What does every man need?

Quite a few things, I dare say. Generally most of those “needs” could easily be reclassified as “wants”.

In my opinion, however, there is one thing this man needs: a good pair of slippers. After a hard day’s work there are few more comforting or relaxing things as a good pair of comfortable slippers.

Now I haven’t had a proper pair of slippers in several decades. Instead I have replaced slippers with Ugg boots, that wonderful Australian invention with its soft fleecy lining that ease any aches in the feet and is deliciously warm in the winter, cool in the summer and just about perfect for the rest of the year.

Sadly, my old pair of Ugg boots met an unfortunate end recently; they were thrown unceremoniously into the rubbish bin accompanied by rapturous applause from She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. (I made that last bit up – the bit about the applause.) My wife has been encouraging me to find a suitable replacement pair for longer than I care to remember. The fleecy lining had been flattened many years ago. The side of one had developed a rip to rival the San Andreas Fault and the outsides no longer looked in prime condition. They could have been mistaken for a oddly shaped refugee from a compost heap.

I tried. I really tried to find a replacement pair but extensive searches and numerous test fittings of potential replacements unearthed nothing suitable. (To be honest, I only went to one local store, and then only tried on about 3 pairs.) Imagine my delight, and my wife’s approval, when I found a pair recently that not only felt comfortable as to size, but also reminded me what I had been missing for so many years.

They are wonderfully comfortable.

Just perfect for relaxing every evening. Don’t know why I didn’t throw the old ones away several years ago.

Read more about Ugg boots here.

Good writing.

Waitpinga Beach, South Australia

The man and the sea.

No – not the famous novel written by a far better writer than I’ll ever be. (Hemingway: The old man and the sea.)

This is about a strange man I saw a few months ago. What this man was doing has puzzled me for months, and I’m no closer to discovering what he was doing. My wife and I were at the beach having a late picnic lunch. Nothing unusual about that. Actually, we were not dressed for the beach and so we sat in the car to eat our lunch. It was wild and blustery, threatening to rain at any moment, not like the scene above. That photo was taken at an entirely different beach on a much better day. But I wander off topic.

We were parked in the car park a few metres from some wooden steps leading across the sand dunes and down to the beach. An old rusty station wagon pulled up alongside of our car and a rough looking unshaved man emerged from the driver’s seat. Next, a woman, presumably his wife, and another older woman, possibly his mother, also alighted from the vehicle. They were not well dressed; in fact, they certainly didn’t look attired for the beach at all.  The wind  whipped their bedraggled hair as they gathered about ten plastic water containers from the rear of the car. The kind that hold about twenty litres.

They carried these down to the water’s edge, depositing them just clear of the waves. The man had no shoes and we watched as he waded into the shallows and proceeded to fill each water container from the sea. As each was filled he placed it beyond the reach of the waves and filled the next one. When all ten were full of sea water, he started carrying them up to the car, struggling through the soft, squeeky sand and grunting with effort up the steps and to the car where he placed them in the back. Five times he made this trip, two containers at a time.

All three then drove off in the car carrying about two hundred litres of salty water in the back. How strange. Why would anyone want to collect sea water – and so much? I’m lost for an explanation of this strange behaviour.

Can any of my readers throw any light on possible reasons?

Of course I was so puzzled I didn’t think of the obvious course of action. I could have asked him! But I didn’t, so I’m left with this conundrum; why?

Rose flower

I feel stiff, sore and rather tired after a busy day in the garden. In fact, I’ve had quite a few busy days in the garden in recent days. The soil is nice and damp from the rain we’ve had making it easy to dig. The rain has also seen rapid growth of weeds, so weeding has been a high priority. Consequently this blog has been a little neglected in recent weeks.

One of the projects we’ve been working on is renovating our bed of rose bushes. It now boasts a new border made with recycled railway sleepers. These sleepers are ungoing a third life. After many years holding together the rails somewhere they were recycled as a rainwater tank stand in our backyard. This was made by the previous owner of our home. Last year we emptied and moved the tank to a more convenient location, so the sleepers were surplus to needs until this last week. They are now entering their third useful life. I never realised how heavy those sleepers were until I had to move them.

Today we planted another eight beautiful roses, adding to those already in the bed. It looks great and well worth all those aches and pains this evening. Now I have to be patient, waiting for them to come out of our cold winter, grow plenty of foliage as spring comes upon us, and then wait for the blooms to emerge.

In the meantime I’ve included a photo of one of the roses taken several years ago.

It’s a bit like waiting for a publisher to accept a manuscript. You put all that hard work writing that story or novel, weeding out unnecessary words, preparing the manuscript and sending it off. Then the patient wait to hear from the publisher.

Good writing.

“Good grief.”

I heard someone use these words only a few days ago. They made me pause and consider them. Funny how those words had never before made me stop and think (well, not that I can remember). They were spoken as one of our many idioms, expressing surprise or irritation, the normal use and meaning of the expression.

What made me think, however, was the fact that this expression is something of an oxymoron, two words with contradictory meanings. When has grief ever been good? Although, I suppose in the sense that grieving leads to dealing with a loss and moving on with life it could be said to be good for you.

The point I am trying to make is that sometimes we use words in our writing which can convey the wrong ideas, communicating the wrong message to our readers. We need to be careful in the ways we use words and expressions, especially idioms and slang. Of course, the use of idioms and slang, used with discretion, can enhance our portrayal of certain characters in our stories. Overused they can become tedious. Always make every word count and make each word or phrase earn its place in your story.

Interestingly, a web search with the term “good grief” turns up about five million results. At the top of the search I did was an Australian group called “Good Grief“, an organisation dedicated to assisting people dealing with trauma, grief, loss and change.

My message today: choose your words carefully.

Good writing.

We’ve gone green in our household.

Let me explain. Three days ago we had a series of solar panels installed on our roof. It’s something we talked about for many years, probably as much as 20 years ago. At the time I even did some serious research into the matter. Trouble was, I didn’t have the ready cash to install such a system. Besides that, in those days there were no government rebates available to offset the enormous cost.

Prices of solar panels have plummeted in recent years due to competition and their efficiency has vastly improved. Add to that the very generous Australian government rebates at present and the whole exercise becomes relatively affordable. Under present conditions the panels should pay for themselves in about 5 years. This is due in part to rapidly increasing electricity prices here in Australia, estimated to rise about 60% over the next few years; we’ve already had one big rise recently.

Talking about power costs, one of the motivating factors in getting the panels this time around was the power bill I received last November. It was about 20% higher than anything we’d had ever before. After the initial shock, the motivation to do something about it created its own momentum and we did our research and chose a good company in the forest of companies offering installation. We also changed providers because we discovered we were being ripped off big time.

The day after installation we kept checking the readout on the inverter to see how much energy it was generating. It was like having a new electronic toy to play with. Most of the time it was generating about 90% of capacity which is about as much as one can expect. It did briefly rise to 97% (3.2Kw of a potential 3.3Kw) but that was short lived when cloud came over the house. On our first day we exported a nice amount of energy back into the power grid so we are actually making a little money. Making money on it is not our intention; we just want to break even and save money. Avoiding rapidly rising energy costs is also a reason.

On the down side, yesterday was 100% cloud cover for half the day and today it’s been raining all day. You get that. I guess we’ll have to be content to only make hay while the sun… let me rephrase the old saying: we’ll only make a lot of energy when the sun shines.

Now back to writing.

I’ve been working on the novel for over 18 months and finally it is getting near to ready to submit to examiners in the coming weeks. Then I plan to start it on its journey around the various publishing houses, so fun continues. This novel writing game is not a sprint, and more of a marathon. In fact, sometimes it feels like having to run a marathon every day.

Despite the weariness, I am pleased with the final product and I’ve learned so much along the way. With the help of my critiquing group, friends who are critical readers, and my supervising lecturers, my skills have been honed and my writing has improved way beyond what I had thought possible.

I have learned, above all, not to be precious about my words. I have learned to be ruthless and to cut anything that does not work, anything that is repetitious, redundancies, passive voice, switches in POV and many other stumbling blocks placed in the path of writers everywhere.

Must get back to the finishing touches.

Good writing.

It is now in its 8th draft in which I changed from the third person to the first person. So far, so good. I think it has been worth the effort. While I was at it, I made some significant changes to many phrases and sentences, including cutting out whole paragraphs – but also adding quite a few words and phrases here and there. The nett result is an increase of about 500 words over the whole manuscript while at the same time cutting at least a thousand words.

Now this week I am going over the whole manuscript again – this time meticulously. I’m looking for typos, spelling errors, punctuation mistakes, redundancies, and especially the misuse of pronouns, a problem which occurs when one changes point of view. All this editing and checking is wearying but essential.

It is essential because I want this book to be the very best I can do.

Good writing.

My old laptop was just over six years old and was getting really, really slow.

I mean – r e a l l y  s l o w. There wasn’t much space left on the hard drive either, which was causing me a few headaches too.

That’s all in the past now that I have my new Lenovo T510. Plenty of space, some new features and a lovely new feel. Now I have no excuse – I should be very productive.

My son is the techno wizz in our family and he helped me transfer all of my files from the old computer to the new one. Everything seems to be working fine, though I am still getting used to using Windows 7. One of the things my son is very careful is making backups of all one’s computing files. I don’t do this often enough on the separate USB drive I have for this purpose. I did do a full backup of all files before leaving on my current holiday visiting my son in Sydney. He is also very careful about backups of all files and he has set up some safeguards for my files too.

All I have to do now is get on with my writing…

…but I am on holiday for another week.

Good writing.

I had the privilege of hearing Australian writer Tom Keneally speak several times during this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week. On each occasion he was in fine form and proved to be not only a brilliant speaker, but also funny and instructive – often at the same time.

I didn’t take many notes during the week but preferred to just sit, listen and soak up the wonderful atmosphere while listening to such a fine parade of great writers. I did take a few notes for one of Tom’s talks.

“I am the one who needs my books – the world goes on perfectly well without them. I am no longer under the delusion that the world needs my books.” Tom Keneally, Adelaide Writers’ Week 2010

This is a sober reminder about the world and about books. He is perfectly right, of course. The world will continue functioning as it does without that novel or short story or poem you are slaving over. It will make no difference at all if that piece of writing is never published.

Tom is also wrong

At the same time, I believe that Tom is also wrong. The world may not need that novel, non-fiction book, sonnet or article, but there is surely someone out there – perhaps only one person, or a handful of people – whose lives can be changed, influenced or even enhanced by what you write. This is why we must, as writers entrusted with divine words, always strive to write the very best we possibly can.

Our writing can – and should – make a difference.

Good writing.

Tom Keneally opening Adelaide Writers' Week 2010

Today is a public holiday throughout South Australia for the running of the Adelaide Cup.

Ridiculous if you ask me.

The Adelaide Cup is, at best, a second rate horse race when compared to say the Melbourne Cup. It interests only a few thousand people and for that a whole state grinds to a halt. It just shows how morally bankrupt our state has become. It is a ridiculous excuse for a holiday in an era when our state should be doing everything possible to be productive.

But then – the same thing could be said of many of our public holidays.

I hope you have a wonderful day, and if you live here in SA,  enjoy your break.

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