Anthony Eaton's Blog: Musings from an Outer-Spiral-Arm , page 6

So, I guess I'm a fully qualified parent, now. Well and truly off my 'P' plates*

Tuesday in Canberra was a good day, if a little hot. (38 degrees** here and humid as hell) By 5.00pm our un-airconditioned house was like a sauna, so Imogen, Toby and I decamped to my mother-in-law's place for a few hours because:

a) She has a swimming pool and
b) She's a three minute walk from a very nice Vietnamese restaurant, and the thought of not cooking or cleaning up afterward had a lot of appeal.

At my MIL's, we had a lovely swim and then strolled down in the cooling evening and enjoyed a feast of Vietnamese food. Then, as the sun finally dropped below the horizon and some of the oppressiveness went out of the day, our little family headed home again to our house on the other side of Canberra. It was still quite warm inside (a solid 34 degrees), but we opened all the windows and doors, put on the fans, and gradually the house began to cool. We gave our - by then very tired - boy a quick cool shower, read him a book, and put him to bed, just like normal. He went out like a light.

Min and I sat up for a while, watched some TV, drank some water and then, at around 10.00pm, went to bed ourselves. We read for an hour or so and, by 11 O'clock the house had cooled sufficiently for us to get to sleep. A last quick check on Toby, who was sleeping soundly, and then lights out.

Until a few minutes after 3.00am, when we woke up to the horrific sound of a 2-year-old in the next room, struggling to breathe.

I don't think I've ever been so terrified as I was when I ran into Toby's room to find him kneeling on his bed, gasping like a grounded fish. His little stomach was sucking hard up into his ribs with every choking breath, and he was trying to cry but didn't have the wind for it. I sat on his bed and he tried to claw his way up me. Min was already on the phone to her mum (who, as luck would have it, is a GP) and searching frantically for the Ventolin inhaler which Toby'd been prescribed a year or so ago, during a bout of bronchitis.

This wasn't bronchitis, though, or asthma - I knew that much. He could breathe out easily enough, but was only getting the tiniest amount of air in. He didn't seem to have anything in his mouth or throat and he wasn't turning blue, but he was panicking and getting increasingly desperate.

As were his parents. We tried without success to get some Ventolin into him, but he was thrashing around so much that we couldn't get the mask over his face, or even just lever the inhaler into his mouth.

"Get him to hospital. Now." Amanda (my M.I.L) told us on the phone and within two minutes the three of us were in the car, racing to the emergency department at Calvary hospital. Amanda phoned ahead and told them we were coming.

At the hospital (which is right beside my work, and which we reached in a considerably faster time than it generally takes me to get to the office) Min ran in with Toby while I parked. By the time I got inside, Toby was in a bed in the emergency ward with about five people working on him. The nice nurse at the ED reassured me that he was okay, and going to be fine.

It was croup. Severe croup, which had swelled the tissues below his larynx to the point where his breathing was restricted. They gave him adrenaline, and steroids, and Ventolin, and oxygen and, over the course of the next hour, his blood O2 saturation levels normalised, and he calmed down. As did Min and I.

Then, at about 5.30, they transferred him to the pediatric unit at Canberra hospital. This involved a ride in an ambulance which, from Toby's point of view was the best thing ever! (He's still talking about it this morning.)

We stayed at Canberra hospital for another 3 or so hours, while Toby was checked over again and monitored. Then, at about 8.00am, they discharged us. Min had to go straight in to work and I took our - now wide awake and perky - little boy home again. I was exhausted, whereas Toby, who'd recently had both a large dose of adrenaline pumped into his system and a ride in an ambulance, was buzzing.

I stayed home with him yesterday, working from the kitchen table while Toby played contentedly. He's got an awful, hacking cough and his voice sounds a little strange, but otherwise he seems fine.

Last night thunderstorms rolled over Canberra and scrubbed the heat and humidity from the air. Toby slept soundly all night. Min and I fell into an exhausted sleep, but still woke up at the slightest cough or bump from his room, checking him every couple of hours.

Today life returned to normal. I'm back at work. I got a couple of hours of great writing done. Toby is back at daycare and Min at ANU.

It's funny - typing all this up, the fear is so fresh and real in my memory, but at the same time the fact that everything is okay and life has just ticked back to normal makes it all seem like a kind of displaced dream.

And I'm lucky, too. We can go back to normal - this is just one of those things that happen. Kids get croup all the time, though not always so suddenly and not always so severely. But at least we live in a country with a wonderful health system, and the security of knowing that we can deal with these things.

And at least, unlike so many people up in North Queensland this morning, Min and Toby and I have a 'normality' to return to.

So today I'm feeling very tired, very wrung out, but also very, very lucky.

* Another one for my overseas friends: in Australia, once you get your driver's licence, you spend a couple of years on your 'P' (for probationary) plates, which means that you have to display a large red 'P' plate on the front and rear of your vehicle, and are subject to an adjusted set of road rules with lower speed limits, 0% blood alcohol allowance and a few other bits and pieces... Once you get through your probationary period without losing your licence, then you're a fully fledged driver, and can pull down the 'P' plates.

** 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit

A few years ago, my good friend Karen wrote a little book called Consuming Innocence. If you haven't read it, then you should get your hands on a copy. It's a fascinating, frightening read. She takes you into the world of Big Marketing - deconstructing both the impact of modern mass marketing on our children, and the techniques which a lot of big brands use to increase their market penetration.

One of the big techniques utilised by marketing departments is to try and expose their brand and / or logo to as many children, as young as possible. To get them 'imprinted', if you will, so that certain brands and concepts form a 'natural' part of that child's social world. This, I recall reading somewhere, is the reason that a certain Large-American-Theme-Park,-Movie,-Television-And-Music Company is happy to have their copyrighted characters printed onto the crotch of nappies; toddlers and babies spend an inordinate amount of time lying on their backs with their feet in the air, staring at that particular part of their anatomy and in the process becoming firm friends with whichever cartoon characters happen to be staring back at them.

Karen's book looks at a lot of this kind of stuff, and takes you deeper into both the psychology and the economics involved, and some of the numbers are staggering. I won't say more than that about the book here, but it's something I think all parents should have a read of.

It certainly re-enforced my determination not to allow Toby (as much as was practicably possible) to be willingly inculcated into the sort of consumer culture that we spend our lives moving within. And, for the most part, we've been pretty successful. We don't buy him clothes or merchandise with big brands or characters on them, we avoid having the television on when he's up (though I'll admit to a couple of transgressions here; both shows involving trains. The boy is obsessed with trains and, to be honest, some times it's nice to be able to take ten minutes to get a load of washing done...) We deliberately sent him to a daycare which doesn't have or use television, but which has a whole lot of (un-branded, un-merchandise-y) toys and activities to fill the days.

And yet, despite all our best efforts, Toby uttered three terrifying words tonight*;

"Bob the Builder."

He said it while pointing to a picture of said cartoon builder in a catalogue which came with a 'Bananas in Pyjamas' DVD he'd been given for Christmas. The thing is, he knew who BTB was.

Which was news to Min and I. To the best of our knowledge, Toby has never seen an episode of BTB, nor read a BTB picture book. He doesn't have a BTB lunchbox, or any BTB clothes, or nappies, or wet wipes, or any of the myriad other objects which carry the BTB brand. The closest he's come to BTB is that he has a BTB-branded toy sander, which another friend gave him for Christmas** and which, since the moment it came out of the box, he's been convinced is a hairdryer just like his grandmother's.***

As far as we knew, Toby had never even heard the phrase 'Bob the Builder', let alone become familiar enough with the product to be able to pick it from a catalogue.

It's a triumph of market penetration; Bob the builder is firmly on Toby's radar, despite all our best efforts.

And, for me at least, the scarier aspect of this is the realisation that already, at just two-and-a-bit-years of age, Toby is already living and learning in a world of pop culture, brands, and highly targeted advertising. And at the same time as he's soaking up language, music, movement, numbers and everything else, he's soaking up brand identification, and it would seem that there's little we can do about it.

Except, perhaps, to introduce him tomorrow to 'Bob the Ballerina...'****


*actually, it's been an evening of landmarks. He also climbed out of his cot, fell on his head, and precipitated the sudden and unexpected conversion of said cot into a 'big boy's bed.' He's now tucked up firmly asleep under a sheet, while Min and I wait for the first 'thump' of boy hitting carpet...

**Toby did well out of last Christmas. We needed to borrow an extra suitcase just to get his presents back from Perth

*** A belief we have very wholeheartedly continued to cultivate...

**** Which, if truth be told, I've just spent two hours creating. That's how serious I am about this...

So I'm here to report in, and the news is good.

My new-look-don't-you-dare-interrupt-me writing time programme is (so far, touch wood) working a treat. All it's taken is a polite sign on my office door, and the self control to turn off my phone, email, twitter reader, iPad, and mobile for the first two hours of every morning. Oh, and the self control to stop writing at the end of my 2 hours.

And, in the last week or so, I've put out a little over 12,000 words. This is about a third of my sum total for the previous 12 months of writing.

What has struck me most, though, is that this is kinda different to all the writing I've done previously. In years gone by* I used to write in intense 'blocks' of time - putting perhaps a couple of months of the year aside and just burying myself in my current book for up to 8 or 9 hours a day. The writing took over my head, and my life.

Nowdays, of course, I don't have that luxury. Last year one of the problems I faced was that I kept putting off my writing until a suitable block of time presented itself. And, of course, it didn't. Hence my horribly low word count, and lack of a 2011 book.

So, as I mentioned in my last post, this year I've adopted a different approach. I've got 2 hours a day - the first two hours. I get into my office, shut out the world, and write. From 8.30 until 10.30 each morning, there's just me, and the pattering rhythm of my keyboard. At 10.30 I make myself stop - regardless of where I'm at, or how much I'm enjoying it - and get on with the myriad other tasks which make up my days.**

The thing which has surprised me the most is how quickly those two hours have become one of the best bits of my day - something I actively look forward to. And that, in turn, is having a positive effect on the writing. I'm hoping this continues - one of the problems with my old 'intense' approach was that, especially towards the end of a book, I'd find myself feeling burnt out and unmotivated. Sure, I was knocking out perhaps 10,000 words in a day, but I was wiped at the end of it, and even more so the following morning.

But not any more. It turns out that 2 hours is, generally speaking, enough time for me to really get into the rhythm of the writing, and to turn out about 2000 words (give or take, it was only 1200 yesterday, but they were good words, IMHO). And then, at the end of it, I've got something to look forward to the following morning.

The funny thing is that, early on in my writing career, I used to hear writers - big name writers - talk about their writing methodologies and I used to dismiss out of hand those who used the '1000 words per day' or similar approaches. I just knew they wouldn't work for me: writing was too BIG to be contained like that. Too spontaneous. Writing couldn't be contained to a number of words or a period of time - it had to be free and unfettered and all-consuming.

And, at the time, that was the right (write?) philosophy for me.

But - I guess like all things - needs must when the devil drives, and as my life and attitude to writing has changed so too have my needs in terms of time and approach. It's just taken me a while to realise it. I might even be able to attempt NANOWRIMO this year. Perhaps.

What about you? How do you write?

*ie: before marriage, fatherhood and full time work at a University
** Naturally I don't do this on weekends. The EBA*** I worked out with myself 6 years ago is quite emphatic on that point...
*** For Rivka and my other overseas readers: EBA = Enterprise Bargaining Agreement - a draconian piece of industrial relations legislation, and a hangover from the days of Australia's last conservative government. Now, thankfully, overturned...

As a general rule, I'm pretty good at time management. I think it's one of those things that you learn by natural attrition when you first hit out as a writer. I know that my productivity in the first couple of months after I left high school teaching was pretty much through the floor. The sudden luxury of being able to go to the movies in the middle of the day, or the beach, or the pool, or even just the post office, was one which pretty much killed my writing for a while there.

Of course, you very quickly work out that if you're not writing, then you soon won't be eating, and so like most writers I learned fast that if I wanted to get things done, then I needed to be more proactive (Urgh! I hate that word...) about making time to write. I guess most people would call it 'self discipline'

But, in the last 12 months, to be honest, I've slipped a bit. In 2009, I wrote roughly 100,000 words of creative stuff. Last year, I managed only 32,000.

This is just my creative writing, though. Last year I also put out roughly 50,000 words in lecture notes, 10,000 words in journal articles, and a good whack of time writing for this blog.

So I'm not a complete time-waster, it's just that I've allowed my writing to take a second place to some of the other writing priorities in my life.

Which brings me to my new year's resolution for this year. I'm going to do my darnedest to write for at least two hours every day. I've blocked out the first two hours of the day on my calendar, put a polite sign on the office door and now I get to work, turn off my phone, don't fire up my email, place my iPad in a drawer, and get to work. And so far this week I've managed to put out the best part of 5000 words, which isn't too bad, given that it always takes me a few days to get back into the rhythm of a book, especially if it's one I haven't worked on for a while. In this case, it's been six months since I wrote a single word of my current book, so I'm pretty happy to be getting back into the swing of it. It's kind of comfortable, falling back into a writing routine.

All going well, my current book should be finished in a couple of weeks (this is the long-awaited adventure thingy), and then I can turn my attention to a few other exciting little ideas that have been churning around in the dark corners of my mind.

My heart is breaking this morning.

A few years ago, when Imogen and I lived in Brisbane, just after I left teaching and hit out as a full-time writer, I made my living doing speaking engagments. Most of them were in the areas around Brisbane; little towns like Toogoolawah, Laidley, Toowoomba and numerous others. I got to know the Lockyer Valley and the Warrigal Highway very well indeed.

In the small town of Laidley, I worked with students from the high school - I particularly remember Laidley because one of those students - I won't name her - kept in touch with me for years after my visit; she used to email me when things happened; often big and sometimes awful things - a friend's death, moving away from home. She used to say what a huge impact my visit had on her. Though I never told her this, her sporadic emails helped me understand small town life in Australia from a teenage point of view, and had a real impact on my writing; her voice was utterly authentic and her emails gave me a real sense of the sometimes crushing difficulties that come with being an adolescent in such a small and isolated community. And even though I haven't heard from her for a few years, now, I've always had very fond memories of Laidley and the kids I worked with there.

A couple of years ago I was invited to the 'Voices on the Range' festival in Toowoomba. I spent a lovely week there, living in one of the most beautiful B&B's I've ever seen, and talking to some of the most engaging and enthusiastic audiences of school students that I've ever come across. I also had the time to explore Toowoomba properly - it's the most beautiful little town, perched on top of the Great Dividing Range like a sentinal at the edge of the vast Darling Downs.

This morning I, like so many other Australians, woke to the news that this beautiful part of the country, filled with people I've met, laughed with, worked with and lived with, is facing one of its darkest hours.

When I toured Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, the whole area was in the grip of drought. In a couple of towns, I was advised not to drink the tap water, because the dams were running dry and there was a lot of sediment in the drinking water. The folks who lived there were living their lives under some of the most stringent water restriction laws in the country.

Last year - finally - the drought broke.

And yesterday afternoon, in an example of just how savage and unforgiving this country can be, a storm of such savage intensity that it's been described as an 'inland tsunami' hit Toowoomba; taking lives, destroying homes, and wreaking utter, utter havoc.

After Toowoomba, the waters dropped down the height of the Great Dividing Range, causing rivers and streams to flood in moments; the waters rising 9 or 10 metres above their usual banks, and sweeping away everything before them as they surged down the plain towards Brisbane.

Laidley, was among the towns hit hard. But not the only one.

So today, as families across the plains from Brisbane all the way west to the foothills are battling against the rising waters, my heart is breaking for them. And for my many friends in Brisbane, who are bracing for the now almost inevitable floods as the water makes its way out to sea via the Brisbane River.

Good luck, all of you. You're in my thoughts.

New Year's Eve tomorrow. Unbelievable.

2010 has, on the whole, been a pretty amazing year for me and the family. Toby has turned from a baby into a little boy, work has been crazy busy but really rewarding and satisfying. I've published my first scholarly papers, spoken at my first academic conference, seen the last of the 'Darklands' books finally hit the shelves, become an iAddict, been invited to edit a special edition of a British Journal called Write4Children, (more on that in weeks and months to come...) won a teaching award, gone to the Sydney Writer's Festival, visited with my sister and her two gorgeous girls in Perth in July, had the worst case of tonsillitis EVER, and just generally kept very, very busy. Min has been busily beavering away at her PhD, which is shaping up nicely now and Toby has been, well... you'll see...

The last couple of weeks, you might have noticed my absence here at Musings... and also on Twitter. This is because, after all the above mentioned hijinks, I decided that my Christmas holidays would be just that - holidays - and so in the spirit of Susan Maushart I rewarded myself with something of a 'shutdown'. The only things I've used my iPad for in the last couple of weeks have been reading and the odd game of 'Plants vs Zombies.' It's been nice. Refreshing, even.

So 2010 has, on the whole, been a good year.

And so, to 2011, which is shaping up to be another busy one: Perth Writer's Festival in March, the new edition of Into White Silence coming out some time in the new year, another big year of teaching, a big conference to speak at in July (I'm talking about Neil Gaiman - yay!), a book chapter to write, the special edition to put together, a house to renovate and, of course, a family to keep on their toes :)

Speaking of which, here's my new year's gift to you all. It's our current favourite song in the WHOLE WORLD! And it comes with some pretty mad dance moves, too. What spins me out the most is remembering that this time last year Toby had just started walking, and look at him go now...*



So happy new year, everyone. Hope you have a relaxing and restful start to 2011. Thanks to those of you who've been reading this meandering little blog during the last year, and who have taken the time to let me know.

In the meantime, Party on!

*Apologies for: a) the shaky camera work , (b) my 'singing' and (c) partially putting my thumb over the camera lens for the middle bit. It's still pretty cute, though, IMHO...

It's the silly season again. This time last year, Toby wasn't walking. How time has passed.

Before I get onto the 'What I've been up to' part of this blog entry, I'm going to throw in an idea that Min came across the other day and which, I think, is lovely.

I don't know what it's like in your family but in mine, in the past, Christmas has tended to be, well, rather stressy. There's a lot of lead up to 'The Big Day' and a lot of planning and panic and pressure and, from time to time, Christmas itself has become more of a chore than a celebration; desperately trying to cram everything in to the one little window of time.

Not this year though - Min read somewhere that the best way to deal with Christmas is to engage in a little 'mental shift' and to think of it not as one single day on which everything must be perfect, but to think of it as a season - a couple of weeks of relaxing, family, cooking, shopping, and taking it easy. This takes the pressure off, and makes the whole thing fun. We've been thinking of things from this perspective and, I have to say, it's turning out to be one of the most lovely festive seasons I can recall.

So, anyway, what have I been up to since I saw you all last?

Well, for the most part, and aside from a little administrative work this last week, I've been having a holiday from, well, life.

A couple of weeks ago, with all my teaching for the year done, my marks submitted and my admin up to date, Min and Toby and I came across to Perth to stay with my Mum and Dad for a few weeks, and to attend the wedding of an old friend of ours.

The wedding itself was on Rottnest Island, which is one of my favourite places in the world - it's a little daggy, rather run down, the accomodation is basic and they gouge every possible cent out of you while you're there ($6 cucumber, anyone?), but it has the most beautiful beaches, no television reception, no cars or internet, and within 10 minutes of getting off the ferry, you can feel the rest of the world slipping away. It's a lovely thing, and just the ticket after a fairly full-on year of work and family. Mum and Dad came over with us and had some much enjoyed 'Toby time'. We swum at The Basin, ate at the bakery, and generally caught up on sleep and reading.

And our friend's wedding was lovely, too.

Then back to Perth for a combination of pre-christmas prep, family catch ups, planning some home renovations for when we return to Canberra in a couple of weeks and, for me, starting the wheels in motion for a special edition of a scholarly journal which I've been asked to guest-edit for late next year.

This is pretty exciting, actually. The journal is a U.K. based, online publication called Write4Children, and has a really nice broad approach to the scholarship of children's writing, encompassing both theory and practice. I'm curating a special Australasian Edition, and have had some very interesting and exciting abstracts submitted. At the moment I'm considering how to form up and shape the edition in terms of threads and ideas, and then when I get back in January I'll be getting onto the selected writers, chasing up the finished pieces, organising the peer review process, then copy and proof editing. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm very excited to think that at the end of it there'll be a really solid and permanent contribution to scholarship, and one which I had a big hand in putting together.

I'm also champing at the bit to get back so that I can start writing again. This year I have some big plans. Hopefully.

Anyway, that's where I'm at. Right now it's about 35 degrees outside here in Perth, whereas back home it was snowing a couple of days ago in Yass, which is about 45 minutes up the road from our house. I think I'd rather be here, though the forecast for Christmas is for 38 degrees, and that'll really test things out.

In any case, I hope you all have a lovely Christmas with your families. I'll be back for a New Year's Post some time in the next week or so, probably once we're back home again.

Hi Everyone -

Just letting you know that I'm not abandoning my post here (well, at least not permanently)

I'm just taking a week or so holiday with the family in Perth, and will be back to blogging again soon.

Cheers
Tony

Just a quick one, for the moment, as I'm about to walk out of my office for the final time this year and in four hours I have to be on a plane to Perth.

Which is not a bad thing, the way events are moving here in Canberra at the moment. Like a lot of the east coast, we've had some rain in the last few weeks. So much so that there is a fair bit of flooding going on. This morning they started evacuating Queanbean, and earlier today they opened up all the floodgates on Scrivener Dam for the first time in, well, pretty much forever. (Actually, I seem to recall reading somewhere that this last happened in 1976)

To give you a rough idea, here are a couple of photos that one of my colleagues took, a little earlier today. The first is of Scrivener Dam (For those not in the know, Scrivener is the Dam which creates Lake Burley Griffin, which is, in turn, the main water body around which Canberra is built)

(Photo: Greg Battye)

This one shows four of the five floodgates open (the fifth, closed, is on the right of the picture) and the water pouring into the Molongolo River, which is usually a slow moving, muddy trickle, but which now looks like this:

(Photo: Greg Battye)

In any case, it's a good time to be leaving Canberra. Preferably not in an Ark, either, though I suspect that's not far away.

As of ten minutes from now, I'm actually on leave and this time tomorrow will be sitting out the front of a little house on Rottnest Island in Perth, along with Min, Toby and my parents. I imagine that there'll be beer involved.

Anyway, as I have a few little bits and pieces to do before I can leave, I'm going to sign off now.

I've just recently (thanks largely to having a few chunks of unexpected downtime last week) finished reading Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking trilogy, which he wrapped up with the hugely satisfying Monsters of Men. I'm now about to launch into the second book of Suzanne Collins Hunger Games trilogy, having chewed through the first book in a single day on the weekend.*

I'm not going to post my reviews of them here. That's what Goodreads is for, but I am struck by something which I think I'll probably do a little thinking about in months to come:

During the 1980's and into the early 1990's in the late to-immediate-post cold war era, there was an explosion (for want of a better term) of Australian post-apocalyptic YA fiction, much of it speculative. I'm sure you can think of more than a few titles which threw their YA protagonists into 'end-of-the-world' type scenarios. Victor Kelleher's Taronga was one of my favourites.

Now I'm wondering if we're seeing the beginnings of a similar thing happening, but on a more global scale. The post-apocalyptic being very much used in YA as a social response to wider issues. But now the focus has moved, slightly; Patrick Ness' books deal with power, government and control. I'm only a little way into Suzanne Collin's trilogy, but can see similar concerns there which touch on ideas like the social contract and totalitarianism. A few weeks ago, at an artist's talk here at UC, I spoke about how the global political climate during the years following on from 9/11 had an enormous impact upon my Darklands books, and particularly Skyfall.

It's interesting, I think, to consider the possible forces that shape our written culture, and particularly to look at the sort of material our adolescent readers are engaging with, and in this terror-aware world in which we now live, I suspect there's some pretty strong influences just starting to reveal themselves.

Dunno. This is a little off-the-top-of-my-head, rather garbled and definately in need of some further consideration.

What about you? Do you have any suggestions for contemporary YA spec-fic that might be wrestling with some of this stuff?

*which is a good effort, but not as good as Imogen, who managed to get through the entire trilogy in a single day.