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Sam van Zweden

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Ex Calamus

It’s Latin for “from the pen”. Dig? I think it’s a smart name.

Ex Calamus is a publishing collective powered by RMIT Creative Writing students. We were looking for a way to keep ourselves writing and get in practise for actual publication, and so Ex Calamus was born.

The Ex Calamus webzine is a weekly publication. On Thursday night, all Ex Calamus writers are emailed a theme. The deadline is 6am Sunday morning. So Ex Calamus is a high-pressure quick-turn-around project.

In its third week now, the Ex Calamus webzine’s past themes – “Gold”, “So don’t close the blinds”, and “This Space Intentionally Left Blank”. A different writer from the group nominates the theme each week.

I submitted a short story called “Johnno in the Easement”, about a kid who is forced to grow up in the blank space between his parents’ garage and the fence.

The webzine is available for download as a PDF document, and is uploaded on Monday afternoons. Keep your eyes on it!

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The Importance of Creative Peers, Again

A few weeks ago I posted about creative people’s hierarchy of needs. The one that resonates most with me is “the need for creative peers”.

The last week has really solidified that for me.

Currently in the last week of semester, which is followed by two or three weeks of things-still-due, my fellow course-mates have been working furiously on a final writing folio for one subject. Mine isn’t due until next Tuesday, so I’m still breathing easily, but some others were not. I received a 5am email begging for help to cut 500 words from a 2,500 word story. I did my best.

All throughout the week coming up to this, I’d also received copies of many other people’s stories for feedback.

My boyfriend laughed at me. I didn’t mind though. Because I know that when I get up to 24-hours before the due date and stress out about my idea being no good, and can’t see the typos for the words, and have to either make up or cut out 500 words – well then I know my creative peers will be there, inboxes wide open, ready to help.

And even when it’s not about editing, I can’t stress how grateful I am to have all these creative people around me. There’s a group of slam poets waiting to hear my latest lyrical bonanza. There’s a publication group waiting for me to send in some work to help make it great. There’s a TV show waiting for my reviews and interviews. And there’s you, dear reader, waiting with bated breath for my next post.

All these people just make it so much easier to produce. I’m thankful for you all.

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Limp Writers

I know you’re reading this post because of the (possibly misleading) title. I dread to think of what this will do for my search engine results… “pen” and “limp” are begging for some beauties.

Anywho, this has nothing to do with the nocturnal concerns of other jot-fiends. At least,  not those nocturnal concerns.

This has to do with Little !ndependent Melbourne Publishing – or L!MP.

This website is run by the first- and second-year Creative Writing students at RMIT. We’re a driven bunch, and this is a part of that… L!MP is in its young days, meetings are currently being held in regards to branching out with it and trying to get it out in the world. So I’m doing my bit by sharing with you guys – check it out, check back, comment, pass it on. Help us get this bad boy up n thriving.

I’ve got a piece up there, which was posted here a long while ago, but the other pieces on the site are really amazing – I am learning with some freaking talented people.

You will hear more about L!MP in the future, I promise.

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Gala Soothes Home-Haircutting Aftershock

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.

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oh, wheeeeeler!

Dear Wheeler Centre,

You linked me. I love you. You linked my front page, so for those hits looking for the blog they’re actually talking about, it’s here.

“Girl with big pen praises Wheeler Centre”… so glad you noticed!

S.

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Farewell to another Great

Yesterday saw the passing of great American writer JD Salinger. The Age have written a nice article outlining Salinger’s life and controversies.

I have fond memories of Salinger’s writing. In when I was about 16, I was busy getting stuck into novels recommended by my literature teacher – Madame Bovary, The Age of Innocence, and many other novels containing statements about feminism which I was a little too young to fully grasp. I’d heard a bit about “The Catcher In The Rye”, so when I came across a $4 used copy, I grabbed it. It opened up a whole world  of writing to me which I didn’t know existed beyond teen fiction  – I thought only books marketed to teens contained anything that spoke to me, while adult fiction was all about interpreting and puzzle-solving. “The Catcher In The Rye”  began my discovery of what I really enjoy reading. It took me through all the Beats, into contemporary writers who challenge the norm – with political and moral consciences (Chuck Palahniuk), pushing “appropriate” boundaries (Bret Easton Ellis), writing in unconventional forms (Irvine Welsh), and all the postmodern trickery that was more widely conducted around the time Salinger was writing (Jorge Luis Borges, through to Dave Eggers and Mark Z Danielewski). So, JD Salinger was the gateway to a whole world of enjoyable literature (which now includes a nice balance of pomo trickery and afforementioned feminist classics).

I was talking to my partner recently about how authors with one particularly famous book or style take on so much of their characters and their characters’ attitudes. I think to some extent this is in the role of “author”… So while JD Salinger was so reclusive for most of his life, and we haven’t heard from him in many many years, his death feels like I’ve lost an old and distant friend.

RIP, Jerome David Salinger.

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