tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-95017262008-08-20T12:37:45.137+10:30jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-46974066595680135852008-08-13T09:50:00.002+10:302008-08-13T10:06:02.877+10:30

so here i am in mexico, walking and walking and eating plenty of iceblocks. i´d really rather not be on the internet, but i keep getting these fiddly lil jobs to do. as a result this is gonna be short. arivaca was interesting. i will write about it in more detail for newmatilda, so i won´t extrapolate here, but on a selfish level it was great to spend a week in the desert hiking. there were

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-24664091860447911752008-07-28T06:05:00.008+10:302008-07-28T07:27:37.852+10:30

utah is like heaven it's real pretty but you can't get a full-strength beer anywhere. so sundance was amazing, and hard to explain. someone there described it as a tree funeral, so that will do for now. it was fun to construct things in camp and be in a collaborative community space (am i over my activist burnout?). i also talked stories with elders, made new family, learned a couple of songs

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-2246392594292782522008-07-06T20:00:00.000+10:302008-07-06T19:51:42.206+10:30

hawaiithefucknot was, as predicted, strange. i spent most of the week sleeping on a quiet beach on the north shore of oahu, polishing off the copy edit of my book with the assistance of some awful coffee, and reading the delightful 'gould's book of fish' between bouts of mock-snorkeling (holding my breath, wearing goggles). there were some excellent fish. i saw a sea snake. hardly anyone bothered

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-4154708411167494592008-06-11T16:52:00.002+10:302008-06-11T16:55:42.196+10:30

The lists have been drawn up, the worldly goods stashed or relinquished, the packing visualised, the return ticket seriously contemplated if still not purchased, the farewells and !buen viajes! by and large celebrated, and my daily twelve-second panic attacks about traveling have dissipated into a high sustained tone of near-breathless excitement. This must be the high note I'm leaving on. Which

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-40148984669575088162008-05-29T14:02:00.004+10:302008-05-29T14:10:01.532+10:30

just a quick one to say wordstorm was fantacular, i'm still high on work, and all is well... thanks to the tropics for putting on such a spectacular temporary autonomous zone superwomenOriginally uploaded by jen_twice wordstormOriginally uploaded by jen_twice

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-18944034136474213892008-05-12T18:19:00.002+10:302008-05-12T18:22:32.662+10:30

The most surprising thing about the editing process is that it is fun. And Fun, as Mr Geisel's cat tells us, is Good. The least surprising is that I am extraordinarily distracted by everything that is not editing, including this blog. I've been on fire since I wrote the Long Important Poem About Shipwrecks* seventeen days ago. Am simultaneously working on at least three other things and feeling

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-36148383105204943652008-04-28T19:14:00.004+10:302008-04-28T19:24:31.922+10:30

i try not to use this blog as a noticeboard for my own purposes, but i've been thinking a lot about the creative impulse and i have decided that everything is metaphor and metaphor is everything. this essay on language by john hughes (published in island) triggered something in my already quite manic brain. "Analogy is a much richer mode of apprehension than explanation, and truer, I think, to

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-57605733769613841722008-04-22T10:12:00.007+10:302008-04-22T10:51:53.985+10:30

my ninety-nine-year-old grandfather passed away yesterday. he went politely, as was his style. the last thing he said to me was "take good care of the British language now, won't you." guess i'll give it a good Aussie try. i recently finished the alphabetical reading challenge which has incidentally provided me with almost four months' record of my reading habits. considering the restrictions

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-76712947519118107302008-04-09T13:31:00.005+10:302008-04-09T13:50:36.498+10:30

i did mean in that last post to write something about this frontier of image management i seem to be on and how having an (admittedly insignificant) public profile opens you up to all kinds of weirdness. the comments over at NM are often useful, informed remarks, but i do wish more folks would play the ball and not the man. instead i have just stopped worrying about it. as i enter the editorial

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-52128408163929576672008-04-01T13:41:00.002+11:002008-04-01T14:02:59.759+11:00

'We all know who the Pope is, and, in most cases, we even know what his views are. I wonder how many could answer the question "who on earth is Jennifer Mills"?' all i know is i'm in queensland. it's sunny, i have been staying on the gold coast which is a laugh a minute (don't laugh) and having meetings with my editor, which is not as hilarious but much more exciting. i will post proper update

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-52048971583343461122008-03-05T13:25:00.003+11:002008-03-05T13:41:09.304+11:00

the sun is finally shining on old sydney town and my compounded mardi gras weekend hangovers, and i'm a ten second walk from the beach, so i'm not gonna spend long on this here post. preparing to head off tomorrow, down to the old clean-beach haunts of the illawarra first, then home via melbourne (and the giant koala, for reasons i will explain later). i'm fairly sure i am never going to do

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-2476767915258962032008-02-14T12:37:00.001+11:002008-02-14T12:51:14.361+11:00

Sorry (word of the week) if it's been a bit quiet around here but I've come a long way since my last post. Driven about 4000km, for a start. In the last two weeks I've signed a book contract, stayed at the Hilton and on the street, and started catching up with loved ones I seem perversely determined to live a long way away from. Living a long way from Sydney is so non-perverse on so many other

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-83504655668562215582008-01-22T18:07:00.000+11:002008-01-22T18:25:23.435+11:00

as some readers may have guessed (and most folks in my phone book have been told), i have been offered a contract with UQP for the publication of my novel, The Diamond Anchor. I'm thrilled to bits. Over the stage where I can't stop punching the air, but still distractingly excited. The relevant bits of paper have to be looked over, but the formal offer has been made and accepted. It feels

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-38792707271873882662008-01-11T13:52:00.000+11:002008-01-11T15:43:02.483+11:00

for reasons i can't quite bring myself to announce, yesterday i opened a 12-year-old bottle of single malt i'd been saving for a particular occasion. i will be less annoyingly cryptic after i've got my good news in writing. let's just say i'm feeling quite pleased with myself, if a little frayed around the edges today. 2008 is going to be a heads-down, hands-dirty kind of year, i can feel it. i

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-36826581128637851192007-12-22T12:00:00.000+11:002007-12-22T12:29:11.594+11:00

today is the summer solstice. time to stand in the place you watch your sunsets and mark where the ol' ball falls, cause he's swinging back north tomorrow. i've had my eye on that horizon for a while - it's still looking good. hitching the great ocean road on no sleep in antarctic drizzle was interesting. it took a day and a half of so many short hops i lost count. my favourite ride was

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-44605237717956428862007-12-04T15:51:00.000+11:002007-12-04T17:07:32.114+11:00

2250 km or thereabouts last week - as though i'm trying to make up for sitting still by running faster. three solid days of hitching with a couple of days' stop in coober pedy on the way, to have a look around. went blacklighting for worthless opal and poked around in dugouts. drank beer in the opal inn where a 64yo man with no teeth asked, 'how much are you?' 'i'm free,' i answered. somehow we

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-55476092015601903392007-11-22T13:54:00.000+11:002007-11-22T14:40:10.830+11:00

yesterday i had one of those "if you told me a few years ago i'd be doing this, i wouldn't have believed you" moments when i went on ABC local radio to talk about my astrological guide to the 2007 election. i suppose it's good to have several ludicrous career options handy... and i did manage to slip in a couple of comments about the nuclear waste dump the current mob are planning to put on my

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-21353025667084353162007-11-09T18:00:00.001+11:002007-11-09T19:16:09.402+11:00

i just wanted to personally thank the Weekend Australian for this magnificent headline: thanks rupert a delightful thing to read while your savings are dwindling away and your mind buried in the darker recesses of your next book, if i may say so. if only i had a smidgin of industrial power i'd be on strike too. the answer was the usual one - that it's some kind of weird pathology.

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-64382773568912801902007-10-28T11:08:00.001+11:002007-10-28T12:55:46.042+11:00

you may notice i've knocked up a few bits of iron around here and shot the sidebar out with a .22. it's amazing what you can achieve while not working on your second book. let me know if there are any legibility issues (esp if you use a PC). excitement of the week: oliver sacks has a new book out called Musicophilia. among other neurological quirks like the guy who was hit by lightning and

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-70966678171196976672007-10-22T13:40:00.000+10:302007-10-22T14:42:59.696+10:30

it's windy today - the dry northwest wind that is featured in the song 'my island home'. the wind that, according to Veronica Dobson's fantastic new book, makes people sick with a sort of restless inertia. it certainly kicks up a lot of dust and fills my head with Woodie Guthrie. Veronica once told me that fig trees are used to tell stories (as seen on the cover of her book), the leaves planted

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-72195419265470714762007-10-14T16:14:00.000+10:302007-10-14T16:21:00.534+10:30

the joy of networked knowledge. i've been reading my own stats again, just to see where on earth you people come from, and cause i like to procrastinate. i'm particularly fond of the bit where it tells you what people were searching for when they stumbled across your site by accident. so i decided to have a sort of award ceremony for the best ones. the rule was that they had to be things i

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-20855047450893756882007-09-28T12:22:00.000+10:302007-10-01T16:29:25.020+10:30

i'm going to iron maiden! i thumbs me nose and sticks me tongue out at those who are not. yoho! speaking of pretending to be hard (but really being a bit of a dag), i got a new flaming skull tattoo. it's the gift i gave myself to celebrate giving up smoking. i had to wait three months since i quit, essentially because i thought i wasn't doing a very good job of it. i'm starting to trust myself

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-2336821639373604552007-09-18T13:41:00.000+10:302007-09-18T14:01:53.141+10:30

i got caulfield back from the mechanic a week and a half ago. the mechanic being a delightful old dude with a tiny bug-eyed dog who told me i 'look pretty good for almost thirty' (i can now look forward to a lifetime of such qualifiers). the new gearbox is a wonder of functionality. have been singing AC/DC and making a nuisance of myself on the roads, now that i get to go fast and - wait for it -

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-42740896512894556902007-08-29T11:45:00.000+10:302007-08-29T12:38:36.789+10:30

how good was that? i spent the intervals between watching the eclipse listening to the fantastic Alexis Wright, who's on her Miles Franklin victory lap. she stuttered through a reading from Carpentaria and said some useful and intelligent things to a small crowd of fans and friends. then this band played a song they wrote about one of her characters. that must be a nice feeling. due to an

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501726.post-16709077968767188902007-08-13T17:37:00.001+10:302007-08-13T17:39:20.595+10:30

I'm sitting in my soon-to-be-ex-loungeroom, having trouble looking at anything because i know i'll have to pack it. Back in Alice, but landed in something of a hole. I left Darwin somewhat reluctantly. I was having a lot of fun with my old friends and their other friends and generally enjoying a simple existence revolving around food, drink, nightcliff pool, and hilarity. Perhaps there was a

jenjenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04226416089638841182noreply@blogger.com