‘Persisterhood’

'A special solidarity amongst women who support each other while persisting (often against all odds) at a certain task. This may be attempting to get a book published, losing unwanted kilos or even waiting together at a stage door for a celebrity to appear.'

Source: Australian Writers’ Centre Newsletter

I love this portmanteau which was made up by some genius at the Australian Writers’ Centre. It perfectly describes the relationship that I’m lucky enough to have with my favourite (okay, only) sister, Sarah Leov. The two of us are chalk and cheese, we always have been. I’m sure that for the best part of our childhood I was the boil on the bottom of an otherwise pleasant existence. But despite all of our differences, the latter part of our lives has ended up running along parallel lines.

Same, same, but different

I couldn’t believe that she married a dairy farmer. I believed even less that I was marrying a dairy farmer, but that was due to the fact I was only informed of this detail some time after accepting the proposal... Other than that, between us, in two short years we’ve managed to produce three beautiful offspring. Now that we can string a number of brain cells together at one time, we have also both chosen writing as the career that we squeeze into the crevices of our lives.

The support that we can give one another is always invaluable, not to mention; relevant, well-researched, timely and applicable to either party. Additionally, we have formed the world’s smallest writing group. She often critiques my work, and with her background of teaching english, she isn’t backward about coming forward with the red biro. I had to negotiate green biro as a demonstration in diplomacy.

She's one out of the box

I’m so impressed that she writes every morning before her daughter wakes up and when her farmer is milking cows. (Well apart from now, because her household is in quarantine lock-down due to a nasty illness which involves symptoms last endured in medieval times.) But generally, all things going to plan, she is diligently chipping away at the first draft of her novel between 5 and 7 am. That is what it takes. She’s blogging about her journey too and confessing her progress by word count every week. (I link to the above post because she is particularly nice about me in it. I’ll always be the youngest child and I won’t fight it.)

This is all really cool to share with one another. She is my teacher, my coach and my therapist. She talks me down from the ledge at least once a week at that terrible moment I’m convinced I no longer have the ability, or, for that matter, any ideas left in my head.

Worrying digital history

My favourite thing is our IM chats at those glorious moments when planets align and all children are in bed asleep at the same time. We are sitting at our computers, striding towards our writing goals and tripping on our shoe laces a bit along the way, but never walking alone.

Sarah: Just completed the first chapter of the first draft and committed my first murder. Sense of accomplishment.

Me: Woohoo! How does it feel to get blood on your hands? Satisfying?

Sarah: I kind of like it. I just beat a man to death with a cricket bat.

Me: Did you know that Brendon McCullum names all his cricket bats after racehorses?

Sarah: No I did not. Excellent trivia.

Hannah: The one he just broke was called Black Caviar. Must go, Duchess just woke up Alex. Not cool!