As Australia’s first foodie fiction author, I take my position seriously and therefore I have decided to make the ultimate sacrifice for you and eat my way around the Sunshine Coast in order to let you know what’s out there. No, please, no need to thank me. It’s my service to you 😉 To keep my spirits boosted during this obviously arduous task, I’ve enlisted the assistance of my friend, Kitchen Coach Ashley Jubinville (of the amazing “bee cake” fame). Together, we will eat on your behalf.
The obvious place to start is at Kunara, the organic superstore that is fast becoming the power centre of what the Sunshine Coast does best: health. Not only is there the organic supermarket itself, but organic cotton clothing, an organic hair salon and day spa, a holistic vet, holistic doctors, organic garden centre, organic butcher and more on the way.
In the cafe you’ll find everything a food sensitive soul would want: coconut milk cappuccinos, paleo chocolate desserts, golden turmeric mylk, vegan pastries and more.
One of the most delightful things about Kunara’s cafe is the outdoor seating that is situated within their garden shop, with the sound of the natural (and spectacular) water feature nearby. It’s a tranquil little space and we both agree it’s rather special. The other thing we particularly loved today was the gluten free spinach and feta roll. Wow! (If you’re not gluten free you won’t understand how exciting this is. For me, I’ve been gluten free for twenty-five years and this is the first one of these I’ve seen in that time. Trust me, it’s a big deal.) Ashley and I are strictly gluten free and to stumble across one of these was a first for both of us. And it didn’t disappoint. Go get one!
And for a bit of trivia, Kunara even features in The Beekeeper’s Secret.
(Okay, it’s not actually Clara; but it could be. Image copyright ‘minoir’, Flickr)
This is Clara Finlay, who shall forever henceforth no longer be an unsung hero. Clara is one of the very rare breeds of professionals who work under completely unrealistic timeframes with nearly always unreasonable demands, with a near-zero error rate, who isn’t paid nearly enough and almost never gets any credit. What’s worse, it’s really difficult for these people to argue for a pay rise because when they do their work at their absolute best… No. One. Can. Tell. They leave no trace; they leave no calling card. They are the ninjas of the publishing industry. They are our editors.
How do I know this? Because I used to be an editor. A good editor, yes, one, worth her weight in salt. But Clara here is a great editor, worth her weight in saffron. I specifically asked (okay, begged) my publisher if I could work with Clara again after working with her on The Chocolate Promise and said, “She will make me work like a sled dog and eat kilos of chocolate but my book will be so much better for it.” And I’m confident to say that during the edit for The Beekeeper’s Secret, both the former and latter came true, and my book is a much, much better novel because of Clara’s nimble ninja fingers.
I’m not talking about picking up typos, spelling mistakes and punctuation errors. This is not what editors do. (Well, yes they do but it’s only a tiny portion of what they do. There is also a proofreader who comes after that who takes a last sweep for those things.) No, what a great editor does is to get inside your mind as an author and somehow know what it is you were trying to say and then help you say it better; get inside your character’s mind and help your character say it better; provide you summaries of reflection, analysing your characters and plots and then showing you what it looks like to a reader (which might be probably is totally different to what it looks like to you as a writer).
A great editor will ask literally hundreds of questions of you. Questions like:
Did you realise that you used the word ‘disquiet’ on page 86, 134, 257 and 301? Did you mean to do that?
On page 33, Alice shrugs. Why? Is she annoyed, bored, or rude? To which as an author I might think, actually I have no idea why! And then I have to have a conversation with Alice to find out why she is shrugging. And Alice might tell me she is bored, or she might tell me that she is remembering when she was five years old and … a new scene is born that gives an entirely different depth to Alice and infinitesimally more satisfaction to the reader.
This here, where you reference legal document XYZ and you say it means ABC… I looked it up and to me it meant XXX. Which is it? To which, I need to go and research the document again and find clarity, or I might decide to remove it altogether and rewrite the paragraph around it.
I think you have a timeline problem. In 1975 Mary was 6, but on page X in 1984 she is 23, and then a decade later on page XX she is 35 and her sister, who was 8 in 1974 is now… Could you check throughout? OMG, I hate these questions! There is a lot of chocolate eating over these ones as I pull out my calculator to start all over again and search the ENTIRE bloomin’ document to find EVERY instance where this could be wrong! (Cocktails may also ensue.)
I’m not sure you can say this? I think it might be copyright. Oops! Lucky!
Do you think George would say this? He seems a bit more conservative to me.
Do you think Marcia would think this? She seems a bit more enlightened to me.
And my favourite: NQR?.. which is editor shorthand for politely saying, “not quite right” or sometimes written more bluntly as, “recast?”. For a blunt interpretation, it means: I think you’ve been a bit lazy and could work a bit harder here and make this a better sentence. Having a bad day, were we? Would you like to try again?
A great editor lets you, the author, solve all the problems yourself, and be in charge of your words and intentions at every step, and yet you would never have gotten there if they hadn’t probed you and asked the difficult questions in the first place.
And on and on we go, for 100,000 words, or around 320 pages. If your editor has worked on hard copy, by the time you’ve gone through and accepted/ rejected/ changed/ added/ expanded/ explained your way through with your red pen, your pages look like a murder scene.
If it’s been done in Word with ‘track changes’, it will be so colourful you’ll think mardi gras has arrived in your document and you’ll barely be able to read the words for the highlighting, colour and added notes.
But when it’s all cleaned up and it’s sparkling white and shiny again, there will be no sign of the ninja whose swift, sharp knife had cut up those pages.
She will have done her job and disappeared once more into the night.
But I want you to know, Clara (and all editors whose diligence graces my books’ pages), that I see you. To me, you are heroes.
I know how hard you work.
I know that you are almost always the last person to touch a manuscript before it goes to print and therefore countless others before you have missed their deadline and pushed the timeframe further and further behind until someone slaps it on your desk and tells you that you can have two days to do two weeks worth of work and it has to be your best work ever, despite the fact that it might take you two days just to read the blasted manuscript, let alone touch it with a pencil!
I know that you’re financially undervalued. I know that it’s near impossible to argue for your worth when the only time someone notices you is when you’ve missed a typo on page 98 and a reader phones the publisher to complain. They didn’t see the four thousand and sixteen things you did; they just saw the one thing you missed.
I know that most people have no idea how skilled you are, how much breadth of general knowledge you need, how sensitive you are, what a great sense of humour you have, or what value you actually add other than picking up spelling mistakes.
I know that when a book does well that you might miss out on the awards and the travel and the publicity and cocktails.
But you will never miss out on my gratitude and deep love for the great work you do. Plus actual gifts. If no one else gives you gifts, I will!
To keep myself accountable to my unicorn for providing her with input from which to draw inspiration for new work, this year, I am keeping a list of everything I’m feeding her. She’s a hungry magical being–an insatiable appetite for creativity–and does tend to get stroppy if I neglect her.
I’m excited about what’s on there already, and looking forward to seeing this grow. If you have any awesome events you know of in the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane or southeast Queensland area, I’m keen to hear them. 🙂
So far, I have:
Books Read (completed, or at least half way, not including the hundreds I read to my toddler). Don’t be alarmed by the brevity of this list. As I’ve said many times, I’m a very slow reader.
Hester & Harriet, by Hilary Spiers
Fall of the Beasts (Spirit Animals), Immortal Guardians, by Eliot Schaefer
Diamond Spirit, by Karen Wood
Theatre Productions/Music
Australia Day (Noosa Arts Theatre), February
2016 Season of One Act Plays (BATS, Buderim), April
It’s been a great year for me and it hasn’t been by accident. At the end of last year, I wrote down my reflections of the year, I pinpointed the things that went wrong and wrote strategies for how to avoid them or deal with them if it happened again. I wrote down all the great things that did happen and all the things I wanted to change. And I mapped it all out, both personally and professionally and then I executed it, month by month. And I did it all in Leonie Dawson’s Create Your Shining Year workbook.
You know how they always say that when you write something down it’s more likely to come true?
That is the value in year planning.
In my last post, I introduced you to the year planner that changed my life in 2015. In this post, I want to tell you about some of the things I wrote down in my year planner that came true, even when I thought they were just fanciful, fun dreams.
The funny thing about writing these things down was that, for the most part, I completely forgot about them. And then months later, when checking in, I stopped and went, wait a minute! I just did that! Better than that, often what I wrote down came true, yes, but in a way that was even BIGGER and BETTER than what I’d written.
Here’s some:
Get new author pics. I was lining up a friend or my sister to do this for me and then about two weeks after I wrote this, my publisher emailed out of then blue me asking if Allen & Unwin could organise this for me, with a professional photographer and a makeup and hair person. Whoa! Yes please! Thank you, A&U, you are generous and wonderful and make me look much better than I feel.
Do yoga. I wrote this down, thinking I’d like to do a class. But you know what? We did better. My husband and I decided we needed a private yoga teacher and it was possibly one of the best things we’ve ever done for ourselves.
Fly to Sydney to see my publisher and agent (for no other reason than to see them). I did this and it was great not only to catch up when things weren’t so hectic but because EXTRA things came directly out of the fact that I did that: (1) totally unexpectedly, I was invited to submit a manuscript for a children’s book that I’d been scribbling away on; (2) I got a new title for my next book, The Beekeeper’s Secret (thanks, Tom); and (3) I booked a flight to the UK! (see next point)
Fly to the UK. I did it! That one was totally a ‘wish list’/ ‘in your dreams’ thing and yet… it came true!
Pay off the mortgage. Okay, this one was also an ‘in your dreams’ thing. But the thing with this one is that I didn’t specify which house to pay off. In my head, I was thinking our family home. But what has happened is that our beautiful tenant has left our other property (our family home before this one), so we put it on the market and we’ve just got a contract for it and that will pay it off. So it’s all good.
I also invested in my business systems.
I changed my focus from social media and began a quarterly newsletter, and when I mentioned it to my publishers, they offered to help out with some prizes for some issues. (Did I mention how great they are?)
I got a personal assistant. This was also an ‘in your dreams’ thing (almost laughable). But guess what? I did it! Only for a couple of hours a week, sure. But it is a great move and I’m so pleased I’ve done it.
I invested a lot more time into my financial bookkeeping systems, spreadsheets of what contracts are where and when reporting periods happen, actually went and found all my contracts (I know, I know). In other words, I really took the legal/financial stuff a lot more seriously and set up processes to help manage the growing correspondence about this. (Truly, I’ve no idea how authors who have ten or twenty books all published in different regions and with translation rights keep on top of it all. But since I do hope that will be me one day, I guess it’s best I try to figure it out now.)
The other great thing that happens when you start writing down not only what you want to happen, but also what does happen, and what unplanned successes came along, is that you get into the FLOW of synchronicity and more and more good things come your way.
Great surprises and beautiful blessings for the year of 2015
A New York agent took on The Chocolate Promise and is hopeful of selling it.
I have contracts for The Chocolate Promise to be translated for the German market!
Kim Wilkins (Kimberley Freeman) gave the most beautiful speech about me and my book at the launch of The Chocolate Promise this year and it will stay in my heart forever.
I received an ABIA nomination for The Tea Chest and my publishers flew me to Sydney to attend the awards.
I got to take my sister, nephew and Dad with me to the UK, for fantastic family support on my research trip there. Lots of gorgeous memories were made and I even got to tick off another of my year’s ‘fanciful’ things to do… play Canasta!!! (We are Canasta tragics in our house and spent many hours laughing ourselves silly over the cards in the Cotswolds).
I have learned so much about myself as a writer, woman, mother, creative and human being this year (and I’ll get to another post about that soon).
Leonie Dawson’s 2016 Shining Year Workbooks are on sale now but stocks are already running low. I cannot recommend them enough. You can choose just the personal life book, or the business book, or both, and you can get them in digital and print copies. They are a small investment in what could be a huge return on your dreams.
Leonie’s books get right to the heart of what it means to live, of what it means to have a business (the big ‘why’ of why we do what we do), of what it means to be alive and have dreams, and then grounds that in real visionary activities. I can’t wait for mine to arrive and to dive into planning the next beautiful year of my life.
Have you got your 2016 diary, calendar, and planner yet? No? Then I have a treat for you. Put simply, these books can change your life. That’s a big call, right? Well, I speak from personal experience so please read on 🙂
Today I am excited to share with you the products I have had on order for months now (yes, I really was a very early bird), that will be in my post box this week, and that I am confident will once again enhance or change my life next year, just as they did this year.
Many of you will know that I follow Leonie Dawson and that I am super energised by her vision, creative products and writing. I’ve followed her for around seven years, but last year was the first time I bought her 2015 workbook, which covered both personal life and business life. I knew from the first pages that the workbook was going to stir deep reflection, poke at hidden tender spots, stoke huge fires of dreams, and get right down the practical heart of running a business and life.
I’m going to do another post soon letting you exactly the things that happened to me this year that I attribute right to having written them down and worked them through in Leonie’s 2015 workbook. But for now, just know that the stocks are already running low. So if you want to take advantage of this great product, I’d advise getting on board today 🙂
(Disclaimer:Yes I am an affiliate of Leonie’s and damn happy to be! This is the ONLY thing I am currently affiliated with so that should attest to how much I believe in these books! 🙂 )
Halloween: I used to hate it; now I’m for it (sort of… kind of… not really, but… oh, let me explain…)
Right up until midday 31 October last year, I hated Halloween. I could not have been more resentful, bitter and loudly oppositional about it. I hated the crassness of it, the fake spider webs dangling from shop doorways, the sales kids dressed up in witches outfits, the pumpkins and goblin masks. I took particular offence to the notion of trick-or-treating and, especially, to the ghoulishness of it all. I hated the glorified meaninglessness of the commercial machine and the seemingly stubborn inevitableness that all this craziness was well and truly here to stay. Like, forever.
At that time, my son was two-and-a-half years old. Years and years of Halloween horrors loomed ahead of me. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be asking to join in, be invited to Halloween parties, with all manner of questionable games and violent costumes (call me crazy, but I don’t actually find it funny to see costumes with knives through skulls or blood and gorge hanging from body parts).
Then a good friend of mine (who doesn’t have children) posted a photo on Facebook, with her decorations of hairy spiders in the tree at the front of her home. She was the last person I expected to participate in something as gimmicky as Halloween. (She loves roses and antique teapots!)
Even her? Was I missing something?
I began to seriously mull over this whole Halloween thing, knowing I was running out of time before I would have to make some clear decision on where I stood and to what extent I was happy for my son to participate (or not). I didn’t even know where Halloween came from, so I hit the internet to find out. It’s a bit of a garbled mix of information out there, but my layperson’s understanding is that it seems to have originally stemmed from a custom of honouring the spirits of those who had passed over (on a night called All Hallow’s Eve) and transformed in some countries to people dressing up as evil spirits and monsters to make fun of them and show them that they were not afraid of them. And it was that last part that caused me to reassess the whole Halloween thing.
I suddenly got it–Halloween is STORY and STORY is how we make sense of the world. Myths, archetypes, legends, fairy tales, genres, nursery rhymes, poetry, cinema and all other forms of stories give us LANGUAGE to describe what is going on inside us and around us. Halloween, specifically, deals with monsters and scary things. And monsters are real, so it is natural that we would need a language–even a basic child’s language–to talk about them.
My theory goes like this. Monsters are real. There are monstrous people in the world who do terrifying, unthinkable, heinous things to children. There are monstrous dictators that torture and murder entire ethnic cultures on our planet. There are creative monsters in the world who want to smash our dreams, humiliate, bully and belittle us. There are monsters in our mind that tell us we aren’t good enough and undermine our actions and dreams.
The monster characters in books and movies—ghouls, two-headed creatures, slime-covered bottom-dwellers and so on—are simply the symbolic representation of real-life monsters. To deny they exist does a disservice to our children and to ourselves. Something like Halloween, if handled with sensitivity and care, might just be a wonderful opportunity to help children learn to bring monsters out into the light, to talk about their fears and know that as adults we will listen to them.
Obviously, I’m not suggesting we should deliberately go and frighten our children or go out of our way to bring monsters into their psyche. But I am suggesting that maybe we shouldn’t run away from the darkness. Maybe, when they come running to us in fear, saying, “There’s a monster in my room!” we might use that opportunity to say, “Thank you for telling me; I want to help you; I want you to tell me when you’re afraid; I’m here to protect you; let’s see what we can do about that together”, rather than saying “There’s no such thing as monsters”.
Because we all know that’s not true.
I’m still uneasy with Halloween’s crass commercialisation, the gore, and I’m definitely still anti trick-or-treating. But this year, I will be using the opportunity to sensitively (and with an age-appropriate agenda) help my son start to have language and dialogue around things that are dark and scary and assure him that I’m here to stand beside him to defeat the monsters together.
Following, is a special memory and story for me, one that makes up the intricate tapestry of my creative self. And I’m wondering if you have any similar memories like this.
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Do you believe that kids often know what they’re supposed to do in the world from a very young age? In my case, I think I did. I have a very strong memory from when I was around three years of age, the timing of which my mother was able to verify based on where I described we were living at the time.
On this particular day, my parents took my sister and me out shopping and we ended up in a toy store. I wandered around and was interested in many things, including a plaster of Paris kit, with figurines of Paddington Bear. But then, I saw a little red typewriter. I was struck with an all-encompassing need to have that typewriter. Soon after, my parents announced it was time to go. I began to cry, real tears of utter pain that I would be leaving without that typewriter.
‘What’s wrong?’ my mother asked, kindly. But I couldn’t articulate what the problem was. I’m not sure I even had a clear idea of what a typewriter did, yet I knew for some reason I desperately wanted it.
‘Do you want the typewriter?’ Mum asked, clearly confused. Then, ‘Or do you want the Paddington Bear kit?’
Now, here is where it got interesting. I can’t remember for exactly what reason–whether it was because I knew the typewriter was expensive, or whether it was because I didn’t think it was reasonable that a three-year-old should want a typewriter (I remember thinking both of those things, but am not sure which argument won out)–I pointed to the Paddington Bear kit and said yes I wanted that.
We took it home and I remember spending many happy hours out in the backyard under the trees making and painting those plaster moulds. I did love it.
But what my heart and soul really wanted that day was the typewriter.
For some completely inexplicable reason, I knew that I was here to create stories and bring them into the world, and at that time the way you did that was on a typewriter.
I was telling my mother this story on the phone recently and I choked up. The pain of leaving that typewriter behind was a strong as it had been when I was three. So when I hung up the phone, I searched ebay to see if there might be a similar one out there. And there was ONE. Just one. Sitting there for sale in England. So I bought it. And now it sits beside my laptop in my writing room and reminds my inner child (and therefore my inner artist) that I am a writer. That I’ve always been a writer. That I deserve to be a writer. That I hear that calling and I acknowledge it. My mission in life is there as a very real, tangible object–a realised dream.
If you’re a creator of any kind, I’m wondering if you have any memories like this? Or if you have any symbols around you in your space that affirm your dreams? Or have you noticed something like this in your own children? I’d love to hear these if you do.
** This post was first published in 2009, but I’m posting it again here because 2015 will be ‘The Year of Retreats’ on this blog **
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‘Welcome to Heaven.’
This is how our small cohort of writers was greeted at our DIY writing retreat over the long weekend. Five of us (four full-time participants and one part-time participant) locked ourselves in a tiny cabin at Heaven in the Hills in Maleny. We were surrounded by rain forest; were warmed by a fireplace that glowed 24-hours a day for four days; slept to the sound of silence; were without mobile phone reception; lived without television or radio; and had the most wonderful time. This is despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that we had gone with a cheap DIY option and were crammed into such a tiny cabin that left one man sleeping on the verandah in a pink ‘fairy’ bed and one man sleeping on the floor in a nest of cushions. (Sometimes there are advantages to being female.)
Locked into such a tiny space we talked and brainstormed and problem-solved our way through twelve hours of conversation at a time. And never once did we fight. On the contrary; we were bursting with enthusiasm and support and laughter.
I came up with the idea for a DIY retreat after reading an article in The Writer magazine. I wanted to go on retreat and wondered who I could convince to come with me. I cast the net wide and left it up to fate as to who turned up. It worked like a charm. I wrote a program and everyone agreed to it. I offered a choice of two locations and everyone unanimously voted for the cabin. We slept little but dreamed lots. We wrote little but received more prizes than any of us thought was possible. We solved the big questions of our writing before we headed too far down the wrong path.
I simply could not have imagined a better time. (Okay if everyone had had their own bed/bedroom it would have been better… but I still wonder if that was part of the magic of this ‘writer survivor’ experience.)
Today I am struggling to keep hold of the magic of the weekend and carry it with me like a candle throughout my day lighting up my characters and plot with every breath I take. But as the wonderland fades a little with every chore found here in the ‘real’ world I know that I only have to open my book and write a sentence in order to find it again.
*** Does a retreat sound appealing to you? ***
If you want to join me on retreat, I’ll be running a retreat on the Sunshine Coast hinterland in October 2015. Click here for details.
I’m also open to visiting you on your own self-organised retreat. You can email me to chat about that too 🙂
Writing retreats are, hands down, awesome–so much so, I’d go as far to say they are one of the most important things you can do as a writer.
Just you, the trees, and your book
I’ve been on a number of writing retreats. In fact, the first one I went on, I organised myself by choosing a location, setting a timetable and a structured outcome process (I’m a former teacher; I can’t help it), and inviting people along. Despite an accommodation challenge, it was fantastic. Since then, I’ve come to value retreats in many varied and extended ways and I’ll be writing several posts on this topic this year. So let’s start with finding the right type of retreat for you.
This is what I did for my first retreat. It’s a bit like a school camp except that everyone there is a nerd, just like you. So you can actually revel in your artsy, geeky glory instead of feeling left out. (Or, hey, maybe that’s just me.) The DIY retreat goes something like this:
a bunch of writers agree to go and spend time together in a location suitable for their needs and desired outcomes
you might share accommodation, food, books, notes, and resources
you might choose to delegate everyone a job, such as presentation to the group on some aspect of the craft of writing
you might all like to submit a portion of writing for the group to review prior to the retreat and at the allocated time in your schedule, you have a group critique session. (Most people really dig this part so it’s worthwhile doing.)
you might even approach an author to come and visit you on retreat (or stay with you), pay for their time to teach you some skills and/or give you feedback on your writing.
Who is this for? Writers on a budget; aspiring writers who want to get their feet wet on retreats; those who want to hang out with other writers; writers who want to tailor their own retreat (e.g. handpick an author to come to their retreat).
The Solo Word Count retreat
This is the retreat you take yourself on to GET THINGS DONE. There is only one goal on this retreat: WORDS. Fantastic if you are on a deadline (either self-imposed or contractually obligated), or perhaps when you’re just bursting with a story and dying to get it down but life keeps getting in the way.
The last retreat I took was of this type and I nailed 10,000 words in two-and-a-half days. For me, that’s fabulous. And if I did three retreats a year like that, that would be a third of a first draft of a novel done in just over a week in total. Bam! Words, words, words. A novel can’t exist without words, after all.
Who is this for? Anyone feeling a timeline pressure. (Or extreme introverts who relish days on end in silence with nothing but their own thoughts.)
The Solo Planning and/or Editing retreat
This is similar to the Solo Word Count retreat, except that your goals are different. Rather than a tunnel-vision goal of moving forwards only (word count), the planning and editing phases of writing are a lot more lateral. Spiralling, even. Narrowing in, then pulling outwards again. Reading, then editing. Writing notes, then typing words. Drawing diagrams, and then throwing them away. It takes time and space to do these things well and a retreat is a great way to really get to know your novel.
Who is this for? Writers at the beginning of their project; writers working on subsequent drafts; writers on a deadline to move through the editing phase.
The Lifestyle writing retreat
This could be organised by you, a group of you, or an external party.
I’d say the focus of this type of retreat is sharing communal space with other writers to enjoy spontaneous connection and indulgence of your love and passion for writing. There’ll be plenty of time to write on your own in a nook somewhere, or sitting at the big ol’ dining table with other writers. There might be shared dinners out, time for a massage, or doing some yoga between sessions.
Who is this for? Anyone who’s feeling a bit stuck, disconnected or who has lost the passion and motivation for their project. It’s a big kick start to your creative juices.
The Research retreat
Oh, this is fun. New locations, road trips, plane trips, boat trips, train trips… you get the point. Photography. Note taking. Maps. Historical societies. Interviews with relevant subjects. On-site visits to businesses, farms or families. Collecting knick knacks, feathers, stones or food.
The goal of this retreat is to get as much hard data and/or whimsical feeling for many of elements of your project to take back home with you so you can continue to write your story with new vision.
Who is this for? Writers who are building scenes and stories about places, time, people, careers, history etc. outside of their own world view of the world. Writers who want to kick start a project. Writers who have stalled in a project and need to infuse it with new life.
The ‘it’s all done for you’ retreat
These are retreats offered by writers, editors, associations and so on. They generally pick the location, provide tutors/instructors/mentoring sessions etc. You pay a fee that covers the accommodation and the retreat program. Some will include food in the price, others leave that out. There’ll generally be workshop sessions as well as individual and/or group feedback on a selection of your writing.
Who is this for? Anyone who’d like to spend time with the already established authors and mentors who are running the retreat. Anyone who is time poor and would rather not deal with the logistics of organising a retreat. Anyone who wants to feel safety in numbers.
*** Do any of these types of retreats sound appealing to you? ***
If you want to join me on retreat, I’ll be offering a tutor-led retreat on the Sunshine Coast hinterland in 2015, so email me at josephinemoon [at] live.com.au to let me know you’re interested.
I’m also open to visiting you on your own self-organised retreat. You can email me to chat about that too 🙂
Each year I set specific new year’s resolutions just for the writing corner of my life, so it’s once again time to do that. The thing I find interesting about these lists is that once I’ve written them down, I don’t think I look at them again until the end of the year when I wonder what I wrote and how far I went towards achieving them. But it’s always fascinating to me how much of them I do unconsciously throughout the year, just because I’ve listed them.
Stay calm and have a cup of tea. (I think I did this pretty well for the most part, bobbing up and down on the waves of my first year in publication. There was stress, sure, but I actually have a written plan now for how to handle ‘the things that went wrong’ in 2014 so I feel more prepared to greet 2015.)
Turn guilt into gratitude. (I got better at integrating the working mother stress as I went along and I feel much more settled now that my toddler is in a good early learning centre two days a week. Though I had to work through a lot of guilt to get there, both he and I look forward to those days so that makes everyone happy.)
Protect the creative process. (Again, I think I got better at feeding my unicorn through the year, and my most recent efforts to do this include my weekly challenge of Creative Tuesday.)
I also said I’d throw in some writing room decorating, and I had abig breakthrough with that in 2014 and am still enjoying my new relationship to my room, actively thinking about nurturing it so that it can nurture me in return.
So, for 2015. Here goes:
I only have one resolution this year, and it’s a big one. It’s the one that scares me the most, that challenges my brain, and pushes me into spaces I don’t like to go.
Numbers.
Tax!!!!! GST. BAS. IAS.
Blech!! That’s how I feel about it now. But by the end of this year, I want to feel like, Pft, it’s nothing. More than that, it’s my friend.
The whole tax stuff around writing is huge, difficult stuff, especially if you are a Word Person. A non-number person. The very gifts that make you a good writers, well, they kind of let you down a bit with the whole number crunchy stuff.
I will write a whole post about tax and writing sometime this year to share with you what I’ve learned. But for now, let me summarise by saying that if you have another job where you’re earning a salary, and then you get a book deal, then you really need to get on top of this tax stuff because writing income can shoot you over into a new tax bracket and, trust me, that can leave you with a nasty tax surprise. Also, after they’ve cleaned you out of money to pay that nasty tax bill, then you’ll then be asked to pay tax in advance, almost straight away. And that might be scary as all hell too.
And of course the rub here is that if you earn money from royalties, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH YOU WILL EARN!! It could be $10 or $10million. There’s a big bloody difference between those numbers.
I am going to enrol in a bookkeeping course. (My stomach actually plummeted as I wrote that.) I don’t ever want to feel disempowered about my numbers. I don’t want to have to rely on an accountant to tell me absolutely everything. (But, oh my, I still need an accountant.) I need to understand the basics; I need to HAVE THE LANGUAGE to even be able to TALK about money. And I need that before I can fill out crazy ATO forms.
And my accountant and I are going to check in each quarter and try to estimate the numbers as we go.
I’m thinking this will take me all year to get on top of this. And so, that is it. My one resolution. The very opposite of what you would think would be a ‘writing resolution’ and yet I have to do it because I have become afraid to earn money because I am afraid of tax bills. And that’s just ridiculous. That’s not a signal I want to send to the universe. So I am declaring it. This time next year, I’m going to feel confident about the money. I’m going to shout, ‘Bring on the book sales, people! I can handle it!’
