We have a new dog, a black kelpie cross called Lucia. We hunted around the RSPCA for months trying to find the right doggy to be a friend to Digger and there she was, all bones and legs and soft brown eyes. She’d been found wandering through the bush with no identification and seemed to answer to Pup. It was the pound who called her Lucia. We call her Luche, or Pooch. Whoever had her before missed out big time: she is a beautiful animal with a gentle, eager-to-please disposition.

But we were on a walk yesterday, after work as the sun was setting, and Lucia turned around to us so that we’d throw the ball for her. The sun caught her eyes and turned them reflective green. She was this black wolf with starry emerald eyes and if you didn’t know what she was like in real life, you would have thought that the demons were loose in Mandurang…

Holidays, and a trip to Italy with M. I should realize this by now but the main purpose of holidays is to stop the day to day scrabble of time and give you room to think. It was after a holiday in Queensland that I decided to do my Masters. And one in New Zealand that gave me the space to think about changing jobs. Now, here in Florence (but it could be anywhere – Melbourne or Sydney – as long as it breaks your momentum forward)I think about all the writing I’m going to do when I get home and how I’m going to plan the time and head space. From here, half a planet away from home, it seems very likely.

the bookshops here are marvelous. I love reading titles of books I know in Italian. We bought the Latin version of HP and the Philosopher’s Stone. and Wicked. And Olivia in Venice. Gotta stop buying books! We still have a long way to lug the luggage.

I’ve had another near miss from a publisher, with a very sensible suggestion for a re-write of a manuscript (that has already had a re-write) in order to make it a stand alone book. And to make it fatter (my words – I know I need to make my characters metaphorically fat). I can see this re-write in my head, can see how the story would swell and take on contours that would just have to make it better. I can even see when I’ll do it – at the end of the year, after I’ve finished another draft of the PhD novel.

At the end of the year?

Another six months, another huge block of time to pass full of other things until I can concentrate on this task. I’m getting sick of this, the constant wondering where time goes and where to steal it from and even where to buy it. So I’m going to get one of those twisty time travel necklaces that Hermione Granger uses to attend more classes than she has to. Maybe there’s one in a duty-free somewhere in my travels with M next week. Perhaps in a little village some distance from Rome a strange old man wearing a belted hay sack will lean forward with a glittering gold time twisty in his hands and say, ‘You need this. For you, no euro involved’ and I’ll take it and be master of my own universe.

Hmmm…I think I’ve been reading too much Libba Bray.

I thought pitches were for other industries but I’ve had a rude awakening. Last year when I went to the SCWBI conference I was amazed to see people voluntarily standing up, with professionalism and finesse, and pitch their manuscripts to an audience of peers and publishers. They were so good at it! It was like seeing impro at a drama camp. I’d only ever done one pitch for a manuscript before and I remember being dull. I thought pitches (like the black stuff) were meant to be dull in order to convey extreme literary merit. Another thing I’ve been wrong about. Pitches with polish are the go.

On Saturday, I went to a workshop run by Rhonda Whitton, she of the yellow Writer’s Marketplace book fame. The workshop was on writing book proposals for fiction and non-fiction. Although some of it was fairly fundamental, her message reached all of us. Know the marketability of your manuscript and be able to pitch it to publishers. This might be in letter form or it could be verbally (less likely). Writing is a business so Rhonda talked of business plans, with market research a must. I got a lot out of the day.

When you start looking around, you see the pitch signs everywhere. Allen & Unwin have a Friday pitch and Penguin ask for a pitch letter when you submit. It’s been there in front of my nose.

Pitching is not the first thing that comes into my mind when I think of being a writer. I can more clearly see someone sitting at a desk, head down, frown on, listening to the lonely warble of bored magpies. I’ve gotta change my vision to one of a confident, out-there business person who can see why their manuscript would sell. Eeekk.

Yesterday at work we had a hot discussion about how to fit writing time into the life of an academic. For the picture, it was academic writing that we were talking about, not necessarily creative writing. But, really, it boils down to the same thing. Bum on seat, concentration in head, and just do it. Many academics have many other tasks and bits that fill in their days, often without them planning any of it. My argument is that you have to snatch small bits of time to write when you can and not wait for that elusive great stretch of blankness where there will be no interruptions. To wait would be the equivalent of winning Tattslotto on the one and only day you buy a ticket. It just aint going to happen. But those fifteen minutes, half an hours, or maybe – if you’re lucky – two hours, are there for the taking.

How do I know this? It’s not rocket science. This skill – and it is a learnable, trainable and attainable skill – came out of necessity. Life got in the way, in other words. People with many other things on their plate – and I speak for all working mothers (and maybe fathers – see Tony Eaton’s blog) – will not ever have the luxury to devote large expanses of time to one project unless they don’t sleep. At all. Which for some people is the case. Not for me, though. Snatching time and clinging to it is the only thing to do. Even, or especially, at work.

Set a goal – ‘I just want to finish the page’ or ‘I’ll just re-write this paragraph’ – and get to it. Small goals work and if you find you do have more time, then go with the flow. I think I’ve said it before but why not say it again? Lack of time is no excuse not to write. You have to make time. Ten minutes at a time.

I know it’s a good thing to put a manuscript into a drawer and let it gather silverfish for a while before you look at it again but it can be pretty embarrassing too. A couple of years ago, I finished a Masters thesis and the most useful comment I had back was that I consistently over-used colons. I think the comment was less kind than that but it sure served its purpose. I have been a Colon Police Officer ever since.

So I was red-faced and ashamed to see the amount of those damn half-emoticons embedded into this pulled-out manuscript.
Sometimes, there were three or four in one paragraph. OMG. And I’ve sent this ms to two publishers. Quote from Sting- ‘I hung my
head’.

I’m in the process of getting rid of them.

Having taken so many weeks off over January, I’d better have done something. This is the one time of the year where my commitments are mainly my own. So what have I done?

I started book two of the summer duo last summer I finished the first and had one glimpse of an interested publisher. Re-reading that after such a gap was good. Some pretty obvious flaws came out. As I suspected, writing book 2 alongside an unpublished book 1 is very useful as I can make changes to both. Word count to date is 22500 and I should have headspace this first half of 2011 to get quite a bit more done. Then it will have to sit until Jan 2012 at the earliest. In the meantime, can I get someone interested in book 1? Hmmm…

The other project of course is the PhD. While I was in Canberra, I had some great feedback from my supervisor at UC. What luxury, to have someone who has to read your stuff and make useful comments! With such guidance, surely a Good Thing will result? I have to seize the opportunity while it’s there because it won’t happen again. I’ll get back to this WIP in the second half of the year and focus on my research proposal in the first half.

But, as always when you have time to think about what you’re spending so much energy on, the Writer’s Black Dog slinks out of the bush to grab you by the ankle. He whispers things like ‘you’ll never publish this’ and sometimes I believe him. But if a writer doesn’t keep writing then they’re just a shell. So, Dog, back into the flooded bush lands you go. I’ve got a story to write.