by Jan Cornall
Last month as I watched yet another race on the tele where only one winner got through by a hundredth of a second, and the stories of triumph and struggle were played again and again, I couldn’t help but think of us writers and mums toiling away - training hard, honing our skills, toning our writing and time management muscles (all of them), and wonder who will be there to hand us our gold medal.

Writers, mums and athletes share many similarities. They hit the pool every morning and we hit the desk, while managing the washing, catering, child management, care giving and so on (you know the list). And if we have our heart set on publication we will do it even when we don’t feel like it. For perhaps that’s what separates the medalists from the rest of us. They never give up even when it means ending their careers in humiliating defeat. Yes, well, writer mums are experts in that too!

But the advantage of being a writer not an athlete, is in writing we can all win if we want to. Those who publish/produce their work have the satisfaction of winning. Giving up is so tempting. Giving in to the voice that says, ‘It's not good enough, you will make a fool of yourself, no-one cares if I do it or not’. If you care the world will care. If you finish the world will be waiting there to hand you your medal. Try it  and see.

So don’t give up your training regime. Ten minutes a day, more when you can manage it. Set aside the time you need to get to the next level - building up your writing muscle as you go, tricking your body into believing you can achieve your writing and creative mothering gold!

And don’t let a busy mum’s life get in the way. The years when my children were young have been some of my most productive writing years. I became so efficient at using what little time I had, I developed my own athletic powers to do a day's writing in one hour or less.

I went for gold and got it and I was the only one cheering sometimes. The thing I am proudest of is never giving up on finding a creative spark in the day no matter how gloomy and impossible it seems. So let's start handing out the medals to our kids and each other and bring some of that Olympic rhetoric back to earth where it all began – with someone’s MUM.

Authors note: On finishing writing I just remembered I hadn’t included the SEX part of this month's theme in my article. I  guess that says it all. Forgetting sex is one way to deal with it. It certainly makes life easier and less messy on many levels.

I wrote a play about a couple who locked themselves in their bedroom on a Sunday morning and locked their young children outside till 11am in an attempt to “connect” (you know what I mean)! But in reality all they wanted to do was to escape each other, their lives and the room. He was secretly digging his way out and she was climbing the walls.They squabbled about who was going to do the dishes and had lost the art of conversation only able to utter –” Do you want peanut butter or vegemite? What? Do you want peanut butter or vegemite? What? Do you want peanut butter or vegemite? What? Do you want peanut butter or vegemite? What?”and so on. In the end they have a huge fight, a storm comes the bed becomes a raft in the middle of the sea, they finally lie beached at either end of the room and find each other again, managing to remember why they loved and lusted for each other, and consummating their “connection” a minute before the kids bang on the door shouting “It's 11 o’clock we want to come in!”

Sound familiar? There is a wealth to be written on this topic in a Sex After series - Sex After Children. Sex After Divorce. Sex After Female Menopause. Sex After Male Menopause. Or simply Sex After.
Stay tuned.  ©Jan Cornall

by Jan Cornall
My mother Marjorie (who would have turned ninety last week) was my first teacher of creativity. She taught me; as Eric Maisel says in 'The Creativity Book', to make creativity my religion, to know that once you have creativity in your day, you have everything you need.

It wasn’t because she was pressuring me to make great art, or to become so successful at what I did. Of course she loved it if I created a finished painting or poem, won a prize or got published in the school magazine. But for Marj, being creative was the most important thing. She called this  important act - Aunty Lil’ing Around.

Aunty Lil was a milliner on my father’s side of the family who could throw together a hat or a dried arrangement with two bits of any old feather and tat and make it look incredible. Marj could easily spend a few hours of any day Aunty Lil’ing Around; fiddling around with stuff; making flower arrangements, throwing oil paint onto masonite, pastels and words onto paper, tripping about the garden with a magnifying glass in one hand and a sketch pad in the other, examining the stamen of tiger lilies and the veined patterns of autumn leaves; bringing back strange shaped shells and driftwood from long beach walks; hunting wild green hooded orchids in the mountains near her home; arranging rocks in patterns around the bottom of her grapefruit trees to conserve moisture; drying the hydrangea blooms in a particular mixture of salts, so they emerged a month later like a lacy fairy bouquet.
 
All these activities were part of a daily observance that Marj kept as she noticed the change from blue to purple of the hills out her kitchen window or pulled out pastels and paper to capture the brilliant sunset out the dining room window.

Marj never thought she was a great artist or great writer but every hurried sketch or poem she dashed off, I now keep as my heirlooms. They are precious reminders that there is more to life than the daily grind of work and dull task driven routines; that if we remember to take the magnifying  glass out into the garden or anywhere we go, there are worlds waiting to be discovered, observed, turned into art, ideas or simply admired in wonderment.

My mother, Marjorie Mum (as I used to call her) encouraged everyone she knew to be creative in their most unique way. Now I carry on her work, passing the knowledge on to my children and everyone I meet. transmitting  the glorious secret all artists keep - when you bring creativity to everything you do, you come ALIVE, and everyone around can’t help but be affected.

by Jan Cornall
RELAXED is  the state I will be aspiring for in ‘08. I’m planning to slow down a notch by doing everything I normally do, but  in slow motion. So join me if you will. Try it around the house at first. Pretend you are walking under water or on the moon. Do it for 15 mins or so, while you eat your breakfast and see how you feel (apart from very silly!) Try it when you are walking down the street, in the park or on the way to the water cooler ( muttering “a giant step for mankind, a slow step for me,” he he).

Why am I going on about relaxation you ask?

In the middle of the year between all my teaching and comings and goings I decided to go for all those regular medical you put off when you are too busy. You know - the mole check, pap smear, mammogram round, with a few blood tests thrown in for good measure.

The mammogram caught a little fish and I ended up having a lumpectomy (more like a slice-ectomy) with radiotherapy to follow. Don’t be alarmed. It’s only DCIS - that’s non invasive abnormal cells in the milk duct - really nothing to worry about UNLESS it decides to come back as invasive cancer which it does in 30% on women, which is why they excise it and blast the shite out of the site with radio.

I said to them “can’t I do DIY  radio therapy at home?”  Just holding a radio with John Laws Toxic Talkback  to my breast every day for 6 weeks – would kill anything for sure! They said “yes that could  help,  but didn’t you know he’s retired?” I said “oh that’s too bad, what about Alan Jones?”  They said “Laws has optimal toxicity and can only be taken live, so it will be down to the X ray room for you I’m afraid.”

As you can see I have discovered a new topic for my bent writers mind - DCIS Ductal Carcinoma In Situ, is the confused, unrecognised, misunderstood underdog of all the  breast cancers, and I am planning to MILK IT for all its worth, so stay tuned!