I started my new job yesterday and so far, so good. Ok, so it’s only been a day, but the people seem like a good bunch and I am so looking forward to having more in my wallet than a crumpled passport photo and a bunch of raggedy old receipts. It's Dickensian poverty, I tell you!

I’ve already started browsing the newspaper for somewhere to live. I’m having a major dilemma over moving into a friend's house and striking out on my own, with the latter becoming increasingly more favourable. If I can afford it, I’d prefer not to share again and actually work on something, for once, that might resemble a ‘private life’. I’ve always wanted to try one... ;)


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Apparently someone once said to Artur Rubinstein that he was a great pianist. He replied that, actually, he didn't play the notes any better than anyone else: what he played better than anyone was the spaces between the notes.

It's sort-of obvious that a very plain, bare narrative - what one might loosely and irritatingly call Hemingway-style - apparently using as few words as possible, works as much by what's not said, as by what is. From that realisation it's not so far to realise that much of such a story's power is in what the reader finds - or puts? - into the spaces between the words. We may not even be aware we're finding anything, and what we're lured into putting there may not be the details of how people feel or places look, a sophisticated structure of ideas or series of events. It might be nothing more than a sense of import, a hyper-sensitivity, a skinned-ness that's beyond words or even thought.

It's less obvious that rich, baroque, lavish writing also operates in the spaces. Why look for spaces, for what's not there, when the words are piled high, the scents and sights and sounds lap round us, the ideas tumble over themselves and each other? But what happens between these kinds of notes is important too.

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Well, I've just heard back from one of the editors I mentioned I'd emailed earlier. And I was almost right. I suggested there was a possibility that my sub/email hadn't reached them; it was actually the other way round. For some reason the email they had on file as mine, um, wasn't

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I've withdrawn two short story submissions today. And that is disappointing. Really, really disappointing.

The first was sent last September. I received no acknowledgement of its receipt and heard nothing when I emailed to see whether it had arrived.

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It's going better this week, the working-to-a-writing-schedule writing life. Who knows why? I was a mess last week, a sprained/strained ankle and twitchy knee keeping me housebound but too irritated to concentrate on writing. Suddenly, this week, although ankle is still a little tender, I am more motivated, more focussed, more intent on stopping playing Scrabulous during my daily two-hours of scheduled writing time. Ok, it's only Monday, but here that's Day Two of the week, so I'd like to take a moment (not during writing time, it ended 6 mins ago) to just give myself a little pat on the back. I think that's important. I find it all too easy to berate myself for what I am not doing, to feel guilty about this and that, but I don't spend much time being nice to myself, saying, Well done, You sat there for two hours doing only writing-related things, good going.

It helps to share goals with my new writing buddy, just the setting of the goals is incredibly useful. I guess that's the kind of person I am. I like lists, ............

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The Girl and Boy are sharing a room for the first time. We bought them an educational bedside light - a globe, which also has animals all over it in their countries or seas of origin. As The Girl turned it gently last night, taking it all in, she sounded out the letters A-F-R-I-C-A and then said "Africa! That spells Africa! It's hot there. I learnt that from the television. I learn so much from the television don't I, Mum?"

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Just before I start at the beginning, I must begin at the present, because something small but significant has occurred - involving a large piece of fruit - which has rendered me incapable of thinking back to a time before this small but significant occurrence with fruit, err, occurred.

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Actually, I wish I had forgotten about my blog, but since April and all that moving to the other side of the planet business I have been feeling terrorised by the blog. "Must blog about this," I have thought. An awful lot. At 3am, mainly. Once I even got out of bed, went downstairs, made tea (loose leaf, in a pot, which you will understand if you've ever tried Australian teabags) and prepared to sit down at the laptop. But it is very cold in Melbourne and the house makes noises that I cannot be sure about yet so I went back upstairs and lay quietly with The Girl for a while...

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March 2003
(Just found this mad letter I sent to my old school friend)

Hello hen

Seeing as you’ve lost my address and fone number I thought I may as well send it to you along wi a letter full of tripe! ….first break…just going for my bath….back soon.

I’m back. Gave the dead-ends a walloping as well. Maybe I should take a wee course in shoemaking, it’s the only thing I don’t do.

I joined that FRIENDS REUNITED on the net. If you want any contact you have to pay £5 for the year. I paid because I saw the first boy I ever kissed was there. You lot made me kiss him through the railings between the boy and girls playgrounds. I think I was about 13! So I emailed him, telling him what I remembered and he emailed back! He said he remembered a lot worse events from his school days and that a kiss should be one of the nicer memories.

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