15/11/2009
If You Were 13, Would You Love Edward Cullen, Too?
Hello, Dieter Brummer/Leonardo DiCaprio/Taylor Hanson/random boys on the bus.
Quote posted at 09:36
13/11/2009
» Rachel's really exciting, super fun blog survey

Image: Eric__I_E
So, I haven’t been posting much lately. There are a number of reasons for this - thesis stress, home stress, freelancing commitments, perfectionism, the sense that even though I’ve often prioritised blogging over the aforementioned, I really probably shouldn’t - but I’ll own up to what is: Bad Blogging Practice.
If I’m honest, boredom and fatigue have also played a big role in my absence. When I first started this blog, two years ago, it was a tentative toe in the waters of blogging as “myself” (whatever that means), under my real name.
In that time, I’ve connected with some amazing people around Australia and the world, and learned a lot about what works for me and what doesn’t. In the latter category: lifecasting or reblogging other people’s stuff without adding original comment (however effective that is elsewhere Tumblr); in the former, original writing and a kind of philosophical analysis, if hits, ‘likes’ and reblogs are any indication (prove me wrong by filling out my survey). You guys also seem to like advice and other meditations related to the writing process.
The trouble is that I’ve learned so much from this process that now, when I look at this blog, all I see is what’s wrong with it. Making the focus Me and My Writing, for one. Who would choose to subscribe to this blog when they could read one that’s about a clear topic, I ask myself? Not putting as much effort into these posts as I do into my paid work when - as I say all the time lately - the internet is “the ultimate free market”, and theoretically, that means we choose to read the best content available. Then again, perfectionism has been a major block to my writing here lately - my dashboard is full of drafts.
So, for a few weeks now I’ve seriously considered throwing this blog in, in favour of something newer, shinier and more exciting - something that capitalises on everythng I’ve learned over the past two years. And I will be launching a site focusing on my thesis research (or, more sensationally, talking about sex) in the next couple of weeks, followed hopefully not long after by a revamped portfolio website.
But in thinking and talking about this with other people, I realised something: whatever its weaknesses, people like this blog. It may not be perfect, but it has an audience - and an audience I’m rather fond of.
What direction it should go in is a question I’m yet to answer. My sense is that treating it as a kind of supplement to my other work is the way to go - reflections, inspirations and discussions around articles I’m working on and the like. The kinds of posts that are in my ‘best of’ section. I’m also considering a full revamp of the layout and possibly even the title.
But as I make those moves, I’m keen to know what you think. I’ve created a survey (yep, I’m linking to it again) asking what you like about this blog, what you’d like to see more of and what you’d like to see changed. I’ve tried to make it as quick and painless as possible - it won’t take more than ten minutes, and if you’re really speedy, I reckon you could knock it over in 90 seconds. I’d really appreciate it if you filled it out. You can also leave a comment below, if you’d prefer, or drop me an email.
Thanks in advance,
Rachel
Link posted at 09:02
27/10/2009
“See you at the 10-year reunion”
That’s what one of my high school friends (Gretchen Wieners) wrote in another’s (Karen Smith) year 12 yearbook, I found out a couple of years ago. Now said reunion is coming up in less than a month, and I doubt either of them will turn up.
Back in high school, I always thought the 10-year reunion would be a rather Romy & Michelle-type affair, to which my best friend (Regina George) and I would show up in brightly-coloured, self-made outfits, dance to ‘Time After Time’ and finally (if begrudgingly) be recognised for our true quirky brilliance. If it wasn’t already obvious, I’m now more inclined to view my high school years as something on par with Mean Girls - and yes, that makes me Cady Herron (ultimately good intentioned, but not good intentioned enough not to do some not-so-nice things).
I didn’t go to my five-year reunion, for similar reasons it seems a lot of people won’t be going to the 10-year one (minus Facebook, which didn’t exist back then). All the people I wanted to keep in touch with, I still spoke to. Who I was at 12, or 14 - or 17 for that matter - was irrelevant to my 22-year-old self, and trying to communicate with people who only ever knew me in the vaguest of terms seemed both impossible and pointless.
As I wrote at the end of 2006:
I only ever hated high school in retrospect.
Sure, there were things I didn’t like about it while I was there – bitchy girls, insufferable teachers, the feeling of powerlessness about one’s own destiny – but for the most part, I think I thought it was quite okay. And I’m sure that if dug out my diaries from when I was 17, I’d find a sad, nostalgic throwaway line about how, now that’d I’d left high school, I’d never have fun again.
It was only after I left that I began to grow cynical about the curriculum geared more towards regurgitation than critical thinking, the idea that you had to walk from room to room whenever a bell rang and ask for permission to go to the toilet, and the idea of a dress code.
But I think the reason I dislike high school so much in retrospect is because everything that came after it was so much better. It was like being kept in prison for 6 years, not knowing anything else, and then finally being set free and realising what a crap situation you’d been putting up with for so long.
All of which, if a tad melodramatic, is still true enough. And I totally “get” why some people don’t want to go.
But for me, the point of the reunion is not to play “fake nice” with people you have no intention of seeing for another 10 years, or to finally prove to people how awesome you are. The beauty of the 10-year reunion - and what makes it so different from the five-year one - is that enough time has passed and enough distance has been created that you can actually get to know your classmates as the individuals they actually are, rather than the blunt stereotypes you imagined each other to be.
As I wrote at the beginning of 2005:
there is this particular awkwardness between people who went to high school together, but who were never friends. There is this merge of distance and proximity – you know the person and you should say ‘hi’, but on the other hand you shouldn’t, because the only way in which you really ‘know each other’ is as a couple of ficticious “characters” which have nothing to do with who either of you actually are or ever were.
And of those people I wasn’t friends with in high school whose paths I’ve crossed with since, the surprise hasn’t been - as people always talk about - the schadenfreude of what losers they grew up to be, but of how interesting - and in most cases lovely - they turned out to be.
So while I have little desire to reminisce about days that didn’t hold a candle to the ten years that followed, I’m kind of looking forward to reconnecting. Or more accurately, connecting for the first time.
Video posted at 10:00
22/09/2009
On why it pays to have an audience
Ten years ago, I completed my first fiction book: off my own bat, with no expectations of it ever being published, just for the fun of it. The secret? I handed over a new chapter to my friends every Monday morning.
I mention this because I was just procrastinating over at Three Guys One Book (found via Lisa Dempster’s post today on book reviews), where Jonathan Evison advises:
My advice to the overwhelming majority first time novelists: first, finish the fucker, even if you sense it’s not working on any number of levels— you’ve got to get into the habit of seeing things through, or you run the risk of being a serial starter, or worse one of those people that has “a novel in them” who spends more time talking about it, than laying bricks.
“Oh god,” I thought to myself, cringing inwardly, “I’m going to be a serial starter.” It’s not out of the question: I am, after all, an ENFP.
And then I remembered that dramatic, emotionally tone deaf “saga” I wrote over the course of 1998. I had finished something! (Well, now that I think of it, I’ve finished lots of things, actually - my degree, Interface, countless articles - but this was something long and involved that required prolonged commitment and sitting by myself.) It wasn’t particularly good - were I ever to submit it to a publisher, it would require major rewrites (let’s just say teenage me didn’t have the most accurate grip on the nuances of human trauma), but it was finished. And I suspect the reason I finished it was because I had a handful of friends (and later, online readers) hanging out for fresh meat each week.
The truth is, while I’m driven to write in a general sense, I’m most driven to write when I know there’ll be someone reading - even better when that audience is a group of people who respond, and whom I can respond to in turn. It’s why I put - well, I would say “so much time”, but compared to people who post 20 times a day, it’s nothing, so I’ll just say “time” - time into this blog, which would probably be more practically spent working on my thesis, or book, or freelance stories. That, and as I’ve written before, I think it’s an essential part of the vocation of a contemporary non-fiction writer.
But it occurs to me that perhaps this energy can be chanelled for good, rather than just procrastination. I’ve been planning on launching a website for my major research project (which feeds into said thesis and book) for a while now - domain name and launch posts all ready to go - but have been holding off until a certain article I’ve been working on goes to market.
Maybe, if I want to hurry this book along more, I should just throw caution to the wind and blog it, much like I use to hand out those new chapters to my friends every Monday morning.
Text posted at 14:05
15/09/2009
It’s the ambiguity, stupid
We’ll fast forward to a few years later
No one knows except the both of us
And I have honoured your request for silence
And you’ve washed your hands clean of me
- Hands Clean, Alanis Morissette
Back when I was 19 or so, I wrote an embarrassingly naive article for the university newspaper wondering why - despite the fact that we were obstensibly adults - the simple act of having a crush on someone remained the subject of such secrecy and intrigue.
The better part of a decade later not much has changed, I realised when the aforementioned Alanis Morissette song began to play on my recent Great Central Australian Road Trip with my beau. Not between said beau and I, of course - that relationship is thoroughly in the open. But in almost every other crush, flirtation or momentary mutual infatuation I’ve entertained in the interceding years? Ambiguity has reigned supreme.
I look at it differently now than I did when I was 19, though. Back then, the silence and secrecy seemed to arise from a sort of immaturity and shame - the idea that admitting that you might actually be attracted to someone rendered you vulnerable and open to rejection. Now it just seems that sometimes, some things just don’t need to be said.
There is no need to ever acknowledge that once upon a time I liked you or you liked me. That she discreetly pretended not to notice the night he tried to kiss her, that he meant something more than ‘thank you’ by that bunch of flowers, or that perhaps she went a little overboard with the SMSes. Perpetual ambiguity allows everything to continue as it did before.
And as a strategy, it makes sense - what does Australian courtship mean, after all, if not always being able to say, “What do you mean, I was hitting on you? I was just being friendly!” Why not continue with the plausible deniability after the flirtation has passed?
Video posted at 10:00
28/08/2009
I’m heading out here (and surrounds) for a few days. Will be back on the 8th.
Photo posted at 09:00