Okay so I guess I’m a storyteller. Aren’t we all, in our own way? Okay so I guess my stories tend to play with the play-dough plasticity of truth. Isn’t that what stories are? Okay so I guess I can annoy people, such as my youngest brother, who get annoyed that I twist the truth when re-telling an event to make myself sound better, or worse (depending on the listener). Isn’t that the essence of a good storytelling? Okay so I guess I exaggerated when I told people about the time my siblings and I hogtied  and gagged said youngest brother with packing tape before stashing him in our parents’ walk-in-robe. (The hogtie/gag did occur, but my role was minimal at best, and consisted mostly of me giggling and watching in amused horror.)

But that story is just so much funnier when I was holding his feet together, or when I was ripping the tape with my teeth so we could gag his mouth. Nevermind that my teeth at the time were such a mess that it was impossible to actually do anything with them, which led to my habit of swallowing way too much food at one time…but that’s a story for another time.

Why am I rambling about storytelling? Because I have had a magical week, where many excellent storytellers shared a piece of their soul with me, and a room full of people. And it was truly, well, magical.

On Wednesday night, I went to my first Penguin Plays Rough, a monthly event where a whole bunch of hipster arty kids gather in a large, old, homely house in Newtown to listen to writers of varying experience read their stories out loud. It was in fact their last night in this house, and will be moving shortly, but you can check their website for more on this.

A young woman from Atlanta, Georgia, and her guitar-strumming “pretend-it’s-a-banjo” boyfriend kicked off the night, with an incredible response from the crowd. It was the end of a long day, And we were all squished into awkward seating positions on the floor, but all ears and eyes were on Nija (or Nisha, I wasn’t very diligent about checking names, my bad). Her Indian mother, discovering that her daughter actually HAS SEX, reacts in the way we could all imagine our mothers reacting.

Jazz Andrews then told us about the night he decided to try becoming a callboy in Newtown, Sydney. His encounter with the handsome, older foreign man, is shared in a way that is unpretentious, honest and heartbreakingly hilarious. Check out his story in Ampersand, although, having not yet read it, the charisma of his story came as much from his delivery as it did from his words. Case in point, realising he’d forgotten to edit out the word ‘anonymity’, a word he admits to having trouble pronouncing, but does so with the help of various audience members.

To be honest, halfway through this story I stopped taking notes and got lost in the moment. I dont’ remember the names of all the other fantastic readers, but the standouts were, of course, Steven Amsterdam, who read an excerpt from his recent novel/short-story collection ‘Things We Didn’t See Coming” which I’d just finished reading earlier that day. And I was going to tell him about how much I loved his book, but got author-stage-fright (you know, when you really love someone’s work, resulting in a crippling fear of saying something dumb and cliched when you actually meet them. Oh, just me? Okay). But I digress. The standoutsssss, plural, also included Fiona Wright, who read a short story that will be published in a collection of Sri Lankan stories, and a play that…Okay. Shit. It was awesome. I forget all their names, including the title of the play, but it was really awesome. (I’m going to Bloggers’ Hell for this post, I just know it). Oh, and we also had a treat performance from comically inclined Zoe Coombs-Marr, who was pretty freaking rad too, telling us about the most amazing moment of her life, at the Regional North Coast Music Camp where she got to perform ALL the West Side Story solos. And it was awesome.

So I’ve decided I’m going to write something for the next Penguin Plays Rough. The theme is the Flaming Lips song, “Waiting for the Superman”. And I’ll read it out, if they let me, because sitting there last night with my knees pressed against my chest, the faint smell of spilled beer, and the big comfy looking red chair on their makeshift stage, listening to the rough, cutting, heavy stories of so many talented writers and readers, I suddenly thought “I can freaking do this”. So that’s the plan, it’s cemented here in blogland.

The other part of my magical storytelling week continued today at the Sydney Writers Festival which I will be blogging about at my other online home. I will say one thing, and that is that Richard Fidler (of ABC’s Conversations), let me nick, err, I mean, he let me have a copy of Richard Van Camp’s “The Lesser Blessed”. Which I got signed. And may or may not give away as a prize to one lucky blog reader in the near future….

By the by, I’ll be reviewing Steven Amsterdam’s book with Nicole from Linus’ Blanket over at That’s How I Blog so stay tuned for an actual date. It’ll be all radio-like and audio and full of win.

Speaking of pimping the hell out of myself, ABC Radio National are broadcasting live from the Sydney Writers Fest this week, and have asked me to pop in each day for a quick chat. So, um, go to their website and listen to me talk at 3pm on Friday the 21st, or at 11.30am-ish on Saturday the 22nd, or at 2pm on Sunday the 23rd. Or if you are super tech-savvy and have a digital radio you can listen on that. But I’m not super tech-savvy in the area of digital radio phenomena and cannot give you much direction with that. And rather than, you know, posting up my schedule for the rest of the week’s events, how about you just contact me through Twitter (@withextrapulp) or www.facebook.com/withextrapulp if you want to catch up.

I highly recommend going to the zine fair at the MCA this Sunday. It will be ON like DONKEY KONG.

In the meantime, sleep-deprived Elena will get some shuteye. Or at least attempt it.

One of the reasons I enjoyed your two novel(la)s was that your respective protagonists reminded me a little bit of Arturo Bandini from Ask the Dust. What was the impact that book had on you? And is that the reason your male characters are such erm, bastards, to women?

Well I learnt of him by reading Bukowski who related to the man so strongly because of the LA connection. I got my hands on Dreams from Bunker Hill first, which is the one he dictated from his deathbed and the last in the Bandini Quartet. I really liked it. Hunted others down and couldn’t find any for months. I lucked upon it one day at my local library. They had just got in the Rebel Inc. Classics version, and I snatched it up and read it in one day. Which is a rarity for me. Everything about it worked. The clarity and turn of the words, the strong method of the character. The attitude toward writing and life. It was funny too, made me laugh. Straight up you knew you were reading an original. You saw the influence he had on Bukowski. I loved the part when he discovered the LA Central library, the one

where years later Bukowski found him, same place, and Bandini walked over to the B section and said to himself that this was the place for him, there on the shelf, adding his words there. That part meant very much to me. I understood what he was saying so much.

I wouldn’t say my characters are bastards to women because of Bandini. I’d read Hemingway long before then. In fact going over my reading journal from just before I wrote ‘the sea is not yet full’ I see ‘Notes From Underground’ by Dostoyevsky, ‘The Torrents of Spring’ by Turgenev. Also Platform by Houellebecq.  And I don’t know if any of those guy’s characters or my own are knowingly bastards. I think I mostly I write about trying to be a man. About understanding what is required in life to be that. Sex, relationships and meaning all roll into one somewhere along the line. I think my character’s suffer much pain over women, about their beauty, what sex means, girl’s lost, some never found, what relationship’s can cost, what they can add. I don’t think there is any deliberate effort to be a bastard. It’s a confusion rather than any purposeful act. How is one a man and what should that include?

And how much of your own personality goes into your characters?

There is much in there. Extensions of self and situations I’ve lived or known of most of the time. People who know me well read ‘the sea is not yet full’ and couldn’t believe I wrote it. When I look back at it though it all reads real. I guess there is outside existence and then there is the dialogue and life you live inside. When I write certain themes fight themselves out. Death. Sex. Risk. Love. Meaninglessness. Purpose. These are the things which concern me most I guess. Everything I write essentially comes down to search for meaning by some method. The writer’s I admire most were doing the same. In some ways it’s autobiographical fiction, in some ways it’s just fiction.

Is there a greater metaphor for life that can be found in poker? I tried thinking of one but all I came up with was that gifted liars will roll in riches, but I’m ignorant on the subject matter. What do you think?

The entire book is a metaphor. Gambling is about risk-taking. It’s about wanting something, and risking everything you have to get it. About betting big and losing and then betting big again. I like the line in the book “When the true gambler loses his bankroll, he gambles to get it back”. Without risking in life there is nothing really. The greatest risk you can take is not taking any risks at all. And you are going to fail sometimes, sometimes miserably, everyone does that, it’s about taking that pain when you know how much it hurt the first time. And you have to have belief to be able to do that. Have to know you’ve got what is needed. But with that comes the rub, and the title refers to it with the double meaning, you lose things through the obsession, time, money, friends, jobs, relationships, you may be damned good, but you’re also damned good. It can be like a personal hell you create for yourself. But you keep going no matter. You keep trying because you believe. The Rookie is that man. He will not give up. Will not. He believes he can be the best there is. Nothing is more important to him than that.

Last question. Much of your short story collection “In the same streets you’ll wander endlessly” is available online. In fact, nearly half of it. Tell us why we should buy it :p

Tangibility. To have it in your hands. So you can read it on the train, or bus or plane. So you can keep it. All the stories in the book are previously published. Some in print and some online and most both. You can get most anyone’s short stories online these days. It just ain’t the same though is it? Just the smell of the paper makes it better.

Okay, ACTUAL last question. What are you writing now?

I just finished a 400 page manuscript. It deals with a number of themes. The occult, murder, life meaning, it is my attempt at a Dostoyevsky type novel, sprawling wildly with big characters that hopefully burn bright on the page. I’ve been at it for 18 months and completed it about six weeks ago. I got my first rejection on it about a week ago. I’ve got another one here too, unfinished, a more Kafka/ Auster type work. Also a screenplay.

Thanks again! (more info can be found at www.jjdeceglie.com)

JJ Deceglie is the Western Australian author of ‘the sea is not yet full’, ‘Damned Good’ as well as many more short stories. Thanks to the innovations of technology, JJ took some time to answer my questions about Kerouac, poker-playing and wearing one’s literary influences on one’s sleeve…

So, well, firstly thank you for this interview. Secondly, you’re a poker player yourself. How long had you been playing before the idea for “Damned Good” came to you?

It started as a short story that I’d began in early 2007. By then I’d been playing a lot of poker for about six months. The short story came about because I wanted to write about this Egyptian Restaurant we used to go to and smoke sheesha, it was a really cool little place in Northbridge that I’d go to with some friends and drink Egyptian coffee and talk and smoke for hours. It was a place that we went to for that. For those long important talks. So I placed a high-stakes game in the back room and wrote about a character who came from nowhere and won everybody’s money and then took the Egyptian waitress home. I liked the character so much, and the meanings I could get from gambling that about three months later I just started adding to it and the flow continued without me having to force it.

Your earlier book, “the sea is not yet full” was self-published, unlike “Damned Good”. What were the main differences you found in the process, and would you self-publish in the future?

I think sometimes self-publishing, or independent publishing (which is what I think it should be called, just like with films and music) is less frustrating. You choose the content, the edit, the advertising, the PR, the cover, you do all the work and you get your own results. It is a very rewarding experience. And both of the book launches I had for my independent works went really great and made back most of the money I outlaid. The corporate publishing world is a slow, slow moving beast. But it is the nature of the beast. That said I’ve spent a heap of time and effort on Damned Good too. Maybe even more than with the other two. I would definitely publish my own work again. I almost did last year.

The poker-playing world seems to be this secret entity in itself, where those who aren’t part of it might find it difficult to understand the subtleties and strategies involved, but your novella helped to sort of bridge that a bit (well, I think, anyway). Was this something you thought about as you were writing?

Not really. I was more concerned that if any Poker Pro’s read it they might find a hole in it. Which I did not want to happen. Just before it was released I did an entire rewrite with a Pro from Las Vegas, Blair Rodman. Just so as to make sure it wasn’t gonna get brushed aside by the Pro’s. We went through every hand played and made sure everything was legit. This took about six weeks of work and delayed availability. Blair took on the job because he liked the book so much to begin with. Since then we’ve got quotes from at least three more Pro’s who all really like the book and were willing have their thoughts put on the cover and website.

I think any book dealing with a particular obsession can’t write for the novice really, you can read Damned Good without large poker knowledge just as you can read Tevis’ Queen’s Gambit without knowing chess expertly, or his The Hustler, or The Colour of Money, without knowing about pool and nine-ball in that way. Even sports books like Field of Dreams by Kinsella, or The Natural by Malamud can be read without knowing baseball very well.

I’ve got to step away from the book for a moment and just ask: Why do you write? Where, for whom, and when?

I write to capture the mood of my existence at that particular time. I’ve thought about it much before and that explanation works best. I can look back over my work and see that now too. Time was captured in each work and now exists for all time. This is important to me. So I write to grasp the feeling as clearly and well as I can. As honestly and as genuine as possible. I write at a desk, usually on a laptop from notes I’ve taken earlier, depending on the routine I’m in generally in the morning, through to the afternoon. Six to eight hours in a day, on a good day. If I can’t write that day I try to make notes or correct previous work. Discipline is a must. I have to do something toward it every day. Have to feel that I did that. And I write for myself I think, in hope of others relating to the writing.

Your characters share a lot of the same literary influences as yourself. Do you think this will evolve in your future stories if (or when) your tastes evolve?

It is as I go. I just finished a large manuscript and it has references to works that have influenced me recently. Kazantzakis for one. Colin Wilson too. Also Gurdjieff.

I wear my influences on my sleeve at times but I see it as sharing the wealth, the writer’s I most admire do the same and led me to others by my reading of the references they had mentioned. I can remember so many times when I wrote down a name Henry Miller, or maybe Bukowski or Hemingway, or some other had mentioned and then rushed off to find that guy at the library. And the find was like treasure, a wonderful sparkling feeling. As I mentioned above I’m attempting the capture of time and the writer’s involved in my life at any certain time are almost like friends I refer to for conference on existence, and I feel at times they’ve said well try this guy, he worked for me. I’m doing the same thing. I think as I go the mention of writer’s will continue, and evolve. I don’t ever think Hemingway or Kerouac will leave me, they came at that sticking time, or Bukowski, Joyce, Dostoyevsky, Fante, Miller, Burroughs, Turgenev, Bowles, Auster, Tolstoy, Selby Jnr, Trocchi, Hamsun. And list goes on and on and on.

Part II tomorrow

In the mean time, you can read story excerpts and other news at www.jjdeceglie.com

We all know how much bookish and literary blogs rock.

However, were you aware that the blogging phenomenon is spread far and wide outside the world of books?

It’s true. I came across a couple of new ones recently which I heart, greatly.

A Dome A Day promises what it delivers. It’s about one woman’s obsession with healthy love of snowdomes in all their weird and wonderful forms. I don’t own any snowdomes and so I live vicariously through this blog. If you would like to do the same, I suggest giving it a look-see. Whether you like cute Hawaiians or like me, love love love dinosaurs,  I’m sure you’ll find something you love among this vast collection.

I never particularly liked cooking blogs. Mostly because my own attempts at cooking, outside of a handful of staple dishes, are embarrassing at best. Enter Neil Perry Asian Cooking Challenge to remind me that you don’t have to be even slightly adept at cooking to appreciate a good blog. Inspired by the Julie & Julia blog, this particular cooking challenge blog has taught me a few things, the latest being that I don’t ever want to cook a dish that involves pork hock.

In other more bookish news, some of you may remember me bitching about, and then becoming part of the ABC Radio National Book Show blog. My concerns about whether to post my blog articles here or there have been put to rest, as the book show blog doesn’t require us to write book reviews or interview authors. So With Extra Pulp will still be around doing what it does best (crapping on about literary-related hoo-hahs), but I will shamelessly link to any of my stories over in ABC land. Hooray for internet link-love.

And big hello to my fellow bloggers, Sarah Malick, Oliver Phommava, poet Geoff Lemon (who’s blogging from Argentina (!) ) and Ronni Phillips (who is living it up in UK-town).

And we have Sydney Writers’ Festival coming up in a few days. I will be shortly posting up a run-down of all the events I’m planning to attend for full hello-ability. In the mean-time the program can be found here.

Finally, because I love a good reason to show off, here is a photo of me and the awesomely rad manual type-writer I was recently given as a present. I am hearting my family so much right now.

You have to forgive me with this review. It’s a bit all over the place. My copy of the book is uncharacteristically pristine. I was too scared to write in it, on account of the thick, pretty (sometimes gruesome) pages, and it comes with a red ribbon sewed into it, so I had no excuse for dog-ears when the bookmark made its inevitable slinky escape.

So my notes were sporadic, at best, and as most reside in my head, have been percolating. “Five Wounds” is the name of the illustrated novel by Jonathan Walker and Dan Hallett. Sorry, that’s “illuminated” novel. A fancy way to tell us it not only comes with the odd illustration, but also black scrawly text corrections and loosely coloured family crests. Don’t bother reading the scribbled out parts, they were scribbled out for a reason.

There are five characters: five fingers, five wounds, five weird names (three of which start with the same letter and we all know how hopeless I am when it comes to keeping track of multiple characters). Cur. Crow. Magpie. Cuckoo. Gabriella. Cur was snatched from his crib as a baby, stolen by a black dog. Heir apparent to the pack of beasts that rule their turf. Crow is obsessed with death. He collects and experiments with various components of human life. Magpie  is obsessed with daguerrotypes. Cuckoo is a man without a face, and Gabriella is the sad angel whose wings were cruelly hacked off by her father’s orders. Through their interweaving stories, we come across those all-to-common themes: death, chance, dreams and prophecy, the out-for-all-he-can-get nature of humans, and all the nuances in between.

The thing is that not all the characters’ stories will ring true with you. In particular, I identified most with Cuckoo, with the malleable, grotesque, empty face, who, with a pull here and a tug there, was able to transform himself into a different person. He stole identities when he needed to, and a part of me has always wished really hard for a chance to be someone else, if only for a moment. He was able to do this on command. But of course, the results are never even close to perfect.

I think this book would have appealed to me more if I was still in high school. Not that it’s a book for young people by any means, but it’s so gosh-darn angsty. There, I said it. ANGST ANGST ANGST. Not that it’s a bad thing to be angsty, by any means. But unless your head is in that space, it’s difficult to appreciate the larger, deeper messages in the book. In fact, I’m not sure I could even tell you what they are. I spent a lot of time mulling over the glossy illustrations in the middle of the book (the plates: images of Gabriella’s un-anaesthetic wing-hacking operation, or Cur in the act of a biting murder, by which I mean biting in the literal sense.) And the text, in its form, does not lend itself to long periods of concentrated reading.

This all being said, it’s a very personal book, meaning you can take away whatever the hell meaning you want from it without any sort of justification or explanation. And while the actual storyline and plot of this book went completely over my head, it was still very pleasing to read in the aesthetic and tactile sense. It’s a book that I think supports the arguments made by Davina Bell on the SPUNC blog recently about the importance of aesthetics in publishing, in this tomorrow-obsessed digital era.

And, um, it turns out I’m not the only one who had trouble articulating my thoughts about this one: Meanjin’s blog Spike reproduced this article, which was originally published on Allen Onion.

Something about the phrase ‘coming of age’ kind of bugs me. And that’s what I was told Geronimo Rex, Barry Hannah’s startlingly popular debut novel, essentially is. Not sure I’d use those words. Other words come to mind: Disturbing? Infuriating? Awfully-violent-like-a-car-crash-you-can’t-help-but-stare-at?

So before I complain about the whole ‘coming of age’ thing, there are a few things about the actual book that might be worth a mention. Apart from the fact that it is considered a particularly successful first novel by one of America’s veterans of literature (and winner of the William Faulkner Prize), it also happens to be a freaking good book. Sorry, I don’t mean to praise so overtly but I literally forced myself to slow down reading it just so I could enjoy it longer, and savour and linger over every word and sentence and piece of dialogue. Also, I am grossly ignorant and mainly wanted to know who the hell Geronimo was. (Should I admit that in public like this?)

There are two things in a novel that I believe, if struck perfectly, can create an excellent book, even if the rest of it is falling around itself in shambles.

1) Voice. Harry Munroe, the young narrator who grows up in the pulp mill landscapes of Dream of Pines, Louisiana, tells a whore joke to his father and effectively ruins their relationship with one dirty punchline. (And not the sexy kinda dirty, the horrendously vile kinda dirty). He floats through life with no care of the things that most people would consider important, and instead fixates his mind and energy on obscure missions and adventures. Harry’s voice pulsates, following his wild whims and antics as well as his rare moments of self-reflection.

2) Dialogue. I’m SUCH a sucker for good dialogue. When overused, it risks being a little too dense for the reader, and “Geronimo Rex” certainly overuses it. But, like most things that seem to come out of stories set in southern America, the dialogue possesses a certain charm, especially to those most foreign to it.

That being said, there are a couple of ’shamble-y’ aspects to the book. A lack of epiphany, for one. Well, there sort of is one, but it’s not very satisfying. Harry Monroe is a shit. And he stays a shit. But then, this isn’t so much a criticism as an observation. After all, in real life, most people who we know to be shits stay that way. So really, this is a story that’s true to its characters as well as real life. And that could be boring, but not if you’re gifted with the same penchant for prose as Mr Hannah. The plot also sort of plods along, but again, if you don’t like it, I’m sure there are plenty of airport trade paperbacks that would just be so much more entertaining. Not to sound like a snot-nosed snob or anything. But yes, the steady pace of this novel is one that would be loved or despised based on personal taste.

It’s a book full of hate-able characters, and I get that some people can’t finish a book if there isn’t at least one character to sympathise with. But it’s still possible to sympathise with someone and hate them at the same time (and from what I can tell, a freaking difficult thing to achieve in literature). Harry Monroe, like most men (go on, disagree, I dare ya), is just a selfish ponce who’s out for himself, but will perform a good deed if the opportunity to do so falls directly at his feet. Except, he’s from the south so you can’t really call him a ponce. I wonder what the Louisianan equivalent for ponce is? Hrmm…..

So, back to the coming-of-age idea. Does anybody EVER come of age? I mean, a lot of books that are touted as such tend to either be in the Young Adult category, or are written for adults, about someone in the young adult age group. I know people in their thirties who are still learning things about themselves, and the world. Are they ‘not of age’ yet? Is there simply just one main truth that everyone has to learn, and once you learn this you’ve come of age? I think so. I think the said ‘truth’ is that people are shits, in all sorts of ways and forms. And the world is conspiring to screw you over until you learn how to manage its reins the best way you can without losing yourself along the way. Gosh, that must be it. If that’s it, then okay, fine, “Geronimo Rex” is a ‘coming-of-age’ novel.

Oh, and for those who, like me, just thought Geronimo was some made up word used by extreme sports junkies, the title character and inspiration for our narrator’s wild adventures is, according to one of the websites that came up in my Google search, an Apache Warrior and American Legend.

That was said to me by a friend. Just this second. And when I told him I was using it as the title for this blog post, he warned me that it was an OC reference, which I wasn’t aware of. So I’ll borrow it for now. Excuse me while I quickly scrub this teen drama muck off my skin. brbkthx.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about confidence lately, and how I seem to have none. And how maybe this has been what’s preventing me from getting what I really want because deep down I don’t think I’m good enough for it.

I mean, I applied for a panellist position with Emerging Writers Festival and maybe thought for a split second that I could do it, but deep down, seeing the kinds of actual successful people who have previously panelled, realised that I wasn’t even close to being considered in that league. Did I get it? Hells no.

So, I wonder to myself, why don’t I have any confidence as a person (never mind as a writer, as a female, as a musician, as a cooker of nasi lemak and bakuteh)? Is it because I took something that James Bradley once said out of context (during a writing class, something along the lines of, if you’ve written something that you think is good enough, then it’s definitely not)?  Maybe. Is it because I only choose to see my personal failures, rather than the big picture?

Or maybe it’s because I seem to follow the blogs and Twitter accounts of far too many young and, in my opinion, successful, female writers. I used to tell people that I do this because comparing myself to those who are ahead of me in similar career paths would serve as a good egging on when I’m feeling slack. It does, most of the time. Now before you accuse me of blaming these women for my woes, let me assure you I am most definitely not doing that.

When you look at other people’s successes and feel sad that you’re nowhere near as accomplished, that’s YOUR problem, not anybody else’s.

Quite simply, I can’t go crying to my mummy that nobody will publish my writing because I don’t even have the guts to send my writing to anyone. This is a constant source of shame and one that I didn’t want to share with the blogosphere but hey, I’m baring all. Deal with it. Also, as much as I love my mum, she seems to have this ‘Elena, you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it’ attitude that I just haven’t gelled with yet*, which kind of sort of infuriates me. I know it shouldn’t.

So I’m now comparing myself to people such as Angela Meyer, writer of short stories, former editor of Bookseller+Publisher, a million other awesome things, not to mention author of this country’s top literary blog, Literary Minded;

Estelle Tang, blogger, online editor for Kill Your Darlings host of the 15 Minutes of Fame at the upcoming Emerging Writers Festival, author of 3000 Books blog,  and part of the editorial advisory committee for Paper Radio (a rad new Melbourne-based audio literary journal);

Rachel Hills, freelance journalist for Cleo, New Matilda, and many other magazines, book-writer, author of the blog Musings of an Inappropriate Woman and advice-giver to n00b writers;

Lisa Dempster, author of Neon Pilgrim, publisher of Vignette Press, director of EWF and author of the blog Unwakeable;

Sophie Benjamin, freelance music journalist and photographer and musician, and Resident at State Library Queensland’s The Edge program where she runs a podcast called A Faster Horse, and author of the blog I Am Very Busy and Important.

And of course, to make me feel OLD and unaccomplished, the 16-year-old writer and about-to-be-published author Steph Bowe.

Now, to be constantly looking up to the likes of these ladies and trying to make my own way in the world, in whatever it was I’m actually meant to be doing, constantly comparing myself and feeling like everything I do isn’t enough, is bloody effing exhausting.

I need to stop. The question is how? Every time I get a moment of positive thought, and start believing that I actually CAN do anything if I put my mind to it (err, thanks Mum), I suddenly freak out and realise that I’m a hack writer, with so-so music skills, poor blogging practice and no followthrough on any of my sporadic side-project ideas.

Again, I need to stress, that this is MY problem. I’m not the type to become bitter over other people’s successes. I’m actually really proud that the writing community is made up of women like the ones I’ve mentioned above. The bit that gets me is that I know I should be pushing myself harder, especially when I can see on a daily basis what can happen as a result of hard work, but instead I find myself panicking and hiding in a little dugout. On the plus side, I built that dugout with my bare, unmanicured hands. Impressive, no? No? Mmmm.

Now this blog post is a mega fail. I was hoping that by writing all this stuff down it would help me clear my head, come to some sort of rational, clear, and positive new way of thinking. But I’m at a dead end. So I’m just going to put it out there and hope that anybody who might be reading this, feeling like they’re useless, no-talent bums, can feel just that little better about themselves.

*More on this in an upcoming post.

Yes, another beat writer. Sorry, couldn’t help myself.

This is Burroughs’s final novel. Typically, or so some would say, it’s not so much a novel of events, chronological or otherwise. In fact it is exactly what the title indicates: A series of vignettes detailing Burrough’s various dreams. Dreams about packing suitcases, dreams about not being able to pack suitcases; dreams about eating breakfast, dreams about not having any food for breakfast; dreams about hanging out with Ginsberg and Kerouac, dreams about his dog…you get the idea. I read quite a few reviews of this book that mention his ‘rich imagery’ and how the reader can see clearly the source of his inspiration by peeking through this window into his slumberous thoughts. Unfortunately this seems to have gone over my head.

Yes there is imagery, and Burroughs’ distinct prose is still present, whether his dream is as simple as: “Aayob is treating Mort for junk sickness” (p74) or more complicated, such as the dream in which he dines on a boat with a Mafia don, and discovers, while staring into a mirror, that he has smallpox.

“My Education” didn’t have me reaching for my pencil and post-its every two seconds, although on closer inspection, it is still riddled with grey lines and yellow torn paper. His sometimes profound observations are sporadic, and therefore surprising.

An accurate description of this comes from its blurb, and I have to agree that it’s probably, for all purposes, an autobiography, one written as only Burroughs could – jagged, nondescript, cut-up, inner monologue clap trap with enough little gems to keep the reading experience entertaining.

“All abilities are paid for with disabilities. Perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. Insight in one area involves blind spots in another.”

I resoundingly agree. This is why people like me who like to write also possess the motor skills and/or hand eye coordination of a three-year-old. And I’ve lost games of catch to a three-year-old. Hrmm.

“My Education” is also riddled with writerly thoughts about the writing process, and the writer’s persona. This is something I’ve noticed that writers love to do: Write about writing.

Like a young thief thinks he has a license to steal, a young writer thinks he has a license to write. You know what I mean right enough: riding along on it, it’s coming faster than you can get it down and you know it’s the real thing, you can’t fake it, the writer has to have been there and make it back…

Okay, so he’s a little patronising. But also kind of trippy.

“The age of information, when only informers are swell informed.”

“You mean well informed.”

“No, I mean swell informed. Swollen with information, like a bursting bladder.”

“Or a cow needing to be milked.”

“So long as there are milkers, there will be cows.”

“Weven when there is no milk.”

For all my frustrations with this book, there comes a point of reading it where you suddenly loosen your control. That is, you stop trying to box it in with your mind as you read, placing boundaries around it, attempting to define it, to find meaning in each short memory or reflection. When this happens, when you let go of it, everything becomes magnified. There is recognition of Burroughs’s style and the familiarity of this washes over you. It’s a book that I would probably revisit after I’ve read more of his work, and not just the obligatory “Naked Lunch” and “Junky”.

Before I tell you about this book, I have to tell you about my particular copy of this book. It was a gift from a friend. Not for a birthday, or a name day, or Christmas, or Hannukah, but a spontaneous, perfect, lovely gift. She had picked it up from the Lifeline Book Fair, so its previous owner was one Richard Rigby, who has an impeccable hand for calligraphy (if we assume he wrote his own name). It’s a traditional Penguin Classic. Dorothy Baker’s author picture and bio on the back cover are mottled brown. Its ‘old book’ smell makes me sneeze if I read for long periods of time and it’s just the right kind of floppy: Not too flimsy.

Now the words inside are a whole other matter. In an American college, somewhere in the 1940s (I believe), Janet Logan is a 23-year-old student who has been taken under the wing of French professor, Pauline Maury. Their relationship is a strange one: They are lovers, but Pauline Maury looks after Janet like a daughter. Janet’s past is shady, and what appears to be a mutually loving relationship at first, reveals itself to be a prison of sorts: Pauline Maury has salvaged Janet’s reputation and moulded her into the perfect form for university society, and in return holds Janet hostage for it, guilting or scaring the young girl into staying whenever she is on the verge of escaping.

This is only revealed, however, when Janet forms a relationship with Ray MacKenzie, one of the help. Things get hairy. I’ve never really been interested in stories about romantic relationships, but this one in particular is told in such a way that you can’t help being drawn to its characters.

..something about the way she did these things gave Ray MacKenzie a sense of never having seen her before. It must have been the sandals that did it, because he’d seen her before, he’d stood with his back against this door before and watched her walk away from him, and he had seen her in most of the right ways of seeing people, in the quick flashes that catch an attitude and print a memory…but he had never seen her wear a brown orchid and he didn’t know she owned these shoes. (p88)

In fact, this book is riddled with underlined passages from my first reading that if I were to share with you, would probably constitute as plagiarism.

Sometimes books have great characters, but the prose may be lacking in something. We still love the characters, but the reading experience lacks that transcendent quality that occurs  as a result of the writing itself (from the likes of say, Nabokov, or Woolf) Other times, we read books where there is no doubt the of the high literary quality of the writing, but without loveable characters, we miss out on the relationship we form with the characters, relationships that feel so strong we can almost have conversations with them in our heads.

In “Trio”, we get feel everything for our characters: Janet’s heart being torn in two, deciding whether to continue to live a tortured but comfortable life or to break free and sacrifice the ‘knowns’ that have accompanied her so far; MacKenzie’s frustration at seeing his lover trapped, and not knowing whether it is a result of her weakness or the professor’s overbearing will; Pauline Maury’s strong sense of what is proper, her genuine wish to offer Janet the world and more. We can feel all these things, but still look at them critically, and each person’s criticisms will differ according to the experience they bring to the book.

For example, I found Ray MacKenzie’s attitude towards marriage, quite simply, wrong. His justification?

That’s how it has to be, you dope. They’re married and everybody accepts it and lets them alone and they do as they please as long as they damned please. (p117)

And I found my opinion of Janet oscillating wildly. One moment she was a victim, the next she was independent, bright, secure. She seemed too easily influenced by her company. Then again, these are frustrations I have with people in real life (myself included). So, frustrating, yes. Realistic, incredibly so.

“Trio” seems to be a little on the rare side when it comes to hunting it down, but it’s worth the effort. This book swam inside my head for days after I’d finished reading it.

There are far too many people out there writing blog posts about how nobody writes letters anymore. If it bothers you so much, quit complaining and start writing letters.

This is something I started around Christmas 09. Instead of sending Christmas cards that were likely to be thrown out within a week, I sent postcard letters to each of my friends, and some of them actually wrote back! Receiving post that isn’t a bill = AWESOME. Well, maybe they did get thrown out within a week but I’d like to think their recipients at least *noticed* that they weren’t Christmas cards. ANYway…

These are some of the postcards I received from my good friend, J. The cute monkey on the left and the gorgeous vintage on the right are from J’s own collection. The nude, tattooed Michael Jackson was from a day we spent in the cafe section of bookshop Kinokuniya, where we sat and wrote each other letters while sitting at the table. I thought it would be funny. It wasn’t. It was weird. Here we were, two young ladies, drinking coffee, heads bent, pens wiggling, silence.

It wasn’t funny, until I read what she wrote on the back, linking my love of MJ with my love of monkeys and chimps (you know, Bubbles.)

postcards from J

Another friend, E, sends me amazingly awesome postcards, from the pop culture depths of her closet.

These are a couple that I received from E (I love that she let me have Harry, even though both of us are mad Ron fans):

postcards from E

But wait, that’s not all…

Postcards from E (the other side)

Then there’s A, who actually paid attention to the ‘writing letters’ aspect of my letter-writing project, and…wrote me a letter! But it isn’t just a letter. Why Having Arty Friends Is Cool #395 – They draw on everything:

Letter from A

Finally, a card from a harvest magazine purchase I made late last year, accompanied by two print postcards that my friend L made. I’m saving them for an extra special postcard situation. However, it is very likely I will keep them for myself to use as bookmarks.

Postcards and notecards

In closing, these are just some examples of the amazing things that could grace your mailbox if you just take the time to write someone a letter.