This short introduces a new treatment for the crop of videos I’ve been cultivating over the last couple of years. Lately I’ve been feeling the need to create a seperate place to indulge my video fettish free of the literary stuff. So with no better ideas, I created a new blog: One hundred cups of coffee
The premise is pretty simple; a video blog to document my attempts to be more creative, more often through one hundred coffees in one hundred different places – each a catalyst for doing, creating and experiencing something new.
100cupscoffee.com is a place for me to hone my video skills while keeping focused on the prime objective: creativity. So if you’re into video (not that kind of video), take a look, and let me know what you think (over there, not here).
And while I have you, here’s 9 things (I couldn’t find the 10th) I learnt about myself while writing at Varuna.
1. Every first draft feels just as hard as the last.
My first draft of the story I worked on at Varuna… Read more
I had left it a week but today I felt compelled to go visit the State Library of Victoria – often described as a quiet haven within the bustling CBD.
In contrast to the chaotic roar of the city streets, the delicate sounds of the library are a real treat. The silence seems to clarify the ordinary; the crisp sound of a page turning, the creak of the antiquated chairs accepting new readers, the knock of footsteps on the stairs, a muffled cough, sniffle or thought murmur. Against the light fuzz of the city golden echoes shuffle through from adjoining corridors, you catch the thin squeak of doors opening and closing down the halls, the scrape of a book on the leathered tables, and the subterranean rumble of passing trams.
In fact, it is easy to just enjoy the bookish ambience and forget what you are there to do; whether that’s to work, study or just chill out. The place just smells productive, each of the many thousands of books giving off its soft woody odour as they are opened and closed, shelved and re-shelved.
Eventually, I did actually get down to some writing, and two hours… Read more
Thanks to Paul from All Things Considered for adding to my collection of book trailers with this new one for Leanne Halls‘ novel This is Shyness, which launched a few weeks ago at Readings in Carlton.
The combination of stylised visuals, music and text really delivers an emotional punch and perfectly suits the young adult genre (This is Shyness won the 2009 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing). The lines helps to set up an intriguing proposition and offer a compelling reason to read more. I like it.
In less than 24 hours, in fact probably by the time you read this, I’ll have abandoned my home of the last 31 years and struck out for a brand new postcode in a new state. Yes, I’m uprooting my well established roots and heading to Melbourne.
In my ‘see you I’m outta here’ email to work colleagues I described the decision to shift state as taking advantage of a “window of opportunity to explore creative pursuits” with the more direct output being a novel (someday). In a sense, those pre-emptive words have come back to haunt me, as I now feel a heavy sense of obligation to carry through on the promise.
It’s a funny thing, for some reason I expected work colleagues to be resentful of the decision to pack up, leave a secure job and embark on my private pipe dream. But the response has been the opposite. All of a sudden colleagues, even those that I barely know, have been slapping me on the back, sitting down and telling me what a great thing I’m doing, how excited they are for me.
Of course many of my colleagues are in the midst of structured long term career… Read more
Fresh off the plane from Varuna with a shiny new word from an incredible book I ought to have read a long time ago. Full run down on the week at Varuna very soon…
dorsal a. of, pertaining to, or situated at the back, or dorsum.
The Lisbon girls were thirteen (cecilia), and fourteen (Lux), and fifteen (Bonnie), and sixteen (Mary) and seventeen (Therese). They were short, round-buttocked in denim, with roundish cheeks that recalled that same dorsal softness.
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides.
Tomorrow morning I head off for a week’s residency at Varuna Writer’s House; a writer’s retreat nestled in Sydney’s blue mountains region.
I’m absolutely thrilled to get the chance to stay, but I am a little nervous about how it will all turn out. My last self imposed stint of creative exile was tough work. Even though the outcomes were worthwhile, much of the time was spent nursing something akin to a nervous breakdown of the authorly kind.
Let’s summarise my lack of confidence by saying I’m cautiously optimistic about the coming week. Ready to be challenged, recognising the potential for frustration, and open to unexpected outcomes. Hell, it’s better than a week of 9 to 5. I have my camera, so at worst I’ll come back with some pretty photos of the garden.
Not that many will notice, but while I’m away things will be a bit quiet here on the blog and twitter. So why not leave me some thoughtful comments to come back to? That would be nice…