Another list on which one's name does not appear ... good luck to those that do

Dear entrants,

Thanks for your patience during the judging process for the 2011 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize. We are pleased to announce this year’s longlist:

Sally Bothroyd, ‘A Cocoa Jackson Mystery’ (NT)
Courtney Collins, ‘The Burial’ (NSW)
Richard Gosling, ‘Bear’ (NSW)
John Hughes, ‘The Remnants’ (NSW)
Lesley Jørgensen, ‘Cat and Fiddle’ (SA)
Jack Ramsay, ‘Brogan’s Crossing’ (Qld)
Dorothy Simmons, ‘Living Like a Kelly’ (Vic.)

These manuscripts will now be read by this year’s judges: Blanche Clark, Books Editor at the Herald Sun; Mark Rubbo, CEO of Readings bookstores; and Aviva Tuffield, Fiction Acquisitions Editor at Scribe. We plan to announce a shortlist in the new year, and the winner in February.

The depth of this year’s entries was very impressive, and we would like to thank you again for letting us consider your work. We wish you all the very best with your writing.

Kind regards,

Ian See
Editor
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Lake George

photo from wiki

Heading away from Canberra this morning, we drove north through the southern highlands.  On a warm (hot even) sunny day like today, some weeks after the ten-year drought has broken in spectacularly wet fashion, the trip was a joy.  Everything that was previously brown and sparse is green (in a riot of shades) and lush.  Lake George had water in its south-eastern corner, which is the first time in twenty-two years I’ve seen that.  

Most of the ‘lake’, however, was covered by a thick, luscious carpet of long grass.  Small herds of cattle gathered at water holes just inside the fence that runs along route 23.  Dotted around the centre of the vast area that can be (and has been) a giant expanse of water there were small flocks of sheep, huddled together as the moved like one organism across the fertile plain, nibbling their way from east to west or north to south.  From the summit of the pass that carries the road between Canberra and Goulburn then Sydney, the far-distant, oatmeal-coloured animals made me think of maggots.

As I drove along I took a notion to keep going, to keep driving around the country (with Spike, one hopes, as a willing companion); seeing more of its variety and diversity, meeting people who live in and belong to communities still connected to the immensity of Australia, taking time to find out more about this place I came to live in eleven years ago after 42 years in my Scottish home.

Is it the country and its people that draws me to the idea of keeping going, my boyish desire to see what’s round the bend or complete disillusionment with the job I’ve now been doing for six years?  Maybe it’s a bit of all the above (and more).  Mostly, though, I need / want it to be the first of those.  I do not want to lose my sense of wonder and excitement at all the simple elements of a good life.  I hope never to become tired and cynical.  That way only leads to madness and despair.  Neither of those belongs to me.

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Singalong

One's public servant best ...

From the parliamentary report of the inquiry into services provided by or funded by Ageing, Disability and Home Care (published today)

There was widespread acknowledgement among Inquiry participants that increased
expenditure, particularly through Stronger Together, has improved the availability of services
for people with disability in recent years. For example, Mr Douglas Herd, Executive Officer,
Disability Council of NSW, observed that Stronger Together funding had made a significant
difference to people with disability:

It is true to say, without wishing to be seen to be using hyperbole, that the atmosphere
before the Stronger Together policy was put in place in the sector, as it likes to
describe itself – the relationship between people with disability and the department,
between people with disability and government, between non-government advocacy
organisations and government and sometimes with non-government service providers
– was hostile and difficult at times. My personal opinion that that was because gross
levels of unmet need meant that people with disability were not getting access to
services and that family members were doing enormously difficult jobs under huge
stresses to look after and care for both themselves and family members who ought to
have been receiving services. The $1.4 billion that we subsequently got [through
Stronger Together] …has made a very significant difference. There is no doubt about
that at all.

Not my most eloquent contribution to debate but one of several quotes in the report.  Job done.  More to do.  It's what I'm paid to do and I do it well enough.  I'd rather be writing stories.

Ditch the ego Dougie.  Just write.  (But don't give up the day job just yet!!)
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Spike's cool maze

It better be an HD or there'll be trouble!!

The Cockatoo

A solitary, screeching, sulphur-crested

Cockatoo clings precariously

to our fourth floor balcony’s balustrade

and it (the bird rather than the balcony)

adjusts itself, like us, to rattling trains 

beneath us, running east to west

across sub-tropical suburbia, alike

and yet so completely unalike

the ordinary streets of growing up

(Scottish) in the northern hemisphere

where any sight of any cockatoo 

of any sort - sulphur-crested or not -

would be frowned upon, dismissed

or feature in the local weekly rag

beneath the tagline “Would you believe it?’

Most would not because we’re decent,

common folk not given over-much

to fancy tales, improbable occurrences or

April Fool’s Day jokes by folks who ought

to know much better than to free

the town eccentric's pampered pet.

But here it’s just another sulphur-crested

Cockatoo, foraging and screeching

homewards as dusk settles on the day.

Neither of us stops to look.  You read a book;

I surf the Internet in search of something

and the sulphur-crested cockatoo takes flight.

(The bird arrived around six.  It sounded as if it was inside the apartment.  I thought there might be a poem somewhere in it.  Not sure there is but I’ve been writing for an hour or so in search of one.)

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Nadine Gordimer: look and learn

It ought to be as simple as this: one word leading to another, one word following the word before it.  But it’s not that simple and very far from easy.

Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

I read an article today that puts my angst, uncertainty and lack of progress into proper perspective.  The Guardian interviewed Nadine Gordimer here.  She’s 87 years old, has written (perhaps I mean has been published) for close to 60 years.  The New Yorker first published one of her short stories in 1951.  That’s six years before I was born.

Nadine Gordimer writes for four hours every morning.  Maybe there’s a lesson there Douglas.  It’s the same as always: ditch the ego; just write.  Make sure you do it every day

I know this, of course.  I’ve known it since I can’t remember when.  But I lack the discipline required.  I’ve never acquired it.  I’m too lazy to dig myself out the hole into which I plunged a very long time ago.

So here’s another beginning, another re-commitment.  Don’t I get tired of them?  Well yes, of course I do.  So what is it makes me keep coming back I wonder?  I may be delusional.  Vanity certainly has a part to play.  And an ego the size of Belgium; there’s always that.

But I do keep coming back.  
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