Why I’m a card-carrying Emerging Writers Festival fan
In amongst the crowd, everyone else seems to know one another. This time last year, I doubt I’d have known anyone. But this year I find someone I know (and there’ll be two more as the evening continues). While my friend and I chat, the official launch of the 2013 Emerging Writers Festival (EWF) program [...]
MWF: A bag of mixed quotes and reflections
From the early morning of August 24th I am in possession of a treasure. In the days that follow I find myself coming to a stop along Swanston Street and rummaging through my bag until I feel the shoelace-like necklace in my hand. When I wear it around my neck in Federation Square I anxiously [...]
It’s not a gift…
Writers festivals get us out of our garrets and into an audience. They can make us swap our view of keyboards and screens for that of a stage. They take us outside the stories we are writing, and into those of other writers. They can be inspiring. And intimidating. My local – the Melbourne Writers [...]
Writer wanted
I just popped a sign in the window at the front of my house. It says ‘Writer of long form non-fiction wanted – ENQUIRE WITHIN.’ Don’t worry, there’s no chance some unsuspecting writer will knock at my door. You can’t see the sign from the street, and anyways no one comes past. The sign is [...]
Would you like a book with that?
A couple of weeks ago an octogenarian friend of mine asked to read some of my writing, ‘None of that Internet stuff though,’ she said, swatting the idea away with her hand, ‘only real writing.’ She is a little old-fashioned, but the truth is octogenarians aren’t the only ones who value a printed page. At [...]
Crowd-funding is the new black
Life is peppered with turning points – those ‘ah-ha’ moments, or forks in the road. In my first post I wrote about a turning point I’d had at the Wheeler Centre last year. It was when I finally realised that the traditional publishing models were floundering, and that I would need to find new ways [...]
