tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3144771691824473672024-03-05T08:00:58.215-08:00Melbourne MusingNicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-16329094471716169852013-12-21T22:03:00.001-08:002013-12-21T22:03:36.289-08:00YA WONDERS: THE WHOLE OF MY WORLD - NICOLE HAYESHere's a lovely review of The Whole of My World... <br />
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<a href="http://yawonders.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-whole-of-my-world-nicole-hayes.html?spref=bl">YA WONDERS: THE WHOLE OF MY WORLD - NICOLE HAYES</a>: Growing up in a footy-family myself, this book gripped me like a vice. The book follows the life of Shelley, one of very few footy loving ...Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-5683653868258611252013-01-10T23:28:00.002-08:002013-01-17T10:09:30.182-08:00The Next Big ThingHello all,<br />
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Long time no write, hey?<br />
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Apologies for the delayed response, but I've been working very hard on copyedits and publicity materials for my new novel, THE WHOLE OF MY WORLD. It's been long and painstaking, but very rewarding, and now I have a brand spanking new cover to show for it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnD9hHoV9amWhg0KAGzLrkWP4VuWU9QoTQu4bA0S4UWQhCX8MHdzr0flpKSfSNg0ja_h-voyHgLEeGz8hTvn2FDKnirAS2Kio7Pzs2XxOBMUbmAR66wbhQVQV_R7nzsci49bZ3oi7qYR2I/s1600/Cover.jpg+large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnD9hHoV9amWhg0KAGzLrkWP4VuWU9QoTQu4bA0S4UWQhCX8MHdzr0flpKSfSNg0ja_h-voyHgLEeGz8hTvn2FDKnirAS2Kio7Pzs2XxOBMUbmAR66wbhQVQV_R7nzsci49bZ3oi7qYR2I/s320/Cover.jpg+large.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>
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<time class="entry-date" datetime="2013-01-11T13:14:07+00:00" pubdate=""></time> </div>
</header>Isn't she pretty?<br />
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Needless to say, I love the cover and the final manuscript, and can't wait to see what happens next. I was also fortunate enough to tag along to the Centre for Youth Literature's Publishers' Showcase in December, and was delighted to find that <i>The Whole of My World</i> was being featured as an up and coming novel in 2013. Very cool to have been chosen for this select category. Don't believe me? <a href="http://readalert.blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/2012/12/07/book-list-publishers-showcase-2/">Here's proof...</a><br />
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Since then, I've been catching up with friends old and new, including one particularly funny and talented author by the name of <a href="http://tonywilson.com.au/the-next-big-thing">Tony Wilson</a>. You've probably seen him on TV or heard him on the radio. He's very kindly invited me to participate in this cool idea called the Next Big Thing Blog Meme. Basically, a bunch of writers answer a series of questions on their works in progress. Tony's books for adults include <i><a href="http://amzn.com/B007O30F6A"> Players</a>, <a href="http://amzn.com/B00AOGNPLG">Making News </a></i>and<i><a href="http://amzn.com/B00AMT8XZI"> Australia United</a></i>, and he's written seven picture books for kids. The most recent two are <a href="http://tonywilson.com.au/books/the-emperors-new-clothes-horse"><i>The Emperor’s New Clothes Horse</i></a> (Scholastic 2012) and <i><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/an-elephant-in-the-room/id567961415?mt=11">The Elephant in the Room </a></i>(ebook only). Check him out and say hi for me.<br />
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So here's the meme thingy, and all the latest on what I've been up to. You can follow the meme on twitter too -- #thenextbigthing. Sometimes you can find <a href="https://twitter.com/nichmelbourne" target="_blank">me</a> there too.<br />
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<b>1) What is the working title of your current/next book</b><br />
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My debut book is a Young Adult novel called <i>The Whole of My World</i>. It's the story of a troubled teen, Shelley Brown, who's<span lang="EN-GB"> unable to connect with her grieving dad following her mother's death. Alone and desperate to belong, she escapes into the blokey world of Australian football where she befriends the star full forward who has his own issues, not the least of which is a quickly fading career.</span></div>
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<b>2) Where did the idea come from?</b><br />
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I don't know... Testament to a misspent youth? Partly. But also because I have daughters, and it seems that, no matter how much things change, they still largely stay the same. I started this novel a long time ago, then set it aside, wrote some other stuff, and came back to it. And came back to it. And came back to it... I never quite managed to say what I wanted to say until last year, when I let myself start again. Freeing myself of what I'd written allowed me to find the real story I wanted to tell. And now I get to share it with you guys. </div>
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<b>3) What genre does your book fall under?</b><br />
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It's Young Adult, and it's aimed primarily at teenage girls, although there's enough footy in there to attract boys too. (Fingers crossed.) Oh - and teachers, mums and dads should definitely read this, not just for the fun 1980s references - spot the mullet, people! - but also because the hero/fan dynamic is so prevalent in today's celebrity-obsessed society. And hopefully, <i>The Whole of My World</i> can provide, if not a window into what goes on in a teenager's mind when caught up in obsession, then at least a jumping off point for discussion.<br />
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Anyway, here's the opening...<i> </i>(The "Draft" I refer to here is the football draft. It's not the manuscript draft!)<i><br /></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-size: large;">The Whole of My World... </span></span></span></span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;"><span lang="EN-GB">Prologue:</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>The Draft</span></span></span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;"><i><span lang="EN-GB">Dad always said we were lucky that
there were two of us. Always someone to shepherd when you had the ball. Someone
to <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=314477169182447367" name="_GoBack"></a>pass to when the pressure was on. Someone to cheer
when you kicked a goal.</span></i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;"><i><span lang="EN-GB">But when it came
down to it, when it really was just us two, that’s not how it turned out at
all.</span></i> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;"></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;">
</span></span></span><br />
<h3>
<div class="ChapterHeading">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;"><span lang="EN-GB">Chapter 1</span><span lang="EN-GB">: The Warm-Up
</span></span></span></span></div>
</h3>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;">
</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;"><span lang="EN-GB">The mirror used to be my mum’s. Her
mum’s before that. It’s oval-shaped with a gold frame and patches of tarnish
around the edge, like smudges of dirt that won’t go away. Usually, I keep the mirror
covered – I have a strip of black cloth just wide enough to tuck into the
crooks of its gilded frame. I saved the remnant from Mum’s sewing cabinet
exactly for this reason. But today is different. I need to see what everyone
else will see.</span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange;"><span lang="EN-GB">I study my
reflection in the glass: mousy brown hair, blotchy skin, hazel eyes probably
more brown than green if I’m honest. I’m short with a medium build – years of playing
every sport I could are still visible in parts, even though everything seems
harder to do now. I feel betrayed by my body. The lean muscles are looser,
weaker. My chest has rounded out, full and obvious, despite my efforts to hide
it. Hide <i>them</i>. It feels as though all
the things that made me strong have become unrecognisable and soft. Of no use
to me anymore. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Dad says I’m a late
bloomer. I should probably be grateful for that, except now I’m paying for it...</span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(If you want to read more, you'll have to buy the book when it comes out!) </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<b>4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?</b><br />
<br />
Oooh. That's a hard one. I love <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2913280/" target="_blank">Ashleigh Cummings</a> from <i>Puberty Blues</i>, but it's possible she'd be too old to play Shelley should this ever become a film. (Sorry Ashleigh!) Alternatively, I'd love to see a young unknown step into Shelley's shoes. Any volunteers? As for Josh, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1882152/bio" target="_blank">Xavier Samuel</a> would be great, age permitting. I can totally see <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0612534/" target="_blank">Callan Mulvey</a> as Mick Edwards.<br />
<br />
<b>5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?</b><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-GB">Unable to connect with her grieving dad
following her mother's death, a troubled teen befriends a professional footballer dealing with the looming end of his career.</span><br />
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<b>6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?</b><br />
<br />
<i>The Whole of My World </i>is being published by the fabulous people at Random House in June this year. I'm represented by Elizabeth Troyeur, at Elizabeth Troyeur and Associates in Sydney. She's ace. :-)<br />
<br />
<b>7) How long did it take you to write the first draft?</b><br />
<br />
Which first draft? Let's just say three months. (Give or take twelve years.)<br />
<br />
<b>8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?</b><br />
<br />
How do you answer that question without sounding presumptuous and wanky? Very well... Several of my early readers mentioned Craig Silvey's <a href="http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781741757743">Jasper Jones</a> when they finished my manuscript, which is just lovely thank you very much. I'm a big admirer of <a href="http://www.as-king.com/">A.S. King</a>, too, although it's hard to draw parallels between your own work and that of authors you love. Another reference point might be Paul D. Carter's <a href="http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781742379715" target="_blank">Eleven Seasons</a>, which I've literally just finished reading. Lots of parallels there, but drawn from the other side of the story.<br />
<br />
I guess, ultimately, what I think doesn't matter. What do YOU think? I'd love to hear from you once you've read my book.<br />
<br />
<b>9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?</b><br />
<br />
My daughters and my dad. My daughters because I want them to grow up strong and smart and brave enough to say no sometimes, like Shelley realises she must do. And my dad because of his love for sport and language, and his ability to turn the rough and tumble of Australian football into something both poignant and poetic with his dry wit and a few quietly spoken words.<br />
<br />
<b>10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?</b><br />
<br />
It's set in the 1980s, which should be great fun for anyone who lived through them, and even those who wished they did but don't realise it. (I'm looking at you, puffy-shoulder-padded Gen Yers.) Shelley is funny and smart, and an all-round cool chick to hang with. Hunky full forward Mick Edwards, yummy boy-next-door, Josh McGuire, and tortured but loyal Tara Lester think so. I bet you do too.<br />
<br />
Plus, all those cute boys.<br />
<br />
* * * * * <br />
<br />
Phew. Now it's my turn to do some tagging. The following authors are friends whose writing I greatly admire -- authors whose books you should all hunt down immediately so you can see how smart I am.Or how smart my friends are anyway.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://stevenoconnorwriting.com/e-fps-for-99c-win-a-100-amazon-card/" target="_blank"><i>EleMental</i> </a>is <a href="http://stevenoconnorwriting.com/" target="_blank">Steven O'Connor's</a> first Young Adult novel.
Originally from Luton, England, he now lives in Melbourne with his wife, two teenage children and Sparks, his ever-attentive,
ever-hungry Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Quite apart from all that, he barracks for Hawthorn. 'Nuff said?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://redroom.com/member/j-p-smith/blog" target="_blank">JP Smith</a> is a screenwriter and novelist whose latest book, <a href="http://redroom.com/member/j-p-smith/books/airtight" target="_blank"><i>Airtight</i></a>, was published in November 2012. His other novels are <a href="http://redroom.com/member/j-p-smith/books/breathless" target="_blank"><i>Breathless </i> </a>(Viking Penguin); <a href="http://redroom.com/member/j-p-smith/books/the-discovery-of-light" target="_blank"><i>The Discovery of Light</i></a> (Viking Penguin), <i><a href="http://redroom.com/member/j-p-smith/books/the-blue-hour" target="_blank">The Blue Hour</a> </i> (British American Publishing); <a href="http://redroom.com/member/j-p-smith/books/body-and-soul" target="_blank"><i>Body and Soul </i></a> (Grove Press) and<br />
<a href="http://redroom.com/member/j-p-smith/books/the-man-from-marseille" target="_blank"><i>The Man from Marseille</i></a> (St Martin’s Press). A great guy and a versatile writer, get used to seeing his name a lot in the near future.<br />
<br />
<br />
Historical fiction author <a href="http://www.elizagraham.co.uk/Pages/default.aspx" target="_blank">Eliza Graham</a>'s books include <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playing-With-The-Moon-ebook/dp/B004E9T0WC/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=A3TVV12T0I6NSM&qid=1333203886&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Playing with the Moon</a></i>, shortlisted for the 2008 World Book Day Book to Read, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Restitution-Eliza-Graham/dp/0230741886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333203854&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Restitution</a></i>, and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jubilee-Eliza-Graham/dp/0330509268/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1333203933&sr=1-2" target="_blank">Jubilee</a></i>. Her latest novel, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-History-Room-Eliza-Graham/dp/0330509276/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333203761&sr=8-1" target="_blank">The History Room</a></i>, was published by Macmillan in 2012. I've known Eliza for some years now -- she's a beautiful writer and a good friend. She also very kindly helped me out with edits of <i>The Whole of My World</i>, for which I am eternally grateful.<br />
<br />
I fell in love with <a href="http://cathylea.wordpress.com/about/" target="_blank">Catherine Lea</a>'s amazing blog some time last year. You want to be inspired? Read<a href="http://cathylea.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/its-liver-failure-but-not-as-we-know-it/" target="_blank"> Happiness: Optional</a>. You want to be touched and have a tiny bit of your heart broken? Read <a href="http://cathylea.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/sayonara-2012/" target="_blank">Happiness: Optional</a>. You want to feel humbled and amazed, and in awe of Cathy's endless grace? Read <a href="http://cathylea.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/its-liver-failure-but-not-as-we-know-it/" target="_blank">Happiness: Optional</a>. You want... ? Look. Just read it, OK? <br />
<br />
That's my end of the deal, all sown up. Thanks for bearing with me, and see you all soon. Just make sure you follow the links, and if you like this post, feel free to share it via whatever social media you can lay your mobile device on. <br />
<br />
Cheers.<br />
<br />
Nic<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-25434354873345499362012-10-07T17:53:00.003-07:002012-10-07T17:55:05.598-07:00Announcing my new baby... the literary kind.Apologies to my friends and followers for the inordinate lapse in updates. The last months have been crazy and wonderful all at once. (Though with lots of tedious bits in between, despite my misguided belief that all that would stop when the best happened.)<br />
<br />
Anyway. The big news is that my first novel is being published by Random House in June 2013. For obvious reasons, this has brought about much leaping and cheering in my household. (Most of it by me, a bit by my bemused kids, and a slightly bigger bit by my Cute American Husband who's been listening to me bang on about this novel for the wrong side of a decade.) Finally, you see, it looks like I might have achieved the one thing writers long for... No. Not millions of dollars, or a line of rubbery dolls made in the form of my main character. Though that sounds kind of cool. What we really crave, dream and long for is, well, <i>readers</i>. We say we love writing for the sake of it - and on one level we do of course; God knows we're not in it for the money - but writing and writing (and writing) with no or limited chance of a readership is less than satisfying. Actually, it can be soul destroying.<br />
<br />
But now I've had my Young Adult novel picked up by Random House which means that the first part of this dream looks like it might come true. It means I'll be able to hold in my hands a book with my name on the cover and even - deep breath - see it on a shelf in a bookshop somewhere without my having to break any laws or codes of decency to get it there. The backing of a publisher with the reputation and prestige of Random House means that the chances of finding readers - real readers who actually pay to read my story - have now significantly improved. However, that's not the end of it.<br />
<br />
Which is where you lovely people come in. (insert obsequious smiley face here)<br />
<br />
Over the coming months, right up to and following the launch of my novel, I will, on occasion, draw on your lovely brains, mouths and keyboards to help me get word out about this novel and, eventually, perhaps even buy it. This is the way of publishing now - word of mouth and online support will make or break this book, and without the support of those who love - or even vaguely like - my writing will hopefully be prepared to back it when asked. <br />
<br />
But more on that later. If you'll indulge me.<br />
<br />
Right now, I'm nearing the end of revisions and am hoping to have a near-to-final draft of said novel in the hands of my brilliant editor within a fortnight, so I will have to disappear again to hold up my end of the deal and deliver a manuscript that is good enough to soon become a book. <br />
<br />
Bear with me while I sort out my end of the arrangement and, in the meantime, prepare yourselves for updates and requests in the coming months aimed entirely at helping publicise and advocate for my new and first baby, currently known as <i>Full Forward</i>. (Yes, I mean my novel. Sheesh.)<br />
<br />
I hope you will indulge (understand/tolerate) these occasional requests, and that you will do what you can to help the process along.<br />
<br />
I will tell you more about the novel in posts to come, but in the meantime, keep reading and stay in touch.<br />
<br />
Nic xxxNicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-14625834001423054332012-04-15T04:50:00.003-07:002012-04-15T05:07:59.329-07:00Update to Googling old friends...It's been great seeing my article about googling old friends published on the very cool Mamamia site. If you haven't seen it yet, here's the <a href="http://www.mamamia.com.au/relationships/how-is-it-possible-that-i-didnt-know/">link</a>. If you have, you'll know that many comments have suggested that I contact my friend's family, despite my misgivings. Many readers felt that having lost their daughter, my friend's parents most likely would want to hear about how she is loved and missed even now, three years later. And I guess I see that now. I have attempted a couple of times to write the letter I'd like to send but have decided to let it sit a while first because, frankly, I want to get it right. There's so much to think about, and still some measure of shock at play. I have lots of questions and very few answers, many of them simply about what to say. And what not to say. Should I mention the article and blog, or shouldn't I? Should I reference the years apart or simply remind them of our time together? How much or how little should I say? These are the questions that hold me back from sending my letter right away, but won't, I assure you, stop me from sending it at all.<br /><br />(The questions are rhetorical, btw. I'll find my own answers soon enough. :-) )<br /><br />In the meantime, I just want to say how thoroughly overwhelmed I've been by the generous and candid responses provided here and at Mamamia - I had no idea this piece would generate such a warm reception, so I'm taking the moment to thank you all for your thoughtful consideration and your moving responses.<br /><br />I'm working on a new novel as I await word on the current one, but will try to blog more often than I have recently, as much because it's been such a lovely experience getting to know all of you readers as because, frankly, I need the exercise.<br /><br />Look forward to seeing you around here and will be sure to update you when there's something new to read.<br /><br />Cheers.<br />NicNicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-26058714705066661762012-04-13T04:29:00.002-07:002012-04-13T04:49:41.627-07:00He's just so cute...<!--[if 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mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:shapedefaults ext="edit" spidmax="1026"> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:shapelayout ext="edit"> <o:idmap ext="edit" data="1"> </o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:36.0pt"><span lang="EN-US">At the end of last year, in a fit of guilty parenting brought on by a heartbroken 11 year old, we caved in and brought home a little bundle of joy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Not the two-legged kind </span><span lang="EN-US">— God forbid. We've already done that twice, and we're still paying dearly.</span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s more a case of breeders dropping by.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Dog breeders.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:36.0pt"><span lang="EN-US">Yes, we have a puppy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A round, troublesome lump of fur who can simultaneously melt your heart while ripping your finger off.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Not a small feat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But to see him you’d think he’d been doing it all his life.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And after he does it, I hear myself, and the rest of my clan, say, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">He’s just so cute</i>.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:36.0pt"><span lang="EN-US">We’re into our fourth month of “parenthood” -- I know, I know; bear with me -- and already I’ve learnt a lot about animals, veterinarians, and myself.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> Not to mention a whole lot of local strangers with whom I have bonded over steaming piles of dog poo in the handful of off-lead areas near our house. (But I digress.) </span>I’ve learned that animals give signals and communicate just as definitively as we do (in the case of many men I know, a lot more) and, correspondingly, to ignore them is, well, pretty stupid.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:36.0pt"><span lang="EN-US">For example, in those first weeks, Brody (alleged to be half golden retriever, but is inexplicably terrified of water) would suddenly run about the room in mad circles, begin sniffing the floor, look at me helplessly, then pee a gallon (like only a puppy can).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My mistake so often was that I didn't attend to the signs.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The fact that they changed almost daily is my lookout.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sometimes he just sniffed and peed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Other days he would run in circles <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">after</i> the business rather than before.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And still other times, it might seem as if he did nothing to warn us at all, unless you can count those microseconds before the release, when he looked up at us piteously, almost shamefacedly, while squatting on the the only unstained section of our family room carpet.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:36.0pt"><span lang="EN-US">Then of course, there’s that biting thing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Considering that Brody still has his “milk teeth” it’s amazing that they can be so sharp.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My heart goes out to his poor mother if she had to suffer his needle-like teeth on her tired and worn teat every time he was hungry (about every twenty minutes at the time of writing).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And he was one of <span style="font-style: italic;">seven </span>in his litter.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I have pin holes and welts all over my hands, arms, and feet — even one across my right cheek — where our precious little darling has left his mark, and there’s only one of him.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:36.0pt"><span lang="EN-US">The books say that he’s teething and so it’s inevitable that he will chew and nip.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But if he’s teething, then how come he already has teeth?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Really, he doesn’t need anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The ones he’s got are more than effective.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:36.0pt"><span lang="EN-US">The second thing I’ve learned is that veterinarians are UNBELIEVABLY expensive.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, forget private school fees for the kids, renovating the house, or even a new car some day.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our money is paying off our local vet’s kids' private school tuition, three times over.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And despite the fact that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">we</i> are paying, she hardly ever talks to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">us</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She just talks to the patient, which I’m sure is very considerate, but it is not especially practical.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“So, Brody, how are you feeling today?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Got rid of those worms yet?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I feel a bit like an intruder when they have these conversations which, I think she’s gradually realising, tend to be a little one-sided.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:36.0pt"><span lang="EN-US">And then there’s the training aspect.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We patiently repeat these inane, simple commands, hoping to get any response, let alone the right one, while he sniffs and looks distractedly away.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When he does finally sit, the fact that you told him to “come” is forgotten as you lavish praise on the adorable tike, only to have him grab your hand in his razor-sharp teeth and chomp down <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">really hard</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And as you yelp painfully, he looks up at you innocently and you have this wild, insane desire to pet him again, just because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">he’s so cute</i>.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">And this is the bit I’m learning about myself.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Apart from the fact that I seem to have developed a certain masochism where bodily pain is concerned, I have also discovered in me an almost endless pool of tolerance and patience.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And that even though there are brief, delicious moments when I dream of a time before Brody, I am so permanently tied to him, that I cannot really imagine a future without him.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><i style="">He’s just so cute.</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><i style=""><br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-45691531234678773332012-03-14T20:20:00.007-07:002012-03-14T22:35:51.520-07:00Googling old friendsA strange thing happened to me last night and I'm not sure what to do about it. I googled an old friend's name. Googling a face from the past isn't the strange thing - I've done this more times than I'd like to admit. (Almost as many times as I've googled my own name to see if some sneaky publisher has released my novel without telling me... Wait. Did I just say that out loud?) The <span style="font-style:italic;">strange </span>thing is that I hadn't googled this particular friend before. I don't know why. She was my absolutely best of best friends in primary school. We even managed to maintain that friendship throughout Year 7 where philosophical differences and geography intervened, sending us to different schools in different suburbs across the city. Even then, for a while, we stuck it out.<br /><br />And then time and age and adolescent uncertainty kicked in and suddenly the slow responses when I called, or the less frequent visits on weekends seemed to mean something had changed, or shifted anyway. Things we took for granted had to be felt out, considered, measured with care. The conversations a little forced, or stiff anyway. We saw each other more sporadically, less freely, and then that dropped off too. I don't know if it petered out or simply ceased overnight, but one day I just didn't see her anymore. For a while after that I thought about her a lot. And then I didn't. Life moved on. New friends came and went. We grew up, separately. Irreversibly.<br /><br />The thing is, I adored her like only a young girl can. I think she felt the same about me, too. No one has ever made me laugh like she did. Nor loved the same things with the same passion and intensity. At the time it was KISS. We had every record, knew all the lyrics. We could draw each of the members' make-up in perfect imitation of the real thing, colours and all, and their outfits were imprinted on our memory way better than the 12 times' tables ever would be. We knew their wives' names, their dogs' names... We could sing the words backwards, literally, like some dwarf-loving David Lynch movie. We studied the lyrics for hidden meanings, transcribed them onto the page, moving them around, putting them back where they belonged. We belted out their songs at the top of our lungs, making up dances that would make Seinfeld's Elaine clap out loud. She called me "Nickski". I called her "Jubski". We made up our own language, quoting chunks from it in the schoolground with the arrogant fluency of Kevin Rudd addressing the Chinese parliament.<br /><br />We rode our bikes down the newly developing Glen Waverley streets, scouting out hiding places amongst the scaffolding and house frames, wrote our names on the bitumen with chunks of chalky clay. We stalked the gorgeous curly-haired Year 8 boy we were crushing on with frightening intensity. She'd report the next day on new sightings after I'd gone home. While I'd wish we could live in the same house so I didn't have to miss out on these moments which I was certain were meant to be ours to share. Her dog came when I called him, her little brother hassled me like an annoying little brother should. Her mother baked my favourite dessert when she knew I was coming, and her dad would test his advertising pitches on us both. They included me in their lives as though I had as much right to be there as anyone with the same last name. Day after day. Week after week. Year after year.<br /><br />And then it stopped. I can't say when exactly, and I don't know why. But it did. And I missed her. I like to hope she missed me too. Somewhere though I always thought we'd run into each other again. We still lived in the same suburb, despite the school change, and by rights, we should have seen each other all the time. We could have if we wanted to. Found a way to catch up, maintaining this friendship somehow, by correspondence, or on big occasions. We could have done that. Except we didn't. And then it ended, and suddenly my everything became my history, and no longer the centre of my life. Not part of my life at all.<br /><br />So it's a strange thing that last night was the first time I ever tried to Google her. Her name is unique and unforgettable. There are not two of them, of that I'm sure. So to finally see her name online, all three bits, hyphenated like always - distinguishing her from the bland cream brick veneer of our childhood Glen Waverley - was something amazing.<br /><br />And something shocking, too.<br /><br />It didn't take long - a quick search and suddenly I was seeing her name in bold font. Large lettering, as clear as the words I write now. Front and centre, featured on a beautifully designed website that reminded me of a scrapbook, or a wedding album. It wasn't either of those things. It was a remembrance page.<br /><br />It was the only mention I could find, the only reference with all three of her names. The only online evidence she ever lived was scrawled on a website dedicated to the dead. Slowly, as I scanned the pages, the tributes, the farewell messages, I began to accept that she had passed away. My best friend in the whole wide world that was my childhood died three years ago, and I didn't even know it. At the time, my heart did not skip a beat. I didn't feel the loss, or sense her absence. Nothing moved or ended. No moment of realisation or awareness. I didn't know, or notice, or see. I still wouldn't know if I hadn't been trying so hard not to write.<br /><br />How is it possible that someone who is so intrinsic to your life, to how you breathe, think and feel, can pass through so easily into her own life, and then the afterlife, without even the tiniest of ripples in your own?<br /><br />How is it possible my one-time best friend died and I didn't even realise?<br /><br />I've spent much of today in a daze, not sure what to do with this information. Whether I have a right to do anything at all. I forget about it every now and then - just like I'd forgotten about her in those busy periods of my life when there was too much else for my mind to hold on to - and then it hits me like a wall. Hard and impenetrable. Impossible and unforgiving.<br /><br />I'd like to tell her family I still miss her. I'd like to tell them she was amazing and special and unforgettable. I'd like to say all of this and more. Somehow though I know this won't happen. Shouldn't happen. It's not my place. Not my right. She isn't mine to grieve - I gave that privilege up a long time ago.<br /><br />So now I have to find a place to keep her, a place of respect and love, alongside the other things I've lost that perhaps were never really mine to have anyway. Alongside my promise to sometimes, every now and then, just remember her. And to hope that my daughters find a friend like I had, even if just for a little while.<br /><br />JWM - Rest in Peace.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-84329234239646146632012-01-29T17:26:00.000-08:002012-01-29T17:42:24.969-08:00Michael Sala's The Last Thread<span style="font-weight:bold;">The Last Thread<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span><br />By Michael Sala<br />(Affirm Press)<br /><br />Broken into two parts, Michael Sala’s <span style="font-style:italic;">The Last Thread</span> tells the story of Michaelis (later, in an effort to fit in with his Australian home, Michael) and his family’s migration from The Netherlands to Australia, from Australia to The Netherlands, and back to Australia again. Largely autobiographical, it depicts his early years as the younger and, in his mind, less favoured of two brothers and their complicated relationship with their frustratingly inept mother. Detailing the years with a cruel and bullying stepfather, through the difficult terrain of family scandal surrounding their separation from an enigmatic father, and their mother’s frequently terrible choices in love and life, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Last Thread</span> is at times both beautiful and poignant, if a little uneven.<br /><br />The first section largely follows the chronology of events and is, I believe, the more successful part. Told in the subjective third person from the young Michaelis’s point-of-view, it weaves in and out of the lives of his family, which, much like the narrative, is in perpetual motion, staying still only long enough for Michaelis — and the reader — to begin to feel like he might have found a home. Each of these upheavals is driven by his complex and difficult mother’s search for happiness. Of course, this sort of search for happiness is futile and painful. The answers his mother seeks don’t exist outside herself and have nothing — or little — to do with geography, although the rendering of the Australian landscape in the 1970s through the eyes of a foreigner certainly paints a bleak and confronting picture of just how hostile and unforgiving it could be. (And perhaps - given the Cronulla riots, our treatment of asylum seekers and Indigenous Australia - still is.) While the family’s fate is driven by the mother’s pursuit of the impossible, the story is focussed on how Michaelis adjusts to these sudden and often shocking upheavals, without ever satisfactorily exploring the emotional toll these decisions have on the young and lonely boy, except in the pervasive sense of disconnection - from everything. The disconnect between the characters and their emotions echoes the disconnect this reader felt with Michaelis himself. Whether by accident or design, like Michaelis, the reader must also keep up with these jarring shifts, forced to reconnect the emotional fractures that characterise all of Michaelis’ relationships. To fill in the gaps. The effect is both compelling and frustrating.<br /><br />The second part of the novel is told in first person, in the voice of Michael as the man he is today: a father and partner struggling to relinquish the tentacles of his torrid and fraught history. This section moves back and forth through Michael’s memories and his present day to varying success, with the added effect of bringing another dimension to the character, while still rendering him largely unknowable. It is as though by luring the reader to a point where we feel we’re just getting to know and understand this man/boy, we are abruptly delivered somewhere else, restricting us from the access we desire. Much as Michael/Michaelis is by his mother’s restless search for a place that feels like a home.<br /><br />The backcover blurb tells us that “Michael — now a father — must decide if he can free himself from the dark pull of the past”, however, this is not where we find ourselves in the end. Rather, Michael — and the reader — are left grappling with the man he’s become, a man still bound by the suffocating fears and injustices that plagued his childhood years.<br /><br />Overall, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Last Thread</span> is rich and beautifully drawn but also, ultimately, vaguely unsatisfying. I suspect that the “truth” of this <span style="font-style:italic;">roman a clef</span> is perhaps the very thing that limits its possibilities. I wonder why Sala chose to fictionalise at all when he seemed attached to a “true” or real ending that leaves us with more questions than answers. Just as Michaelis/Michael is a work in progress, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Last Thread</span> felt a bit like an unfinished manuscript too. Having said that, there is much to enjoy in this novel, and I’m keen to read more of Sala’s fiction. My hope is that, next time, this talented and exciting new writer frees himself to move further from the autobiographical into the fictional where, I’m certain, breathtaking fiction awaits.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-1636283931170174532012-01-21T15:23:00.000-08:002012-01-21T15:37:48.419-08:00Back from HiatusIs it possible that the last post I made was in May? That the last book I reviewed was eight months ago? Oh, say it ain't so.<br /><br />For reference, in that time I've completed a novel and sent it off into the loving arms of my tireless agent and am now awaiting word from publishers. In the meantime, I am NOT checking my email hourly, turning my phone on and off to make sure it's working, OR sending said agent inane tidbits about the latest book I read, or a cool new washing product (that really works!), just to remind her I exist.<br /><br />I'm not, I tell you. I'm. Not.<br /><br />What I <span style="font-style:italic;">am </span>doing is trying to decide what to write next. Right now, the answer is hovering somewhere between something similar but a bit different to what I've just finished and resurrecting my longheld desire to join the circus. <br /><br />As you can see, I'm making excellent progress. <br /><br />So while I draw ever closer to determining the meaning of life, I have some books I want to review cluttering my bedside table, and better I empty them here than continually harangue my agent. At least, that's what <span style="font-style:italic;">she </span>says.<br /><br />Still with me?<br /><br />I'll be back with the first of these soon. In the meantime, follow me on Twitter (@nichmelbourne) which is all that's stopping me from parking outside every publisher in Australia, brandishing my 300 page manuscript like a sword.<br /><br />NicNicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-87967160526178427442011-05-05T18:54:00.000-07:002011-05-05T19:19:07.044-07:00Fugitive Pieces by Anne MichaelsI have this thing I do, when there are gaps between books I’ve been wanting to read, where I go back to novels I’d dismissed despite critical applause. My inner literary snob wants to believe that any quality novel can sustain my attention, even if it deals with a subject I’m not interested in. Or am sick of. Or simply cannot bear to delve into for various reasons — perceived bleakness, ungodly length (<em>Freedom</em>, anyone?*), or because the author has taken a shortcut to fame (James “It’s a true story!” Frey). <br /><br />World War II novels have fallen into my growing pile of neglected brilliance for no better reason than I’ve read a lot of them. It seemed my entire HSC English literature booklist was comprised of WWII books, both fiction and memoir, and although a decade — (cough) or two — has passed, the memories still haunt. I’d begun to feel that there was really nothing to say about Nazi atrocities, Jewish escape narratives, or London bombings that hadn’t already been said, and very eloquently for the most part. (Apparently Australia was also in the Second World War, although no one told the Year 12 English curriculum coordinator.) So I opened Anne Michaels’ <em>Fugitive Pieces</em> (1996) with some trepidation — even the title suggested another bleak account of hatred and cruelty, followed by loss and displacement, culminating in stoic survival. The requisite arc for survival stories.<br /><br />And then I read it.<br /><br /><em>Fugitive Pieces</em> is written in two parts: Book 1 and Book 2. It opens with the fictional account of Jewish poet Jakob Beer who, as a young boy, escapes the horror of his parents’ killing in a village in Poland, by running through the dark forest at night and burying himself in the dirt to avoid detection during the day. The horrific but gripping depiction of his escape is over quickly however, as it primarily serves to set up the encounter that shapes the novel: the loving relationship between the boy and his rescuer.<br /><br />“No one is born just once” Jakob tells us, in a novel that takes rebirth as its theme — even as it focuses on what we find under the ground. There is Jakob’s earthen burial, the dark, filthy hiding place from which he emerged to be rescued by the Greek geologist and humanist Athos Roussos, who wonders if this apparition were one of “Biskupin’s lost souls”. Athos is on an archeological dig when he sees this filthy boy, and takes the strange and courageous step of helping him escape, and giving him a new life.<br /><br />“Lost soul” doesn’t touch the edges of the depths of the protagonist of this story. Jakob is both lost and beautiful, fragile and resilient, nurtured to health and a fragile peace in the capable arms of the loving father-figure, Athos. The story that unfolds as Athos takes Jakob to a Greek island to hide and, eventually, Toronto to migrate, is one of enduring love and the power of human connection to rekindle the spirit and renew life and hope. Michaels’ novel tells us that we are not complete as beings until we have loved, and been loved. That through this love, we can find rebirth.<br /><br />A man of enormous wisdom, Athos gives the haunted Jakob another life, another language — two languages, in the end — and with this, a sense of history and humanity. Travelling across continents, struggling to find food, shelter and a place to call home, all the while grappling with having left his beautiful older sister to an unknown fate when he escaped, Jakob remains an almost mystical spirit, somehow separate and removed from the world around him, except in the stories and wisdom imparted by Athos. And in the lasting friendships this man brings to him. <br /><br />After Athos’s death, having anchored his soul in the warmth of his mentor, Jakob turns to Athos’s words and history to escape his grief. He posthumously publishes Athos’s notes rejecting the Nazis’ falsification of history, in a book called, <em>Bearing False Witness</em>, and believes, for a time, that he's found love with Alex who he too quickly marries. But his darkness persists and the marriage ends, thrusting Jakob back into the search for understanding and peace in language, literature and scholarship. Saved by a friendship with a local family, Jakob is introduced to Michaela and, together, they return to Athos’s family home in Greece, complete and content, and finally at peace.<br /><br />The second part of this novel deals with Ben, a Toronto-based professor who has grown up with parents haunted by the Holocaust, to the point that they seem unable to connect with him in the same way that they can connect with his wife, Naomi. Unable — or unwilling — to stop this from driving a wedge between himself and Naomi, Ben seeks out solace in separation, leaving his wife in his search for Jakob Beer’s lost journals. Ben had met Jakob before he died, and uses this quest as a means to avoid his damaged relationship with his parents, and his anger with his wife. <br /><br />For a short time, this second section became an unwanted distraction from what I thought was the real story. I was completely caught up in Jakob’s life and quest for peace, and felt deflated and lost, initially, when I realised that his story, ostensibly, was over. I persisted, though, and gradually grew to care about Ben, who manages a difficult but eventual resolution to his own damaged soul, largely as a result of the truths he found in Jakob’s experience.<br /><br />Michaels’ language is exquisite. The evidence of her poetry is as clear in the deft imagery in her sentences as in their brevity. Beautiful and simple, she waves an almost mystical sheen across the places and people who inhabit this novel, without ever compromising their inherent warmth. Graphic and grim in places, somehow even the most horrible scenes have a majesty about them as examples of humanity, both good and evil. She describes the Greek village, Kalavrita, following the German invasion, accordingly: “In the valley, charred ruins, blackened stone, a terrible silence. A place so empty it was not even haunted.” And Toronto: “A city of forsaken worlds; language a kind of farewell.” And in perhaps the most poignant observation, the universal experience of grief and loss is eloquently rendered thus: “The grief we carry, anybody’s grief, is exactly the weight of a sleeping child.”<br /><br />Anne Michaels is a poet, literally and figuratively, but unlike much of the poetry that seems to monopolise contemporary poetry pages (wherever they’re hiding), Michaels’ language never loses site of humanity, warmth, and the exquisite complexity of the human condition.<br /><br /><br /><br />* Two things: 1. I’ve now read Jonathan Franzen’s <em>Freedom </em>. 2. I am not opposed to the notion of a long book. Having said that, when I have to lug the bloody thing in a backpack already weighed down by manuscripts and endless parent crap, it reminds me, and I’ll remind you... Size <em>does </em> matter.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-41584345218616800792011-04-09T22:13:00.000-07:002011-04-10T04:52:48.605-07:00The Poetry of Eddie VedderIt’s a strange thing that whenever I confess my admiration — OK adoration — for Pearl Jam, it’s often met with a blank stare. Which is interesting enough, given the band’s profile, but more surprising is that sometimes I get the eye roll. When I query said eye-roller, they often can’t name a single song. Or they can name a song, but only from Pearl Jam's first album, and usually “Jeremy”. Either way, it’s an opinion drawn on little, if any, actual familiarity with their music. <br /><br />(OK. I have no doubt there are people who hate Pearl Jam having given them a fair and reasonable hearing. I just haven’t met them, m’kay?) <br /><br />The lack of familiarity comes from the fact that Pearl Jam do not benefit from regular airplay on commercial radio, nor do they have a string of memorable video clips on 24-hour rotation on Rage. (It’s probably called something else now. So I’m old. Sue me.) In fact, Pearl Jam have released only a handful of video clips, apart from those drawn from live shows, MTV unplugged performances, or the multiple bootleg YouTube offerings. Adding to their lack of broadcast opportunities, for a decade they eschewed the conglomerate Ticketmaster, using their own outlets and pioneering online ticket sales to distribute concert tickets to their loyal fans, in the process successfully keeping ticket prices comparable to the cost of a paperback novel but also, conversely, limiting the stadiums and venues where they could play. In theory they wanted to let their music sell itself. According to Rolling Stone, however, they seemed to have spent a lot of time “deliberately tearing apart their own fame.” <br /><br />Quite successfully, my informal surveys suggest. <br /><br />Musical taste is an incredibly subjective thing. One that often defies explanation, reason and logic. So I will not waste a moment trying to convince anyone here of Pearl Jam’s musical worth. You can click on the links and decide for yourself. (Or look at the impressive list of their collaborators, musical awards, number of fans, and body of work...OK. Couldn’t resist entirely.) <br /><br />What I will do, though, is tell you why anyone who reads, writes, or appreciates language is missing out on some of the best poetry of my own fading generation. (The Xers, for those who haven’t caught up.) The reason they’re adored by so many and continue to sell out whenever they tour is because people — myself included — want to hear what Eddie Vedder has to say. As the lead singer and main lyricist, he is the driving force behind this band. But more than this, his lyrics transform an eclectic, grungey array of musical expression into something almost transcendental — a quality taken even further by his solo catalogue. <br /><br />But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s give Eddie the pen for a moment. <br /><br />What I’d like to do is just copy slabs of his lyrics and let him speak for himself. This, however, most likely breaches all kinds of copyright — quite apart from being all kinds of lazy. So what I’ll do instead is highlight selected extracts from his catalogue that I think best expresses why we — Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder fans alike — hang off his every word. <br /><br />Perhaps the best place to start is with Pearl Jam’s first single — one of only a handful they’ve released over the years. (Yet another example of their anti-marketing strategy.) <br /><br />“Alive” tells the story of a teenaged boy whose mother tells him that his father is actually his stepfather, and that his real father died. <br /><br /><strong>“Son,” she said, “have I got a little story for you <br />What you thought was your daddy was nothing but a... <br />While you were sitting home alone at age thirteen <br />Your real daddy was dying. <br />Sorry you didn’t see him, but I’m glad we talked...”</strong> <br /><br />Grim, shocking, and worse, in the next verse hinting at incest, this was eventually revealed to be autobiographical. Part of a trilogy that Vedder calls a “mini-opera” entitled <em>Mama-san</em>, it tells the story of a teenaged boy who has been lied to and betrayed by his mother to the point where he does not know what he’ll do next. But ends, initially, with the almost pleading declaration that he is “still alive”. <br /><br />Then the story builds to a terrible crescendo in “Once”, part two of the trilogy: <br /><br /><strong>Backseat lover on the side of the road <br />I got a bomb in my temple that is gonna explode <br />I got a sixteen gauge buried under my clothes, I play... <br /><br />Once upon a time I could CONTROL myself <br />Ooh, once upon a time I could LOSE myself, yeah... </strong><br /><br />And culminates in “Footsteps” in which the youth having gone out on a shooting spree now awaits his death sentence: <br /><br /><strong>Don't even think about gettin' inside <br />Voices in my head, voices <br />I got scratches, all over my arms <br />One for each day, since I fell apart </strong><strong><br /><br />I did, what I had to do <br />If there was a reason, it was you... </strong><br /><br />Still blaming his mother for what happened to him: <br /><br /><strong>Footsteps in the hall, it was you, you <br />Pictures on my chest, it was you, you </strong><br /><br />“Footsteps” eerily pre-empts “Jeremy” which details a high school massacre, arguably the song most frequently cited as a reason to dislike Pearl Jam. It is also, in my opinion, one of their least interesting. Despite this, it is the song that gets most frequent radio play and is one of the only video clips they’ve made. (A clip that Vedder has since admitted he regrets agreeing to.) <br /><br /><em>Ten</em> was the start of the Pearl Jam story and, admittedly, the harshest of all the albums, lyrically speaking. It’s also, ironically, still their best album musically. Although there are better individual songs, each song from <em>Ten </em>is potentially a single in its own right. If they were into that, of course.<br /><br />Since then, Vedder has moved away from this focus on difficult childhoods and fractured family life, covering everything from the political “Bu$hleaguer” <br /><br /><strong>like sugar, the guests are so refined</strong><br /><br />to pithy social commentary: <br /><br /><strong>It’s a mystery to me <br />we have a greed <br />with which we have agreed. </strong><br /><br />Vedder turns desire into a complicated battle: <br /><br /><strong>The waiting drove me mad... <br />you're finally here and I'm a mess <br />I take your entrance back... <br />can't let you roam inside my head</strong> (“Corduroy”)<br /><br />and transforms loss into something tangible: <br /><br /><strong>Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay <br />Were laid spread out before me as her body once did.</strong> (“Black”) <br /><br />(Incidentally, “Black” was one of the first songs that forced me to listen beyond the music — to study the lyrics and wonder about the man behind them. Something about the next line grabbed me and changed how I listened to Pearl Jam forever: “And all I taught her was ... everything.”) <br /><br />He ranges from stinging self-actualisation: <br /><br /><strong>I did, what I had to do <br />And if there was a reason <br />Oh, there wasn't no reason, no <br />And if, there's something you'd like to do <br />Just let me continue, to blame you.</strong> (“Footsteps”) <br /><br />To quiet self-determination: <br /><br /><strong>Me, I figure as each breath goes by <br />I only own my mind.</strong> (“I am Mine”) <br /><br />He is cynical about religion and the hypocracies committed by followers — <br /><br /><strong>The selfish, they’re all standing in line<br />Faithing and hoping to buy themselves time...</strong> (“I am Mine”) <br /><br />and yet has written an almost Messianic ode to the power of belief in “Given to Fly” : <br /><br /><strong>Alone in a corridor, waiting, locked out <br />He got up outta there, ran for hundreds of miles <br />He made it to the ocean, had a smoke in a tree <br />The wind rose up, set him down on his knee <br /><br />A wave came crashing like a fist to the jaw <br />Delivered him wings, "Hey, look at me now" </strong><br /><br />While both Vedder and Pearl Jam deny the Christian overtones — Vedder is an aetheist — there is blatant referencing of the Christ story: <br /><br /><strong>He floated back down 'cause he wanted to share <br />His key to the locks on the chains<br />he saw everywhere <br />But first he was stripped <br />and then he was stabbed <br />By faceless men — well, fuckers <br />He still stands </strong><br /><br />Again, Vedder returns to the defiant advocacy of love, couched in anger and frustration, granted, but still, ultimately, a declaration that love is what makes us human, and allows us to soar: <br /><br /><strong>And he still gives his love, <br />he just gives it away <br />The love he receives is the love that is saved <br />And sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky <br />A human being that was given to fly... </strong><br /><br />It is surprisingly sentimental and decidedly lacking in cynicism. It is also very powerful as a consequence. <br /><br />The simple wisdom of some of his lines requires no explanation — <br /><br /><strong>And the young, they can lose hope <br />cause they can't see beyond today,... <br />The wisdom that the old can't give away... </strong><strong>...<br /><br />Sometimes life <br />Don't leave you alone.</strong> (“Love Boat Captain”) <br /><br />and yet so often these simple wisdoms aren't given the respect they deserve, or not in any meaningful way: <br /><br /><strong>Sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied. </strong>(“I am Mine”) <br /><br />In his grammy winning solo album for the Sean Penn film, <em>Into the Wild</em>, Vedder so artfully slots himself into the headspace of the story’s protagonist, Christopher McCandless — top athlete and college graduate who sells everything he owns to disappear into the Alaskan wilderness — that the film almost didn’t need dialogue, so clear was the narrative across Vedder’s lyrics. <br /><br />The story is synopsised in Vedder’s Oscar-nominated song, “Guaranteed”: <br /><br /><strong>Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere <br />Underneath my being is a road that disappeared <br />Late at night I hear the trees, <br />they’re singing with the dead <br />Overhead... </strong><br /><br />If you've seen the film, you’ll understand all the extra layers to this verse. But even without seeing it, Candless’ mixture of innocence and naivety, underlined by an unfulfilled desire to understand something bigger than the “normal” society he was expected to enter before he took off “into the wild”, is sweetly rendered by Vedder: <br /><br /><strong>A mind full of questions, <br />and a teacher in my soul </strong><br /><br />and <br /><br /><strong> I’ve got my indignation, <br />but I’m pure in all my thoughts <br />I’m alive... </strong><strong></strong><br /><br />as well as recognising Candless’ genuine feelings of remorse for having hurt the ones he loved by leaving, as well as his attempts to ease any feelings of guilt they might have: <br /><br /><strong>If ever the was someone to keep me at home <br />It would be you... </strong><br /><br />Vedder understands the frustrations of youth, even now, at the ripe old age of 47. The cynicism is there, as is the sharp and witty social commentary — very rock-and-roll and very “alternative” (if there is such a thing anymore) — but what tempers Vedder’s stories — for they are all stories — is the persistent underlying theme that manages to force its way to the surface, if not in every song, then across each album, and certainly throughout his career... <br /><br />That is, love. <br /><br /><strong>Love is all you need. All you need is love. </strong><br /><br />The haunting "Black", already cited, gives us one of my favourite declarations of love: <br /><br /><strong>I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, <br />I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky, but why <br />Why, why can't it be, can't it be mine? </strong><br /><br />In "Love Boat Captain", a song written in response to a fan’s request in the aftermath of a tragedy that almost forced Pearl Jam to disband, Vedder reminds us simply in this un-ironic quotation: <br /><br /><strong>It's already been sung, <br />but it can't be said enough <br />All you need... ... is love </strong><br /><br />The incident that triggered the band’s crisis occurred at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. During Pearl Jam’s act, the crowd surged dangerously toward the stage. In the crush, nine young fans (all men) were trampled to death, largely unseen by the other fans or the performers. On stage, Vedder had repeatedly pleaded with fans to move back, but it was only later, some way into their act, that they discovered what had happened. They cancelled the performance and left the stage. The festival continued without them, although no other acts appeared on that particular stage. <br /><br />Vedder references the incident directly in “Love Boat Captain”: <br /><br /><strong>Lost nine friends will never know, <br />two years ago today... </strong><br /><br />But it is in the question these deaths poses immediately after that we get to the heart of it: <br /><br /><strong>...and if our lives become too long, <br />will it add to our regret? </strong><br /><br />The question suggests that this level of loss is never finished, never closed. That time doesn't make it any easier, just longer. During live performances, Vedder changes the lyrics from “two years ago today” to reflect the actual time passed — a poignant reminder that while life goes on, the families’ suffering is a continuum. As is the band’s. (Several of the band members, including Vedder, have remained in contact with the families of the nine dead men.) <br /><br />Perhaps this is the greatest irony surrounding people’s misconceptions about Pearl Jam. Considered to be grunge and therefore somehow cynical, bitter, and angry, in truth, more recently, and perhaps all along, love shapes Vedder’s music. It is the question he most consistently asks and tries to answer, and the only consolation he willingly offers up when nothing else makes sense. <br /><br /><strong>Once you hold the hand of love... <br />it's all surmountable.</strong> (”Love Boat Captain”) <br /><br />The opposite of cynical, Vedder’s faith in love is the source of the most eloquent and original contributions to the genre, and, yes, I'll say it: the generation. Even when referencing his angry youth — <em>the </em>angry youth, more broadly — there is a hopefulness and optimism pervading everything he writes. Even if he wasn’t a recipient of it as a young man, he knew it was what he needed. What we all need. And he seems to have found it as an adult. <br /><br />This is the opposite of the nihilistic ranting too readily associated with grunge music by its critics, and too frequently cited as the reference point for Pearl Jam detractors. Vedder unashamedly advocates the purest but most complicated of all desires in the simplest form possible. It’s all about love. The need to give it and receive it. <br /><br />Enough from me, though. I’ll give Eddie the final word: <br /><br /><strong>Hold me, and make it the truth,... <br />That when all is lost there will be you. <br />’Cause to the universe I don't mean a thing <br />And there's just one word that I still believe and it's <br />Love,... love. love. love. love. </strong>Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-24143242847593461462011-03-27T19:16:00.001-07:002011-03-28T11:53:50.373-07:00What's coming up...Will get back to you re info regarding a new project I'm working on. I'm putting together a list of interviews with local and overseas authors and hope to start this new series in the next couple of weeks. Also have some reviews coming up - some new books and a few oldies.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-57727761287968559912011-03-23T20:40:00.001-07:002011-03-24T02:00:08.782-07:00Reason # 155 for avoiding my thesis......too many books to read, for a start.<br /><br />Anyone else feel overwhelmed the moment they walk into a bookshop - liquidation and bankruptcy issues aside? The sheer volume of books there are to read has the double whammy of 1) reminding me that the world doesn't need another author (me, for example), and 2) making it impossible to choose one out of the million possibilities on offer.<br /><br />There are whole genres I barely consider, let alone buy, and whole departments (self-help, I'm looking at you) in which I've never deigned to set foot. (I don't <em>think</em> I have. I actually don't know where that section is. So if you see me hovering near one, understand I am almost certainly lost.)<br /><br />And then there are the books I already have - the ones that scream for my attention in a way that Cute American Husband has no hope of managing. Some of them are reputed to pertain to my research, but they're so tired and dusty looking that I struggle to read their titles, let alone their contents. Most of them, however, come in the form of distraction - from my children, my work, and most of all, my thesis. (From here on in to be known as The Beast.)<br /><br />Most intimidating of all is the Dreaded Bedside Pile. The tower of knowledge and words that grows almost daily, never shrinking, despite the efforts of Father Gravity, the laws of logic, and my relentless desire to "get on top of things". (No chuckling in the back row, thank you.)<br /><br />Still, you can't question my commitment to this pile, comprised of a mix of borrowed books, newly bought books, library books and old favourites awaiting a second (third, fourth, twentieth) read. (See <a href="http://melbournemusing.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-top-five-contemporary-novels.html">this </a>for specifics.) There are books I've begun but can't <a href="http://melbournemusing.blogspot.com/2011/03/john-irving-and-me.html">finish</a>, nor can I give up on them confidently enough to re-shelve for another time. There are books I feel like I <em>should </em>read but don't want to, <em>have </em>read but can't remember, and <em>won't </em>read but have promised I will. You see, in my unique style of reasoning, as long as the book remains by my bed, there is some hope I'll get to it as promised, some day, <em>eventually</em>, and so it isn't a lie so much as a not-yet-fulfilled promise. (Yes, there's a difference.)<br /><br />Quite apart from the Dreaded Bedside Pile are the various manuscripts of unpublished novels cowering on my hard-drive, weighed down by a promise of feedback, encouragement, support and/or editing - all shouting at me to be read the moment I fire up my computer.<br /><br />So you can see why I'm behind on The Beast: all those books, with no time to read them. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that this reading business is fun. Sometimes it feels like hard work, and then I stumble upon a story that pulls me in so completely that I wish I didn't have to waste time eating, sleeping and washing. And I remember suddenly why I love reading.<br /><br />Right now I'm halfway through the latest novel by Jon Clinch, author of the beautiful but harrowing <a href="http://www.jonclinch.com/finn.html">Finn</a>, whose new book, <a href="http://www.jonclinch.com/kings.html">Kings of the Earth</a>, has been listed among the <a href="http://www.pprize.com/Discussions.php/2011-Prediction">outside shots at a Pulitzer</a>.<br /><br />It's always a cool thing when you knew the author before they were published, seeing the years of rejection end with a bang the way Jon's career did. It's even better when their second book lives up to the promise of their remarkable debut. I intend to post my review next week, so won't impart further details here, but if it continues at anything like the quality it's begun, be prepared for the kinds of superlatives I've saved for my <a href="http://melbournemusing.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-top-five-contemporary-novels.html">favourites</a>. Already it's the kind of novel you want to devour, and then re-read, slowly, carefully, to savour the language. The characters are distinct, believable, and eloquent, their voices as clear as a bellbird's song. So I'm taking my time with this one, almost despite myself, knowing that the towering pile will not allow me a second bite at this cherry for some time to come.<br /><br />In the meantime, for those Australian readers who are tempted to give <em>Kings of the Earth</em> a shot, I'm afraid it's been deemed "too American" by local publishers, and so you can only buy it online or overseas.<br /><br />I can only assume that local publishers haven't actually read it yet, because the novel I'm reading is as universal as the idea of storytelling itself. And, from the perspective of an aspiring author, as intimidating and as towering as the Dreaded Bedside Pile and my beastly thesis combined.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-7458709793772701692011-03-14T21:03:00.000-07:002011-03-16T02:19:39.741-07:00John Irving and Me<em>I want a divorce.</em> <br /><br />There. I said it. <br /><br />Before my mother panics, or my in-laws investigate cross-continent custody laws, please be assured, it’s not that kind of divorce. Not one from my actual RL husband, but a divorce from my literary husband. The man I fell in love with at the tender age of 16, when his story about an oddball frustrated writer with initials for a first name and a species of fish for a surname (albeit a fictional hybrid) made me laugh and feel smart and sophisticated while bolstering my budding feminist self — all in a single insightful sentence: “Jenny felt that her education was merely a polite way to bide time, as if she were really a cow, being prepared only for the insertion of the device for artificial insemination.”<br /> <br />The author was John Irving and the book was <em>The World According to Garp</em>. (I made the hybrid bit up, but what else would you call a gar-fish crossed with a carp?) Mr Irving (we were not yet on a first-name basis) had described how I cynically viewed the cohort of students’ ambitions at my Catholic girls’ school, in words both cutting and dry — the very tone I attempted to emulate for the rest of my teen years. (In between writing really bad Don Walker-inspired poetry.)<br /><br />Thus began a love affair which outlasted a century and crossed several decades, through the good times (<em>Cider House Rules</em>, <em>The 158-Pound Marriage</em>, <em>The Hotel New Hampshire</em>) and the What the Fuck? times (<em>Setting Free the Bears</em> and <em>The Water-Method Man</em>), taking me to the cusp of my literary desire in the form of his 1989 novel, <em>A Prayer for Owen Meany</em>. Newly paroled from my convent school where the “three r’s” weren’t merely taught but canonised, Irving’s blatant disregard for punctuation and capitalisation was as deliciously rebellious to me as sex before marriage and Vodka and Passionfruit UDLs. I wanted to have “UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE” tattooed on my inner thigh, and experienced a giddy delight every time Owen delivered his unrelenting all-caps voice. I decided right there and then that John Irving had to be the most outrageous, experimental, and hilarious author there was. (I mentioned the Catholic convent thing, didn’t I?) <br /><br />Better yet, the man was handsome — according to the book jacket anyway. (It is only in the process of having watched so many of my friends’ books get published that I’ve learnt the art/ifice of the author photo.) In short, I thought John Irving was creative, inventive, brave and original, and the only man I could ever truly love — literarily speaking, of course.<br /><br />Did I mention that I didn’t read very widely at the time? Goes hand-in-hand with the Catholic education thing, no doubt. You see, I read voraciously and relentlessly, unforgivingly and repeatedly, but the depth of my reading had little to do with the breadth of it. If I liked an author, I stuck by him or her. I read all their works, from top to bottom, then started again. Anything or anyone I liked, I loved. My teen and early twenties seemed to consist entirely of a series of superlatives and extremes, loves and hates, “discoveries” and obsessions, but sadly, little in the way of range. When I loved an author, or a book, or a series, they loved me back. Soon I was them, and they were me. I wore them like a badge — proudly and ostentatiously, spouting quotations and memorising passages as though my own. Is there anyone better at obsession than a teenager I wonder? I’ve yet to meet one, if there is, and I took that to its monotonous extreme. I was obsession personified.<br />Along with the obsession, I was also fiercely loyal. <br /><br />So, it was by drawing on this loyalty that I forgave John Irving <em>A Son of the Circus</em>, and feigned ignorance at his recycling of old stories in <em>Trying to Save Piggy Sneed</em>. My patience was rewarded with the solid <em>A Widow for One Year</em>, and the pending release of the film version of Owen Meany. Finally, I would get to hear Owen’s “wrecked voice”, see what I believed was his vaguely Mr McGoo-like qualities — the ghostly and improbable combination of wispy blonde hair, a cracked and shrieking voice and that permanently dwarf-like height. I faced the prospect of a Hollywood version feeling both eager and tremulous. How difficult to manage! How easy to go wrong! And then my beloved John resolved my dilemma for me, distancing himself — the screenplay having strayed too far from the original story — whereupon I duly cancelled my plans to see what later became known as <em>Simon Birch</em>, and have continued to live in ignorant bliss. <br /><br />I was delighted by the integrity of this decision — that John Irving wouldn’t allow my beloved Owen to be changed beyond recognition, knowing how dearly we readers cared for him, how loyal and committed we were to our own imaginings. <br /><br />After this near-disaster, I expected John’s resurgence — a return to the core of what we loved about him. I could not get enough of New England and Vienna, motorbikes, bears, and wrestling; beautiful dead mothers, and oddly innocent yet precocious young boys. Even Canada seemed mildly interesting in an austere and remote sort of way. Surely if I still loved them all, John would too.<br /><br />I had moved past <em>A Son of the Circus </em>by then, could pretend Piggy Sneed had never happened, and bought <em>The Fourth Hand </em>the same week it was released. This was the moment the cracks truly emerged. Where was his loveable protagonist? The innocent boy, the beautiful dead mother? Even the bears had been replaced with a lion — a hand-eating one, no less — and suddenly all the things I knew and believed about John Irving’s world was being slowly ripped apart. <br /><br />But worse was yet to come: he shifted from the third person to first in <em>Until I Find You</em>. I have nothing against first person (obviously) — have employed it in my own fiction a lot — but this is not the John Irving I know or love. The self-reflexiveness that seemed both coy and gentle was suddenly brash and loud. Let me explain — and stay with me, if you can: the main character of <em>Until I Find You</em>, Jack Burns, wins an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay the same year that John Irving really did win his Academy Award — 1999 — the same year that Jack loses the Supporting Actor Oscar which, in Real Life, was won by Michael Caine for his role in Irving’s adaptation of <em>Cider House Rules</em>. (Still with me?) And then Jack goes to school at the same place where <em>A Prayer for Owen Meany</em>’s narrator, Johnny Wheelwright, teaches English as an adult.<br />See what I mean? <br /><br />Coy it ain’t.<br /><br />Now, what began as possible separation has shifted irrevocably to grounds for a divorce. And the straw for this blessed, overburdened camel? <em>Last Night in Twisted River</em>. <br /><br />I had so much hope for this novel when I first picked it up — we are back in “innocent young boy with mysteriously dead beautiful mother” territory; there’s Canada and logging, and New England and icy rivers... All the stuff that made <em>Owen </em>and <em>Garp</em>, <em>Cider House </em>and <em>Hotel New Hampshire </em>such riveting reads. <br /><br />And yet, there’s no love. No warmth. No humour. And, frankly, too many logs. <br /><br />The real sadness, though, is that I can’t finish it. I’m sure I will one day — as my father used to say when referencing our family’s refusal to quit our lazy attachment to Catholicism, “You don’t change teams mid-season.” I will make myself finish <em>Last Night in Twisted River</em> because I owe that much to John Irving. And I will continue to revisit Owen and friends whenever I need a literary jolt. <br /><br />But there is no going back. The divorce papers are in and this party, anyway, has moved on: I am no longer in love with John Irving.<br /><br />At least in this divorce, there’ll be no the custody battle.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-12679504132296944972011-02-22T01:42:00.001-08:002011-02-22T02:07:10.952-08:00The Gender DivideI just posted an extract from my blog on this groovy little gidget thingy called the <a href="http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php">Gender Genie </a>and a weird thing happened. I turned into a bloke. (Just don't tell my husband.) According to the website, these people were inspired by a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/10/magazine/10WWLN.html?ex=1061784000&en=843e4c97d49a9f82&ei=5070">New York Times article</a> that argued they could gauge the gender of the author of texts based on particular word choices and frequency of use. In other words, it's a question of mathematics. Or Algorithms, more specifically.<br /><br />Here's the thing, I tried this test over and over, and no matter how many cutesy things I say, how fast I bat my eyelashes, or how high I like my heels, apparently I write like a bloke. Sixty to seventy percent male words over female ones, every single time.<br /><br />Now, this might seem like a simplistic approach to understanding something as complex, fraught and slippery as the idea of gender, and gendered writing, but it interests me because it parallels other experiences I've had. You see, on every forum and bulletin board I've visited anonymously, no matter which country, subject, or field of interests, posters consistently assume I'm male. Not just some of them. <em>All</em> of them. Until I say something declaring my hand, something unambivalent or clearly gendered (like the fact that I'm a mum, or that I went to a girls' school), whereupon I am inevitably met with a chorus of, "Sorry! I thought you were a dude." (Bloke, if Australian.) Or, "You sound like a guy." And variations on that theme. Over and over, everywhere I go.<br /><br />Now, I've always had interests in areas not traditionally associated with women - footy, politics and debating - so perhaps this shouldn't surprise me. Except that in my fiction, I deliberately and carefully write for women, about women, and about girls. I'm not interested in writing for men, don't choose subjects that would matter to the blokes I know. I actively and carefully target women. As readers, and as subjects.<br /><br />So you can understand my confusion. And, frankly, concern. Because here's this mathematical theory essentially declaring me a man trapped in a woman's keyboard - a theory that seems to hold up when tested amongst real people - and now I have to wonder if maybe there's something to it. Or at least, something to the <em>perception</em> that there is such a thing as gendered writing. Even if that perception is among readers, rather than writers, or something we've learnt rather than imbibed. Either way, it's tricky.<br /><br />So why don't you give the <a href="http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php">test </a>a shot and tell me how it goes? Were they right, or were they wrong? Or are they as confused as you are? (Try to sample at least 500 words - that's the recommendation. But even when I cheated, posting half what they asked, they still pegged me as bloke.)<br /><br />P.S. For those having trouble posting comments - sorry! I thought I could fix it - twitter me or send a message and I'll try to sort it out. Or post on your behalf.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-61478264540596062582011-02-18T10:25:00.000-08:002011-02-22T01:34:56.802-08:00Fact or Fiction: Does it matter?Australian director Peter Weir's latest film is finally out in Australia. Called <em>The Way Back</em>, it deals with the story of a group of Russian prisoners who make a grueling 4000 mile escape from a Siberian gulag during the Second World War. Based on a book by <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">Slavomir</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">Rawicz</span> of the same title, it depicts what's been claimed to be a true story of the author's journey overland to India.<br /><br />As so often happens for "true stories", questions have been raised about its veracity, and the likely role <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">Rawicz</span> played. Weir himself almost dropped the project on the basis of these claims, believing the only way the film could work was if it was a "true story". It does seem to have had a negative impact on its American release, having come out there in January, just in time for the 2011 Oscars (it's been nominated for Make Up), but died a quick and nearly silent death within weeks. Maybe it's the ruthless <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">tentpole</span> market that Weir talks about in the below interview, or maybe it was a direct response to the queries regarding the "true story" tag. Either way, the rumours couldn't have helped in a world that seems obsessed with the "true story" over the fictional one.<br /><br />In the interview captured below, Weir decided to pursue the project, despite lingering doubts, largely because the research he unearthed suggested that there were many documented stories of escapes similar to this one; that the fact that they have happened in some form, in similar situations and with similar outcomes was enough to hang the "based on a true story" tag on <em>The Way Back</em>.<br /><br />My question is, though, why the obsession with the "true story" label? Why does a dramatic feature film have to have its grounding in actual events? Is it less satisfying if it's fictional - made up, created in <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">someone's</span> head - rather than taken from their life? Actual experience? Real events?<br /><br />Where do we draw the line anyway? If it happened somewhere, or we think it happened somewhere, is that "fact" enough? Even that it <em>could</em> happen somewhere - do we need to know to whom, when, and where?<br /><br />How much non-fiction is true anyway? It's supposed to be true, of course, but how can we know? And why must we know? What is truth anyway, when all of these renderings come in the form of someone <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">else's</span> musings, their perspective, their slant? Always the story is viewed through a distorted or filtered prism. It is always <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">someone's</span> take - whether the screenwriter, the author, the director or even the producer. Maybe it's even the actors'. Or a combination of all of these. How can we know where the story starts and the facts stop?<br /><br />Worse still, this push for "facts" in our stories could arguably be the reason for so many literary hoaxes of late, James Frey being probably the most widely <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">vilified</span>. He couldn't sell his novel as fiction, so he sold it as memoir. He really had spent an afternoon in jail for drug related offenses - didn't that qualify him to tell a "true account" of the life of a drug addict who, after a stint in prison, redeems himself and gets clean?<br /><br />Did the fact that this "memoir" was plugged as self-help somehow make Frey's crime worse than had he written a "factual" account with no redeeming message of hope? No, "look what I did - and survived!" theme underpinning it? I'd guess if we asked Oprah, her answer would be yes. It's much worse.<br /><br />My question is, are we kidding ourselves that we can somehow learn more from "non-fiction" than we can from fiction? That its message is somehow more reliable, more accessible, and more believable because the events "really happened".<br /><br />Peter Weir believes that he'd found enough evidence in the research about other stories of long walks across the desert to justify his faith in the veracity of <em>The Way Back</em> as a "based on true events" story. Maybe he did.<br /><br />My question is, does it matter?<br /><br />Here's the link to the interview.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2011/3138933.htm">http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2011/3138933.htm</a>Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-73234282015556177162011-02-13T01:51:00.000-08:002011-02-13T02:09:56.082-08:00Asking for notes etiquetteBelow is a piece by screenwriter Derek Haas that he posted on Artful Writer in response to the countless people who ask him for notes.<br /><br />I, too, get a lot of requests for feedback on manuscripts and feature film scripts - sometimes I say yes, occasionally, if I'm feeling really brave, I say no. I wish, though, that I could always say this:<br /><br />With permission from Derek and the fabulous screenwriters' forum, Done Deal:<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://messageboard.donedealpro.com/boards/showthread.php?t=60328&highlight=etiquette">http://messageboard.donedealpro.com/boards/showthread.php?t=60328&highlight=etiquette</a><br /><br /><br />The point of this is to remember that no one is entitled to help. No one should expect to be read. Everyone who is prepared to offer time and effort for no good reason other than they can, or would like to, deserves consideration, space and the courtesy of not feeling obligated.<br /><br />Easier said than done, but no one ever said the world needs another writer. We might need to write, but the world doesn't need to listen.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-15997878617466839062011-02-09T15:11:00.000-08:002011-02-09T18:57:37.766-08:00The Kids Are All Right, but...What about the mums?<br /><br />I was really looking forward to seeing this film for all kinds of reasons. Firstly, I have a heterosexual girl-crush on Julieanne Moore (who doesn't, I ask you) and, as someone who's dabbled in the art/craft/torture of screenwriting, have dreamt of the day when Annette Benning is cast in one of my films. (OK. First I need to get one <em>made</em>. But, then, the moment that happens, I have no doubt Annette will come running.) Plus, Mark Ruffalo is yummy in all the right ways.<br /><br />But mostly because it's about time that this increasingly visible kind of family is acknowledged in popular culture in an intelligent and considered way.<br /><br />So the synopsis is simple enough: The two children (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) of a lesbian couple - one born to each mother but with the same father - decide they want to meet their sperm-donor dad. There's the obvious discomfort and uncertainty when these middle class, smart and sophisticated women learn of their kids' desires, but both mums are doing their best to be understanding and patient with what is, at this point in their lives, a difficult and fraught decision.<br /><br />The meeting, when it happens, is delightfully believable. Awkward silences, overcompensating gestures, and the squirming humiliation all adolescents display when they can see their parents trying too hard. Good fun and very believable. And not so far from what any meeting of adoptive and biological parents might look like. I liked that part the most - how similar the arrangement, and how irrelevant, ultimately, the gender breakdown is when it comes down to love. Loving parents are loving parents. Biology has its place in the parenting process, but family is really about who's there, night and day, day after day, loving and caring, talking and fighting, growing and learning, living and dying. Basically, it's about being together.<br /><br />So far so good. And then a weird thing happens...<br /><br />********************SPOILER ALERT*****************<br /><br />Scroll down for the rest.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Struggling with strained relations with her wife, Jules (Julieanne Moore) gets involved with Paul (Ruffalo), the donor dad, first, as his landscaper, and then, well, kind of as his landscaper again. But a different landscape altogether.<br /><br />Basically, they screw. A lot, it has to be said.<br /><br />This is where the film loses me. While, from a storytelling perspective, it answers the important dramatic question we're supposed to ask when dealing with story arcs - Find the worst thing that could happen to your main character and make it happen - it slides into that murky, chauvenstic old chestnut that argues that all lesbians really need is some solid man flesh. (I had a quicker, sharper ending to that sentence, but resisted the impulse.) Basically, that belief that lesbians are somehow missing out on something essential to human sexuality as long as they persist with this whole lesbian thing.<br /><br />The film's message isn't as simple as this, of course. Nor do I think it's even the writer's intention, interestingly. The film spends a lot of time giving these amazing women real consideration and pathos in the process of making very difficult decisions. Jules experiences much angst and guilt associated with this tryst, which Paul is taking to heart in a way that she is not. He's ready to settle down, see - catalysed by his kids' appearance in his life. He dumps his easy lay, focuses on changing his life, and embraces this strange but intoxicating mantle of fatherhood with impressive, if naive enthusiasm. The kids like him a lot, and their relationship with Paul changes into something real and substantial over the time they spend together.<br /><br />The result is that Paul sees this relationship with Jules as the beginning of his "family" - now that he's ready to have one. She sees it as a reaction to the hurtful things her wife has been saying and, it must be said, seems as much about getting her rocks off with someone who couldn't be more different from her wife if he tried.<br /><br />Of course, the deceipt is the killer, but not just between Jules and Nic (Benning), although the betrayal is fraught enough. (Not just an affair, but an affair with a man, and not just any man, but the father of their children, and not just... It goes on.) The clincher is what Paul and Jules seem not to have factored in - the betrayal their children feel, and their subsequent guilt that they have somehow brought Paul and Jules together. In effect, threatening to destroy their family.<br /><br />The performances are lovely. Wasikowska and Hutcherson display just the right amount of uncertainty in this new life that they feel partly responsible for creating, mixed in with all the completely normal (horrid but inevitable) adolescent angst that plagues any family with two teenagers making their way in the world.<br /><br />There are several funny/painful moments, particularly Nic's drunken rendition of Joni Mitchell at the dinner table right on top of the moment she realises Jules's betrayal. This is truly squirmworthy storytelling. Nic is so vulnerable in that moment - passionate, loving, open and in pain - so completely different to how we've seen her until then, made all the more excruciating by her refusal to let up, even after the point is made. Her lilting, husky rendition of the lullaby persisting in the face of prolonged and awkward silences... Really powerful stuff.<br /><br />I just wish Jules had not so desperately and urgently embraced heterosexual lust as though it were somehow better or more than what she had known with her wife. While it was most likely intended as a comment on how stale and tired a long marriage can become, and how fresh and intoxicating new love/lust can be, particularly the forbidden kind, the fact that he was a he, and the father of her son, gave it a layer that, I feel, undid a good chunk of the subtlety and respect the writers had shown this non-mainstream but unquestionably loving family.<br /><br />But the ending is extremely satisfying and in some way compensates for that aberration of a midpoint.<br /><br />See it or rent it because it's worth it - funny, smart, different and sophisticated - but I'm still waiting for a time when a lesbian family graces our films without the patriarchal/heterosexual hangover anywhere to be seen.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-44196086015290662752011-02-06T17:55:00.000-08:002011-02-06T19:39:51.002-08:00My top five contemporary novelsNow, by "contemporary", I mean authors who are still alive. Not sure what other people mean by contemporary, but just in case there's some confusion. No F. Scott Fitzgeralds, Patrick Whites, or Miles Franklins to be seen. These books are by living people who might or might not have a Facebook page, but certainly have witnesses to their ongoing existence on earth. Today, anyway. And, hopefully, next week.<br /><br />So, now that's cleared up... <br /><br />I love these novels for all kinds of reasons - some literary, some personal, and some a bit of both. Either way, I have no hesitation in recommending them to people who ask - and, weirdly, a <em>lot </em>of people do - because they rarely bite me on the backside later. The worst that happens is that disgruntled readers think I'm a wanker. But that's OK. I think they're wankers too. :-)<br /><br />Number 5: <strong>The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx</strong><br />I love the sparseness of the prose, her unique turn of phrase, and Proulx's incredible ability to cast a fine mist of grey over her writing. Newfoundland, where it's set, is cold and grey and damp and, somehow, that tone pervades the whole novel. I was living in Hawaii when I read this book, but remember feeling cold - genuinely <em>cold </em> - when I turned the pages. (OK. So maybe I had the A/C ramped up. But still.) I loved the protagonist, Quoyle, "a great damp loaf of a man", because he was so unlike any main character I'd known - square chin, broad, thick body. Slow and heavy, and dull, too, if his wife - the absurdly named Petal - were any judge, although he turned out to be anything but. Still, I shouldn't have loved him the way I did because he didn't fit my exacting image of a hero. Yet I did. <br /><br />Mostly, though, I loved the language - "great damp loaf", yes, but also "pain like gravel under the knee". I could see, feel, <em>hear </em> this place I'd never been to before, and I had such a strong image of it that, despite enjoying the film, never allowed Lasse Hallstrom's incarnation of Newfoundland replace the vision I took from the novel. Quoyle will never be Kevin Spacey, destined, instead to remain a "great damp loaf of a man" in my mind, forever and ever.<br /><br />Number 4: <strong>A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving</strong><br />Ah, Owen. This book doesn't even have a full title in my small, somewhat tragic world. I call it "Owen" because rarely has a character of such miniscule size cast such a dwarfing shadow over my literary soul. Owen Meany is tiny, shrill, and moralistic. As a young boy he spoke indignantly of "THE UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE" perpetrated by the Catholics (as a lapsed Catholic, I felt an UNSPEAKABLE DELIGHT that there was such a thing), and always in that wrecked voice perpetually caught between a shiek and a squeal. Owen's UPPER CASE direct speech was the first time I'd seen such blatant disregard for the lexicon, and I felt a genuine thrill at John Irving's audacity. WRITING IN ALL CAPS? IMAGINE! <br />John Irving had me at Garp. By the time Owen came along, I was a goner. (Or at least until the <em>Fourth Hand</em>. But that's another posting.)<br /><br />Number 3: <strong>We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver</strong><br />Lionel Shriver might very well be me in another life. The me that didn't have children and didn't want to. The me that moved countries and wrote angrily - long distance - about her abandoned home. The me that imagined any child could grow up to be a high school serial killer if he didn't have a mother who loved him. This novel riveted me because I both loathed and loved the protagonist's voice. The letters she writes to her estranged husband are a testament to the perpetual and pointless second guessing and only iffing we parents subject ourselves to any time our children break our code, or our rules, or even the law. Kevin does more than break the law - he defies nature. And so does Kevin's mother, or we think she does, until we work through her angst and see just what kind of horrible price had to be paid in order for her to forgive herself. This one divides my reading friends, but those who love this book, love it fiercely, angrily, determinedly. So, for that reason alone, as a means of dividing my friends into those who get it and those who don't - those who get <em>me</em>, and those who don't - it's my favourite of standard recommendations.<br /><br />Number 2: <strong>Beloved, Toni Morrison</strong><br />My first foray into contemporary Nobel winning literature, and one that stayed with me for years afterwards. Small, sharp sentences, original and unforgettable imagery and a mystery teased out just long enough to keep me engaged without distracting from the amazing characterisations. The beauty of the language, the power of the story, and the strange mix of brutal reality alongside paranormal intrigue is positively breathtaking. Read, and re-read. Then read again.<br /><br /><br />Number 1: <strong>The Road, Cormac McCarthy</strong><br />I always start discussions of <em>The Road </em> with a sigh. So picture me sighing. There's something about this novel that moves me - no, <em>pains </em> me - in a way that no other novel does. Or will. The language is as sparse as it is poignant. There is not an errant word, nor a superlative in sight. The characterisations of the boy and his father - characters without names, on a landscape so bleak it defies description - are as true and as clear as if they were my own family. I don't know their eye colour, the cut of their hair, what they liked, or what they did before I first met them on the page. I don't need to. They have each other, and that's really all there is. And, incredibly, it's more than enough. <br /><br />This story is an ode to the love of a father for his son - the love of a parent for their child - and yet, the word "love" is not used once. There are no grand speeches. No waxing lyrical on the power of the paternal bond. It's one step in front of the other. One silent but grim decision followed closely by the next, surviving every brutal day with dogged relentlessness, in a world where the truest expression of love is in the shape of two solitary bullets, saved for that day when the worst happens. Can you do it? the man asks himself. Can you kill your own son? <br />McCarthy has painted a world so brutal and desperate that you find yourself praying he can. <br /><br />Read it if you dare. Be warned though, you'll not read anything else like it again.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-5733048489564694562011-01-29T01:58:00.000-08:002011-01-29T01:58:09.383-08:00Melbourne Musing: Steve Prestwich, RIP<a href="http://melbournemusing.blogspot.com/2011/01/steve-prestwich-rip.html#links">Melbourne Musing: Steve Prestwich, RIP</a>Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-49327928836942732892011-01-28T03:23:00.000-08:002011-01-28T03:59:38.748-08:00Steve Prestwich, RIPI've got a confession to make. I used to be a bogan. A full-blooded, Cold Chisel loving bogan. Mocs and all. Even Uggs for a year or so. (My mother still blames my flat feet on that particular fashion statement.) <br /><br />While I'd like to apologise generally for the bubble gum jeans, the pixie boots and the pastel v-necks I exposed the world to, I make no apologies for my excellent taste in music, or my undying love for a band no one outside Australia knows (and no one east of the CBD and west of Springvale Road acknowledges): Cold Chisel.<br /><br />OK. Bear in mind that I can't abide great chunks of Triple M (so blokey, I don't feel welcome at all) and I don't ever need to hear a beery cover of Khe Sanh again, but there are plenty of spectacularly uncommercial, even un-bogan (or is it anti-bogan?) songs that never make Best of play lists, and yet have not faded with time. <br /><br />There's the obituary to a lost friend, "Letter to Alan", the ode to gambling in "Numbers Fall", and the litany of exotic place names in "Houndog" - highlighted by the sexy, crooning Ian Moss interlude that made Hornsby station sound like Shangri-la. But of all my Cold Chisel favourites (and there are too many to mention), it is the poetic but incomprehensible <em>Breakfast at Sweethearts' </em>song, "Dresden" that changed my life, potentially forever.<br /><br />This Don Walker-penned ballad made me want to write. There were other influences before then of course: a love of story telling, a father with a gift for language, and a desire to express on paper all the things I couldn't say out loud. But it was the moment when I first read Don Walker's lyrics that I genuinely began to think of myself as a budding writer. <br /><br />For a while as a teenager I spent great chunks of my angst-filled days writing and re-writing the "Dresden" lyrics in the hope that some of Walker's brilliance would rub off on me. When that didn't work, I started stealing from it, drowning my terrible poetry in images of "icy rime" and experimenting with objects I could successfully describe as floating "like thistle down". I made "sledge-wings dip and play" and placed stones "above each measured stone" believing that I was honouring Mr Walker when really I was simply plagiarising him. I still find myself tempted to drop in some mention of God being "on the edge of time" and wonder how I can reference the "mark of Cain" without actually knowing what it means; I even copy out the lyrics every now and then in the hope that one day I might eventually understand them.<br /><br />So, in the weeks following the death of Cold Chisel drummer, Steve Prestwich, it seems apt that I invoke my inner bogan (not to mention my latent adolescence) and reproduce Walker's poetry right here and now:<br /><br />"Dresden" by Don Walker (and frequently plagiarised by ... let's call her "Nic")<br /><br />Dresden<br /><br />The morning breeze is off and gone<br />The winding factory streets are clean<br />Old ladies put the kettle on<br />And all-night lechers pause and lean<br />On grey shop windows, everywhere<br />A deeper hum is in the air<br />Hotel room, drifter leaves no clues<br /><br />He rides a freight-train out of town<br />And whistles at the icy rime<br />The cattle float like thistle-downs<br />And God is on the edge of time<br />Somewhere behind a siren wails<br />The freight-train soars above the rails<br />The traveller, he's hard as nails<br />As the train sweeps down the line<br /><br />The salmon Season's here to stay<br />And etched into each shoulder-bone<br />The mark of Cain is on display<br />As stone above each measured stone<br />Old Dresden burns above the breeze<br />The traveller, he's on his knees<br />He's watching sledge-wings dip and play<br />So far above the holy throne<br /><br />Dresden blues...Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-63512586122164248392011-01-25T18:49:00.000-08:002011-01-25T19:01:09.834-08:00It's Australia Day here in, well, Australia, so it seems apt to post a list of things I love about this country and - yes, I'm a lefty with an agenda - ten things I hate about this country.<br /><br />Top Ten things I love about Australia in no particular order. (Don't let the numbers fool you.)<br /><br />1. The beach<br />2. The footy<br />3. The humour<br />4. The film industry - ha! Just kidding!<br />5. No - 4. The backpacking mentality.<br />5. The weather - OK, that's a Melbourne thing, but still. It counts.<br />6. The idea that 12 hours on a plane is no big deal<br />7. The food.<br />8. The wine. (Wait - that should be number 1.)<br />9. The convict heritage.<br />10. The Indigenous culture.<br /><br />Ten things I hate about Australia<br />1. Our increasing level of intolerance<br />2. The bogan population.<br />3. The humour. (It works both ways.)<br />4. The film industry - ha! Just kidding!<br />4. This is 4. The idea that 12 hours on a plane is no big deal.<br />5. The fact that our flag has been stolen by nationalistic lunatics<br />6. The fact that our flag was originally stolen from the English.<br />7. Our anglophile tendencies<br />8. The polarisation of the political debate. (There was a time I would have put this first, then I realised how little influence politics really has.)<br />9. Australian newspeak which has transplanted the word "refugee" with "illegal immigrant" or its evil twin, "queue jumpers".<br />10. That I could find 10 things I hate about Australia.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-8429060642445463252011-01-18T02:34:00.000-08:002011-01-18T03:02:19.217-08:00A film I wanted to love...I'm an Aaron Sorkin fan. I mean, truly, a huge, borderline-obsessive, Sorkin fan. I have the entire seven seasons of the <em>West Wing </em>on DVD - legally purchased at full price. (Literally the only show I've bought this way.) I've read all of his scripts - produced and otherwise - and have watched everything he's made multiple times in case there's a stunning line buried amongst the other stunning lines that I missed in the first 47 viewings.<br /><br />You getting this? He is a screenwriting god in my tragic little world.<br /><br />So, I was (discreetly) salivating at the prospect of seeing <em>Social Network</em>. The reviews only made the wait - for it to land on our sunny/flooded shores - more angst-ridden and painful. The gap between its origin nation and my very own had never seemed wider than during those weeks of anticipation. The endless waiting. <br /><br />And then it came. And the local reviews were generous, effusive, even a little giddy. Just what I was hoping for. <br /><br />After a few aborted attempts, I successfully managed to buy a ticket and was ready to go. Finally free to indulge in some serious, dark-room Sorkin-worshipping when, half an hour into the experience, I realised something very strange...<br /><br />I was watching a movie.<br /><br />This might seem a statement of the bleeding obvious. Not worth mentioning, right? Except. This was an AARON SORKIN FILM. Are you getting it yet? When I watch a Sorkin story, I'm in it. With it. These people become my friends. CJ Cregg would be my daughters' godmother if only she'd answer my calls. Josh Lyman - my righthand man for my very next political coup. And Sam Seaborn? Well. I'm married, so best not to continue with that.<br /><br />Thing is, I know them. I love them. I want to be their friend. I want them to love me the way I love them and, secretly, disturbingly, believe they already do. <br /><br />But in <em>Social Network</em>, from beginning to end, I was aware I was watching a film. A very good film. Probably the best film for the year. But not a stunning film. Not an Aaron Sorkin film. Not - and I use this word advisedly, sparingly - a masterpiece. <br /><br />Worst of all, it wasn't brilliant enough for me to forget what I was doing.<br /><br />I wanted to love it. I wanted to buy it on DVD, download the script and study them both with the same envy-laden adoration that I've attached to all his work.<br /><br />Except I couldn't love it. I could only like it very much. And sadly for Sorkin - although I'm guessing it won't bother him too much - I want more. No - I expect more.<br /><br />Alas, poor Aaron. It must really suck being a genius.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-31663812305665889762011-01-04T16:01:00.000-08:002011-01-04T16:17:18.390-08:00A story...<strong><span style="font-size:130%;"><em>Life, Art and Crystal’s Levis</em></span></strong>
<br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">
<br /></span>
<br />MITCH: I’m not leaving, Crystal. I don’t care what Blake says.
<br />
<br />CRYSTAL: But Mitch, he’ll kill you if he finds us together.
<br />
<br />MITCH: I won’t let him get between us. Not this time.
<br />
<br />CRYSTAL: Oh, Mitch. What are we going to do?
<br />
<br />
<br /></strong>“And then they kiss and the camera stays on them as they embrace passionately.” I look up, hopeful. “So… What do you think?”
<br />
<br />I don’t know why I do this. Why I persist. He hates my work. Hates everything about it: the words, the stories, the people I work with, even the fact that I work there.
<br />
<br />“Could we talk about something else?” he’ll say, as though, as long as I don’t speak about it, it isn’t there. That the words — my words spoken aloud — are all that make it real.
<br />
<br />Which makes me talk that much more.
<br />
<br />Which makes him hate it that much more.
<br />
<br />Sometimes, when I’m working through a script or in the middle of a re-write, he walks into my office, storms in really, and announces he’s leaving. Just like that. His anger huge and intimidating in my tiny, not-quite-a-bedroom home-office, shrinking me — shrinking us — as he rails.
<br />
<br />He tries to soften it. Tells me he loves me — he always does that first — but true to form, comes right out with it. “I love you but…” The reasons vary, or sound different anyway. But underneath it’s the same thing. Same old story, just a different episode.
<br />
<br />My words. He hates my words.
<br />
<br />He denies this of course. Says it’s not what I do but how much I do it. That I’m “never there”, and when I am, I’m so distant that it barely counts. Distracted, he says. Somewhere else. That he wants me back. “Down here. On Earth,” he yells, like his Earth is the kind of place I’d want to be anyway with him all angry like that. That if I gave it away, tried something else, we could make it work. “Together, we could make it work.”
<br />
<br />But they’re just words, aren’t they?
<br />
<br />It doesn’t happen like that in real life. Real life is a lot more like soap opera. It’s not like a sitcom, where we find resolution in twenty-two minutes (minus the ads). Nothing’s like that. It’s not even like a blockbuster movie where the hero lives to accomplish Herculean acts, while the heroine is thin and gaunt and looks fabulous in jeans that have never been near a Chinese sweatshop, or a Tijuana market. And the bad guy loses, or dies, and always, always wears black.
<br />
<br />But soap opera ... now that’s real life. Take Crystal and Mitch, for example. They love each other, they’re two consenting adults of different sex and equal social status — no reason in the world why they shouldn’t be together. Lord knows they’ve had sex often enough. But, still, there’s the whole Blake thing — the former lover, now revealed to be Mitch’s long lost twin brother, who has control of the family’s wealth and will banish them both if Crystal doesn’t return to him, like she’d promised she would after he threatened Mitch’s life…
<br />
<br />It’s messy, isn’t it? Well, so is life. I mean, really, who doesn’t have an ex, the brother of your current lover waiting around somewhere? The kind that shows up at the local mall with the girl he dumped you for strung around his shoulders, her skinny hips as narrow as your forearm, and her creamy blond hair tied up in schoolgirl pigtails, while you’re in your gardening gear — not even the good gardening gear, but your crappy, never-let-anyone-see-you gardening gear — and your unwashed hair sticks to your face in a limp attempt at the “natural look”. I mean, who hasn’t experienced a moment like that?
<br />
<br />The fact is, life’s complicated and ongoing, with endless threads and loose ends tying themselves up with bits of your life that should otherwise not be connected. And there’s never just one bad guy. It’s never that obvious.
<br />
<br />Besides, I look really good in black.
<br />
<br />But back to my husband…
<br />
<br />“It’s fine, Rach. Just fine,” he says. The sigh resting right above his words, not quite near enough to be audible, but hovering just out of reach of my indignation. So he gets away with it.
<br />
<br />“What do you think will happen next?” I say, despite the voice inside me saying, Shut up! Shut up! He hasn’t insulted you yet, he hasn’t threatened to leave you in weeks, so why do you persist? Why? Why? Why?
<br />
<br />He looks at me squarely. His eyes are as blue as a kids’ wading pool. Seriously. Exactly that colour blue. And his eyebrows are heavy and dark and almost always brooding. He could be a character on my soap opera, except he’s too literal and too practical, and wouldn’t dream of declaring anything loudly or passionately, unless he was watching the Cowboys go wide. But he’s handsome, my husband. Very handsome.
<br />
<br />“What’s going to happen next?” he says, his voice as tired and strained as I’ve ever heard it, and I realise that he would have answered me anyway, one way or another, whether I’d pressed him or not. Because today is the day. Finally. After all the promises, the threats, the anger… today he is leaving me.
<br />
<br />“I don’t know, Rach. What usually happens in these stories? They hate each other for a bit, then they meet someone else and get on with their lives. After a couple of seasons apart, they decide they were meant to be together all along. That, or they discover they’re long lost siblings.”
<br />
<br />I want to reach out to him then. Kiss him square on the lips because, even when I hate him, when this voice he saves for disappointment — this voice he saves for me — is hard and immovable, he is still smart and funny, and better, somehow, than anyone else I know.
<br />
<br />“I could quit,” I say weakly, although we both know I won’t do that.
<br />
<br />“Too late, Rach. It’s way too late.”
<br />
<br />I nod, and think about what Crystal would say here, what Mitch would want to hear. But I probably would have written this differently, so that there was another woman, or another man, or suspicion anyway, and once they realized it was all a mistake, they could return to each other, knowing they’d never have to feel such loneliness again. That they were meant to be together.
<br />
<br />But I’m no terrible at first drafts. Better to let this version go the way it is. Set it aside for a time, revise it later, and try again.
<br />
<br /><strong>*****
<br />
<br />
<br />GRACE: Quick, hide here!
<br />
<br />CRYSTAL: I can’t do it, Grace. I can’t put your life in danger!
<br />
<br />GRACE: It’s too late, Crystal. Blake already knows. But our friendship means more than that. More than anything.
<br />
<br />CRYSTAL: You’re the best friend a girl could have, Grace. I’ll never forget this. Never!
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></strong>“So he left? Just like that?”
<br />
<br />I’m talking to my friend now. That friend we all have. The one you’ve known so long and been through so much with that you’re not even sure where she ends and you begin. So you find yourself relaying stories that, later, you suspect might have happened to her and not you, but as neither remembers or cares, you don’t bother trying to work it out. That person who calls you and says, “Hi.” No name or details, no reason for calling, just a sigh that you recognise even before she speaks, and the unquestioning, unrevealing “Hi,” that somehow manages to say it all.
<br />
<br />“Just like that.”
<br />
<br />“Are you sure?”
<br />
<br />“No, I’m not sure. I should check the garage maybe, or his workshop. He could be hiding in there…”
<br />
<br />“I mean, is it for good?” She’s barely six months older than me, but has always seemed decades ahead, like someone told her things that no one else knows; secrets she ekes out grudgingly, on a need-to-know basis.
<br />
<br />“Who knows?” I shrug. Who ever knows? If he comes back, will he stay? If he doesn’t come back, will that ever change? Does anything ever really change? Or do we just see different drafts of what is, essentially, the same thing. Variations in plot, maybe some character development along the way, but the same point, in the end. The same old story.
<br />
<br />“Right then. Let’s get drunk,” she says. And who am I to argue when she’s so much wiser than me?
<br />
<br />We are lying on her floor now. The fake Persian rug she bought in a factory outlet downtown is scratching my elbow, which is holding me up. The wine bottle is beside me, empty, on its side, looking as necessary as I feel, and as useful.
<br />
<br />“You know,” she says, languidly, like it’s something she’s been saving up for all night, “we kind of had a thing together.”
<br />
<br />I stare at the wine bottle, my eyes somehow disconnected from my brain, because although I am looking at the bottle, I can still see her face, clear as day: the heart-shape is pretty, if a little insipid, with a sprinkling of tiny freckles across her nose, and one persistent pimple that reappears monthly, as it has done today, in the same place along her jowl. She’s watching me, of course. Watching to see what I’ll say. Hoping I’ll say more, or maybe she’s hoping I’ll leave.
<br />
<br />And then I’m speaking, although I don’t remember deciding I will. And my voice sounds like it’s coming from another place, somewhere I’ve never been before.
<br />
<br />“What does that mean?” Although I know — we all know — exactly what that means.
<br />
<br />“It was a long time ago.”
<br />
<br />Of course it was. It always is a long time ago. What would be the point of making it recent? How better to prove my perpetual self-absorption? My longsuffering husband’s inevitable surrender, while demonstrating that he is flawed, too, and real. Not some saintly two-dimensional Perfect Man who the audience loves to hate as much for his perfection as his whining self-righteousness. Not someone who we all boo and hiss, crying, “You’re better off without him!”
<br />
<br />And so I miss him more — we all miss him more — because of this imperfection.
<br />
<br />But that’s later. First, the drama…
<br />
<br />“Tell me.” My voice grates with wine and tiredness, and all the things that I’d quietly suspected, but hated myself for thinking.
<br />
<br />“Soon after you met. You weren’t really with him then…”
<br />
<br />Not “really” with him? my mind shrieks. Not “really” with him?
<br />
<br />“It was in those first few weeks. One night when you were meant to meet us — after work I think. You didn’t show up. You’d just started writing then.”
<br />
<br />Ah, the words. Of course, the words. See how it’s all tying together?
<br />
<br />“Anyway… We were drunk. We were both really drunk. It didn’t mean anything. Not a thing.” Her hands go up, flat and open, proof of her innocence.
<br />
<br />“We promised we’d never say anything. He didn’t want to screw things up. He was so in love with you.”
<br />
<br />Obviously. Because when you really love someone, you sleep with their best friend.
<br />
<br />“You were all he talked about.”
<br />
<br />I try not to cringe at her use of the past tense.
<br />
<br />“I felt really bad. Really. But there was no point saying anything. It would only have hurt you.”
<br />
<br />And you would never do that, would you?
<br />
<br />I look into my glass. Four bits of cork float on the surface, bumping into each other and the side of the glass as I swill the wine around and around.
<br />
<br />And then three of the bits are stuck to her face, and the wine drips from her chin, and I look around interestedly for the fourth piece of cork.
<br />
<br />******
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />I have a plaque on my wall about friendship. It’s old and corny, but I’ve had it so long there’s a stain on the wall edging it, from age or water. From life. So I’ve left it there to hang.
<br />
<br />It’s a list of what makes a friend true. Line after line of what friends do. Friends listen when you need to talk. Friends talk when you need to listen… That kind of thing, on and on all the way down the plaque. Except there’s one missing that they really should include, <em>Friends don’t sleep with your husband.</em>
<br />
<br />*****
<br />
<br />I can’t sleep again, and the morning seems a lifetime away. My characters are filling my head, fighting to be heard, to live. They’re always clearer to me at night. Perhaps the day’s events, by then, have been sorted, and my brain is ready to tackle the moments without order. My creative mind takes over and prowls the dark night, looking for treasures hidden under rocks, secrets taped to the bottom of wicker love seats. And then the characters start to breathe, and I am right there with them.
<br />
<br />Never more than I am now, with Crystal.
<br />
<br />I watch her enviously. The way her jeans cling to her hips, snug and unfettered, as though she couldn’t be more comfortable or at ease. Her short, midriff tops are light in colour to offset her tanned flat stomach that glistens under the camera lights. I’ve always wanted my clothes to sit on me like that. Natural and easy, not like I’ve dedicated a good part of the morning trying to squeeze into my jeans. Or that I’ve had them altered twice for my height — first shortened, then lengthened again because the extra weight I’d put on made them sit two inches above my Achilles, revealing my squat ankles in all their stumpy glory.
<br /><strong>
<br />*****
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />CRYSTAL: It’s no use. He knows everything. We have to stop.
<br />
<br />MITCH: I’ll never do it, Crystal. I’ll never give up. You mean too much to me. We mean too much to each other.
<br />
<br />CRYSTAL: Oh, Mitch. This is crazy! You need to start a new life. Forget about me.
<br />
<br />MITCH: Never, Crystal. As long as my heart beats and there is air in my lungs, I will love you. I will always love you.
<br />
<br />
<br /></strong>“Crystal’s sobbing by then. Really into it. But Mitch stays strong. He takes her in his arms, strokes her forehead while the music kicks in, and then he sings their song. The camera stays there, then pulls away to show Blake standing right behind them.”
<br />
<br />“Then what happens?”
<br />
<br />“Well, nothing. That’s it. The camera holds them, to let the audience know Blake’s heard it all. That they’ve been caught again, only this time, by the look on Blake’s face, we know it’s serious. Really serious.”
<br />
<br />I watch my producer absorb this. He’s an older man, and looks a bit like my dad, but a lot less friendly. He’s pretty gruff most of the time. Crystal’s terrified of him. Even now, after two years working there.
<br />
<br />“I don’t like it.”
<br />
<br />“You don’t like what?” I ask, feeling the shock of his words reverberate through me. I try to think which part he’s worried about. “Is it the song? We could cut the song. I thought it’d be an easy connection for the audience, plus a shot at cross-promotion. But I’m not married to it. I won’t die in a ditch. Is it the song?”
<br />
<br />“No. Not just the song. I don’t like any of it.”
<br />
<br />“But, but…” A thousand thoughts rush through my brain, but I can’t seem to grab hold of even one of them. So I stand there, stupid and mute, while he waits for me to leave his office.
<br />
<br />I suppose he realizes I’m not leaving because he clears his throat, looks at the door pointedly, then puts down the paperwork he’d already begun shuffling.
<br />
<br />“Actually, it’s Mitch and Crystal. I don’t like them.”
<br />
<br />“But, they’re the whole thing! The whole series has been geared toward this moment. That was the plan.” It feels like the earth is shifting beneath my weight and I am left floating — hovering — dangerously above it. Out of the corner of my eyes, I can see the walls moving.
<br />
<br />“I don’t believe them,” he says simply, shrugging away all my words and, yes, me too. Shrugging away me.
<br />
<br />“Believe them?” I sound hysterical. The edge in my voice has shifted to one decibel below a shriek, and is already of a similar pitch. “How can you not believe them? They’re everything romance should be. They are passion and intensity. Courage and truth. They are … they are … impregnable,” I finish, although I stumble a bit over the word and remember, belatedly, why I never include it in dialogue.
<br />
<br />“Yeah, well, I think they’re boring. Cut them.”
<br />
<br />For a full minute I am unable to draw breath. I must look a little scary because he gets up quickly as though ready to perform CPR, but looking also like he really doesn’t want to. When I’m able to breathe again, I say quietly, through gritted teeth, that he can’t do that. That the audience would crucify him. That the people want love. “They crave romance,” I yell, “Crystal and Mitch define romance!”
<br />
<br />The producer is watching me closely. He’s already decided I’m insane — you can see it in his eyes. He’s unsure what I’ll do next and is primarily concerned with getting me out of his office, into someone else’s realm of responsibility. But I suppose he thinks I’m still capable of reason, and that if he talks quietly, calmly, I’ll leave.
<br />
<br />“Look. I know you’re having trouble at home——”
<br />
<br />“What?” I say. “What?”
<br />
<br />“Your husband left...”
<br />
<br />He’s waving his hand around like he doesn’t know what to do with it, and all I can say is, “You’re going to cut Mitch and Crystal?” My voice is now a hateful whimper. And I decide immediately that it’s all Mitch’s fault — the whole thing, this disaster, comes down to Mitch.
<br />
<br />“The ratings have dropped consistently since Crystal and Mitch got together. The audience loved the first kiss, but have hated everything since. I thought the best friend’s betrayal would pick it up, but it didn’t. Crystal and Mitch need to disappear ASAP. A death would be good. Maybe a murder/suicide. That’d work. Might help us move things over the holiday break. Open up some space for new characters, new stories——” his eyes narrow to ensure I understand before he continues, “new writers.”
<br />
<br />“No.” That’s all I say. One word, one statement, encompassing every single emotion I have suffered these past weeks. It is the summary of me. Simple, clean, complete. No. That’s all. Just no.
<br />
<br />“Well, obviously you’re fired.”
<br />
<br />“Obviously.”
<br />
<br />“So now you should go.”
<br />
<br />“No.”
<br />
<br />“No?”
<br />
<br />“No.” I am loving this word. All this time I’ve tried to write lives, build worlds, with word upon word, when the answer’s been staring me in the face. This perfect, facile yet all-consuming word. No. It’s beautiful. This word, no, is beautiful.
<br />
<br />By now security have shown up and all I can say, over and over, is “no”. I say it louder and louder. I say it — scream it — so many times that it loses meaning, run together in a string like that. But I know, too, that I can’t alter its meaning, or contextualize its point. I can’t manipulate it in any way. The meaning is so intrinsic, so wholly definitive that, even I, a wordsmith, a word lover, a writer, can do nothing except say it.
<br />
<br />No.
<br />
<br />No.
<br />
<br />No.
<br />
<br />And it feels good.
<br />
<br /></span></strong>*****
<br /><strong>
<br />
<br /></strong>So I’m at home now, sitting at my desk. I have no job. No husband. No best friend. I’ve never been more alone in my life, and yet I feel better than I have in years. I’ve brought Crystal with me, of course, tucked away in my mind and my computer. After a time, I’m sure I’ll let her out. Perhaps find her another Mitch, or even a Blake, maybe a best friend. But for now she can rest. Pull on some loose, comfortable jeans, tie up her silky blonde hair, and hang out at the local mall, being gorgeous and elegant and slim. While I continue at my computer, working on the perfect sentence, writing my entire life. Tiny words on a vast white page:
<br />
<br />No. No. No.
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-66540450572604857182010-12-12T02:41:00.000-08:002010-12-12T02:49:36.631-08:00Losing your (golf) ballsWhat is it about this game that turns normal people into raving lunatics, reasonable athletes into bumbling idiots, and the average crowd into dazed sheep? I’m talking, of course, about golf. Perhaps the greatest enigma confounding humankind today. And, stupidly, probably the greatest enigma facing humankind tomorrow.<br /><br />I recently started playing this endlessly frustrating sport, quite badly I must say, and have already fallen irrevocably into this mysterious tailspin of lost causes. I will probably never be any good at golf and yet, absurdly, I continue to curse and cuss like a trooper every time I shoot a double par or miss a forty-foot shot. Duh…<br /><br />Realising the futility of my anguish, I decided to survey some of my previous golfing partners in the hope of obtaining some kind of understanding of the average golfer’s behavior. Unfortunately, these people are no longer taking my calls. I asked my husband (who has to take my calls) to explain the mystery, but found him to be just as confused. He, quite bravely, has taken upon himself the unenviable task of teaching me how not to make a fool of myself on the course, or at least to avoid it for as long as possible. He’s taking it nine holes at a time. I’m usually pretty good until the second one.<br /><br />Much to my surprise, Frank, a dedicated if erratic lover of this sport, is equally amazed at people’s slavish respect for golf. He frequently watches televised tournaments only to repeatedly shriek and chortle at the crowd’s blatant stupidity. “Oh my God!” he exclaims, “The ball has gone into the crowd at the same spot three times and THEY’RE STILL STANDING THERE!” Another shriek of laughter, “That guy just got hit by the ball and HE’S STILL STANDING THERE!” And so on.<br /><br />And yet, religiously, he stands by the TV, emulating the current leader’s stroke in the hope that some of the magic touches his custom-made clubs. After a bad round, my usually sportsmanlike husband announces, “It must be my clubs.” I smile at him hopefully and ask if perhaps I have the same problem. He doesn't blink or miss a beat. “No. It’s definitely your swing.”<br /><br />I remember my father, a better than average sportsman in most fields, being totally confounded by the game. “Think of it logically, Nic. It’s a simple concept involving a ball and a club. Your arms follow a straight line driving the club into the ball - the ball should follow the same projectory. Right? Wrong. No matter what I do, the ball never goes where it’s supposed to.” A firm believer in education as the key to success in, well, everything, he would read books, try training aids, take long walks around the golf course in the hope of picking up something from other players…anything to improve his game. It didn't work. He got to a point and never got any better. I’ve heard similar stories from other equally intelligent and able people. Still they persist.<br /><br />Golfing actually seems to defy the laws of gravity, physics and reason. Shouldn’t the ball go where you aim it? If you hit the ball harder, shouldn’t it go further? And, if you practice really, really hard, shouldn’t you get better? Apparently not. Or not in golf, and not in your lifetime (well, certainly not mine).<br /><br />And I know why, too.<br /><br />Golf was sent down from a higher being, obviously a better golfer, to remind humans of their very tiny position on the earth and of their very human limitations. Even professional golfers have the occasional nightmare shot; we are, after all, mere beginners in the sand-trap of life, and even those paid huge amounts of money can fall victim to overshooting a one-foot putt.<br /><br />And as I take aim this weekend, as that tiny, dimpled ball smirks up at me, glinting in the beautiful Australian sun, smug in its knowledge that I will never get the better of him (for it must be a man), the immortal words of a New York copywriter come to mind: Just fucking do it.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-314477169182447367.post-57652518744629929262010-12-06T17:43:00.000-08:002010-12-06T17:49:54.920-08:00Something I wrote a while back, and yet it still bears some uncomfortable truths...First words, first time<br /><br />I am a writer. Well, almost a writer. According to one literary friend, you’re not a real writer until you’ve had a book published. The short pieces, fiction or non-fiction, even the contest prizes don’t count, he argues, because “anyone can knock out 3000 words” and because, until a commercial publishing house is prepared to spend time, money and marketing on you, you are not truly legitimate.<br /><br />But that’s the problem. Publishing experts say that writing the novel is the easy part. The real work starts when we try to sell it. They’re not kidding.<br /><br />How do I know this? Because I am, as they say, “between” publication right now. As we speak, my Young Adult novel manuscript has done the rounds of every respected children’s book publisher in Australia, most likely never raising its ugly head from the bottom of the much maligned slush pile, beyond getting the cursory 60 second skim before it ends up where they've all ended up. In the rejection pile. One of about ten thousand manuscripts that have done much the same thing this year alone.<br /><br />Because I'm practical but ambitious, I waver between dreaming my manuscript will be selected for publication first time around, to hoping the rejection is at least personalised, and not just another form letter on photocopied letterhead. Even a friendly, scribbled “not for us” in the top right-hand corner is somehow less painful than the two-paragraph “this is a subjective business” blurb that no one reads, or even believes, because we all know that what it really means is “you suck” (“…but don’t let this prevent you from submitting to other publishers.”)<br /><br />Of course, the downside to personalised rejections is that I inevitably try to read encouragement into them, and even an invitation to try again. When an agent or publisher tells me “I didn’t fall in love with your story” what I tell myself they really mean is, “it’s extremely worthy of publication, and you deserve far more than I’m prepared to offer you.” When they say, “I didn’t find your protagonist believable”, what they really mean is “your brilliantly-written, unforgettable heroine is too progressive for our staid old marketing team.” <br /><br />I’m not alone in this desire to read between those tired old lines. There are whole online forums dedicated to breaking down and analysing the various literary rejections, deconstructing their tone, language and implied meaning. And in between these postings, contributors sit about in various corners of the world, reminding each other that it’s really about the words not the money, that we are brilliant writers NO MATTER WHAT ANYONE SAYS, even if we never make it, and even if the commercial publishing world refuses to acknowledge what is patently obvious to everyone else here at this forum… That we deserve to be published. Of course, our main reason for believing this is because our mum likes our characters, or our year ten English teacher told us we were good writers, or our friends think we tell funny stories, but hey, that there is the reading public. We’ve done our own market research thanks, and have very strong results to show for it.<br /><br />The moment we leave the forum, we rush straight back into the seeking-publication mayhem, no better informed, no better prepared, but tragically, more determined than ever. Despite all the writing for publication books, submission guides and how-to articles we’ve devoured, analysed and critiqued, and despite the robust exchange of rejection horror stories, rumoured six-figure successes, and industry gossip, there is so much contradiction and misinformation, that much of our time is dedicated to the business of understanding the process, than submitting our work or, heaven forbid, actually writing the manuscripts in the first place.<br /><br />What’s worse, published writers are no help. At conferences and workshops, I ask popular authors how they identify their target market, and whether it’s a good idea to include similar titles in query letters, but am inevitably met with blank stares and vague rumblings about how they just write the books without thinking about publication. The moment I use the word “pitch” their eyes glaze over, and they mumble something about that being the agent’s problem.<br /><br />“But what,” I persist, “if you don’t have an agent?”<br /><br />“Oh,” they say, cheerfully, “then you’ll probably never get published.”<br /><br />“OK. How do you get an agent?”<br /><br />“The same way you get a publisher.”<br /><br />Right then. Back to the slush pile.Nicole Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01508798620704860433noreply@blogger.com2