The art of procrastination...

"Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday." Anon.
Today is the perfect day for writing - blustery and cantankerous outside - ideal for unleashing the mind and letting the words spill out onto my stark, white (empty) page. 
Alas, I am suffering from a severe dose of procrastination. Argh!
I had such high hopes for the day...until the procrastination monster snuck up on me and sucked up all the precious minutes and hours: 

• Got up this morning and went for a two hour walk with G. But that couldn't have been procrastination, that was exercise which is essential to good health.
• Went to the shops to buy zippers. These I need for making cushions, which are essential to sitting comfortably on the lounge. I would hate for my visitors to lack lumbar support.
• Sent an email to the property manager requesting a new shower head. This is necessary to ensure cleanliness and hygiene and again, good health. I am fast becoming a shower gymnast, which could be dangerous. With the water spurting out backwards through a huge hole in the connection I have to twist my body in a 280 degree loop to position myself under the wayward jet. 
• Phoned around getting RSVPs for a party and talked to my friend Legend for ages. This was essential for two reasons. First, as any good host will attest, numbers are critical for catering purposes. Heaven forbid we should run out of chilli cabanossi bites before the stragglers roll in, or worse - an excess of prawn cocktails turns limp and greenish in the afternoon sun. Second, I like talking to Legend, the sun always shines a little more brightly after our conversations. But therein lies another curse of procrastination. It's catching, and, like a virus latching onto an accommodating host it spreads. Sorry L.

It didn't stop there. Oh no no no.
Then I spent 25 minutes googling quotes on 'Procrastination' to try and inspire action. The best I came up with was the Crusoe line. It didn't make me feel guilty and lazy like all the others. ("You may delay but time will not." Blah. "Tomorrow is the day when idlers work and fools reform." Snore...)
Ooh, but this one I like:
"Procrastination is the thief of time."
Now there's a thought. I'm outta here. Got to go down to the cop shop and report a robbery.

An Aussie calypso summer...

Still on the theme of sport and stories, I came across another inspirational tale this week watching a documentary that you may think sounds geeky but is actually very, very cool.

It follows the epic West Indies cricket tour of Australia in the summer of 1960/61 and has all the ingredients of a great adventure story: characters that captured the hearts of the nation, high drama, sportsmanship, history-making events (the Brisbane Test resulted in the first ever tie in 83 years of Test cricket), controversy (Australians were enamoured of the touring team and its black Captain, Frank Worrell, during the era of the White Australia policy), courage, fierce competition, romance (where there are fans there's fire in the hearts) and heart-stirring friendship (500,000 Aussies celebrated the Windies at a farewell ticker-tape parade even though they lost the series).
Calypso Summer tells the tale through the eyes of the players, with real life legends like Garfield Sobers and Richie Benaud telling anecdotes about each other with signature understatement that makes you laugh out loud.
But isn't it peculiar how we make assumptions about people based on first level dimensions - things that are obvious to the naked eye like colour or gender. 
Listening from the kitchen to a lilting, musical accent, I glanced at the TV expecting to see a long, tall West Indian like Wes Hall or Alf Valentine reminiscing, but to my surprise it was a middle aged white man with a pink weathered nose whose name, Gerry Alexander, is as Pommy-sounding as his skin is fair. But Alexander is a true-blue Jamaican - wickie for the Windies on the tour. 
It took a minute or two to reconcile the accent coming out of his mouth with the visual because my brain was programmed to expect an English brogue. And I had to give myself a rocket for my lack of imagination.
It's liberating to know that in creating characters, the writer has licence to imbue each one with whatever traits and quirks we choose. 
In this world where truth is usually stranger than fiction, I doubt one could ever invent a character that is truly in-credible.
There was a kid in my primary school who used to catch daddy-long-legs spiders, rip the legs off them and eat the body. Right in front of us. 
You can't make that stuff up. 
Do you know anyone with a truly unusual, quirky bent that sets them apart from the rest? Tell me!

Global village goes GaGa...!

Song of South Africa trip 09 - this is what everyone is dancing to sub-Sahara. Love this global village we live in, makes me feel close to my African friends...turn it up LOUD!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdpSmNMg1is

Poetry and sport...'don't think, just play'

At last, back on line after an unplanned absence, a metaphorical twist in the tale.

Even the best laid plans (plots?) go astray and this prolonged diversion lent me hours of TV time devouring old movies on M-Net including, fabulously, a formative film from my youth about two of my favourite things: poetry and sport.

Bull Durham. I LOVE this story!

Who’d have thought a late-’80s movie about baseball with a kooky cast of characters and some seriously bad hairstyles would have introduced me to a lifetime’s fascination with the work of William Blake, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman?

Opening with a soliloquy on the soul that is pure gold by Susan Sarandon’s character, Annie, in the vein of the metaphysical poets at first it sounds outlandish but makes perfect sense. This story never fails to reach into my imagination and switch on the floodlights.

Annie is disarming, fiery and tender, choosing between her self-imposed role of mentor and ‘life’-coach to young thunderbolt ‘Nuke’ - Ebbie Calvin LaLoosh - and the magnetic pull of catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) whose wit matches hers in pace and intellect, and whose skills with the glove are tested off field in Annie’s Edith Piaf inspired candlelit boudoir.

Now, as proven time and again by my mates, there seems to be a gene built into the male DNA that enables guys to recite movie lines on demand and ad nauseum. How do they do that? I can’t even remember a one-line joke.

Besides Grease (standard for any self respecting child of the ’80s), Bull Durham is the only movie I can recite.

The scriptwriting is hilarious and sharp. No superfluous words. And for all its surface fluff, its message about inner-belief, courage and remaining true to one’s self is universal.

So my unexpected detour threw me a curveball and presented me with soul food and a change in direction for my own story. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, a taste of Bull Durham that always makes me giggle:

Tim Robbins’ ‘Nuke’, caught yawning in the change room after a late night with Annie and assumed by his team mates to have gotten lucky.

“Nah man, she read me poetry all night. That’s way more tiring than sex.”

A wonderfully whiffy tale...

'Did you do a poo on Mole's head. Well if not - then who?' The 'favourite characters' conversation has generated some lively discussion in Africa. My nine-year-old friend Josh presented a fabulous fictional character to his class in an English oral assignment recently.
The brief was to discuss his favourite animal character in a story. Without hesitation he chose Mole, from The Story Of The Little Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business, by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch.
It's a book I had given him for his third birthday, a cheeky tale of a mole trying to identify which of nature's beasts was responsible for pooping on him by investigating a myriad of spoor samples from the animal kingdom. Mole's story delighted Josh then as much as it does today.
Apparently it's a topic of hilarity and endless fascination among his cohort - poo.
His mother was worried his choice of character might kick up a stink but according to the teacher, Josh's speech brought the house down and he earned his best English grade ever.
Today's reading recommendation is enthusiastically endorsed by Grade 3 at DPHS Prep...!

Creating characters...

The question I'm grappling with is: What makes a character resonate with the reader so that the reader cares about what happens to them?
If you don't care what happens to the characters the story is pretty much dead in the water, no matter how promising the plot.
As I develop my characters in Africa, surrounded by old and inspiring friends who may well, unbeknownst to them, lend their own attributes to my fictional friends, I'm thinking about characters in fiction that have moved me. Either to adore them to the point where I haven't wanted to finish the book because to remain present in their literary lives is far better than to feel bereft in their absence. Or to react to a character with such disdain that the book is flung impatiently aside and abandoned.
In my childhood, Anne (of Green Gables) was prissy and boring. Fling.
Pippi Longstocking, on the other hand, captured my imagination with her stripey tights and her pluck, dashing off on endless adventures with her motley crew of mates, orange plaits agape in her wake.
In high school, inspired by the heroine Tess (she of the D'Urbervilles), it frustrated me no end that Thomas Hardy should pair such a treasure with the limp, insipid, gormless Angel. Pfft.
The only reason I watched the entire movie Alfie (the Jude Law remake) was because I was trapped on an aeroplane with a TV screen two inches from my nose and couldn't walk out or turn it off. His title character was vile. He started out as an arrogant arse, played with peoples' emotions, flung them recklessly aside until they were fractured shadows of their former selves, then went on to have a miserable life. End of story. Huh? What's the point?
If the characters have no substance, there's no reason for the reader to empathise with them or become emotionally engaged.
Some of my all-time favourites from fiction whose appeal I'm contemplating are:

• Atticus Finch and Scout La Rue, To Kill A Mockingbird
• Troubled but gutsy Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye
• The cast of country characters island-bound during WWII in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
• Grotesque and depraved but strangely sensitive and fragile, Grenouille, from Perfume
• All time gun-slinging, quick-drawing Annie Oakley, the wildest cowgirl in the West, who burst into the testosterone world of cowboys and Indians, matching them on her horse and confounding them with her femine wiles and sweet-girl glamour

How to pinpoint the X-factor in characters that reel us in and keep us turning pages? Keeping them real enough to be credible, admirable enough to raise our expectations but whose failings don't repulse us to the point of rejection.
I'd love to know what you think. Who are the characters that have stuck in your heart and mind, and why?

In Africa...

Just arrived in Africa and stepping off the plane in Durban, South Africa, after a thumpy-bumpy flight through an early summer Kwa-Zulu Natal thunderstorm, the words that came to mind were:
"Ah but your land is beautiful..."
A quick reading recommendation, the third novel of renowned South African author Alan Paton, Ah But Your Land Is Beautiful.
Paton's more famous novel, Cry, The Beloved Country achieved international acclaim during the apartheid years. Both worth a read for anyone interested in a writer who speaks from the heart and with an intrinsic knowledge of his land and its people, that resonates even with those who have never set foot on the great continent of Africa.

How not to bet on the horses...

I’m back. The internal thermostat has at last righted itself and I lost again on the Melbourne Cup. Life has clearly returned to normal. And not without a lesson learned:

When making your once annual flutter on the GGs, find a friend who has a clue and take your tips from them. 

Good advice. Thanks. I’ll do that next time.

I picked my winner because I liked his story. So while my brain shifts back into writing gear, I’d like to share it with you.

Exactly this time last year I was talking to the man who bred 2008 Melbourne Cup winner, Viewed, and asked him how he came up with the future champion’s name.

While your average punter may not question it, a significant amount of cryptic consideration went into its choosing.

The story goes that Viewed was sired by Scenic out of Lovers Knot.

The first three letters of the word Viewed spell the French word for ‘life’ and the second three spell ‘wed’.

Wed for life – Lovers Knot. Scenic. Viewed.

Aah, love a good play on words. Pity he only ran seventh this year.

The people of Africa believe that a name is not simply a random sound applied to a person, animal or thing. To indigenous Africans your name is your soul. Your symbol. And it possesses magical qualities that are bestowed upon you the moment you are named.

Hmmm… anyone got the inside tip on how this year’s winner got his name? 

On absence...

Rubyfire is temporarily incapacitated by an evil fever. Please drop in again shortly :)