Briefest view from the top and a false start.

Only a brief moment of respite, having climbed the mountain, planted my flag, exalted in my primacy and taken in the view, before heading down to join the unfamiliar fray of literary agents, publishers, writers, bloggers  and sundry camp followers.

A reality check: up one mountain and lo and behold another one to climb! 
Next week.
Fast forward-fast rewind;  I though I'd already reached the summit in January; not exactly popping the champagne corks but printing off multiple copies of the manuscript to hand out to friends (my beta readers), now only useful as single sided scrap paper―a huge stack cluttering up the side of my desk― after a writer friend of mine in Melbourne, whose opinion I value, sounded the alarm and suggested the ms needed more work.

My heart missed a few beats when I opened her email, eager to know  but dreading what she thought...

Dear Nino,

Let me start by saying how much I enjoyed reading the manuscript. Your writing voice is immediately accessible and inviting and I just wanted to keep reading – I can tell you, this is no mean feat, I read heaps of scripts where it’s a torture just to keep going! With this, I never stopped wanting to read on. 

Phew! Over that hurdle. Fluttering at this point but then came the spoiler (2 pages long).

I am not going to go through everything I loved/liked – I really did enjoy it all – I think it is in fact more important to talk about where I think there needs to be further thought because I do feel that there is still quite a way to go if it is going to be picked up by a publisher...

Finishing on:

The next step, I think, is to really work out what it is that you, the writer, want to say. Your take on it. The thing that you must say, want to say, need to say. That has to inform your next draft – cos, yes, you have to do another draft – and then quite likely, another one after that! 

Oh no! On the job again, a full time occupation for the last two years and I blame J my editor for the premature celebration, declaring the memoir was "a page turner" an "airport book"! If only! But I think he was punning on the title Flight of Faith and anyway, catching a plane, would you buy a book with that title? 

I am fortunate to have J, a Yorkshireman, as my editor for these reasons:
(a) He lives in Italy and is bilingual, which means he can correct my deteriorating Italian (I moved to Australia 10 years ago) and he is happy to undertake fact checking missions for me to Cortona.
(b) He is a friend who features in my story, we shared a tower in Cortona once, and he can refresh my memory and fill in the gaps, even unwittingly provide some of the dialogue, as did other friends when I questioned them via email or on skype. 

By the end of July with three complete rewrites under my belt, I was in danger of becoming deranged. (Think The Shining: "All Work and No Play makes Jack a dull boy"). The great art in painting is knowing when to stop, which I suspect is not the case with writing; there are infinite ways of saying the same thing, endlessly pecking at words, honing, polishing, diffusing chapters, then trashing huge chunks in a single, emotionally charged key stroke. Why is it that the passages you desperately try to hang on to are the ones destined to go in the end?  

This didn't make the final draft, one of my favourite anecdotes:

I had a terrible night, crashing at Marc’s apartment, puking out of the third floor bedroom window with the room whirling around me, and later stumbling to the kitchen― I couldn’t find the bathroom in the dark― shovelling penne out the window by the hand full with the sink filling up so fast.

Very early the next morning I am woken by a persistent sound of scrubbing and―bleary eyed peering out―I can see the old lady on the ground floor washing down a stone bench directly beneath.  She spots me and angrily waves her scrubbing brush up in the air at me, shouting, “Was this you?  You animal! What a disgrace!”  And pointing to the bench I had spewed over from a great height, “this is my husband’s favourite seat!”

I mumble an apology and duck back inside, trying to recall the confused events of the night.  I feel mortified and quickly dress, scribble a brief note to Marc that explains nothing except I have gone home and steal out of the apartment.  Exiting the palazzo I notice bits of pasta lodged on top of a car parked in the piazza in front of the building.

Marc calls me later in the afternoon sounding irritated. “Hey, buddy, what the hell was going on last night?  What’s the story with the old lady downstairs?  I thought she was going to attack me in the hall, and it was only her husband being stretchered out of their apartment at the same time that saved me.  Apparently he had a heart attack!”

She must have mistaken Marc for me and I have a terrible sinking feeling: was it my fault?  What if the old man was sitting there on his favourite seat and had a heart attack when I started raining down on him? 

I love the element of tragic-comedy and also the fact that it portrays me in an unfavourable light, resisting the temptation to gloss over, show and tell. (Fortunately the man's heart attack had nothing to do with my nocturnal exploits). 

One advantage of being an artist is that nobody is proscribing how much paint you use or the size of the canvas; the equivalent of the ubiquitous word count for writers.  Another would be having everything spread out in front of you, unlike writing and having to endlessly check back and find the page your train of thought is buried on.  

What I have learnt thus far: I need to get out of my studio into the garden more, heavy with the scent of Angels' trumpets at the moment, and enjoy the new view after a huge fig tree in front of the house was blown away in a storm, literally upended and somersaulted down the hill, like losing an old friend. 

And a new resolution: hopefully now that I am no longer chained to a computer and can start painting again, I will also quite smoking.