By a sneeze

I didn’t anticipate my Madeleine to be so – unpleasant. With a rib-rattling sneeze a wallop of mucus flung from my nose, and I was instantly transported back to the brothel Bucharest.

Hot tea and cake is so much more delightful to yield a relaxing reverie. But I suppose you can’t be picky about sensory stimulus! So here is the result of last week's writing exercise: 

Bucharest

I lay on the floor of my tent in a sweltering fug of fever. Lashing rain drowned out my haggard cough. I fidgeted, fighting to get comfortable. I finally flung off my sleeping bag, only to retreat under it moments later. A platoon of mosquitoes laid siege. We were camping in a poorly drained swamp. Even without a fever the air hung like a soppy, hot towel.

We had pulled into Bucharest earlier in the day. We pitched our tents in a campsite in outskirts of the city. The campsite used to house laborers during the communist era. A handful of original plywood huts still stood. They had since been tarted up with bright paint. We were later told that that wasn’t the only tarty behavior.

Campsites have a less then savory reputation in Romania. After the Iron curtain fell, these types of huts were sold off for private enterprise and turned a fine profit when rented by the hour.

This particular campsite was built on the edge of an industrial estate, a forty-minute bus trip from the city. We eagerly pitched our tents and set to work washing our filthy clothes in the bathroom sinks. Giggling at the strategically placed massage tables in the toilet sheds. Not yet knowing about the campsite’s avenues for revenue.

With everything washed, we negotiated with each other for space in the campgrounds backfield. We hung our wet clothes from fence posts, tent guide ropes and trees branches. The field looked like a launderette had exposed. We were immensely satisfied. Everything was washed. We failed to anticipate the impeding rain.

It wasn’t the rain that broke us. Bucharest broke us. As we eventually drove any from the wretched city we were weary and unwell.  My lungs were still a cesspool of mucus; everyone else had hangovers from a night on the city’s wild side. I suppose I haven’t explained very well why I’ll never return to Bucharest, that’s for another time. I highly doubt anyone else I travelled with would return either. I guess I risk the possibly of returning to it whenever I have a heavily laden sneeze. 

Writing Task #4: Proust it!

I've been reading The Memoir Book by Patti Miller. Her chapter on memory has been greatly influenced by the Proust. Miller defines memory as either being ‘original’ or ‘remembered’. 


‘Remembered’ memory is simply your ability to recall events, ‘this is the extracted idea of the memory’ as it may feel as though you are ‘watching’ the events. Whereas ‘original’ memory is ‘the product of a sensory stimulus’ and you ‘relive the experience’ hence the heavy referencing to Proust.

So this week’s writing task is to find your own madeleines. Try and unlock some original memories by setting up some sensory cues – whether this means going for a slice of cake, sniffing out the spice rack, listening to music, touching silk or corduroy - anything that may trigger of some memories.

According to Miller, Proust said reverie was his favourite emotional state and the one he believed all good writing ought to induce. So allow yourself to slip into "a state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts; a daydream" and record all the words/memories associated with the sensory stimulus you have selected. 

The room in which you sleep

The Result of writing exercise #3:

If I were to die tomorrow and my possessions were pillaged & plundered, what would be found? 

A substantial collection of spare buttons. A bookshelf of dog-eared novels haphazardly arranged like a frustrating game of Tetris. Food stained university lecture notes and anatomy textbooks reeking of formaldehyde. A stack of 90’s sewing magazines and a dusty sewing machine. Unused clusters of crockery, teapots, table runners and Indian cotton quilt sets, strewn between piles of clothes. The space under the bed would reveal unhung art and creepy one-eyed dolls from a reckless youth.

There is no real system of organization. Spare socks plug empty spaces of the bookcase. Books wander into the wardrobe. My room is my home. Many people experience the choke and congestion of clutter. I’m fairly content to live with my things luxuriously lounging about the place.

Did I fare any better living out of a backpack? I can give you a resounding no. In fact I was far worse without four walls to confide my belongings.

That is NOT my suitcase

Travelling in a twenty-ton truck leads to all sorts of false ideas of spaciousness. In fact, travelling light is nonsense when driving around the world. You do tend to forget a minor detail - how much it is humanly possible to carry.

At every border crossing the truck was inspected. We had to be responsible for all our personal possessions. I had to be able to shoulder all my things and walk across the border whilst the truck was separately inspected. Some borders had more thorough inspections then others. I can remember a Nepalese border guard bounding up the steps and calling out a cheery hello before waving the truck on. At the Turkish border the guard was more concerned with a passenger’s “stylish” bandana. We stood in subzero temperatures for hours whilst they tore the truck apart at the Chinese border.

At the Chinese border, after I had posted a 12kg package home from Kathmandu, I still had a 25kg backpack, two overflowing plastic boxes, a day back, a handbag, a jumbo sized environmental plastic bag. The seams of every single bag groaned. But not as loudly as me, as I lumbered through the security checkpoints. Trying not to look suspicious. The only people who would have carried more things travelling would have been the first pioneers. And they were going into the unknown for indefinite durations.

In fact I had so much luggage, at one point I unwittingly became an international smuggler. I slipped whiskey into Malaysia. Why whiskey is contraband is beyond me. I happened to chortle at the sign also outlining eggs, sugar and rice as restricted items. I then confidently crossed the border, assured I was following the letter of every law.

Looking back on it I wonder why I had some much luggage. I suppose it comes back to my panache for cumbersomely shaped or weighty objects. Otherwise known as home wares. Since leaving Australia I developed a raging nesting instinct. After only two months in London I posted home an 18kg package. Of home wares. For a house I do not own. I have an unfailing sense of optimism that I will, one very distant day, own a house. It’ll perhaps be wise to also invest in a garden shed as well, to house my heaving collection of eclectic keepsakes.

I’m still re-discovering all the stuff I bought whilst away. I procured a couple of things “for the house” in every country and mailed a bundle home every so often. ‘Bundle’ may be a misleading word. During the nine months on the road I mailed home five packages totaling a whopping 56kilos. My backpack weighed in at a sterling 24kg at my last border crossing.

I became very friendly with postal staff worldwide

I suppose the only thing I can say is that this future house of mine shall require a good many rooms, as I’m doing a daily decathlon to get out the front door.

Writing Exercise #3 Dropped Dead

Mountains of Rubbish, Glastonbury 2011

I think that this writing prompt from 'Naked, drunk and writing' is particularly poignant given my inability to find things in the roaring rumble and rift-raft that is my room. 


"You dropped dead suddenly and your house is cleared out. What do they find?"


I almost miss just having all my possessions fit into a backpack.But then again I am and always will be a book hoarder. Well that's a half-truth, I hoard many things. From mountains of clothes to broken yo-yo's, christmas cards and CD's that are scratched beyond play. After travelling I have also learnt that I've got quite a penchant for objects of stone or exceptionally fine fragility...

Lessons in how to be dumb

There are seven days in a week. 


Not earth shattering news for most, but it still rocks my world. My weeks are now bookmarked with work, study, coursework, daily commutes and washing my hair*. Free time is fleeting and fought for.

It's been a painful adjustment after almost a year of traveling, when my time was wholly and luxuriously my own. Nap time was mandatory, as was listless daydreaming. I felt a heady sense of accomplishment if I backed up my photos or got a load of laundry done.

Needless to say I have a bit more to pad out my day. I need to push and prod responsibilities around to fit my writing in. I had originally anticipated I would have a first draft of my novel completed by May/June. After all I wrote reams whilst on the road, all I had to do was retype it and add a bit of flowery language, right? I can safely say I think that this sweetly naive and almost laughably so. That's not to say I haven't been working hard to make it happen, but I fear that it will not be enough, so my revised deadline is August.

You can see with my self-imposed deadlines that I'm trying to create goals to ensure I keep writing a priority. Without goals I fall into a slurry of whimsical distractions.  

My current dilemma is how to set goals that set action in motion. I know I need time pressured goals but at the same time I falter if set too firm. My recent attempts of establishing writing goals has left me floundering & overwhelmed.

Just in the past month alone I have oscillated between wild and varied word counts goals - then I abruptly realized I don't really count words. In fact word counts added a sense pressure, not the ra-ra motivating kind, the straggling kind.

I decided to focus on a country/region per week. This worked somewhat well for Tibet and Iran. But found that this approach had me nit picking sections I had already written and didn't propel me into creating new material. It also had me hopping between chapters and leaving some ideas unfleshed. I know if I skip on and leave these ideas half formed, they will become rotten and unworkable by the time I return to them.

I've toyed with fixed durations - two hours per day. Or even setting times of the day - write whilst commuting, but as drool drips onto my iPad and my head lolls towards the shoulder of a stranger most nights I am just too tired.

Basically I have set many goals. Many dumb goals. I need SMART goals. Yup, this is starting to sound like every work related professional-development course ever run - except without the cheap instant coffee and stale biscuits. I offer no biscuits.

So I need to set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

It hasn't been all miserable failures. I am keeping my goal of completing one writing exercise per week. My inner critic berates me that I should do one a day, but I am firmly ignoring that bitchy whine. I'll review and increase the number of exercises based on what's achievable in the upcoming weeks.

I just need to figure out a series of SMART goals to achieve my August deadline. As that deadline is just like a floating pie in the sky at the moment. For more info on goal setting check out this and this.



* yup, since getting back to Sudney I can safely reassure everyone that I do wash my hair on a regular basis.  Thanks to irregular shower access, irate plumbing and corrosive water, a gnarly matted nest was starting to take hold of my scalp.

The hot heart and cold eye

The other day I mentioned I was on the hunt for a book. It still remains a sight unseen. Though in my half-hearted attempted to find it, I happily rediscovered another book. I abandoned the search and whittled away the afternoon re-reading ‘Naked, Drunk and Writing’ by Adair Lara.

I bought the book last year because of the title* and it’s promise to help the reader ‘craft a compelling memoir or personal essay.’ At this point I was half contemplating writing a travelogue about my impeding journey from London to Sydney. I was also starting to get steady requests to pen opinion columns in SpitPress.

On the first read I gobbled the book up. The pages are dog-eared and annotated with flashes of green highlighter and scribbles in the margins.  Adair Lara’s guide is personable and informative.  Lara addresses structure, subject matter, tone, narration, scene with a firm hand and wry wit.  Even Lara, a writing teacher, admits, “structure is not sexy”, yet I would consider her own book as delightfully playful. She blends anecdotes of working as a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle and teacher, throughout the book. Thereby giving each lesson or writing task depth and relevance.

Lara also liberally quotes other writers including Chekhov - “Tear your story in half and start in the middle” or Marilynn Robinson’s description of writers starting out “At first less in love with structure or pattern and more in love with words in a foolish but sweet way.”

Lara herself is also full of quotable titbits (hence the heavy-handed green highlighting) “Apply part A (Butt) to part B (chair)….Don’t vow to write. Vow to show up at the desk.” Or “You must work. You start with your hot heart, spilling truth any old way onto the page. And then you bring in your cold eye.”

There is a plethora of writing exercises in the book. In all honesty I have completed few. I read the book quickly and with immense joy. Then I packed it in a box with 18kilos worth of other goods and shipped it from London to Sydney.  

Some of the writing advice stuck like glue throughout the rest of my trip and inferred astounding impacts on my journal writing. Lara recommends that you collect sensory rich images as well “those cranky, eccentric details that could come only from a frontier where no one else has been: your life…the most neurotics details resonate like a tuning fork”. So I wrote my journal with a hot heart. Now I just need a cold eye.

* The title itself is a cute story in itself “somebody at a party once remarked to me over sushi that books with ‘naked’ in the title always sell”. 

Photo inspiration. Prague.

This is what I came up with for writing exercise number 2:

If Europe were a beehive come June 1^st, rain or shine, it gets mercifully hacked open. Everyone is on holidays and keen to get out and about.

Great swarms of people swoop onto anything that has been vaguely labeled as a tourist landmark. The calamity of foreign languages creates a heady hum in cobblestone streets across the continent.

Even if you’ve run marathons, walking five hundred meters saps your stamina. There’s the constant threat of getting sideswiped by a stroller, struck by a wayward elbow or suffocated by a swarm of tourists unexpectedly rounding a bend. The constant stop-start flow of foot traffic burns the calves,buckles the knees and causes cheeks to flush.

Crafty footwork

Big-ticket cities are like this all year round. Even in snowstorms Piccadilly Circus is literally a circus, Paris is packed and Rome is overrun. But there seems to be a round robin of popular alternatives.

Prague

Through the magic of cheap airline tickets, reams of overt and covert advertising, these alternatives sink into the collective conscious as 'The' destination to visit that summer.

This summer it was Prague and we were in the heaving heart of it.

Like any run of the mill travellers, we were keen to capture it all on camera. Though even Olympic level gymnasts would have struggled to contort themselves to obscure strangers from the photo frames. Yet we all valiantly gave it a shot. Ducking, weaving, kneeling, lying down on cobblestones or straddling lampposts, wildly angling the camera lenses.

Random on the Right. Aidan and I posing fountain side.

We gave up. Huffing and puffing we would mutter the now commonly thrown catchphrase 'photoshop. You can definitely erase them all.'

Sounded like a great plan.Yet even if you actually blissfully swipe strangers away with the click of the mouse, you wouldn't to be able to erase the haggard drag of your shoulders and sheen of sweat across your brow. You can’t help but look absolutely spent.

Though you'll get a hundred odd people in your photos, it's worth snapping away, Prague is truly picturesque. Simply stunning. Yet, it's not the Prague I imagined at all. For lack of a better description it was all a bit too...clean.

Through a strict plan of restoration and gentrification that facades are freshly painted and flawless. The cobblestone streets smooth. Even statues appear almost ageless.

Sculpture in Prague

I expected a bohemian ragtag attitude or a poetically caviler indifference. Perhaps an accordion player sitting on a street corner. Soft cap dragged rakishly low. Gypsy music slyly slinking out of bellows. Yet it was all too shiny. Too new looking. And absolutely exhausting.

Writing Exercise # 2 - photos

Cameras on the ready! Prague

I have started flicking photos from when I was aboard, stacking and sorting them for a photobook. A decent share of my photos are out of focus, stark or dim depending on terrible lightening, cluttered with distractions or momentums obscured by hordes of tourists.

Basically I realized most of my photos are crap.

But then I started thinking maybe they aren’t completely terrible after all. Stay with me on this thought, I promise this isn’t me just massaging my fragile ego.

Perhaps my dodgy photos don’t just represent my lack of photography skills but maybe they highlight the atmosphere of each place. It is near on impossible to get a photo of anything in Europe with at least half a dozen people loitering in the frame. Or the out of focus pictures of the fire festival in India was due to the push and crush of the swelling crowd. Or poor lightening in the Vietnamese photos was secondary to monsoonal weather. The off kilter photos of the Himalayans was due to the heady nausea of altitude sickness.

I will heartily admit that someone with skill could easily overcome these challenges, but I intend to make lemonade from these lemons of photos and create a writing exercise:

This week’s writing exercise was to write a short piece based on photos taken on the trip. I wanted to focus less on the obvious aspects of the location and more on the atmosphere captured on lenses.

The quirky photo above inspired me to write about the crowded streets of Prague.

Out of focus (tick), Red eyes (tick), Light Flare (tick). Countless memories of running around Cappadocia (tick). Plus evidence of a Kombi with an attached beatle - seriously too cool for school

My Home

The result of this week's writing exercise about 'home':

My tent (with the fluorescent fly)

I did what felt like a fair amount of research for my tent. It would after all be my home for six months. In retrospect, I did little more than flick through pictures. Durability, dimensions, weight and weatherproofing didn’t really factor into the search. But then I found her. As cute as a button, my very own home away from home.

Square bottomed with two entrance points, it looked cozy and hobbit-hole like. It boasted that it could comfortably house two people. Two people with desirable BMI's, no luggage and possibly a foot shorter than the norm.

I found a video clip of the tent being tested. It stood pegged on a golf standard green in the middle of a warehouse. Suddenly, out of a network of overhead pipes, reams of water started pelting the tent. Wind machines ticked over, emitting shrill shrieks as they spun, plummeting the tent in all directions. It was a fabulously high tech and carefully engineered mini cyclone. The tent stayed stoutly secured to the ground. The interior bone dry. Yes, that would do just fine I thought to myself.

The clincher of the decision lay in the tent's ridiculously reduced sale price. I didn't for a moment question why the company would be drastically cutting prices and selling this style of tent to clear. I was more focused on picking a colour. The green fly of my tent was such a fabulously fluorescent it could have only be camouflaged if pitched in a discothèque celebrating a St Paddy's inspired Mardi Gras. Not exactly the colour for concealment. If anything it was more like a beacon in the night, herding nefarious types to our campsites.

Once on the road and with a fistful of bent and broken aluminum tent pegs, I realized that this camping malarkey would be hard work. During preparations I had anticipated that next six months would amount to an adventure of Enid Blyton proportions - endless rays of sunshine, snugly woodland creatures, lashings of ginger beer and sugary cakes.

My Enid Blyton vision of life on the road

Not imagining for a minute the possibilities of tent eating ants, thistles and thorns. The discomfort of pitching on concrete or in quarries. Or the dangers of getting trampled by herds of cows or goats, suckled by millions of mosquitoes,enquiring machine-gunned militia or bone-chilling temperatures.

Despite looking lush and green, thistles are in terrifyingly plentiful portions (Germany)

Exercise #1 Home

I’ve been reading Carmel Bird’s writing book ‘Writing the story of your life’ with keen delight. It sounds awfully dull, but she has such a gentle turn of phrase that she makes everything sound so lovely, lively and achievable. Interspersed are quotes from a range of people who have written memoirs, as well as tips and advice.

Inspired by the following discussion of a quote

“Colette, in her autobiography, Earthly Paradise, wrote of returning to her childhood home out of a ‘desire to observe the exact relation of memory to sites which shaped it.’ And she found many things still ‘fitted faithfully beneath the tracing which I always carry with me’. “

I came to the swift realization that I hadn’t made any real mention of my home for the last six months. So this week’s writing exercise has been writing about my beloved fluorescent green tent. I'll post up what I came up with.

Write on track

Fruit market, Barcelona, Spain

Fact: Exercise gives you energy! More pep in your step! How about writing exercises? Can they revitalise your writing? Are they worth the fruit of your labour?*

I've been teasing out a story about an ensemble of mismatched characters for the last three months. I first met Nathaniel in Koh Samui airport. He popped into my head as I sat slumped on the hard plastic chair at gate 11. He wouldn't speak. I ignored him as my stomach rattled and rolled, struggling to digest a greasy fast food meal. I eventually established that the slim slip of a lad was mute. Suddenly out of nowhere a boisterous old man rambles into the scene. I start to pay attention as the man talks about when he used to a food critic. I could he was lying. I wasn't sure why. But I knew for sure he never ate tomatoes that looked like the blush of the lips of a woman in love. As the plane taxied down the runway, I had met Nathaniel's mother and a piano teacher.

This story hasn't been on the front burner at all. In fact i haven't even been consciously thinking about it. But every time I actually jot something down I find whole scenes drifting out of my fingertips. Each character has taken upon their own voice - or lack of voice as in the case of Nathaniel. But still I haven't made any great shapes in developing the story. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure how the characters knew one another, yet it felt right that they should.

The other day I read about a writing exercise in the Writers Digest magazine. It was the first of five steps in developing the themes of your story. This writing exercises aims to make sure any themes you wish to explore are intrinsic to the story - rather then forced or lumped on top as an afterthought. To paraphrase the exercise:

Randomly pick a scene from your story and ask yourself why each character is present. Make a list identifying what are their motivations and intentions. The character's ideals, morales and values are the drivers their behavior and actions. Essentially it will add authencity to both the character and plot.

I found this exercise gave me structure to start my writing session and added extra dimensions to an otherwise flimsy set of ideas. I now understand why the characters interact with each other in the way they do. Besides forcing me to think about themes (something I rarely do!) it also enabled me to kick start on a wonderful tangent of thoughts and ideas.

I have countless books about writing yet never actually do any of the exercises! So once a week I'm going to select a writing exercise and complete it. I'll post up the writing exercise once a week so you can join in! I'll be applying these exercises to both the fiction and nonfiction projects I'm working on.

*I apologise for the bad photo related pun