If I close my eyes I am instantly back there, sitting cross-legged on the floor of our family room underneath the IKEA shelves and fold-out “architect’s desk,” scribbling on scraps of paper. Sunlight slants sideways from a big wall of windows, the curtains decorated with lime concentric circles. There are lime-and-red cushions on the chairs.

The family room is dominated by a gigantic, yellow, vinyl, double-sized beanbag. On days that I am sick and stay home from school, I lie lengthwise in this beanbag and Mum lets me watch daytime TV. On one particular afternoon, one that has gone down in family folklore, Mum lets the dog inside to “comfort” me. He races through the kitchen and leaps onto the beanbag, not realising I am already in it until it is too late. He lands on my head. From that day until the day he dies, that dog will never leap into that beanbag again.

I’m not in the beanbag when I close my eyes. I’m on the floor, under the furniture. I’m writing a book. Scraps of paper surround me and on each of them is a new page of my story, thick with misspellings and childlike illustrations. Later, Mum will staple all the pages together to create my book. I am rewriting Black Beauty. “Black is my favourite colour,” I tell Mum, “because I love black horses.”

That is the first time I can remember thinking I want to be a writer.

In the years that follow, I swell with pride when my story is printed in my primary school newsletter, the Panorama (because my school’s name is Wideview, get it?). I pen self-conscious and intensely melodramatic dramas during my hippie stage in high school, inspired by a blood moon rising beyond the horizon. Once, I create a mythology for “the birth of the sun.” In my description of the “raw power and force,” I believe I have tapped something deeply inspired. My English teacher tells me she feels as though she is reading a motorcycle advertisement.

Later, I write a fable about time. A travel memoir about growing up in the country. Poems about broken hearts. I subconsciously turn every job I have into a writing job, until I stumble into a commodity analyst/journalism role and my editor becomes my mentor. Writing is now my profession, but the words I create are a long way from those motorcycle-advertisement dramas. Now, I write about wool futures and cattle markets. About business leaders and political decisions. The subject matter is less than inspiring, but my editor teaches me about plain English, the elegance of minimalism, the value of self editing.

Hunched over my desk under a flickering flourescent light on a contract writing-job for a client, I write a novella in between memos and reports. At home, insomnia turns my brain into the rabbit hole to Wonderland. My novella spirals with it, and transforms into something unintentionally tainted with magic. When the editors at Curtin University’s Black Swan Press approach me to publish my book, I am as proud as I was the day the Panorama sent out photocopies of my Nancy Drew-inspired adventure. Possibly more.

The day I get the letter to say cutbacks in funding mean Black Swan will be closing, and my contract is void, I am devastated. I take it personally, and it is months before I write again. But then I do write, and I burden my next character with more humiliation than I have ever known. It is cathartic.

I am writing this on the floor of my lounge room, cross legged, wrapped up in my dressing gown with my lap top on my knees. My two children are upstairs asleep. Madeleine is two and two months, and she loves to create stories in her little notebook. “One day…” she will promise out loud, while scribbling across a page. Then she will mutter for a little while over more pages and more scribbles, before closing the book with a loud clap and announcing, “The End!”

My fingers on the keyboard are my livelihood but, more than that, they are the outlet for my deepest emotions. The telling of my story, and of theirs. The retelling, the rewriting, the foretelling.

Some beautiful surprises have been arriving in the mail and on my doorstep in recent weeks. I feel so lucky to be on the receiving end of so much thoughtfulness and generosity.

:: Lovely cards and notes and ephemera from beautiful friends met via this blog
:: Precious cherries in the middle of winter, from my wonderful husband
:: An adorable, polka-dotted parcel of goodies, from the lovely Louise of Jubilee Road
:: The most extravagant, glorious floral postcard I’ve ever seen, from mail artist Dean Grey
:: Stunning pink roses from Tillda Flowers, with little watermelon sweets from Suga Muma
:: And this crocheted bunting from Sandra, which is so perfect I don’t even know where to start

Each of these absolutely brightened my day, and I’m so incredibly thankful to everyone who has taken the time to write to me and send these things. WOW, you guys are so generous!

It’s not exactly the same, but I thought I’d try to pay it forward a little bit by sharing some lovely bits and pieces with you all that I’ve collected from around the Internet of late. I hope you enjoy them.

1. To test any creative idea, ask yourself: what comes next?

2. These people have transformed something from the everyday (a school bus) into something wonderful (a stylish holiday home)!

3. More giant knitting. Snuggle up!

4. This made me laugh. My ideal wedding at any age

5. LOVE the look of these DIY ‘watercolour’ mugs

6. When was the last time you wrote a thank-you note?

7. Cats like food trucks too!

8. Valley of the Kings. I want to go here.

9. Fantastic list of books for creative people

10. I lost way too much time exploring The Nostalgia Machine. All the memories!

11. Don’t try this at home: railroad street art

12. Healthy nachos? Don’t mind if I do!

13. This makes me want to create my own urban jungle

14. In my job and my creative pursuits, I often still draw or write things out by hand before flipping open the laptop. Seems I’ve been doing something right.

Have you written someone a letter later? Just a little note in the mail to say “Hi, I’m thinking of you”? Let’s all send someone a lovely surprise in the mail this week. I can tell you from personal experience: it will make their day!

More mail art has been going out to say thank you to people for subscribing to this blog. People have been asking me how I decide what to draw and paint on the mail. Here’s an idea of my thinking behind this batch.

∧∧ Clare wrote in her blog about finding a figurine of Krishna in the creek near her house

∧∧ This had something to do with Liesl’s email address

∧∧ Adrienne has a blog called Tough City Writer

∧∧ Louise wrote in her comments to me, “I like rabbits”

∧∧ I had an aunt and uncle who used to live in Willoughby and they always gave me books, so I drew some for Bridie

∧∧ Relates to something Laura shared in her message to me

∧∧ Relates to something Sandra shared in her message to me

∧∧ Emily has a blog called Thimble Cat

∧∧ I wanted to make something a bit fairy-story-ish for Kwan-Yu

The end. More soon!

Lately a lot of people have been asking me about the snail mail I send. I figured it’s been a while since I shared this story, and never in the one place, so I thought I’d give it a go today. Forgive me if you already know this story: please enjoy the pretty pictures and I’ll be back with something new tomorrow.

So back a few years ago, I wrote a little novella called Airmail. It was about snail mail between strangers. A girl chose a phone number out of the phone book, at random, and started writing letters to the stranger. As her letters became increasingly surreal and urgent the recipient, an old man by the name of G.L. Solomon, was moved to shake off the shackles of his curmudgeonly, routine-driven life and experienced something of a “life renaissance.”

When the book came out, I thought it would be a fun thing to write letters to readers. So I promised to write a personal letter of thanks to anyone who read Airmail (and I did). Some of them wrote back to me, which was wonderful.

As time went by, other readers found me online, and wrote to me from all over the world. Some of them drew pictures on their mail, sent ephemera, snippets of their lives. They wrote amazing things about how my book had reached them at the right moment in their lives. Letters like this:

I am staying at a youth hostel in East Berlin and stumbled across a copy of your book. I am a forty year-old woman traveling with my 14 year old son, and readily identified with Mr Solomon’s bemusement  when he first enters the hostel (it was my first time staying at a hostel!).  Being forty this year was hard for me and I too am traveling and gathering more marbles. It’s not so much that I haven’t lived an adventuresome life, it’s just that suddenly your life seems so much shorter while the list of things you want to do grows bigger, and you realize that you have spent the last 10 years of your life raising kids and working. (could this be what a mid-life crisis is all about……duh) It’s amazing how at certain critical points in your life the right book or the right experience occurs.  Your book is part of that for me.  Today I walked past some graffitti on the side of a cafe  -’ Life is not over yet ‘ it read.

You cannot imagine how that letter made my day! (Well probably you can.)

Since I started doing this – writing Airmail, writing to book readers, writing to blog readers – I discovered a whole new community of people who love snail mail. And they are the BEST people. There’s something about people who take the time to write and send letters, and read what others send them. Nine times out of ten (probably more), they are kind, considerate, lovely people. Often funny and clever. Always generous and creative. This community is the best thing to have come out of writing my book.

Meanwhile… we had originally planned a bit of a book launch when Airmail came out. A bookstore in Sydney was going to host it, and a local online magazine was going to host a bit of an ‘after party’ on a rooftop, with a snail mail theme. We ordered a box of books ready for this event (books were included in the ticket price), but then we moved from Sydney to Queensland. We figured I could still fly back to Sydney for the event, but planning it got a lot trickier. Then we moved from Queensland to Adelaide, and the planning got even more difficult. And a move back to Sydney seemed less and less likely. We started putting out feelers in Adelaide for bookstores that might host a book launch instead but to be honest by then my heart wasn’t really in it. Then I went overseas for a month. Then I fell pregnant. Then we moved yet again, this time to Melbourne. And by then it felt like the book had been out forever (it was less than a year but the gloss had come off), and I admit I felt kind of deflated and a bit of a failure.

People were still buying my book and reading it and writing me lovely letters, but that box of books from the launch-that-didn’t-happen sat sadly at the bottom of a cupboard, mocking me. Until you. I can’t tell you how honoured I feel that you come here to this little space of mine. That you read my blog, that you take the time to comment, and that you share your stories with me. Every time I hear from you, I am blown away. Every time! It is so amazing. YOU are so amazing.

So I decided to use that sad little box and turn it into something really happy: a way to say thank-you to you for taking the time to read this blog. And because I want you to know I care, I do my best to make the mail I send you as pretty as possible. Thank you!

ps. If you subscribe to this blog (or you want to) and you’d like me to send you mail like the parcels you see on this page, just leave me your details using the form on this page.

UPDATE 5 July 2014: as of today I have run out of copies of Airmail to send you. However I would still love to send you something nice by snail-mail to say thank you for reading this blog, and I will still do my best to make it look pretty. If you have subscribed to this blog (or you want to), simply fill in your postal details on this page. And if you’re still keen to read Airmail, there’s a list of stockists here.

The following four questions about writing are part of a “blog-hop” that’s doing the rounds at the moment. If you’ve never heard of this term, a blog-hop is like a never-ending relay (if the baton could be divided an infinite number of times). I received the baton from straight-talking fellow Melbournian Annette of I Give You the Verbs. Annette is one of the friendliest, most encouraging, most connected bloggers I’ve met, and you can read about her own writing process here. Leave Annette a comment because she always responds, and she’s wonderfully chatty and supportive across social media.

1. What are you working on right now?

This blog! I’m always trying to improve it because I want it to be more useful, more interesting, and more reliable for you*. Straight after this I’m going to write you a post on an amazing Australian artist, who was kind enough to answer some questions for us about where she finds inspiration (and time) to create. That’ll go live tomorrow so stay tuned!

And also…

* An e-book – possibly a series of e-books – about Melbourne and parenting and parenting in Melbourne, and stuff like that

* Letters – lots and lots of snail mail letters to you guys. And on the back of that, I’m thinking perhaps I’ll form a mail-art pen-pal network, and/or a stationery swap. Would anyone be interested if I did that?

* A novel – it’s about a sommelier who does dastardly things to get hold of the ultimate wine. I have been working on this novel FOREVER (or so it seems), because it’s hard to get and keep your head inside a novel with little distractions running around the house

* My job! – part time, I write feature articles for magazines, and write copy and communications strategies for companies and charities

Phew that’s a lot of writing. No wonder the carpal tunnel has been acting up.

2. How does your writing differ from others in your genre?

One of the great things about personal blogs is that they are free from the constraints of house styles, or any formulaic kinds of writing. So really this question is moot. What you read here differs from others because it is my voice, writing about my life and my ideas and the things that I love and the things that I think (I hope) will bring you joy.

3. Why do you write what you do?

Being born into a literate culture brings with it many advantages. But one of the disadvantages is that many of us have lost the ability to retain things – facts, stories, ideas – without writing them down. I definitely fall into this category. In fact the way I’m not sleeping these days, I’d be in danger of forgetting my own name if it wasn’t in my blog title! So I write this blog to document the things that are important. Precious moments, shared with those I love. Places I’ve visited that I really want to visit again. The process of building a home. At the same time, I keep discovering wonderful things that I want to share with you. Creative projects that I admire (and sometimes try). Food stories. Food trucks! Snail mail! Documenting and discovering. That’s why I write this blog.

4. How does your writing process work?

My top tip – as an author, a journalist, a blogger, a copywriter and an all-round storyteller – is to break everything down into manageable portions. If you don’t know where to start, just write one paragraph. Then another, and another. When I was at university I’d break a standard 3000 word essay down into portions: 200-300 word introduction, 200 word conclusion. Three key arguments, of 800 words each. Four core elements / points to each argument, of 200 words each. That’s not much. Just start writing! Before I knew it I’d have my 3000-word essay written, and all I needed then was to give it a “big picture” finesse. That is still my writing process today, in everything I do. Just break it down and anything – even a novel – becomes achievable.

Another trick that my first editor taught me was this: you don’t have to be the expert, you just have to find the expert and ask them the right questions. Whether I’m sharing craft or recipes on this blog, writing a feature story about business, writing a novel about wine or anything else, that advice has come in handy almost every day of my writing life.

Now, what about the other writers?

Passing the baton, I want you to first meet Belgium-based Turkish blogger Gulin Senol-Dreesen. Her blog Hyper Real Details is a beautiful reflection of the fleeting moments that make life so precious. Gulin reached out to me when I had just given birth to Madeleine, and she was pregnant with her own beautiful daughter. She is such a lovely, artistic soul. Sometimes she lets her images tell the story, in others, her words shine (despite English not being her first language – can you imagine how hard that must be?). I can’t wait to read what she has to share about why she writes.

Next, I want to introduce you to Katherine Mackenzie-Smith of The Beauty of Life. Katherine is one of those people who acts on her dreams. You know how when the rest of us are sitting around thinking “I wish I had that” or “I wish I did that for a job” or “I wish that was my life”…? When Katherine thinks those things, she makes them happen. Recently Katherine switched careers from TV production to life coaching, and I can’t think of anyone more qualified to help people make their own dreams come true. I met her through her personal blog, and have followed her progress with pleasure.

Take it away ladies!

And in the meantime, tell me in the comments. Why do YOU write?

* (On that, is there anything you’d like to see more of on here? Anything you’re not so keen on? Anything you’d like to hear from me that I haven’t covered?)

What does your workspace look like? Do you like it clean and organised, or do you thrive on creative chaos?

I love those pictures of great writers sitting at their antique desks, all slumped and drowning under mountains of paper, with pictures in scraps pinned all over the walls, and old coffee cups, stacks of yellowed airmail correspondence bound in old string, desiccated red wine in dirty glasses, dusty armchairs, and dying, drying flowers… and they are invariably writing one or another of the world’s literary masterpieces, you know? That would drive me CRAZY. Which is perhaps one reason why I haven’t written any of the world’s literary masterpieces lately. I can’t even start to work until my desk is clear and my office tidy.

I’m the same in the rest of my living and working space. I can’t stand it when the house gets too messy: suddenly everything feels like it’s crowding in on top of me, I feel out of control and claustrophobic. Which seems a rather melodramatic sentence when I write it out like that, but it’s true. That’s just me.  First world problems, I know!

Anyway, all this is a lead-up to explain why things might be looking a little different on this website lately, if you’ve happened to have popped in to take a look. I’ve been having an autumn clean. I felt like my blog was starting to get a bit cluttered, a bit old and tired. I was uninspired. Like a dingy, messy old office, my blog needed a fresh coat of paint and some creative storage solutions. Some white space to make it feel clean and fresh. And some nice pictures on the walls to inspire me when the fog of creative block descends.

What do you think? Do you like it? I renamed the blog “Naomi Loves,” because this space is all about the things I love. I painted a new header in bright patterns and colours, because they make me happy. My enormously talented friend Brandi Bernoskie tweaked these things to make it all work. I’ve made it much easier for you to subscribe to receive updates via email, if that’s your thing, with a simple box on the sidebar. And there is some exciting content in the works, not the least of which that book I was telling you about!

Now, tell me about your workspace (online or offline). How do you make it somewhere you want to be?

ps. Photos are old Instagram ones (remember when we all went beserk with the filters and the frames after it first came out?) of my home office in Adelaide. That was the most amazing workspace. I wish there was a way to replicate it everywhere I go!

Sometimes, surrounding yourself with creative people is easier said than done. For example if you stay at home and look after a baby every day. I’m willing to admit it, I don’t get out much, not socially anyway. Once a week I do head off to mothers’ group and these ladies are very nice, but to be honest I don’t know them well enough yet to find out if they are “Creative People” or not. We generally spend our time talking about the frequency of poo in nappies, and how fast our babies’ fingernails grow (REALLY fast).

So, for the time being, I will surround myself with Creative People via the Internet. And hopefully via some old-fashioned mail. How will I do it?

1. Earlier this week I posted this inspiring video and it made me feel a little better about my own inability to express or create things the way I want to.

2. I joined in Pip Lincoln’s (free) blog school to try and refresh myself and my ideas. There are some AMAZING bloggers in this group. Slowly, I’m feeling more lively. Let me know if you’re part of this too.

3. And then I saw the My Creative Space project (also from Pip), and it just seemed to complete the trio. Using the list at the top of this page, I am going to take one photo a day on Instagram (I’m @naomibulger if you want to follow me). The photo on this post is my first, for “a creative space.” It’s the inspiration board I keep behind my desk. I’ll use the hashtags #amonthof and #mycreativespace to be part of the project community.

Do you want to join in? You don’t have to use Instagram. You can tweet your daily inspiration. Or blog about it. And there is a Facebook group too. Just use the hashtags so everyone can see what you’re doing.

Everything seems to get tired towards the end of the year, don’t you think? Well, not this year! May November be the month of NEW CREATIVE ENERGY. Hooray!

(ps. The beginning of that video. Does the music remind you of the movie Amelie? I really want to watch it now)

I always…

mime Madeleine sleeping for Mr B before waking her
sniff the pages of old books
wish I could bundle all my dear friends up and bring them to Melbourne
crave summer fruit (oh! plums, nectarines, mangoes, cherries, more more more)
love winter and long for snow to fall on my town

I sometimes…

make a cup of tea and read blogs in the morning
do my hair and put on makeup just to feel awake
wish I lived in my own house, instead of renting
long to travel again
cry when I look at Madeleine, just because I love her so much

I never…

let the pets into the bedroom (any more)
get too excited about hot weather, even at the beach
skip breakfast
remember phone numbers
eat offal

Always-Sometimes-Never was inspired by a little cutie pie called Janee from Yellow Bird Yellow Beard, and she was inspired by the equally cute Danni from Oh Hello Friend (I read both these blogs). Will you take a turn now?

*     *     *

And on another matter, Madeleine! (No surprises there). We plan to buy her a cot this weekend, as she has grown too big for her bassinette. Each night she wiggles around in her sleep, kicks off from the sides, and pushes herself up into the far right corner of the cradle in a bizarre angle. It never seems to bother her, though, and she always wakes up in the best of moods. My little angel.

We had such a lovely, gentle weekend: long walks through the city; making fajitas at home with friends; baking cupcakes; cuddling a baby who snores like a tractor; and I finally managed to write some long overdue letters to friends in Belgium and Germany and America, drawing pictures on the envelopes.

As you may have noticed, on Friday I launched my new blog, to absolutely no fanfare. I’ve made the move from Weebly across to WordPress, which was a torturous process because I had to cut and paste every one of my blog posts! Yeesh. This means I lost all the wonderful comments that were on the old site, something that gives me not a little sadness because the comments are what this blog is all about: community. You! I miss you! The silver lining is that WordPress allows for a much better management of comments, so I’ll actually be better able to interact with you in the future. The blog you see today is a kind of Stage 1, my content in a basic template. Shortly I’ll start working with a very talented friend who will help me customise things to make it look and interact a lot better. Maybe then I’ll permit myself a little fanfare (perhaps even a competition or two).

Also, I want to introduce you to an amazing cafe I discovered last week, the Grub Food Van. We headed up there with friends, including Madeleine’s little boyfriend, who oddly enough showed a lot more love for his green balloon and his slice of hazelnut gateau than for my princess. Hmm. Thankfully she slept right through the insult. At Grub, there’s an indoor cafe area as well as a kitchen inside a silver caravan to serve food to diners in the sunny courtyard. But my favourite space is something nestled in between: a kind of giant greenhouse with cafe tables and a vegetable garden and a ping pong table and a partial kitchen hidden behind a wall of sweet pea. I planned to go back and take some proper photographs for you, but our walk took us in the opposite direction on the weekend, so these iPhone snaps will have to do.

Speaking of greenhouses, did you ever see the movie Greencard? I’ve had this movie on the mind lately. Partly because I often sing the song from the closing credits to Madeleine when she cries, and partly because this movie is a kind of Utopian vision of inner city life. A glorious, crumbling rooftop greenhouse smack bang in the middle of Manhattan, crying out to be restored. A volunteer army of ‘Green Guerillas’ creating verdant spaces for play and food in the poorest of districts and the most barren of cityscapes. And a giant of a Frenchman (who a friend once described as “he looks like God held out a lump of clay and then just chucked it onto his face”) who is so… elemental… that he is all kinds of attractive. I first saw this movie in my early twenties and oh boy I wanted everything in it!

But back to that closing credit song. I looked everywhere to see where it came from, and turns out it was composed just for this movie. The chorus is perfect to sing to a crying baby:

Keep your eyes
On the prize
Don’t be dismayed
Don’t be dismayed
Deep in your heart
You must believe
Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
Some day.

Happy Monday.

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Carpal tunnel syndrome causes tingling and numbness in the wrist, hand and fingers. For me, it has gotten progressively worse and is now so bad that I wake up at night with excruciating pain that radiates from the tips of my fingers up to my elbow. Often I get this through the day, too.

It’s so bad now that it is impairing my capacity to use my hands, especially my right hand. Simple things like holding a fork or toothbrush, opening a door, signing my name, using a phone, carrying a bag, navigating the Internet on my laptop, have all become difficult and sometimes impossible. Typing this post is also causing extreme pain, and I’m having to fix a lot more typos than usual as my fingers spasm on the keyboard.

So I’m going to take a little break from blogging. I’ll still pop in and share things on this blog whenever I have a good day, and I’ll keep reading your blog posts whenever my hands will let me use the mouse.

Baby B is due in four weeks and hopefully the condition will go away after that. If not, I’ll have to undergo an operation as my job is to write and that’s going to require the use of my hands. So either way, I’ll be back. See you soon!

Yours truly,
Naomi xo

(photo from here)