Search

Sam van Zweden

Writer

Open Search

Aiming High

People achieve things by aiming high, right? They set their sights on things that are worth aspiring to, and they chase it.

I never aim high enough. I don’t bother to even ask about things that seem hard or out of reach, because I somehow believe that I’m not important enough for dreaming so big.

This morning I proved myself wrong. I emailed someone who’s a hero of mine, and asked if he’d care to interview for LGWABP. Within a few hours, he’d emailed back to say yes.

The lesson I learned: I can aim high. It won’t always work, but it’s not impossible. I just need to believe in myself and try. I can surprise myself.

6

Admiration/Inspiration Thursday: A Week of Inspiration

This week, I’ll be sharing with you some of the inspiration for my writing this week. Via the wonderful Steph Bowe I discovered “We Heart It“, and have been sourcing a lot of inspiration from there.
So here’s kind of an inspiration journal for the last week:

I’ve also taken inspiration from an old chair I used to own. It was big and red, and I bought it with one of my best friends for $25 – he bought the matching one. He still has his, but mine broke. I have a lot of memories that go with that chair, and they’ve been inspiring me.

I’m reading Jane Austen (still) and her language has been creeping into mine. It’s frustrating to know I absorb things like that, I’m so unsure of my own voice. It becomes really obvious when Jane Austen shows up in my work, I wonder how much more subtle stuff gets past me. I don’t know if it’s inspiration so much as influence here…

I’ve been playing with my hair all week. I got it cut last week and I’ve been trying to make it work for me. Not there yet, but the attention to myself for however long it takes each morning leaves me feeling a little better about myself. Self-confidence inspires me.

7

Comment July Challenge – Week 2 Highlights, and Used Book Woes

I’ve been a little slack this week. One day I only did three comments. Another day I did none at all… But that means there have still been 27 comments besides. Here’s a list of some of my favourites – articles, not comments.

“Book Launch: After America by John Birmingham, Ariel Books Paddington” on With Extra Pulp gives the usual personal twist to a literary event – a great read.

“My ideal writing desk” by Shari Green shares some of Shari’s ideas about the perfect place to write – I want the driftwood desk!

Steph Bowe’s “The Road to Publication”: talks about publication as part of a journey instead of an end-point.

Jenna Sten’s “Erotic Fan Fiction at the Wheeler Centre” on Virgule covers an event I went to this week but was too lazy to blog about – Jenna did it better than I would have anyway!

Ella’s “PHUN” on Cellophane Teeth celebrates some fantastic film trailers. My favourite is the dancing from Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

In other news, I’ve spent today book-shopping. I now have all my schoolbooks for next semester, apart from two. One of them is on order to be picked up Friday, the other… The other is just about impossible. “Beloved” by Toni Morrison is not available in Kill City Books, that used-book-shop on Flinders St with the yellow signage, General & Academic Books on Swanston, Tim’s Book Shop in Kew, Borders, Dymocks, Readers Feast, or Angus & Robertson.

Semester 2, 2010 school books

After returning home and having a Facebook status-whinge, I had a chat with the ever helpful Keith Redgen from Bluebird Books and Records, who is supplying me with the book I need, as well as a copy of a very hard-to-find book for a friend. If ever you get stuck, Keith’s got it 90% of the time.

It’s been a long day… I think I need to curl up with a good book!

8

Teaser Tuesday

I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before now – Teaser Tuesday, only I’m still on the same book as last week! Oh dear… It’s quite a big one and requires quiet and correct mood for me to read. So, this week we have more of Sense and Sensibility.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
  •  You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

“All her impatience to be at home again now returned; her mother was dearer to her than ever; dearer through the very excess of her mistaken confidence in Willoughby, and she was wildly urgent to be gone. Elinor, unable herself to determine whether it were better for Marianne to be in London or at Barton, offered no counsel of her own except of patience till their mother’s wishes could be known; and at length she obtained her sister’s consent to wait for that knowldge.”
-From Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

0

Splashin’ Around

Today I spent the day in a room. With. John. Marsden.

…and THEN. Steven. Amsterdam!

WAHHHHHHHH!

Today was the first “Big Splash” at the Wheeler Centre, run by Express Media. The day was a mini-festival featuring a keynote speech from Jessica Au and writing workshops by John Marsden and Steven Amsterdam. And what a day it was – as the first event of its kind, Express Media got it spot-on first go.

Jessica Au’s opening speech was a reflection on her recent reading of Virginia Woolf, who once said that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Jessica talked about what a woman today might need in order to write. Money was still a concern – “they say time is money, but for a writer, money is time,” Jessica said. The means to afford time for our writing is important. And not just time for our writing, but time for everything that goes with it – time to get distracted, time for uncertainty, time for re-writing and editing. Also essential are engagement with critical culture, and a good balance between egoism and pessimism. Later in the day Jessica shared her experience in getting published and dealing with publishers – she’s a very well-spoken lady, and while I haven’t read any of her work yet, I’ll be on the lookout for it!

The next part of the day saw the group of 28 attendants split in two, each going with a different writer, which would swap later in the day. The first workshop for me was with John Marsden.

John Marsden‘s importance to me simply cannot be understated. I was part of that generation who chewed hungrily through the “Tomorrow, When The War Began” series, got to the back cover of the last one, then started it all again because I just didn’t want it to end. “So Much To Tell You” is one of the first books I ever remember buying, and “Dear Miffy” the first thing with really explicit material (I remember the sentence too – “squeeze me like a lemon baby, your juice runs down my legs”) that I snuck past my dad out of the library. He’s been with me for about as long as I can remember reading, and now he’s coming with me into my writing life too.

Some notes on Mr Marsden – swears like a trooper. Natural story-teller. Rambles, but in a totally engaging way. Has a natural fascination in people and playing with status in real-life situations. Watches a lot of different movies – Pretty Woman, Terminator, some avant-garde French thing…

John’s been running workshops for about 20 years – and it shows. He does it incredibly well. While the first 45 minutes or so were a ramble about status, he eventually looked down at his watch and said “Shit, this is meant to be a writing workshop, we better do some writing!”.

His exercises were short and to-the-point. We looked at how stories need solutions, and how solutions don’t have to be absolutely unexpected to be good. We talked about how all stories are essentially “What If’s”. The example I came up with for this was, “What if I go home today to find another family living in my house, and find out that that family has been living there for a long time, just when I’m not home, and today I just catch them by chance?”. It certainly got me thinking(/paranoid)… I’ve been keeping an eye out for clues of their whereabouts since I got home.

John also came out with something really comforting – someone said something about a plot they’d come up with, then undermined it by saying “I know it’s just like (some popular thing) but…”. To this, John said: “Sometimes people are apologetic about their work being derivative, but you shouldn’t be, because everything is. You should only be apologetic if your writing lacks energy.”

Speaking to Express Media’s artistic director later, Bel Schenk, she said that John told her we were the best workshop group he’d ever had. It may have been hyperbole, but I’m claiming it. That’s right, folks, I was part of the best writing workshop John Marsden has ever run. YAH!

 The next part of the day was with Steven Amsterdam. Recently, Steven Amsterdam has wow-ed me with “Things We Didn’t See Coming”, which I picked up at the EWF, and was thankful for every page of. The man writes well. Really ridiculously well. You should pick up a copy.

Steven’s workshop had a lot more “heads-down” kind of writing, but was no less enjoyable for it. We used visual prompts to produce a pretty sizable body of story starters. Steven kept one guiding principle in our minds as a way to always push our work forward – “What’s the core value of your story?” he’d ask. And for the most part, by identifying what that is, there was a logical way forward.

This piece of advice is pretty priceless for me. I so often get stuck with a story, with a beginning and most of a middle – I know where it needs to end, but I’m not so sure how to make everything reach that point. Often I’ve been spending time writing really detailed character sketches outside of the story in order to figure out what would logically happen. This idea of keeping focussed on the core value of a story really helps with this process.

Steven also said something great about making story ideas original. With our visual prompts, we were mashing together seemingly unrelated ideas. Steven likened this to googlewhacking… I very much like this idea.

The day wound up with what was called an “informal panel session” but which was executed in a circle, with people throwing questions to the three writers, who chewed on them for a bit. It was incredibly relaxed, and felt so much better and completely different to any other author/writer event I’ve been to.

Both Steven Amsterdam and John Marsden are so incredibly friendly and approachable that I managed to have a chat with both outside of alloted time. Both were lovely enough to sign their books for me…

"Sam, Best Wishes, John Marsden"
"Sam, Keep it strange, Good luck! Steven Amsterdam"

…and John Marsden signed his using MY PEN… I absolutely loved my pen before, but it’s just taken on a whole new element. John Marsden wrote with my pen!

Beloved Pen, now graced by the hand of Marsden!

Best day I’ve had in quite some time, by far. Thanks Express Media, can’t wait for the next one!

7

Hit Me

Hit Me

Tom sits heavy at the table, so heavy that his bum muscles start going numb.

“Hit me,” he says.

Perfectly tuned machines ping around him, he cannot see outside, and pretty soon his arse will lose feeling altogether. Tom sits even heavier.

He says, “Hit me.”

A clock flies across the room, “YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT FUCKING TIME IT IS,” Anna screams, and Tom quickly shuts the door behind him, falling on unsteady feet toward his wife.

He sees his kids sitting in their pyjamas at the kitchen table. Their faces are filled with sleep and they both hold teddy bears.

“Oh, hey guys!” The kids don’t smile. One of them starts crying.

Anna’s picking up her car keys, saying “I’ve had enough of this, Tom. I’m done with this shit.”

She’s picking up already-packed bags and moving towards the door, telling the kids to follow her. Tom steps into the doorway ahead of Anna.

“Put the bags down, sweetness,” to Anna.
“Go back to bed, guys” to the kids, with a confident smile. They stay where they are.
“You’re not going fuckin’ anywhere,” to Anna.

She looks into his eyes with a hard expression, none of the softness she had when Tom married her. The clock’s still ticking, but the second hand’s shuddering in the one place, like time stands still.

“I was out with the boys,” Tom tells his wife, “Time got away from us. No matter. Let’s go to bed, my love.”

Anna shakes her head, glances quickly towards the kids.

“I told you to choose, Tom. We’ll lose the house. There’s no savings. It’s all gone! I can’t stick around for this.”

She moves toward the door again but Tom grabs her by the arm, hard.

“And take my fuckin’ children, woman? No no,” he shoves her back against the fridge, his hands around her throat before he realises what he’s doing.

As Anna’s whole body strains against Tom’s strength, he comes to himself and lets go. He falls back across the room, hits the wall, and slides to the floor. There are tears.

“You piece of shit,” chokes Anna, grabbing their children by the wrists and pulling them behind her to the door.

“Hit me,” begs Tom, “I’m done. I’m sorry. I won’t go back, just don’t leave. You can’t leave! Go on, hit me!”

She’s out the door, and Tom moves after her. The car engine starts, and Tom watches the headlights grow smaller into the night, away from the house.

He screams into the night.

“HIT ME!”

He can’t go home. There’s nothing there, just piles of microwave food baked onto plates from three weeks ago, and bills shoved under the door, spilling across the kitchen floor. There’s no dial tone anymore, and even if there was he wouldn’t know where to call. They’ve disappeared. Pretty soon the house will go too.

“Eighteen,” says the dealer.

Tom nods slowly.

“Hit me.”

“Twenty-five,” says the dealer, scooping up the cards, “Bust.”

“Hit me,” says Tom.

The dealer just stares.

Tom says, “Hit me.”

This piece appeared in Ex Calamus ezine, issue number seven, which can be downloaded here. Support local emerging writers, read Ex Calamus!

4

Admiration/Inspiration Thursday with Megan Burke

It’s that time of the week again! The one where I tell you about someone/-thing that I think is great.

This week, it’s Miss Megan Burke of Literary Life.

Megan is something of a Superwoman, juggling a bunch of jobs, attending literary events, and blogging daily. She has a very strong readership, even though she’s only been blogging for about a year.

Her posts are insightful, witty, and always engaging. She often has something new to say about a much-reviewed novel, or something from her personal life thrown in there, which gives her blog something a bit different from straightforward book review sites. Megan also does author interviews, which are always thorough and entertaining. Thoroughly entertaining!

And throughout all this running around and fitting about sixty times more than I do into the day, Megan always (always) smiles.

Here’s our interview.

Describe yourself in five words.
Crazy. Talkative. Enthusiastic. Excitable. Book-lover.

Tell us a little about your blog, and what you do there.
I review books, interview authors/journalists/agents, go to literary events (like book launches, lit festivals etc) take photos and then write about them, hold competitions, talk about the publishing world and my own life (I volunteer at a lot of lit organisations) and work, and, above all else, ramble!

 Your blog has a pretty strong readership – how long has this taken to build up, and what kind of work and investment has that required from your end? Has the way you blog changed?
Lit Life has been around for just over a year. The key to a successful blog are regular, content-rich posts. Now, I can’t say that all my posts are worthy (however I’d like to think some are!), but I do post regularly. I guess I’ve built up my readership by a number of avenues. Doing different things and contacting different people help – for example, if you interview/review an author, author puts link on their site, author’s fans read it, and some might stick around. Also if you go to a variety of events or post on a variety of relevant topics people searching for sites with those key words will come up.

I am certainly not the most successful blogger around (I still cry a little each time another blog gets 100 comments within ten minutes of posting and I struggle with ten!) but I am proud of Lit Life. It’s a labour of love – I spend way too much time on it each week! I plan blog posts everywhere, scribbling ideas down on scraps of paper and in my mobile. I think my approach to my blog has stayed the same, but as my readership and profile go up I’ve definitely become more cautious of what I write and what I say – you never know who is reading! However, Lit Life’s core principles are still there – just a crazy book nerd rambling about books.

Your blog, Literary Life, is incredibly busy – you generally post most days of the week. How do you manage this? Where does all the content come from?
Gosh, I ask myself this every day! Usually I post in the dead of night, or at the crack of dawn. Or between classes. Or before work. Actually, I blog all over the place! I don’t know how I manage this to be honest. I take snippets of time and use them well. The content comes from everywhere – lit events/festivals, interviews, reviews, my life, other bloggers/authors/journalists – everything. I like to think that I post on a wide variety of publishing/writing things/issues, but it is skewed more towards my likes and what I do (ie what book launches I go to).

I also understand you’re quite a busy lady – you juggle a bunch of jobs, and blogging, and literary events – how do you find the time?
I don’t sleep. You get used to it. Ha-ha. No really, I am a good time juggler. So good, in fact, that I wrote a post on how I manage everything. You can read it here. The bottom line is I don’t waste any time. A break from work? Read a book to review. A train ride to class? Work on that novel. Don’t take time for granted. It gets away from you so fast.

You’ve done something quite brave recently on your blog, and issued a challenge to the blogosphere – the Comment July Challenge, which has got a pretty positive response so far. What’s the challenge all about, and were you confident that it would take off when you put it out there?
I was not confident at all that is was going to take off! As I write this, I have ten people pledge to comment with me and I am ecstatic about that! I thought it was going to be one of those silly things that I do and eventually it dries up because no-one reads it and/or cares about it. I was so excited when people started to sign up.
Basically, I know that I lurk on blogs and don’t comment on them. This bothers me, but obviously not enough to change – until now! I also like getting comments on my blog, and thought while I was in bed late one night of a sort of pay-it-forward system – people pledge to comment on at least five blogs per day every day of July. I really hope it works – everyone likes getting comments!

 In the course of your blogging you’ve interviewed a huge amount of people – what’s been your favourite interview so far, and why?
This is a hard one! The one I was most excited to get back in my inbox – as in the one I was screaming about – is Liane Moriarty. She wrote one of my favourite books – Three Wishes – and after not having a web presence for years she finally made a website and a blog. I was so excited! The interview is long and asks a lot of nit-picky questions about the novel and her life, and I like it because I like her!
I’m also proud of Tasma Walton – it took me over six months of chasing to finally get her to reply so it was well worth the wait! I also love Kathryn Lomer, simply because her novel, What Now, Tilda B?, was amazing.
It’s hard to name favourites, though (yes I know I just did!) because they’re all special to me in their own way. Which sounds incredibly lame I know, but I love the personal connection you make with the interviewee for that moment in time when you interview them. I love the back and forth emails, the interaction. I love exploring different sides to the author and the novels.
Saying that, I do worry that people don’t read the interviews. Looking at my interview list, it’s all very ‘me’. Majority of the interviewees are personal favourites and/or friends, and while I am interested in them, I’m not sure other people are. So it’s hard in that sense.

So you’ve met some great authors, you’ve also had a bunch of blog-related perks; invites to special events and the like. What’s been the best part of the whole blogging experience for you so far? What’s been the best blog-related perk?
The best blog-related perk? There have been so many! Ha-ha. No, I don’t blog for the perks (although they are awesome) I blog because I love books, and I have a lot of opinions on books. Probably the best perk so far is the Charlie Higson event at Penguin Offices in Melbourne – it was so special to be invited to the offices! It was such an amazing experience.
The best part of the blogging experience for me is the community. Hands down. From it, I’ve met so many fantastic people and made some lovely friends. Just the overall sense of community is just so lovely and over-whelming. I love it. It makes everything worth it.

What’s next on the cards for Lit Life and Megan Burke’s life? What can we look forward to?
We can look forward to a month of passing on the comment love!
I have a bunch of lit events coming up, which will be blogged about. So hopefully people find that interesting! I get a lot of good feedback from my posts from events and my Melbourne Writers Festival Live Feeds – they made people feel as if they were there too, which is fantastic and I’m so glad I’ve been able to do that for people.

Do you have any advice for people like yourself? And who, indeed, are these people “like yourself”?
People like myself? Crazy book nerd people who can’t shut up about books?
Are there people like myself around? I’d like to think I’m pretty unique but maybe I’m not!
Yeah sure – maybe stop talking about books for one second because I’m pretty sure that your friends and family don’t care anymore!
Seriously, I don’t know if I’m the best person to give advice, but hey. I’ll try!
To writers: keep writing.
To readers: keep reading.
To bloggers: I love you all!
(Lame yes, but hey. I never claimed to be some great advice-giver!)

Thanks so much to Megan for agreeing to be interviewed for Admiration/Inspiration Thursday!

3

Comment July Challenge, Week 1 Wrap-Up

So I thought I’d post weekly highlights for the month of July, while I do the LitLife Comment July Challenge.

This first week has proved harder than I thought it would – 5 comments a day, not so hard? Actually, incredibly hard! I’m also trying really hard to make my comments more substantial than “Great post!”. This, at times, seems to be an exercise in showing how little I really have to contribute to discussions…

However, there have been some good discussions, and some great posts to comment on. So here’s my top five from the past week (in no particular order):

1. Lisa Dempster’s “How to Blog When You’re Not Blogging”
2. Liam Wood’s “What’s Hipster Than Being Cool?” on Virgule
3. Megan Burke’s “What We Can Learn From Mia Freedman” on Literary Life
4. Jo Case’s “Why The Internet Turned Me On (To Creative Writing)” on Kill Your Darlings
5. Q & A Monday with Lisa Dempster on Virgule

Are you part of the Comment July Challenge? How’s your week been?

2

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
  •  You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

“Edward had been staying several weeks in the house before he engaged much of Mrs. Dashwood’s attention; for she was, at that time, in such affliction as rendered her careless of surrounding objects. She saw only that he was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it.”

from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classic edition, p18)

…I’ll also have you know that the edition pictured is the edition I have. I have a little collection of the super lovely hardcover Penguin Classics, with these amazing canvassy covers. They’re great!

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑