The Pub Lunch

Posted on May 31, 2007

I know lots of people think that the writer’s life is glamourous never thinking that the majority of it is spent wearing trackies and slippers and banging your head on the keyboard in search of inspiration but hey - it has its moments I’ve discovered! A couple of days ago I exchanged my sad slippers for my favourite green suede boots and flew from Sydney to Melbourne for lunch with my delightful publisher and editor. Yes, that’s the kind of girl I am!

Spent four hours getting down there, three hours there and four hours getting back but hell it was worth it just to say I went to Melbourne for lunch. But I also had fun discussing my manuscript ad nauseum (something you can only inflict on your publisher, and maybe your agent to a point) and had a delicious lunch and several glasses of champagne.

Going back 20 years I think the publishers lunch was a given but fringe benefits tax and perhaps a more business-like approach by publishers has made them curtail their lunching, so from an authors POV, lunch with your publisher is a good sign that you are advancing up the food chain.

Paris Je T’Aime

Posted on May 21, 2007

Went to see the film ‘Paris Je T’Aime’ - a title which is extraordinarily difficult to pronounce unless your French is pretty hot. T’Amie is one of those words you just roll around in your mouth and breathe out.

Anyway, the movie, according to the ads, is the number one French film in Australia. Pronounced by one critic AMAZING! It has a ‘star-studded international cast, 18 directors, 18 romantic stories’. While I concede the idea has merit, for me it was a celluloid smorgasbord the ultimately failed to nourish - well, almost.

The last story was of an over-weight, middle-aged American tourist. A postal worker back home, she’s a little lonely in the city of love and tells the story in her very bad French. The right at the end she finds herself in a park, sitting on a bench simply watching Paris being Paris and describes this moment of joy when she feels herself fall in love with Paris and Paris fall in love with her. It’s so beautiful and poignant and genuine, sort of puts the whole film in perspective somehow with its ordinariness.

Gently Rising

Posted on May 18, 2007

Still I Rise You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high,    Still I’ll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines Diggin’ in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history’s shame    I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain    I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear    I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear    I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave.    I rise  I rise   I rise. -maya angelou

The Zimmers

Posted on May 14, 2007

My kids introduced me to The Zimmers I’m probably the last to hear about it - as usual. I defy you to watch it and not have some sort of silly smile on your mush. Wish i was old enough to join up!

Vile Bodies

Posted on May 11, 2007

I read this quote from Evelyn Waugh the other day and thought it was quite interesting, he apparenty wrote this shortly after the success of his second novel ‘Vile Bodies’ - hard to imagine the marketing department of a major publisher allowing that title these days! Nor an editor allowing so many elipses…but here it is:

” There must be a connection of some kind between a writer’s work and his life. His knowledge of the world is limited by his experience…a writer who has never been seriously in love cannot make his characters seem so…But there the connection ends. Nothing is more insulting to the novelist than to assume that he is incapable of anything except the mere transcript of what he observes…Novel writing is a highly skilled and laborious trade…One has for one’s raw material every single thing one has ever seen or heard or felt, and one has to go over that vast smoldering rubbish heap of experience until one finds a few discarded valuables. Then one has to assemble these tarnished and dented fragments and try to make a coherent and significant arrangement of them”

Hear, hear I say. Quite right too.

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