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NaPoWriMo Wrap-up

02 Thursday May 2019

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I made it through the challenge of NaPoWriMo again for April 2019!

It is always a struggle to feel that my poems are any good when I do this challenge, I seem to churn out so much rubbish, but as with NaNoWriMo, the point is quantity over quality.

I will have to set aside some time to revise and review the poems I’ve written this month, although I did publish one poem here and one poem on a couple of Facebook groups for life modelling. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

The art studio

1 convener
5 minders
9 artists
21 models

A room full of nude bodies
Holding perfectly still

The sound of one voice
And scratching on paper

The knowledge that in a few
Minutes we break to eat

Working to create great art
Together sharing our vulnerability

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Seven poses over four hours by a Monash University student (April 2019)

It was written on the last day of the challenge, close to midnight, after a full day of work at the day job, followed by a four hour life-model training session. I am not particularly good at drawing, but the act of performing as a model to be drawn has been something I’ve enjoyed for over five years. 

The Life Models’ Society is having an art competition at the end of the year. I’m helping to organise it and we’re finalising details now but I may even submit a work to the competition. I’ve been thinking about something like a charcoal drawing, perhaps several figures all together, with my poems about life drawing printed on transparency over the top. I think it could look quite good – obviously dependent on the quality of the drawing(s) I manage to produce.

I spent a little less than a week over Easter with my beautiful friend Cathy and her family in New Zealand. It’s been difficult the last few years as a number of my close friends have moved away from Melbourne. It’s not the same as having them here, but knowing I can pop over and visit and have their love and warmth on tap 24 hours a day is a great comfort.

My next projects are going back to some of my incomplete prose manuscripts; I wrote 1500 words in one today despite my procrastination!

Thank you to all my friends, family and supporters – I wouldn’t be here without you, and I hope that I support you in return. Big love.

Get the coffee pot ready

29 Sunday Oct 2017

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It’s that time again, the lead up to NaNoWriMo. Each November hundreds of thousands of writers around the world commit to writing, the goal is to write a 50k word novel over the month, but writers can approach it however it suits them. I’ve done this month long writing sprint five times already (and I got 50k words each time). Talk about glutton for punishment, am I right?

Nanowrimo

It’s only a few days away and I haven’t got a story idea yet. I’m thinking maybe

more of a family saga than the relationship focused stories I’ve done in the past. I’ll put a romance into it, because I like that sort of thing, but the family dynamics is where my interest is at the moment.

A couple of times over the last month I’ve had conversations with people about my writing. I’ve told them them I have five novel length manuscripts in varying states of polish. Four of these have been submitted to traditional publishers but so far no one has chosen to pick them up.

Sometimes it feels hard to explain to people that I’m a writer when I haven’t had my stories published. I feel like they look at it as a badge of worth. Other writers, of course, understand that if is incredibly difficult to have your writing picked up by a traditional publisher. J.K. Rowling, famously, had eleven publishers reject Harry Potter, and Virginia Woolf published herself.

I know my work is developing and my style is becoming more clear with every project I do. People I’ve shown my work to have responded positively, but occasionally I have doubts. I’ve put a lot of hours into writing in the last six so years. It’s been a labour of love; I do it because, as tortured as the process can be sometimes, I like having written. I like that I’m a writer.

Whether I make it to being an ‘author’ with a traditionally published book remains to be seen. I’ll continue to write novels, and maybe only five people with ever read them. But maybe I’ll find an audience and it will make a difference to someone’s life.

For now, I’ll put the coffee pot on and get down to business. I’ll have to say no to social outings, because for the next month I need to write at least 1700 words a day. And I’ll do it, because I’m stubborn like that. You can follow my progress here. See you on the other side.

Why do I do it?

31 Monday Oct 2016

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I’m in Sydney for a few days giving myself a little holiday, visiting a couple of cool people. I told my friend, a poet, that I was feeling a little anxious about starting NaNoWriMo without a plot, or any characters. She laughed, and asked “why do you do it?”

This year will be my fifth time. I couldn’t think of a good reason at the time, and after thinking it over I don’t really have one, except I do it because I can.

There is something that I get from forcing myself to do the marathon that I don’t get from writing on my own. Additional motivation that comes from the companionship of other people doing the same thing. I don’t think I’d achieve nearly as much without knowing hundreds of thousands of people around the world are doing it too. There’s also an element of competition against myself; chasing those daily word count goals. Without that I wouldn’t make time for writing.

I am aware I create quite a lot of content, and I do the most of it at the last minute, right on the deadline. I think, deep down, I’m lazy and having something external to push against really helps me. And knowing there is a time when it will be finished, has to be finished, really helps sustain my efforts. Having the end in sight makes it easier to just keep going that little bit longer. A preset time when you have to stop also helps to avoid perfection paralysis.

This morning, I sat in a coffee shop in Newtown, with a coffee and wrote 600 words of plot and character summaries. I think I probably have enough to start with. Probably my plot has holes in it I won’t notice until later, but I can fix that up later. I start writing tomorrow.

Expect a couple of updates before the month is over, and possibly a faux-cover reveal later in the month when I’m procrastinating doing my daily words.

We’re halfway there!

21 Wednesday Sep 2016

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Tonight we start the second week of my first ever Melbourne Fringe Festival show and it’s raining again. I know that Spring is supposed to be rainy, and I know that we need the rain, but it still puts me in a kinda flat mood, especially after all the sunshine yesterday.

I’ve been still struggling with the roller coaster ride of emotions that seem to come with performing. Agitation, tension, that sick feeling I get in the five minutes before show time. Then I come off the stage and I’m buzzed and bouncing, and then exhausted but can’t sleep for hours. I don’t know whether it gets better, or more likely, you get used to the crazy ride.

I question why I’m doing this in those moments, but when I’m up on the stage and people are laughing at stuff I wrote, it’s the best feeling. And afterward, when people give my amazing feedback like ‘you’re a natural performer’, ‘the chemistry between you two is great’,  ‘I can’t believe it’s taken you so long to do this!’ and ‘you have such a lovely stage presence’ I feel such pride and relief. I feel like I can dismiss all those little voices in my head telling me that I shouldn’t do this, or I’m fooling myself.

I think creative people will always have those little niggling doubts. That sick feeling will always come the moment before you go on stage. The worry that I have made something terrible, and people won’t like it.

I know that I shouldn’t be worrying about whether people like my art, I should just do it because I want to, because I need to create. But I do want people to like it. I want people to like me because they like my art.

In summary I’m having both an amazing and a terrible time doing this show. I’m so proud of it. So come see it y’all!

Fleur and Alexandra Save the World

7:30pm, Sept 21-24. $20 ($16 concession) on the door.

Collingwood Underground Car Park, 44 Harmsworth St, Collingwood, VIC 3066

 

Comedy Festival – GO!

25 Friday Mar 2016

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Last night was the first night of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF). I went out to see two shows; Mel Buttle’s Up to Pussy’s Bow and Luisa Omielan’s Am I Right Ladies?

Two beautiful, strong, funny women. I bought this awesome Bumper Book for Boys, published in 1938, from Mel for 35cents. I’m looking forward to seeing more MICF shows over the next few weeks, it’s such a fun time to be out in Melbourne!

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Bumper Book for Boys, it’s going to look great in my flat above a shop in Fitzroy North. I’m not a hipster, I swear.

I’m also giving consideration to doing NaPoWriMo again. That’s National Poetry Writing Month, the idea being that you challenge yourself to write a poem a day for the month of April. I did it two years ago and I quite enjoyed it, although the standard of the poems that came out varied wildly. I don’t know whether I’ll have the time to do it properly, with the comedy festival and the band and the new job and the life modelling and the trying to organise and write our Fringe show, but I might as well give it a try.

If you’re out at the MICF and you see me, say hello! If you have recommendations for shows, tell me! If you want to do the poem a day challenge I’d love to hear from you, it’s always nice to know that there are others out there who are attempting the same stuff I am!

Photo Portraiture

08 Sunday Mar 2015

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For Christmas, my mum gave me a ‘voucher’ for a photography course. She made it herself and it accompanied some money with which to pay for said course. My mum does good presents.

I took some time looking around for a course that would suit my skill level, more experienced than a beginner but not a super whiz (especially with the technical side of things). After speaking to a few photographer friends and having a look at the photos available on each course’s website, I decided to go with Creative Photo Workshop‘s Natural Light Portraits course. It was a bit on the expensive side compared to the other courses out there, but ran for six hours, and, it turns out, they pay for a model, which was really great for practising. I decided that the longer duration (other courses run for three hours) justified my spending more on it.

Model - Brock, with window light.

Model – Brock, with window light.

Model - Brock, with carpark fluorescent lighting.

Model – Brock, with carpark fluorescent lighting.

Both of these shots were set up by the teacher in order to demonstrate what he wanted us to learn, as well as the many others I took.

I’m really glad that I attended the class. Before yesterday, I wasn’t confident to use the manual setting on my camera, although now I feel like I have a better idea of what the individual functions do and how to get them to do what I want them to.

Glynn’s photographic style is distinctive and strong, and while not completely in tune with my own style, produces some awesome effects that I’m glad to be able to replicate. He is extremely knowledgeable and he’s able to convey technical information and tips without making it seem like hard work, which is great for someone still learning. Glynn also focuses on in-camera technique, rather than post production or photoshop, which reflects my own preference. His style is a bit blokey, and though it’s not my favourite,  in the end, didn’t affect my enjoyment of the class.

So thanks Mum, and thanks Creative Photography for opening up my experience and for instilling a sense of confidence in my technical ability which should result in a better translation of my creative vision to the finished shot. Woo!! I look forward to shooting more portraits in the near future!

Happy New Year for 2015!

01 Thursday Jan 2015

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For the last two years, I’ve published a list of goals here that I set myself for the coming year. I think it’s important to set yourself up to succeed with specific, achievable and challenging goals. I don’t like to call them resolutions, because New Years Resolutions tend to have a high failure rate (to be honest, I’m basing this on anecdotal rather than statistical information, but it sounds true).

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Here is my list of goals for 2015:

  1. Win NaNoWriMo
  2. Finish and submit We Can’t Have Nice Things (the novel I started for this last year’s NaNoWriMo)
  3. Redraft the Adventures in Mediocrity script
  4. Visit the Netherlands
  5. Finish my Bachelor of Letters
  6. Perform with the band I’m in
  7. Find/perform at new spoken word events
  8. Find a ‘good’/’real’ job
  9. Talk to strangers
  10. Exercise
  11. Read
  12. Explore
  13. Expand
  14. Eat well

The first five of these are pretty easily defined and achievable. Numbers two, three and five I hope to have ticked off by the middle of the year. Winning NaNoWrimo has to happen in November, because that’s when it’s on. I guess I could do it any time, but having the other participants there for encouragement is a really important part of the process for me.

I’m planning to go to the Netherlands to visit my friends Simon and Katharine in their summer, once I’ve finished my degree. I have four subjects, or about six months, left on the Bachelor of Letters and a trip feels like a suitable reward to myself.

Performing with the band is one of the only goals on the list that relies heavily on other people for it to be achieved. Part of that is scary, but part of it is exhilarating! Setting myself a team goal is going to be a stretch for me, and I think I will feel even better for having achieved it. I’m aiming for that to happen in the second half of the year, we have a lot of work to do before we’re ready to get up on stage.

Number eight, is related to the end of my study. Once I finish studying I’m going to have a meeting with myself about what I want to do for work. I’m enjoying the casual work I do at the moment, but it doesn’t really feel like a grown up job. I think I’ll probably want a job with stability and routine so that I can channel myself into my creative pursuits in my time outside of work. It’s also nice to have colleagues with whom you work regularly and build up a relationship with, that’s one of the things I guess I miss most about my old job.

Finding new spoken word events is primarily up there because I’ve really enjoyed the stuff I’ve done with Velvet Tongue and Little Raven, but I don’t know whether they’re going to continue this year, so expanding that network is going to be important. There are a few different venues that host spoken word open mics and slams and other things, so I’m sure I’ll be able to find somewhere where I’ll feel good getting up on stage.

The last six are a bit more vague and are there to encourage me to really focus on learning, growth and pushing my own boundaries. I want to continue to expand my creativity, to explore new avenues of friendship, work, and relationships. I want to meet new people. I want to spend time on myself and value myself by cooking more and eating better – since moving to Fitzroy I haven’t been able to get into a good routine foodwise.

Thank you to everyone who made 2014 a year of learning to be happy. Thank you specifically to Cathy and Aaron for hosting a very sophisticated dinner party last night, it felt very grown up, and you are both really important to me. Thank you to everyone who I met in 2014 and thank you for everyone who’s stuck around from before. Thank you to my family. I love you all and I look forward to sharing this year with you.

How it got to be December

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

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On the first day of November, I started to write my third novel. It was an ambitious and very different project for me, both in scope and in content/tone. If you’ve read my last entry, Feeding the darkness, you’ll know that mid way through the month I started to have doubts about myself as a result of the stuff that was coming out of my writing.

It’s now 2 December and NaNoWriMo is officially over. My total wordcount for the month was just under 55,000 words, which is a fantastic effort I think for my third year running of the challenge. Disappointingly I haven’t finished the story, the characters are just heading towards the climax now. I expect it will need another few thousand words, I might even make it to 70k, which would be a personal best for me. The problem is that since Saturday I haven’t felt any motivation at all to write. I have used up a lot of my energy for writing by binging for NaNoWriMo and I’m starting to worry that I won’t finish the project. I look at other NaNoWriMoers and some of them have done truly ridiculous (and impressive) word counts, up to 200k words, and I think that I should be able to just push through to the finish. I’m sure I will because the completionist in me won’t let it rest, but it’s hard to remember to be nice to myself – it was a big effort, at times it felt like an insurmountable obstacle to churn out my words every day, but I reached the goal and learned a lot about myself and my writing in the process.

I finished my last university assignment for the year on 3 November, so over the last month I’ve also been applying for jobs. So many jobs. All the jobs. I’ve been using a scatter technique in which I apply for just about anything and hope for the best, I figure if I get offered a job and it sounds like it would suck, I’ll turn it down. As anyone who’s been a jobseeker will know, it’s a hard slog. I find it difficult mentally, because each time I get an interview, I spend quite a lot of brain time fitting in the potential position into the stuff I’ve got going on at the moment and working out whether I’ll have to squeeze or move things, and when I don’t get the job, or don’t hear back, it takes a toll. It’s exhausting. Soon, all things going well, I’ll be able to stop doing the mental gymnastics that are involved with job hunting and settle into something for which I get paid!

For the rest of the summer, I hope to get more out of this blog. I’ve had it for three years now – the anniversary slipped past a couple of weeks ago – and I feel like it’s been a fantastic source of inspiration for me. It’s been a space to explore different media, styles, and challenges, and it’s been a space for me to develop my own unique voice. I hope to spend some more time working on my photography, particularly I’m going to take my camera to a few more gigs around the place so I plan to put up some thoughts here on that too.

The weather is beautiful today, as it has been in Melbourne for the last week or so. I’m sure it’s just the city’s way of lulling us into a false sense of security and hopefulness but that’s one of the joys of living here. I’m heading off to the markets shortly to get vegetables and other stuff to make into home made preserves for Christmas gifts so I’m feeling good. It’s a bit annoying that the job situation is still up in the air, but overall I think summer is going to kick butt and I’m really looking forward to getting out and about, meeting new people and generally being awesome!

forward to getting out and about, meeting new people and generally being awesome!

Guilt + New Projects = Neglected blogging

27 Monday Oct 2014

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I feel like haven’t blogged for a while (even though it’s only been a couple of weeks), perhaps it’s just a part of the cumulative guilt thing that I seem to have going on at the moment. I’ve recently been feeling incredibly busy and part of the reason for that is that I’ve been taking on new creative projects and meeting new people, and I guess I feel a bit like I have a lot of balls in the air and I’m really worried I’m going to drop one of them.

I’m sure that quite a lot of the stress I’m feeling about the new projects is misdirected stress about uni assessments which have been looming large for the last few weeks. Hopefully that source of tension will settle down soon, I’ve finished all the assessments two of my subjects, and the other two will be finished by this time next week (oh god, I have to write 4,200 words by then). But back to reason for my blog, I wanted to tell you all about my new projects! Writing things down makes them feel more real, right?

1. NaNoWriMo 2015

If you’ve read my blog for a while you’ll know that for the last two years I’ve been involved in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to get a whole bunch of people together, both in person as part of local group activities and online as part of the NaNoWriMo global community, to encourage each other to commit to writing 50,000 words in November (they also run Camp NaNoWriMo in April and July, but I haven’t participate in either of those sessions yet). It sounds like complete, unachievable insanity, but I’ve successfully completed the challenge the two times I’ve been involved, and I feel confident I can do it again this year.

My current working title for the novel is ‘We Can’t Have Nice Things’ and I’m using characters from a short story that I wrote a little while ago and expanding them into a longer work. The idea is that it will be dark – an exploration of the way people’s lives can go wrong. I’m thinking of it as an anti-romance, I don’t really know if it will work, but I’m going to give it my best shot!

2. I joined a band.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here before, but a while ago, on a whim, I bought a bass guitar. I’ve played it a bit here and there for the couple of years I’ve had it, but I never really prioritised it. Then I met Seth at a party and he asked if I wanted to be in his band, and I thought, why not? And now I’m in a band. That was about six weeks ago. The line-up is still being worked out, and we’re really still trying to find our feet, but I feel really good, conceptually, about being in a band. Since joining the band, I’ve been out to see a bit more local live music and I’ve met some fantastic people, in particular the boys from The Destrends, who are not only phenomenal musicians and performers but also super amazing human beings. I hope to continue getting out to gigs and meeting people in the music industry and really immersing myself in a culture I never felt part of before.

3. and 4. Drawing and Photographing

There are also two other things I’ve been spending time one, but they’re not really taking up as much time/brain space as the novel and the band so I’ll mush them together into one paragraph. Firstly there’s drawing. I’ve been life modelling with the Life Model Society for all of this year and I’ve been meeting fantastic artists at every group I’ve worked with. Meeting these talented people and seeing the beauty they can produce has inspired me to spend more time on drawing. I’ve been to a couple of life drawing classes, the results of which I’ve put on my Instagram account, they need some work, but I think there’s a solid foundation of ‘looking vaguely human’ in there. The second thing is a couple of friends of mine, Woland and Gabrielle, who have appeared in this blog before, have been doing some really outstanding off-the-wall performance art at local events in the last couple of months, and I have been privileged to act as their stills photographer for these performances. It has been challenging, not just artistically, but personally, as their art pushes boundaries in all the best ways, you can watch their latest performance, ‘A Mermaid’s Tale’ here, but I should probably put a (fake) blood trigger and NSFW warning on it, just to be safe.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. I hope I’ll be able to spend some more time on this blog over the summer, without the constant demands of university I hope I’ll have a bit more space in my brain for this, and I’ll have to bring you updates on all the amazing creative adventures I’m having! Every day I’m grateful to the people in my life who encourage and support me in my meandering search for a meaningful and fulfilling life, and every day I am rewarded with what I create, and with what people around me create, and I know that I wouldn’t go back to where I was three years ago for anything!

Allusions

04 Saturday Oct 2014

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Today, my writing group held their all day writing seminar. The second session, on poetry, was a panel moderated by me. It went really very well, the participants were enthusiastic and willing to learn and discuss, the panel members were knowledgeable and the whole thing ran very well.

As part of the panel, I asked everyone to write a poem. I had spend some time talking about pantoums,and read them this one, Pleasure in Elysium, from my friend Louise Carter at Alone with Beauty, which they all really loved, and I was inspired to write one of my own.

 

Allusions

The past is a foreign country

Who is in need of a wife

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Don’t go gentle into that good night

 

Who is in need of a wife

When he awoke from unsettling dreams

Don’t go gentle into that good night

Or call a rose by any other name

 

When he awoke from unsettling dreams

Staring at hills like white elephants

Or call a rose by any other name

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river

 

Staring at hills like white elephants

Two star cross’d lovers take their life

Fog everywhere. Fog up river

Sailing the waters back to Grey Havens

 

Two star cross’d lovers take their life

The past is a foreign country

Sailing the waters back to Grey Havens

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.