Category Archives: Blogging

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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 ...

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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 ...

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Agents for Bloggers

Lookey lookey here... Five select (mummy) bloggers now have agents!

This news was broken last month, and apparently all hell is breaking loose in the blogosphere cuz there was an article in The Courier Mail today about it.

The agency is called The Remarkables Group  and so far have signed five bloggers (three I'd read before, two I hadn't).

"Becoming professional in blogging land is the modern equivalent of an indie band in the 1980s signing with a mainstream label or writing a pop song." - The Courier Mail.

This is interesting to me, and the more I read about it the more interesting it became.

My initial thoughts were why not!

These people are getting approached by different companies for sponsorships and advertising and why shouldn't they have someone looking after it all?

(I mean, authors have agents right? And so do actors.)

But the comments are ...

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Live: From The Depths of The Rabbit Hole

 I thought it would be fun to blog live from the depths of The Melbourne Rabbit Hole at The Emerging Writers' Festival.

For a few reasons, but first and foremost is so I don't loose my mind.

Hilariously ironic given the theme of Alice in Wonderland, however last night we kicked it off with two hours and in those two hours I racked up 3,128 words (hooray!) however I did start to get that sinking feeling when you know something is going to go wrong.

It was very smash this stuff out and although the first leg was two hours (technically a bit less by the time the host said some words etc) and I was already feeling like this weekend is going to be very long indeed.

And I'm cheating: I have to leave today at about 3.30pm, 3.45pm because I have to ...

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‘It doesn’t seem like blogs have as much “power” as they used to’

I have to admit I've been a bad little blogger lately: that is, I've barely read any blogs.

I can trace this back to when I moved from Blogger to WordPress.

See, Blogger has this nifty in-built blog reader thing where you can add blogs to your reader and in a scroll box all the new posts appear.

So I subscribed to roughly one hundred bookish websites, including my own, and every time I'd log into Blogger (on average this was hourly) I'd scroll down the list until I hit my own post recent post: I knew then that I'd read all below that.

This was the perfect way to keep up-to-date with everything and I loved it.

Fast-forward to WordPress which has no such reader.

So everything sort of dropped off the radar.

I'd only read posts that I saw on Facebook or Twitter - few ...

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… Without evidence of this nature, defendant is not “media”

So I found this article about a blogger in America who is in court with investment firm Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick after she 'went out of her way' to bad-mouth them on various sites.

It's really interesting to read, and I particularly like the below definition of a journalist, and it demonstrates how the blogger doesn't fit that mould and thus isn't given the same protection/allowances as journalists are:

'Defendant fails to bring forth any evidence suggestive of her status as a journalist. For example, there is no evidence of (1) any education in journalism; (2) any credentials or proof of any affiliation with any recognized news entity; (3) proof of adherence to journalistic standards such as editing, fact-checking, or disclosures of conflicts of interest; (4) keeping notes of conversations and interviews conducted; (5) mutual understanding or agreement ...

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Blogging as Graffiti

I saw Contagion on the weekend. Jude Law's character, a journalist, is chasing Laurence Fishburne's character for information about what's happening.

Fishburne's character spits at him, "Blogging is not writing: it's graffiti with punctuation."

I smirked and, much to the dismay of those sitting around me, pulled out my phone to jot down the quote.

Of course, I started to think of defenses in my head but when I really thought about it, it's true.

But then again, that can be said of any print or online writing. As I mentioned in the interview that was posted over the weekend (you all enjoyed that, right?!) this can been seen as simply my soap box for anything I want to say. 

And, you know, people say that about certain journalists with columns in papers *cough*.

And then you could say that about authors pushing their own agenda's in ...

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Part Two of the Interview with Me!

Part one is here, written by Rani McDonald.

There are a number of perks that come with successful Blogging. Talk us through those.

Yes there are perks but they don’t come for free… well technically they do come for free but it’s a lot of work. I get tonnes of review books, even more emails from people wanting to send me books, which I’ve been forced to decline. So yeah I get a lot of free books, I get a lot of event invites, I guess I’m also privy to a lot of information. I guess another major perk is networking. I mean… I would like to think I’m a pretty good networker!

There are a lot of people out there that are in it just for the perks, how do the publishers distinguish them from the genuine literary lovers?

Totally. Word of mouth. ...

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Me interviewed! (So more of me rambling, essentially :P)

Hey kids! Something a bit different and special today: part one of a two-part interview with me by a lovely girl from uni, Rani McDonald. Read more for insights into blogging, writing, reading, books and everything related! Part two will be up tomorrow.

 

The Girl Most Likely

 In a world where the internet is fast becoming the nerve-centre of society and blogging is the new darling of the media, I sat down to talk with rising star Megan Burke about her blog, the Melbourne literary scene and her new manuscript.

It’s 11:04am on a brisk spring morning in Melbourne and I’m running late. I rummage in my bag as I walk, locate my phone and shoot off a quick text explaining. Before long there is a bleep! bleep! and a reply comes back, ‘That’s ok! ...

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A Thousand Words Festival – Tomorrow!!

GUESS WHAT!

That time of year is upon us again, where we rejoice and go to A Thousand Words Festival!

Here's the media spin by (the fantastic and awesome) festival organiser Bec Kavanagh:

Not long now until the annual celebration of books that is A
Thousand Words Festival! In 2011 we’re bigger than ever with the biggest book swap, the festival gala, interactive performance panels and books, so many books!

If you’re on holidays and are a reader, wannabe writer, emerging editor, book fiend or sucker for a story come to the festival this year. On Friday the 23rd and Saturday the 24th of September you’ll be able to come down to the Northcote Town Hall and join other writers and book lovers to talk all things bookish. YA authors Tim Pegler, Leanne Hall, Cath Crowley, Fiona Wood join many more to present a ...