Backstory:
After the death of my mother on the 23 November 2019 I have been in a state of mourning and my muse has been on hiatus. I was in enforced isolation as I struggled to process. Now we are all in lockdown and the enforced recovery time has prompted my muse back to my life. I want to write a daily online diary dealing with this time for myself and share it for catharsis and posterity.

Today's writing update:
My goal today was to write. I'm attempting to maintain a loose routine so after breakfast my daughter and I went for a bike ride and then I sat down to write. 

I'm working on a chapter where Srebrenica is layed to siege as the UN debates a resolution to make it a safe zone. I notice already how the current circumstances are changing my view of the action within the book. So far I have been very focussed on the external forces that are impacting on the family, the war conditions and deprivations, but today my chapter was very focussed on the intimate interactions between family. It is as if my own focus on intimacy with my husband and daughter have brought this into sharp focus.

I also feel such a sense of gratitude that I am living in the country that I am, that we are taking the precautions that we're taking, and that I have my family close at hand to get me through this, and this is bleeding through onto the page.

So today I wrote 1,000 words and even though I've had a four month break from the manuscript, I'm snapping back quickly. I've written so much of the book and dedicated so much research time that it is so real to me.

What I'm reading: 
Novel: I am still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall-about a young girl left for dead in Canadian wilderness. It seems reality and escapism keep converging and this sense of being isolated in a bubble is making me want to find ways of processing.
Non fiction: this article by Christos Tsoilkas about our new uncertainty is so beautiful and poignant. He captures so well the reality of writers today.

I got commissioned to write this article in AEU Magazine about dealing with burnout as a teacher and it was just published in the latest issue. So it's a good news day!

Holding onto the good teaching moments from the past week:

• When I told my year 9 students that I would not be going on camp and would therefore be teaching them I prefaced it with the sentence "I'm not sure how you are going to feel about this..." I expected groans of disappointment that they won't have a slack-arse week and instead received an almost positive response of "Okay, Miss," which in year 9 speak means "we're kind of pleased."
• When I told my year 7s I would not go on camp with them and received groans of disappointments and daily checks to see whether I'm feeling better and could go. My sweeties.
  
• Delivering a lesson to year 9 students on incorporating adjectives, verbs and features of horror in their climax and reading some wonderful extracts that uplifted me.
  
• Developing a memoir scaffold orientation for my year 7 class using Bianca Elmir's Fighting Spirit as inspiration and reading some amazing orientations that I had to read out loud to class.
  
• A First Aid officer coming to my year 7 Integrated Studies class to see a student and thinking they were doing a test because they were so quiet and focussed. This one wasn't an example of inspiring teaching, but instead inspiring and diabolical classroom management by giving them a choice-complete a unit summary for Ancient Australia or stay in at lunchtime to finish. Yes, I am that teacher.
  
• Reading my year 7 plans for memoir writing and laughing out loud and feeling sad at what they want to write about. So looking forward to teaching this unit and reading the completed pieces.
  
• Another moment that happened a few weeks ago was having them write their I am poems and they were mad good. I got to know my students so well.
  
• Creating a website for the House System and finally figuring out an efficient way of streamlining the swimming carnival sign ups using an embedded Google form, and exporting responses into an Excel spreadsheet I could format. I feel so technological and accomplished. Although I did have some great teachers support me in developing this idea to concept. 

I'm holding tightly onto these moments because they have been in short supply for the past few months after my mother's death and the emotional fallout I'm still reeling from. Feeling happy almost feels like a novelty so I'm going to sit on the couch and watch Vampire Diaries with a smile on my face.... until 7.30 pm when I have to return to school to conduct a presentation to parents and teachers for the Year 7 Expo from 7.45-8.00 pm. I guess that's one more thing to be thankful-that my work/home commute is so short that I can come home instead of staying at work until 8 pm. Ah, the teaching life.

It's always a great day when I hear from readers. It is still such a novelty as it hasn't happened much with my previous books. #mademyday #thingsnobodyknowsbutme 

As a writer you squeeze every little joy you can. As publications compile lists of favourite reads Things Nobody Knows But Me was mentioned by two authors I admire. The first by Alice Pung in Frankie magazine in the pic below. And secondly by Zoya Patel on the Feminist Writers Festival website.

I made a goal of reading 40 books this year, however in November I had to revise and upped it to 45. Last year I struggled to meet my goal of 40 as I was doing a lot of research for my PhD, but this year I didn’t have to do as much. Based on a post by Sandra Ruttan who set a goal to read more Indigenous authors I made that my goal and deliberately searched for Indigenous authors. I read some non fiction for my PhD and some fiction that were based in The Balkans as part of my research too. I also wanted to ensure that I keep reading young adult fiction so that I can talk to my students and recommend books, although I also snatch their good reads as soon as they finish and borrow from the school library. I also ensure that I read more female authors than male authors, and especially that I hone in on Australian authors.
Total: 46
By Genre:
12 Crime
9 Non Fiction
10 Young Adult
13 Fiction
1 Poetry

Based on Australian Female vs Male
26 Female Australian Authors
5 Male Australian Authors
2 Anthologies of mixed gender
33 out of 46 were Australian

By interest
3 PhD research
8 Indigenous authors

Crime (12)

1. A Few Right Thinking Men by Sulari Gentil (Oz F)
2. Dead Man Switch (A Billie Walker Mystery #1) by Tara Moss  (Oz F)
3. Good Girl, Bad Girl (Cyrus Haven, #1) by Michael Robotham (Oz M)
4. The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2) by Margaret Atwood 
5. Platform Seven by Louise Doughty
6. The Cry by Helen Fitzgerald (Oz F)
7. The Pale House by Luke McAllen
8. The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid
9. The Ruin (Cormac Reilly #1) by Dervla McTiernan
10. The Lost Man by Jane Harper (Oz F)
11. Ghost Girls by Cath Ferla (Oz F)
12. Second Sight by Aoife Clifford (Oz F)

Non fiction (9)

1. Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood by Barbara Demick (PhD)
2. Unlike the Heart: A Memoir of Brain and Mind by Nicola Redhouse (Oz F)
3. Surviving Srebrenica by Hasan Hasanovic (PhD)
4. Inside the Law by Vikki Petraitis (Oz F)
5. The Last Refuge by Hasan Nuhanovic (PhD)  (Oz M)
6. Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe (Indigenous)  (Oz M)
7. Imperfect by Lee Kofman (Oz F)
8. Close to Home by Alice Pung (Oz F)
9. Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder (Oz F)

Young Adult (10)

1. Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms by Anita Heiss (Indigenous) (Oz F)
2. The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling by Wai Chim (Oz F)
3. The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf by Amber Kwaymullina (Indigenous) (Oz F)
4. Too Flash by Melissa Lucashenko (Indigenous) (Oz F)
5. Mrs Whitlam by Bruce Pascoe (Indigenous)  (Oz M)
6. Black Cockatoo by Carl Merrison (Indigenous)  (Oz M)
7. Catching Teller Crow by Ambelin Kwaymullina and Ezekiel Kwaymullina (Indigenous) (Oz F)
8. On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta (Oz F)
9. Growing up African in Australia edited by Maxine Beneba Clarke (Oz)
10. White Night by Ellie Marney (Oz F)

Fiction (13)

1. The Bad Mothers' Book Club by Keris Stainton
2. Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman (Indigenous) (Oz F)
3. Mother of Pearl by Angela Savage (Oz F)
4. The Healing Party by Micheline Lee (Oz F)
5. The Yield by Tara June Winch (Indigenous) (Oz F)
6. Love and Other Battles By Tess Woods (Oz F)
7. The Fifth Letter by Nicola Morirarty (Oz F)
8. The Best Summer Stories edited by Aviva Tuffield (Oz)
9. The Place on Dalhousie by Melina Marchetta (Oz F)
10. Down the Hume by Peter Polices  (Oz M)
11. The Good Teacher by R.M. Anderson  (Oz M)
12. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (Oz F)
13. Girl at War by Sara Nović 

Poetry (1)
Just Give Me The Pills by Koraly Dimitriadis (Oz F)​