Author: carolyncordon

Wife, mother, Poet, Writer, Art Installationist, Stand Up Comedian, Dog Enthusiast. Spending most of my time being creative in a variety of sometimes quirky ways! I have suffered in my life, I have had wonderful things occur in my life. Concentrating on the wonderful things makes it easier for me to live a great life.
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How Many Is Too Many?

carolyncordon

Ah, an interesting question this one, and the answer can depend of so many different things. How many houses is too many? I have just the one, and and satisfied with that, other people might have many houses, and there are various answers in between. I know a chap who has several rental properties, as well as his own home. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he said he has a holiday home as well.

This man has retired, and obviously earned good money at his job, and saved, or invested, or something. I didn’t have as hightly paid a job as he did, when I was ‘a worker’, and so I certainly have never had enough money to buy a rental property. My my husband and I , both more or less retired, both live good lives. We have enough of what we need, and sometimes too much of other things, but not often.

This is a way to live a good life, I feel, having enough, and not too much, of what we need, and some of what we want. We have enough money to pay our bills, almost all of the time. When we want things we usually have enough money to but them, and sometimes there’s money left over to buy extra things.

If I had lots of vegetables, more than we need, that would be a problem, trying to deal with the excess produce. If I had rental properties as well as the house I live in, I’d worry about the upkeep, getting the rent, looking after the people living in these houses …

Things like flowers, I don’t think you can have too many of them growing in a garden. If there are plenty, you can pick them and have them on display inside, while leaving others in the garden still, to look at, and enjoy. Trees, I’m sure you can have too many of them in some instances, but most of the time, having lots of trees is a wonderful thing!

Those lovely trees can attract birds and other creatures into yard, and most of the time that is a wonderful thing. But if you are growing fruit and vegetables, sometimes lots of birds can be a problem, unless you have ways to keep your produce safe. At our place we have a few strawberry plants growing in hanging baskets, and we decided that this year, we wanted to actually eat our strawberries again, instead of the birds getting them.

So we were fortunate enough to have some extra money, and bought some bird netting, so now we are able to eat some of those lovely strawberries, which always taste better than any you get from anywhere else! There aren’t lots and lots of strawberries, but just enough for us to have some every now and then.

So I think the best way to go is to have an ample sufficiency of what you like, and not much at all, of what you don’e like!

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Some Good News About Rejection!

carolyncordon

Plague Invasion, the anthology I put together last year, using works sent to me from all around the world, as well as my own country of Australia, has been given back to me by the publisher I gave it to, unpublished, and instead of being sad or upset, I am happy!

I spoke with Michael Bollen, from Wakefield Press today, and while he said it was a good anthology, he would not be able to have it ready to be launched in July, for the Gawler and Adelaide Plains Festival of Words (Recovery). In the face of these crazy Covid times, the publishing would is running hot, with many people writing books, and wanting to be published.

So I am both sad the anthology won’t be published by Wakefield Press, but happy to have this ‘baby’ back in my hands, to self publish book myself! It’s been a while since I looked at what I’d said about the terms for publishing this anthology, so I’m going to have to go back and look at it all. I’ll be sending out a form to all of the people whose work I’ve accepted, which will happen I expect, in late March.

So if April comes around, and I haven’t emailed you an author agreement form please contact me on my email address, kittycordo@gmail.com

This doesn’t feel like a rejection to me, it feels like getting my child back, after they’ve been away on a holiday! I have enough pieces for this Anthology to be a fine book as it is right now, so won’t be accepting any new works for Plague Invasion. But if this is a successful endeavour, there may well be a new anthology once this one is launched, sold, loved, and admired!

I have never done such a large project, and while I am thrilled with how this book will likely look, it’s still a very new thing for me, but I saw the time for this anthology was now, and many people wanted to be involved in such a project. The Covid issue has twists and turns, good, and bad, and this process of getting the anthology has been a bit like that too.

But the anthology will happen, and will be launched at the Festival in 2021, and I am so glad. Now, to get onto the artist for the front cover again, and see what he comes up with!

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What If ‘What You Know’ Is Rape?

carolyncordon

Write what you know, they say, whoever ‘they’ are … But what if what you know isn’t fluffy kittens, or interesting garden tips and tricks, or wise dogs with funny thoughts. What if what you know, is how it was to be sexually abused by a family friend, gang raped by some young men I’d idolised, and sexually abused by work colleagues?

How would I write about that, when the reality of it was something I rarely allowed myself to think about these days, happily married to a good man, mother of a fine son, and safe from the predatory behaviour of workmates, because I’m now a writer, and not working in a office, with Happy Hour an excuse to all get pissed, and ‘see what happens …’

Well actually, I have written about the sexual abuse, a poetry collection I put together and got published in 2011, one year after my diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis, which I am now learning, may in fact have links to sexual abuse – who’d have thought it? Well the body knows about these things, and some researchers have looked at these things, and noted the statistics about sexual abuse, and about Multiple Sclerosis are similiar … coincidence? I wonder.

Maybe there is another book in that thought, but at the moment, I’m working at feeling settled, and safe. This past week with all of it on the media, and getting hooked up and unable to escape, and feeling and remembering things I’d thought gone. A dear friend pointed out that what I’d written on Social Media sounded exactly like Complex PTSD, with memories hitting me, things I’d barely remembered, humiliating, frightening things I don’t want to remember, but my body and brain remember, whether I like it or not.

At the moment, I don’t feel that is the next book I want to write. I have a novel to finish, and a poetry collection to put together, on much happier subjects … What I am interested in doing with these sex abuse issues though, is to run workshops or at least one workshop, looking at finding peace through poetry. Being able to write things down, and making it into poetry, can be a healing thing, the idea of therapeutic creative writing is far from a new thing.

I know this, I have a book to prove I know it. I also have a blog, where I have looked at these issues, http://www.damagedchildrenpreciousgems.wordpress.com the blog having the same name as my poetry collection on the subject. So if anyone out there in South Australia is interested in such a workshop, let me know, I’ll happily present it!

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Poetry and Getting Over ‘Issues’

carolyncordon

This is serious stuff, and the current Mini ‘Me Too’ times currently happening in Australia shows how widespread this ‘issue’ my poetry helped me to get over is. But getting over things, isn’t really a thing, is it, not necessarily. I know the poetry collection I’ll say more about soon, may have felt like it helped my top ‘get over’ something I’ll refer to soon as well, didn’t actually help me to ‘get over’ just to hold at bay.

So to bring clarity to this all, the poetry collection is titled “damaged children Precious Gems”, which is a collection on the theme of child abuse, particularly sexual abuse. I put together this collection at a time when I was facing other bad, but very different things in my life, a medical related thing. But anyway, the writing of poems, and putting together of the collection helped me feel far more in control of my life, regarding the abuse I had suffered at the hands of various men.

At that time, I launched the poetry collection, I was married, being a ‘stay at home mum’ and working through my sexual abuse issues with a community worker who’s held a workshop for women with problems of abuse. That was around twenty years ago, and I was feeling in control, as I said. The book is a good one, and I’ve had plenty of praise for it. I was happy with how I was going.

But then, this week, I hear of, see, read, about the rape two years ago, of a young woman at her workplace, an awful thing, not unusual really, sadly, terribly, but that workplace was parliament house in Canberra, and her abuse was ‘allegedly’ working for the government, as she was, and the whole thing seems to have been covered up by a member of parliament, and others in the Liberal party too.

This, I hope this young woman, and another one who seems to have suffered in the same way, will get the proper treatment, and this abuser is charged with the two rapes, so the wheels of justice can do what they should do at such times. I can’t do much about this process, apart from offer support on Social Media, and watch to ensure it doesn’t get swept under the carpet again …

This has finally shown me what the concept of triggering is about, I’m feeling edgy, and things I’d thought were finished, have been hitting me this week, over and over, memories I hadn’t thought about, and had in fact forgotten, have been right there in my head, telling me that even though I’ve been full of inward praise for myself for going from victim, to survivor, and on to thriver, I’m still that victim, at least to some extent. Yes I am thriving in my life, I have eight published books, I’m involved in the poetry ‘scene’ in South Australia, I have family and friends who love me, and a good marriage with a fine man (35 years, with a fine son doing well in his life).

But the memories, oh if only I could wipe them out forever … But if I could do that, would I still be the me who was able to write such a fine book of poetry on the theme of sexual abuse? Who knows. We are all made up of the things that happen to us, and the ways we manage, or don’t manage them. I am who I am, because I have survived what has happened to me, and that medical thing I mentioned (the diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis in 2010), well there’s a possibility that may have something to do with trauma from my sexual abuse, who can tell?

But I’m actually doing well with the Multiple Sclerosis (MS), going through a long period of remission, and no real relapsing, only pseudo ones from too much heat, readily resolved by getting cooler. I’m very aware of the dangers to people with MS of getting too much stress, and I work hard to manage my life so stress isn’t there, as much as I can. It’s working well for me, but this current situation has me spending far too much time of Social Media, following the story, to see that it is properly dealt with. In reality, what can I do, but be witness, and offer support …

Maybe it’s time to resort to writing some more poetry about all of it, put my thoughts into words, and share it with others, or perhaps writing about it in prose, rather than poetry, who knows, but I know I am connecting and supporting other victims, and together, may we collectively make changes to ensure this doesn’t get cleaned up, and ignored, but gets the weight of the law applied to it, and if anyone is found guilty, they get exactly what they deserve, a jail sentence.

Us victims have had our penalty paying the price in so many trauma related ways, and we were the victim, not the perpetrator!

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Visiting a Town, or Scouting for Settings?

carolyncordon

Today I am heading off to a town I know of, and have visited previously, but don’t know really well. And because my novel is set in a town quite close to the one I’m visiting, I may well find some way to get some of what I do in my visit, into my current novel-in-progress …

And because I will be going to something, a strawberry fete, that I haven’t been to before, I’ll be looking carefully at what happens at this event, so if I every decide to run one (in my novel series), then I know what happens at them. Or if I decide to have one myself, of course! Haha, that will not happen!

I imagine doing this successfully requires lots of hard work from dedicated volunteers, and an ‘official’ who gives lots of support for the event. As I type this, I’m thinking about the characters in my “At Talloola” Cosy Murder Mystery series, and how they would fit into such an event.

The joys of writing a novel, nothing experienced is ever wasted, no matter how it goes, because you can use everything, to make it seem real. So yes, the Owen Strawberry Fete, here I come!