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Aussie Expats Update – Part 3 of our Roadtrip
Woooop, the end of week 3! Wow, are we getting around a heap and seeing a lot: we’re 21 days and 4000 miles (6400 km) into the road trip to end all road trips (seriously, after this, we’re pretty sure we’ll never really want to drive again), and are currently on our way to Knoxville. So, on to the recap! Luckily for us, our Day 14 trip from Savannah to Charleston wasn’t too long (just a little under 2 hours), which meant we had some time to do a bit of training in the morning: my frog hops and transition into handstands are really coming along. [A weird thing to be excited about,…
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Challenges: Proofreading and Feedback
Huh. Well, this one is a bit of a doozy. You write, and write, and write, and you think you’re getting better. In fact, you think your latest piece—whether it’s a story, a poem, a novel, an essay—is pretty damn good. But, you’re also conscientious and maybe you’re entering a competition or putting it somewhere for the world to read, so you ask a few people to read over it for you. Oh man. Buckle in. Where to start with this one? To kick it off, I’d like to say that if you have a small group of talented, painstaking and helpful friends out there who will proofread your work…
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Aussie Expats Update – Our Big Southern USA Roadtrip, Part 2!
We’re back again for the week 2 update of our epic US road trip! We arrived in the Keys last Friday via Key Largo, where we impulsively decided to book in for a jetskiing adventure on Saturday and followed it up with feasting on an incredible lunch of steak sandwich and fish and chips. If you haven’t had fish for eight months—because how the hell can you trust ‘fresh’ fish in landlocked and rustic Oklahoma?—then believe me when I say, you’re happy to have fish. And this Mahi Mahi was juicy and delicious (and also deep-fried). We gorged ourselves and then gorged a little more with some Key Lime pie…
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Organisation? A ‘Writing Projects’ List
Greetings fellow humans! So I’m a little bit excited about this one, in part because I took a photo and I used glittery golden pen to jazz up my page. I actually didn’t do a great job (the gel pen wasn’t working properly so I’m blaming my tools), but I stuck it up on my wall in front of my desk because ‘look at my artistic skills’ *cough*. And James said it was nice, so there. But anyway. This idea occurred to me while I was lying in bed in early January and realised my notebooks were jam-packed, my digital filing was all over the place, and my head was…
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Aussie Expats Update – The First Road Trip Report!
Hello from Florida everyone! Well, we’re on Day 7 of our amazing trip, and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind so far. Despite a less-than auspicious beginning on Saturday—whe the alarm clock failed to wake us up at 0400—we managed to be on the road by 8 am with our borrowed tent in tow (as, despite ordering our new one 3 weeks prior, it still hadn’t arrived). But, we got out butts on the road, and drove through to Dallas for an Arby’s lunch-stop before kicking on to Grand Gulf Military Park (MS). The ranger had left the gate unlocked for us after we’d called ahead earlier in the day,…
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The Joy of (Re)Discovery
Happy Monday world! I love writing. And I love finding my old writing again (well, love-hate, but definitely a fair splash of love in there). One of the most exciting adventures that I can go on (at least inside my own house) is rediscovering old things. That’s a pretty open-ended statement because I find it really easy to have adventures and get excited about stuff, but I’m fairly confident with rating finding old, forgotten things—depending on what the ‘old things’ are, I mean I’m not advocating for digging up any ancient graves, everyone—as an exhilarating experience. But it’s complex, too. I wandered downstairs a few months ago to put a…
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Blogger Recognition Award
Happy Monday world! I was incredibly lucky last week to be nominated by Ida Auclond for the Blogger Recognition Award. If you’ve blogged for any length of time [I seriously mean any length of time: even if you started last week and have somehow stumbled upon my blog today] then you know that blogging, like writing in general, can sometimes be a disheartening experience. There will be times when you’re not sure that you’re being seen or heard, and it might feel like you’re wasting your precious time and energy on an endeavour that no one else gives a damn about. Even if you’re writing for yourself, there is still,…
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Aussie Expats Update: A Ball, Cookies, Hiking and General Adventures!
Holy schmolys people. What a doozy of a week and what a lot to cover off on, plus, stacks of pictures (you can thank me later). As I mentioned in our last update, we had the St Barbara’s Day Ball for James’s Brigade on Friday night. Of course, this necessitated an early slammer of a gym session for the day, some bright red toenail polish, a couple of cheeky G&Ts, and a whole bunch of cheesecake. Despite my promises not to eat as many pieces of cake as last time, I think I ate more (thereby, one might argue, actually keeping my promise. Semantics). I would like, however, to point…
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Biting the Bullet: to Submit or not to Submit?
You know how sometimes you’re on a roll, getting stuff done, thinking that there is a high likelihood that you may in fact be superhuman… When you suddenly realise you’ve forgotten to write your Monday blog post? Yeah, that just happened to me. I’m feeling pretty chuffed with myself for getting through some time-consuming chores this morning, so I won’t be too harsh on myself; besides, here’s the post! I mentioned last week that I was in the process of working on a piece of speculative fiction, and I actually started writing this particular one as an entry into the The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition (deadline is tomorrow, so if you’ve got…
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Aussie Expats Update – Our Expat Australia Day & Other Tales
Friday again—where does the week go? We’re off to yet another ball tonight, since James’s Brigade decided that celebrating St Barbara’s Day when it’s meant to be celebrated (in December), is lame, and we’re much better off doing it in late January. The big upside is that I’m going to paint my toenails red and James’s sister, Amy, will be coming with us: so hopefully we will all get out of it alive! I can’t, however, promise that I won’t eat other people’s desserts. I’ll try to restrict myself to just two or three. We’re greatly looking forward to doing a whole lot of nothing this weekend (though we’ve got…
