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Aussie Expats Update – America, Five Months In
Five months, human beings. We have been living in America for FIVE MONTHS. I’ll lay it out straight for you: I’m not feeling very warm towards America right now. By that I mean, I’m feeling pretty cold. The reason? This morning, I took a friend into hospital early in the day. For reference, she’s about three or four years older than me and also for your information, I’m pretty hungry: which as anyone knows, is dangerous ground. Anyway, we get into prep and I’m just sitting off to the side, doing some work, when one of the nurses goes to me—“Oh, so are you Mumma?” OH MY EFFING GOD: NO. …
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Failing and the Intimidation of the Great Big Writing World
I got my results back from the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge in the early hours of this morning (only the score, as feedback will come later this week), and it would be a mild understatement to say I’m a bit disappointed. I thought that maybe there was some possibility that I would knock this one out of the park and make it into the top 5 to head to Round 3. I got zero. I wasn’t expecting that. I also didn’t know I was going to be as disappointed as I am (I wonder if it’s just a case of bad timing with a number of other things that…
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Why I’m not Doing NaNoWriMo
Happy Monday everyone… and HAPPY HALLOWEEN! May all the ghouls and ghosties resist the urge to devour your immortal souls and may you be gifted with plenty of candy to fill your trick-or-treating pumpkins. I hope everyone had an amazing weekend: we were once again a hit as the tastiest and most-stylish sammich on the market (by which I mean at a Halloween party), I’m 99.9% sure that I haven’t bought enough candy to last me the evening (and by ‘me’, I definitely mean all the little trick-or-treaters who will be stopping by our decorated front porch for some lollies—by the way, Americans don’t know what that word means. Huh?) and…
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An Introduction to my Novel
Happy Hump Day everyone! The middle of the week is always a time for partying and celebration… Okay, that’s not true. But it does mean you can all get a little bit excited because it’s that much closer to the weekend (and sleep-ins! Also maybe waffles – James?). Before we get to the promised post though, I wanted to remind you about the Flooded Anthology! The Kickstarter went live yesterday and we’re trying to drum up support for this project: please, spare a few minutes and go over to have a look at this. Perhaps you know someone with a brain injury, perhaps you have suffered one; maybe you’d like to know…
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Figuring Out Your Setting
Hellloooooooo everyone! For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently writing a YA fantasy novel (it took me a really long time to accept that it was YA, so we can all celebrate my publicly announcing it as a lovely little mid-week accomplishment), which is what got me thinking about this particular blog post. But first, a seemingly unrelated paragraph (it ties back in, promise). If you know anything at all about me, you know that I think brains are pretty cool things. For instance, for a woman who is occasionally bad at map reading [Disclaimer: I firmly believe that repeatedly missing turn-offs while James is driving isn’t really…
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Writing and Learning
Sometimes, Mondays just seem to come around so quickly. Weekends tend to be consumed by chores and studying, and you manage home-made pizza and a movie on Sunday night, then it’s Monday again. What the hell, world. Anyway, on to the post! Today is all about learning. I have a confession to make: I’m a bit of a nerd [Dislciamer: obviously depending on how you define nerd]. I love to read, I love to learn new things, I love studying (some days), and I find that it constantly boggles my mind how much there is out there to learn about, and how much we can utilise the things we learn…
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Aussie Expats Update – America, 3 Months In
Welcome back to the end of the week everyone! Fridays are always a happy light at the end of the tunnel (how this can be the case when I don’t have a job, don’t ask!) and despite James’ avowal of a busy weekend of study, I’m looking forward to at least one sleep in and maybe a Saturday night movie. I know, I know: we make coke-snorting, LSD-taking ravers look tame. It’s just who we are. When I counted the weeks on the calendar earlier today, it hit me that we’re coming to the end of our third month of Aussie expat life. How crazy that seems! Life, of course,…
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The Pressure Cooker of Advice Lists
Happy Monday world! Does anyone else ever feel pressured as a writer? You know what I mean: you have to do x, y and z to develop your voice. You have to use this story structure. You need a theme. You need a strong female character, but don’t push a feminist ideal; more speech tags but you should only ever use ‘said’; more diversity, more action, more intrigue, more adverbs, less adverbs… It can’t be just me. Everywhere we turn, someone is telling us how to write. Some might argue that’s just an extrapolation of all the other things that the world and its nosy people feel free to tell…
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Aussie Expats Update – Driving Reprimands, Manuscript Typing and Travel Planning
It’s Friday yet again (thank goodness!), and I’m worried that no tale will ever again live up to that of the free-spirited armadillo I introduced you all to last week. [We need to name it, I think, then freely and ignorantly apply this name to every and all armadillos seen in the future, dead (‘sleeping’) or alive.] However, I did get pulled over by an on-base cop yesterday! There you go, more drama and intrigue in the life of the Aussie expats. Having picked James up to take him to a promotion ceremony that was happening elsewhere on base (and on a tight schedule, I’d like to add), I turned…
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Burning Out
I’m feeling burnt out. It’s Sunday night and we had a big day today. Though it fortuitously included waffles for breakfast and froyo for a pseudo-lunch, it also included a hike through the Wichita Wildlife Reserve with Kim and her pup Frankie that left me pretty wrecked. Writing Monday’s blog post on a Sunday evening, I feel exhausted. And typically, that leads me to feeling some mild form of creative despair. I’m sure you’ve been there. Raise your hands if you know what I’m talking about (don’t worry, no one can see you guys). Yeah, that’s what I thought: almost everyone in any kind of creative endeavour has. [Disclaimer: I…
