Kathryn Heyman - Emerging Writers Festival, 7 Enviable Lines
Friday, June 19th, 2009 | Conventions | 2 Comments
Kathryn Heyman was the last Ambassador to speak, novelist and with a very sharp mind. After her speech I chatted to her over coffee and she was very thought provoking. In addition to her writing she teaches workshops and occasional mentoring. From my brief and fascinating encounter with her I would not recommend her for a shy author still finding their voice… perhaps because I think it’s important to write that self indulgent poetry without fear when finding your voice (which is very different to expecting that work to be published).
Once you’ve found your voice and are prepared to be properly challenged and made uncomfortable she’s fascinating, fearless, intelligent, will ask you hard questions and won’t let you wimp out on the answers. I can see why she’s very picky about who she mentors. After and while I was speaking to her I went through a rainbow of emotions… and then went back to the hotel and made the script stronger.
Kathryn Heyman had lots of interesting anecdotes she had to cut out as the next session was coming close upon us. Her nuggets of wisdom, swiftly distilled through my brain were:
- You will be rejected
- Keep writing, get it wrong, play, take risks
- Be motivated by the art
- There are many different approaches - experiment
- Trust your own voice
- Write, re-write
- Be brave, be humble
- Crucially, be foolish - you’ll make discoveries
So on that note, may you all do something brave and something humble this week… no not sometime… this week… go on… and if you can, let me know how it goes. I love adventures of all shapes and sizes (except the mean ones).
lots of love
L
David Milroy - Emerging Writers Festival, 7 Enviable Lines
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | Conventions | No Comments
If Ambassador Milroy has a website I can’t find it, but google David Milroy and you will find his name attached to a range of really interesting and well regarded projects. He’s a musician, writer, playwright, artistic director, he’s won Deadly Awards and he has a really nice presence. I found him to be a really down to earth interesting guy with that rare combination of thoughtful plus active plus playful mind.
- Writing is a manifestation of thoughts, so have lots of thoughts.
- Bananas, dark chocolate and peanut butter can help the creative process
- Having a lie down can also help
- Deadlines are good
- Get critiques from people you trust, varied people (they don’t all have to be industry people), honest people
- Less with the exposition, more with the drama
- When stuck, pick a character and kill them. If everyone says no no don’t kill that character… you know you’re on to a winner. I jotted this down as a David Milroy comment… I’ve just read Graham Clements writing up this panel said Luke Devonish made this comment! Oh no, where is the truth? Oh recollection you are imperfect and this was a spot where I looked at text and filled in blanks, so Graham is probably right.
- Visualise. Visualise and strip it back to bodies in an empty space and visualise it without big fancy props or a hundred set changes.
- Humility is important
- Co-writing can be dangerous territory, be careful
- Obsession is ok and sometimes the house might fall apart for a few weeks (so get the timing of your obsessive binges right so you’re bills are paid relatively on time).
And tomorrow, at lastly last it will be the articulate and snazzy Kathryn Heyman… who by those weird washingmachine actions of the world recently taught my Dad in an intensive novel writing workshop. Dad’s been raving about her ever since.
And in other news
Sunday, June 7th, 2009 | News update | No Comments
And in other news I’m writing and doing all sorts of things while waiting for our flight. Update of our adventures by the numbers:
- 15 minutes until we board our plane for Los Angeles
- 45 minutes until the plane takes off (nominally)
- 10am Monday we leave Australia, we travel for 14 hours and arrive 7.30am Monday. Ah the joys of time travel.
- 7 days in Los Angeles
- 10 days in Portland
- then 6 weeks at Clarion
- 1-14 days amount of time I need to have my ankle in a brace. Given my physiotherapist will be on another continent I’m going to go for the conservative end of things.
- ?????? amount of time we will live in America.
It still hasn’t quite sunk in. We’re going, we’re on our way. I am so full of enthusiasm and excitement. We are in a state of becoming.
Rachel Hills - Emerging Writers Festival, 7 Enviable Lines
Sunday, June 7th, 2009 | Conventions | No Comments
Rachel Hills was the third Ambassador to speak at the Emerging Writers Festival. Rachel’s a widely published journalist and editor. She’s also an awesome blogger (with many of her articles available to view) and posts interesting tweets linking to interesting articles. I wish I was half as retweetable as her. I was excited to finally meet her, having met her virtually years and years ago when she was working on a story about labiaplasty (now that’s a long story).
Rachel has in her fabulous blogging way put up a transcript of her full talk, you may find it interesting to see the difference between what I distilled and what she said. The distillery says:
- It is about who you know and how you’re known; this doesn’t mean being a suckup, but consistently doing work. Become known for producing good work and hitting deadlines
- Submit now. Don’t hold yourself back with artificial barriers or thinking you have to jump through unspoken hoops before submitting to a publication.
- You need to work hard
- Write for publications you enjoy reading and what you want to read
- Know your mag. Read a publication before you submit to it. Know the voice of the publication and pitch a specific story and angle to a specific mag.
- Learn to leverage what you’ve already done and know. Build on your strengths, you have some.
- Getting where you want to be will take longer than you think.
Tomorrow - it’s Ambassador David Milroy.
Luke Devenish - Emerging Writers Festival, 7 Enviable Lines
Saturday, June 6th, 2009 | Conventions | No Comments
Five skilled wordsmiths, each providing seven gems of knowledge at the Emerging Writers Festival. Luke Devenish was the second to speak. Ambassador Devenish witty, charming and, as is appropriate for a screenplay writer, does good punchy dialogue. He’s a novelist, coming from the land of TV and the stage. He also teaches for AFTRS and has got me seriously considering going back to school. He too has a website. Here’s my paraphrasing of his enviable lines.
- I wish somebody had told me not to believe my own PR. Don’t get a hyped up, bloated ego head.
- I wish somebody had told me the importance of doing more than clever dialogue. To start with I was just a dialogue monkey (ed: Luke didn’t say monkey, Liz just likes to say monkey). Good story takes you to the next level and writing for TV forces you to be a story machine.
- I wish somebody had told me the real deal about agents - you don’t need to have them to get published.
- I wish somebody had told me to keep my gorram mouth open. You must learn how to talk about your work and promote your work. It is a skill you can learn and get better at with practice.
- It pays to be multi-skilled
- It is impossible to have a career without spelling and punctuation
- There is no shame in the lowest common denominator. Next to my computer I have two words SEX and DEATH.
- Just do it
Tomorrow, Ambassador Rachel Hills.
Pooja Mittal - Emerging Writers Festival 7 Enviable Lines
Friday, June 5th, 2009 | Conventions | No Comments
Five skilled wordsmiths, each providing seven gems of knowledge. That’s how the Town Hall program at the Emerging Writers Festival (EWF) is kicked off. The Ambassador Program at the Emerging Writers Festival (or #ewf on twitter) quite simply rocks. The Ambassador’s role is to be available, be ready to have their head picked, brain meats fossicked and have curly questions thrown at them. It sets a wonderful atmosphere of availability and open conversation for the rest of the festival. I hope other writers festivals go for this kind of thing. It’s a wonderful, wonderful program.
Ambassador Pooja Mittal, poet and geek girl was the first to speak and share the seven things that she learned/wished people had told her. Pooja has a lovely fresh voice, crisp intelligent language and a blog. Here are my imperfect notes and interpretations:
- There is no Ivory Tower. Find community, it will help you create, it is important
- All criticisms are constructive. If it’s true and hurts it’s because they’ve found you out. If it has absolutely no grain of truth (and make sure you look)… well then it isn’t a crit.
- Conserve your syllables - it’s a useful tool to help you show not tell. Make sure every sound serves a function and has elegance.
- A writer’s block is just a block in the road, it is no the end of the road. Fallow fields, dry seasons allow the soil to rest.
- Inspiration doesn’t strike, it surrounds
- Change is natural, don’t pigeonhole yourself. Explore different media and different forms. Most creators create in more than one way.
- Give no excuses for your writing - don’t explain what you’re trying to do. Do.
Tomorrow I’ll post Ambassador Luke Devenish’s lines (novelist and highly experienced screenplay writer).
Comikaze this weekend - 24 hour comics challenge
Thursday, June 4th, 2009 | Conventions | No Comments
Make comics. Make comics fast. Make comics with good company (virtual or there may be physical outposts in your area). Make comics with people encouraging you every step of the way, with inspiring artwork and stories popping up around you and people laughing, going mad with sugar rushes, not sleeping or having a nice nap.
Make a comic over 8 pages and be eligible for prizes (people’s choice, probably only Aussie residents for prizes).
Make a comic 24 pages or over and be eligible for a Nintendo Wii Console plus 3 games (Judge’s choice).
Make comics this Queens Birthday long weekend.
Going off previous years there will be people participating that have never made comics before and there will be seasoned veterans…. I won’t be making comics, I get to look at them later as one of the judges and I can tell you now everyone who gives it a go is awesome, rockin’ and has my admiration.
Go to the Comicaze Website , register, participate and have an amazing time.
Message ends.
5am Melbourne - After the Emerging Writers Festival
Sunday, May 31st, 2009 | Conventions, News update | No Comments
The Emerging Writers Festival is over. I had a rocking good time. Met some lovely people. Had the brain juices stimulated, challenged, soothed and had some of my wackier ideas encouraged! Beware.
As always, I didn’t attend most of the panels I intended to go to. Instead I wandered from interesting thing to interesting thing and like a jellyfish followed the currents that found me. There were times when I was juiced up on the best drug of all (ideas), mind and mouth rambling and brain sparking off in all directions from good company.
There were some times when I was asked some really hard questions about my own work, discovered some deep emotions and subtext to my graphic novel script that I had never realised. I felt confused, sad, struggling, lost and around my own writing - going back to my hotel with a laptop full of mud… And built a bridge, got over it and wrote important words. There is still some difficult work to be done (and dusted before Clarion), but I’ve made an important breakthrough… now I just have to hold on to it.
If I do something with 10% of the ideas I’ve had at the festival it shall be a good year. I got up at 5am this morning, with three articles bubbling in my head. Dragging myself up before the morning light I ignored those concepts completely and wrote a comic script instead. I thought it would be a good fun fluff piece (if slightly disturbing) for Tango’s new anthology Love and War. But as I wrote it, dammit, I realised it had a deep and meaningful subtext directly relevant to the theme of the anthology. Ben Hutchings would be the perfect artist for it if he’s available and willing. The working title of the comic? Love and Spandex.
Numbers, Ankles and Visas
Monday, May 18th, 2009 | News update | 4 Comments
It’s been a full few weeks. Here’s a little by the numbers.
- 6 whole days until I leave Canberra
- 4 whole days to pack up most of the house and prepare an awesome farewell
- 3 torn ligaments in my right ankle
- 3 visits to the physiotherapist and 1 ankle brace
- 1 set of x-rays showing no bones broken
- 2 Visas, one for Mike(y), one for me. America here we come!
- 1 night of rockband, singstar and pata pata pata pon until 3am with friends
- 1 night of Eurovision and friends
- boundless, the sensation of blessedness around the good people I have in my life.
And here’s a picture of my bruised ankle from a few days ago. Since then the migration of bruising to my toes has contined in a black textured manner, the swelling has gone down further and the bruising over the ankle has faded. This happened shortly after my last post on accident prone lizness… the pen really is mightier than the sword. Owwww!
Liz's purple bruised ankle
Little liz - the accident prone years
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 | News update, clarion | No Comments
… no the accident prone years would mean just about any year. I am writing this with a strapped finger after getting a deep slash in my finger while examining suitcases.
I wrote up this anecdote to share with my Co-Clarionaters, we’re getting to know each other and Mr
The scene. Midnight, an eight year old Liz is cutting up a chocolate syrup bottle with stanley knife (box cutter). The plastic is really hard and I am tired and impatient and get careless. The stanley knife suddenly swishes really smoothly through plastic and over one of my fingers.
There’s a lot of blood. Everyone is sleeping and I know I shouldn’t be up and I don’t want to bother anyone and I don’t want to get into trouble so I stifle any kind of sound and try to apply first aid.
My parents, woken by random sounds and movements late at night find a bathroom with blood splats and a messy pile of bandaids that keep floating off.
My parents say “What’s going on?” with some urgency.
I hide my hand behind my back and say “nothing” convinced I am going to be in the biggest trouble ever for being so stupid with a knife.
I don’t get into trouble at all and am whisked off to hospital where I get a tetanus shot, many local anesthetic injections and get two stitches. I watch with fascination as the thread passes through my flesh and somewhere in the back of my head I’m thinking “Wow this will make a great story.”
I’m particularly pleased that I will remember this as I’m still cross that I don’t remember breaking my leg when I was three ’cause that was really cool and my leg bent at a funny angle. It’s very unfair I don’t remember breaking my leg especially because my brother says that when you break a limb it heals to be stronger and so my chances of ever having a broken leg again have been reduced by 50%.
I get a day off school to recover and I traumatise my little sister for years and years with slow graphic descriptions of watching needle and thread go through flesh.
Even at eight everything was material to observe and absorb to use for later and my technique for any kind of trauma or scary thing is “this will be useful material”.
