and practice. Focus on wordcount until quality begins to improve.

The best quote I’ve read lately is:

‘I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.’  ~James Michener

And this is what gives me hope. At the moment I’m writing 1000 words  a day. They’re awful 1000 words, but eventually I’ll pull out 10 words from every 100 and polish them and make them sparkle. A friend is going through the process of producing a draft and whinging about hating the revision process, whereas I love it. If I am revising it means I have the story there and it’s like a crumpled piece of paper that I have to smooth and wrestle out the creases until it’s crisp and clean again.

And so the battle continues.

We’ve all been down with a cold, hubby, baby and me. Although baby copped it the worst with a chest infection. Finally starting to feel better and life will return to normal soon.

I discovered a tv show at my local video store and am hooked. It’s called Queer as Folk and its about four gay friends who live in Pittsburgh and their trials and tribulations. It’s kind of a gay Sex in the City and it’s fabulous. It’s also interesting how my perception has changed watching this show.

While I was never a homophobe I did find myself producing an internal reaction of shock when I saw two men kissing or physically expressing their attraction to each other. Seeing two men together was strange, an oddity and my mind filed it accordingly. After a few seconds I wouldn’t think about it anymore and I’d be able to switch off again and embrace the escapism of the show or movie I was watching, until the next time.

Interestingly I’d feel the same reaction of shock when I saw two women kissing, but it was milder. I’m used to seeing women express their physical affection for each other so a kiss on the lips is not a big stretch, but the only male shows of affection I witness in real life is heterosexual males showing affection in mock fights, or with bruising, hulking touches that in no way imitate physical expressions of love.

But after watching Queer as Folk, I’m now on Season 2, seeing two men kiss, embrace, or engage in any physical act is matter of fact. While the show is amazing in its writing, characterisation and themes, the best thing is that it depicts the gay cultural scene realistically.

Thinking about the way I’ve changed in watching this show makes me realise the power of television and its role in representing different realities and creating acceptance, and I say acceptance because I hate the word tolerance. Tolerance is touted as this whole great initiative that’s supposed to improve the lives of the disenfranchised, but to tolerate is to put up with. You can still hate it, think it’s something wrong, but you turn the other cheek.

We all live in our own little worlds, usually surrounded by the same kind of people as us. Not many of us put ourselves in the path of having our realities challenged. Life rolls on by like a train trundling on train tracks.

If there is something uncomfortable outside the window, we don’t look until we’ve passed by it, but otherwise we’re comfortable in our climate-controlled train cart. When we need to we step off onto the platform, knowing that this is only temporary and soon enough another train will come by to pick us up again.

Watching Queer as Folk yanked me off my train and now I’m riding a fluorescent pink train on diamonte train tracks. Everything is upside down and jumbled. My reality has been altered and I won’t look at the world the same way.

We need more bravery in television programming. Television has the capacity to open up new worlds for us and to normalise those things that are outside of our experience. I’m loving Queer as Folk and the best part is there are five seasons-so I still have more watching to do. If only I could control myself and stretch them out a bit more, instead of watching a season in 10 days.

Want to get a first five page critique by a young adult author and 15 year old teenager to boot. Check out Steph Bowe’s Super Awesome Contest.

As part of the Melbourne Prize for Literature a video was made of all of the finalists. These videos have been uploaded to You Tube so to see my video click here or to see videos from other finalists click here. I especially recommend Simmone Howell’s video. I found it hysterical.

Also I discovered an amazing website and feel like I’ve been slapped with a big dose of common sense. Parents I would recommend you all check it out. It’s called Free Range Kids and it’s about the way there is hysteria these days about kids being kids and we overreact to small dangers as a result we’re not raising our kids to be self-sufficient and able to tackle the challenges of the real world. I love, love, love it. Have a read and see what you think for yourself.

And Mai Wen has given me the Lemonade Award and I want to pass the love around.

This award is given to bloggers who show great attitude and gratitude. The rules for accepting this award:

• Put the Lemonade Stand logo on your blog or within your post.
• Nominate at least 10 blogs with great attitude or gratitude.
• Link the nominees within your post.
• Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
• Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

In the past I spent New Year’s typing up lists of resolutions and goals that I would tape prominently near my computer. The goal would be that each time I sat down to write I would read my goals and resolutions and work toward achieving them. The reality was that I would then torment for the first four months of the year by reading each of my goals, and realising I had actually not done anything to achieve them. By the time May rolled around my eyes stopped seeing my list and it would only be at the end of the year, when I cleared my corkboard that I’d notice my list, read it, feel like crap, and toss it into the trash, before sitting down and typing out yet another list.

Now I’ve learnt better. No more lists, no more bloody goals, no more resolutions, no more torture, no more guilt. There’s nothing like having a baby to give you perspective. When you have kids in your life you realise nothing is in your control. You learn to roll with the punches, make fluid plans, and not procrastinate. So my new year’s resolution: live each day to the best of my ability, write when I can, and take it easy.

2009 has been the best year of my  life in so many ways: the birth of my baby on the 29 December 2008, the publication of my debut novel on the 4 May 2009. Both these events were much anticipated with joy and while they brought me a lot of happiness, 2009 has also been the worst year of my life. I have never been brought so low: motherhood with its sleep deprivation and unending demands, being a debut novelist and navigating the unknown world of publishing where I was so out of my comfort zone it was almost like I was on Mars.

I spent so many years anticipating the joy I would feel when I was published, practicing my interviews in my head, that the reality of being a first-time mother and first-time author, the combined pressure of both, the sleep deprivation and the stress, made it all a jumble of fear, helplesness and failure. It got to the point where I couldn’t wait for the publicity juggernaut to end so I could have some time to breathe, to remember who I am, and to think clearly.

These past few months I haven’t been writing and while not writing has taken me to a dark place, I also needed the time to learn to be still again, to enjoy my solitude and get back to myself. When you have a baby your every moment is consumed and the moments you have to yourself you just crave the oblivion of sleep it seems as if time disappears into a black hole and you blink, and a year has passed. So this year I am going to stop berating myself. Instead of focusing on all the things I say wrong/or do wrong I’m going stop, remember something positive, take a breath and smile.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope it’s a good one for each and every one of you.

When you have a child  the whole focus is on how you as a parent are meant to educate and enrich their life. It seems the relationship works only one way-you are the sage, they are the novice. But in actual fact the relationship is fluid. There is so much a child can teach you. My baby girl is nearly one year-her first birthday is next week. Every night before she goes to bed I read her book. We recently bought the whole collection of Dr Seuss books and it is as if a whole new world has opened up for me.

I read her Green Eggs and Ham last night. My husband heard me reading it and he came and we read it together, alternating a few pages at a time. We started acting out the book and she giggled and we laughed and it was one of the best moments of my life. It was the first time I read this book. I’d heard about Dr Seuss, I’d heard about Green Eggs and Ham, but I’d never read it.

As a child of migrant parents I didn’t have access to this world I am now discovering for the first time with my baby. A world of story books, of nursery rhymes, of silly games. My mother bought us Golden Books, but it was only when I learnt to read at school that I could get into this world. I remember making up stories to go along with the pictures before I went to school and how in some ways when I learnt to read I lost this ability to tell stories.

While she is the child and I am the parent I feel like I’m rediscovering my childhood in some ways. The childhood I never had. When I think about the future and how I want to bring up my daughter I think of teddy bear picnics, cubby houses, doll houses, doing Playschool craft assignments. All the things I dreamt about doing as a child, but never got to experience.

But this relationship is a two-pronged sword. I have to be careful not to live out my fantasies on her. To burden her with my unfulfilled desires. I have to let her be the child she is and have the childhood she’s supposed to. But I will enjoy it. I will enjoy playing with my little buddy and giving the child within me the chance to play and be carefree in a way I never was.

Yesterday I went to the city to receive my prize for the Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Civic Choice Award. During a lovely morning tea hosted by Simon Warrender, Executive Director and Founder of the Melbourne Trust, at the Federation Square boardroom I received my cheque and a certificate from Mark Rubbo, Managing Director of Readings. I want to thank Readings and Hardie Grant Books and of course Melbourne Prize Trust for their support.

Simon was saying how the Civic Prize has grown since the Melbourne Prize began from 400 votes to this year’s 2900 votes. So that was wonderful to hear. Also the videos that were part of the exhibition will be uploaded on You Tube so I’ll be posting the link as soon as it’s ready. The videos were amazing and some of them were funny as.

I promptly hot-footed to the bank to deposit the cheque in the 39 degree heat. Then I went to the bookstore to celebrate and bought Justine Larbalestier’s Liar which I’m really looking forward to reading. Steig Larson’s first book in the Millenium Trilogy. The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, which I read and loved for my husband, and In Cold Blood by Truman Capote cause I’ve always wanted to read it.

On the way there and back I listened to a podcast from the Reading Matters Debate 2007: Girls’ Books vs Boys’ Books and it was absolutely hysterical. Loved Justine Larbalestier’s argument that girls rule the world because of girl germs, Jack Heath’s comparison of boy books being a series of action strung together by plot whereas girls books strive too hard for realism and him reading extracts of Tara Moss’ and Lee Child extracts to prove his point, Jacqueline Wilson asserting that there are female writers still pretending to be male and providing examples to prove it, Simmone Howell talking about all the useless things she learnt from boy books, and David Levithan going nuclear to win the debate. You have to listen to it to believe it. I’m going to be downloading more podcasts to listen to because they are so much fun.

It’s been an amazing month in terms of personal milestones. I received an Arts Victoria grant for creation to work on my new project The Other Daughter, the sequel to The Good Daughter, and an Artists in Schools grant to work at my former high school St Albans Secondary College to develop a short story anthology with the Year 9 extension program in the second half of next year. So next year is going to be all about writing and getting my brain engaged again. Sofia has been going to childcare consistently for a month so next year she’ll be going every morning and I’ll get to write, write, write. So full of glee.

The only bummer has been a month of colds, ear infections, antibiotics, upset tummies, and general malaise for the whole family. Hopefully we’re all on the mend now and will be able to enjoy the holidays in style.

Baby and I have been sick. Both suffering from ear infections and on antibiotics. Starting to feel better, but still droopy. In the meantime there are a few things I’d tell you about happening elsewhere. My friends Jodi and Kim who have a business Art By Wiley have had a write up about their groovy pieces of art here.

Also if you’re under 30 and interested in all things literary, there’s an opportunity for you to blog for ABC’s The Book Show. More info below:

The Book Show Blog

The Book Show, ABC Radio National, has a new blog and we want you to write for it.

It’s about reading, writing, books and publishing. It’s about the book launch you went to last night or the writers’ festival event you really enjoyed. It’s your top 10 book-to-movie adaptations or the books you’ve spotted people reading on trains.

The Book Show and Express Media are in partnership to find a team of young Australian writers to contribute. If you’ve got an internet connection you can be part of it.

It won’t be live until February 2010 but you can check it out here.

The fine print

You must be able to blog at least once a week;

You must be passionate about books, writers’ festivals, writing, reading – anything literary and cultural really.

You are on the younger side of 30.

How to apply

Please send the following four things by January 25th to Artistic Director Bel Schenk at artisticdirector@expressmedia.org.au

1. a sample of writing not longer than 300 words that you’d consider appropriate for a blog;

2. a paragraph outlining why you’d like to be involved in this project;

3. a few sentences that tell us what your main areas of interest are (i.e. romance writing, zine making, writers’ festivals etc).

4. three suggestions for upcoming posts.

What then?
Express Media and The Book Show will select the best writers to contribute to The Book Show Blog. It will be launched February 2010.

You will be given guidance in blogging and ABC editorial policies. The blog will be moderated by a producer on The Book Show.

Then you’ll have a national platform for spreading your ideas. We also hope to provide some ‘fringe benefits’ throughout the year!

For all the poets out there:

I am happy to announce that Moving Galleries is now receiving poetry submissions for our next exhibition, Observance. For details and submissions see: www.movinggalleries.org

As part of the Melbourne Prize for Literature there was a Civic Prize category which was decided by popular vote. Well the votes were in and amazingly I won in this category. To see the announcement click on this link and hit the news link.

I’m so stoked because it was by popular vote which is so amazing. I want to thank Senada Softic-Telalovic for her support by advocating on my behalf in the Bosnian community, and everyone who voted for me. There will be a little ceremony on the 16 December where I will receive my $3000 cheque.

Also in more good news there is a bid in my Ebay auction of my services in critiquing a manuscript to raise money for the Indigenous Literacy Fund so I’m wrapped that I’ll be able to support this amazing cause and hopefully help out a fellow aspiring writer.