Year: 2017

When Linesman first came out, Sherylyn and I did a talk at one of our local libraries. There was time, afterwards, for questions.

“Do you consider yourself gifted?” one of the ladies in the audience asked.  “Having published a book and all.”

“No,” we said.  “We persevered.”

There are some truly gifted writers in the world. Not all of them are published.

Likewise, there are truly gifted artists in other areas.  People who can draw or paint, musicians, dancers. Not all of them are famous, or in jobs where they use their ability.

There are also lots of us who say, “I can’t draw.”  “I can’t write.”  “I can’t hold a tune.”

Yet most people can draw. We can write. We can hold a tune.

Provided we are taught how to.

We may not have natural, native talent that shines through, no matter what. But we can learn. If we get the chance. Or if we so want to do it that we will find a way to learn it, despite all the knockbacks we get for it.

How many people, for example, become authors if they can’t read or write?

I can’t hold a tune. But both my parents were musical. My father learned to play an instrument. My mother was natively talented. She could pick up a tune and would whistle along with it, perfectly in tune. Two of my sisters played musical instruments. They can hold tunes. I’m sure, if I learned how to, I could hold a tune too.

I can’t draw. I was never taught how to. Sherylyn couldn’t draw either. Not at school.  Until, as an adult, she decided to do a pottery course.  She enjoyed it so much she enrolled in the pottery certificate course at the local TAFE.  One of the subjects in that course was drawing. As you can imagine, she was nervous.  Like me, she thought she couldn’t draw.  I remember, at the end of the subject, we were sitting, talking, and she was sketching.  She showed me her picture.  It was me. Recognisably me.

Nowadays, she paints, and her paintings are recognisably what they’re meant to be.  She isn’t embarrassed to show them to other people.

Not bad for someone who left school ‘knowing’ they couldn’t draw or paint.

Likewise, with stories. If you want to write a novel, you have to learn how to. And then you have to persevere.  You have to write it. You have to edit it. You have to have learn the basics of grammar and sentence construction.  It’s a rare person who can write a novel on talent alone.

Most of us, luckily, are still taught to read and write at school.  Less of us are taught to draw, or paint, or play music.

I still can’t draw, but I drew the cartoon above after watching Graham Shaw’s TEDxHull talk, Why people can’t draw – and how to prove they can.  If I persevere, one day I might have drawings that I could show the world as well.

Even if I do learn to draw, I doubt that I’ll ever become more than a competent artist.  Drawing isn’t a passion for me the way writing is.  I can stop drawing, but I can’t see myself ever stop writing.

When you’re passionate about something like that, and are prepared to work and learn to improve it, that’s when the magic happens.  That’s when you go beyond ordinary into something you can be proud of.

If you’re interested in learning how to draw, I recommend Betty Edwards’ book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I know people who have worked through the book and come out with some impressive skills at the other end.

Growing up, Halloween was a weird celebration other countries (US, and maybe Canada) celebrated. We didn’t.

Over the years, Halloween has become a thing, here, with parents buying scary costumes for their children and the kids going around to neighbors’ houses. Or some of them, anyway. It hasn’t really become a thing in our suburb yet—although I can see it will—because until recently this was mostly a renter’s area, full of students who went to the local TAFE. But that’s changing. We’re in a suburb where the families are moving in. Kids are starting to appear.

So much so that this year we actually bought sweets and had them set aside in case someone rang the doorbell. No one did, so I might add that we had lollies left over (which we’re slowly eating), but … I digress.

For a long time I thought trick or treat meant that you either gave the kids lollies or scared them witless by being really scary. I know better now, but my old version of trick or treat would have worked really well in this last week.

You see, I had an injection in my eye last Tuesday and, to quote my eye doctor, “What must have happened is that somewhere along the way they nicked a blood vessel.”

For the last few days I’ve been going around thinking I looked like a vampire. Believe me, it looked bad. The blood pooled around the eye, totally covering the white. I would have taken a photo, but it looked so bad, I didn’t even want to show it.

I tell you, if it had been Halloween, and my definition of ‘trick or treat’ was scaring kids witless, all I would have had to do was answer the door in the dark and shine a torch on my face. They’d have run, screaming, and probably had nightmares for years afterwards.

Fact number one. I wasn’t a vampire.

For the first few days, I swanned (can I call it that?) around thinking I looked like a vampire. But investigating photos for the blog I realised that the pupils in vampires are red, not the whites of their eyes. So, definitely not a vampire.

In fact, the closest I could come was the Aswang of the Phillipines. A shapeshifting witch who eats unborn foetuses. According to Wikipedia, they’re not harmed by sunlight, they can be befriended, and they talk to you like any normal human. In fact, they even protect their friends and neighbours. They have bloodshot eyes, which is the result of staying up all night searching for where wakes are being held, so they can steal the bodies.

Mind you, my eye isn’t bloodshot. It is absolutely, irrevocably, bloody. There is no white whatsoever. It is red.

Blood red.

Fact number two. You can’t see how bad it is.

Seriously, other people recoil, but you can’t see how awful it looks, unless you look in the mirror.

Fact number three. It makes the eye look smaller.

I have to say, when there’s no white around the eye, the eye looks so much smaller. So all those monsters you read about that have red–or black–eyes where the white should be. Either they’ve got tiny little eyes, or otherwise their eyes are so much bigger than humans.

Fact number four. It could be worse.

I was sitting in a shop today, having my nails done, and the nail technician asked about my eye. By now, I had the spiel down pat. “I had an injection in the eye, and they nicked a blood vessel, and …”

“You’re lucky,” said the lady having her nails done next to me. “My sister had both eyes done. She spent a week walking around, looking like her husband had bashed her.”

I am lucky. It is only one eye. But believe me, I’m holding out for the week to be over.