I graduated and I wrote a manuscript

and absolutely nothing in my life is changing

Welcome to my head - a round up of what I have been thinking about, reading and eating.

Thinking

Last week my graduation certificate arrived in the mail. I have officially completed my Masters in Creative Writing. I opted not to go to the ceremony for fear of sitting still doing nothing for too long. Also  overwhelming shyness about standing in front of a hall full of people.

The receipt of this certificate coincided almost exactly with the feeling that I never want to publish a book. Not that the two are related of course, you can write a book without studying for a Masters and you can study a Masters and not write a book. But it seems I went down the path of both writing a manuscript  and completing my Masters. The manuscript was harder. It took years of drafts and then I worked through it with an editor and she helped me improve it by about 890% by completely restructuring it and basically getting me to rewrite it.

But then came the part that everyone warned me about - the getting published bit. I sent my story off to various agents and publishers and got back some lovely feedback that in essence said - this is great but the story won’t sell right now.

I was briefly quite sad. I am not good with rejection (is anyone?). So I started to try and learn more about the publication process, what is required, how do you get there and what do you need to sell a book. And I have concluded that, not only do I not have any of these things but I don’t want to have any of them. 

I cannot sell myself, nor do I want to. I never want to do a podcast or an interview or speak to strangers. I don’t want to see my name in lights or on a bookshelf.  I want to write - I do not want to publish.

The common wisdom is to to savour the journey as much as the destination and I loved writing that manuscript/book but for the time being I have decided not to reach the destination.  Still proud that I wrote it and I still have it tucked up in its little folder if I ever change my mind or have a complete personality change.

Reading

I  had seen so much about this book on social media but I have only glossed over it - reading plot points about four young girls disappearing on a school excursion and a teacher going to find them. The reviews I skimmed told me that the girls eventually came out of the bush - but the teacher never did.

And while this is the essence of the story, this book is about so much more. It is written from the perspective of the headmistress, and told in present tense which I found a bit disarming at first but then couldn’t put down. Nikki Gemmel writes in such a distinctive way that is at once angry and passionate, you can almost see the emotion, feel the fury of her words on the page. Her short, sharp sentences are filled with  the frustration that women are still forced to behave in a way, that the patriarchy determines so much of our lives and the helplessness we feel as our ‘hormones rage against the dying of womanly might.’

At heart Wing is a manifesto sprinkled with facts about feminism and the reality of trying to overturn the patriarchy. It is about the private school system, the privileged and the entitled. It is about friendships and relationships and it is about being a woman and going through menopause. It is a thriller, a mystery and a crime drama and quite frankly I am awed that someone managed to get all this into one book and make it so compelling at the same time.

I feel like I have been educated, fired up and heard - all in the course of 300 pages.

Eating

Want a way to make broccoli less healthy? Let me introduce you to this delicious salad.

Ingredients

2 heads of broccoli chopped into small pieces

1/2 cup raisins

1 pkt Changs fried noodles

1 cup cashews

Dressing

1 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup sugar

3 tbsps red wine vinegar.

There are so many textures and flavours that every bite is a sensation. In fact my son said it would be perfect food for eating at the movies - instead of popcorn. So really that’s a vote for how unhealthy I managed to make broccoli.

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Thanks for reading to the end and please thank me for not making the first part of this post THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS, because in truth that’s all I’m thinking about most of the time and my brain is a hellfire.

See you next week

Lana