Hivemind

Cate Blanchett on winning an Oscar:  " Maybe it's just the pessimist in me when I say I feel like I've peaked."

I can understand how the brain works in these situations. Salt Story has been quite successful for a first book but coming down from the launch and the subsequent media has been pretty interesting. I still haven't finished my next book, and looking over it; it's shit. I don't like the writing. As a writer, I can see it reads like a workhouse tome, the plot is crap and it is laboured with the academic examiner looking over my shoulder. I thought I avoided that clique'd difficult second book scenario by writing them both at the same time but I sure punked myself on that one. Maybe, maybe this is it? Maybe, after all those years I have pulled off one good book and this is it.

I've been working for a landscaper friend lately. Authors, artists and actors may be famous in the media gaze but in reality, while they are busy creating content for the masses, most of them are sustaining themselves working their usual gardening round or teaching kids how to add, subtract and spell. My boss is an actor and a musician, which is cool because he will periodically ask me to pay attention when he puts down the hedge trimmer to sing a song or recite some Shakespeare. It's always a good lurk on a hot day to rest up on a shovel and listen to him. He's starred in soapies, pub bands, plays and advertisements since the 1980s but the whole time he has stayed grounded: whipper snippering down the the vincas, kikuyu, geraniums and other entwining rods that more comfortably waged folk have built for their own backs.