A voice in the world (who is Rebecca James?)

Rebecca James: grit and determination

What if the Wall Street Journal suggested that you could be the next JK Rowling, one of the most commercially successful authors of all time? What if you signed a two-book publishing contract that would gross you a million dollars? What if you went on to sell your work in 52 countries?

This is just the stuff of dreams, you say, and you’d be right. But it does happen, albeit once in the bluest of blue moons, and it’s happened to a writer who calls Canberra home.

Her name is Rebecca James and she writes gritty, dark, urban dramas about teenagers finding their way in the world. Her work contains plenty of sex and drinking and drugs, and there’s much swearing as characters go about their heady business of trying to work out who they are and what they want.

No wizardry, no love-hungry vampires, no dresses catching fire.

Who is Rebecca James? And is everything they say about her true?

The author lives with her partner Hilary, a public servant, and their four children in a most unassuming red-brick house in Canberra’s inner northern suburbs. There’s a blue people-mover parked in the driveway (no garage). On the concrete porch some kids shoes and a free weekly newspaper still in its plastic wrapping. A small brown dog comes to the door. Rebecca James follows. She is small, petite. If she were a bird she’d be a wren or a robin: inquiring, mischievous.

Inside her neat home, which I am assured has been cleaned for my benefit, James turns her attention to the coffee machine. ‘Normally we just microwave the milk but I’ll have a go at frothing it for you.’ While she works out the buttons, I notice a large unframed painting on the kitchen wall. All reds and yellows and oranges, it is immensely vibrant – vital even – in an abstract way. A silhouette of a face; is that a hand emerging from the colours? ‘I painted it,’ says Rebecca James, now using an egg-slice to inexpertly lift two pastries out of their white cardboard box. ‘Nobody likes the picture, but I do.’ She laughs freely, wildly.

We take our places in a small sitting room, which contains two long blue couches and a large flat-screen television. The room has the most peculiar aesthetic: the walls are covered with small white tiles…

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Keep reading over at the Sydney Morning Herald, which published this piece on Saturday 11 October 2014. Thanks to Sally Pryor.

Great, long, dreamy adventures

I can remember the exact moment.

I can remember exactly where I was: in the car, on the Hume, just outside Marulan, heading south. And what I told myself: You have to get your act together, take this seriously, make every effort. Get. A. Damn. Website.

The kick up the pants? I was coming home from a month-long residency at Bundanon, Arthur and Yvonne Boyd’s gift to the Australian people – I’d worked my bum off, a productive time, but I’d also connected with a bunch of extremely committed artists, many of whom spoke about the need to have a digital platform. I didn’t even have the internet on at home. Within months I got connected to the internet, had a website built and got this blog going (which recently took over the role of being the actual website). Yes, my online adventures began on the Hume Highway that morning back in 2009. But the world has moved on, I’ve moved on, nothing’s the same.

Which means I can now make a declaration: this is my 300^th post for UTCOAFITD (which clearly is the most ridiculous acronym in the history of humankind). And this will be my final weekly post.

I really have been doing this on a weekly basis from the beginning, because I read some advice somewhere or other that blog posts should be regular and frequent. On a handful of occasions I’ve done a cheeky mid-week post, but on the whole I’ve kept to my commitment. And there’s been something about that commitment: spending days thinking about what I’ll post, whether it be something that had been published elsewhere (Canberra Times, BMA Magazine) or something written for the purpose. There have been times – many times – when I haven’t known what I’d write until the pen was being put to pad, which sometimes resulted in no words at all, so I resorted to shonky visual…things.

I doubt that I’ve ever known what I’ve been doing, other than, perhaps, writing a journal that other people might read – here’s a depository of writing, one amongst a gazillion other depositories of writing. Of course, the most rewarding part has been connecting with other writers, bloggers and thinkers, some of whom I now consider friends, despite living hundreds if not thousands of kilometres away and never having met in person. This must be the best part of the digital era, surely.

What happens now?

I’m not going to call it quits, but from now on posts will be on an ad hoc basis only – perhaps on average they’ll be every month, but no longer will there be any hard and fast rules. Why? Because I’m exhausted, I’m over-committed; in the larger scheme of things, my brain is really quite small, it can only take on so much, which really isn’t that much at all. I need to prioritise. I want to spend as much time as possible reading fiction and writing fiction. I want to go on great, long, dreamy adventures; I want to be moved, confronted, changed. I’m forty-five – it’s time to start learning about how this planet works, and, I think, the best way to do that is through immersing myself in fiction.

So, fond blog, happy 300^th post. Sincere thanks to everyone who’s read and commented – I’ve appreciated our conversations very much.

Here’s to new adventures.