Tag Archives: Melbourne Romance Writers Guild

Show Review and Other News

21 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by in My Journey, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dear readers

I’m not sure why I started with that, but there you go. Since I last updated you, Alex found that Milk Bar Mag have put up a review of our little show here. It’s always very gratifying for people  you don’t know to say they enjoyed your work!Nanowrimo

I’m busily preparing to go overseas for a few weeks on holiday AND do NaNoWriMo at the same time. Past Fleur thought this was a good idea, but Present Fleur is starting to doubt her judgement. I will press on though, and even if I don’t get much done, I’ll have nearly two weeks after I get back to catch up.

I attended my monthly Romance Writers’ group today, and we had a presentation from Lauren Clarke on Creating Compelling Characters. She had a great balance of information and activities, although there was a lot to take in. I took notes so I’ll be able to go back and look at it later if I forget.

It was a great opportunity to come up with some new characters, and from that I developed about half a plot for the new novel. It’s a relief to know I can still come up with stuff after taking a while off writing new fiction for the show, and to edit previous work.

I have a fresh new notebook to use for drafting, I bought myself fancy new fine-liner pens, in multiple colours, and I have the bones of a story. I might even make it through this NaNoWriMo with a novel that’s worth editing!

While I’m travelling and drafting, I’ve also arranged for the editor of my first book, Annie Seaton, to have a look at a new 45k manuscript. I’ll look at her feedback in December and aim to have something ready to publish in February. So keep your eyes peeled and on this blog for further announcements.

Lots of things are bubbling along, as is always the way, here at Fleur HQ. Thank you all for your continued support and love. I couldn’t do it without you.

Over half way to May!

17 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by in Art, My Journey, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is just a brief update post on what’s happening in April. Things have been progressing well in my world. So far I have completed my poem each day (not today but shhh) as part of NaPoWriMo and making good progress on the show for the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Firstly, the poetry. I’ve been writing everyday, which has been great. I’ve been hand-writing my poems, and then transcribing them onto the computer for posterity and editing (of which I have done little). So far most of the poems have been on the ranty end of the spectrum. There are one or two with potential to become something more polished. I wouldn’t show the raw poems to anyone, but as a way of getting some stuff out of my brain it’s been very effective.

I try not to judge the quality of my first drafts, but it’s a challenge to stay away from that judgemental thinking.

Last Sunday I attended a workshop run by one of the writing groups I’m a member of, the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild. We had well known author and all around champion human C. S. Pacat to talk about world building. It doesn’t sound much like romance at first but creating a sense of authenticity to the setting is important in any book, especially in fantasy or sci-fi.

The part of the workshop which really stood out to me was the idea of the creative phase versus the skeptic phase. The creative phase is when you write down every idea that comes to you. You ascribe no value to it. The skeptic phase is when you then go back and evaluate whether the ideas will ‘work’, if they’re practical, or derivative etc. Pacat said that these two types if thinking inhibit each other and doing them at the same time will not produce good results.

I’m very good at critiquing ideas as soon as they come to me, which is not very useful creatively. I’m sure it’s a skill, like any other, to allow yourself to ‘go mad’ in the first phase, and really hone in in the second phase. I aim to improve this skill set in future.

Secondly, Melbourne Fringe Festival registrations are now open. This means we’re de-prioritising script development to focus on venue selection and application submissions. I’ve also bought a bunch of materials to start making puppets, which is for later, but I’m excited to get started on them.

Alex and I attended a ‘venue speed dating’ event yesterday run by the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Artists and venues were brought together to meet. We spoke to a number of great potential venues, several of which I would not have otherwise approached.

It’s still all very up in the air and I can’t tell you anything more. Watch this space for an image reveal in a few weeks – Fleur and Alexandra are Out of this World and they’re coming to a theatre near you.

Things are chugging along happily for me, I hope things are coming along for you too.

Was it Worth the Price of Admission?

12 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by in Art, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

A few weeks ago I started working on the new show which Alexandra and I will be performing at the Melbourne Fringe festival in September. Currently titled ‘Fleur and Alexandra are Out of This World‘ it will be a pseudo-sequel to our last show, ‘Fleur and Alexandra Save the World’.

We’ve got a plot and we’ve started drafting the script, so we’re well on our way. I’m getting excited designing the puppets and set dressing and coming up with jokes and then late last week Alex suggested that we submit our script to a competition run by the Australian Writers Guild (AWG). I’d never heard of them, but apparently they’re THE people to talk to about writing for the screen/stage/radio in Australia.

The competition promised a cash prize which was to be used for development of the project, as well as the opportunity to pitch the Head of Comedy at the ABC. It looked good and I told Alex I was keen.

She did all the work to get the script from the first show into a screenplay format and down to 30 minutes, as well as most of the work to come up with plots for additional episodes (we needed to pitch six episodes).

Then we read the fine print – we had to be members of AWG. It was $210, double that of the Romance Writers of Australia (RWA). It didn’t really seem like something I wanted to sign up for, but if I wasn’t a member we couldn’t submit to the competition.

In the end I decided that it was worth it for the prize. I would do my best to get value out of the membership while I had it, but it got me thinking about the value of professional memberships, especially in the arts.

I’m a member of the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild, who meet once a month. The meetings and writing retreats are immensely valuable for both motivation and learning my craft. Writing is so often a solitary pursuit and meeting others in the flesh really helps you not feel alone.

I’ve been a member of the RWA, however the membership expired this month and I haven’t decided if I’ll renew it. I would have access to discounted rates for the conference, which I’m not going to this year, and to the online writing courses, but both of those can be purchased without membership, although one has to be a member to enter their competitions too.

I’ll do some more thinking about the pros and cons before committing. The RWA doesn’t have meetings I can attend regularly, which makes it feel like a much more ephemeral membership.

The tight-arse in me is skeptical of spending money on something for which I don’t earn any in return. Then again, I’ve paid for writing courses, I’ve paid for acting classes, I’ve paid for rehearsal spaces, and I’ve paid to record an EP.

Perhaps thinking of these things as strictly transactional is not helpful; measuring what’s put in against what comes out. It’s also possible that these transactions will have payoffs down the line. Networking with people in these memberships could end up creating an opportunity which bears fruit, or one day I’ll be rich and famous and all the money and time I put in will pay dividends.

We’ll have to wait and see, I guess. On the plus side, I now have a membership to AWG, an opportunity to win a sweet prize, and the seeds for four new shows. At least we won’t run out of material!

Productivity Hacks – What are yours?

18 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in My Journey, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Yesterday I was at the monthly Melbourne Romance Writers’ Guild meeting. We had special guest Anna Campbell come to speak to us about writing through the fear. Anna is a full time writer and she had a lot of great tips for making the most of your writing time.

One of the things which really stood out for me was the use of a productivity diary. It can be anything, but it’s somewhere to record the work you’ve done on your writing. One of the other participants suggested using Excel and the nerd in me was very excited. After the meeting I came home and made a spreadsheet:

Writing Tracker pic

It’s pretty simple, but it’s a way to keep you grounded about how much you’re actually producing. Anna said she was always surprised by how much she wrote when she looked back over her productivity diary. She said that a lot of her struggles with writing are based around ‘demons’ who tell her she isn’t good enough. Having a record of the writing she did over the month means she can tell the demons to get stuffed. I don’t know if it’ll work for me, but I’ll give it a try.

I’ve also started to think about what to do for NaNoWriMo this year. I’m going to use Lauren Clarke’s The Novel Handbook which I bought from her at the Romance Writers of Australia conference in mid-August. I found that with my last manuscript I was struggling to keep the characters straight in my head, to remember their eye colours, favourite foods etc. A story bible (try this one) like the productivity diary,  can be in whatever format suits you, but the purpose is to keep character, setting, and plot stuff handy so that you can refer to it.

As I was going through editing the manuscript I realised that I’d changed the names of three different minor characters. I got to a section, fairly late in the novel, and thought ‘Who is George?’ He was the main character’s father, originally named Ben. There were also two Renees.

The phrase ‘be ruthless in protecting your writing time’ has come up a number of times over the last month for me, and it’s really brought home the need for me to be disciplined. I’m good at sprinting, doing a lot of work over a relatively short period of time, but I haven’t developed a good sustainable pattern. I’ve blocked out Monday’s in my calendar for writing, and I am going to be ruthless about not booking other things during that time.

I’m going overseas at the start of October for three weeks. I’m taking a laptop with me so I hope that I’ll make some time to write. I’m going to take my Choose Your Own Adventure story with me; I’d like to have that edited by the time I get home. It might be fun just to put that up on the internet for people to read.

What are some of your techniques for squeezing out more writing time? Making use of dead time, not falling down a Netflix/YouTube hole, and doing short bursts, even if they’re only ten minutes, were all ways that I thought I might be able to scrounge some more time for writing.

Going Wild – 2017 RWA Conference

19 Saturday Aug 2017

Posted by in My Journey, Travel, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I’ve been pretty busy lately, including this blog I wrote for the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild about my trip to Brisbane for the RWA conference.

Now I’m working on getting my manuscript ready to submit to some publishers ASAP to take advantage of the renewed enthusiasm from going to the conference.

I’ll update you all soon.

Welcome to 2017

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in My Journey, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Firstly, can I just say that 2017 seems like an absurd number for a year. I finished school in 2002 and that felt quite strange but now I’m even older and it’s 2017. It’s not a real number, it’s not a real year. I feel very old.

But back to what I was really going to talk about. My new years post. I brought in the new year watching the fireworks over the city and got home after 5am from a lovely house party with a spa and lots of lovely people. As a result I’ve spent today alternately sleeping and binge-watching Sherlock. It’s been a good way to start 2017.

So what goals am I setting myself for this year? Well, to start with I’m getting rid of the vague goals from last year. ‘Eat Better’ and ‘Exercise More’ are so ill-defined that they really don’t allow me to succeed at them; so they’re out.

One of the new writing groups I’ve been attending recently is the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild, and the members are quite active in entering competitions and submitting pieces. I think it would help me to pitch got publication if I had won some competitions, so I’m going to add that to my specific goals for the year.

For my writing projects here is my list:

  1. Win NaNoWriMo 2017
  2. Enter 5 writing competitions
  3. Finish the first draft of ‘My Mother’s Secret’
  4. Redraft ‘You Brought this on Yourself’ for submission (this is a hangover from 2016)
  5. Redraft the Choose Your Own Adventure and publish it online.

That’s probably enough for the year, if I’m honest. I think I will need to rewrite the first two NaNoWriMo manuscripts I wrote for publication, they don’t quite sit in the genre of romance well enough to be commercial and they’re not literary fiction either. That’s probably too much to do this year, so they can go on the list for 2018 along with another fringe show. I did a fringe festival show last year, and it was a fantastic experience, but it took up a lot of my creative mind. I think I’d like to do it again, but perhaps every second year is more sustainable.

For my performance goals this year I’m going to focus on Hello Volume. We’ve had a couple of gigs this year and I’d love to be able to get one gig a month in 2017. We’ll need to do some work on networking as well as merchandising and social media presence and all of that jazz. But there’s four of us so that’s doable.

I need to take a bit better care of myself this year. By the time we got to the end of 2016 I was pretty stressed, exhausted and unhappy. I’d let friendships drop off and was anxious about a lot of things. Things that will help to make my 2017 awesome include cooking good food at home, keeping up with regular exercise, reading, and spending time with friends.

I wish you all a brilliant year in 2017. May it bring you adventures and love and happiness and just the right amount of challenge.