Sewing
Last week a journalist came round to interview me about my forthcoming novel and he was very relieved to hear that I wasn’t sewing anymore. He seemed to think, based on my old neglected Poppyshock blog, that I was sickeningly productive. I tried to explain that it was all smoke and mirrors, and that I didn’t do very much, but what I did do I photographed in its best light. I also tried to explain how, when I had small children, I had to make things because I couldn’t stand for days to slip past with nothing to show for themselves apart from a few new stains on my once-fancy clothes. I told him about my mother, who is always making things and improving things. I told him that now I don’t do anything apart from write and draw comics. I don’t really miss the making of things – maybe I will, when I get more time. Maybe I’ll even take up sewing again, once I get that room of my own.
Reading other people reading
Jonathan’s actually finished reading The Fall of Light now. He said he really liked it. I hope he’s not just saying that for the sake of marital harmony.
Oh, and Lydia Davis is a revelation. I’d never heard of her until a friend lent me her collected stories a few months ago, and then she went on to win the Man Booker prize. I was just listening to Breaking it Down on the Guardian Fiction podcast – her tone is wonderful. The story is bursting with sensuality and regret and misunderstandings and longing. Some of the stories are incredibly short but they contain so much.
Telling details
‘Telling details’ is a stock piece of advice I give at creative writing classes, along with ‘show, don’t tell.’ But it is amazing when students move from writing about generalities and amorphisms to particular details – green bicycles and yellow shirts, late season apples and the like. Suddenly the writing is vivid and specific, so much more their own story. I think other reasons I was so insistent that the fridge repair man could tell stuff about me by the contents of my fridge was firstly because it was embarrassingly grubby, and secondly because I read too much Agatha Christie as a teenager.
Oh, and here’s that Jarvis Cocker song I was talking about. He doesn’t say ‘deeply superficial’ – instead he says ‘I am profoundly shallow.’ I can’t remember song lyrics for the life of me. All my lyric remembering was used up in my youthful Smiths devotion. In another song on the same album he says ‘don’t write a novel, a shopping list is better.’ I wonder if his advice should be taken.
The twelve dancing biros
I had a bit of down time at the end of this week, so I decided to get ahead on the comics. I was going to save this until Monday to post, but I have no self-control. It’s hard enough that I have to wait until July for my novel to be published. You’ll have to remember this time later, when weeks go by without me posting any new material!
Oh, and I’ve been having fun watching these clips on the NZ Herald site, adapted from a Coco Solid cartoon. I particularly liked this one about Kowhai and Monty playing at an art gallery and their white girl fans.
The Fall of Light has landed!
This morning I opened my door and there was a bubble-wrapped package on the doorstep. It took a while to hack it open, and this is what I pulled out – an advance copy of my novel. I have a weird sensation when I see my books, because I play a large role in what they look like. My excitement is counterbalanced with cringe – was that the kind of cover I should’ve designed? Did I choose the right typeface? What would my old creative directors say – that it was sloppy, that I should’ve finessed it more? What about the paper – so white, so uncharacteristic in fiction, where the usual stock is cream and bulky? Were those the right decisions? Oh God, it’s too late now.
I never read my books after they are published, beyond skimming them for sections to read at events. I had my chance at the end of last year, and over again this year, where I had the sense I could go on changing things forever. This is it, it’s never going to be perfect, but I hope I made it as good as it could be. Of course, how I imagine someone might read my novel is never how they are actually going to read it. They will bring their own baggage, their own memories, their own quirks, experiences and obsessions. As much as I want people to pick up on the fairy tale references and the pokes at contemporary art, they might not notice them, instead concentrating on the family dynamics in the book. After four years of being able to control my little fictional world, I now have to relinquish that control. The story is no longer just mine. And I don’t really want it to be mine, because I love it when I can make another writer’s world my own, and when a reader tells me that I was writing about them.
Anyway, here are a few little shots of the graphic novella section in the book:
And here are the flaps, which are very exciting to have, as my last two books were trade paperbacks and this is a C format (if I have my publishing terms correct).
Anyway, it’s not published yet – it won’t be out until July. In the meantime I shall fret that everyone will hate it and have wild fantasies that everyone will love it. I hope that some of you will fall into the latter category!
Behind the scenes at the museum
Something exciting happened last week – I got ‘freshly pressed’ by WordPress – my ‘Night Walking’ comic was selected as a featured post on the WordPress home page. Which means I got a whole pile of international visitors – welcome!! So I probably need to explain what Te Papa is (New Zealand’s National museum) and what the word ‘taonga’ means (treasures).
Oh, and the title of this entry is inspired by Kate Atkinson’s first book, which I gobbled up years ago when it first came out and which I suspect might be the inspiration for the museum cameo in my novel. But I can’t remember enough of the book to be sure. That’s the problem with being a prolific reader – sure it’s good for your writing, but there’s also the danger that you’ll regurgitate all the excellent writing that you’ve read. Hopefully, in my case, in an unrecognizable form.
Night walking
I’m procrastinating – I’m meant to be doing a comic for a magazine (not Metro this time!) and I felt like I should warm myself up by doing some extra messy drawing. I’ve run out of good paper so I’m just using copier paper and the Lynda Barry technique of putting a piece of cloth underneath to soak up the extra water from the paint. Of course I couldn’t find a nice piece of toweling so I grabbed an old nappy from the rag bin. Nappies! Thank god I don’t have to change them any more.
For those of you who want to buy my comics, you still can! Only $6 each! Just email me, sarah@poppyshock.com. And now I’m going to go and procrastinate some more, by making scrambled eggs and taking my latest bundle of comics orders to the post office. I will do my actually-will-get-paid-for comic soon – I can see it spooling out in my mind’s eye.
Popeye and olive oil
This is my Metro comic from April — you can click on this to make it bigger! I keep on seeing the man when I go to the Pt Chev shops and I wonder if I should tell him that I immortalised him in the comic. He would probably look confused because we didn’t really drink beer together, and nor did Madeline and her class mates turn up to slide in the spilt olive oil. I’m posting this because the latest Metro magazine is out if you care to buy it.
Thank you so much to the people who ordered my comics! Please let me know if there are any of you who want some as I’m getting more sent over from Australia. They are only $6 each! (plus postage). They would make great…er….gifts!
And in more random news, last night I read Luke Pearson’s Hilda and the Midnight Giant and it was so great. The colours and line work are exquisite, reminiscent of Tove Jansson, and the story is effortlessly magical, working within its own logic without any clunky explanation. I wish I could draw and colour like that!
Faux (fur) pas
You may recognise this comic from the Nga Pakiwaituhi NZ comic exhibition a few months back. If you visit the link, you can hear a podcast of me on a comics panel with Sam Orchard, Dylan Horrocks and Adrian Kinnaird and see another comic in which I reveal embarrassing secrets. My friend Drew thinks that this comic, which is A2 in size, belongs to him, because it has him in it. Which is a troubling precedent – does that mean that I can only draw comics about myself in order to assert ownership?
Anyway, that was the 90s, which was when I was in my twenties. Now I’m in the twilight hours of my thirties. I can sense a mid-life crisis comic coming on….
Oh, and if you were following the possum story, pop over and check out the comments – I’ve had some people sharing their own possum stories. I love getting comments!
I got the comics!
Yesterday, I spent a full-on day flogging comics at Chromacon. I didn’t even stay till the bitter end — I left at 3 so that Jonathan could go to his band practice. It was great to meet Matt from Pikitia Press, who printed these for me, and James Davidson, who was selling copies of Moa, and also to say hi to all the people who stopped by. Now I am completely wiped out and would like to spend the day pottering around, hanging up all my clothes and sorting out my piles of paper, if it weren’t for my crushing load of deadlines.
Anyway, Matt gave me a pile of these 32-page comics so if anyone wants to buy a copy (only $6 ea! And $2 postage within NZ!) please email me: sarah@poppyshock.com. I’m going to sort out a shop soon… soon…. it’s on my to-do list!
LET ME BE FRANK 