Rumplestiltskin?

It may well be that my Pulitzer prize winning novel is now going to win the Australian Book of the Year for young adult fiction, for I have decided to re-work an old manuscript that I once loved, but which never got published.

And, upon reflection after casting it aside for 5 years, I can see why. It’s shit.

To be honest, I can’t even remember what I age I would have written for – the language is older and yet the main character is clearly pitched at twelve year olds. Twelve year old losers, even. She’s a whiny pain the neck and I want to smack her. I wrote her a hot older boyfriend and she didn’t even want him, for God’s sake – and I can’t even tell why!!!

The beauty is that I’ve already written fifty thousand words and, although a lot of it falls into my own assessment of “crap” I think it only fair that I be allowed to acknowledge some of it as good, also. The plot itself is ok. It just maybe needs to not be set in a seaside village (what was I thinking!) that is also, quite remarkably, near the bush, and has a perfectly sized rural township too. Talk about covering all bases!

And I’m going to make it darker! The main character is a witch and yet, she’s even worse than the Worst Witch! She needs to be Hermione meets The Changeover. And an actual distinguishable power might help too!

So suddenly, I am further along in my quest for glory than I thought I was. Sort of. Now I have to figure out how to spin straw into gold!

Sweet Sorrow? Are you kidding!

So, I haven’t blogged for ages … you might now have a better sense of why I’m clearly not the candidate to back in the run for the Booker Prize. (Yes, I change prizes frequently, just as I change my shoes, my career aspirations and my underwear - but I just don’t like hedging my bets!)

So, in the lead up to the Miles Franklin masterpiece that I am slowly creating, it’s been quite a tumultuous few weeks. I’m quite an emotional person, I’m afraid, and the month of July thus far has seen some stress on the heartstrings. A friend of mine from my Pro-Writing degree once told me that she was no longer able to write, because she was so happy in her life “right now” the angst that had once fuelled her creativity was gone and she couldn’t churn out a sentence.

I doubt I’ve ever been more jealous of anyone in my life!!! Forget beauty, forget height, forget money, I don’t want it! If angst were the key to my writing success, I’d have won every literary prize under the sun! My 20s were a steaming vat of boiling, tortured angst. And then I grew up and got over it; as you do.

But I’d stopped writing.

I suppose I could have started churning out novels about serial killers and plagues, but it was never what I wanted to write about – because I’m happy when I write, so I didn’t want to write about awful things. So I just wrote nothing at all.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m ok; just one of those months where a variety of stressors seem to crop up at once. But the slightest bit of anguish seems to be the antithesis of creativity for me: it’s the Judas to my right side brain, the Lithium to my inner intensity. The reaper of my creative impulses! (And that’s Grim Reaper, if you haven’t already worked that out!)

So if anyone has a cupcake for me … And I will share my Premier’s prize with you! :-)