Monday 27 July 2015

A new, actual, real life journey. Like in a car.



Proof that Alice and I survived our road trip from Perth to Melbourne - 3,641 kms in 3 days

Hey readers! (That makes me feel like I have just demoted you all – let’s start again).

Hey friends! How are we all? Have we been well? It’s great starting a blog with a few rhetorical questions isn’t it? I feel it’s polite before I bang on about what has been happening with the novel and my life in general, just to check in on how you all are. All 3 of you. I jest, there’s at least 300 of you but let’s not brag about my dizzying heights of blogging success.


When we last spoke I teased you with many things, the first being that I have rewritten the ending of my book. Oh my gosh, this has me on the edge of my seat… Was this a good decision? Who knows but let’s roll with it. And it’s too late now, I’m not rewriting it again!


I also teased you all that a big thing that was about to be happening, so let me tell you more about that. Are you ready? By the time this is published… are you sitting down?  I will be in… wait for it… my new hometown of … where could it be?... Melbourne!!  I am moving to Melbourne for work! By the time you read this I will have also just driven 36 hours across Australia to get there, making this journey with my housewife Alice (don’t worry, she is totally comfortable with her sexuality and Dean, her boyfriend, is totally cool with me calling her this). Hopefully by the time this blog is published we are:


(1)    Not potential characters for the new Wolf Creek movie

(2)   
Not the headline on Australian papers… “Yet another pair of stupid poms get stranded in the outback and costs us millions to rescue”

(3)   
Still speaking to each other.

By then, I will be pretending to be a totally (sorry, totes) hip and happening member of Melbourne society. I will be frequenting the cool local ‘secret code-word’ bars and eating enough delish food to counter any crossfit (stop rolling your eyes I can see you) activity. That’s the dream. In reality, I will probably be sitting alone in my new room wishing I still had friends.  But for now, let’s pretend that my hundreds of new Melbourne friends will be loving me and that we will all be laughing and rolling our heads back at how great life is.


In a rather lovely, yet loose, link back to my superb friends and the actual novel itself... I had a chat with Lindsey the other day - you remember Linds, she is the very cool lady editing my blogs and book. We had an update on the edit and it went a little something like this:


Linds: “Ere Crinal! [That’s Bristolian for ‘hey Corina’. She’s not from Bristol, it’s just her impression of me]. You know that novel of yours that’s like five bajillion words long?”

Corina: “Ere Linds! [A Bristolian response to ‘hey Corina’ with ‘hey Lindsey’]. Is this a rhetorical question?”

Linds: “Affirmative.” (Lindsey speaks as though she is a walking thesaurus. For the purposes of all of us, I’ll translate from here. ) “Well, here’s the thing. I promise promise promise I have made a start on the edit, but then I purchased a puppy who is mental, and work has been incredibly busy so I have been working 23 hours a day, 7 days per week, trying to maintain a social life and a relationship, travel to the Philippines and Melbourne, have my brother to stay, train a beagle, keep in touch with family in England, use my yoga Scoopon, paint the bathroom, be the perfect housewife and exercise so as not to get fat. Is there any chance we can possibly maybe perhaps change the deadline to the end of September? Please? Not rhetorical.”

Corina: “Certainly Lindsey. I suppose the fact I am paying you with wine hasn’t helped either?”

Lindsey: *Unable to respond as snoring on floor drunk.*


Anyway, that is where we are with the book. We have a revised deadline of the end of September for the edit. Then I will be smashing through the comments – while still maintaining the level of pure creative genius that you’ve come to expect of me – to achieve my own deadline of getting said book to the publishers before 2015 is out. Woah! There so much to do and so little time. Meanwhile, I will be continuing with my monthly blog to keep you updated on the progress of this modern piece of classic literature.


Let me continue briefly with last month’s theme of self-gratification:  This month has been exceptionally crazy with work, relocating, exercising (see I don’t say crossfit all the time), the heartache of leaving my friends in Perth aaaaaand to top it all off I turned a whole other year older. While that’s all been going on, I’ve been writing this and organising getting the edit done (aka waking Lindsey up from her wine-fuelled stupor and bribing her with more). I don’t think that is too bad for a month’s work.  Of course I am also prone to exaggeration, so take that as you will.


Before I sign off I feel I should share something poignant with you all as I have been quite deep and meaningful recently… I guess my main lesson of 2015 has been the quote below. I know, I know you’ll all be thinking, ‘how has it taken you 36 years, 7 days, 7 hours and 11 minutes to figure this out?’  Well it has.  It’s simple but it’s the best piece of advice I can give to anyone:


“We are not what we think, or what we feel, or what we say, we are what we do”
– Dr. Gordon Livingston

Written by Corina Hawkins, soon to be author of ‘Tattoos of memories’ and creatively bossed by Lindsey Barnett, who is a (overworked) legend.