Hell in the hallway

A love letter to the in-between: querying agents, Adelaide winter, and the wee rituals that keep us moving.

Photo by Pierre Antona on Unsplash

I used to romanticise liminal spaces – those poetic in-betweens where one thing ends and another begins. “Where the land meets the sea,” I’d muse, “Where the plains become mountains.” Lovely, isn’t it?

Yeah nah.

Scrap that. I’m tossing those old musings into the poetic crap file. It turns out it’s not the spaces I love, it’s the idea of them. Because when you’re stuck in a real one – in that silent, gnarly echo chamber where you’re just waiting and longing to see if your efforts amount to something or nothing, it’s torture!

As my friend Kehau puts it:

 “When one door closes, another opens. But in the meantime, it’s hell in the hallway.”

Right now, I’m pacing my own hallway. My first novel, Tree Bird Fish Bell, is out in the query trenches, and apparently, it’s normal to wait three months or more for responses. I’m hitting month two - patience is not my best virtue.

Winter hasn’t helped. The biting, dry cold weather here in South Australia makes me contract like a turtle pulling back into its shell. To fight it, I started one-to-one training sessions. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them and I’m definitely stronger, but I’ve gained 3 kilos! That’s despite tweaking my calories up, down and sideways and still my plump partridge of a body smiles back at me from the scales, going ‘nup’.

Jeez, when does this stop? I think nostalgically of my mother’s generation - women who turned 30, got a shampoo-and-set, lit up a ciggy and gave zero shits about calorie deficits.

Yes, okay, many of them died younger because of that approach. And the hairdos were tragic. But still.

Anyhow, whinge over. For now.

At least Spring is sniffing around the corner. I caught a faint whiff of warmer desert air on the north wind this week and just sighed in delight. I also had a proper catch-up with Tracy.

We have this weird working cycle. We’re in each other’s pockets from October to March for the Christmas Show at the Goodwood Theatres and to prep her latest Fringe show. Then we vanish from each other’s lives until it’s time to do it all again.

We’ve started early this year for the Christmas Show, which will take place on the 16th and 17th of December, and it’s going to be two nights, as it keeps selling out. This will be year four of the show and year three for me and Tracy as a team. Hopefully it’s becoming a bit of a low-key Adelaide tradition, one twinkly Christmas tree at a time.

Between now and then, it’s gig season. A chaotic carousel of writer/celebrant/mum/actor duties with hats swapping at warp speed. It’s good, though - feeds my short attention span with a perfect mix of novelty and routine.

It’s funny how much life crams into the cracks, but that’s where the magic glows and coalesces. Hour by hour, day by day, giving love to the small things makes them stack into the big things over the years, decades and lifetimes.

So, here’s to whatever hallway you’re in. Whether you’re here in the south waiting for spring to warm your skin, or in the north preparing to coorie in as Autumn slows the collective pulse, may your next door open soon. And may there be snacks.

Catch you in a month. I might have answers by then, or maybe I’ll still be pacing.