WORKSPACE

Well I've just begun a new novel. I don't know whether Random House will
even want the second one, and this is a sequel to that, but I figured I
wouldn't let not knowing the fate of Novel #2 stop me. If Random doesn't
want it, somebody else might.

This Intimate Strangers project is making me examine my process quite
closely, and I'm discovering some interesting, rather frightening things. I
always knew I was disorganised, but this is ridiculous! I have come to
realise it's a bloody miracle that I ever get anything done.

I don't have the luxury of space in my house. Not that it's a really small
house or anything - it has three bedrooms, after all, and there are three
people living here, so there's room for all. The thing is, the other two
occupants of the house are my teenage kids, whose space just keeps on
encroaching upon my own. Sometimes I think if I disappeared tomorrow, they would swallow up the space I currently take up, so that all traces of my
existence would disappear with a barely discernible *plip*. You know, the
way a stone is swallowed up by a pond. *Plip* and a few ripples, then
nothing.

But back to the house. And talk of *process*.

My space has to be internal. My study is in my head. I get my quiet space by sticking headphones on my head and playing peaceful music - something choral or folk or New Age. Sometimes the kids even encroach upon that space too, so I have to negotiate with them for the use of MY computer and MY headphones. Fuck it, that makes me so mad.

<breathing deeply> See how disorganised I am? I can't even write about how disorganised I am without getting off the track...

Okay, so here's a mental picture of my space. See me sitting in one corner of the living room at a big desk, tapping away at a keyboard. The headphones wire me up to a CD-player on a set of metal shelves behind me, and in my head there's something by Terry Oldfield playing.

Luckily for me, the keyboard is in a little pull-out drawer that fits under the desk. The surface of the desk is littered with - well, stuff. I know a clean desk would be less of a distraction, but every time I clear it off, more junk appears. It seems to me that there's a kind of stasis achieved when the junk hits a certain level. The actual composition of this stuff changes regularly, but not the level of it.

Today there's a coffee-cup, a ceramic head my daughter made, several bits of paper, envelopes with important stuff scribbled on the backs, Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth", a pencil case, a box of tissues, some folders and shit from school, a Vietnamese phrase-book, hand lotion, batteries, a letter from my aunt and a candle-making kit on top of everything. God knows what's underneath it all.

So how do I work here? The same way I work in the middle of TV noise and kids fighting. I put the headphones on and don't think about it, try not to even look at it. Fortunately I can't touch-type, so I spend my time looking from the keyboard to the screen, and my eyes just skim over the mess in the middle.

A metaphor for my life, I guess. I try to ignore the crap, and that way I never need to clear it all up. Ha ha.

 
 
 
PROJECT AND PROCESS

So what's the project I'm trying to get into right now? Well, like I said - it's a novel. I've heard some people spend ages on research, and they gather their material, organise their material and then begin writing. Those people probably have Virgo featuring prominently in their chart somewhere. I don't.

I get an idea, like it a lot, then start writing about it. Then I get stuck. I realise I have absolutely no knowledge of the stuff I'm writing about, and the actual writing goes on the back-burner while I frantically search for information. It works for me. I get the answers to the questions I'm asking, and not a whole lot of superfluous information that I didn't want and will never use.

I'm quite excited about this new project, because I'm learning a lot of different things. Bits of Vietnamese, a bit about permaculture, and I'm off to Gippsland in Victoria for a few days at Easter, to suss out my location.

Now, I really hate talking about a current project in any detail, because if I know too much about it, I get bored with it. I like to be surprised by my writing. I think that's why I find it so difficult to actually finish a novel. When I know my destination, I lose interest in the journey. That sucks.