Journal

In Brisbane – and in much of the rest of Australia – people tend to have a “local” when it comes to their coffee. The place that does it better than everywhere else, that will serve you a breakfast that’s just a little bit better than everywhere else, and generally has an atmosphere conducive to spending quality time enjoying said coffee and breakfast.

(There are rumours, in other countries, that cafes serve things like lunch and dinner, but that shit is un-Australian. You go to your cafe for breakfast and coffee dammit)

My local cafe shut down for the holidays. They don’t re-open until after Australia Day.

For weeks now I have ducked across the train tracks just outside my apartment, stumbled the hand-full of meters to my local, and ordered a pretty damn good flat white and an outstanding avocado on toast concoction that came with an assortment of nuts, a whole goddamn spice-rack full of herbs, and tiny, delicious slices of radish.

I am devastated and, quite frankly, in need of coffee.I am tempted to take to the streets, coffee mug in hand, and a sign reading “will write words for caffeination.”

It’s summer. It’s hot. I’m already covered in an obscene amount of sweat and it hasn’t even crossed 9:00 AM here in Brisbane. I’m off to write club in a half-hour, so putting on the air conditioning for such a short period isn’t really cost-effective. And I just got news of a short-story acceptance, so I can think of no better time to hang out the single and say:

See you all tomorrow, peeps. If you feel the need for your daily dose of writing neepery, may I suggest checking out this post at writerly scrawls about taking the stress out of freelancing.

It’s Monday morning and I’m sitting on my couch, listening to old INXS songs on youtube. Writing this, instead of working on the Space Marine: Pew! Pew! Pew! manuscript, because Monday is one of the days when I can get away with that.

I should probably go make coffee. Or go collect coffee from the cafe on the far side of the train tracks, if there’s enough spare change in my change-jar to justify that kind of expenditure.

I’m trying to stay chill because, lo, I watched a bunch of movies this weekend, and so many of them had characters who are writers, and that is the stuff of rage.

Movies give us an endless parades of characters who agonize about writers block and disappear on book tours and live with an absolute conviction that what they do is the most important shit in the world.

“It’s not important,” the none writer characters will say. “It’s just a book.”

“It’s the most important thing in the world,” the writer character says, then goes away to sulk.

Movie-writers sulk better than any real-world writer I’ve ever met. They sulk like they’ve been told their sulk will end wars and bring about world peace, and so long as they are unhappy the world will be transformed into an eternal, glorious Disneyland.

And yet, I love them. Even as I hate them and rail at the TV, I love me a good movie-writer film. He Died with a Felafel in his Hand with Noah Taylor wandering around as the biggest dickhead writer of all time; Stranger Than Fiction with Emma Thompson being the most batshit insane writer of tragedies ever; innumerable films adapting the work of beat poets and novelists; Throw Momma From the Train.

Oh, dear god, especially Throw Momma From the Train.

I love those writers with their sulks and peculiarities, their impending alcoholism and their books that are all-consuming parts of their lives. Get the narrative right and I will forgive all manner of impracticalities when representing the act of writing, ’cause…well, story.

Good story trumps most objections to most things while you’re watching it. Good story will let you defer your anger ’til later.

Except, today I’m not angry.

Today I’m thinking of what it was like when I wanted to be a writer as a kid, when all I had to go on was the way writers behaved in books and movies. When you had an interpretation, shaped by narrative, instead of instant access to blogs and twitter and facebook messages that, while still being an interpretation, come far closer to the reality of writers lives.

This is a handy thing.

Given time and sufficient internet access, we may actually start to deconstruct the bullshit that surrounds creative careers and rebuild it into something useful.

In the mean time, I have checked the spare change jar. There will be no trip to the cafe this morning.

If you need me, I will be staring pensively at my computer screen, awaiting the inevitable complication that is going to drive the next scene.