December 20, 2020

The hidden art of home libraries

The school year sags into holidays and this fascinating year of 2020 drags its feet, unwilling to relinquish its fervent grip on the throat of human hope. Coronavirus continues to rage in parts of the world, serums designed to reduce the virus' impact bring possibilities but not cures or prevention, Sydney has another outbreak while the rest of Australia holds their collective breaths as Christmas travellers clutch tickets, and I hope to see my daughters and grandson in the new year.

Daytime work for 2020 stopped on Friday. Actually, it was meant to end on Wednesday, but small unfinished tasks lingered through Thursday and Friday, drawing me back into the office to add detail and 'do the right thing', whatever that actually is in a working world.

There are also distractions. Friday and yesterday I chose to build a dream - a wall library in the lounge for our books (or at least for some of them). I'm no carpenter - I failed Woodwork at school - but I managed to recompose a combination of IKEA bookcases, Bunnings kitchen cabinets, assorted sections of melamine, sweat, determination, creativity and careful measurement into a library (picture below). Finally, a space in our house feels like a writer should be here.

Editing of Chasse's Song has therefore been interrupted and slow, but the aim is still to finish the first edit before Christmas Day weighs in. Rearranging word order to improve the scansion (yes, I know it's prose, but the inner poet can't let go of a sense of rhythm when writing), selecting 'better' words, finding one word to replace three, reducing same word repetition, testing alternative words, adding and removing details, and checking for typos, misspellings, grammatical inconsistencies and really stupid mistkaes (yes, Dad joke irony) continues to be the prime imperative in this part of the writing process. I'm hoping the next couple of days will be fulltime writer days to aid this process.

I suspect my next post will be either between Christmas and New Year or in the new year. Either way, I wish you all an amazing, restful, Coronavirus-free, loving Christmas. Let's see if the contract for 2021 has any fineprint or hidden clauses. I'm hoping it brings everyone a fresh perspective, energy, productivity and joy.