Lili Wilkinson's Blog, page 9

Pink Giveaway #2

The original title of Pink was Pink is for Girls. I came up with the idea one sunny afternoon in Sydney, when I was researching convicty things for Scatterheart. I sat on a bench in Circular Quay and scribbled down a page of thoughts, then dashed to Surry Hills where I met author-friends Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier in the pub for a drink. "I want to write a book about a gay girl who secretly likes boys!" I told them. It sort of percolated around in my brain for a year or so, until I heard David Levithan talking about killing the vampires for queer teenagers. Then I knew I had to actually sit down and write it.

To win a copy of Pink, leave a comment with a link to something awesome and PINK! (keep it clean, though)

This is an international giveaway. Make sure your comment includes a way for me to reach you!

Pink Giveaway #1

PINK comes out in the US this week! To celebrate, I'm going to post an excerpt or behind the scenes piece of trivia every day this week, as well as giving away a copy of the lovely shiny US edition.

To win a copy of PINK, leave a comment telling me about an item of clothing that used to be PARTICULARLY important to you.

This is an international giveaway. Make sure your comment includes a way for me to reach you!

EXTRACT: Chapter One

'You're leaving?'

Chloe dropped my hand.

'I know, it sucks,' I lied. 'My parents think I'll get better marks at a new school.' Another lie.

'The fascists,' said Chloe, which was kind of hilarious given that my parents met at the Feminist-Socialist-Anarchist Collective at university.

'It'll be okay,' I said. 'Billy Hughes is a really good school.'

'What's wrong with our school? They're all the same, anyway. All institutionalised learning designed to turn you into a robot.'

I shook my head. 'Billy Hughes is really progressive,'

I told her. 'The school motto is Independence of Learning.'

Chloe narrowed her eyes. 'You don't want to go there, do you?'

Of course I did. 'I don't want to leave you.'

'They'll break you, Ava!' said Chloe, her eyebrows drawing together in concern. 'It'll be all rules and homework and standardised testing. No creative freedom. There'll probably be cadets.'

I shrugged. How could I explain to Chloe that I wanted rules and homework and standardised testing? I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to be around people who cared about maths and structure and results. Not so much the cadets, though. The truth was, I'd begged my parents to let me change to a private school. I wrote letters and sat a scholarship exam and when I got the acceptance formletter halfway throughjust before the end of first term, I danced around my room like a lunatic.

'It's not like I'm going to another country,' I said. 'We can still hang out after school and on weekends.'

Chloe lit up a cigarette and took a long drag. 'Whatever,' she sighed, exhaling.

Chloe was the coolest person I'd ever met. She was tall and thin and had elegant long fingers and pointy elbows like those pictures on women's dress patterns. Today she was wearing a black pencil skirt with fishnet stockings and hot-librarian shoes, which she'd kicked off beside my bed. She had a black shirt on under a dark tweedy fitted jacket. Her dyed black hair was short and spiky and elfin. Two silver studs glittered in her nose, and four in each ear. Her fingernails were painted a very dark plum. The only lightness about her was her porcelain skin, and her white cigarette.

Chloe read battered Penguin Classics she found in op shops and at garage sales. They were all by people like Anaïs Nin and Simone de Beauvoir and made her look totally intellectual, particularly when she was wearing her elegant horn-rimmed glasses.

Chloe didn't really care about school. She said most of the teachers were fascists, and sometimes even cryptofascists, whatever that meant. She said that our education system made us docile and stupid, and that true education could only come from art, philosophy, and life itself. Chloe would rather sit on the low stone wall just outside our school and smoke cigarettes and talk about Existentialism and Life and make out with me.

She was wonderful, and I was pretty sure I was in love with her.

So how come I wanted to leave so badly?

When I first told my parents I was a lesbian, they threw me a coming-out party. Seriously. We had champagne and everything. It was the most embarrassing thing that'd ever happened to me.

They loved Chloe – possibly even more than I did. When Chloe came over, she usually ended up poring over some Ann Sexton book with Pat, or listening to Bob Dylan on vinyl with David. Ostensibly, I was there too. But I didn't really care for washed-out poetry about wombs, and

I thought Bob Dylan was kind of overrated. So I just sat there politely like I was at someone else's house, until the phone rang or something, and I could finally drag Chloe away to my room. Then there would be less talk about feminism, and Chloe would read to me from my favourite book of Jorge Luis Borges short stories, and

I would make her laugh by doing impressions of Mrs Moss, our septuagenarian English teacher. Making Chloe's lips curve upwards in a smile, or her eyes crinkle with laughter, made me happier than just about anything else in the world.

When it was finally time for Chloe to go home, she'd smooth her hair and rearrange her clothes, and we'd troop back out to the kitchen. Pat and David would always look so crestfallen that she was leaving. 'So soon?' Pat would say. 'But we've hardly had a chance to chat!'

Sometimes I thought my parents wished Chloe was their daughter.

I got home and said hi to Pat and David and then went into my room and shut the door. I wished I had a lock, but there was no way my parents would approve of that. It would imply that I had something to hide, and they're the most liberal and accepting parents in the world – so what would I possibly want to hide from them?

If only they knew.

I went to my wardrobe and dug through my old jelly-sandals and mouldy runners until I was practically in Narnia. And I pulled out a bag. It was one of those paleblue shiny shopping bags with a ribbon handle. It was the kind of bag that people on TV have fifty of when they're on a shopping spree that could fund a starving African nation.

In the bag there was a bundle wrapped in thin lemon-yellow tissue paper, sealed with a pale-blue oval sticker with gold lettering on it. Holding my breath, I gently prised the sticker away from the tissue paper, and unwrapped the bundle, listening carefully for the sound of Pat or David busting in to offer me an espresso or a lecture on post-structuralism.

At the centre of the bundle there was a sweater. A pink argyle cashmere sweater, to be exact. It was pretty much the softest thing ever, the pink and cream diamonds snuggling up against each other like soul mates.

I rubbed the soft wool against my cheek, and then stood in front of the mirror, holding the sweater against my body. I didn't need to put it on – I knew it fit perfectly. I knew because I'd tried it on at the shop. And it was so beautiful, so soft, so … pink. I just had to buy it. Even though I knew I couldn't wear it, because Chloe would laugh herself silly.

I never wore pink. Pink wasn't cool. Pink wasn't existential. Pink was for princesses and ballet shoes and glittery fairies.

When I was five, I only wore pink. Pink everything, from my undies to my socks to my little frilly dresses to my Flik Flak watch. I refused to wear any other colour – much to the dismay of my parents, who were itching to dress me in miniature Che Guevara T-shirts and black berets.

All my toys were pink. I only used pink pencils. I insisted on having my bedroom painted pink.

Not now. Now my bedroom was painted a sombre pale grey, with charcoal skirting boards and architraves. Now, there was no trace of pink in my room. No more unicorn posters on the walls – instead there were black-and-white art prints. My parents must have been so proud. There wasn't even so much as a rainbow flag; as Chloe said, we weren't that sort of lesbian.

As I'd grown older, Pat and David had worn me down. They explained to me that pink was an empty signifier of femininity, and pointed out that none of the other little girls at my Steiner school wore pink dresses under their art smocks. They showed me magazine articles about Britney Spears before she went off the rails, and shook their heads sadly.

By the end of primary school, they were victorious. The pendulum had swung all the way over to black. Now, you'd be lucky to find me in a skirt, and at the end of Year Ten I'd thrown out my last pair of non-black undies. My hair was dyed black, and usually caught up in a messy bun. I wore a reasonably unchanging wardrobe of black jeans and black tops – black singlets in summer, and a grandpa cardigan in winter. Sometimes I wished I could dress crazy and eclectic and feminine like Chloe, but I knew she would always outshine me, so I stuck to what I knew.

So now the pink sweater was practically glowing in my grey bedroom. It was like a tiny bit of Dorothy's Oz in boring old black-and-white Kansas.

I carefully folded it up, and rewrapped it in the yellow tissue paper.

Pink was for girls.

Girly girls who wore flavoured lip gloss and read magazines and talked on the phone lying on their perfect, lacy bedspreads with their feet in the air. Girls who spent six months looking for the perfect dress to wear to the school formal.

Girls who liked boys.

The NaNoExperiment

So I finished NaNoWriMo in 2009. In 2010 I fixed up the manuscript a bit, and sent it to my editors (and to @snazzydee who is my unofficial-but-equally-important editor). I got comments back this week, and am starting to work on revising the book ready for publication next year.

And I have A LOT of work to do. Much more than in other books I've written. A lot more broad-brush structural stuff than usual. It's to be expected, after all, I usually write a first draft over six months, not 30 days.

So is it worth doing NaNoWriMo? I don't know. It's certainly more work for my editors. Will it mean more work for me? I'm not sure.

I'll let you know when the book is finished.

Healthy

Firstly, let me say that there is nothing wrong with being fat, thin or in-between, as long as you are healthy. I don't want to be a fat-hater, or make any of those horrible magazine-cover-thin-is-perfect stereotypes any more pervasive. Nor am I a health/fitness junkie.

But over the Christmas season, I over-indulged and put on a bit of weight, and I felt uncomfortable. Not body-image uncomfortable (although to be honest there was a bit of that too), literally uncomfortable. Less healthy, less energy, and some of my clothes didn't fit any more. I'd gotten into some lazy habits – too much take-away and sugar, and drinking alcohol – if not too much, then too frequently.

So Healthy January was declared. It involved joining the gym, eating better (more veggies, wholegrains and protein, less starchy carbs) and no booze at all. Now January is over, I thought I'd share my findings.

Despite all the ads on TV for DVDs and meal programs and magic devices, the secret to weight loss is this: eat less crap food. Exercise regularly. Drink less alcohol.
Exercise: I'd been doing it wrong. My friend Jellyfish shared this piece of wisdom: When doing cardio, you should never be so out of breath that you couldn't have a conversation. Feel your body working, work up a sweat, but don't overdo it. It doesn't have to be unpleasant to be working.
I still hate exercising. I haven't had one of those "I love it!" revelations. It's BORING.
But I feel fantastic. I sleep better, I have more energy, I'm more focussed, and I lost 4 kilos in a month.
Audio books help. I'm currently listening to Bill Bryson's At Home, which is fascinating.
Eating less doesn't mean only eating lettuce leaves. We have Healthy Parma, for example, which is a grilled chicken breast with Napolitana sauce and melted (low fat) cheese. Curries. Chilli Con Carne. Lots of BBQ.
And we still have cake at a birthday party and other treats. We just appreciate them more.
The discovery that I'm a bit lactose intolerant has aided the whole Feeling Better thing.
Sparkling water and apple juice in a champagne glass is not a bad substitute for champagne.
I'm also doing Body Balance classes (a mix of Tai Chi, Yoga and Pilates) which is awesome for the wellbeing – as well as being a surprisingly full-on workout.

We're trying to take incorporate some of Healthy January into daily life – eating better (although not dieting because I dislike the idea), drinking less, and continuing at the gym. Hopefully we can stick it out so it becomes a habit!

A tale of two boxes #2

This was my desk at the Centre for Youth Literature. Now it's all packed up, cleaned, with eight years of bits and pieces in one single cardboard box. I thought I'd take you on a tour of that box.

A copy of Voiceworks magazine from 1995. I had a poem called "Imagination" published in this edition, which now looks hilariously naive and childish next to angsty poems about rejecting postmodernism and foetal blood.

This is from an event for the Library's 150th birthday, where we put Winnie the Pooh on trial. I think we charged him with honey theft. I photoshopped the image on the slide. Pretty proud of it.

This was also for the Library's 150th (2005) – I curated a small exhibition of 150 Victorian books for young people that was displayed in the Cowan  Gallery.

Here is 22 year old Lili on the SLV's Annual Report. That photo also hung out the front of the Library on a 30 foot banner for a year or two. I got to keep the banner when it was taken down, although who knows what I'm supposed to do with it.

Don't tell anyone, but I may have nicked Ned Kelly's helmet. I'm sure nobody will notice.

And finally, this photo was taken at the very first CYL event I ever went to, when it was still at St Martin's Youth Theatre. This is from a Bookgig featuring Isobelle Carmody's The Gathering. Look at tiny 11-year-old Lili with her too-short jeans and white socks! She is currently being very inspired by Isobelle Carmody and hoping that one day, she'll get to stand up there and talk about her books*. I found this photo in the CYL archives after I'd been there for about six months. I don't really believe in destiny or signs, but finding the photo certainly made me feel like I belonged.

Thanks, CYL! Thanks, Agnes and Mike and everyone else I've worked with there over the years. You were the best First Real Job a girl could ever want to. You changed my life in bigger and more profound ways than I can put into words. Stay in touch.

_______________________

*This is the year, Tiny Lili! For the first time ever I'll be appearing on the CYL program as an author, and not a staff member, at the Reading Matters Conference.

A tale of two boxes #1

This week has featured two very important boxes. Here's #1:

A box of Pinks! The US edition of Pink comes out on 8 February, and I shall be celebrating with the Week of Pink – where I shall give away a copy of the US edition EVERY DAY from the 8th to the 13th. There'll also be heaps of giveaways and interviews and things on other websites, so stay tuned!

Thoughts on titles

1. I spent half an hour lying in bed the other day, idly wondering why how the title Twilight reflected the book Twilight. Don't worry, I figured it out eventually. It was quite early on a Saturday morning.

2. There is an award in the Smoshkas (my peeps' special Oscars party) called the Gaynigger. The award is for the worst title of the year, in honour of the film called Gayniggers from Outer Space which, due to me inheriting a hard drive with lots of random stuff on it, I now somehow own (but haven't watched). Previous nominees for the Gaynigger have included: The Hottie & the Nottie, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theatres, Gory Gory Hallelujah and The Slammin' Salmon.

3. I was thinking, the other day, about book titles that I like. The three I immediately thought of were:

Don't Call Me Ishmael

Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer

4. I've always struggled with titles. My first book was so hard to title, that in the end it never got one, which is why I called it Joan of Arc: the story of Jehanne Darc. I wanted to call it Hot Chick or Fahrenheit Joan, but somehow my publisher didn't find that very funny. Scatterheart was called East of the Sun until pretty much the last moment, when I heard a Bjork song and a lightbulb went off. Angel Fish was The Army of Lost Children for ages, and it's Company of Angels in the UK. Pink started out as Pink Is For Girls. The Not Quite Perfect Boyfriend was originally Spelling Mistakes, but we decided that gave too much of a witchy impression.

5. So I'm feeling pretty chuffed that the only title work to be done for the new book was changing it from A Pocket Full of Eyes to A Pocketful of Eyes.

What are your favourite book/film titles?

10 Beloved Books of 2010

Graffiti Moon, Cath Crowley

I think this is my favourite Australian book to come out last year. It's a word-perfect one-night-in-Melbourne romance with art, grafitti, mistaken identity and just the right balance of comedy to pathos. Beautiful.

The Sky is Everywhere, Jandy Nelson

I didn't read The Sky Is Everywhere for ages, because I was a bit put off by the blue-ink-diary-meets-funky-Bible production of it. But then I inhaled it on a plane and cried on Michael's shoulder and clutched him tight. Summery, flowery, musical romance. Gorgeous.

Teenage, Jon Savage

This is the only non-fiction book, and also the only non-YA. It's a prehistory of teenagers, from the late 19th century to the 1950s. Utterly fascinating and will be of great use for my research this year.

Six Impossible Things, Fiona Wood

Another one I didn't get around to reading for ages, and then devoured and loved. I think my favourite part is the bitter newly-single mum who starts a wedding-cake business, but turns all her potential clients off marriage. Genius.

Guardian of the Dead, Karen Healey

My favourite kind of fantasy is when magic permeates the real world in subtle and interesting (and sometimes violent) ways. Guardian does just that, weaving Maori mythology (and other kinds) into contemporary New Zealand life, where it mingles with teen drama, humour and romance.

This is Shyness, Leanne Hall

How could I not love a book about a secret suburb somewhere near Collingwood and Fitzroy, where the sun never comes up, and sugar-addicted kids and creepy monkeys roam around abandoned housing commission flats?

White Cat, Holly Black

Curse-working was banned along with alcohol during the Prohibition years in the US. And it's still banned. People wear gloves to protect their hands from curses. Throw in some good old fashioned cons, some confusing dreams and a memory that doesn't seem quite right, and you have one Lili eagerly awaiting Book Two.

When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead

One of those books that is made so mind-blowingly profound by its conclusion, that you have to immediately turn back to page one and read the whole thing again. New York, secret messages, a beautiful homage to Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time, and some of the most thought-provoking, deceptively simple, philosophical writing I've ever come across.

Three Loves of Persimmon, Cassandra Golds

Cassandra Golds is yet to write a book that I didn't adore. This one is no exception. She returns to the vibrant and delicate world of mice in this novel – mice, heartbreak, cabbage-roses, trains, theatre and love.

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares, Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

In the vein of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, this back-and-forth novel has all my favourite things: New York, second-hand bookstores, romance, humour and Christmas. An absolute delight.

In 2010 I also reread nearly everything ever written by LM Montgomery, because I went on a bender and couldn't stop. I met Emily of New Moon for the first time and possibly love her more than Anne Shirley. And then I couldn't stop, and had to read everything. I adored every single word, with the possible exception of Kilmeny of the Orchard which I found a bit creepy.

(Also, for the record, my top films of the year were Toy Story 3, Easy A, Scott Pilgrim and The Social Network. In that order.)

What were your favourite reads of 2010?

Resolutions

This is a bit late, but I've just been catching up on my blog reading and it has put me in a ruminatey frame of mind.

So, in 2011 I hope to:

start my PhD
write another book
join the gym and do something about my deplorable fitness levels
ride my bicycle as much as possible (more on bicycles soon)
travel around the world with Michael
read more adult fiction (as well as plenty of YA, of course)
watch Mad Men
finish my string quilt (this one may be a little ambitious)
spend time with all the people I love

…

and here's a pertinent one for this blog:

start reviewing books

Because I can't do it through CYL any more, and I like to share. I'm not going to be reviewing EVERYTHING I read, and I'm not going to do negative reviews because I rarely finish a book I'm not enjoying. But every now and then, when I read something that I'm desperate for YOU to read, it will appear here. And I'll be starting this week with a list of my favourite books from 2010.

Best wishes for 2011!

Catch Up

Happy New Year, Internet!

I had a lovely break, with lots of awesome gifts at Christmas (highlights being craft books, a new bike helmet for a new bike, and most of all a beautiful song recorded by Mj – Dear Lili (after Dear Prudence, which is our favourite Beatles song)). And there were NOMS GALORE, including a Gingerbread Experience with an Industrial Designer:

We discovered some Fearful Symmetry at the zoo:

And I got sent to gaol:

But escaped on a ferry with a charismatic musician:

Then got chased by zombie ponies at a Proposed Hobbit Hole Site:

But I also managed to fit in some quality beachtime with my peeps.