My body looks a whole heap different (thank goodness… this would look decidedly bizarre for a 68 yo lady, no?), but the subject for Rodin’s sculpture ‘The Thinker’ and I share the same pose, mentally at least. We have for quite a few days, in fact.
Have changed thinking about my beloved farming memoir, ‘Old McLarsen Had Some Farms’, but fear not, that tiny handful waiting breathlessly for it to be published… it is STILL a goer. But frustratingly, it’s going to take a whole heap longer.
My latest and exhaustive (and exhausting) research proved to me that the length I envisaged for each of the 5 books in the series was wrong. I was within hours of completing the editing of the first book, ready for the toughest formatting demands yet, when I decided to do another check – this time on the preferred length of memoirs.
Of course, I’m glad to find out at this stage, but still… it’s SO hard to accept that I will need to combine the first two books into one,to create a more acceptable length of 70,000 – 80,000 words. My current first book comes in at around the 30,000 word mark. It looks a lot on my computer, and printed out… but it’s not sufficient.
Deepest thinking and agonising has made my decision to do the combination, but sadly, it’s back to the drawing board, BIG time! So now I have even more editing ahead, of even more words than the first lot, and this second book is still only in first printout form.
I cannot yet visualise when in this year I will be done, but rest assured, that good old midnight oil will be burning brightly and nightly in this neck of the woods.
To ease the great disappointment of my tiny handful of fans, here are a few of the chapter titles about to be attached to make the first book – still called ‘Brave Beginnings’, because this encompasses our apprenticeship on the vast wheat and sheep farm in Western Australia, and now also the decade of being Dairy Farmers on our very own farm. These three chapter titles could make the waiting more bearable… maybe?
To All the ‘Girls’ We’ve Loved Before (our dairy herd… our ‘girls’)
City Visitors – a word of advice (this one is hilarious)
The Mean Machine (a thoughtful look at the changes from city to country)
The Gypsy in our Souls… (have the tissue box nearby, first to mop the tears of laughter, then of sadness)
In amongst all the other thinking, I had a small light-bulb moment (one of many), that I should copy small excerpts of whatever chapter I’m editing here for a sneak preview. Do you like that idea? A bit more work, but hey… I do keep saying I’m up for a challenge, and ‘bring it on 2014’, so I can’t go all ‘deflated balloon’ on the job now, can I?
I know I quote this one often, but I love it (the one my dear Mum used often and had added to, many many years ago)
‘When you think you’ve come to the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hold on tight’
The original is variously attributed to Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin. (Illustrious company you joined, Mum.)
Hope you are all keeping your chins up in 2014, as I am,
