Yearly Archives: 2012

Closed (temporarily)

I saw The Perks of Being A Wallflower last night.

As one would expect, it was amazing and intense.

And it talked about doing what I'd been doing lately:

Charlie's Last Letter excerpt.

Because I know there are people who say all these things don’t happen.
And there are people who forget what it’s like to be sixteen when they turn seventeen.
And know these will all be stories someday and our pictures will become old photographs and we’ll all become somebody’s mom or dad.
But right now these moments are not stories.

This is happening.

I've been doing that. Living life. No more concerned with making stories.

I've been taking less photos. Going to events and listening, actually listening, enjoying it, not concerned with making sure I have the right quote or rushing home to upload a post about it.

It's ...

Life.

Talking on the phone for three hours, and then the next day the other person calls you for three hours - spreading the costs out like you did in high school. Three loads of washing in one night. Learning Gangnam Style for the party shop. Wine tastings, five star hotel, 2am swims, crazy road trips to little German towns, leaving my purse in the hire car and missing the flight home in the Barossa Valley. Discovering Jeremy & Kathleen. Watching Madagascar Three and scoffing pancakes. Homework. Finding a dismembered possum in the back yard. Conferences. Treating myself to new dresses at my favourite shop. Being an adult and seeing an accountant, buying accounting software and booking my car in for a service. Being a kid and swinging on swings, running around playing chasey and dancing to Afro Circus/I Like To Move It. ...

Blogging for beginners: my first teaching gig done and dusted!

This morning marked my first blogging class.   It went for almost three hours and it was an introductory look at blogs and social media.   I had a small but engaged and active audience who questioned me constantly and really seemed to be enjoying themselves and learning lots.   (Okay, I know they were, I got pretty kick-ass feedback forms!!)   It's an amazing thing being really knowledgeable on a subject. An expert almost.   They were asking questions and I knew all the answers - and more - and it was an amazing feeling.   I did feel a bit bad though as I wasn't practising what I preached.   That whole 'make sure you blog reguarly' and here I am, my last post in August?!   Guess you kids don't want to hear excuses so instead, here's what I've been up to: -Getting ready for this course -Finishing the study period (aka semester) for uni ...

So, my two weeks at Mamamia is up

And I only have three things to say.

1) I may or may not have cried in front of Mia late last night (while in the green room at ABC studios). I thought I got away with it, but according to Twitter I didn't. Fail!

2) Mia is the most amazing person you'll ever meet. I was told that I shouldn't get my hopes up, that idols can often let you down once you meet them in real life, without the gloss of the media and all the smoke screens. But Mia has been everything I thought I knew, and more. She is the most dedicated, smart, driven person. It's been an honour just to be here, let alone anything else. Just sitting in the same room as her was... I can't even find the words.

3) I don't want to go home.

Can Fiction Writers Write About Real People?

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

I’ve been thinking lately about writing about people – dead or alive – but not as a biography. Merely fiction.

 It’s been done before, and done well: example of Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde or Michael Cunningham’s The Hours spring to mind (of Marilyn Munroe and Virginia Woolf respectively).

But does that make it right? Should authors be allowed to take living people and immortalise them in a way that might not be 100% historically accurate?

The Guardian thinks fiction is up for grabs, by anyone:

The question of whether authors have the "right" to write about living or real people is not one that should be answered by the caretakers of historical reputation. Fiction is a free-for-all, and as long as an author can find someone who'll publish what they write (or these days, publish it themselves), there are no ...

Review: Get Well Soon! My (Un)Brilliant Career as a Nurse by Kristy Chambers

If you thought TV’s Nurse Jackie told it like it was, then Get Well Soon! is one hell of a revelation.

Falling into the nursing profession, Kristy Chambers has spent almost a decade working as a nurse, with patients ranging from drug addicts through cancer patients to those in Emergency. Along the way she met some wonderfully brave people. As for others, well, you’ll need to read her book to really believe it.

Chambers is a new and idiosyncratic voice in memoir writing. Her tone is dark, her humour black, but there is honesty, heart and compassion in Get Well Soon! She shows us more than ever the incredible work done by nurses and the challenges they face.

‘My quest for a career started early, when I was four years old and gave myself a haircut to see if I liked that sort ...

Best & Worst of the Week

Today I had the honour of being the person who writes the 'Best and Worst' over at Mamamia.

It's a really surreal feeling to be writing something that is so well-known around the MM traps, something that tonnes of people comment on - it's all about sharing the best and worst of your week.

My best? MM for sure. Mamamia is amazing, Mia even more so.

My worst? Realizing I can't do everything. I had a mini (okay huge) attack of the hysterics last night when it became obvious not everything was going to get done.

It was hard, I'm not going to lie. And my best friend Beck found a million ways to say the same thing: calm down.

Something gave and while I'm still not happy about it, nothing can be done about it and so I have to live with it.

It's a huge ...

Mixed Bag

...And the winner is Tomorrow, When the War Began!

In third place: Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody

Your runner up: Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta

And the winner is: Tomorrow When The War Began by John Marsden

What a great list!

And what a great month of discussion too.

Check it all out on the Kill Your Darlings site.

Anddddd, you all can read my short story from the residency! It's gone up super-quickly, so thanks Yarra Plenty Libraries! Check it out - tell me what you think! (There's some spacing issues so bare with it!)

I feel very disconnected from the literary world lately.

Like within the last month or so.

I've been living, breathing and eating media for the past two days at Mamamia, before that the residency, the USA Consulates Office, then Bendigo Writers Festival...

August has been my insane month. 

Melbourne Writers Festival starts this week, and I'm crying ...

I am interning at Mamamia!

I have to let you guys in on a little secret, something that’s been killing me to keep to myself but now I can finally shout it from the roof tops!!

Firstly: it’s no secret, however, that I idolise Mia Freedman. I write about her often, stalked her at the Family Life Forums, practically memorised her books, articles – everything. You all know that.

So it’s with great pleasure that I can finally announce that currently – as I type! – I’m in Sydney interning for Mamamia, Mia’s website!

When I got the email saying that my application had been successful, I was at a shopping centre with my sister. We were in line, waiting for a juice, and I started jumping up and down. (There may or may not have ...

Views from the Residency

And so yesterday my residency finished, a sad mix of feelings.

I'm really proud of the story I wrote. It started to do with abandoned suitcases, and then evolved into something to do with fire water tanks (the abandoned suitcase now playing a minor but important role). I have to give a HUGE shout-out to my Uncle Ross, and Peter, one of the artists' other halves who gave me such insight into the world of farming, irrigation and fire water tanks, which I knew nothing about: but I know heaps now!

The other three artists did an amazing job, it was so exciting to be with them working in such insane quarters. Everyone produced such high-quality work and it was such an honour to be a part of it.

It was also slightly terrifying at times: we had members of the public stream in ...