Mid-last year I decided that 2012 was going to be my year of being a writer. I’ve been a professional writer for ages—the corporate kind. I enjoy corporate writing. I value immensely the things I have learnt from doing that work for ten years, particularly discipline and the ability to step back from my work… [Read more…]
September 14, 2011
The stories told about my grandmother Madeleine are many and varied and mostly colourful. The most colourful and varied of these are those she told herself. I heard a lot of them before she died because she told us all stories when we were growing up and later I asked for more. I’m writing these… [Read more…]
September 5, 2011
This year I’ve been getting increasingly obsessed with the idea of storytelling. It seems kind of obvious that I would think about the idea seeing as I call myself a writer. But, honestly, with the type of writing that I spend most of my time doing (blogging, tender writing, marketing copy, sponsorship proposals), storytelling is… [Read more…]
August 17, 2011
Alphonsine and Pierre’s thirteenth and last child was my great-grandmother Florence. Her twelve siblings had dark hair and eyes and strong features from their father. They were tall and strong-looking. Florence had dark hair but was built delicately, had a finer complexion and pale grey eyes. There were rumours about this last baby. The most… [Read more…]
August 15, 2011
Actually, I believe it’s real, I just don’t believe it’s a good enough excuse for not doing something. I think a lot of the time what people call writer’s block is not knowing how to be disciplined. There are people who insist they can only write under certain circumstances, with a certain lamp, on certain… [Read more…]
August 9, 2011
Over the weekend, somewhere on my Singapore-Helsinki-Heathrow stretch, I finished Chris Currie’s first novel The Ottoman Motel. I started it a couple of months ago just after its Melbourne launch but stopped when I got busy and the only time I had free to read was right before bed and I couldn’t because it was… [Read more…]
July 6, 2011
The next step in my plan for writing this book based on my grandma’s family is to spend a few months in the USA and Canada pounding out a first draft. I can’t in good conscience write about a place unless I know what it smells like and how the air feels. Reading and photos and videos will… [Read more…]
July 4, 2011
If I was going to write a memoir, I wonder where I would start. I wonder if I would start with my first memory and work my way forward in time from there. I wonder if I could remember things properly and how many arguments I would have with my sisters because they would remember… [Read more…]
May 30, 2011
A lot of people I know seem to know a lot of random information. For a writing project I’m working on I need to know a lot of random things so rather than looking things up myself, I thought I’d ask my blog readers whether you know any of the things this project is asking… [Read more…]
May 23, 2011
It’s festival week. A month of massive weekends (in which, as discussed previously, I am used to sleeping) in the lead-up is probably not the most strategic manoeuver in terms of personal energy conservation/stockpiling but there’s nothing I can do about that now. Luckily, I’m really excited about the festival which is pretty energising. I… [Read more…]
March 27, 2012
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