Tim Winton’s “Eyrie” and tracing a novel

There is a fledgling manuscript, with scrappy notes and great lengths of fluff printed like typeface on two sides.   It has lay flat, dreamed of becoming more polished and less inhibited.  The pile of paper- story tucked away in the snap shut lid of a plastic storage box.

With Tim Winton’s new ‘Eyrie’, hot in my hand -the day-dreamy ‘Tasmanian’ story I began; left in pieces in my head is prodded.  If there were a more rousing writer in Australian waters, I’m yet to read them.  Only a pinch of pages in and Winton’s ‘Eyrie” has loosened the shackles and I’m savouring each sentence because I want to read like this every night, tucked under the covers with children softly snoring across the house. And write for this place too.  Conjure up a peaceful “other”, with trusted words shaped like walls to cocoon readers, like me.

This is a revered voice, a place and time; an Australian persona, presented like a map.  Winton digs narrative nuggets out of the landscape and shines them up so they look better than gold.  So he’s my crush, right.  There he is in published form, on the top shelf with some uni guide books, while I gather momentum on the keyboard.  An ebb and flow of creativity, living between these brick walls with wind coming off the coast; an all new office space up high.

‘Eyrie’, like a guide.

Living and writing does clang together and make too much noise for concentrated effort at times.  I wonder though, if in these free- flowing thought periods, a slowed down clarity can be restored.  A pause, and a birthday gift (thank you my boys) – the latest Winton weaponry– reigniting the urge to address the skint novel, under covers.