Transition Girl

Why transition girl?... Best answered by a quote from the Iliad....."The soul was not made to dwell in a thing; and when forced to it, there is no part of that soul but suffers violence."

Sunday, January 31, 2010

A Shift in Blog Theme - Sharing a Writer's Passion

When I originally set up this blog, I was going to limit it to musings from my holiday travels and sharing photos with friends. Much easier than crashing everyone's email systems by sending 10 huge picture files every time I returned from some trip somewhere.

But things have changed. For various reasons, I haven't been able to take a decent holiday since mid-2008 - the worst of which has been being a workplace where bosses have no qualms about cancelling leave. This has not only left me out of pocket some $15K, but it has also meant that trips planned last year to see the Western Australian Kimberleys region and to travel to Paris and Barcelona in Europe were forced to be placed back on my travel wish list for another time.

Another big change in my life is that I have returned with passion to one of my favourite past times - fiction writing. Truth be known I have been writing short stories and novellas since I was a young teenager, though there has been a considerable lull in my writing activity first when I was studying economics (channelling my creativity into patterns and problem solving instead) and second during a (now defunct) very long relationship with a brown cardigan fellow who preferred his woman to be plain vanilla types.

I still practice in the field of economics, or public policy advising to be more precise, but have returned to the hard core writing since I moved to Melbourne in late 2004. So I have a career (which I am passionate about) and another passion I pursue in my "life balance" part of the "work-life balance" equation.

Writing part time can be challenging - it took me four years to write my first novel that has the same name as my blog site - Transition Girl, and which bears little resemblance to the original physical travel theme of this site. It is a philosophical journey. It was a labour of love.

For completeness, the first novel's plot in summary is as follows: "There is an ageless philosophical question. What defines our actions and the core essence of who we are as a person? Can we pinpoint snapshot moments in time that drive our behaviour? Transition Girl takes us into the world of Lucia, who is seeking to discover if she has any inner core, and by extension, if any person does. Lucia’s journey offers a rare insight to observe a person, who leads a life of apparent hedonism pick herself apart as she tries to solve her life’s master puzzle."

And now that it is done, it is like my pipes have been unblocked. I have so many ideas for stories floating around inside my head now that I feel those ideas will spill out of my ears from the over flow.

I am now planning on using my blog site to share some of my thoughts about the writing process including occasionally excerpts from the fiction I am writing, words of others that inspire me as part of that process and (because no blog is complete with such commentary) some of my own life experiences that impact on my writing. So, through some natural evolution, this blog has morphed into what a blog should be.

Finally, my author webpage is located at:
http://www.cristinaarcher.com/ There you will find out more about what my writing landscape will look like over the next few years and there is (of course) a link to a reputable book seller if you want to purchase a copy of the first novel.