Have you done your Christmas shopping?

The year is truly galloping along now. We've reached that point where trying to organise a date to meet with friends becomes a comedy of checking and cross-referencing and text messages back and forth ... until finally you all agree that mid-January looks great.

My 'before Christmas' craziness has begun, with editors and corporate clients all needing their work in the door on Christmas Eve. Why, I'm not sure. It's not like Santa's elves will be popping in over the break to actually do anything with the copy filed. But I'm just as happy to have everything tied up by then, so I smile and nod and work late into the night.

In the meantime, the Christmas shopping is not done. Actually, not even thought about. And I can feel the underlying stress that comes with that. There is nothing I hate more than last-minute Christmas shopping. Elbowing your way through crowds with those crazy elevator-music carols hammering in your brain.

Usually, I have most of the shopping well and truly wrapped up by now. (I know it's only November. The carols start in October, you know!) But this year we were moving house during the big sales and I got caught short.

Unfortunately, the closer it gets to Christmas, the less I feel like stirring myself to shop.

So for now I'll concentrate on texting my friends and meeting my deadlines. Surely Santa will take care of the shopping?

Have you done your Christmas shopping? Or, in fact, anything Christmassy at all?

Naming characters: When Jericho met Ham

I am naming lots of new characters at the moment. This is not as easy as you might think. Like naming lots of new children, only some of them are 40 and grizzled, some of them are nobility, some of them are not, some of them are... you get the idea.

When we named Mr8 we had a boys' name all set - and argued for nine months about the girls' name. When it came to Mr5, we had the girls' name ready to go - and came up with a boys' name on the way to the hospital.



My technique with characters has always been to go with my first instinct. If I have no instinct, I simply name that character Fred until I think of something later. This allows me to continue on with the flow of the story without getting stuck. Names can be a real sticking point.

Unfortunately, with this particular project, I have so many characters that if I named all the un-named ones Fred, I'd have bits of text that went like this:

"Why did you do that?" asked Fred.
"I don't know," said Fred.
"It's not very smart," said Fred.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," said Fred.

You see my problem. The universal find/replace when I later decide that one Fred is called Dominic and the other is called Horatio will simply not work.

So I'm trying to do it as I go this time. Which is why I currently have a character called Jericho and another called Ham.

I'm thinking that I am going to have a lot of work to do in the second draft.

How did you name your kids? Did you always know? Did you argue? Or did you simply wait until you saw them?

Oh, and what's your Dad's name? I need a good Dad's name.

[image courtesy of Mr8]

The secret lives of friends

My shy friend Allison Dobell asked me to let you know that her first book, Alice's Wonderland, is now available at Amazon. She describes it as a sexy, funny romance with lots of laughs. It is filed under 'E' for erotica.

You can find out more about Allison's secret life here.

And you can buy her book here.

Thank you.

Do you like a bit of 'heat' in your books, or do you prefer your authors to 'close the bedroom door' before the wobbly bits come out?

Words adrift in paper boats

Every once in a while you have one of those weekends that just covers off everything at once. They rattle along at breakneck speed and, before you know it, they're over, leaving just those tantalising memories behind.

On Friday afternoon I travelled to the Big Smoke with my Dad. Due to trackwork (I'm pretty sure those tracks have been rebuilt seven times since our move to Fibrotown), we spent many, many hours together, on bus and train. Hanging out. Eating biscuits. Talking about nothing. If you have to be squashed into a bus seat with someone, make it someone you really love.

After a visit to my accountant (best glossed over) and a quick beer with my brother TICH in his new abode (note to self, buy funky apartment in hip suburb so that I can pretend to be cool just once in my life), I met up with a writer friend. We spent many, many hours together. Hanging out. Eating burgers. Talking about nothing.

Then I went to stay with my dear friend A, who thinks nothing of evicting her children from their beds so that I can sleep in one said bed, surrounded by little boy detritus, at late notice and at the drop of a hat. If you're going to arrive late on the doorstep of a friend's house after several (thousand) beers, make it someone you really love (and who will still love you back).

On Saturday morning, I presented at the NSW Writers Centre on time and surprisingly fresh for my panel at the Emerging Writers Festival. It was a lively discussion and my fellow panelists Alice Grundy and Chris Summers did a stellar job - the upshot of our discussion (Why Pre-Publication Matters) is to be prepared to work just as hard (if not harder) after you receive a publishing contract as you did while writing your novel (or in Chris's case, play).

One thing I love about writers' festivals is the people that you meet there. Like the guy who told me candidly over a break that he'd taken another writer, his friend, out the back of his property and shot live ammunition at him just so that he (the friend) could feel what it was like to be under sniper fire. The same guy showed me the most beautiful writers' notebook that I'd ever seen. Tiny, copperplate  handwriting, all colour-coded and illustrated. It was a work of art. (Note to self, create lovely writers' notebook...) I am hoping that he will find me on Twitter so that we can chat some more. I really want to read his book when it comes out. If it is as beautiful as his notebook, it will be a work of art.

After the working part of the day was over, I met my boys in the city and we went to Sculptures By The Sea. The sculpture in the picture was my favourite. Words adrift, words washed up. Also, I am obsessed with paper boats. What's not to love?

Today was a day of rest. Mostly poking about at home, getting the chores done, shouting at the children. I wrote some words on my NaNoWriMo project and I end the day completely satisfied.

See what I mean. Everything covered.

How was your weekend?

Quiet please. Writers at work.

It's that time of year again. The first of November marks that day on the calendar when hundreds of thousands of writers around the globe vow that this year will be different. This will be the year when they will 'win'. This will be the year that they will bash out 50,000 words in a month. This will be their year of NaNoWriMo.

This is my third attempt at NaNo. I have never won. I am okay with that. Each time I've done it in the past, I've walked away with about 15,000 words and a good idea. Both of those ideas have become full manuscripts in the fullness of time. One will be published next year. One will (hopefully) be published in the future.

I look at it this way: even if I only finish with 15,000 words, they're 15,000 words that I didn't have on October 31. It is a great starting point, no matter which way you look at it.

This year, I am trying something new. Children's fiction. It's a whole new world for me and will no doubt be a steep learning curve. It's seriously good fun though. So far. Talk to me about in on November 17.

Mr8 is also writing a book (those are his words in the picture - he puts as much effort into those little swords that mark scene breaks as he does into the story). I love that we can sit down together and discuss our work. He knows nothing of NaNoWriMo, or winning or whathaveyou. He just really loves to write.

We could probably all take a leaf out of that book.

I wish you a full life of the everyday

It's not often that I have Big Picture thoughts while I'm slicing mushrooms. Life's too short to stuff a mushroom, or so Shirley Conran would have it, but slicing them... well, that's a different story.

I was concentrating on not chopping off my finger, watching the blade slice through that springy flesh, thinking about the boring Boscaiola sauce I was making. The kitchen window was open and I could feel a light breeze stirring those bits of hair that never quite manage to stay in my ponytail arrangement. Birds were doing what they do best, with a tweet/squawk/chirp orchestra in full swing outside.

The Builder was in the garage, cleaning up the mountain of sawdust he'd created whilst making wooden tomahawks for the school fete. The boys were in another room, bickering over the Wii. Or the sofa. Or something. They could Bicker for Australia at the moment, those two.

Just a Monday evening.

Just the everyday stuff.

The stuff we tend to forget about in our memoirs. The stuff we tend to overlook in our never-ending quest for 'special'.

I think we should take the everyday stuff and hold it tight. This is the living. I know people climb mountains, swim oceans and run marathons to feel alive. But this is it. The living. The everyday stuff that constitutes 98 per cent of our lives.

I have a friend who would give a hell of a lot tonight to be doing something everyday. She would no doubt love to be at home, listening to everyday noises, thinking everyday thoughts. She is the kind of person who understands the joy of contentment. She would be willing to submerge herself in the everyday.

Instead, she is in a hospital bed, fighting an extraordinary battle.

In the dying light of the afternoon, with my mushrooms sliced and my children still bickering, I went out into my garden and took this photo. A beautiful flower bathed in golden sunlight - with a totem tennis pole in the background.

Finding the special in the everyday.

On my friend's behalf, I challenge you to do the same. Yes, children drive us mad. Yes, washing up is boring. Yes, we have too much to do and too little time.

But tomorrow, find the positives. Yes, even in the bickering (a challenge of Mt Everest proportions if ever there were one).

I wish you a full life of the everyday.