Having gone entirely too hard last night, I’m not writing today.
Someone else did though, and they did it very well.
This guy has written a fantabulous post sharing important people’s strategies for getting past creative blocks.
Enjoy.
My Sunday was a nice one.
We came back from seeing family, we showered, sat around and checked the usual online importances, then we headed down to Station 59 in Richmond to catch a Madonna gig.
Not the elasticized pickled material girl, no. Madonna are a local band with so much joi de vivre your eyeballs and eardrums may just burst when in their musical presence.
Station 59 is a very average venue, but one that is now attracting a pretty steady crowd, and one which offers pretty fantastic and unbeatable $10 pot-and-parma’s.
Madonna’s music is a hyped-up, chilled-out synth and sample-fest. Everybody bops, the band fling them selves, bare-footed and half the time bare-chested, around the stage with massive smiles of their own, prompting massive smiles from everyone else.
I’ve been meaning to blog about some of the bands I see that inspire me: Madonna are definately one of them. They have such love for what they do, and such energetic creativity to share with everyone who shows up to their gigs. They just make it all work; it’s just sheer and simple fun. Even when it’s messy it’s seamless and you go with it.
This morning I cut my own hair. I was feeling out of sorts, somewhat dissatisfied with the world. And my fringe had been hanging in my eyes for weeks.
Being poor and restless, I took up my scissors and gave it a good chop. A very rough, far-too-short chop. A chop that turned out looking not entirely like anything my fringe has ever experienced. It’s trying to be something, but it just looks confused.
To soothe the discomfort which has only been inflated by my hair cutting, (my partner hasn’t woken up to laugh at my uneven hair yet) I decided to sit down and watch some of the footage from the Wheeler Centre’s opening event, “A Gala Night of Storytelling”.
Yesterday the footage of Christos Tsiolkas, John Safran and Chloe Hooper was uploaded. On Thursday the first six writers’ footage was uploaded. There are still a few more writers to go.
Each featured writer was asked to share and discuss “those tales that have been handed down to them through the generations, each giving voice to an inheritance of wisdom, of understanding, of identity”. Some writers took this more seriously than others – some accounts are poignant, some funny, all are pretty enlightening in terms of where such revered literary figures have come from. I can honestly say that I only found one or two of these speakers dull…I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to pick which ones they were.
But at least even the boring ones distracted me from my wonky fringe… Time for round two with my scissors: The Straightening.
An interesting lineup on radio station 774 ABC Melbourne, with the “prolific” (and very grandfathery-sounding) Alexander McCall Smith, Stephen Cummings, and Michael Williams (Head of Programming at the Wheeler Centre).
Engaging, entertaining, absolutely worth a listen. What a great group of people to put together in a room!
…I love Michael Williams. He speaks so well, and is so great to listen to. I saw him on a panel at The First Word last year at the Emerging Writers Festival, and, honestly, Wheeler could not have chosen anyone for this job more in touch with things and more like a real person.
Have a listen (sorry about the link, I can’t figure out how to embed audio in mp3 format):
…and a big thanks to Keith for letting me know this interview exists, you were right, I’m certainly interested in this!
I am… entirely, thoroughly, absolutely. And I love it.
Today I came across this blog, “Lost in Books”.
I’ve been on there for about 45 minutes already, and I’ve only just skimmed the surface. I just had to share it – such a huge site, so varied, and offers a lot of inspiration, especially on what to blog about. Very helpful and interesting, also seems to be a great place to connect with like-minded people.
Enjoy, and props to Rebecca from Lost in Books for putting so much work into a fantastic blog!
I recently found an incredible website.
Infloox asks the question: “what are famous people’s favourite books? …today and throughout history?”
At the homepage of Infloox, you can type in the name of an author, a famous person, or the title of a work. This then takes you to a page which provides a short biography of this person, or work. Under this is where it gets interesting…
Infloox lists (and wiki-style, allows feedback on) this person’s “infloox” (things that were influential upon that person’s life and work), and “outfloox” (the same idea but outwards – so things and people that were influenced by this person). Not only this, but Infloox is expanding what it lists… It now also lists “affinities”; giving details such as “people who liked this person also liked…”
I’m a sucker for these types of lists. I love being able to link ideas, works, people.
I’m blogging about this because I like to think about influences. Anyone who thinks that idea about not reading for fear of being overly influenced has any merit, is crazy. You need to be a good reader to be a good writer. Infloox is proof of that.
I’m also blogging about this because I like this site, and would like to see it grow. So click the link, send it to friends, help the database of Infloox grow so I can learn more…
If there was an Infloox page about me right now, it would have on it:
INFLOOX: John Marsden. Chuck Palahniuk. Robert Adamson. Raymond Carver.
OUTFLOOX: perhaps one of my musician-friends? Or my partner’s photography, that’d be nice.
What would your Infloox page look like?
Today’s post was prompted by John Pace’s article in The Reader (pictured left), titled “Re-Draft with Craft”. It got me thinking about drafting, something I truly struggle with (and I suspect a lot of people do… like Dan Brown, and Bryce Courtney’s more recent work?)
While Pace’s article is directed at screenwriters, I believe it applies to all forms of writing, or even all forms of anything that requires drafting.
Pace gives some fantastic advice about drafting (obvious, yet helpful – this is how most creative-type advice seems to be, especially the helpful stuff), such as cutting out unnecessary “hangover” words in order to write punchy, economic pieces. What stood out to me most about this article, though, is something that spoke to my constant fear of starting.
I have long embraced the term “vomit draft” to describe that first terrifying committment of word to page. I pussyfoot around a piece, thinking on it for too long, scrapping it before I even get it onto a page. Pace suggests the more apt rule, “be wrong as fast as you can”, coined by Andrew Stanton (screenwriter of Wall-E and Finding Nemo). “Just get it down,” says Pace. “Don’t worry about its merit”.
Yes, I needed to be told this. I’m not a brave writer.
Later in the reader, Simonne Michelle-Wells, (in “A Letter to my Younger Self (from the time machine)” ) sits her younger self down for a chat, saying:
“You didn’t draft enough. Drafting and editing are not the same things and you happily convinced yourself they are. Editing requires sweat. Drafting requires blood. Tossing out an errant comma and deleting reams of superfluous adjectives is a leisurely jog compared to the marathon of unpicking a rambling narrative arc or killing off characters in the name of expediency.”
For such a long time, I have convinced myself of the same thing. Pace talks about one screenwriter who sits down to re-draft in front of a blank page. No cut-copy-paste, this writer starts again from scratch, with faith that the ideas that count will resurface.
THAT is brave writing.
Monica Wood’s “Pocket Muse” tells writers, “you have to be willing to write badly“… and I think that’s the key here. Without a willingness to “be wrong, as fast as I can,” I can’t even start to get it wrong. I’m too safe, too much of the time.
Two days ago, I recieved my copy of The Reader. This is a collection of fiction and non-fiction pieces by people involved in the Emerging Writers’ Festival.
I have to say, I was so excited to get my hands on this, and though it’s quite a diminutive publication, it packs quite a punch. I’ve so far only read about five articles, but it’s got me laughing, thinking, and wanting to lock these little tidbits of writing wisdom away in some part of my mind. I know they’ll come in handy.
So over the next few blogs, I want to share with you the places I’ve been taken by The Reader, what it’s prompted me to think about and research, and what I’ve come away from it with.
Until then…
I’ve been reading Jeff Chang’s Total Chaos: The art and aesthetics of hip-hop… Being a collection of essays, some things are great and others are total shit. That’s the way collections are.
Three essays in, I’m introduced to Marc Bamuthi Joseph… my heart sings, my creativity is tickled, and my head explodes just a little.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph is an NYC “arts activist”, whose work is pretty varied but mainly now focusses around hip-hop spoken word and dance. He mentors young kids through a program called Youth Speaks – I can’t even begin to express how happy this makes me. I’m right behind anyone who supports literacy and fosters kids’ creativity. Hell, fosters anyone’s creativity! (I am part of Golden Key International, whose Swinburne chapter supports Ian Thorpe’s Fountain for Youth , they do amazing work also around Indigenous Literacy… but I digress).
In his contribution to Total Chaos, MBJ’s piece (Yet Another) Letter To a Young Poet is a call out to the young writing world now.
“…I’m spending the day reading Rilke. He’s this early-twentieth-century European philosopher-king who writes of creating poetry from the depths of the soul out of an irrepressible, intrinsic need. … I can’t believe that I’m in Africa but my eyes are in the book of yet another dead white guy. And yeah, Young World, you should probably read this shit at some point, you know just ‘cuz, but ultimately it exists in his dead-white-guy vacuum that was never meant to include you.”
Bamuthi makes a clear and honest statement to the “young world” –
“Your elders in rhyme challenge you to find your own voice, to work hard to apply it, and to do so responsibly. If you’re not afraid of your own potential, we promise you that we won’t be. Hey Young World, the word is yours…”
Bless his heart, watching this man move is a song that makes me want to write.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph inspires me to write, to take control of what I’m writing, to take the word and make it mine. Reading, watching, and listening to him makes me happy.
Sam van Zweden 