Currently, I’m snuggled under my sleeping bag in the dorm in the hostel I’m staying at: a dorm which I have to myself I might add! Another hooray for room & ensuite to myself!

I must admit I won’t be uploading any photos as my mini laptop, as much as I love it, is very slow, and I don’t have the time nor patience currently to wait!

However, you can hit LIKE on my Facebook Fan Page as I’ve been putting photos up there, and will continue for the rest of my time here.

(Side note: in extraordinarily good timing on Facebook’s behalf, when I checked Facebook on the way to the airport this morning, a thing flashed inviting me to download a new Pages app – how awesome! I’ve been on there all day. So much easier to update, interact and monitor Pages. Big win!)

I took the flight this morning as an extremely good omen as when I stuck the headphones in during take-off (ie when I can’t listen to my own music), guess what I found while flicking through the channels? The director of SWF talking about the festival! I was very excited and listened to the entire interview.

I knew I was going to miss the first part of today’s session: The Forest for the Trees: Writers & Publishing in 2012.

As Sophie Cunningham said at the end, it had been a dense day, but informative and interesting.

Six 45 minute/hour panels on different aspects of the publishing industry, and I’m still a little confused why the price was only $35/$25. They could have easily charged that per session.

It was a long day, no denying, and it was obvious as the room slowly dropped off towards the last few sessions. Which was a shame, as the last session was one of the most fascinating.

As I said, due to my flight I missed the first session, which was a real shame as I really like Sophie Cunningham.

During the second, she made an off-handed, almost joke comment, which I really loved. She said that writing – if you’re still working a 9-5 –  is often like having an affair. You have to steal secret moments, keep on going. 

I have some random notes I took, I apologise if I don’t have a speaker associated with said comments:

• You can keep going back to research until you feel that you’re ready to write, but you have to draw a line somewhere
• ‘You don’t know what you can survive til it comes at you’ – Elliot Perlman
• On getting bad reviews: ‘I understood the process so I thought it would protect me, but it didn’t’ – Sophie Cunningham
• Write everyday, it’s hard to get back on the wagon if you miss a day or two (side note: completely agree! I feel the same way about this website: if I miss a day or two, it’s a hell of a lot harder to drag me back to it – thus why those sort of gaps often stretch into a few days rather than one or two)
• Is the state of the publishing industry natural progression or a revolution?
• Panel agreed revolution
• Last year, 200 books closed down (Borders, Angus and Robertson etc) and another 40 opened (independents)
• It’s a growing trend for self-published e-book writers to approach publishers, saying that they have this e-book and could they publish it?
• ‘The sooner you lower the price, the sooner you’re devaluing books’ – Paul Baggaley
• Paul also suggested that the physical book is becoming a collector item, something for those with a book fetish
• In terms of the new wave of social media and how to navigate it from the perspective of both publishers and authors, here are the top five social networks in Australia (ie to help you select which ones you should join for marketing purposes):

1. Facebook
2. YouTube
3. Blogger
4. LinkedIn
5. Twitter

This surprised the audience, and also the rest of the panel - on the position of Twitter in fifth spot, and of the inclusion of LinkedIn. Interesting indeed…

It was held at the State Library of New South Wales, just lovely, and was an intense day of all things writing and publishing. It was like a mini festival in itself.

I over-heard a rumour that SWF might do it again next year, and I would hope they do!

Meanwhile, I’m also looking for activities to do between sessions: granted, this time is extremely limited as I’ve jam-packed myself with sessions and a few friend catch-ups, so any such activities will have to be centrally located and fairly quick. Any ideas?

And now, I have to drag myself out of bed as I’m off to see Jeffrey Eugenides - again. So excited!

He joked to me the other night that I’d already heard all his good material, but whatever. He’s worth it!

I don’t think I’ll be taking many notes if the session is basically the same as the last one I saw, but I will direct you to not only my wrap, but also Jo Case’s wrap on The Wheeler Centre’s website. Just lovely.

What are you up to tonight? Anything half as exciting as my Eugenides event?

This is no doubt a hot-topic with debates flying all around the internet.

In Writer’s Cramp: In the E-Reader Era, a Book a Year Is Slacking, The NYT explores publishing and says the once-normal ‘book a year’ is now out, in favour of two books per year.

Coupled with the fact that authors also have to maintain websites, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, write short stories for release about six weeks before their novels PLUS find time to, you know, have a life/families/etc - some are asking is it little wonder authors like the English author above are quitting?

The e-book age has accelerated the metabolism of book publishing, the article says. The push for more material comes as publishers and booksellers are desperately looking for ways to hold onto readers being lured by other forms of entertainment, much of it available nonstop and almost instantaneously.

The British thriller writer Lee Child, who created the indelible character Jack Reacher, is now supplementing his hardcover books with short stories that are published in digital-only format, an increasingly popular strategy to drum up attention for the coming publication of a novel.       

Mr. Child’s first story, a 40-page exploration of Reacher as a teenager, was released last August, several weeks before his latest novel came out in print. On the advice of his publisher, he is planning to write another digital-only short story this summer.       

“Everybody’s doing a little more,” said Mr. Child, who is published by Delacorte Press, part of Random House. “It seems like we’re all running faster to stay in the same place.”       

I particularly love the line, Today’s readers seem incapable of being overwhelmed.

I found the article via author Allison Winn Scotch, who writes,

For me personally, I could never write two books a year. I have friends who do, and I applaud them. But I know that my quality would suffer, suffer, suffer, and I also don’t think that I’d have anything fresh to write about. And I think it’s really detrimental to write a book for the sake of writing a book. But this may just be the brave new world of publishing. Only the strong will survive.

Only the strong will survive.

What do you think? Is all this too much pressure on authors?

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 at best.

I only read a handful of websites, ones who’s URL I remembered, and a couple of them weren’t even bookish websites.

So, I was kinda low on the whole bookish links situation (as you’ve probably noticed).

The night before last, after the awards ceremony, I had coffee with Steph and Sarah, and I asked Steph how she found all her fantastic bookish links for her daily Bookish News & Publishing Tidbits post. (Which you should read, if you don’t.)

She said she has lists of agents/publishers/authors in Twitter, subscribes to various websites, follows websites and that combined with other avenues means she has the best book links each day.

I told her that I often poach her links for Twitter and Facebook – giving her credit! – but I really miss wading through the pools of links and posts to find my own gems.

Of course, I came away from that coffee completely inspired (as I often do after bookish events) and set up Google Reader and am now well on my way to being in the game again!

Something I was dismayed to find was, however, that several of my favourite blogs aren’t running any more.

Take Bookends Literary Agency, for years I followed them devoutly and loved almost every word Agent Jessica Faust wrote.

In April this year she wrote her final post, saying:

In 2006 I had the idea to start a blog. Not a lot of thought went into this idea other than the fact that blogs were the hot new medium for marketing and it could help not only build our agency but our clients as well. At the same time I was cutting back on my conference speaking schedule and missed the interaction with authors and the ability to teach what I know. The blog seemed the perfect way to continue this.

It’s been five years and a terrific ride, but after much thought and deliberation I’ve decided that it’s time to say good-bye to the blog (obviously my work with BookEnds and the agency will continue).

It doesn’t seem like blogs have as much “power” as they used to, especially with the ease and speed of sources like Twitter and Facebook. Most important, however, I don’t have the passion for the blog that I once did. While I will surely miss hearing from the authors I’ve learned so much from, I think I will find other ways to interact.

This makes me sad for so many reasons, but it’s interesting to note that she said ‘It doesn’t seem like blogs have as much “power” as they used to’ - it’s not the first time I’ve heard that.

To only support that, Twitter has announced they are going to start emailing you your top Tweets.

And yesterday I read this great article: 100 Useful Blogging Tools.

They opened by saying.

Have you heard?!? Blogging is dead! It’s not, actually, but that’s what some people would like you to believe. Blogging is very much alive and well 5 months into 2012 (you’re reading a blog right now). Blogging is one of the Internet’s oldest platforms for sharing information and it’s just as important as ever to the Internet ecosystem. True, less people and businesses are blogging this year, but the bloggers that remain tend to actually publish worthwhile content. If you’re a tech startup, you can’t tell me you don’t want to be covered on Techcrunch. Yes, Twitter (a micro-blog itself) and Facebook (built-in blogging capabilities) and a slew of new apps and networks are making it easier than ever to share information, and control who sees it, but some things simply can’t be said in 140 characters or less or shouldn’t be hidden behind a walled garden. The open Web is here to stay (it would be a sad world if it disappeared) and blogging remains the best way to publish high-quality, findable and useful information quickly and easily for a very large segment of the world’s population.

But is that right?

Is this the way forward? Short character updates from Facebook and Twitter?

But surely there still has to be a medium for these updates, somewhere, someone on the internet has to have a platform for writing the articles that get circulated around.

As for me? I might have to re-evaluate all the time/energy/money spent on this website in the future, but currently it’s going to keep on chuggin’ as usual.

What do you think? Are blogs on their way out?

I have five top favourite books (they all swirl around the top equally; there is no specific order) - and when you consider one of those authors is deceased (Richard Yates), another hasn’t put out a book this year and therefore unlikely to tour (Tom Perrotta) - I’m doing pretty damn well when I say can I’ve seen the other three in the flesh: Michael Cunningham, Liane Moriarty and now I can joyfully add Jeffrey Eugenides to that list.

It was a special event, a coat-tail ride-off from Sydney Writers Festival: 10 Writers, Five Double Bills.

Joshua Cody and Jeffrey Eugenides

It’s nice to be surprised as a reader. You open the pages thinking you know how the story goes, but instead you’re ambushed by an unexpected turn, or a narrator who usually stars in a different story altogether. In back-to-back events, we bring you two contemporary American writers who break taboos and rewrite conventions as naturally as they brush their teeth.

Composer Joshua Cody says he’s not really a writer – but his raw, cerebral cancer memoir, [sic], suggests otherwise. The New York Times called it ‘the memoir of the year’ and praised the way its ‘sentences swing into you like small, gleaming axes’. This is experience alchemised into literature, folding in sex, drugs, rock n roll… and cancer.

Jeffrey Eugenides is one of the most celebrated names in contemporary American literature. From the darkly hip, deceptively slender The Virgin Suicides to the sprawling, eccentric gender adventure Middlesex, he’s known for tweaking convention. In his acclaimed latest novel, The Marriage Plot, he subverts the oldest convention in the book, delivering an end-of-the-millennium coming-of-age spiked with sly wit and Regency romance.

Jeffrey Eugenides will be in conversation with Michael Williams. Joshua Cody will be appearing with Chris Flynn.

Jeffrey Eugenides is presented in partnership with Melbourne Writers Festival.

I arrived late due to work, and hung around in the foyer waiting for the intermission.

I’d called last week and confirmed what time Eugenides would be on, as I didn’t want to miss him, and luckily it was 8pm – more than enough time.

As I sat in the foyer waiting, about ten minutes before Cody finished, in walked Eugenides.

Dear reader, it took all my might not to rush up to him like a crazed fan and jump on him.

My good sense kept me in line, thankfully, as the various security people hovering probably would have been swift to act: and swift to kick me out.

8pm couldn’t have rolled around fast enough, and finally, he was on.

Firstly, a shout-out to The Wheeler Centre Director Michael Williams, whom I always love hosting events. I love his combination of quick wit, intelligent questions and ease of conversation with the authors – so many hosts can come across awkward and stiled, but not Williams.

Notes I took:

• Jokingly, his next book will be out in 2020 (play on the fact there’s such long gaps between his books)
• If you had of looked at his bookshelf in his university days, you’d have called his books pretentious
• ‘Of course you take things from your own life and put them in your characters’ – on being his characters
• He had started another novel about a debutant ball, featuring the three main characters of The Marriage Plot, before he scrapped it, took the characters, and started another book
• This happens quite a lot, and is partly the reason he takes so long between novels.
• He doesn’t start with ideas or themes when writing, he starts with a character and a problematic situation
• ‘It’s important to have the right name for a character,’ he says, and continued on to say he can’t write the character without the right name

• He doesn’t like books without senses of humour
• ‘You write novels because you have a hard time making decisions,’ so you describe both sides, he says. Williams had questioned him on The Marriage Plot, saying that although there were lots of ideas and theories in the book, Williams wasn’t quite sure what Eugenides believed
• He doesn’t think you can write without reading
• ‘Research sometimes gives you your plot,’ he says, and describes that when researching Middlesex: ‘Research really gave me the plot!’
• He says that each book you write teaches you something for the next book
• He said that by the end of Middlesex, he knew how to do characters: something that was lacking in The Virgin Suicides
• The way The Virgin Suicides was written – from the outside, not in the girls minds or in their house – was on purpose as he couldn’t write it
• At 15 he wanted to become an actor, by 16, a writer
• He likes being on book tour

• ‘Being physically in another part of the world makes you feel different’ – rather than just reading about it
• As mentioned earlier, he is ‘constantly starting things I don’t finish’ and he doesn’t usually return to them
• The nine year wait is also part experimentation
• ‘In a way, I’m always writing the first book again’ he says, as all three of his books are drastically different and unique
• He says that he’s ‘not very good at it [writing]‘ and Williams laughed, asking how can that be when he has three almost perfect books under his belt!
• ‘You often feel when you’re writing, you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing,’ he says
• He has fond memories of Sofia Coppola, who directed and wrote the screenplay for the movie of his first novel, The Virgin Suicides
• He said there were unavoidable changes that had to be made in order for the book to appear on screen, such as actually getting inside the Lisbon house
• He said you are, ‘Pleased less as a writer when they’ve chosen your book [to make a film/tv show]‘ but then they change it so much, as the case with his short story turned movie, ‘Baster’ into The Switch
• In when he knows a story is finished: ‘I know when something’s finished when the more I work on it, the worse it gets’
• His early readers include his editor, wife and a trusted friend – who was once the editor of The Paris Review

Eugenides’ work can be broken down:

1 The Virgin Suicides: language/sentences
2 Middlesex: plot
3 The Marriage Plot: characters

Afterwards, I got my book signed and asked him about The Virgin Suicides, and about the comment he’d made earlier about not knowing how to write characters, ie not inside the sister’s heads or their house. Would it have changed the book if he had of?

He said it would have been a completely different book, and the point of the book was not knowing what was going on, everything was about these boys, these men’s, speculations.

He then gave me an unexpected piece of writing advice which I am definitely not going to repeat (it’s mine, all mine, dammit!!!) but I will say this:

Thursday can’t come fast enough.

Utterly amazing.

It all started way back when (read: about a month ago) I applied to be a judge.

There was the call-out, and I emailed a short plug for myself and a CV. I made the short-list and was sent an application form, which I promptly filled in. It included questions like why do you want to be a judge and what can you offer.

I got the phone call while I was walking down a street in Richmond; I’d just had breakfast with a former boss of mine. A wonderful, lovely woman who has been a great help, inspiration and a whole other bunch of things to me – since I’ve known her really, but also specifically these past few months.

So I was already elated from talking to her and to then get the call saying I was a judge? Amazing! Best day ever!

Next was setting up meeting times.

There were four other judges plus a few reps from the council organisation the competition. There were quite a few group emails until we settled on dates.

I have to say, I got damn lucky in that the two meeting dates chosen were the dates I wanted! The council sent us a few dates to choose from, and as I was trying to minimise the amount of time taken off work so I put forth two dates when I usually have uni (I know, I know, but the job I’d be cancelling on is where I nanny and they, you know, rely on me to look after the girls and stuff. If I cancel, the parents have to leave work early). Luckily luckily those dates suited everyone else! Success!

The first meeting consisted of two main things: getting the entries and deciding how we were going to judge.

See, there’s quite a few different ways you can judge:
• Third parties to select a short-list, from which all the judges read and then select winners
• All judges read everything and then vote
• Each judge gets an allotted selection of entries, makes a short-list, then every judge reads every entry on the short-list and then vote

And so on.

As we didn’t have hundreds of entries, everyone was happy to look at each entry.

Next: how were we going to judge?

We decided on four categories, and to give each entry a score out of ten in each category: 1. Originality (what makes the story significant?)
2. Structure (organisation, plot, presentation)
3. Expression (connection with the reader, dialogue, voice, narration)
4. Response to theme (Don’t let gambling take over)

We also decided to have a short-list of five, as the entries we liked the most might not get the best grades.

So off we went to judge!

I went a bit easy on categories two and three as we weren’t judging a ‘literary’ competition.

Personally, I read all the entries and judged as I went, filling in the scores as I finished each piece. My short-list was constantly changing as newer entries bumped out old ones.

It was quite amazing, to me, that often I’d be debating whether to give a piece say a seven or eight (out of ten) – truly wavering, not sure which way to go.

And whatever number I wrote down could decide that entries’ fate: one number was all it came down to in some cases. It was a little daunting having that power.

Meeting two was all about picking the winners! This is the fun bit as we got to sit around and debate all the entries and stand up for what entries we thought should win!

Earlier that day, we had emailed our scores to the organisers who collated them into a neat little table, which was handed out. Amazing to see the variety of the scores!

After we went around debating different points of the entries, we had to decide: how would we bring everything together?

In the end, it was decided that the short-listed entries would be given points. So if an entry had a number one short-list slot, that would get five points, a number two four points and so on.

We went around the room and read out our top five, that was translated into points and we had the winners from the short-list – and the winners from the scoring (based on the categories above).

We decided to combine the two and the five winners were the ones that scored the highest in both sections.

I was super happy with the outcome as the two entries I chose as my top two (in the short list) ended up coming first and second!

Then we decided it would be nice to give some feedback at the awards ceremony, so out of the five winners (who got prizes awarded) and three highly commended pieces, we divvied them up and each of the judges wrote a few sentences on why that piece was placed – to be read out when the winners are announced.

Then we all sat back, had a hearty laugh and exclaimed what a great job we all did!

Well no, that didn’t happen :p

But it was a fantastic experience, and something I’m definitely interested in doing again (*cough people needing judges cough*).

I thought it would also be fun to get a look at how another judge judged, so here’s Shannon:

I’d never been given a responsibility like this before, to judge. So I was very excited to be given this experience. I laid the stories in front of me, black and white pages of stories which covered the table. I had my pen at the ready, like an English teacher, I scrawled notes, gave marks for criteria, drank more tea and traced along the pulse of the stories. I favoured the stories that caught me unaware and went straight for the jugular.  There were many surprising moments where a sentence would amaze me so much that I wanted to scoop the words up and put them in my pocket. But for me, the most enjoyable part of judging was when we all came together and discussed the stories and chose winners. Often writing and reading is a very lonely task so it’s nice to be able to share this experience.

Last night was the awards ceremony, and it was held in a very fancy room at a fancy town hall and included fancy things such as lecterns and food and a room us judges claimed as our own. (Did I mention it was fancy?)

We had a running sheet, and had decided we were going to give brief feedback to the winners and shortlisted entries, and have a panel talk at the end with the top three winners.

Myself and another judge spoke on the judging process, myself and yet another judge gave the feedback when the winners were announced and three judges (including Shannon from above and the judge who gave feedback with me) were on the panel.

‘Twas a really excellent night but it dawned on me that being in this tight bubble of judging for a few weeks now: it’s over! All over!

And that made me sad, but also happy as I was really happy with the job we all did.

Any questions?

It sits on my dresser, watches me, and I watch it.

I love it, and I love the book.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw the he was going to Sydney Writers Festival.

It only dawned on me on Thursday that if he was coming all the way to Australia for SWF, then surely he’d be in Melbourne!

I was in luck: one session at a Melbourne CBD bookstore.

(Can someone explain that to me, by the way? That an international author would fly all the way to Australia, bother to come all the way to a state, and only do one half an hour public event?! I just don’t get it. Obviously they do school visits but still…)

I emailed the bookstore to book, didn’t hear back, so on Friday I called.

No such luck: it was booked out.

My heart sank. I knew it was my fault for not realising earlier (come on marketing, where are you!!) but surely they could squeeze me in?

They were doing a special afternoon tea with free food and drink for mothers and kids.

“I don’t need to eat,” I said.

They were having all these chairs set up.

“I don’t need to sit,” I said.

I still got a firm no.

I feebly tried to pull my half-baked media card, saying I had a book website and would give them lots of nice press.

“Doesn’t matter,” the booking lady said. She explained she already had a waiting list and it wouldn’t be very fair for her to bump me up, would it?

“I’m desperate,” I whined.

I could almost see her shrugging down the phone.

“He’ll be doing signings at 3.30pm,” she said. “Come then.”

Of course, that was never going to happen.

Of course I was going to rock up on time, early even, and try to worm my way in.

(I am nothing else but a dedicated bookworm!)

As luck would have it, there was nobody checking booking slips and the whole space was rather open.

There were tonnes of people there when I turned up (half an hour early) but most of the seats were empty.

My plan was to lurk in the aisles and over-hear what he was saying, but as I wondered over to the back of the event, who do I bump into but the lovely Sally Rippin! Straight away she said I should come and sit with her, her husband and son – I briefly regained my woeful tail of not having a booking and she laughed and assured me I wouldn’t be kicked out.

And so I sat with her (surrounded by about ten empty chairs mind you!) and her husband and her son and together we waited for Oliver.

Oliver Jeffers being introduced

And he came on, and he was perfect.

He was animated, hilarious, great with the kids and had lots of funny one-liners for the parents.

One woman two seats down from me was laughing so hard she was doubled over - much more than the kids!

And the woman next to me had Oliver Jeffers drawings tattooed on her arm.

Wow.

He said you need only three things to draw:
1) Something to draw on (his mother got sick of scrubbing him every day, so he found some paper)
2) Something to draw with (he has a little pen for little drawings, a regular-sized pen for regular-sized drawings and a comically large over-sized pen for large drawings)
3) An idea

Clue for the next book: it’s about a moose! Out approx September

 Because I can’t be bothered to fight with the picture editor any more, the next two photos should be swapped around: the first is of the tree Oliver drew, and quickly filled it up with various items a boy tossed in it to get down his kite.

 

 

 

 

 

The tree is starting to fill up!

THE INCREDIBLE BOOK-EATING BOY!!

Every woman is too busy to stop. 

How to Get your Mojo Back is everywoman’s guide to taking a minute for herself and turning her hectic and stressful life into one that is fulfilling. No life is free from stress, weight problems, relationship worries, but you can break the cycle, get your mojo back and begin to enjoy life again.

Written in an intimate, informal, and hugely entertaining style by medical advisor/GP/author Dr Ginni Mansberg – who has seen and dealt with it all – this book is like having a friend with all the best advice to coach you through your mission to claim your potential and live the life you deserve. 

Covering all the key problem areas — work, eating/weight, sleep, relationship, parenting issues, stress etc this book offers practical, encouraging solutions in an intimate, informal, and entertaining style.

There are quotes from women throughout, showing readers that they are not alone in their struggles. 

The author’s medical expertise/experience is evident throughout the book, as is her understanding and compassion for everyday people with everyday problems.

I feel this was particularly important for me to read considering I get approximately three hours sleep each night and can’t remember the last time I vegged in front of the television for no reason.

If you’re interested, I took a quiz that’s in the book and I was borderline being at crisis point, almost at: “If you were in my surgery, I would be insisting you take a day or two off work to sleep.”

Hmm, if only I had the luxury.

One of the problems of being a part of this large thing we call ‘the internet’ is there is no way to switch off.

Your employer might accept a medical certificate, but if The Age stopped updating for a day… Well, I’m sure it wouldn’t be pretty.

So this book intrigued me: with everyone becoming busier and busier, is it possible to get your Mojo back, and how do you go about doing it?

This book had it all: real-life stories, hints, statistics, an orderly system of different chapters for different issues.

But what I really liked was the ease of the writing; the simple yet effective suggestions and how Mansberg managed that fine line of not coming across as preachy or a know-it-all or talking down to the reader.

The book covers everything from diet and exercise, partners, sleep, stress, and many more.

It looks at each issue in one’s life in detail, and provides some steps to work on it.

If you’re busy and you feel like you’ve lost your Mojo, this will definitely help you to get it back. 

For more information,
New Holland

It’s an interesting article and I’d recommend you to have a read.

I have to admit I was shaking my head when I was reading it, but, of course, I’m reading this article through the eyes of someone who wants to be in her position: what do you mean you don’t like the deadlines? I’d kill to have deadlines! What do you mean you don’t want to put out a book a year? I’d sell my soul to put out a book a year. What do you mean you hate the isolation? Bring it on! I’d give anything not to have to deal with poo-filled nappies or crying five-year-olds and quit the old day job.

I always find it hilarious when I hear people say they want to be a teacher. So flippantly, just like that. While I, obviously, don’t have first-hand teacher experience, I can safely say, from someone who used to go out with a teacher and being a part of the literacy education organisation (where we, among other things, put on teacher PDs) that teaching is not an easy gig. You got that? Not easy. So many people assume it is easy. Oh it’s just 9-3, they say. All those holidays, they say.

Right. My ex routinely got up at some un-Godly hour of the morning to be at school by about 7.30am, and often wouldn’t leave until 6pm – or later. (In fact many times the only reason said ex left the school was because security were locking it up and everyone still there got kicked out.)

This same ex would be up til all hours doing school work - planning, marking, and everything else.

Holidays? What holidays! They were spent with more planning and marking (and also trying to regain a little piece of your sanity). I remember many times going to my ex’s house and helping cutting out things for the classroom walls (my ex had preps), photocopying worksheets. In fact I think we spent one Australia Day doing that.

Needless to say, between my ex’s school work and my crazy schedule, we didn’t get much alone time.

I wonder if Ms Swainston has even taught before, and I wonder if she knows that the ‘too much stress on authors’ is going to only intensify: but re-branded as ‘stress on teachers’.

She does confuse me with this statement:

But – cautionary tale alert! – the writer’s life isn’t what it could be. For starters, packing in the day job can be a mistake. Swainston says: “Writers have to have something as well as writing, something which feeds back into their work and makes it meaningful.” She references the 19th-century Scottish writer and reformer Samuel Smiles. “He said that if you are going to be an artist, you should have a job as well, so that you’re not relying on your art to pay your bills. If we don’t have external influences …” she pauses, “well, look at Stephen King. All his characters seem to be writers.”

Right… So is she saying she’s becoming a teacher for a day job? If so, why did she get out of her most recent book deal and throwing this whole author business in the bin?

Then there’s this:

Then there’s the lack of human interaction: “I suffer terribly from isolation while writing. I really need a job where I can be around people and learn to speak again. It’s much, much healthier to be around people. Human beings are social animals.”

No der, I wanted to shout. But then I want to ask Ms Swainston how vocal she is on social media online? (I don’t care enough to check.) Many authors say they love conversing via blogs, Twitter, Facebook: it’s become a virtual water-cooler. Then there’s other options such as writing in public places or buying a desk in a communal office space.

“I don’t have a problem with fandom,” she says. “But I don’t think fans realise the pressure they put on authors. The very vocal ones can change an author’s next book, even an author’s career, by what they say on the internet. And writers are expected to engage and respond.” She pauses. “The internet is poison to authors.”

Oh darling. Complaining about this isn’t going to make it go away. Tis the curse of being in the public eye. How many celebrities say they don’t read what’s online for that very reason? And isolating her fans with comments such as this isn’t going to help. If I was one of her fans – well, I wouldn’t be after reading this.

She says: “I have to get back to real life again. It wasn’t an easy decision, because it took a lot to get to the stage of being a published author. But during my teacher training so far, I’ve dealt with so much – flooded schools, fire alarms going off, children being sick …” And, after living in her own fantasy worlds for so long, it’s this seeming mundanity that Swainston craves. That and “doing something meaningful with my life”. But won’t she miss the writing? “Chemistry feeds that sense of wonder that made me want to be a writer in the first place,” she says. “Besides, I’ve never said I won’t write again, just that if I do write another book, I’ll do it on my terms.”

And here’s the sentence I hate the most: “doing something meaningful with my life”. So it’s not meaningful enough to write books? I don’t even know where to start in explaining how ridiculous this statement is. Especially in YA – probably less so in fantasy, I’ll acknowledge that – what can be more meaningful and fulfilling than a reader getting in contact saying they felt less alone by what you’d written? That they felt reassured they weren’t alone, they connected, and the world was a little less bleak on that day?

Ms Swainstone, I’m sorry.

I really, really dislike this article. I feel that she’s giving people in publishing bad reps, and if she really wanted to just become a teacher, then do it.

But don’t make a huge song and dance about how hard it is to be an author.

God knows being an author is hard. We hear it from those who are actually authors, and are sticking it out.

Not every career is for everyone, and it sucks you found it out the hard way that writing just isn’t for you.

But don’t go bringing down the entire industry just because you decided to quit.

Hooray! You know you want to

Y’all remember the short story contest I was judging?

Well after tonight I can say that we’ve ’been there, judged that’. I am extremely happy with the winners and short-listed entries and can’t wait for the awards ceremony.

There will be food and drink (bonus!), me talking (can’t wait!) and lots of other goodness including emerging writers being praised for their awesome stories about gambling. (Which really, is why we’re all there.)

The deets:

During April, Council held a story telling competition for young people to mark Gambling Awareness Week (14-20 May).

Council called for young people to submit stories on the topic, “Don’t let gambling take over”. Entries took the form form of  written stories, photographs, drawings, video and other kinds of media.

Winners will be announced at a ceremony at the Fitzroy Town Hall (201 Napier Street), on Monday 14 May, from 5.30pm – 7pm.

The competition was held in conjunction with Hume City Council, North East Primary Care Partnership and the Multicultural Gamblers Help Service.

So, you should come down, because if nothing else you’ll get to hear me rabbit on about the judging process, the entries, and really, whatever else takes my fancy! Hooray! Now won’t that be a sight to see!

(Of course, the other judges will be speaking to, as well as readings of the winning entries, speeches from organisers and other fun stuff like mingling.)

Come Monday night I’ll be doing a wrap of the event – as always – and I’m currently trying to secure permission to write about what the actual judging process was like.

 I really shouldn’t need to convince you more, so I’ll just leave it at see you there!

Awful news to discover that Maurice Sendak

You should check-out this tribute to Sendak, ‘Live Your Life, Live Your Life, Live Your Life’ which is just beautiful.

The LA Times also has comprehensive coverage, as do most newspapers.

Here’s ten quotes from him. One that made me smile was:

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters, sometimes very hastily, but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, ‘Dear Jim: I loved your card.’ Then I got a letter back from his mother, and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he ate it.’ That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

-Interview with Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio‘s “Fresh Air”

RIP Maurice Sendak