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An Emergency In The Form of a Bright Blue Box Set

There’s many book shop loyalty programs. They all basically work on the idea that as you buy books, you get “rewards” (points of some sort which can be redeemed at that book store for more books).

A quick scan through my wallet shows the following book-store loyalty cards:
BORDERS: One stamp for every book you buy over $20. When you get to a certain amount (I think it’s 7), you get a free book of a value under $20. It’s pretty rare for Borders to charge under $20 for anything decent, plus this is only valid if you earn those rewards within a three-month time frame. No thanks.
ANGUS & ROBERTSON REWARDS: One point for every dollar you spend. Good deal, no? No. It takes 100 points (that’s $100, kids) to earn your “reward” – a $5 A&R voucher. That’s a lot of money for little payoff. Really.
DYMOCKS BOOKLOVER: I’ve been a member of is for such a long time, and it’s still not such a bad deal. Dymocks give you 5 points for every $1 you spend. Every 100 points equates to $1 credit on your card. As I said, not such a bad deal.
VWC MEMBERSHIP: This is an inappropriate plug for how great it is being a member of the Victorian Writer’s Centre. For those of us on concession cards, it’s only $45 a year, and that pays itself off SO quickly. Not only do you get sent special publications all about the writing industry, and get cheaper tickets to workshops etc AND access to the kick-ass library they’ve got up at the Wheeler Centre, but you also get 10% off at Paperback Books on Bourke Street. The Paperback is one of my favourite book shops in Melbourne, and this 10% off makes it so much better shopping there. Rant Fin.

My favourite rewards card though? Easily
READER’S FEAST PRIVILEGED READER: You know those book guides that Reader’s Feast put out each season? That gets sent to you in the mail. Along with invites to special events, such as discount shopping evenings and writers’ appearances. On top of this, every dollar that you spend at Reader’s Feast gets tracked on your card, and twice a year 10% of the amount you’ve spent gets reimbursed as a Reader’s Feast book voucher. If that amount is under $5, they send you a $5 voucher anyway. Forgot to bring your card? No worries, they’ll look you up on the computer.

So, all that being said, I know my top two choices for Christmas shopping!

Last week in the mail I received the above mentioned seasonal book catalogue. In the same envelope were two invitations. One to a special evening where you partook in “Christmas cheer”, “light refreshments”, shopped, and received a $5 voucher just for coming. Unfortunately, I was working that night and missed it. However, the other invitation was for “End of Year Bonus Time”. Between the 21st of November and the 5th of December, Readers Feast are boosting the Privileged Reader’s rewards to 20% credit, rather than the usual 10%.

Today I headed in. I’ve been eagerly awaiting having enough cash to buy the whole Black Inc. “Best Australian…” box set, containing the collected essays, short stories and poetry. I’ve been unreasonably excited about this – when I received this “20%!” invite, I had to have in. I had the cash, I had the time, I went and got my box set. The box set, worth $70, is now sitting next to me on my couch waiting to be cracked open. Not only do I own this box set, but $14 of the purchase price will soon come back to me in the form of a Reader’s Feast book voucher. $14! That’s SO MUCH!

I’m proud of myself, folks. And I’m giving you a kind heads-up. Things you should take from this post:
– Join Reader’s Feast Privileged Readers reward program. It’s free, and so very awesome.
– Join VWC. They’re so plain awesome that they snuck into this post uninvited!
– Buy the “Best Australian…”  collection. In a box-set this year! It’s so pretty. So very, very pretty.

SO pretty, in fact, that I’m settling down with a coffee to get stuck into them right now. Boss, if you’re reading this, I may not be in to work tonight, I might have “an emergency”…in the form of a bright blue box set.

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Brain-work on a Monday?!

Usually I manage to structure my Mondays so they involve as little brain-work as is humanly possible. I just put chutney on some toast – usually that’s about as tough as my Mondays get. That, and turning pages of trashy novels.

Not this Monday! This Monday I’m doing all sorts of brain-work, and I’m not sure I’m OK with it quite yet.

There are decisions to be made today. I’m going to a slam tomorrow night to perform at their open mic in preparation for the State Library’s Australian Poetry Slam on Wednesday at the Balwyn heat. Both these events are quite big and scary for me – I haven’t done any poetry performance outside uni events, so while I’m not nervous just yet, I have a feeling I very much will be later. I have two pieces that I feel are quite strong, and I need to choose which is stronger. One has some humour. The other is a bit pretty.

I need to practice these pieces more so they’re totally drummed into my brain (brain-work…).

When that decision’s been made, I need to decide on an extract from Hold On, the story which is appearing in Page Seventeen, being launched on Saturday. I’ll be reading an extract at the launch, up to 3 minutes… I haven’t decided which three minutes yet. I think most logical is from the start of the story, because the chronological story is intercepted by flash-backs. But is that the strongest part of the story?

The following piece of brain-work involves writing up a pitch for a workshop I’ll be running before the end of the year in Northcote, through Express Media.

By the end of the day, I think I’ll be happy to head off to work and only think about filling fridges. By far too much brain-work for a Monday!

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Dreeeeeeam-Weaver!

Last night I had a strange dream.

I was at a venue, and after some show I went to collect my things from the cloak room. I’d left a huge quill pen there. It was a beautiful pen, with a big whispy red feather extending about a metre into the air. I asked the cloak-room attendant for my pen. He nodded, and came back with two pens. I recognized mine, but he also held one which was much bigger. The same pen, just as beautiful, but bigger than mine.

Little Girl With a Big Pen dreamed about someone with a bigger pen.

What the hell does that mean?!

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Some Solid Advice

I’m a fan of Cate Kennedy. She’s a great writer, a wonderful editor (hey, Christmas is coming up! “The Best Australian…”? Anyone?), and I especially enjoy reading her columns and journal articles.

Having read some of her work before, I know that Cate Kennedy is a major proponent of turning the damn internet off when you’re working. She tells some harsh truths, she honestly gets to the crux of the problem, whether it’s time-wasting, or lying to yourself about what your work really is or wants to be…

Yesterday on The Inc. Blot (the Black Inc blog), Cate wrote her top ten tips for writers. Usually these lists are pretty gimmicky, or they take the piss. Mark Twain’s advice, “Use good grammar” and a very helpful BBC article telling me to “Get an agent!” are two such articles.

Cate’s list, however, is true to her usual form. She cuts through the crap, and gives real advice which talks to the real problems most writers face. Thinking about fame when what you need to do first is find somewhere to sit and write. Mucking around on Youtube. Self-editing before anything even reaches that page. Most importantly, just get the job done. Cate gives advice that helps you do that.

So head on over to The Inc. Blot and give her article a read.

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Coming home and The End Point

That’s it. Semester over! This semester was big. Really big. Fourteen novels for just two of my subjects and that’s only the stuff with covers. At least two reams of paper, lots of ink, hours and hours of reading off my screen because I couldn’t afford to print any more. Twelve weeks of sacrificing the reading I actually wanted to do, to make room for things that were mostly worth reading, but not always what I wanted to do.

But that’s over now! It’s holidays! It’s lovely weather! The real reading can begin. I can cross billions of things off my “to-do” list, and work through the huge stacks of books that I’ve been buying but not had space or time to read. I can make sense of my writing desk, make some narratives happen, rather than torturous essays comparing texts which should never, ever be compared (Camus’ The Outsider and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea being the most recent hideousness).

So here I am, back at home in the blogosphere. I can blog whenever I like, I can dedicate that section of my brain to planning posts as I live. I can work my way through my poor, neglected Google Reader feed! Oh poor Google Reader…

Today I read a piece that really got my attention, which was re-tweeted by Angela Meyer. The article, “Where Did The Web Go?“, talks about a lot of things that got my attention.

First point of interest: A quote from Stephen Mitchelmore: “Finding a way to talk about the reading experience is, I’ve realised, the greatest pleasure of writing; where it ends is of no importance.” I love this quote. Stephen’s talking about how it doesn’t matter if your online literary efforts never really take off, because that’s not the point. The point is to find a way to talk about your “reading experience”. Reading is a strange thing in a similar way to writing – it’s a necessarily lonely activity, but there’s a definite pleasure in finding ways to share that loneliness. For me, LGWABP is a major way that I do that. I’m not sure that I always (…ever) provide insightful contributions, but I enjoy doing what I do. Stephen’s right – it is “the greatest pleasure”.

Second point of interest: “Choose what you want your site to be, and then do it” – I like this. Sometimes I feel like my blog misses the mark because I’m not sure what I’m doing with it. Successful blogs have something that is specifically theirs, whether that’s a layout, a tone, a bunch of memes, whatever. They own it.

Other than these two superficial things that caught my eye, the article itself is actually a great contribution to the discussion of the role of online media, in particular online literary criticism. Check it out.

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The Literary Legacy of a Trip I Never Took

My father and stepmum recently got back from a 3-month holiday. We caught up yesterday, and they gave me some presents from around the world – they did well.

This sign now sits in my study looking endlessly cool. It marks my space as mine. This is where the genius happens!

Also a fantastic gift – magnetic fridge poetry! These are those little words that stick onto your fridge, and you can arrange them as you please, making fantastic little poems with a limited set of ideas. I spent about an hour at the fridge last night messing around.

Results that are still on our fridge:

“explore the cracks
in every spine
this villain could never tell
of beautiful poetry
beneath human monsters”

“always create
inspire another wisdom through fiction”

and

“empty
above science I can wander
and begin whispering magic”

a Aren’t they great? Get yourself a set, they’re fun, and they’ve provided me with a real excuse for walking out of my study and into the kitchen when I should be writing – I’m making poetry! I want to build up a big set of these, because I know there’s other sets (this one being the ‘book lover’ one, containing words like ‘page’, ‘chapter’, ‘hero’, ‘villain’ etc), and have a huge choice of words. With a small collection, though, it’s a lot of fun to get all Oulipo and see what you can do with a limited set.

Thanks, travelling family!

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Remembering

I used to do plays when I was younger. The roles I had usually only required me to remember choreography, maybe a line or two. The one play that had a larger speaking part wasn’t too bad, because it all seemed to have an internal logic which forced me to easily remember what to do, where to be, what to say.

Memorizing poetry, however, is something new to me. I was thrilled by the discovery that I perform better without a page in my hand. My hands move freely and they keep rhythm, they provide markers for the words to sit on, making it all easier to remember. I’m glad of this, as a hazard of reading poetry seems to be shoving a page in front of your face, disconnecting yourself and the audience.

How to remember in the first place though? I wrote out the piece on my computer, and read it over and over. I eventually stopped looking. Then I said it aloud to myself as I went about everyday things. In the shower. On the way to the tram. For the most part, this worked.

I put a call-out on Twitter for any tips anyone might have for memorizing. Veronica Cybluski was very helpful, providing the following ideas:
1) Find a beat or rhythm.
2) Stick a copy of the words around the house so you see it everywhere. Laminate it and put it in the shower.
3) Record yourself reading the piece, and listen back to it, possibly just before bed.

The laminating idea appeals to me. I heard once about people who record themselves reading their pieces at double-time, and learn them at that speed. That way when they’re on stage and have a brain-freeze, what feels like a big pause to regain their train of thought is actually only a slight pause.

My simple “repetition, repetition” theory worked well enough, but I’ll be trying everything mentioned above eventually to see how I can best remember my poetry for performance. Pieces really are stronger when you get rid of that page.

What’s your trick for remembering your work?

2

“My Thing”?

Some writers have a certain thing about them. You know what to expect of their work.

I expect my own work to be a bit unstable in this way. I’m a young writer, I’m still trying to find my voice. I’ll most likely work my way through many clichés before I find it. I’m fine with this.

I didn’t expect my work to have its own thing yet. This morning I had a strange conversation with my partner, who was talking to a friend about my work. The friend asked what kind of writing I do.

D’s reply?

“Depressing”.

Depressing? Really? Oh dear. I know he said it with respect, he’s one of my most helpful ears to test things on. He’s honest.

But I don’t want to be that! There are writers I no longer want to read because they produce the same story over and over. While I know that I’m young and producing a reliable stream of crap, I also thought my writing had a certain amount of newness. I thought I told more than one story, had more than one tone.

Depressing? Excuse me while I have an existential crisis!

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Making Shit Real, Yo!

Today I met someone I respect quite a lot. I introduced myself, and he said “oh yes, Little Girl With a Big Pen, I read your blog.”

The name of my blog sounds surreal coming out of people’s mouths, like it’s a real thing. People out there read it. YOU! You read it!

So hey, thanks. Thanks for reading my blog, and giving me an audience, and making shit real, yo. I had a moment today where I realized that I’m doing something ace that I enjoy, and it’s getting somewhere. It’s been about a year since I started blogging, I think it’s a year in about a week’s time… Gosh.

And:
YEEEE! (RE: Recognition via blog)

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