Storytime

I recently attended a free writing workshop with P.D. Martin. This was part of the Casey Writers Project (Narre Warren) supported by the City of Casey and presented in association with Casey Cardinia Libraries. Have to love a writers workshop that is free! Well done all involved. This was only a small part of the workshops offered, and alas due to work and other commitments the morning session on Plotting and Structure was all that I could attend. However, even in those few hours, I had a lot to think about. I love structure....and know this requires planning...however I tend not to do either. I am always drawn to gardens that look like this. Hard landscape, strict structure and lots of forethought and careful planning. My own garden always looks like this... An untidy ramble (although this is a bit of an old photo, some things have changed). I was...notice the past tense....of the persuasion of 'oh I love that, let's put it here' and 'I nee...

A few months ago I led a Memoir Writing workshop. It was during seniors week so the majority of attendees wanted to write their life stories.  Some wanted to share their childhoods, whether it was on an isolated farm or in another country. Some wanted to share snippets of their lives such as a two year work exchange program...just imagine walking into someone else's house and living there as if it were your own. And as we talked about these ideas, and wrote and workshopped I kept bringing up the idea that no matter what you were writing there should be a theme. An underlying idea behind the memoir...or any type of writing really. There should be something that ties the piece together. Gradually people began to understand and were soon offering up some ideas as to what others could use as this 'tie' for their piece of work. On the weekend I attended a beautiful country wedding. (My niece's and she looked stunning!) Just look at that backdrop...OMG.....what...

Last night I attended, with several of my writing buddies,  the CBCA 2018 Night of Our Stars at Lamont Books in Hallam. It was an interesting night. Celebrating some of our Victorian authors and illustrators, both those who write and illustrate for picture books and junior novels, as well as middle grade and young adult. The idea behind it is to showcase the various authors and illustrators, to share their recently published books but also as a way for the audience (majority teacher librarians, teachers and librarians) to see who they would like to book for their school or library for future events. Author visits or workshops. It was a good mix of some great Victorian authors and illustrators. What was very interesting was that each guest was given three minutes- yes THREE MINUTES- for their spiel. To talk about their current books, their just published books, how they wrote, what gave them the idea for the story, how they worked around problems that arose......

I just spent a long weekend away with several of my writing buddies. Not everyone in my writing group could attend or attend for the whole time away...one recovering from surgery and unable to drive herself came for an hour (chauffeured by lovely hubby)....another came for one day and one night....another unable to attend due to sudden illness gave her place to a fellow scribe...but it was just what I needed. It was a lovely old house with a great shabby chic style inside.  Wooden floorboards that dipped and bowed, twinkling chandeliers and white washed walls. and lovely bedrooms. I arrived first and managed to nab this lovely room for myself.. Writing retreats gives us a chance to escape the everyday demands and focus on one thing. Writing. That doesn't mean that we don't do other things...most days there is at least one walk. Some great meals and chances to chat.  But we knew this time was precious and made the most of ...

We had Miss Two for the weekend recently, and we took her adventuring. We went on a drive out to the country to visit the Alexandra and District Open Gardens. She does love roaming our garden. Just discovering that if you are walking on a hill you have to lean, but not too far...and that at times you will fall over. She loves going out and picking an orange from the tree...she sometimes eats it...always loves to carry it around with her. We visited three gardens, each one offering up something different. Something to think about in our own plot. Whether it was the plant combinations...the colours... Or the fact that Miss Two enjoyed them all. She had a great time. Running on the lawns when there were lawns... stopping at times to look at the flowers and say 'aw, cute.' I found so many inspirations for my garden. Yep so want one of these... and I liked how regimented these hedges were then that burst of frothy flowers at the bottom. I li...

It doesn't take much does it? A word or phrase, perhaps a comment...sometimes even a look and it is as though it is now a truth eternally etched into our hearts. I remember years ago, year seven (so yes YEARS ago)...we did that dreaded Maths example. You remember, where they took our height...and our WEIGHT...to create a graph. We also looked at other factors but frankly I don't remember them. What has stayed with me for all these years was that in that group I was short and fat. Yep...that's what has been engraved on my skin. And when I look back on those teenage years (OMG)...let's get a shy girl and then make her believe she is short and fat and doesn't live up to any standards and see what happens. It really doesn't take much for us to believe in negative thoughts. This month has been a bust writing wise. Frankly this year has been a hell of a year in so many ways...some good...but a hell of a lot of bad and uncooperative and just plain annoying. ...

Last week I ventured to another library and ran a memoir writing workshop for Seniors Week. It was a lot of fun (and boy was I nervous!) and I'm glad to say not only was there a good turn out but I received some very good comments. In fact one lovely bunch of women would love me to come back each week and help them step by step through their writing. I did make them write and the majority were more than eager to share their work. It was so interesting to discover that while most people know exactly  what they 'want' to write about, when it is said out loud it does sometime lose it's glamour. It becomes a bit humdrum. What we discovered during these two hours was the glory of the aside. People would say 'I''m writing a story about this time when this happened and this happened and I remember vividly this happening". All nice, all great social commentary...but then they would say something like 'and that's when she got the gun out and trie...