Our responsibilities

Second draft.






Roman Polanski is a brilliant film director who also happens (in 1977) to have raped a 13 year old girl. I need not go much more into that as all the sordid details have been available for decades and in the news recently. Polanski was on his way to the Zurich Film Festival in 2009 to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award and was arrested. His friends and many of his colleagues were outraged. As they saw it, Polanski has been a model citizen and a productive one, since that one lapse. It seemed only reasonable to them that someone who had such an illustrious career should be excused.

It does sound reasonable put that way until you consider that the type of rape that took place was not done (inexcusable as it would have been) in the heat of the moment but was coldly calculated. Polanski gave this girl alcohol and a relaxant type of drug to make her compliant.

Polanski has charmed his colleagues and friends and even his film going audience, but the fact remains that there’s a darker side to Polanski. And that’s the one who has to pay for the crime, no matter how rehabilitated he seems or how brilliant his directing work. He doesn’t want to do it. Polanski allows his friends and colleagues and even his wife to justify him. Emmanuelle Seigner, Polanski’s wife, blames his actions on the ‘crazy age of sexual permissiveness’. I would have thought that even in the ‘70’s sexual permissiveness related to two consensual adults, not between a grown up and an unwilling child.

Polanski stole a young girl’s innocence and wrecked any trust that she would have had for adults. I can’t help thinking of that as I watch my young granddaughters move slowly away from their childhood. In a handful of years we’re going to have less control over their ever expanding world. Stranger danger is easy when they are five or six, how do you go about preparing children on the threshold of puberty. When I started going out to teenage parties my mother told me not to drink anything that I hadn’t poured for myself, as my drinks might be spiked. I thought that was hilarious at the time.

Last year there was an uproar about a photographer who made a living by taking photographs of young girls in sensual poses (with the permission of the girls' parents.) The community in general thought it was despicable but his artistic friends hotly defended him.

Times change as do fads and fashions, but what sort of society is it that finds preying on young innocents acceptable?

We have a responsibility to our vulnerable children to keep them safe from predators who come in all sorts of shapes and sometimes pleasing guises. If we can't push past the seemingly plausible rhetoric and recognise these people for what they are, what hope have our children got? It’s up to us to make sure our children are left to develop at their own pace and be allowed to keep their innocence as long as they need it. Rape is never acceptable in however it is disguised or presented, neither is artistic licence when it has to do with young innocents.

Model Parents

Draft five. Expect many more. The lead in is much too long and the piece is too repetitive. I’ll be giving it a rest for a couple of days and let my subconscious work on it for a bit.


Whenever the subject of role models comes up, it has been a major irritant to me that the same people come up with the same complaints about airbrushed photos and beautiful models making it hard for young girls to aspire or live up to. I agree, unrealistic images and natural beauties make it impossible for the rest of us. We shouldn’t objectify these people we're told, I agree with that too. But I believe that neither should they have the responsibility thrust on them for how we feel about ourselves.

We chastise erring footballers for not living up to the image that young boys have of them; the same goes for swimmers, songwriters and actors. We can't even judge what we think of a song until we've seen the accompanying music clip of beautiful people prancing around singing indecipherable lyrics. Forget that most of us can’t sing or dance or prance worth a damn, we want to be just like them. And if these high profile types let us down, excepting politicians, they get a serve from the rest of us, (We know immediately what to expect from politicians so can’t be disappointed.)

The reason for my diatribe is Jennifer Hawkins. Hawkins is a lingerie model who recently posed nude for an Australian magazine, Marie Claire. The resultant furore wasn’t about the model disrobing. It had to do with the magazine’s claim that the beautiful and flawless (and un-airbrushed) Hawkins represented the rest of the less than perfect female population and was a desirable role model for young girls.

Had Marie Claire offered someone like the older and more shop worn Elle McPherson as an ideal to aspire to, the magazine might have got away with it. Elle is 46 years old and a mother of two children. Nature has been kinder to ‘The Body’ as she is known, than to the rest of us in the same situation. But the occasional picture that slips past the editor’s desk proves that life and gravity have also paid McPherson a visit. Having said that, even an un-airbrushed and tired looking McPherson is somebody we couldn’t possibly aspire to be like. How can we be? Her parents aren't ours. And let’s face it she is a stranger to us all. Where do we get off expecting her flaws to give us comfort about our own?

If we can learn anything at all from Elle, Jennifer and others like them, it’s that they do their best with what nature gave them; they work hard to maintain their health and their figures. If they were musicians, they would be practicing several hours each day to perfect their skills. I’m sure that models or former models do no different when it comes to tuning up their bodies. They work at being the best they can be and we can learn something from that. But I don’t think on the whole that society today is interested in that; society wants a quick fix; society wants somebody else to make sure it doesn't feel bad about itself.

Mention 1940’s actress Veronica Lake to older people and they will tell you she was famous for having a wave of hair covering her left eye. Thousands of women paid to have their hair styled and dyed exactly the same way. Great for hairdressers but the followers looked ridiculous. So did Veronica, but she was beautiful and could pull it off. As the saying goes, ‘imitation is the greatest form of flattery’. That's okay, but making high profile outsiders responsible for how we feel about ourselves places a heavy burden on them.

Doesn’t the role model status belong to parents? Some of us only have to look at our parents to know that the local Orthodontist can expect a visit from us when we hit our teens. It’s in the genes, stupid. If we have a sense of humour it’s because our parents do, or their parents did; if we have a sense of self and integrity we can thank our parents for raising us to believe in ourselves and to respect others.

My parents are dark haired and of average size. Being a pragmatic kind of child, like my dad, I knew almost straight away I was never going to be tall and blonde (hair dye and high heels don't count). They wear prescription glasses; I wear prescription glasses. My dad has a facility for languages, sings well and is a great dancer; something to aspire to even if I have two left feet and only speak one language. Both have a way of telling a tale that I think I have inherited, so when I check out my ugly, aging mug, I comfort myself that even though beauty has faded, I still have the gift of words that they gave me.

My parents have always loved me unconditionally and uncritically choosing to focus on my best features rather than point out what was wrong with me. I grew up on a diet of fan magazines featuring beautiful actors. I’d look forward to getting a new one each week and ogling them and reading about their fictional lives. I enjoyed myself immensely but thanks to the way my parents raised me, I never let it diminish me, and never felt the need to compete. Great role models, my parents.

Multi-tasking Mammas

My son and daughter in law recently celebrated the arrival of their first born child. Eden’s parents were rank beginners ten months ago but are catching on pretty quickly because Eden who is my third grandchild, is a happy baby, thriving on his solids and passing all his milestones, so I’m told.

I couldn't help comparing the different parenting styles of the two mums who are raising my three grandchildren. One copes with the parenting chaos by sticking strictly to routines, the other is laid back about sleep times and feeding schedules. My parenting style was a mix of both depending on the occasion and the day. I suspect that our goals are the same; we want our children to be more successful than their parents. I thought of all the mums I've known and realised that the more things change the more they stay the same. We all have a bit of the psychologist in us, a well developed bull dust detector and the skills necessary to kiss 'boo-boos' better. As that song goes, 'we are one but we are many.'

There’s Story Telling Mum (STM). She likes nothing better than to read the same story several times a day for weeks on end. She will often stop at every other word to answer multiple questions directly or indirectly relating to the story. STM rereads the favoured tale of the moment with enthusiasm, keeping to the tone and to the spirit of the story, making sure not to deviate by even one word from the original text. STM’s children have their own library cards and book bags, and although she hates dusting with a passion, she and they also make a regular pilgrimage to the local bookshop to add more dust collectors to their ever increasing stash.

When not reading tall tales and true to her brood, STM, mutates into GPM, a Game Playing Mum who drops whatever she is doing to make herself available for I Spy or Monopoly. She always knows the rules of the game, but rarely manages to win one. She has discovered that game playing promotes the sort of conversation that direct questioning never does, so that ‘I Spy a car just like Mikey’s’, reveals that Mikey had hit GPMs child over the head with his toy car. His lower lip trembles with the injustice of it all; after the ensuing tussle he had been made to sit in the time-out corner.

GPM sheds her mild mannered persona to become Fix It Mum. FIM wants to dash straight down to the school or kinder to sort things out with the teacher but is having a tussle with Adviser Mum who believes it’s important to formulate strategies for her children so that they can learn to deal with their own issues. Generally and after embarrassing her children with their peers a couple of times, it’s the latter mum who wins out.

There is a time in every mother’s life when things get a bit confused and she wears the wrong mothering hat (Monster Mum) and makes a wrong call (Raging Bull Mum). Or possibly it’s because she made them eat their greens that her children declare that they hate her and are running away from home. When this happens, it’s the job of Suitcase Packing Mamma to facilitate a smooth escape with a minimum of fuss; she helps with the packing and drives her children to see GMM (grandmother mum). SPM also makes herself available for the return trips at no extra charge.

Listener Mum takes short naps to store up the sort of energy necessary to listen and respond appropriately. At the tail end of an entertaining TV program or a vital news item she has been waiting to hear, there is bound to be the inevitable, ‘mummy, where do babies come from?’ This is where hopefully the question answerer mother takes over, tailoring the answer to suit the age.

The question answerer mum encourages questions (although she dreads the above), but finds herself struggling with the follow-ups.
‘Why does aunt Prunella have wrinkles?’
‘Because she’s old, honey.’
But why is she old, mummy?’
‘We all get old, sooner or later.’
‘But why…?’
As each explanation followed by the ‘but why’ response finally defeats her, question answerer mum finds herself echoing her own mother’s ‘because I said so’. Words she promised herself faithfully (before she had children of her own) that she would never use. At around this time she gets flash-backs to her own past and can’t help but admire her own mother’s forbearance.
Interpreter Mum plays a vital role in her children’s lives. In the early years, she explains their precious utterings to the world, translating what sounds like gibberish to us into toddler gold. IM owes a great deal to the lessons she learned as Answerer Mum. When the children reach their post pubescent phase she translates with ease the language of grunts and shrugs, finding a wealth of meaning in a raised eyebrow or a snort.

‘How was school?’
‘Urgh.’
‘Any homework?’
‘Ergh.’ (fill in your own blanks here)

This is a short phase that thankfully disappears at the end of the teen years. I’ll leave it to you to discover what comes next. Suffice it to say, prepare yourself for empty nest mum / swinging door mum, casserole baking and laundry cleaning mum and finally there is the mother-in-law mum. The latter is a story meant to be experienced rather than described.

No matter what day or time of day the Rubber Pot Mum (mine) is prepared without notice to provide food for the hordes. To that end, there is a pot of soup constantly bubbling on the stove. Rubber pot mum hangs round the house waiting for the chance to host her children’s friends. She remembers their names, who is a vegetarian and who is allergic to pumpkin. Once fed, she beats a silent but hasty retreat.

Chauffeur mum delights in being on call for her children. Although the term communication is a misnomer (communication being only one way), sophisticated devices like iPhone have proved to be a blessing to her. Day or night, CM keeps her trusty phone handy and her car fuelled up and waiting in the garage. She prefers the night-time calls as insomnia tends to keep her up on date nights.

Nobody speaks about DM, Demoted Mum if they can help it, unless it's in hushed whispers. Demoted Mums dispense their old fashioned advice long after the use by date. It's a depressing but mercifully a short lived phase. It's only a matter of time before DMs re-brand and turn into born-again GMMs, Grand Mother mums. GMMs get to claim a brand new and much more receptive audience. They get to do it all over again but this time round it is with all the care and none of the responsibility. GMMs tell the stories, play the games, and answer the questions. It's true that they have to rest a lot more often between sessions, and they do sometimes envy the youth and energy of young mums, but mostly, Grandmother Mums are content to find a useful niche for themslves once more.

Can you learn how to write?

Can you learn how to write? Lots of people have made a mint writing books saying that you can. I’ve read some of them myself and found them interesting and informative. I also learned a lot from a writing course I took a few years ago. When I came back to study as an adult I thought I would come out of it with a qualification to do the thing I had studied for: writing. It's not that I had aimed for it; but I was looking for something constructive to do now that my children were old enough to raise themselves. I'd read the syllabus and found it interesting and thought what the heck! I'll enjoy myself studying something interesting and be a writer into the bargain.

I was really impressed that most of my classmates had brought a manuscript along with them to the course. I felt right out of it. All I had with me was a notebook, a pen and a yearning to have a novel of my own. I did churn out several chapters when studying Novel Writing, but they weren't worthy of being recycled into door stops let alone being published. By the end of the first year I learned that I was never going to be a novel writer.

I don’t know how many of my friends published after they left, but I did learn that it wasn’t so easy even if you had something worthwhile to offer. Most publishers don’t take unsolicited manuscripts. Offerings go to what is called in the industry a ‘slush pile’. If you ever hear back from the publishers it’s months later, after you’ve inquired a couple of times (not too often to bug them) and usually it’s a standard form letter to tell you they don’t want it. If you’re thinking you might want to spread your wings and send your manuscript to a few publishers at a time – don’t. Publishers don’t like it.

If you want to be off the slush pile and have your manuscript seriously considered (although not necessarily accepted) you need an agent. But their books are often full and most won’t take you anyhow unless you’ve published.

And even if you get your manuscript accepted, the advance isn’t much to speak of and given our small population in Australia, neither will the royalties be, but you need to pay back for the advance before the royalties are yours.

A blockbuster is what you need. Most of our top notch writers like Bryce Courteney or Colleen McCulloch, have the market sewn up, and the rest of us get what’s left over. They began with blockbusters and have kept the momentum going ever since. But even you could luck it like lucky Nicholas Evans did. He was a first time author who wrote the Horse Whisperer. It sold 15 million copies worldwide, and to quote the Amazon blurb: ‘the film option was snapped up by aging heartthrob Robert Redford for 3 million smackers.’ His ‘How To’ book if he wrote one would be worth reading, but in the end it’s how he did it, not how we would go about doing it.

Once I’d accepted that novel writing wasn’t for me, I settled down and enjoyed my course. There was a journalism type subject, short story, novel writing, writing for radio to name just a few. And each subject linked into the other. Even if you’re writing an article, you need to know how to grab a reader’s interest. When you write fiction, you still need to keep to the integrity of background information. There’s nothing more annoying than to have the historical context: dress, attitudes of the time and even the style of dialogue, wrong.

You can learn to write and taking a writing course will enhance what skills you already have, but I’m not sure that you can learn to be a writer in the same way you can take a course and come out a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher. Unsurprisingly not everyone has a novel in them. But people who are attracted to writing courses generally discover what skills they do have and their niche, whether it’s in advertising, or article writing or even setting up blogs of their own. Whether or not you become a 'real writer', I don’t think anything you learn is ever wasted.

On Revising and Real Writers

Although I have not dipped into my ideas box for a while I’m giving up all pretense of not writing anything at all till next year. If for no other reason than keeping my typing fingers and brain cells limber, I’ll keep on going with ‘On’ series for a bit. (Ooh, the ‘On’ series! How grand to have a blog of your very own and not worry about how dopy that sounds)

I’m told that there’s a filter between brain and tongue that allows you to revise everything you say before you say it. I can think of a variety of situations I’ve found myself in where it would have been handy to own one. My tendency is to speak and then pay for the consequences. It gets me into more trouble more often than my granddaughters who can at least be excused as they are still growing and developing that brake on their tongue.

Revising the written word, is another matter altogether; that’s where I excel. I have restructured and revised the above paragraph at least five times (six times as of this morning) and before I’m done with this piece, I am sure I will revisit and restructure once more.

Someone once wrote that if you find yourself modifying a short note excusing your child from gym practice, you know you’re a writer. I think it was Danny Katz. Although I most definitely don’t put myself in his league, I’m a great admirer. He is an Australian writer who writes witty pieces for newspapers and magazines, but he’s right about the note. For those of you who haven’t grown up learning the art of letter writing, it is a handwritten form of e-mail done on hard copy and sent by, gasp, snail mail where it takes at least one day to arrive at its destination. I write up my e-mails in a Word document before cutting and pasting into the e-mail window. Then I give it a once-over, just in case, before sending.

The above could prove that I am a real writer, but my need to revisit every line that I write could also have to do with the fact that I have a compulsive personality. I need to eat each packet of chips down to the last few crumbs, then use a finger to coax the salt out where it’s lurking in the corner of the packet. When I smoked I couldn’t have a few puffs and stop; I’d have smoked the butts if it was possible. Thank goodness it wasn’t possible. Given my tendency to compulsion, I knew that the only way I was going to stop was to go what we call ‘cold turkey’. It was a painful process but it worked for me. No crutches like nicotine tablets or patches; I just knew someone like me would only transfer the addiction from the cigarettes to the cure.

Does it make you a writer if you revise sms text messages? I don’t do that too often as I have an old fashioned type of mobile that requires much thumb pressing. But I do refuse to make things easier on myself by abbreviating the words. I can’t get myself to limit communication to a bunch of letters and numbers: no C U 4 lunch, 4 me.

My son and I have arguments about lyrics versus music. Guess which side of that debate I’m on. Today’s lyrics are indecipherable. Strain as I do, I can’t make them out. My son assures me that this is desirable. Young people don’t want to be burdened with words. It’s all about sound and video clips. I’m not sure whether or not preferring to hear a story even if it’s in rhyme makes me a real writer. Possibly that’s why I’m stuck in the sixties with Simon and Garfunkle and Dylan. Possibly not in my lifetime, but I’m sure the pendulum will swing back some day soon.

On Ideas

Even if I did say goodbye a couple of posts ago (till next year), I seem to be finding the energy to do just one more. It’s 11pm here and I have the house and the computer all to myself, a rare occurrence in this household, at this moment, as I’m outnumbered by grandchildren keen to surf the Net.

It’s marvellous isn’t it? One granddaughter has only just started school and already has the hang of it all. Pretty soon we’re going to set up an email account and slap a keyboard or an iphone into a newborn baby’s hands and let their fingers do the walking.
I’d like to tell you where my ideas come from, but I don’t really know. My guess is that my subconscious picks up on something and chews it over for a bit before offering it up to me as a fully blown idea.

You’ll have noticed that my ideas on this blog come from the same source: my grandchildren. But as I’ve mentioned before, the ideas aren’t any good without the rest of it. That’s the bit that takes a lot of hard work. I occasionally look out for ideas for a particular market or just to get myself started on the next project, sometimes an idea can foist itself on you when you’re not looking.

I’ve had this idea for a short story for years and it’s still tucked into the back of an old notebook. (Don’t you steal my idea.) I call it ‘Mistresses Galore.’ I noticed a truck pass me by one day that said: Mattresses Galore but I had misread it. I jotted it down in the notebook that I keep in my pocket for such occasions. Then I tried out different scenarios in my mind, one of them being that on the way to visit a woman in hospital, a man sees the van and misreads it. It was a Freudian slip. This man is on his way to visit one of his elderly mistresses. She was beautiful once, and exciting, now she’s old and sick and has become quite cantankerous. As he walks along, he remembers how each woman came into his life and how it was great until it all went wrong and how now he is stuck with a bunch of elderly, needy lovers. I’ve let this idea stew in the sub-conscious for years and am still waiting for inspiration to push itself to the forefront Another variation on it, is that these elderly, long gone lovers are in the van waiting for him to join them.

Talk to you next year. No, really. No more repeat performances. Really.

On Editors

I wasn’t going to write any more till late January at least, but it’s past midnight and I can’t sleep. It isn’t late in the scheme of things if you’re an insomniac or if you are young but I don’t fit into either category. I find myself up and about tonight when everyone else is sensibly refreshing those little grey cells.

I’m sure that I’ll pay for it tomorrow because it’s going to be hectic, but I thought that a quick session between my computer and myself might help settle me down.

Even though I’ve said in my previous post that you need to have an angle for a piece or else you’re wasting your time and your words, I’ve decided to indulge myself this once and see where it takes me. Possibly not far, but the beauty of it is that as I’m both writer and editor of this journal I can please myself; at least for the time being, till my compulsive need to revisit and revise takes over.

When I have a piece professionally published and paid for, it’s usually the end of that particular journey. Once I’ve worked and reworked a piece it’s out of my hands. I have to hope that the person who reads my peace will be sensitive to it. If you have published in the same place more than once, you get to know the editor and at least get to know what to expect.

The thing is, if you want to be published you have to accept that once someone has bought your baby, you lose control. Someone else gets to edit it and decide what to keep and what to leave out. That’s not always a negative thing. Sometimes I’m too close to be objective and what ends up in print makes it better not only for the publication but for me. A good editor takes away what’s necessary without disturbing the essence of the piece.

The thing is, that if it turns out badly, then the reader usually blames the writer for it. As in any other profession, editors will come in all shapes and sizes. There are the good ones, the bad ones and the ‘what the hell have you done to my piece’ types. Sometimes they will cut your precious words down so they can fit it in an advertisement or another piece on the page. I had an awful experience (just once) where every reference that would have made my piece meaningful was cut out, as evidenced by the fact that the illustrator understood what I meant when he read the piece and the editor did not when he cut things down. (They had obviously not consulted one another.) You can decide to complain, in which case you might not have a chance again at that particular market, or you might decide to never submit there again which limits your choices, or you might hope that that editor moves on to some other publication and butcher somebody else’s work.

A good editor needs to know a lot more than just about tone and grammar and structure; a good editor is like a good GP and knows a little bit about a lot of topics.
Even though I get paid for it, once that piece is in print I will happily forget it and move on to writing something else.

I hope people have liked the child I’ve produced and put on display but strangely it’s not the child but the audience that’s my main consideration. Here I am, my own electronic market, and enjoying pleasing myself, but I do often wonder what sort of people they are who drop in (some of them regulars) from different parts of the globe, and read my work. And what is it that they find they like that makes them regulars.

I find the thought fascinating that they must relate to some of the things I’ve had to say here; because even though the French say vive le difference and I’m all about celebrating our differences, at the core of things and where it counts, I’m sure we’re the same.