What a joy it is to read, and how important as a writer. It is joyful to read different texts and see how they fuel the creative process. Cosmicomics has inspired a short story. Love in the Time of Cholera reminds me how fluid time, language and can be reminiscence. I always think about Marquez’s writing as non-linear and yet in some ways it is quite linear; my mind darts like a fish between the then and now, a collage of memory. I’m afraid Jonathan Livingston Seagull reminded me of what I don’t like in beast fables and what I especially don’t like in spiritual teaching stories – but even there there was benefit. Jonathan Livingston Seagull reminded me of the down to earth fables and teaching stories from China and Japan I loved and read as a child.
Well Thanksgiving was a blast, and my strange fears totally unfounded. We attended two vegetarian thanksgivings with delightful company at both. A Thanksgiving that included a small child talking about how Earth is the best planet and Venus is the worst planet (because Venus will crush you with its enormous gravity) gave me strong hopes for the new generation. I highly recommend at least renting a child of this type for all such occasions.
’tis the season of festivities and events. Lee and Annaliese Moyer (our lovely hosts who kindly keep us in their basement) have both just had shows open. Lee is showing at the Radio Room and last night we went to the opening of Elementum, which is showcasing Annaliese’s photography. Mike took photos of her art with his iPhone, I love how you can see the reflection of happy viewers in the glass
Annaliese's Gallery Show - Mermaids and ObserversAnnaliese's Gallery Show - Photographer and Mermaid
In other delightful news Cracked Leather be published in The Pedestal Magazine on 21 December. Cracked Leather was the first story I wrote at Clarion Writers Workshop, I wrote it during Holly Black’s tutelage and it was critiqued under the care of Larissa Lai.
Love and Spandex, a comic I created with Ben Hutchings, has just come out in Tango – Love and War, the ongoing romance comics anthology by Cardigan Comics. This edition shared it’s launch with The Tango Collection launch, which has been published by Allen and Unwin. It’s a fantastic recognition of the hard work Cargdigan Comics have done over the years bringing together diverse, independent Australian comics. I heard the launch was fabulous and would expect nothing less.
You can also hear a small snippet of me describing the Hawaiian shirt I was wearing at the Jay Lake recording during Orycon. The snippet is in Banter 2, but you should really check out the other recordings as a source of delight. Mary Robinette and her stalwart crew did a fantastic job reading stories by Jay Lake (different fab writers doing the voices of different characters and Mary Robinette as the narrator). I am astounded by the sound quality of the recording given the terrible acoustics of the space. I imagine that is a big bravo to Robert Kowal, sound guy, for doing such a splendiforous job.
I hope you all have a happy and safe festive season and a joyous 2010.
Living the USA has been wonderful, but it also shows to me what I love and what I miss about my home country.
A few months ago, heck a few weeks ago I was excited about our first truly cold Christmas. A Christmas with the promise of snow, a Christmas where Christmas food is entirely sensible and does not accompany sunburn and going to the beach afterwards.
It is so wonderful how social media, like facebook, like twitter, like livejournal, wordpress, flicker and youtube help us create our narratives. We experience things we value and we are able to share them so easily. A few clicks and we have sent a sleep walking dog, or a music video or a call to action to people in our communities. These virtual communities made up of people we see in real life, kith, kin, acquaintances and people we have only ever met through our practices on the internet.
I’ve just finished reading Six Memos for the Next Millennium, the last work by Italo Calvino, a series of lectures on writing he was to deliver in 1985. Much is said about the hows of writing, tricks of the trade and so on, even more so now that there are more writers (emerging and established) talking about their process than ever before. Italo Calvino does something different.
Italo Calvino talks engages with writing on a higher (and fundamental) level and writes about Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility and Multiplicity. He died before he was able to write the final memo, Consistency.
They Might Be Giants were in Portland last week – one of my favorite bands. I remember when I was a shy geek girl trying to buy music with gift certificates I would look for They Might Be Giants, Sinead O’Connor… and… and then I would look around blankly. Seeing them in person at the Crystal Ballroom was joyous. I felt tears forming in my eyes as I realised it was THEM, this wasn’t a video, we were really here, they were really here and it still felt impossible. I’m so used to tour dates belonging to a different continent, I’m not used to the access we have to different bands now that we live in the United States.
Seeing They Might Be Giants inspires me as a writer.
This is for everyone who wants to develop their writing, but it’s especially for folks who want to write comics. Please pass it on.
Clarion Writers Workshop was a fantastic experience and really exciting for me. I write across many genres (from ‘literary’ to horror to spec fic) and I write across a range of media (prose, poetry, song and comics) and I felt developed and respected in all my guises. The focus of this workshop is the short story, but the lessons learned go much deeper and broader than that. As someone who has been slogging away at comics career for quite a while now Clarion made me really excited for emerging comic writers.
The life of an aspiring comics writer can be lonely, frustrating and it can be very difficult to get access to tha constructive criticism that will help you develop your craft. I see enormous potential for comic writers to deepen their storytelling craft through this writing workshop. I also see how comics writers can give different approaches to the craft of short story writing -> the discipline of writing comics schools you in different ways.
Hello all. Life has been a bit crazy the past few months. I’ve just finished a whole bunch of educational comics work, comics about staying out of jail, community sector careers and drugs (mostly alcohol and cigarettes). I’ve just come back from World Fantasy Con, which was magnificent.
Cat Sparks captured many fine moments at WFC, and through the power of google I found a Flickr group dedicated to WFC09.
Right now I’m in an interesting liminal space, exploring new opportunities and deciding what gets priority. I probably won’t have any more educational comics work until next year, which means I am free to explore… and free to eat ramen. It is exciting none the less, there are a few opportunities to chase that excite me, there are short stories to edit and actually send to publishers, novels to explore and creative things as yet unthought of. There is also slush to read and books I promised to judge.
Life is full, yet open, I feel blessed by the people around me and 2 weeks ago I got to be a mermaid. I’m sorry to be so tedious and happy, I shall try to have something juicy and horrible happen (but not too horrible). I injure myself with enough frequency that I am sure something will come up and I shall remember to chronicle it (I fell up the stairs three times in the last month in a splat owie flat on my face kind of way).
I am trying to write more book summaries, overviews of non-fiction I read. To help me engage more deeply with the text as I go over it so I can write about it and help me remember who said what should I need to refer back to things. Hopefully it will be a useful resource for other folks as well.
Creating Short Fiction by Damon Knight was a lovely, well balanced read with a lot of love for the art, the craft and the practicalities of story making. It looks at processes in detail and combines theoretical concepts with practical exercises (20 exercises all up).
Because reading is important (and delicious). One of my favorite things to learn, that I learn every workshop, festival and convention, is that reading is important. “Writers must read!” People proclaim and every time they do I get a delicious shiver. Really? I can indulge in my addiction? I am trying to strategically target my addiction a little more.
Things I’ve read in the past month or so, a scattering of thoughts:
