Storytime

It rolls around each year. The day we are meant to celebrate our fathers. Praise them to the skies. Buy them useless presents like socks and chocolates and soap on a rope (who on earth invented this and why!) And if you are a father you are meant to sit back and lap it all up. It's a day that frustrates me like Mother's Day and to a certain extent, Valentines Day. These Hallmarked days that tell you who to praise/ love and if you haven't got a father/ mother / lover or if you aren't yourself a mother/ father/ lover ..how much of a loser you are. Don't get me wrong it's always nice to get a phone call and a visit from your children, but that is just lovely on any day. Not a specifically designated day chosen by a commercially avid world. Rant over. I did phone my father on this special day. Had thought of a visit but due to my heavy cold and the fact that he's only recently out of hospital, figured it wasn't the best idea. Then I became designa...

I have more first drafts than finished pieces. A lot more. In fact if I really thought about how much more I think I'd panic. Because in truth I'm pretty good at first drafts. First drafts- or better yet- call it an idea. A glimmer. A speck that gets put down. Yep, I'm real good at that. A few lines here, a thought there, paragraph there....few hundred words over there, few thousand way out there. And usually that's where they'll stay. This is the latest 'first draft'. My junior novel, nearly 12, 000 words. And it is soooooo first draft...in actual fact it's more like a series of scenes with no connection or flow. But it is printed out, ready for me to go over and edit this weekend... and take copious notes. Lots and lots of notes. My big question is -  will I do any more to it? I don't have a great track record. Oh there are short stories and poems and even novels, yes novels, that I've worked on and edited and re-edited and po...

This was the question asked by one of my writing friends recently. Initially I wondered what she meant. But the more I thought about the question, the more I saw in it. I don't tend to read fiction during the day. It feels like an extravagance. I know I could so easily lose the day by reading (and have done on so many occasions in the past) so I allow myself to dip into magazines and non-fiction. I save the fiction for reading at night. Most of the time I have a pile of books by the bed and admit to getting a bit tetchy when I'm down to my last two. What happens if one is a dud? What happens if they both are? I'd be reduced to re-reading one of the old faithfuls kept in one of the many bookcases. Which would be good but it's not the same as diving into the unknown of fresh words. I also have a kindle (Christmas present) which I have used, and tend to take away when I'm travelling. It's light, portable, and can house so many stories. Which is great when you ...

Last weekend, a cold and rainy spring Melbourne weekend, I decided to abandon the garden and dive into spoken word. Not that there is much to do this end of the woods, or hills, or ranges, whatever the case may be....but there are two gigs that I do get to as much as I can, when work and life doesn't intrude. Saturday was Stoppingallstations at Nunawading. It's a lovely venue and Carole is a very welcoming host. There is an open section (offering a wide range of great poetry) as well as a feature each month. This month it was Tiggy Johnson. Tiggy's first reading came from her newly released collection 'First Taste' - and although I know these poems quite well it's always great to hear them again, read with such style and I love watching people's reactions especially to poems such as Concluding and Solitaire. Her second set was new poetry, mostly inspired by her major camping trip with the family around most of Australia. I was very interested to hear...