Belinda Jeffrey

As a part of the 2010 QLD Writers Centre Blog tour, I’m blogging here about my writing space.

I was gong to post a picture of what is technically my study though, after moving into a  town-house, this is just a little corner in a garage among everything else we have to store in there. It houses the mad mess of ideas and research for my novels, plus the paints and paper, ribbon, boxes and ’stuff’ for artistic endeavors, should anyone feel inclined, and the washing machine.

My preferred writing space, though, is a small table at Gloria Jeans at Indooroopilly Shoppingtown. Yes, I know, it’s not the most ‘ambient’ of places. It has no atmosphere, it’s opposite Woolworths and it is just a re-claimed space in the middle of the mall. But it’s where I go everyday to write (when I can).

The advantage of this particular place is that there is a constant background noise that cocoons me into my own thoughts. Too much quiet around makes my own myriad of other thoughts seem way too loud. Hmm. I feel like chocolate, damn I fogot to hang out the washing. When was that electricity bill due? Too much noise, like music, has me tuning in and singing along, that’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight losing my religion. But with a constant level of background noise, I forget where I am and everything else except the novel I have in front of me. Oh, and the coffee is good and the staff know me. It’s the small things. People drop by for a chat, and it’s not far from home.

By current novel, Big River Little Fish, was mostly written here and it will be published by UQP in September.

Quite chuffed to find Brown Skin Blue plastered on the cover of WA Education Department’s Fiction Focus for Western Australian schools.

Fiction Focus

It’s especially valuable to me because some schools perceive the content of my book to be unsuitable for young adults. I’ve never understood the need to keep teenagers and young adults from accessing some of the darker concerns of life. In fact, I think that if adults are too scared to confront a range of issues, then it makes it a scarier place for younger people.

My son recently saw a poster of ‘The Boy In Striped Pajamas’ and asked me what it was about. I gave a simple, fluffy answer and he kept picking up on the vague places in my answer and asking specific questions. He said he didn’t want me to leave out the bad parts because he needed to know the whole story.

When I hear comments from adults saying that young adults ’shouldn’t read about things like that’ I often think of what it would be like to be a kid who’s had to live through terrible things, imagining what it would feel like to hear an adult describe their life as unsuitable for ‘good kids’ to think about, read, let alone understand. If Barry (my main character) were real, he’s the kind of person I’d love my kids to spend time with. Real, honest, un-afraid of grey.

It has not taken me long to let my brain wander into another story and I’m back in the head space of my adult novel set in Sydney in the thirties. Prostitutes, gangsters, deserters. Debauchery at it’s finest.

I stumbled upon this fantastic book by Peter Doyle called ‘Crooks Like Us’ which is a collection of photographs that were taken in the 20’s and 30’s by police photographers. For some reason crooks and crims were photographed in poses and portraits in addition to mug shots. Doyle suggests it was in order to understand the criminal mind, to see if there were some physical way of discerning the criminal from the respectable citizen. In any case, Crooks Like Us is a fantastic chronicle of mis-fits and fences, rapists, murderers, penny-pinchers and schemers. The pictures seem to strip these people bare, to peel back some veneer and expose a rugged, hardened, resolved physchology. Through these pictures I feel I have an intimate view into the characters that make up the world of my story.

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Here’s the video of Marcus Zusack.

Come along to Avid Reader on Friday Night and support the Indigenous Literary Project at the Great Book Swap. The program aims to raise money and increase awareness for Indigenous Literacy. Tickets are $15

Bring along a favourite book or two, hand them in for auction and purchase another book. All money raised goes to the Fred Hollows Foundation.

Want to know more? Check out the website.

ah the wonder of modern technology. Retweeting and share this trial.

So here it is, the updated and brand-spanking new website. I’ve got the iphone, a pen, paper and, of course, coffee. Everything I need to write.

For those of you who’ve read Brown Skin Blue you’ll know that my main character, Barry, has dark skin. His mother is white and, not knowing the identity of his father, wonders where he comes from.

Barry and I share this mystery of our cultural origins. I have dark skin, my son’s skin is even darker, and I have only stories passed down from my father and aunties about where our dark blood comes from. But today I received this photograph from my grandmother on my mother’s side. She is the baby in the picture, sitting on her mother’s knee. Is it just me or does this woman look dark, too! My grandmother said she had always suspected, but growing up under the White Australia policy makes you tune out to those suspicions.

I’ve always had a nagging, burning question deep inside me. I’ve been the one in my family to wonder and ask and scratch at the surface about where we’ve come from. I’m beginning to think I should dig a little deeper, push a little harder.