Working in a library is an interesting experience. For example:

- A girl just answered her loudly ringing phone right next to a sign that had QUIET ROOM written on it. Underneath that it said, "This room is a designated quiet area for silent work and study. Please switch your mobile phones to silent. Phone calls and conversations can occur in other rooms of the Library. Thank you for your cooperation".

I am sitting with some State Library regulars. It's like Cheers, for us. Where everybody knows your name. Well, not your name exactly, but there's a fair bit of genial nodding that goes on. We waited for a while and let Loudy Talky Girl alone in case she wanted to quickly tell the person to call her back in five. After a while, she got louder. The regulars exchanged looks. Almost as one, we turned around and looked sternly at her. I gestured towards the sign as though perhaps it was positioned inconveniently and she couldn't quite see it.

She waved at us crossly and left.

All she was doing was reading an MX anyway. Hardly even deserved to BE here.

Peehee!

- Another girl, earlier, was sitting back from her study, peering into her mobile phone. It took me a while to figure out that she had the camera function turned on and was using it as a mirror. My phone doesn't allow me to do that, thank heavens, but when I walked past her I realised she was looking at herself critically in the phone-as-camera-as-mirror device. She was beautiful. She looked completely revolted. After a while she stood up and left. I wanted to tell her she looked lovely, but it didn't seem to be something she would necessarily believe. I wondered if it was her own appearance that made her decide to leave, or was she going anyway.

- At 12.12pm, a man wobbled in to the arts reading room. "Anyone here know where the toilets are?" he slurred. We pointed him in the right direction and he went the opposite way. He was as drunk as a skunk.

- A bloke in the Arts Reading Room, a regular like myself, sits for a great part of the day conducting with one hand while he listens to music.

It takes, as they say, all types. Although those with loudly ringing mobile phones and Loudy Talkie Voices may take themselves elsewhere please, lest they face the pious wrath of the superior regulars. Like those people at swimming pools who grunt furiously at you when you're swimming too slowly in a lane marked Fast, we are your greatest critic. Approach with caution.

I have subsequently found a few more contenders for the Best Writing In An As Yet Unrecognised Field, subsection: Text Messages. They are:

1. Tim Bain (already nominated in another category) for a text message that came in after I was misquoted in The Age saying that I wanted to hand in my citizenship documents and leave the country. Knowing this would not have pleased me, Tim sent the following text:

Bon Voyage, traitor!

2. A housemate of mine wrote the following text message when I was at the supermarket and she had stayed home:

Toilet paper? she asked hopefully.

3. Another housemate, home sick and having taught herself knitting:

I didn’t want such a long scarf but I don’t know how to cast off.

(Quite a nice metaphor I've always thought)

4. Stewart again, to Rita and myself:

Greetings fellow existers!

5. My friend Annabelle, who saw our 2007 comedy festival show which included a small appearance from Jane Austen in an Elizabethan style dress that I thought nobody would recognise:

I think my favourite thing was jane austen wearing your formal dress.

6. And lastly, from Melanie Howlett, Standing There Captain of Industry, who took me to my first Sydney Writers' Festival and saw Alex Miller reading at a session at which our table, quite literally, caught fire. Some months later, I texted Mel because I had seen Alex Miller at my local cafe. For several days, I got no response. Then:

This is a belated wow how cool that you saw alex miller! Had to google him before responding. See you very soon!
 

I love people. And it's going to be a tough decision from the judges, oh yes indeed.

Yesterday, on the topic of writing fiction, I mentioned that the category of Writing Good Emails should not be disregarded as a category worthy of praise. I have subsequently been thinking about other writing categories deserving of awards. 

For example:

Best text message

Definitely an overlooked but richly layered category, with many deserving nominees. Although this is of course contentious, I would be dishonest not to nominate my two Standing There Productions counterparts, Mr S. Thorn and Ms R. Walsh. After some consideration, here are a few nominees. I am of course open to submissions from the public in relation to this hotly contested category.

Nominee #1

R. Walsh, for her 4am text message after a massive week of hard work, at an event featuring free drinks:

"Hello. I an shambles".

I think this entry has everything. Polite salutations, information, a personal confession, and a subtext. A very hard entry to beat.

Nominee # 2

S. Thorn, for a text message that arrived just as I should have been leaving the house to get to a wedding. At the exact moment at which I was deciding perhaps I should change back into the original dress because I looked hideous and this dress and what was I thinking, comes the following message from Stew, who was two hours' drive away, in Bendigo:

"You look wonderful".

Again, this is a short message with a whole lot of punch. On the surface, it's a loving expression of support. Reading between the lines, however, it is a comment on the predictability of the always late and badly prepared recipient who should be leaving the house now, if not five minutes ago. It also provides a context for all the other times the nominee in this category uses the expression "You look wonderful", given that in this circumstance, he is prepared, sight unseen, to encourage the recipient to leave the house, regardless of whether or not she looks like an urchin character out of "Oliver!" This is either very encouraging or very discouraging, depending on your take on the nominee in this category, who is very lovely but also as cheeky as hell. 

Nominee # 3

My sister, who sends me messages such as:

"Great day for up!"

... which should in my view be the tagline for any anti-depression initiatives that might be in search of a tagline. It's from a children's book, and the above text message usually happens in Spring. 

There are of course more nominees in this category but I thought I'd get started. It's a big job, compiling forms of writing that are yet to be recognised in the form of awards, but I think I'm the girl for the job. 

As I say, submissions welcome. 

I have decided that unless I am directed towards any evidence to the contrary, I do not enjoy contemporary fiction and am going to STOP READING IT, with the exception of young adult fiction, which is usually excellent by the way and I think everyone should get a copy of anything by Meg Rosoff, Ruth Park or Doug Macleod. 

Grown-up fiction (as opposed to adult fiction, which may well be more exciting) seems at the moment to be about metaphors and nicely written descriptions of people having dull or mildly depressing times in domestic settings leading towards inevitable endings which are supposed to be a "reflection of today's ____  society".

You may insert one of the following in place of the gap:

- alienated

- post 911

- cafe latte

- media obsessed

- interconnected

- anonymous

You may at no point insert the following words in place of the gap, lest the fiction book not be awarded a prize described by the newspapers who fund it as "important":

- hilarious

- actual

By way of testing my theory that it is the novel as a form that I dislike, rather than the particular novel I am reading at the time, I have recently read some novels by excellent writers (Tim Winton, Anne Enright, John Banville) and I have come to the conclusion that, for the moment at least, while novels describing mild feelings of detachment are fashionable, the novel is a very boring and worthy structure and I much prefer:

- short stories

- autobiographies

- articles in The New Yorker that I never manage to finish

-  funny emails (from Scottish Phil, for instance, who sends me emails that I print out and read small sections of to people for days). Tim Bain is also an excellent long-distance emailer and should be highly commended in this category.

I know it is immature of me to want something to happen in my novels. I studied literature enough to know that some writers (ee cummings anyone?) think even capital letters are conformist and hierarchical. And I support them, I do, but for the time being, my tastes remain conservative in the sense that I would quite like to be interested in what happens on the next page of whatever it is I am reading. I know closure is unfashionable but trust me, it's not closure I want, it's a POINT. Looking at the booker prize list, I see the most hated book and I grin widely. Vernon God Little. The only fiction book I've liked for what we in the Young Adult Fiction world call "yonks".

Any recommendations of books that will revive my interest in the novel, or in fiction generally, are welcome and I will not pre-judge. I will even try not to post judge. I went to the MTC last night and I haven't even sworn since.

Some people I know are grown-ups. They have proper jobs and pay tax on time and donate blood regularly and know about superannuation.

They presumably have tidy bedrooms and clean cars and they enjoy cooking and plan things on weekends and go to gym regularly. They do their washing and FOLD THE CLOTHES IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS, and, probably they are all wearing two socks right now that are the same.

I am wearing, so far as anyone can tell, a skirt with stockings. This is a trick. I dislike stockings. they make me feel like I'm not who I am. Like I'm sitting an exam for a subject I didn't attend the classes for. Like I'm a size twenty wearing a size four. Like I'm a Bloodhound pretending to be a poodle. So the plan was to avoid wearing stockings and instead to wear nice leggings with warm socks and still look semi respectable while at work. This went very well. For a time.

However, due to the fact that I did not do my washing and fold the clothes immediately afterwards and in fact the clothes remain in a huge pile on my floor, it was a miracle that I found any socks this morning, let alone two that were the same colour. Having two socks that are the same colour is a poor substitute for having your life in order, though. I have thus been walking around with two black socks, one of which is knee-high and one of which PRETENDS to be kne--high and then slips back down as soon as you start walking. Walking has been a bit of a feature of my day.

Hence: girl with two black legs stands up, takes a few steps thus revealing one black leg and one leg sporting a huge white band of luminscent skin (satellite images reveal that you can in fact see my legs from the moon). Girl stops, yanks up recalcitrant sock, continues on. Stops. Repeats.

My attempts to cheat at being a grown-up have failed. One should never pretend to be someone one is not, which is why I was trying not to wear stockings in the first place. Perhaps I should wear a tracksuit everywhere and just be honest about it. At least then I'd be totally hot.

There is something nice about day jobs. Other people, a sense of routine, and, in the case of my day job, an endless supply of earl grey tea.

Not to be shirked, my friends, not to be shirked. Shirketh ye not.

On the way to the State Library this morning:

Two men, in full council gear complete with facemasks, pointing petrol powered leaf blowers at the footpath. Could not hear very loud leaf blowing machines due to extreme 100 k per hour winds blowing giant twister-style spirals of leaves and rubbish (kindly sponsored by McDonalds) throughout the suburbs while trees are blown over onto powerlines in a State-wide wind-powered path of destruction.

Little guys, pointing little machines at the footpath, attempting not to be blown over by a wind that renders them so entirely useless that they might as well sit on the footpath and discuss a better way to deal with the pending environmental disaster and the enormously important problem of the wind blowing the leaves out of the trees than by BLOWING LEAVES WITH PETROL.

Seriously, sometimes we just look so stupid.