May & June 2023 in Review

Maybe it seems like I’m cheating by putting two months together, especially since we’re almost halfway through July already, but I spent most of June on holiday in Japan! So I’ve combined the two into this big fun update with a lot of weird and wonderful things that happened in a mammoth two months.

Work

May was another huge month of work especially as I worked through teaching (and the end-of-semester marking!) along with mentoring, manuscript assessments, workshops, a festival, the IPEd conference and an interview.

The lovely Elaine Chennatt invited me to speak on the blog at Aniko Press about my role as a freelance editor and what it is I actually do!

As well as giving an in-depth description of my process and clearing up some misconceptions about the job of editing, I also answered some questions about how I got into my career and offer some lessons and words of advice for anyone looking at a career in the arts.

You can read the full interview at https://www.anikopress.com/indie-editors/indie-editors-series-jess-gately

I also had the pleasure of joining some fabulous people on a weekend away in Margaret River for the Margaret River Writers and Readers Festival. Other than some fabulous sessions (including those of friends Holden Sheppard for his book The Brink and Michael Trant for the launch of his book No Trace) I also had fun with my friends as we spent a lazy weekend by the fireside reading books, writing, and consuming copious amounts of quality wine.

And look I know this technically isn’t work but we had a ‘craft-a-noon’ while we were in Margaret River, and I created this little dragon on its hoard of books for my project.

I still need to paint him, but I was pretty happy with the result.

And yes, before you ask, creating all those books for him to lie on was very time consuming!

I also hosted my new Writing Speculative Fiction workshop for the first time at the Centre for the Stories.

It was a great group, some of whom were already fast speculative fiction fans and others who were only just dipping their toes in for the first time, but it was great to see everyone start developing ideas and their worlds and walk away both excited and confident that they could write something they’d be proud of!

And finally for work, I invested in this very handy guide on copyright for writers by the Australian Copyright Council so that I can continue to offer my clients well-informed and knowledgeable advice on how to go about their projects.

It did arrive the night before I went on leave though so I’m only just now getting around to flipping through it.

Reading

I love going on holiday because it gives me a chance to read more - and boy do I binge when I’m holiday. May was a flop for reading as I spent most of my days either reading assignments or reading manuscripts for clients, so I embraced the opportunity to dive into some books in June.

I started off with a chonky, dark and thought-provoking read - Babel by RF Kuang. I could be here all day unpacking some of the fabulousness of this book. This alternate reality has some minor magical elements to it but is more about empire, the institutionalised racism underlying our education systems, and the power of language and words. This book is both a love-letter and a dire warning to the power of language. I highly recommend it.

Following on from Babel, I felt like I needed something light and a bit of fun so I choose A Hunger of Thorns by Lili Wilkinson as my next read. I was oh so wrong though about it being a ‘fun’ read. A Hunger of Thorns turned out to be quite dark and its characters complicated. While the blurb suggests this is a story about ‘wild girls’ and the author clearly was trying to make a point about the roles women are expected to play, the stronger and more natural themes in the story were around toxic relationships - particularly toxic friendships.

I’ll admit to being a tad underwhelmed by the writing style, and it felt at times like Wilkinson was trying to say too much in too short a space. There were a lot of ideas and themes all jostling for attention. I don’t know if this is the intended beginning of a series or not, but there was a lot to unpack.

Since A Hunger of Thorns turned out to be dark I decided to keep following the same thread and delved into The Deep by Rivers Solomon.

The premise of this book is heavy - in an underwater society built by the water-breathing descendants of pregnant slaves thrown overboard from slave ships, Yetu is the historian and holds the memories of her people so that they don’t have to remember their traumatic origins.

This demanding role has become too much for Yetu and so she flees to the surface to escape the memories, the expectations and the responsibilities, to discover the world her people left behind long ago. Unexpectedly, however, I found in The Deep what I’d failed to find in A Hunger of Thorns. While the themes and history and emotions of this story were indeed heavy, it was laden with hope and love and, by the end, warmth. I adored this novella and can highly recommend it.

Leisure

Before I delve into holiday madness, there were some moments of magic in May. While my parents were away on their own holiday adventures, I took over babysitting duties for my 1-year-old nephew. With this guidance I have been discovering the joys of Bluey (which I now watch more than him I think) and the pains of reading the same 6-page board book 20 times in a row while being sure to make all the sound effects every single time - apparently this does not get boring for him. The fabulous artwork below (which perfectly sums up my thoughts on the matters of being an aunt) is from Penny Fournier.

As the weather cooled down here in Perth, I became dedicated to making my library a cosy safe haven in which to spend my evenings.

Chilling out in a beanbag with the fairy lights and candles (and a lightbox projecting ‘stars’ around the room which is the red, blue and green lights you can see), plus a speaker with some soothing piano and rain sounds (for when it wasn’t already raining) created the perfect reading and relaxation zone. I may also have fallen asleep in here a few times too.

And two final memes before I delve into holiday content… I’ve been feeling a lot of weird things about my own writing and creativity recently. These two memes in particular have been saved to my phone to remind me that being ‘good’ at my art also means practicing, looking after myself and not expecting instant results.

Number one comes from one of my all-time favourites - Nathan W Pyle. The second is from artist Miki Montlló

Holiday madness

Alright, and just in case you stuck around this long here are some bookish and nerdy highlights from my time in Japan. If you’re more interested in actual cultural Japan, the food, the sights, and the day-to-day fun we had, you can see it on my travel Instagram @jjgately_travels