blog 8: In which I say, ‘Thanks a lot, Herman.’

Posted on May 22, 2011 by mgbauer

I owe a great deal to Herman Melville – at least three books.    

Page from Life magazine showing Gregory Peck as Ahab on the side of Moby Dick.

 

One day after I’d quit my job and was trying to write my first novel (a novel that I thought I’d never finish and even if I did, no one would ever publish it) the seed of another story was planted in my mind.    

It was planted by this picture of Gregory Peck from the movie of Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick. I liked the image. I’d torn it from a Life magazine and stuck it on the noticeboard beside where I wrote. It had been pinned there, along with a lot of other rubbish, for a number of years.    

On this particularly day, I paused from my writing and stared vacantly at the image. I knew Moby Dick well. I really liked the book (although I can appreciate why many people don’t). I’d studied it at Uni and written an assignment on it so I knew a lot about it. As I looked at Ahab on the side of the Great White Whale, desperately trying to get his revenge, the novel’s opening line came into my head. It’s often listed as the most famous opening line in English literature. This simple three word sentence:    

Call me Ishmael.    

That day, for some reason, I imagined a boy, saying the opposite. Not confidently identifying and introducing himself like the narrator of Moby Dick, but whingeing or complaining about his name and pleading, ‘Don’t call me Ishmael!’    

That little thought grew into a novel. Why? Because it made me curious. I wondered why this boy called Ishmael didn’t like his name. Then I wondered why his parents gave him that name. When I reasoned that perhaps they named him after the narrator of Moby Dick, I wondered why parents would do a crazy thing like that. And most importantly I wondered what sort of a boy he would be. In the end when I told his story, I gave him a characteristic I had at school – I was terrified of speaking in public.    

During the writing I found there were other connections between my novel Don’t call me Ishmael! and Moby Dick besides just the opening line and the names of the narrators. Both books also shared a theme of Revenge. I thought I could emphasize that link by using quotes from Moby Dick to introduce each of the five parts that my story was divided into.    

Moby Dick is quite a long book, but I was still surprised at the quotes I was able to find that perfectly reflected or closely tied into important elements within my story.    

However the very last thing I expected to find in a melodramatic adventure tale about whaling was a quote relating to bullying in schools. But as I was re-reading Moby Dick one day, I came across these words:    

I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies – Take someone of your own size; don’t pommel me! No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden.    

It was tailor-made perfectly for my story. I felt like I was channeling Herman Melville! Strangely enough I had a similar experience when I was using Einstein quotes throughout my novel Dinosaur Knights.  At one stage I was worried that maybe the idea of writing a story about future scientists discovering ‘time fossils’ and attempting to pull a carnivorous dinosaur for the past only to lose it in the Middle Ages, might be a little hard to swallow. Then as I was researching Einstein’s quotes on the nature of Time I came across this:    

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.     

It seemed like Albert himself was giving me the nod to go ahead and write my book. So I did.   

But my debt to Herman is even greater. His words and inspiration led to me write Dont Call Me Ishmael! which led on to a sequel Ishmael and the Return of the Dugongs and soon the third and final book of the series Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel will be making its appearance. It has been a huge joy and a blessing for me finding the characters of Ishmael and his friends and having the chance to tell their story and to share it with others. So thanks a lot Herman, you definitely rock.    

Back in 2006 when DCM Ishmael! was launched (appropriately enough considering the sea-faring connection, on a floating restaurant in Sydney) I spoke about how much I owed Dyan Blacklock from Omnibus Books for publishing my very first novel and for making it possible for me to fulfil what I thought was an impossible dream of becoming a writer. I borrowed Herman Melville’s words on that day too. In Moby Dick he wrote:    

All men live enveloped in whale-lines.    

.    

I could certainly relate to that. At the launch I finally got the opportunity to thank Dyan for cutting me free.    

Cheers
Michael

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blog 7: In which I rediscover my only attempt at a picture book

Posted on May 16, 2011 by mgbauer

I definitely have a thing about the name Joseph. I chose it as my Confirmation name. It is also my son’s name. It was the name I used for the main character in my novel The Running Man. And my first and only attempt at writing a picture book was called Joseph’s Discovery.

The picture book was about a little boy called Joseph (what a shock!) who was obsessed by dinosaurs and dreamed of discovering a dinosaur of his own. In the story Joseph attempts to draw a T-Rex with some surprising results.

The book was inspired by my son Joe who loved dinosaurs and who, at Kindy, when others kids were drawing stick figures and mutant-looking cats and dogs, was drawing anatomically correct T-Rexes etc. At one stage he also started a journal where he was attempting to draw every individual dinosaur bone in every dinosaur known to science and label it with its correct scientific name.  Joe was a constant source of amazement and wonder to Ard and me. He still is.

As well as writing the words I also added simple pencil sketches just to show how I thought the story would work. Here are two pages from near the beginning.

Every day Joseph read his dinosaur books, sang his dinosaur songs and played his dinosaur games. Sometimes, he even became a dinosaur.

 
And every night Joseph dreamed of discovering his own dinosaur …

 I liked the story and it was fun creating it.  Unfortunately though it was rejected (along with some encouraging words) by each of the half-dozen or so publishers I sent it to.

Reading it now I think I know why. Or at least, I can see things in it I would change. These days too, I understand a bit more about how expensive picture books are to produce and why many are written but few are chosen. I realise too, that I’m no Shaun Tan. But then again, who is?

In the end, I made a special, one of a kind, picture book just for my special, one of a kind, son. And Joe’s always loved it. Gotta be happy with that.

Cheers
Michael

 
 

 

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Blog 6: In which I include a poem written by a 23 yr old me.

Posted on May 14, 2011 by mgbauer

There was a little period in my life from when I was 22 through to 26 where each Christmas one of the things my mother Elsie would buy for me was a Diary. Each time she did, I made a resolution that I was going to write something for every single day of the next year. I always failed miserably.

Those entries I did manage to write usually included a brief summary of the events of the day as well as a poem. The poem was the most important bit. In the poems I would write about my most secret thoughts and feelings, my hopes and dreams, and about people and relationships. To save embarrassment if someone ever read them, I used lots of images, symbols and metaphors, to disguise who or what I was writing about. For example a girl I knew with long blonde hair was transformed into ‘the moon maiden’. (Ok you can stop pretending to dry retch now. No, seriously, it’s not funny, Stop!)

It’s a weird thing reading poems from a much younger me. Sometimes I think I’ve changed a lot. Sometimes, not at all. Sadly the vast majority of them are almost chronically cringe-worthy. Some of them are so heavy with symbols and images, that now I can’t even figure out what they were about! But I’m really glad I wrote them. And I’m really glad I kept them. It’s all the silent, empty pages that now leave me frustrated and a little sad.

Below is a poem I wrote when I was a 23 year old teacher and single. As I recall it was written between about 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning after I’d arrived home from a farewell party for someone I taught with. Clearly, I was more than a little ‘tired and emotional’. See if you can spot the ‘frustrated writer’ coming out in me in the last verse.

All My Friends – a liquid lullaby.

All my friends have fallen over
And they’re lying on their sides
All my friends are empty bottles
And they ease these chilly nights

For my friends I’ll write a love song
Something simple, soft and sad
I’ll invite a few more over
We’ll talk of all the fun we’ve had

You’d search the world for friends like these are
And no better would you find
For they give without receiving
And they just don’t seem to mind

I can feel the world revolving
Spinning slowly out to die
Twirling like a top in motion
Going nowhere, so am I

I went to see the moon at midnight
To make sure it wasn’t gone
But it had some pieces missing
I wonder who they fell upon

The clock upon the wall is ticking
It doesn’t need to, I don’t mind
It could take a rest I’m certain
That we all could spare the time

The moon has never seemed so silver
It makes me sad this song I play
Just like a boat that knows no harbour
My words drift pointlessly away …

Cheers
Michael

PS: Back then my dream was to be a singer-songwriter, so that night, along with the words, I also wrote a tune to go with them on guitar. In my perfect world, Tom Waits would sing it.

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blog 5: In which I learn something about writers and stories.

Posted on May 11, 2011 by mgbauer

2005 Reading Matters Program

The first big thing I went to as a writer was a Reading Matters Conference at the State Library of Victory in 2005. I didn’t know any of the other ‘real writers’ attending so the night I checked in to the hotel in Melbourne where we were all staying, I decided to go down to the bar and see if I might bump into someone there. I did.

Kathryn Lomer a poet, who had just written her first YA novel The Spare Room recognised me from the program. She didn’t know anyone either and she’d had exactly the same ‘bump into someone at the bar’ idea as me. We bought some drinks and found a table to the side.

Pretty soon we noticed across the room a very animated group of 20 or so people gathered around some lounge chairs, laughing and waving their hands about and talking loudly. The writers! Kathryn took out her program and we checked. Even though the photos were small and we had to take into account that some writers might have submitted ‘young-ish’ images of themselves with maybe more hair and fewer wrinkles, it wasn’t too long before we had identified 3 or 4 ‘definites’ and a bunch of ‘probablies’.

I was quite happy to play ‘Identify the Writers’ all night but eventually Kathryn said:
This is silly. Why are we sitting here? We should just go over an introduce ourselves.

To which I replied:
Great idea! What don’t YOU do that while I go and get us some more drinks?

Anyway, after rolling her eyes in disgust and mumbling something about me, which involved the word pathetic, Kathryn heading off to the writers and I headed off for the bar. But when I started to make my way over with the drinks, Kath wasn’t with the writers. She was back out our little table sitting by herself. So I went over to find out what had happened.

Apparently she’d walked right into the middle of the group, introduced herself confidently with a big smile and said: You must all be writers down for the Reading Matters Conference.

What followed was a couple of seconds of silence interspersed with confused looks, before someone replied:Writers? No, we’re all from TELSTRA.

How I laughed when Kathryn told me that. Of course when we did eventually meet the other writers over the next few days, that story got a few airings, as it has done in other times and places over the years. And as it is doing again here in this blog.

I guess what I learnt is, whereas WRITERS may be hard to find, STORIES often have a strange and surprising habit of finding you.

Cheers
Michael

PS: Kathryn Lomer’s most recent YA book is What now, Tilda B? She has also written novels and short fiction for adults such as The God in the Ink and Camera Obscura. Her second book of poetry Two Kinds of Silence won the 2007 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize in the NSW Premiers Literary Awards.

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