7. What did you want to be when you were a kid?

I wanted to be an author. Or, as my brother would have said at the time, I wanted to "auth" books.

I love writing but I haven't written fiction for a few years now. I still don't know why that is. I stopped getting joy out of writing stories, and I didn't really know what I wanted to say in a longer form piece. I was good at writing characters but not so good at plot, and that frustrated me. I started this fantasy story with all these excellent characters that I loved, and they gathered together at this meeting place and then -

Nothing. I couldn't work out what they ought to do. There wasn't anything they needed to discover or fight for that seemed important. So they are still stranded at that semi-circular village on the edge of a forest, waiting for me to come back to them.

Mum, every so often, looks wistful and says, "I'd just love for you to write a book." I would love that too, but for some reason the creative energy I have at the moment doesn't extend to stories. I'm glad I still blog, and writing here daily has been a great reminder that words come pretty easily to me, when they don't to everyone.

But as I say to people when they ask me about it, at least you can only improve as a writer as you learn more about life. It's not like I was trying to be a ballet dancer and I've missed my peak years. I'll get back to it. One day.

Advice to writers: Robin Hobb

I've been slowly reading through the reddit AMA (ask me anything) Robin Hobb did today. She is one of my absolute favourite writers and I am eternally indebted to Jennie for introducing us. Every time I read one of Hobb's books, and reading this AMA now, I just want to go and hide in the woods and write, write, write until my hands fall off.

I know I don't need to go to the woods to do this, and I'm not even sure where these mythical woods are, but it just seems like the sort of writing where you need to be locked away in a comfortable room with candlelight and reams of paper and a good pen. Off grid, as Kevin McCloud would say.

I'm not finished reading through it yet, but just got to this bit and thought it needed to be shared, as much to be a reminder to myself as anything:

Advice to new writers. First, just write. A lot. Second is Read. A Lot. And if you are in school, I’m not sure that you should major in How To Be A Writer. Instead, consider all the things you are interested in and go learn lots of things about rocks or history or mushrooms or the Abyssinians (I’m pretty sure I spelled that right.) Because editors and readers will ultimately forgive you errors in syntax or formatting a lot faster than they’ll forgive you for telling a boring story. And one last thing to do? Write some more. And then read yourself to sleep that night. 

(link to full comment) 

Edit to add - ooh, this too! I've always been a bit discouraged by those writers who Have A Schedule, as I am the sort of person who detests schedules and submits to them unwillingly. So it heartens me to read:

Writing schedule. No, I'm afraid I don't have one. my computer gets turned on right after the coffeepot and it's the last thing I turn off at night. I flit in and out of my office, writing pages, doing the laundry, deleting paragraphs, clean the cat box, put the paragraphs back, and add three more pages, make notes to myself on where this seems to be going, and go weed the garden. This works for me. I will quote here my remarkable writing friend Vonda McIntyre. "There is no wrong way to write a book." So if this is very different from what you are doing, you are still fine.

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Faithful Writer

It seems odd that a writer would have trouble writing about a writers' conference, but I don't think I've actually managed to digest/process the Faithful Writer yet. Maybe I never will. That's part of the problem when you're on an organising committee of any sort, even if most of the running around is being done by someone like Karen The Dynamo. You are just aware of tiny things that have the potential to become problems, you don't get a chance to just soak up the atmosphere or just hang around with the other delegates.

I arrived at 8.15am, as Karen and I had arranged, with the booklets I'd designed. I was barely through the door when I was already being hassled (the hassler was obviously just worried because people had turned up early, but since the registration desk didn't open until 8.30 I don't know why he was so frantic). I had to tell people to just leave me alone for one minute, allow me to put my bag down and work out what I was doing. Guan had kindly bought me a coffee, and once I was organised, we registered about 120 people and welcomed them to the conference.

Trevor interviewed the keynote speaker, Mark Tredinnick, and then did a short devotion. Mark then gave a fairly rambly talk about writing as an act of faith. He talked about how you needed to do the important work of 'mending the nets in the hope that a fish may rise', continuing to work away at your writing even when it seems mundane, so that you're ready when the moments of inspiration hit. I can relate to that.

He encouraged us to aim for the Hemingway school of thought and try to say things in a way they had never been said before. He said "a way of finding your voice is in refusing the clichés that are most precious to you." And the final thing I wrote down was "write the poem, the sentence, the essay, the story, the book that only you can write - the one told in your own original voice."

Good advice.

After a donutty morning tea, Guan and I wandered to a local cafe so he could work on the writing exercise that had been set. I didn't even attempt it; my brain was so scattered and my thoughts so unfocused I don't think I could have managed much. But towards the end of the hour I scribbled a few things down about the whole writing shebang:

Words are ordinary things that fall from our lips every day, but they can also be extraordinary and dangerous when put together a certain way. When they are put together well. But as Mark said this morning, that can take discipline and practice.

Kate Grenville works by a couple of principles. One is 'never have a blank page'. Another is 'you can come back and fix it later'. It was very freeing to realise that, to be released from the idea that something had to be perfect the first time around, or that you had to keep nutting out a phrase before you could move onto the next. Sometimes you just have to step over that roadblock and move on. You can come back and clean it up later.

Just before lunch everyone handed in their writing exercises for us to look through. Karen, Trevor, Tony, Mark and I read them all and pulled out ones we thought would be good for workshopping after lunch. It's kind of hard to do that; just as hard as it would have been for the writers to feel confident submitting something for public scrutiny after only an hour, it was hard to read them all and feel like we'd done them justice. But we weren't looking for the best or worst, just ones that had something interesting to talk about in the workshop.

Karen and I grabbed a quick lunch. After letting Mark read through the pieces more thoroughly, culling them down to a final six, we typed up the pieces so they could be projected onto the screen for all to see. Mark led the workshop and was tough but fair and reasonably gracious. I think everyone learned a lot through the process, about avoiding cliche, about when and how to use certain types of punctuation, about what makes a piece flow better, about how to structure something.

Then it was time for the seminars. Karen and I ran a seminar on Writers and Editors, which oddly enough had the highest number of attendees of all the seminars. We did a kind of tag-team effort, with interview, role play, brainstorming and general discussion all thrown into the mix. I had a minor disagreement with one of the delegates who kept saying, "I've had two books published and my experience with editors has been nothing like that". I never quite know how to respond to things like that without getting prickly and defensive. But apparently I handled it well, and we were on friendly terms by the end. George was very encouraging and said we had done a good job at running training (drawing lots of inspiration from her seminar at Word by Word a while back).

I don't think I had afternoon tea. I seem to recall chatting to Dave and telling him I needed a holiday, but I'm not sure if that was at afternoon tea or lunch. Then we tried to call everyone together for the readings, though we were running a bit late by this stage. Greg read an excellent piece about getting his car (or himself?) serviced at a prestige garage, and some entertaining poems he had written for his children. I read the pineapple tarts section from Undragon Stories - and a brief listen to the audio tells me that I still need to work on slowing down my delivery. And to close, Mark read a selection of his poetry.

After the conference I sat, guarding the bookstall cashbox, while the packing up went on. I was impressed that Karen was still able to rush around, but she just kept going until everything was done. People came up to me and told me how much they loved the story, which still amazes me because I am so familiar with it I can't see any of its merits anymore. But several people said they really really wanted to taste a pineapple tart, and others commented that they felt they were right there in that humid kitchen. One lovely woman said after last year's conference she had scanned the Sydney Writers' Festival programme for my name, and hopes to see it there next year.

Maybe one day!

lazy writing

"Nicole Kidman has delivered her first child, a baby girl, her agent, Wendy Day, said." [SMH]

Wouldn't it be a worry if the child was anything but a baby? 'Nicole Kidman has delivered her first child, a fully-grown woman...'

reflection

Reflected Arrows 1974 Jeffrey Smart

Why does my continual low opinion of my writing surprise me, as though I'm the only one who's ever felt this way? How ridiculous. Jeffrey Smart, an artist whose work I love, was interviewed on Talking Heads tonight and said this about a retrospective of his work, "when i look over them, I see a series of disasters. I feel I'm going to paint my best work...soon."

He's 81 and recently sold a painting for something like $900,000!

Then there's Andrew Bird, a brilliant musician who wrote recently on the Measure for Measure blog,

I listened to my record recently and I’m concerned about how much I like it. This has never happened to me at this stage of making a record. Right about now is usually when I want to scrap the whole thing and start over. In fact, scrapping whole records has become par for the course for me when recording.

I'm not saying that "oh well if other artists think they suck it's okay to think I suck". I don't think I suck. I know there is value in my work, but that doesn't mean I'm immune to being frustrated to tears by it. I guess there's a disparity between accepting that my writing is decent and whether I think anyone else will like it or get something out of it. I like people to read my stuff, but at the same time I'm terrified that people will think I am my work, that they will weigh it in the balance and find it wanting, and by extension will find me wanting.

I think the only thing to do is accept that an artist of any sort is going to feel negative about their stuff, and I guess that can be amplified if you tend towards low self-esteem anyway. It doesn't make sense, and it might seem self-indulgent, but it's just how it is. I just have to accept that and move on through it, reminding myself that I am not my work and finding joy in it.

salty apples

My pet project at work is webSalt, but sadly (and possibly because it's seen as a pet project) I don't get much time to devote to it.

How odd that on a day when I'm sick at home, away from the hustle and bustle of the office, I have sudden inspiration to write an article!

Check it out (it's a rant about the new Sydney Apple Store). Hopefully there'll be lots more coming soon.

clouds

I love things like this - Wordle is amazing (thanks Doug!). You just dump a bunch of text into the site and it generates a beautiful word cloud. You can adjust the colours, direction of words, fonts, number of words it displays. And it seems to be able to handle a lot of text very easily (it managed my 53,000 Undragon words with nary a hiccup). I find this fascinating because you can see what words you use the most, and maybe what sort of themes are coming out in the bit of writing. And it's pretty. They're like fingerprints.

So here is my novel in word cloud form (using 400 word clumps...that might be too many for this exercise, but...it's still pretty).

The Jasmine bits:

The Daniel bits:

The whole shebang:


Click on the pics for a closer look. I guess I must use the word 'don't' a lot.

falling through the cracks

I haven't read any of Debra Adelaide's books, but I was taken by an interview with her in this week's Spectrum, where she talks about the process of writing her latest book, The Household Guide to Dying. This seems to underline the point I made at last year's Faithful Writer* about how important time, space and support are to creativity and writing.

...The Household Guide To Dying must have been forming unconsciously for years. By the time she embarked on the novel in 2003, her marriage had ended and she was raising three children - Joe, now 18, Ellen, 15, and Callan, 10 - in south-west Sydney while working as a book reviewer and part-time creative writing teacher. That year she scored a full-time lecturer's position at the University of Technology, Sydney. Then Callan developed leukemia.

Again Adelaide is adamant that her novel is not about her son's illness. However, two years of treatment, worry and work left her little time to write. Callan recovered but Adelaide was not sure if her novel would. "I was afraid to look at it because I thought, how can I continue writing a flippant novel about dying when my own son's been suffering with leukemia? I had to make a decision. So I forced myself to open it one day and I found I could go on with it."

A small research grant enabled Adelaide to offload some of her teaching last year and meet a self-imposed deadline. "I felt convinced that a book I'd written to amuse myself in snatched time in a little corner of my bedroom - a novel I had to fit into the cracks of my life - couldn't possibly work." When she handed it over to her agent, Lyn Tranter, she said, "You'll probably tell me to go away and give it a decent burial." Tranter, however, decided to auction the book.

I love that phrase "a novel I had to fit into the cracks of my life"; that's exactly what it feels like writing my book Undragon Stories. I want to give it more time and space, but feel like my life is so stretched most of the time, there's nowhere to put it.

Yet every so often I get a little burst of enthusiasm about the book, like yesterday when I workshopped a very small scene I wrote a few weeks ago and felt greatly encouraged by my fellow Word-By-Word writers. I've checked out a few grants here and there, because it would be so wonderful to be able to buy a slab of time that I could use to finish the book. But most of the big ones, even if you're applying for the new or 'emerging' writers grants, you have to have a certain number of things already published. I've had a few things published, but not nearly enough. So how do you prioritise? Is it more important to work hard on a book to get it finished, or to work on shorter pieces you can get published in journals so you can apply for the money to allow you to work hard on the book to get it finished?

At this point, just writing at all is a victory, and I'm happy to claim it.


* by the way, this year's Faithful Writer conference is coming up on August 2. The keynote speaker is Mark Tredinnick, he of The Little Red Writing Book fame. There will be writing time, workshop time, and some great seminars (Karen and I are running a seminar on Writers and Editors, but we both want to go and hear the others too!). Along with Mark Tredinnick and Greg Clarke, I'll be reading some of my work at the end of the day. You should come along - register now if you haven't already!

some inspiration

I need to collect things like this in a jar and open it to look at them when I'm floundering.

For me, that’s what creativity is - playing with found objects, reconstructing things that already exist, transforming ideas or stories I already know. It’s not about the colonisation of new territory, it’s about exploring inwards, examining your existing presumptions, squinting at the archive of experience from new angles, and hoping for some sort of revelation. What really matters is whether we as readers continue to think about the things we have read and seen long after the final page is turned.

Shaun Tan, Originality and Creativity [source]

the man in black

Last night, we went to see, hear and speak to Neil Gaiman at Books Kinokuniya. Guan and I drove in and had a coffee. Karen had gone home to change into her lovely velvet coat (which was commented upon favourably by me and others), but soon joined us and we saved a spot for Fish to join us after work. We sat on the floor in some semblance of a queue with a bunch of other black-clad fans; closer to the start time I looked up behind us and the store was swarming with people. I'm glad we had the presence of mind to line up early!

The woman who introduced Neil was nervous as anything. Her hands didn't just tremble, they shook as she tried to read her speech, and she was worried he was making fun of her behind her back (he wasn't...well, not really). And then Neil stepped forward to cheers and applause. His voice has a pleasing English lilt to it, and he is charming and gracious, so it wasn't at all difficult to sit there on the floor for an hour, listening to him read from his upcoming book and answering questions that had been scribbled down by the audience. He said wonderful things about writing, which I forget the details of. He made us laugh contentedly. A large Moleskine was passed around by the organisers for the fans to write notes in for Neil; I wrote something blathery and gushy. But then, I think everyone did.

I was fading fast by this stage, desperately needing to eat and not be in a crowd, but thanks to our queueing skills, we only had to wait for about 15 minutes to get to the head of the line. We flipped through the well-thumbed proofs of The Graveyard Book while we waited, and then, there I was, standing in front of Neil. He blinked at me and smiled.

"Hallo," he said. "How are you?"

"Hello," I replied. "I am well. How are you?"

"I also am well. We are both well and very polite."

We chatted about sleep and food and not having enough of either while he signed Neverwhere and The Dream Hunters for me. Then it was all over. With probably another 450 people after me, I was never going to be able to have a conversation with him. Besides which, I never know what to say on the spot like that; it's why I don't think I'd make an especially good interviewer, because I can't think of interesting questions under pressure (the funniest question Neil answered from the audience was the final one: "What do you think about Starburst?" He paused while the audience cracked up, and it looked as though he was toying with the idea of answering with his opinion on the candy, rather than discussing his book and the movie, called Stardust. In the end he said, "Someone, somewhere in this room, has just gone bright red.")

We went to Sakura afterwards to have dinner. I couldn't even focus on the menu so trusted the others to order, and the food was good. Miso soup is very refreshing when I am that tired! Once revived, I drove everyone home, then went home and lay in bed, wishing I was beyond these early stages of my writing career, or at least that I could enjoy it more, but being very glad to have finally seen Neil in the flesh.

City writing day: Customs House

We wondered at the red and whiteness of it, the model of the city, the discovery of new space. We found the reading room with its long ranks of brown wooden tables, and glowing lamps. We sat beside the reference books, dictionaries, books of proverbs and idioms and the dictionary of the underworld. We sat in the long light from the tall windows in the silent, book-lined room, and we wrote.

I also stared out the window at a slice of sky.

art imitates

Helen Garner is one of my absolute favourite writers. I mainly love her non-fiction, but her fiction is sparsely beautiful and real and haunting. If I could be half the writer she is, I'd be happy. She has a new novel coming out on April 7 (her first since 1992), called The Spare Room, and there's an interview with her in today's Spectrum, though SMH doesn't seem to have it online. As my own fiction writing usually draws on my own life (much as Garner's does), I found this comment of hers extremely sane and encouraging:

I don't know where people think writing comes from. People talk as if a story is something lying on the ground that you pick up and dust off and put in a book. But material isn't a story, it's a mess, a cloudy series of events or experiences. On every page there's a thousand tiny decisions about how you're going to tell it. And once you've written something, you can't even remember which bits 'really happened' and which bits you made up. . .What any writer does who is fired by their own experience is open up an enormous space behind their own experience, where all the rest of the world can flood in and everyone else's experiences, too.

a writerly diagnosis

There's a great interview in the Guardian with Terry Pratchett (via Neil). Pratchett is one of my favourite authors, and when I heard last year he had a rare type of early-onset Alzheimer's I was greatly saddened. But as he pointed out, "'I am not dead.' I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this may be further off than you think - it's too soon to tell."

He is incredibly prolific; according to the interview he has written his Discworld novels at a rate of 2 per year since 1983. That's staggering! I can't imagine such an incredible output, but I do appreciate it (more delicious books for me to read). But it's encouraging to know that even though he is so gifted, he still struggles with the whole process as much as anyone else:

"When I was going in for the tests, they asked my wife and PA to say what they had noticed in my behaviour. They jointly wrote a letter saying, 'Like any author who's in the throes of writing a book, Terry probably shows all the signs of dementia: he's unworldly, he doesn't pay attention to things, he's antisocial, grumpy.' I'm a typical bloody writer. Maybe all of us have had Alzheimer's for years without realising it."

night owls

Chad Perrin explains why I like working at night time much more than during the day (substitute 'hack' for 'writing' or 'designing'):

Crazy-late hours of intensive hacking lend themselves naturally to entering, and sustaining, a deep state of "hack mode":

• Other (saner) people aren't around to interrupt. They're all asleep. This provides additional safety when juggling eggs.
• The requirement of keeping from disturbing others inhibits the tendency to engage in distracting entertainments (like TV). This almost forces one to focus entirely on one's work. Only something like reddit stands in the way.
• Subjectively speaking, it seems that the wee hours of the morning lend themselves to an almost surreal, abnormal perspective. Inspiration can be found in odd places under that sort of influence — which leads to new ideas coming to mind and being explored that, by the light of day, may have been dismissed immediately as "crazy talk".

via Lifehacker

mountains and other great weights

I saw an interview with Ian McEwan on the 7.30 Report tonight, in which he said that as a writer it was important to him to stay in good physical condition because writing a novel requires a lot of stamina. It's like climbing a mountain.

I remarked to mum that even though I well understand what he's talking about, when a successful novelist like McEwan describes the difficulties of the writing process like that, it makes me think "Oh what's he going on about? He's just making a big deal about nothing." After all, he's written many best selling books, right? (I haven't read any of them) He's internationally renowned and his speaking engagements sell out. How hard can it possibly be for someone like him to write a novel? Don't the words just pour out of him?

Such a thought is traitorous, to say the least, to writers everywhere. Because it is hard to write anything well. And it is very hard to write a novel. McEwan likens it to a mountain; my own experience is that it is like being trapped under a soaking wet doona. Or maybe, for an extra-complicated novel, a soaking wet futon.

I'm not sure what it's like for someone who writes novels for a living, who can devote their full-time working week to writing. But for someone who has to squeeze in the writing around a job, and the vagaries of ill-health, that smothered feeling is just inescapable. You have the weight of the book around you, on you, in you. You resent it. You fear it. You flail at it every so often to try and shift the weight but you just get further entangled. You get a flicker of light, the spark of an idea, and just as soon as you try to follow it, the wet mass snuffs it out.

Perhaps the method ought to be to calm down, to take some deep breaths and try to follow some sort of logic, try to find the ending, try to tie up the loose ends and find the way out from underneath. I'm not sure I've worked out how to do that yet.

One of the things I am greatly looking forward to on my trip away is having space. The physical space away from the everyday, and the exploring of new spaces, yes. But also the mental space. The creative space. The space that is billowing and airy and allows itself to be filled with just the lightest touch, bringing the tendrils and tender shoots of inspiration that can lead to new life. Even if things don't go according to plan, even if I don't have time to write much, I know that this holiday will be a time to clear out the clutter in my head, and time for the wellspring to start filling up again.

And I can't wait.

An excerpt

or A passage of writing that shows why I like Neil Gaiman.

---

Fat Charlie blew his nose. 'I never knew I had a brother,' he said.

'I did,' admitted Spider. 'I always meant to look you up, but I got distracted. You know how it is.'

'Not really.'

'Things came up.'

'What kind of things?'

'Things. They came up. That's what things do. They come up. I can't be expected to keep track of them all.'

'Well give me a f'rinstance.'

Spider drank more wine. 'OK. The last time I decided that you and I should meet, I, well, I spent days planning it. Wanted it to go perfectly. I had to choose my wardrobe. Then I had to decide what I'd say to you when we met. I knew that the meeting of two brothers, well, it's the subject of epics, isn't it? I decided that the only way to treat it with the appropriate gravity would be to do it in verse. But what kind of verse? Am I going to rap it? Declaim it? I mean, I'm not going to greet you with a limerick. So. It had to be something dark, something powerful, rhythmic, epic. And then, I had it. The perfect first line. Blood calls to blood like sirens in the night. It says so much. I knew I'd be able to get everything in there - people dying in alleys, sweat and nightmares, the power of free spirits uncrushable. Everything was going to be in there. And then I had to come up with a second line, and the whole thing completely fell apart. The best I could come up with was Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty got a fright.'

Fat Charlie blinked. 'Who exactly is Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty?'

'It's not anybody. It's just there to show you where the words ought to be. But I never really got any further on it than that, and I couldn't turn up with just a first line, some tumpties and three words of an epic poem, could I? That would have been disrespecting you.'

'Well . . .'

'Exactly. So I went to Hawaii for the week instead. Like I said, something came up.'

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Headline Review, 2006, p92-93

girl's got issues

We had a writing day today at Karen and Ben's place. I wasn't off to a great start, having only had four hours' sleep the night before for no good reason (much lying awake, staring at the ceiling, that kind of thing). I then stacked it spectacularly walking down the path at the Beilharzs' - ankle just gave out and there I was, sprawled on the ground at Guan's feet. It also turned out I had quite deeply grazed my knee, shin and ankle. Hooray.

I sat on the couch and wrote in fits and starts, adding bits onto Undragon Stories and reading over some things. I didn't get into the flow at all and write anything of substance, but got to strengthen some of the stuff I had written yesterday at Word by Word.

It was a blazing, bright blue day. We went to Newtown and had Japanese for lunch. In the course of the conversation, Karen wanted to confirm with me some things about the Faithful Writer conference in August, namely that I would be on the committee, co-lead a seminar on writing and editing with her, and read some of my work at the end of the day. I said yes. Then, "Wait! What did I just agree to?" Everyone laughed; it's a bad habit I have of agreeing to things and only later thinking through what it actually means. Karen clarified; I would be helping two other respected authors end the day by reading some of our work to the assembled conferees. I made a face and mouthed "But I'm not a writer!"

I earned myself a swift kick from Guan, at Karen's behest.

I know why, I mean it's ridiculous, isn't it? I go on about writing all the time, it's what I do, it's what I want to do, I'm a writer. And yet my gut reaction is to say "but I'm not a writer". I still feel like a fraud. I still feel like people are just being nice when they ask me to do things. I feel like if only people knew what a hack I am, they'd quickly change their opinions. And being invited to read my work out, on a platform with two men whose writing I greatly admire - surely they must have made a mistake. They can't mean me!

Why do I do that? I'm a writer. I am a writer. I'm a writer.

Okay, glad we got that sorted.

panda love

I haven't really publicised it here, but there is a zine that Mark and I put together called webSalt. It complements the printed version of Salt (which we also edit), but also gives us the scope to do things like the current issue, which is all about that dreaded scourge, Valentine's Day.

The issue's called What's love got to do with it? and features pieces by me and my lovely friends (ah the joys of self publishing...). Do check it out!

great Odin's raven!!!

I sent some stuff to Guan to read this morning, and came across this thing I made whilst procrastinating wildly at Varuna last year. Might give you an insight into my despairing creative process! (click on the picture for a bigger version)

the Big Read

I realised I didn't write about the Big Read, which was held last Saturday night at the Beilharz home. I'd never been to their house before, and found my way there easily thanks to Karen's directions (my favourite bit of which read 'Beware of the false steps that lead to no door' - I felt that it would make a very good beginning to a short story of some kind, which I may yet write). I found Karen lighting lanterns at the front steps, and loved all the fairy lights she had strung up in the stair well and along the mantel in their living room.

I helped Karen order the copious amounts of delicious Thai food we had for dinner, and then braved the room full of people. I shouldn't be nervous about things like that - after all, even if we don't know one another we are linked by the fact that we're writers, Christians, and most of us know Karen (only one woman was there who had never met any of us before, but she seemed to cope quite well!). But I do always find those sorts of social situations difficult, especially when (as in this case) the majority of people in the room already know each other.

But of course, I needn't have worried as I fell into easy and funny conversations with Ben May, Ben B, Dave and Kel Phillips, and actually quite enjoyed myself. I didn't get to know the others so well, but at least we'd now be able to recognise one another in the street (and not just from each others' blogs).

We had dinner, introduced ourselves, then I read Psalm 139 aloud because Karen suddenly remembered that we ought to have a Bible reading and was feeling a bit pressured about having to do everything on the night. I liked that psalm because we had read it at church the week before, and I'd marvelled at it then, and it seemed appropriate in a roomful of Christian writers to remember that "before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD."

We went around the room, reading pieces we had written or brought. Karen read the story she had written during our city day earlier that week, and it was all about coffee and why she doesn't like it and what led her to that point - more about relationships than coffee. In fact many of the pieces were about relationship, whether with parents and the disappointments that can entail, or with spouses or fiancees and the wonder of that kind of love. I liked Dave's pieces about technology and toys (one of them is here). And I read my story about the pineapple tarts, a good old standby that I feel everyone has read but in actual fact it hasn't been published anywhere so the only people who've read it are those I've intentionally given it to.

It's an autobiographical story about me making pineapple tarts with my grandmother in Malaysia one Chinese New Year. It annoyed me for so long because I thought it was trite and uninteresting, but my mum always talked about how much she loved it and how real it was in terms of describing that cross cultural gap between my Chinese family and me. I suppose it was really the springboard for my thesis and, later, my novel, extending those ideas into a semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical thing. So I read it at the Big Read (and did the voices and all) and it seemed to go down really well. Haoran said he was "right there" throughout the story, and Little said it made her want to try a pineapple tart, both of which I take as good signs.

After the readings we played some fun writing games, and then it was all over. Some people had to leave straight away, but some of us stayed a little longer for dessert. Then, remembering I had to play piano at church the next morning, I left. But it was a great evening - thanks for organising it Karen, you did a brilliant job!