Caroline Reid Writes

Pressfield: "The Muse always delivers" Disappointing news this week: the writers retreat in Fiji that I should be flying away to right now was postponed. Nothing like having to change international flights to give you a dose of bureaucratic reality. Aargh!  However, postponed is not cancelled and the retreat will give me something to aim for later in the year. Instead of flying to Fiji I spent the day working on a story 'The Caretaker'. I took the first half of this story to my writers group and they wanted to read more. That got me excited. (Golden Rule - Keep Them Reading). So I keep plugging away at 'The Caretaker' and it continues to grow. Definitely one that will end up in the collection, Satisfied. In the meantime, I miraculously finished a first draft of a new story, 'Crocodile' over 2days. I'm not exaggerating when I say miraculously - I've never worked that quickly before. I put it down to continuously turning up to the blank ...

Highway One I'm proud to say that my story 'Highway One' is now available for reading at the on-line publication. Verity La . I'm in good company. This excellent on-line journal has published many well-respected Australian writers including Paddy O'Reilly, Ryan O'Neill, Chris Womersley and Irma Gold. In other news, it's less than three weeks until I arrive in SavuSavu, Fiji to take part in a writers' retreat led by the marvellous Margo Lanagan. Spots still available but not many, so get in quick. . 

the long drop: open air toilet So how long should a story be? As long as it needs to be is usually the answer I give. When I first started writing them my stories seemed to consistently be 1000-2000 words. Then they got shorter, though I've yet to spend time working a great deal on shorty-shorts or micro-shorts. I think there are a lot better writers than me doing it ( Josephine Rowe , for example) and it kind of reminds me of that intensity of writing poetry, which - except for the occasional stormy effort - I've pretty much left by the wayside. Enter 'The Caretaker' (no no, not the excellent Harold Pinter play). This is a story I started over a year ago as 'Defrag' . Then it became 'In the time of Camels '. ( I love playing with titles). But at over 5000 words, and nowhere near finished, this is a story - I finally conceded today - that is going to be much longer than any other story I've written. And yet I've persisted - until today...

Kanowna at 4 in the afternoon I remember reading somewhere that what you do when you're not writing is just as important as writing. After having spent a few days in the old town of Kalgoorlie, where I grew up, I was reminded again of how rich this place is in story and of the extraordinary quality of the light, especially as the sun goes down. This photo was taken on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie, at the old Kanowna Cemetery. The light is burnt and trees turn copper. It's eerie. I wish I could explain it better. Sounds are few - the  'aaark' caw of a crow and the occassional car speeding by. But mostly it's as quiet as butter. The world feels very still. Another world feels close, one that isn't concerned with Super Pits or gold or any kind of reality we know of. One that you could dream of, if you were brave enough to really let go. Less than 2 hours later the sky is pitch black broken up only by big winking stars (so big you can't tell the difference ...

"I was walking along the other day thinking about death,' said Bob of The Yearlings as an introduction to a song. Good to know I'm not the only one that walks along thinking about death. Not a symptom of depression in this instance. Thinking about death is kind of like thinking about infinity, can't quite grasp it but it stretches the mind and can almost be fun. I write this blog an hour before I fly out to Kalgoorlie for a funeral, so thinking about death has become acute again. The death in this instance is a woman who I first met 40 years ago in Kalgoorlie, the mother of a very dear friend of mine. Kalgoorlie and Death also gets me thinking of home - where is home when you've moved so many times and where would you be buried when you're not quite sure where home is ... or what it is. What is home? For now home is an emotion, home is a memory pressed into the belly and heart and mind. For now home is a friend and a visit to the past while acknowledging tha...