Author Thoughts

So, 2019 turned out to be a year of travel and I am really glad we (my husband and I) made the effort to leave home because, thanks to COVID-19, 2020 is turning out to be a year of no travel. Australia’s international borders are presently shut; its state and territory borders closed; regional travel prohibited; and in Melbourne, we are in the second month of a lockdown. That means leaving home only to buy essentials; no visiting friends; no visiting the (vulnerable) elderly; no social gatherings; and only an hour or so of exercise per day: running, walking or biking, limited to groups of two (unless family members), and maintaining 1.5 meters social distance.

In 2019, none of this was on the horizon but a great deal of travel was. We had an overseas trip planned for August, starting with the World Fantasy Convention in Ireland, but then we had the opportunity to spend two and half months camping in the Australian Outback. The whole lot meant we left home with the caravan on May 23,  returned on August 6, then flew out on August 13 for Ireland, England, the Netherlands, Spain, Egypt, Jordan, Crete and then home via Rome and Singapore at the end of October.

I was super keen to finish I Heard the Wolf Call My Name but we were camping with friends and sitting alone in a caravan writing isn’t very sociable. Nor did I want to miss out on the Outback experience which includes wonderful sunsets, starry nights, and chats around the campfire.

Instead of trying to work on the novel, I decided to brush up on my poetry. I bought a lovely new notebook with a pretty cover, and made a public pledge (to keep me honest) to write a poem a day.

And I did write every day, although I’m not pretending all of it is poetry or will ever be poetry, even at final draft stage. Yet the writing was fun, despite me grumbling some nights when I was about to flop into bed and remembered I had to write something. Poetry and prose; poetic prose; free-form poetry; the differences can be very blurred but writing every day is a great discipline. It meant I had to really look at what I passed, and really think about what I experienced, and this kind of attentiveness can throw up all sorts of story ideas.

At the end of the ten week trip, I had a notebook full of writing that forms the basis of my present WIP (work in progress). More information in Newsletter #5.

As for my international travels later in 2019: I unpacked and packed my laptop countless times at airport security check points but only worked on I Heard the Wolf Call My Name in Crete, right at the end of the trip in October, where we stayed in one place for a mini ten day holiday. Carrying a laptop was a nuisance on lots of levels and when the borders open and I hope we can travel overseas again, I will be buying a nice new notebook and using it for different types of writing instead.