Inspiration Finds You Working

On the joys of making bad art and using an indoor toilet

This week, the angels sang for me when the PortaLoo was carted off by the Dunny Man. She served us well, but I was happy to see the back of her. On my birthday last week, she did an extremely disgusting thing to me, and our relationship never really recovered. Now, no more visits to her acrid, damp claustrophobia in the muddy dark of night. We have indoor facilities!

The builders need only do a few last-gasp silicone and grouty bits of business in the bathrooms, and then their work is complete. The bits left - sorting the laundry area, painting, hanging curtains and art, all the fun stuff- remain for Keith and I to do on our own time. The shower is functioning now (no more outdoor winter showers!) and my bathtub is plumbed in and functional! I am absolutely loving it in there. For next newsletter, I hope, a proper reveal, but for now, just a vibe:

I had a wonderful birthday last week, tucked up in bed with Keith and kids and dog.

‘I love you so much. You are my treasure,’ said one child, and ‘Can I make you a coffee cake, Whorebag?’ asked another. ‘You’re my treasure too,’ I told the one, and ‘Wonderful, thank you Slutface,’ I told the other. With the third, I’ve been watching Alone Australia and trying to learn a Tik Tok dance about a German woman called Barbara who opens a rhubarb bar for barbarians. What blessings.

A wild year, this. A changeling. I’m just trying to hang on for the ride. I’ve really needed my quiet mornings in the dark to keep myself on keel this month. Tucking my hot-water bottle onto my hip, plugging the Pink Noise into my earphones and moving the arms and legs of my imaginary friends about.

With the novel, I’ve reached the end of Draft Zero. Hooray! The last fifteen percent, it must be said, is outlining-madness. The final outcomes of a few threads really depend on where things go in the middle section, so I refrained from spending too long on the prose there. I’ve now started Draft 1, a clean draft, where I am rewriting, refining and reordering from the mess of notes in Draft Zero. I loved this Writer’s Routine podcast ep where the author Julietta Henderson’s mad system reflects my own, a bit. It’s comforting.

In this draft I aim to corral and contain my unbroken brumby of a brain, which has some trouble telling the pertinent detail from the dross. Draft 1 will still have way Too Much Information, but it will be all in the right places, I hope, and from there I’ll start killing my darlings. Fingers crossed I can excavate a sparse and clean truth from all the babble.

I’m Wallace and Gromit’ing the novel at this point: putting down the next track of the train as I rattle along. Even though I can’t see too far in front of me, I’m trying to lay a good sturdy track.

I’ve also been working a bit on my other book, a memoir called Unscrambling the Egg. I think of it as a third in a series, following Mothering Heights and Pardon My French, and it’s about ADHD and perimenopause and mothering and daughtering and wifing in midlife: this era that cracks you open and spills your guts on the pavement.

I’m scared of writing more memoir, and I should, perhaps, stick to just the one project, but I’ve been thinking lately about this phrase: inspiration finds you working. Nothing is ever wasted, creatively, I find. Something that starts to bubble, if I explore it, will find its way into something else at some point if I just follow that goose down the alleyway.

My friends Caitlin and Lizzie wrote a wonderful book called Creative First Aid, which is about the mental health benefits of a creative life. In the book they describe the scientifically-proven positive impact on the nervous system that comes from low-pressure artistic pursuits. You don’t gave to be ‘good’ at art to feel good doing it.

It’s a great book. I love the idea of switching the dial from Spectate to Create, because it is so tempting to scroll and watch and consume content from our addictive little boxes, rather than make things ourselves; especially when we feel we are not a ‘real’ artist making ‘worthy’ things. But our brains are so clever at processing and transforming the things that happen to us into our own unique pieces of expression. We should let the incredible machines between our ears play.

During this last month, I’ve kept coming to the page, even though Bleach Church is a huge mess and the Egg frightens me a little. Last week, I sat in the car at a headland while I waited for Smallest Child, and I drew the beach with watercolour pencils while listening to the funny girls at Celebrity Memoir Book Club recap Tori Spelling’s utterly eccentric Mommywood. It was private and hilarious there in my cosy car, and then the rest of the day rushed on.

Listening, Watching, Cooking

Middle child and I are walking and listening to the audiobook of Project Hail Mary. Hard recommend; fantastic sci fi from the author of The Martian.

I’m in a house-tour phase atm. Poh’s house tour for the op-shop finds and art from friends, Troy Sivan’s house tour for his delightful taste and Lenny Kravitz house tour for the lols and wonders.

I love making this air-fryer eggplant at the minute, my own recipe:

Dice a big eggplant into little chunks, and mix with garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt and pepps and olive oil. Air fry on high for about fifteen, checking after ten minutes. Crispy on the outside, melty on the inside. Delicious.

Bath book of the month

A fully painted wall for next time, I hope! I loved The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne, Joan Didion’s nephew and Carrie Fishers bestie. It’s a romping, sad and funny tale of 70’s LA life in a fractured, loving family.

By the way, I’ll be talking at the Orange Readers and Writers Festival at the start of August. Come and say hi, if you’re there. Tell me what you’re making: words, pictures, bathroom walls, epic eggplant….

Go forth and create, comrades!