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.

It’s done.

On thursday night, I received a copy of my first book and I felt like a brand new Mum.

Look, I’ve got a book!

 I’ve seen every word and every page too many times to remember. I’ve seen the cover and the inset pages. Everything. But seeing it all together, as a complete book, is moving. I keep picking it up, looking at it, 

Did I really write this?

I don’t know why I’m so passionate about books and why I have to write them. Lots of them. Why does one person spend their lifetime perfecting the skill of cricket, or engineering, or painting, or writing? And why passion is so important?

Its been a few years now that I’ve known I want to be a writer. Not a person who writes one book, but a writer. I want to do this always. And that means getting up every day ( or most days), sitting at the computer and tapping out my thoughts. It doesn’t stop with a published book in my hands. If anything, having that book on my desk is an incentive to work harder. 

Brown Skin Blue will be launched in the first week of June and, while I have the occasional thought/worry about sales figures, my more immediate concern is finishing my next book. I want to have a completed draft by the time Brown Skin Blue goes on sale.

I had better get writing…

On New Year’s Eve, I was in Armidale with my family. We were tucked up inside our little campervan at the Pembroke Caravan Park where it was hot enough during the day to swim in the pool and cold enough at night to snuggle up under a quilt. Perfect, in my opinion.

We’d been on a driving trip from Brisi to Dubbo with friends to take the children to the zoo. The day we went biking the 15km around the Western Plains Zoo, the temperature hovered around 33degrees with humidity that was, well, bloody high, and apparently record crowds. My husband had a rotten cold/flu and spent the entire time sneezing and blowing his nose. I’m not that good with heat. Or bikes. Most of the animals were too hot to be bothered emerging from the water or shady corners. My kids are the kind to say ‘oh yeah, there it is, let’s go’. Still, I’m glad we went. But our friends loved every minute of it. 

In Armidale, at Pembroke Caravan Park, the owners invited us all to a NYE BBQ beside the pool. There was quite a turn out. My kids were swimming in the pool while I drank Banrock Station white Shiraz ( highly recommended) and spoke to a lady about all things from retirement to Tim Winton. On the later point we shared a mutual affection. The condition to attending the BBQ was to be prepared to share a story and I thought, well, given I’m a writer, that should be ok. But I spent most of the salad and sausage course hoping I wouldn’t be called upon to say anything. The lady I was talking to disappeared every few minutes to have a cigarette, really, this is my only vice, she said each time before departing, which made our conversation – which I was quite enjoying – rather disjointed. I listened to the conversations all around me. Oldies, mostly, discussing their medical ailments, really, you have diabetes, too. Which kind? There was the man in the corner, red-faced and sweating explaining the virtues of different caravan park amenity blocks, really, the quality ranges from the adequate to the plain inconsiderate. Imagine a man my size (picture a happy walrus on two legs, here) trying to squeeze into a cubicle fit for a child, or trying to get my entire body wet with a showerhead so clogged only one stream of water works and that shoots out in an unpredictable squirt. Dessert concluded  and the owner of the park stood and thanked everyone for coming. Story time. I was happily distracted watching one son in the pool and the other on the playground and hoped to avoid being asked. I needn’t have worried. Person after person volunteered telling us all about themselves, where they had come from and, while they came from such diverse places as Germany, Perth, New Zealand and ‘up the road from Glenn Innes’, they all concluded their sharing by saying how much they appreciated the BBQ. One bloke, close to tears, told about how he’d been on the road for years and wouldn’t go back to a fixed way of living for anything, when I’m dead, the misses can kick me out the door on the way to the next town. I’ve got a van full of cards from friends I have made in parks. You won’t find communities like this staying in motels, I  can tell you that. There were three votes of thanks offered to the owners of the park that night, and three rounds of applause. Not because any of the people who stood and said, ‘I think we should show our appreciation’ thought any of the other two were inadequate, but that hearing isn’t always that good by the time you’re old enough to take off around Australia and two rounds of applause and cheers simply  weren’t noticed. 

I found myself soaking up every inch of my experiences this holiday. The way that tree branches vary in colour from reds and oranges to the most glowing whites. The way the leaves from some trees are silver and shimmer as though they are a colony of a thousand, miniature insects. The sense of an endless road. The feeling of the caravan bumping along behind us. The worry of whether we’d double checked the tow ball. The surprising arrival of lavender and sunflowers and daisies. The feeling of heat and tiredness and dogged determination to finish the bike trail at the zoo. The way anger rushed up inside me every time my kids decided to belt into each other in the back seat or the way some people love what others loathe. The relief of cold water, the feeling of cold wind on my face. The words that people say, the way they look and think and interact. And, yes, stories. Too many, too important, too fragile to share, yet. 

I’ve been out doing some last minute Christmas shopping at Indooroopilly Shoppingtown. Yes, I braved the ridiculous car parking situation and the multitudes of people. But, I did have a very nice breakfast at the Shingle Inn and am happy to report that they do a damn fine coffee. So much so, I shall now have to divide my time between there and Gloria Jeans (I’m such a tart). 

Between Kevin Rudd’s ‘here’s a bit of cash for you all at Christmas time’ hand-out and the competitive pre-Christmas department store discounting war, consumerism looks alive and well for another year. There is an up-shot, though, to the shopping frenzy. I was pleasantly surprised to find shorter lines in Myers, Target and Kmart than in any Indooroopilly bookstore. In every store, there were snaking lines of at least ten – twenty people holding piles of precariously perched hard and soft covered items. It was a pleasant feeling to realise that books are a last minute must-have. But I found myself thinking – on the back of my shingle-Inn coffee buzz – that bookshops should be encouraged to devise a McDonald’s-esque approach to sales. I’m thinking that it could be standard to ask ‘Would you like a Kimberly Freeman with that?’ or Jason Nahrung, or Chris Bongers (that will have to be after May, 2009, folks). This is of course assuming that at least one of the above Australian authors are amongst their purchases already. 

After buying my items, I made my way to the Red Cross gift wrapping station and happily donated to have my gifts wrapped. It felt good knowing that I could both have someone else wrap my presents neatly and efficiently (no tears and holes) and make a donation to a worthy cause. It started me thinking about how we could donate to the worthy cause of Australian literature (apart from buying as many books as we can). Here’s a thought. Take a friend or two into each bookstore. Choose your favourite author/s and engage in an audible (preferably loud) conversation about how brilliant the book and author is. See if you can’t increase an already teetering pile of books, of someone standing in the line, by just one more. ‘You must have a Marcus Zusack with that’.

Seeing all of those books is motivation to finish my own. I now have a new last line.

You should love live, love to cook, and the men will love you back, her mother says and she knows they are important words to be remembered. 

Today is the day.

I’ve been waiting for it for, hmm, a while.

My husband has finished studying and is on long service leave from work. He’s happy to look after house and children. Most of my contract work has wound up for the end of the year. For weeks I’ve been saying,

I wish your last exam was today. 

It’s my time to write. 

But…

I’ve been away from my manuscript for a while now. I’m starting to worry that what I’ve done isn’t nearly good enough. I’ve lost the emotional momentum. I’m at that ‘difficult’ spot about 20000 wds in. My brain is swarming with new book ideas because, for me, starting something new is so much easier than finishing something already started. I whinged to my husband and he said,

Babe, invest in long term relationships.

I’ve loved these characters for so long. I couldn’t possibly count how many hours I’ve already spent with them. It’s Christmas, after all. Time to spend with family and long-time friends. 

My story hovers on this last line,

‘At least we have each other,’ her mother says. 

It won’t be the last line by this time tomorrow.

I love Christmas. I don’t care much for the heat or the humidity or the anticipation of an expanding waistline, but I do love the ’spirit’ that to me feels almost tangible. I love giving presents. Almost more than I love receiving them. Most years I go to great lengths to whip up something crafty. Something wearable, something edible, something ’ahh-able’. Yes, I do love the reactions. Last year I made handbags. The year before that I made gingerbread trees. Not the small, quick variety, but table-topping, tiered, snow-covered creations. One year I made rum ball trees complete with flashing angels on top. This year it’s Gingerbread houses. To me, Christmas isn’t so much about spending lots of money, but being generous in time, effort and relationships. Thoughts are more precious than Kmart gift cards and Ipods.

Christmas is also a time (before I had children, that is) where I could spend days, weeks curled up with great books. When I was at Uni, I looked forward to every new Wilbur Smith and Bryce Courtney in December. This year I want Rose Tremain and Kate Grenville and Margarret Atwood under my tree ( I did want Chris Cleave and Stephanie Meyer, but I couldn’t wait and bought them myself). To me a book is a living, breathing, interaction with an author. It’s a gift of their mind. A creation sometimes years in the making. It has been dreamed, moulded, shaped, baked and wrapped. Perhaps that’s why I love writing at Christmas time. 

In Big River Little Fish, my seven year old main character, Tom, has been shut away with his dysfunctional mother for six years of his life. He knows almost nothing about the world at large, but he does know his own mind. So when he does discover the world when he goes to live with his father, his interpretation is unique. This is his first Christmas. 

Leave a comment if you like…

Something about the Guthrie’s house wasn’t quite right. Something struck Tom on the way in, grabbed his attention and set mosquitoes buzzing in his brain. The questions were hard, there was no denying that, but the brain bugs weren’t exactly giving him a fair chance.

In the corner of the kitchen was a great big tree growing up out of the floorboards through a clay pot. Not one of the Guthrie’s noticed anything strange. Their eyes didn’t stray to it — not once. Tom had been watching. But even more surprising were the kinds of things growing on the tree. At first, Tom couldn’t help but look. Strange brown hearts with ribbon tethers hung from some branches; tendrils of something Tom couldn’t name stretched out horizontally from branch to branch. That was all he really noticed before the mosquitoes swarmed inside him. Made him itch just thinking about it. Felt something strange and hot rise in his blood. He saw that the others weren’t looking at it. Didn’t want to ask in case it was one of the things his mother said not to tell his Pa. In case it was one of those things he didn’t want his Pa knowing he didn’t know. But Sarah was his friend. Said “bloody” around him without looking shocked or taking it back. Helped him carry his fish. Shared his last humbug and first orange.

‘Does everyone around here have trees in their kitchens?’ Tom couldn’t work out a better way to say it in his head before it came out.

Sarah spun on her heels in front of the line of bottles on the bench.

‘What, the Christmas tree?’

Tom shrugged his shoulders. ‘The one in the corner.’

‘Haven’t you ever seen a Christmas tree before?’

Tom shook his head.

‘Are you for real, Tom Ribbald?’

‘I bloody well am!’ Tom felt the hot thing spring out all over his face, making him want to dive into the river. Knew Mother Murray’d take it away, cool him down. Drown everything he didn’t know he should have known.

‘Don’t get your knickers in a knot, Tom. Wait ‘til we’ve got the milk all sorted. I’ll tell you everything down with the lambs. Right?’

 Tom scratched his head. Mosquito bites most likely. He Nodded and took the bottle Sarah handed to him while she poured milk in from the large bucket. Slopped some on the floor at his feet, on his shorts. Said “bloody hell”.

Mr Guthrie grunted from the paper, ‘Cuss again, girlie, and I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.’

Sarah shrugged, poked her tongue out and made a bad face.

Tom smiled. The mosquitoes buggered off, and the two of them walked down the back paddock in search of the lambs that needed to be fed with the milk they’d poured together into the bottles from the bench near the tree that grew through the floor.