As one would expect, it was amazing and intense.

And it talked about doing what I’d been doing lately:

Charlie’s Last Letter excerpt.

Because I know there are people who say all these things don’t happen.
And there are people who forget what it’s like to be sixteen when they turn seventeen.
And know these will all be stories someday and our pictures will become old photographs and we’ll all become somebody’s mom or dad.
But right now these moments are not stories.

This is happening.

I’ve been doing that. Living life. No more concerned with making stories.

I’ve been taking less photos. Going to events and listening, actually listening, enjoying it, not concerned with making sure I have the right quote or rushing home to upload a post about it.

It’s freeing, but scary, and also making me a little sad.

For so many years, my life has revolved around this website. Writing it. Researching for it. Thinking about it. Working on it. Paying for it.

The shift happened while I was in Sydney for Mamamia. For those two weeks, I was living, eating and breathing the media. Not publishing news, just the media. The 24 Hour News Cycle. Breaking news. For those two weeks, I was an expert. I knew everything as I was constantly on. It was thrilling.

And a little scary as about half way through I realized I had no idea what was happening in the publishing world. My world. I didn’t know what books had been released, what deals had been mad, who said what. What had happened.

I didn’t know a thing.

I feel like I’ve almost, maybe, run out of things to say.

I have crafted, cried and created this site since 2009.

And what it’s becoming – nothing – scares me.

I look at the home page and all I feel is pride, I’m proud of this site, what it’s become, what it’s done for me. What I’ve done for it.

And sadness that I don’t know what to write anymore.

But I’m living my life.

My non-cyber life.

I going out more. I’m working more (crazy I know!). I am watching less television. I have a partner. I am living a physical life, one that isn’t bound by my computer. I’m looking at my future.

It’s freeing but scary and I don’t want to loose this.

So. At the moment, it’s in limbo.

Perhaps I’ll come back. Maybe I won’t.

In the mean time, you can find me on my Facebook page. I’m going to try and start up Tumblr again, and Twitter.

For the moment, however.

This site, me, we are infinite.

Talking on the phone for three hours, and then the next day the other person calls you for three hours – spreading the costs out like you did in high school. Three loads of washing in one night. Learning Gangnam Style for the party shop. Wine tastings, five star hotel, 2am swims, crazy road trips to little German towns, leaving my purse in the hire car and missing the flight home in the Barossa Valley. Discovering Jeremy & Kathleen. Watching Madagascar Three and scoffing pancakes. Homework. Finding a dismembered possum in the back yard. Conferences. Treating myself to new dresses at my favourite shop. Being an adult and seeing an accountant, buying accounting software and booking my car in for a service. Being a kid and swinging on swings, running around playing chasey and dancing to Afro Circus/I Like To Move It. Driving my sister to the airport at 6am. New babysitting clients. Preparing for classes. Electric blankets. Feedback forms. Blocked noses and coughing. Being trapped in an elevator with a baby. Dreaming I had a baby of my own. Huge electricity bills. Throwing away old clothes. Eating large amounts of over-priced grapes. Milky Ways, Sprite, strawberries. Tiredness. Mistakes. Suffocation. Happiness. Disappointment. Stressfulness. Life.

Mia and I

1) I may or may not have cried in front of Mia late last night (while in the green room at ABC studios). I thought I got away with it, but according to Twitter I didn’t. Fail!

2) Mia is the most amazing person you’ll ever meet. I was told that I shouldn’t get my hopes up, that idols can often let you down once you meet them in real life, without the gloss of the media and all the smoke screens. But Mia has been everything I thought I knew, and more. She is the most dedicated, smart, driven person. It’s been an honour just to be here, let alone anything else. Just sitting in the same room as her was… I can’t even find the words.

3) I don’t want to go home.

I’ve been thinking lately about writing about people – dead or alive – but not as a biography. Merely fiction.

 It’s been done before, and done well: example of Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde or Michael Cunningham’s The Hours spring to mind (of Marilyn Munroe and Virginia Woolf respectively).

But does that make it right? Should authors be allowed to take living people and immortalise them in a way that might not be 100% historically accurate?

The Guardian thinks fiction is up for grabs, by anyone:

The question of whether authors have the “right” to write about living or real people is not one that should be answered by the caretakers of historical reputation. Fiction is a free-for-all, and as long as an author can find someone who’ll publish what they write (or these days, publish it themselves), there are no actual rules about who or what can be tackled, give or take a few libel laws.

And they raise an interesting point: the onus seems to fall on the writer about whether they do it or not, and, most importantly, how they do it.

Personally, I love The Hours. It’s one of my favourite books. And I’ve read a little of Blonde (and I own the mini series) and from what I read – just beautiful.

But my concern is that what these authors write will become the perception of that figure in the reader’s mind.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say my perceptions of Woolf weren’t based around Cunningham’s words for quite some time.

It’s a delicate situation as I do believe the writer has a responsibility to the reader in this respect.

If a writer is going to alter someone’s life so much, alter their personality and traits and events in their life so they barely resemble that person anymore, why doesn’t the writer simply make someone up? Because even though at the beginning of The Social Network it outlined that the following was ‘based on true events’, we can’t help but walk away thinking the Zuckerberg is a jerk who screwed over his best friend (which may or may not be true).

I like what Oates said in relation to her Marilyn:

I’d hoped to evoke a poetic, spiritual, ‘inner’ truth by selecting incidents, images, representative figures from the life, and had absolutely no interest in a purely biographical or historic book.

And Cunningham:

The fact that Woolf had very little confidence and strongly suspected that she was just a hysterical, spinsterish figure whose tinselly little experiments would be swept away by time. And so I thought about contrasting this day in the life of my reimagined Clarissa with this day in the life of Virginia.

It makes you wonder.

What do you think? Is there a responsibility? Should fiction writers stick to making things up or can they borrow from real people’s lives?

Falling into the nursing profession, Kristy Chambers has spent almost a decade working as a nurse, with patients ranging from drug addicts through cancer patients to those in Emergency. Along the way she met some wonderfully brave people. As for others, well, you’ll need to read her book to really believe it.

Chambers is a new and idiosyncratic voice in memoir writing. Her tone is dark, her humour black, but there is honesty, heart and compassion in Get Well Soon! She shows us more than ever the incredible work done by nurses and the challenges they face.

‘My quest for a career started early, when I was four years old and gave myself a haircut to see if I liked that sort of thing. I liked it plenty, but my mother did not. Much later in life, after moonlighting as a maid and enduring myriad other unsatisfying positions, I fell into nursing, the way one may fall into a pile of sheep shit at two in the morning (which I have also done).

Aged thirty, I was spat out of university with a degree in nursing and a sense of bewilderment. I was dumb with wonder: I wondered why on earth I hadn’t studied something else, like furniture design. I like chairs.

My baptism of fire in nursing was harsh, but a pointed reminder that buried beneath my foul mouth was a kind heart, and I had been given an opportunity to use it on a daily basis. I like chairs and sick people. Nursing has been both a hellride and a joyride, but brutally educational most of all.’

‘One of the most distressingly funny books I have ever read.’ Benjamin Law

Starting with stories from her high school work experience (I could totally relate. Because I am a nerd, I did three lots of work experience. Yes, three. *Cough nerd cough*) before finally launching straight into her (un)brilliant career as a nurse, Chambers takes the reader through many typical days as a nurse.

Although I had fantasies of becoming a nurse when I was around seven, this book has allowed me to make my mind up for sure, determining for sure that I will never be a nurse.

(On that topic, I really liked this article on Mamamia where they discussed career ambitions when you’re a child (and silly job titles). Because, as they say, what kid grows up wanting to be a Health Promotion Specialist or Head of Digital Innovation? A nurse is a pretty good, stock-standard thing to be when you’re a kid.) 

The book is divided into chapters, each with the lead secondary character’s name – a different patient of Chambers’.

From her days on rounds as a student working up to being a fully-fledged nurse, Chambers has done it all and then some.

She moves from psyche wards to emergency rooms to hospital wings, all with a smile and sarcastic comment.

For me, this was little memoir of Chambers herself and more a series of essays about various people she came across while working.

For some that would be fine, but for me, I would have liked to see more personal development and personal stories from Chambers.

She briefly talks about a boyfriend, about how she frequently went home to drink after a particularly tough day. But that was pretty much it.

Chambers has the patient stories downpat; hilarious, touching. But I’m left wondering about her personal life, how/if nursing took a mental toll on her (aside from the drinking) and the rest of it. I wanted more.

You can’t help but love Chambers and feel for the patients, no matter how she portrays them. Brash at times sure, but always honest and always with the utmost care.

Chambers is downright hilarious, and you can’t help but snort with laughter at almost every page.

This is particularly difficult given Chambers’ subject matter, and it’s a very hard skill indeed to walk the fine line between treating someone with respect and still being funny and offending them.

Each patient was fully-formed – yet another technical skills Chambers masterfully demonstrated in such a short space (a chapter). The human race is certainly an interesting one, and Chambers has done a stellar job at pulling out all the wrinkles and warts for all to see.

One last thought: next time you design a cover, UQP, try to not put coffee stains on it. Every time I picked up the book I panicked thinking I’d stained it! (Even though I don’t drink coffee. But actually I really like the cover.) 

It’s out now.

For more information,
UQP

It’s a really surreal feeling to be writing something that is so well-known around the MM traps, something that tonnes of people comment on – it’s all about sharing the best and worst of your week.

My best? MM for sure. Mamamia is amazing, Mia even more so.

My worst? Realizing I can’t do everything. I had a mini (okay huge) attack of the hysterics last night when it became obvious not everything was going to get done.

It was hard, I’m not going to lie. And my best friend Beck found a million ways to say the same thing: calm down.

Something gave and while I’m still not happy about it, nothing can be done about it and so I have to live with it.

It’s a huge lesson. And one I probably had to learn. As everyone knows I tend to do too much, and while I knew August would be insane, I thought I could handle it.

So now I’m learning how to breathe again.

What’s the hardest lesson you’ve had to learn?

In third place: Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody

Your runner up: Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta

And the winner is: Tomorrow When The War Began by John Marsden

What a great list!

And what a great month of discussion too.

Check it all out on the Kill Your Darlings site.

Anddddd, you all can read my short story from the residency! It’s gone up super-quickly, so thanks Yarra Plenty Libraries! Check it out - tell me what you think! (There’s some spacing issues so bare with it!)

I feel very disconnected from the literary world lately.

Like within the last month or so.

I’ve been living, breathing and eating media for the past two days at Mamamia, before that the residency, the USA Consulates Office, then Bendigo Writers Festival…

August has been my insane month. 

Melbourne Writers Festival starts this week, and I’m crying in my coffee that I won’t be there (although, let’s be honest – missing it for Mia? Totally worth it!).

But I’ve been catching up on the blog, which is starting to be filled with fab posts.

What are you going to see at MWF?

Mia

Firstly: it’s no secret, however, that I idolise Mia Freedman. I write about her often, stalked her at the Family Life Forums, practically memorised her books, articles – everything. You all know that.

So it’s with great pleasure that I can finally announce that currently – as I type! – I’m in Sydney interning for Mamamia, Mia’s website!

When I got the email saying that my application had been successful, I was at a shopping centre with my sister. We were in line, waiting for a juice, and I started jumping up and down. (There may or may not have been fist pumping.) My sister was mortified and begged me to stop, but I couldn’t.

And so now I am in Sydney for two weeks, interning full time. Usually they’d get people one day a week or so from Sydney universities, as most places would with interns, yet because I’m from Melbourne I asked if they’d consider doing something intensive and they’ve been so flexible and lovely about it.

I’m staying really close to the office which is brilliant as it means I can walk – which is what I wanted, not relying on any public transport.

It’s hard to describe what it’s like to be here.

Mamamia is my favourite website that I’ve been reading for years; Mia has long been my idol… It’s strange being in this environment.

Mia gave me a compliment earlier and I almost died.

My desk is right. Next. To. Mia’s.

The post-it note wall is behind me (all those familiar with MM will know what I’m talking about).

Everyone that you see in the Open Post photo galleries is here.

(It’s kind of funny being in that space, where you feel like you know them so well yet they don’t know you!)

So, obviously, posting is going to be a bit slack for the next fortnight while I’m up here as I’m going to be at MM.

And, obviously, I won’t be able to talk super-much about what happens here in the office, but let me say the following:

• The post-it note wall is amazing, endless information, planning, the works
• The office has the most amazing water view, just divine
• It feels very surreal to be here after being a fan for so long
• Mia is – hard to sum up in one word. Amazing. Driven. Knowledgeable. It’s really weird to be sitting one desk away from her. (Okay, weird because I have a giant urge to drop to my knees and proclaim how much I idolise her (okay, can’t really do that, must be professional (breath, breath breath)))
• The people who work here are the most amazing, passionate, intelligent people ever and are so giving, lovely and friendly

A few people told me before I came up that I had to remember to breathe.

Yeah, not really happening!!

Have you ever met your idol? How did it go?

I’m really proud of the story I wrote. It started to do with abandoned suitcases, and then evolved into something to do with fire water tanks (the abandoned suitcase now playing a minor but important role). I have to give a HUGE shout-out to my Uncle Ross, and Peter, one of the artists’ other halves who gave me such insight into the world of farming, irrigation and fire water tanks, which I knew nothing about: but I know heaps now!

The other three artists did an amazing job, it was so exciting to be with them working in such insane quarters. Everyone produced such high-quality work and it was such an honour to be a part of it.

It was also slightly terrifying at times: we had members of the public stream in and out, watching every single word I typed: talk about pressure! It had to be perfect!!

The entire experience was amazing. I hope they do it again, I’d love to be a part of it a second time.

My story will be on the council website soon – I’ll keep you updated – but in the mean time, enjoy the view…

I’M FAMOUS!

My workspace: there was a projector screening on the wall which showed every. single. word. I. typed!!

My board: on the bottom is my inspiration for the story – abandoned suitcases. Above, I had a board where people could write their own thoughts about why a suitcase might be abandoned. It was so popular that it filled up so they started writing on green post-it notes!

My parents looking at my board

View from the back of the room (one of the aritsts’ had her space behind where I was standing)

Me talking during my speech

The artists, L-R Dan, me, the Mayor of Banyule Tom Melican, Lisa, Marcello