Storytime

Yep I'm on holiday. For two weeks. Two lovely, wish I had put in for more, weeks. No, we are not going anywhere. Not this time. And surprisingly for me, I don't have a lot planned. It has been a hectic past few weeks. Lots of Tinies and Storytimes and kinder visits and Halloween shows....there has been new libraries to meet... if near Narre Warren you must check out Bunjil Place! AMAZING. Reading nooks to try out.... There has been Charlie Chaplin capers for a friend's 50th... we even began a saga about the mystery of the meandering moustache.... There has even been a tad of culture Much Ado about Nothing at the pop up globe...AMAZING. With this lovely lady.  So I'm a tad tired.  And in my wisdom have decided to simply take it easy. I do have some things pencilled in the diary...getting my back seen today....car service tomorrow...hair cut on Friday. But for once I don't have a huge TO DO list as is my wan...

On Saturday I got to see one of the reigning, if not THE king of shock rock. Alice Cooper. Not my first concert of his, I think his third (or perhaps fourth). And I must admit, a few of us did wonder could he still deliver a great show. The answer was HELL YES! Nearly 70, he still manages to give it his all. Perhaps not quite as much quick movements, a more controlled stroll across the stage...and maybe some of those high notes on some of his songs were not quite hit...but...he delivered a show that had the audience screaming for more. Age is one of those things we can't avoid. It's a natural progression..and the alternative is very real and harsh. Death. So to avoid the above mentioned death, we must age. For a lot of us it is quite traumatic. Some birthdays are easier than others. We zoom through then all of a sudden we are hitting 40 and wondering what the hell happened. Then we hit 50 and are shocked. Where have the years gone? What have I done with them? H...

Most of you know I do like my garden...in fact I like anyone's garden. So when I venture off to ooh and aahh over other's works of greenery art, I happily snap away. Only to return home with a lot of photos and a desire to change, add or construct in my own plot. It has taken me a long time to finally realise that although I admire, love and covet what others have and how they garden...it's not always for me. I go and admire something like this. My potting area is a shambles and our deck looks like this... With a few more pots... actually a lot more pots on it. I fell in LOVE with this dragon...how awesome! and I have this.. Actually I do have another dragon who is AWESOME...and a dragon pot!    yet so different. I fell in love with the creative way this gardener set out their planting... Mine are in an assorted tumble of pots on the deck. Now it has taken a long time for me to understand that while I totally admire and love ...

During the school holidays, amongst the balloons and bubbles, the puppet storytime and wrapping kids up as mummies...I ran a black out poetry workshop. My first. It was such fun and it left me amazed at how imaginative and creative kids can be. A very excited group arrived, and interestingly none of them had created black out poetry before. A few had written poetry and one little girl (our ages were 9 plus) had quickly written a poem that morning as she thought that would be needed. I quickly gave an explanation, and showed them examples. We talked of finding an anchor...that one word that would be your starting point. And how to then scour the page for words that could be tied in. We worked on an example on the board...showing how words can be in the same wavelength. LOVE ---They offered up chocolate, boys, friends, kiss, coffee, family, dog etc Or how words can be opposite and create something interesting---they gave me denial, hate, pain, hurt. ...

Last weekend I had the great opportunity to attend a workshop with Kate Cuthbert from Escape Publishing.  She was a great speaker, full of information and eager to share her knowledge. She got us thinking about our works in progress, and then she made us write about our characters. Now, at the moment, I'm working away on my novel. I'm on second draft but have just done a major time shift, and rejigged scenes etc but after this workshop I realised I know nothing about my characters. Paper cutouts...shadowy figures that do what I want them to do. (Mind you, every now and then, one or more of them do tend to go a bit wild and apparently do whatever they please). The more exercises we did, the more I came to realise, how much more work I need to do on my characters. Not necessarily for what they do in the book, but for what they do out of the book. Interestingly I thought I knew my characters...but when Kate asked some in-depth questions, not necessarily to...