Wrap: Bendigo Writers Festival

I’m sitting in my friends house, snuggled on the couch with my laptop with a heater on me.

I’ve come here from the festival, my ‘professional’ day over.

The interview last night was insane. I was there from 10.30pm, on air at 11pm, and left at 1.45am.

Yep, over two and a half hours.

We covered everything from the festival to blogging to social media to censorship to new media versus old media and more.

It’s all kind of a blur really.

I had my sister and another friend from Melbourne listening who both texted through-out the show. My sister helpfully suggested I should stop talking over the presenter (sorry!!) and then around twelve thirty said she was going to bed.

“No I’m still on!” I texted back.
“I can listen to you crap on at home” was her reply. Thanks for that!!

It was kind of surreal to be in the station.

I was shaking sitting in the seat in front of the mic for maybe half an hour, before I become more comfortable.

It was so much fun talking about everything I love. That coupled with the panels today (more on them later) – definitely what I want to do for the rest of my life.

He’s putting the interview up online so I’ll be providing a link here to it – because I know you all want to listen to me talk for two and a half hours

I did something incredibly stupid, incredibly me last night after the interview.

I realised around twelve thirty ish that I didn’t actually know where I was staying.

I have this friend who is a librarian in Bendigo, and the last time I was up here I stayed with her family.

Both times I’d followed her back to her house from town.

So when I was getting ready to leave the studio at quarter to two it dawned on me that I had bugger all idea how to get back to her house!

I checked the White Pages and couldn’t find it, Facebooked one of her sons (who was fast asleep and didn’t reply until this morning!) and finally studied Google Maps, trying to find any roads that looked or sounded familiar.

I found one, and set off towards it, hoping to wing it.

After thoughts of sleeping on the side of the road I finally called her, waking her in the process.

Thankfully she directed me safely back home.

Gosh! I can’t believe how stupid that was! I’d been meaning to get her address off her but just kept forgetting.

On the plus side it’s in my phone now!!

Because I finished late and drove around for a while, lost, I didn’t get to bed until 3am – so late!

I cancelled my breakfast plans and slept in until 10.30am, where I got up, ready to go to the festival!!

My first session was chairing a ‘Hot Seat’ panel with Emilie Zoey Baker.

Melburnians will be familiar with the performance poet who is just utterly amazing.

When I got to the green room, I walked in and Emilie was right at the door.

“Welcome to the Ita parade,” she joked.

In the middle of the green room was Ita Buttrose. There was a massive circle of people around her, a mixture of other speakers and volunteers, and several camera men were taking photos and videos of her talking. It was crazy!

We ducked out in search of a quick breakfast as neither of us had eaten, and after several failed attempts finally found a cafe.

Emilie was amazing. She performed two poems and we chatted about her career, poetry and changing the lives of young people.

She is such a joy to listen to and if you can make her show at The Melbourne Writers Festival - the annual Linear Notes, this year on David Bowie’s Ziggy Star Dust – I highly recommend it!!

Straight after that was my session on writing for the web; websites, blogs and social media.

We were up against Ita and I was honestly expecting about five people but much to my shock the venue – a theatrette – was almost full! We ran out of handouts and all!

Of course I’m biased, but I thought it went brilliantly.

We polled the audience on what level they were at to get a feel for what they wanted us to talk about – ie did they already have blogs? If not, we could talk about how to start one. If they did, we could discuss strategic planning.

In the end we did an introduction to blogs/how to start one and touched on social media and strategic planning.

Lots of people came up after wards and grabbed business cards, and boy am I glad I got mine!!

Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I had re-ordered my business cards as they needed updating with some new information.

I paid for a rush job on the printing as I wanted them before the festival so thank god they arrived in time!

(Hello to everyone I met at BWF!!)

After that, I had a quick lunch with the beautiful Jess, whom many readers will know as JessTheReader. She, because she is gorgeous, came all the way up to see me – Jess, you’re beautiful, thank you!

One last session in the afternoon, moderating another Hot Seat session, this time with a local Bendigo romance author called Jess Anastasi.

That was also a really interesting one as Jess talked about her books, the romance genre, 50 Shades of Gray and her career thus far.

I’m now taking the opportunity to have a quick break and blog before heading off to the artists party tonight.

I head home tomorrow and it’s kind of sad – you get into this festival bubble and the normal world is just so boring in comparison!

What have you been up to?