No Looking Back – School’s Out and Life Begins (Pt XIII)
Chapter 10 – My Passions – Family, Writing and the Outback
My passions – first comes family. Followed by writing and the outback together. While I have lived in cities for most of my life I always have and will always remain passionate about the outback and the way of life on our pastoral stations. As mentioned earlier, I wanted to start writing as a child – I wanted to write a book and publish it. But I really had no idea where to start.
Next best thing was finding some new penfriends and writing letters. Those I wrote to as a child were found through the ABC radio and newspapers. I wrote to most of them for the rest of my childhood but then that fizzled out once I turned 11 and was sent down to boarding school. I didn’t lose interest exactly. It was just that I was so unhappy, so lost, had such bad homesickness that most things were driven from my mind. I did still live for the daily mail (in the cities it was and still is delivered daily, except on the weekends) but really only looked for mail from home.
This break from writing really lasted throughout my teens and 20s. It began again when my husband was transferred from Perth across to Sydney. Our girls were then four and one. The passion began to surface again so I began writing to some of our friends back in Perth and a few in Adelaide. The problem was that none of these friends shared my love of writing so that kind of petered out before it really began. Then I started looking in some of the women’s magazines and once the internet was introduced, I found some that way. I also eventually found and joined a couple of penfriend groups and thereby found my first new penfriends. And so I got back to writing. Over the years, this passion has stayed with me and at one stage, I had around 200 penfriends around the world. That kept me busy – and broke!
But irrespective of all these penfriends I still had the yearning to write a book and have it published. I had completely given up on fiction as I don’t have the imagination nor creativity for that. Meanwhile my late father had been writing his book: ‘The Sawers from Pitcairn’ whenever he had the chance, for the last 20 or so years of his life. He had literally just finished the actual writing when he passed away in 1993. For the next 16 or so years the manuscript, along with piles of documents and photographs, was passed around my three older brothers and me. Round and round and round. Until it reached me one morning and I realized that something had to be done to get this book published and out there, preferably before our mother died. She was around 87 at the this stage – and while her health had been pretty good to the end (as far as I know) no-one lasts forever so we knew Mum would eventually pass on too.
Now, to ask that question again. I needed to get this book out – but how? I turned to Google. I researched publishers around Australia but couldn’t find exactly what I wanted. I knew it was useless to even think about going through a traditional publisher, which is what I would have preferred, but it just wasn’t going to happen this time. I eventually left Australia with my search and found a POD publisher in the USA. And they were absolutely amazing. I had two consultants, both knew the situation – that we were working against time – and I really could not have asked for more help. Between the three of us we worked tirelessly to get that book out in time – and it almost worked.
We missed – by one week!
It was published and went on the internet – exactly one week after Mum passed away! I was devastated but have been reassured by many that Mum knew something was about to happen and died a happy woman. Well, as happy as anyone can be when facing that stage of life as we know it.
Next book was a largely forgettable effort, published by the same company as the above. I had different consultants and wasn’t quite so happy with their efforts this time. But then the book wasn’t exactly my pride and joy either.
And then – I woke one fine morning – and my ‘epiphany’ struck! I suddenly found myself with the most amazing window of opportunity. I realized I could finally combine two of my passions – writing and the outback. And produce a book – called: ‘Red Dust Dreams’.
To read more about that, you’ll just have to buy the book.
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