I’m up at the shack. I’ve been here for four days on an intensive deep dive into the edit of the manuscript, called - well at least on my computer - The Lambing Diaries. I have been working on this manuscript for four years. It’s based around a diary I kept over the lambing seasons through the drought. It’s a book of fragments, guided by the principle that we can never grasp the whole, but instead only offer this moment or the next, to lay out some sliver of truth. Perhaps that’s why it has been so hard. There’s three different voices in the book. There’s my diary self - close and intimate. There’s an observational voice that writes short bird portraits - a scientific description overlaid with something more poetic. And then there’s the traditional memoir voice - the story teller ranging backwards and forwards in time. I have a vision for the book. I can see sketches of birds, dogs, sheep and mud maps of paddocks and waterholes and dry creek beds. It is also a mediation on motherhood. Perhaps because of all the things I wanted it to be, it almost wasn’t anything at all. But here I am, four years on, engaged in a conversation with my wonderful editor about what stays and what goes, about what is unclear, confusing, what is a little purple and what is a deliberate choice to leave a silence. The poor love, my editor that is, also had to grapple with my appalling spelling and grammar.
I’ve brought with me two dogs, a bag of books, enough food to keep the three of us going and some wood. Turns out I didn’t need the wood for it’s been warm. The books, the dogs and the food were all essential.
It’s so quiet up here that the only sound punctuating the click of ‘accept change/reject/resolve comment’ is the sudden splash of a tern diving. Have you ever seen one? When they dive they are like a weight dropped. I’m always shocked by their sudden release into gravity’s pull. One moment they’re caressing the air, instantly recognisable as a tern as they float and glide, the next they fold their wings and plummet. It’s a performance I never tire of watching. So yes, perhaps it slows the work. For every time I hear that splash, I look up and wait for the bird to rise, a silver fish in its beak, wait for the shudder of it, the ash of shaken water.
It kills me that I can’t tell you exactly what tern I’ve been watching. I forgot to bring the binoculars. So it could be a little tern, caspian tern, crested tern, common tern, a fairy tern, or an artic tern. They’re all remarkable - the artic tern travels 40 000 km to follow the summer. I find this impossible to imagine. The young ones do too and they will often stay here for the winter rather than make the long flight north.
I push on with the edit. On the bay is a passing parade of birds. Pelicans cruise in small flotillas, moving deceptively fast they stop and plunge their giant beaks beneath the water chasing fish and prawns. Sometimes they will spy a fish ahead of them and make themselves small, their heads tucked into their bodies until they spear forward upon their prey. It’s faintly comical. There’s a family of silver gulls, the youngsters still annoying their parents for food. Another family of white-faced herons, and I can tell the adolescents by how clumsily they land on the rim of the water. There’s both pacific gulls and kelp gulls, they look like tugboats compared to the sleek terns. There’s cormorants (pied and black), swans, and a solitary musk duck.
It’s taken me months to face the ms, which is thick with comments, suggestions, nips and tucks, moves and insertions. It’s hard to start. I have to shed my skin and step back into the work. It requires a retreat from the mundanity of ordinary life, it requires me to commit myself again to an immersion in something I can’t quite see. One page at a time I tell myself and get up early and stay up late. My days are punctuated with a paddle on the bay at sunrise and again at sunset. Being out on the bay rather than looking at it shifts my perspective. I stand on the board and watch another world slide underneath. I can see where the swans have grazed during the night. There’s a feather or two and the seagrass floats on the surface. The paddling is a meditation. I count strokes and concentrate on bracing my core against the pull of the water. A musk duck pops up beside me. He’s a funny creature, his wobbly chin makes him look ponderous and old. A clumsy flyer, says the bird book, but he is swift through the water and after exchanging a glance with me he is gone again, popping up twenty metres from the board only moments later. His map of the bay is different again. I imagine him diving, slipping through the seagrass beds, sliding over sand bars, the underwater world just as familiar as the air above.
I finished the edit last night. My body was stiff from the concentration of stillness. I took the dogs out into the moonlight and we walked the edge of the bay. The book has a shape at last. I can see the terrain I’ve mapped and the path I’ve laid down. Up ahead James rocketed along the track, a golden hairy bullet, while behind me I could only hear Dusty, for she’s as black as the shadows. The swans were singing to each other and somewhere out there was the musk duck, floating on the bay, at home in the inbetween worlds.
Reading
I have hardly read this week. It’s been all about the editing. But I rewarded myself with a chapter of Anna Clark’s new book Making Australian History every morning over a coffee. This book is so good. It’s nuanced, smart, thought provoking and easy to read. The very best sort of history. I also started The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers. It’s brilliant. It’s a mission though at 900 plus pages. This article is good on why Wordle feels different and why it has had such universal appeal. The family Whatsapp group that reports in every day with their patterns is my favourite corner of my phone. Thanks Z for posting this little collection of musing on what is love.
Listening
I am awaiting my next audible credit, which arrives tomorrow, to listen to The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. His novel A Gentleman in Moscow was the first audiobook I’d listened to and I loved it.
Writing
See above!
Doing
My new section. Last week J and I met friends in Hobart. We went on those silly scooters. It was so much fun. Hard recommend.
mm
Love this, Maggie. I'm greatly intrigued by the three voices at work in you. You make me think of how editing might be taking binoculars up in arms to focus in on a specific bird and how writing and birds say back to each other. This sounds a bit crazy to reread, but I had owls living in my backyard this summer and they brought such wisdom to me. I believe in the power that observing birds can bring to the words you are writing and editing and reliving. Sending you the best writing vibes from the other side of the world!
Our special and mutual friend Di Carlton has treated me to a subscription of ‘the Sit Spot’ and I now look forward to Tuesdays with impatience. Your descriptions transport me back to the wonderful State of Tasmania where we have enjoyed many holidays hiking and fishing with friends. I also enjoy your reading and listening suggestions - what a glorious photo this week. Good luck with the new book - thank you.