As a result of all the discussion I referred to briefly in my last post, Overland have amended their call out for bloggers. Check out the updates here.
I’m still unsure how I feel about this whole debate, so I’ll withhold comment for now, while I attempt to form a more rounded response than my last one.
It’s taken me quite some time to feel like I had the right (or perhaps the guts) to weigh in on the debate that’s being waged about the merits — or otherwise — of organisations like the ABC’s The Book Show and Overland Literary Journal putting out a call for bloggers. Bloggers that they’re not currently planning to pay (at least not with money).
It’s a thorny issue. The Book Show Blog callout is aimed directly at writers under thirty, writers who, presumably, aren’t already being paid for much (or any) of their writing. Overland aren’t asking so explicitly for young writers, but they’ll probably get quite a few applying.
Lisa Dempster, Ryan Paine, Benjamin Solah, and Extra Pulp have all been part of the discussion, as has Alec Patric on the Overland blog. (Clearly, I’m a bit slow off the mark.) I’m prepared to have my mind changed, but most of me thinks that these opportunities are good ones. Sure, they may not pay in actual cash, but (and if you read through the comments on the Overland piece, you’ll see that I’m pretty much reiterating what I’ve written there) being committed to making a regular contribution to, well, something, would be worth it for me. Payment is not always financial.
Again, a repetition of my comments on the Overland blog: I think blogging needs to be rethought. How do we make a distinction between professional and amateur bloggers? Does the fact that some writers might be paid necessarily mean that they are valued over those that aren’t? There are many different reasons to blog; not everyone who blogs considers themselves a writer. Is the distinction here the fact that these blogs are being put together by organisations?
If nothing else, the fact that such a flurry of typing fingertips has ensued can’t be a bad thing.
It seems timely, given what I’ve just done to my working life and income, that I should come across this post on Lisa Dempster’s blog.
I’m afraid this venture of mine might fail. But there’s the remote possibility that it might succeed… and even if it doesn’t, at least I will have learnt something.
Patience has never been a virtue of mine. At the moment I’m struggling with my lack of it. I’ve (sort of) finished up at work, and one would assume that would give me lots of free time. Not so.
This week I’ve been really busy. I had a (very welcome, by the way) visit from a friend, yoga classes, a brother’s 21st present to finish making, cooking, movies, The Decemberists concert, a night at the Moonlight Cinema. My brothers and some friends were over for dinner on Thursday night, excited about the Big Day Out they were going to be sweating at the following day, then my parents came up to Sydney and I had dinner with them and my aunt, uncle and cousins before we headed off to Foster on Saturday morning for a family holiday. I’m currently lazing about drinking cider and eating cheese and biscuits, so I can hardly complain, but I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever start with the writing. And I’m getting frustrated.
See? No patience.
On a side note, I picked up this second hand dictionary the other day from some cute kids selling some things outside their house. They told me I looked like I was in high school. Bless. Small salespeople in the making, methinks!
One can never have too many dictionaries.
And so it begins. I’m freaking out. I got my last pay packet today, and it was less than usual because I’m only working one week of the fortnight, and I owed some money for some extra annual leave taken. So it’s all real now.
Arrrrrgggghhh!
Just had to get that out.
I’m sure the freak-out phase will pass. And then I’ll be able to focus on getting some writing done, and sending it out there, and hopefully getting it published. This is the plan, beyond trying to get temp work.
I’ve spent far too much time over the last two weeks wondering whether this is actually a viable plan, or whether I’m actually insane. Will I be able to get anything published? Actually, scratch that, will I even get anything finished enough to be comfortable sending it to a publisher? Further down the track, once the savings are dwindling, will I be able to eat, or pay rent, or pay bills? Will I end up with a massive credit card debt? Will I get sick of eating lentils and rice because I’m too poor to buy anything else?
And then on top of all of that I have to concentrate enough to be able to go to yoga classes, read all my text books and try and retain information about anatomy, philosophy and language.
What am I thinking, doing this?
Underneath all the worry, though, is bubbling excitement. Right now this feels a little crazy, but once I get a few things sorted out I’m sure I won’t look back.
In the meantime, this man will help me feel calm. Thank you, Mr Lidell.
Somehow it’s suddenly new year’s eve and I’m all thoughtful and excited, and just a little bit sad. The coming year brings exciting things, it brings change. But of course change means leaving things behind, it means missing people. I’m sure the positive will outweigh the negative, but there are certain faces I’ll miss seeing most days.
So! The year that was. This year I was published in Voiceworks; I made some new friends and spent as much time as I could with old ones; I got rained on, I got sunburnt; I went to some exhibitions; I read far more books than I realised, but far fewer than I would have liked; I wrote a short screenplay, about four short stories and the beginning of a novella; I worked full-time and studied part-time (and went a little crazy doing so); I joined a book club for a while; I stayed with my writers’ group and grew to love them all even more; I drank copious amounts of tea, and slightly less coffee; I cooked and cooked and cooked.
And the year that will be. So far, a yoga teacher training course and some more writing, and perhaps some radio production. And who knows what else!
I, like most people, say I don’t like to make new year’s resolutions but secretly make promises to myself. (On a side note, here’s an interesting article about why we insist on making and breaking resolutions each year.) So some of my promises to myself are to read more, to write more, to play the piano and sing again, to cook more, and to show some more dedication to this space and The Monday Project. I’m sure I’ll manage to think of a few more over vodka at the Russian Coachman tonight.
Have fun tonight, whatever you’re doing, and stay safe.
Tonight I went to a yoga class (ouch — haven’t been in a couple of weeks), then came home and cooked a yummy pasta from tomatoes just ripe in our front garden, and listened to these guys.
My housemates are away at the moment, so I’m enjoying some time on my own (well, with the house cat). After Christmas with twenty-nine other relatives, it’s nice to have some quiet.
And now I’m going to settle down with the latest issue of Voiceworks. Ahh…
Pity I have to work tomorrow, really. Happy New Year!
I don’t normally have an urge to write about a book I’ve read. I’m not sure why that is — something to do with internalising the ideas, the atmosphere. Perhaps I’m a bit protective of the world a fiction book has created in my head (although my brother reminded me the other day that I used to constantly steal books he’d started, so I’m obviously not as concerned about other people maintaining those worlds in their own heads — sorry Tom!). I’m perfectly willing to talk endlessly about non-fiction, but I find it more difficult to articulate my feelings about fiction.
And so I was surprised when my reaction to Nava Semel’s ‘And the Rat Laughed’ was to write about it. It’s an unusual book. Essentially, it’s about remembering the Holocaust — how a story should be told, if it should be told, how to tell a story of trauma to a young family member without traumatising them too, how to avoid diluting the story so much that the essence of the experience is lost, how to then continue passing the story on without it turning into a warped game of Chinese whispers. Memory fascinates me, which is possibly why I loved this book so much, despite whole sections that simultaneously irritated me with their format or style.
The book is in five sections.
The first is the old woman’s story, told in bits and pieces, at times difficult to decipher among her wondering about the damage she might do to her granddaughter, to whom she is telling the story, her guilt about telling her granddaughter when she has never told her own daughter, and through the cloud of her own memory loss.
In the second section, the granddaughter apologetically tells her teacher that she failed to get a story from her grandmother, and could only elicit from her a seemingly meaningless legend about a rat that desperately wanted to laugh and a little girl in a pit who could not help him.
The third section is a series of poems. Short, simple. Devastating to the reader having already read sections one and two. They sound like poems written by children, and in a later section we discover that this is exactly what they are.
In part four I found myself skipping sections and forcing myself to go back and re-read them. It is set in 2099, in a time where people can communicate with one another through their dreams and send ‘b-mails’ (brain-mails, like emails). All the futuristic stuff was a bit far-fetched for me, but this section did serve to explore what can happen to a personal narrative once it’s removed from the person who had the experiences, and becomes a sort of myth.
The fifth and last section comes back to the original story, and shows us the diary of the priest who eventually saved the little girl (who became the grandmother) from the pit and tried to rehabilitate her.
At times I couldn’t help but feel that the Girl and Rat myth became a bit gimmicky, and took away from the devastating story of darkness and abuse, but then perhaps that’s the point. What does happen to our stories when they are told and retold in less and less accurate ways? Do the important parts disappear? Do they become myth? And if they become myth are they necessarily less emotionally potent?
And this, perhaps, is why I felt compelled to write about this book: it left me with questions.
In the last week I’ve taken some steps towards making some (rather big) changes in my life. While I was away in NZ I had a lot of time to think, and realised that some things I thought I’d always dream about doing but never actually do, were really quite realistic.
So! To stop talking in an abstract way: I’ve resigned from my full-time job and have enrolled in a yoga teacher training course. I’ve practiced yoga for about five years now, and have always thought vaguely about how wonderful it would be to learn more about it, and to be able to share that knowledge with others. More recently I’ve also starting thinking about how well it might fit with my writing and other more creative pursuits. Writing and teaching yoga like Jodi seems an entirely realistic proposition, really.
Of course, this will mean I need to think about lots of things in my life (like money, and how to make enough to eat and pay rent) completely differently. It’s scary, but the possibilities are also really exciting.
On another note, New Zealand was great! Beautiful country, cheery people. How could anyone be grumpy when their surroundings look like this?
Ahhh… New Zealand. Will you have me back some time?
PS. If anyone has some writing work for me, or even part-time anything work let me know. I like food. It would be good to continue to eat. Seriously. I mean it.
avocado and lemon 