a flash of inspiration and advice to 'loosen the reigns a little' saw me doing a bit of writing yesterday, and i'm hoping today will continue in the same vein. actually, the creative burst was also helped along by some olfactory trigger therapy; i used some coconut soap that we bought in fiji, and it bought back a few memories - like i yelled out to mark through the mist, 'it smells like castaway in here!'. i might have to chat with the family to see if there's anything else re the whole christmas in fiji thing that i've forgotten... wouldn't it be nice to be able to make a 'research' trip* back to fiji? i found that being there last year actually helped with a lot of imagery in my writing, a lot of things brought back memories i didn't usually access very often. weird thing is, i felt the same way in queensland - so maybe my real triggers are sunshine, the ocean, and frangipanis. i did do a little hooning around with some of my cousins in qld - that probably helped a lot. though i would love to go back to fiji for christmas this year - there's a bit of a reunion happening, and a wedding, so there will be family from all over the place going. well, fingers crossed. you never know what might happen between now and then.
on a different note, it seems i will be forced to watch a current affair this evening, as norma khouri has decided to 'break her silence' to ray martin. couldn't she have picked a better show? i would have loved to have seen her on enough rope, though maybe she is a tad wary of andrew denton's crap-o-meter. from the vision they've been using on channel nine for ads for tonight's interview, it seems that ms khouri does not understand why we'd like to know what she thinks she's been doing. she said something about 'doing what she did for one purpose only' (to expose honour killings), and newspaper reports have her saying that she has yet to receive a cent of royalties, that she never expected to anyway, as the plan had always been to donate it all to charity. i understand that honour killings are a bad thing, and i think that you'd have a hard time convincing a 'western' audience otherwise. what we don't get is, why did she feel like she had to fabricate her own past in the process? you know what, it's true what people say. they're a weird bunch, them writers.
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