Fully booked
Meredith Jaffé apologises in advance for the unkempt state of her home and studio. She has a new novel to promote, is 20,000 words into her next, which means she has 70,000 more words to inject before the first draft is due in just 10 weeks. In her “spare” time, she’s directing the biennial StoryFest, a weekend of storytelling in the Shoalhaven region, which follows hot on the heels of the draft deadline and takes place from June 18 to 20. Then there are family lives to coordinate, a menagerie of pets to care for, a host of speaking and facilitating commitments to juggle and a B&B to manage, so describing her life as “busy” is a gross understatement.
It turns out that Woodlands, the farmhouse Meredith shares with her software sales manager husband, Paul, and two teenagers in the rolling green hills behind the township of Milton, is not as messy as she makes out. True, there are books everywhere, optimistically piled up, waiting for a spare moment for reading, and perhaps a bit of creative clutter in her studio, but it’s far from a pigsty. There’s not a dirty plate in sight, the benchtops are clear and when Australian Country arrives early on a Sunday morning, there’s even a zucchini cake baking in the oven. Ask a busy person …
“I’m very organised and I don’t shilly-shally,” she
