nicely done, a cup of jo.
February 24th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
It’s not difficult to believe that blogger and writer joanna goddard is a wonderful mother considering how lovely her own mother seems.
When Joanna faced the dilemma of whether or not to write about her own nasty bout of depression on her popular site, her mother wrote:
Isn’t that beautiful?
The result was this honest and touching post, which provided an account of depression that I’m sure many readers — not just young mothers — will identify with and benefit from.
I’m encouraged to see that conversations like this about depression and other illnesses (I hesitate to call them “mental illnesses” because I believe that they are physiological disorders just like any other disease) are gradually becoming more frequent, open, and comfortable.
Nicely done.
fontastic: lost type co-op.
February 23rd, 2012 § Leave a Comment
I’ve been looking at fonts until my eyes water.
The lost type co-op is my favourite online destination to visit not only gawp at various fonts, but to see how they can be tweaked for greater effect. The library is small, but the use of colours and textures in the samples is inspiring.
I’m attempting to redesign the corner image for this site so that it suits the space better and more genuinely reflects my personality and the character of the site. This is proving very, very difficult.
My cup-of-tea consumption has risen dramatically.
Oh well. Back to the drawing board.
ring ring.
February 22nd, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Last year, I was, at long last, able to take off the two rings I’d been wearing for more than twelve months. They’d become stuck when my hands had puffed up (because of weight gain? arthritis? — I’m not sure) and simply wouldn’t budge, even with soap and oil and all the twisting and yanking in the world.
Then I went on a jewellery diet.
I usually wear the same things every day: a fine silver necklace with two brushed silver discs on it and crystal studs in my three ear piercings. But I like rings.
… as long as I can take them off when I want to.
I ordered this delicate little knot ring online from silverknots. Jim, the maker and seller, was lovely to communicate with and so prompt with the order.
I like to look down at my hand and realise that I know the name of the person who made the ring for me.
Do you shop on etsy?
down to business.
February 21st, 2012 § 7 Comments
This week I get down to business.
I was lucky (extraordinarily so) to attend a two-day workshop in Brisbane facilitated by The Australian Industry Group and edgeware, which filled me with enthusiasm, inspiration, and plenty of practical ideas for my little freelance business.
This is my time. I’ve finally realised that I need to stop waiting.
I’ve studied my craft for more than six years and now I want to use it. The Internet is my oyster, so to speak.
So, in addition to finishing off a job application this week, I will be putting my mind to updating the copy on my professional website, opening up my professional blog again, and making a definitive decision about my business-card artwork.
Posts here might be lighter than usual, but sometimes less is more, yes?
PS I had my logo made into a stamp several weeks ago. There’s something very satisfying — and therapeutic — about manual stamping. I recommend it.
eggling: crack and grow.
February 20th, 2012 § 2 Comments
Isn’t this a sweet idea?
These little eggs are made out of porous porcelain. But crack open the top and — surprise — you will find a micro-plant all ready to go. Add water and place in a sunny spot to cultivate.
Each eggling comes with a tiny terra cotta dish and extra seeds. All in all there are ten varieties to choose from: basil, mint, thyme, chrysanthemum, phlox, petunia, lavender, cactus, red capsicum, and wild strawberry. The baby plants can grow in the egg-shell for up to five weeks before needing to be transplanted into a larger vessel.
Apparently, these are very popular in Japan, but I saw them first when I was in Sydney last year. They were stocked in general pants among a variety of other very cool and quirky merchandise (Pantone iPhone case, anybody?). I think an eggling would make a cute and lovely gift for both children and adults.
listen: paper route.
February 16th, 2012 § 2 Comments
I play songs over and over again.
I can’t stop myself. Yes, I know you might think it’s tedious, but what else does one do when one falls in love with a sound?
An old friend with exquisite musical tastes introduced me to paper route on the weekend.
I can’t stop playing “Dance on our graves”.
You can listen to it right now!
But the better news is that the entire Absence album is available for free download on noisetrade at the moment. (Naturally, just type the words “Paper Route” into the search by any artist name box and go from there.)
It’s all about those violins towards the end.
katherine howell: silent fear.
February 15th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Australian crime author katherine howell has this month released her fifth novel in the Ella Marconi series: Silent Fear. I confess that I horribly disrupted my sleep cycle by staying up until 1.00 am the day after I purchased it.
I just couldn’t put it down.
{Photograph of Katherine and Grace the chihuahua by Scott Campbell}
As with the previous four books, Silent Fear draws inspiration from Katherine’s years spent working as an ambulance officer, pulling Sydney police officers and paramedics together in strangely entwined scenarios.
Vigorously paced and chillingly real, this novel opens with a routine ambulance call to a collapse at a park. During a casual game of touch football, a man stumbles to the ground while bent to tie his shoelace. Paramedic Holly Garland is stunned not only to feel a gunshot wound in the back of the gentleman’s head, but to see her estranged brother huddled with the man’s friends on the grass. So begins detective Ella Marconi’s hunt for a brazen murderer, but in the process, how much of Holly Garland’s past must she dig up to find the answers?
What I love about Katherine’s writing is the tension and high stakes she manages to achieve without resorting to farfetched plotting or overdrawn characters. If anything, the sense of familiarity and “realness” is part of what causes the heart to race… because it could be happening just around the corner. The pavement is your pavement. The suburbs are your suburbs. And characters sweat, fret, lose tempers, and crack under pressure. Detective Marconi is self-assured, endearingly competitive in her male-dominated environment, and determined to get the Bad Guys even if it means running on mediocre coffee, adrenalin, and snatched hours of sleep. There are no predictable near-death scrapes at the end of every novel, nor are there staff — who would never ordinarily be on the field out of their labs — apprehending criminals in their spare time. Real is satisfying.
And real is scary.
I was lucky enough to be able to ask Katherine some questions about her writing process. She has just finished writing her sixth book (phew!) and her seventh will form part of a doctoral thesis that she is completing through The University of Queensland. Between travelling, teaching, tending to the chihuahua, and supporting her partner’s bookstores, I have no idea how Katherine finds a spare moment to answer all my garbled e-mail, but she is always generous with her time.
1. Silent Fear is your fifth Ella Marconi novel. What are the pros and cons of writing a serial character? Does it make some things easier and some things harder? Is it difficult to keep the character consistent, or do you feel it’s natural for them to grow and change too?
Pros and cons of a serial character — readers become attached to the character and look forward to each new book, and they see Ella as a friend, and so do I! It’s easier in one way because she’s already established in my head; I don’t have to imagine a whole new person (although I do with a number of the other characters in the books anyway), but it’s harder in that sometimes I’ll invent some detail of her past and drop it in then forget about it, and say something different in a later book, but a reader will pick up on the mistake. I do worry sometimes about whether she’s consistent enough, and also how’s she’s developing and changing. I don’t know where she’s going, or how long the series will last, but I’m really enjoying the journey.
2. Many reviewers have commented on your “sense of place”. Is this something that comes through naturally as you write, or is it something you have laboured to achieve? Do you think that your books’ “Australian-ness” appeals to/misses/doesn’t affect foreign markets?
Re: sense of place, I think in my books it comes through from how I describe the places that the cops and paramedics go, and the fact that they spend a lot of time on the ground with people, on the streets literally, and in the weather. I hope readers get a sense of Sydney as a place not just centred around the inner city but with sprawling suburbs and ordinary streets and every kind of dwelling from tiny units to big houses on acre blocks to townhouses to the streets, in the case of the homeless. I don’t know if it helps or hinders with overseas markets!
3. I have noticed with the last two books that the stories’ conclusions have held some sort of promise of “more to come”. Do you story ideas now extend beyond one novel into visualising a shape for the series, or do you still approach the task in the discrete unit of one book at a time?
I don’t visualise a shape for the series, but I do think about what might happen in the next book, and certainly with Ella having relationships I think that creates a sense of more to come. The crimes themselves are discrete, though.
Katherine is wonderfully personable and open to sharing. Pop on over to her website to read more about her life, books, classes, and tour dates. Katherine also has a new twitter account, and needs some encouragement to test the tweeting waters (if she doesn’t mind me saying so). Give her a shout out, and — of course — buy her books.
blog tour tuesday: the dictionary of obscure sorrows.
February 14th, 2012 § 2 Comments
{original vintage book pola by timothy logan}
Have you heard of sniglets? Sniglets are neologisms (coined words/new words) that “don’t appear in the dictionary, but should”.
You see, there are things in life for which we have no word but are so common, widespread, and familiar that being alerted to their presence and knowing that somebody else gets it elicits a certain thrill. Take “Vegiludes” for example: n. Individual peas or kernels of corn that you end up chasing all over the plate with your fork. This usually happens to me when I’m eating in company that I want to impress.
This tumblr, the dictionary of obscure sorrows, is a deeper exploration of the phenomenon. It’s an exploration of the wispy little gaps in our language and those tiny, flinty feelings in life that we all recognise but have no means to express. I don’t know who writes it, but I appreciate their layman’s philosophy and linguistic literacy.
In spite of its name, I feel validation — not sorrow — when I read each new definition.
It’s the incredibly poignant and precise writing that saves this site from being a study in mere melancholy.
how to love me.
February 13th, 2012 § 8 Comments
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, a fact that I have been conscientiously trying to avoid this year. I do not mean to seem or sound bitter in the least, because I have a lot of love in my life, but it’s a brutal occasion if you happen to be nursing a broken heart.
I hope to commemorate V-Day with a couple of friends, drinking tea in the afternoon… and perhaps sharing a slice of chocolate cake. Nothing spells l-o-v-e to me like tea and sympathy.
{polaroid taken by the ever-lovely fanny}
Do you feel loved?
During one of my bleakest days a month or so ago, somebody wise gently pointed out to me that it can be very difficult for people to know how to love you at the best of times, but especially when you are hurt. “Think of the gift you can give someone,” she commented, “if you could let them know exactly what you need.”
Blink, blink.
I think so much in terms of either loving or not loving; the questions of how, when, where, and what… well, as with most things, I sort of expect people to just get it. But maybe that’s a little like asking someone to make an angel food cake without a recipe or electric beaters on hand. I know that I sometimes wish people came with both a Google Translate feature and a comprehensive instruction manual (Dad?).
My mother has a couple of books in her shelf about the so-called five love languages. Usually personality profiles and tests and categories et al cause me an irrepressible spasm of eye-rolling, but the love languages at least start from the helpful premise that individuals encode and decode love and affection in different ways. There are plenty of tests you can take online to determine your “type”, but I prefer not to buy into these boxes with high walls on every side. If you can conceive of the languages as possibilities along a continuum, it’s easier to understand that you and the people you love are mixed bags who require careful working out and tending, rather than branding from a page in a book.
But what are the five?
Words of affirmation positive verbal reinforcement.
Physical touch bodily contact between people
Quality time periods where you have complete attention
Acts of service doing things for a loved one
Receiving gifts physical or visual symbols of affection
I have been stumped by these delineations in the past as I have — let’s just say — a rather “effusive personality”. My parents call me the Changeling because, out of a family of awkward huggers and silent types, I’ve always been the one invading personal spaces and writing heartfelt messages in cards. In this way I am also terribly guilty of trying to jam the square peg into the round hole. I blunder about showering affection in all my own ways without waiting to discern what other people really need from me.
If you’re unsure about your strong and weak spots, it can be helpful to work backwards. What hurts you the most or makes you feel the least worthy or loved?
What bums you out? Someone sitting a foot away from you or recoiling from a hug? Someone forgetting a special occasion or putting zero thought into a gift? Someone refusing to help you out with something? Someone talking over the top of you or becoming distracted by something else when you’re spending time together? Someone making an insensitive verbal crack about you or merely nodding, “Mmm,” when you desired genuine feedback?
It was only by considering these somewhat less exciting questions that I’ve come to understand what makes me tick. Because I love to give gifts and because I’m a writer, I always assumed that I belonged with one foot in the giving/receiving gifts camp and the other in words of affirmation.
But close scrutiny reveals to me that I’m all about quality time. Remember how I said “nothing spells l-o-v-e to me like tea and sympathy”?
I am lucky in that I have three very close lady friends who are all about the quality time, and I have been in at least one intimate relationship where my partner and I seemed to be conversant in this same language. It always means so much to me when a friend or loved one initiates contact.
On the flip-side, nothing hurts me more than somebody not wishing to spend time with me, saying that they’re too busy, or always waiting for me to make the first move, make the call, send the text, tweet, or e-mail. Silent treatment pushes me into despondency. In my mind, you can never be too busy to say “Hello” or “How are you?” or “I love you”. It’s not about quantity; it’s about quality and purity of intent.
As I’ve got older — and, at times, sicker — acts of service have also become increasingly important and cherished to me. I feel loved and understood when somebody cooks for me or makes me a cup of tea or even helps me to hang out my washing when I’m too sore to manage this myself.
This wise person said to me too: “Tell the truth. Faster.” So, I’m trying to be more raw and authentic this year, not apologising any longer for who I am or what I want and need.
I’m curious to know — nay, I really want to know — about your idiosyncratic love language. If your personal instruction manual only had one do and one don’t, what would they be? What buffers you and buoys you up? What replenishes you?
And what diminishes you?
