Storytime

Once a year my writing group, The Lazy River Writers with help from the Victorian Writers Centre , hosts a writing workshop. This year we featured writing for young adults with author Penni Russon. Penni has over 9 novels published and teaches at Melbourne University (not to mention juggling the jobs of wife and mother to three young children). She had a wealth of experience to share, and share she did. It was a great afternoon. Penni offered not only good advice and some great ideas to use as jumping off points for our writing - but she gave us writing exercises. The one that most intrigued me was putting an experience - and for this exercise we used a 'first time' experience - into a haiku. Yes a haiku. There were no words to hide behind, no waffling, it had to be condensed and concise. A very interesting exercise and one I totally recommend. I think what I got most from this workshop was confidence. That yes there are mountains of books out there... -and ...

Yes i'm busy relearning the intricacies of technology. (hard for a dinosaur like myself- I still have trouble with my mobile phone and take way too long to figure out which remote is for the DVD player).  I was recently given an iMac for my birthday - a big surprise for a PC girl like me. My first question was how do I turn it on? - quickly followed by and where are the buttons on the mouse? Once these two questions were answered - it became the job of showing no fear in front of it. Bit like facing a large wild animal- appear confident and it will leave you alone. That is the theory and so far it is working. I will confess to deleting a lot of windows when I merely want to go back, and have no idea what most of the icons at the bottom of the screen mean - but it is on my to-do list. Another goal for the year- become master of the machine - show no fear and move forward bravely. As for goals - and I know it's only 2 months in to the year and things may change - bu...