Screen free saturdays

Now, I'm certain that the astute among you a have noticed that already, just three days into July, and I've already managed to break my commitment to post something here every day. This is because I forgot to factor in screen free Saturdays. This is something that Min and I have been doing (well, attempting - with various degrees of success), for the last month or so. Simply put, we try, on Saturdays, not to use any screens. That means no computers, no iPhones, no television, and this week - to my horror - no brand new iPad. (Alright, I'll admit right now that I did cheat a couple of times yesterday, and steal a few quick moments with my new toy while Toby was asleep, but for the most part I did okay)

We got the idea from hearing Susan Maushart talking about her new book at the Sydney writers festival in May. She and her family went "off the grid" for six months, and this got us talking about the degree to which various forms of screen time have imposed themselves, by degrees, upon our day to day lives. Those of you who follow this blog will know that, for some members of this family, at least, our relationship with screens - of various types - is really something close to an obsession. Especially since someone introduced me to the products of the evil empire that is Apple Corporation. And so I'll admit that I came to the notion of screen free Saturdays with just a little trepidation.

But you know something? I really like them. Saturdays have become my excuse not to check my email, and in doing so to completely get all work-related matters out of my head for a while. They've re acquainted me with the pleasures of working in the garden and around the house. Of taking the dog out for exercise. Of board games. Of reading for pleasure, rather than work. It means that we do stuff together as a family. Not that we didn't before, you understand, but it just takes one major distraction and timesink out of our days.

Screen Free Saturdays have also driven home to me the degree to which this new, ultra connected age in which we find ourselves (and I know that if my grandkids ever read that last sentence, they're going to piss themselves laughing) imposes an odd, subconscious, sense of obligation upon us, just as much as it connects us. The first time we did screen free saturday, I felt guilty for not checking my email at least a couple of times. What if one of my students had a question about something? What if somebody had emailled me with an urgent query about an upcoming event?

But, of course, when I did get to my email on Sunday morning, neither event had occured. And if they had, it wouldn't have mattered. It was all in my head, and that's - I think - the most useful aspect of screen free Saturdays for me; they remind me that I don't need to be connected all the time. At least, not to the rest of the world. And in not being connected to the rest of the world, I get time to work on my connections with my nearest and dearest, which is far more important. No offence intended.

So while I'll have to hold my hand up and plead guilty-as-charged over my lapse yesterday, I won't be apologising for it. Yesterday we took Toby and Chelsea to the local dog park for a run around. We went to the farmer's markets and did our shopping for the week. We did some cooking. We did a little work around the house and in the garden. All in all, it was a good, screen free day.

Of course, it has to be Saturdays, because tonight is "Masterchef" night.

And, after all, you have to have priorities ;)

Day Two: Going Strong

See, a post a day. Not hard at all. The challenge will be keeping them interesting. And not resorting to lists and links of other people's content.

Speaking of which...

I've been working at home this morning, in a manner of speaking. Actually, the first hour and a half was spent tracking down and buying the last iPad in Canberra. (Well, probably not technically the last, but pretty damn close to, I suspect). It's rather nice, and shiny, and will be useful for work and travel. And lots of other things, I'm sure. Like meetings - I've been going to lots of meetings lately, and conferences, too.

That's my position on the matter, anyway.

Actually, on the subject of taking positions, a friend of mine, who'd prefer to remain nameless, is among those bashing away at this blog here and provides some thoughtful (and more than occasionally amusing) ideas for general consideration.

I've also, in recent months, been thoroughly enjoying the contributions to the blogosphere made by one John Birmingham who is - in my humble opinion, one of Australia's most versatile and edgy writers. JB's blog is a ripper and hits that nice, and often hard-to-achieve balance between provocation, humour, and intelligent social commentary.

Anyway, I've got a brand spanking new iPad sitting here on the table beside me and so, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and play.

See y'all tomorrow

Okay, then. Here we go...

A post every day for a month. How hard can that be, right?

At the risk of kicking things off with blatant self promotion, there's a little event coming up in Perth in a few weeks which it might be worth flagging:



Tuesday the 27th July, at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, in (of course) Fremantle. (The FCLC is the same place where both Nightpeople and Skyfall were officially shoved onto an unsuspecting public, (and also, oddly enough, where Imogen and I got married) so I'm thrilled, as you can imagine, to have the chance to finish the trilogy off in the manner to which it's become accustomed.) If you're in Perth (or, you know, want to fly to Perth from wherever you are,) please let me know if you'd like to come along. The more the merrier.

The book will be launched by the Federal Member for Fremantle, Melissa Parke I met Melissa a couple of years ago at a function, soon after her election to parliament, and since then she's proven to be a great supporter of the FCLC, and of literacy generally. She's also an avid spec-fic reader, so I'm really pleased to have her as the launcher.

And, as long as I'm on matters Darkland-y, while doing a trawl for some reviews of my books for the new-look anthonyeaton.com website (which is almost done, and looking really nice) I found this:

Which is, I think, pretty cool in its own way. Just the fact that someone took the time to really think about the book and then talk about it so intelligently is pretty nice, from my point of view. Even if she didn't like the characters or story (and, I'll be honest, she's not the first to make that observation...) I tried to send her a response but to do so I need to sign up for a youtube account and don't really want to. Either way, if you ever read this, Anna, then thanks.

It's probably also worth mentioning that, following on from her comments, setting 'Nightpeople' in an Australian context was a very deliberate response to the fact that a lot (though not all) of spec fic by Australian Writers tends to be set in worlds that are either completely 'other' or based on a European and often medieval framework. There are very good commercial and artistic reasons for this, but with the Darklands books I really wanted to challenge this trope a little, so it's really nice to know that this aspect of the books worked out for some readers. (I'm also not the first to do this, by a long shot. Sean Williams, among others, has written some *awesome* antipodean spec fic. (Actually, his 'Books of the Change' were among the big inspirations for the Darklands Trilogy - they're awesome!)

Anyway, day one of my month of blogging and I've already resorted to banging on about myself. I'll try for something a little more interesting tomorrow. Promise.

The 'Gong Show. Plus July News.

Okay. Blog post. It's been...how long now? Crap! More than two weeks! You could change a government (or at least a PM) in that time. Okay. Sitting comfortably. Email switched off. Phone on silent. Actually no... left my mobile at home today, so phone back on noisy, just in case.

Right.

Time to post.

Here we go.

I spent a good chunk of last week at the biennial ACLAR conference in Wollongong. (Australasian Children's Literature Association for Research, just in case you're wondering). Listened to papers by some of the world's luminary scholars in the field of children's literature studies. A lot of it was inspiring stuff, from a critical and academic perspective. I delivered my own paper too, entitled The Politics of Prizes - Selling and Redefining 'Young Adulthood. It seemed to go over okay, in as much as nobody threw anything, and during the ten minute question time at the end, nobody told me that I'd gotten it all wrong.

The funny thing about the conference, though, was being there as a nobody. Having spent the last few years regularly attending literary festivals and children's literature conferences where I'm known as 'an author', and where other people attending generally have at least a bit of context for me, it was unexpectedly weird to walk into a conference where -as an early career academic - I was a complete unknown.

Does that sound horribly egotistical? It's not supposed to. It was really good, actually. It meant I had to open my mind up to a whole different perspective on 'children's literature', and view what I do through a new lens. I heard people deliver papers which unpacked books I know and love in such remarkably unexpected, challenging and different ways, that I came away with a whole new attitude to both my own creative writing, but also my academic research.

So now I'm back, writing again for the first time in six months (I had a great writing day yesterday, and am having a really crappy one today, which is often the way of things with me)

I'm also setting myself a challenge, a bit of a biggie. Tomorrow is the start of July, and for the entire month, I'm going to attempt to post something here every single day.

There, I've said it. Can't promise that I'll actually manage it, but we'll give it a bash and see what happens. I suspect that by the end of the month I'll probably be reduced to posting Haiku about how little I've written that morning.

Still, it's can't hurt to try, can it? How hard can it be...

See you all tomorrow.

My Bacon = 4

So last month, while swanning around at the Sydney Writer's Festival I found myself going on stage for the school days immediately before UK writer Charlie Higson, who does a very nice line in young secret agent books, but has more recently tangled with Zombies.

Now, despite me giving him possibly the nastiest introduction ever on our first day, he was a very nice bloke, and a good deal of fun to listen to. He also had a finely nuanced appreciation for the more confronting aspects of zombie-ism, so much so that at one point during his talk, one entire row of year nine girls in the audience were holding their fingers in their ears so as not to hear the gory details during Charlie's reading.

But most of this is beside the point, really.

My point is this:

According to Charlie's Wikipedia Page (So it must be true), in a previous life he worked as a plasterer, (as in he put plaster on houses, not got plastered...) in which capacity he plastered, among other houses, the home of then flatmates Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (you might be beginning to see where I'm leading with this - steps one and two as below...)

Charlie Higson (above) and Hugh Laurie (below, as House M.D on a bad day...)

Laurie, in 2009, voiced over the role of Doctor Cockroach PhD in Monsters VS Aliens, which also featured, in a role sadly overlooked by the academy that year, Renee Zellweger (that would be step three)

And Renee, also in 2009, starred in My One and Only (I'll be honest and admit that I had to look that one up) with ...

(Tah Dah!)

See, four degrees from Kevin Bacon! I always knew I'd amount to something one day...

Now, I've got nothing against Vampires...

... apart from the fact that they're monstrous, undead, blood sucking fiends.

Speaking of which, I was in Borders a few days ago, and snapped this little pic:

That, it would appear, is all that the 'Young Adult' category has to offer at the moment. Stephanie Meyer and more Stephanie Meyer. And what the photo doesn't show are the adjacent shelves with about 30 variants on the Twilight theme, all with titles like; Vampire Academy, My Vampire Boyfriend, Dead - But Still Sexy (okay, so two of those are made-up, but you get the general idea)

Of course, on the other side of that shelf was all the 'other' YA fiction. You know, the stuff which isn't about vampires. Of course, most of that was in single copies only, all of it tucked away next to the children's section, and none of it was shelved face-out. If you weren't deliberately looking for it, you wouldn't know it was there.

Sigh.

Still, no point complaining about it, is there? I might as well just get back to writing my new vampire novel...

Right, so I've been busy...

You're all getting sick of these excuses by now, aren't you. I know it. So I won't offer any. Just this enigmatic post after three weeks of nothingness.

I've finally got the semester all wrapped up, now. Marking done, grades submitted, all signed off and officially behind me. It's been a rather flat out experience, but a good one. My next big task is to prepare two papers for presentation at a couple of conferences I've got coming up in a fortnight; a symposium paper on the topic of 'making to unmask' - which will be a creative-practice led paper looking at the writing and response to Into White Silence, and the degree to which as a writer I 'unmasked' myself in that book. (I'd provide you with a few more details except that (a) I don't have them yet and (b) I'm not sure whether I actually did any unmasking in that book...)

The other paper is for a conference at Woolongong on The Power of Prizes - this one is going to be an update and expansion on some of my PhD research and so (touch wood) should be okay to write.

Then (finally!) WRITING TIME! Six glorious weeks put aside through July and the start of August where I can write. I'm going to hurl myself into the long-stalled Orion and see if I can get a draft of that done before the start of semester two. It should be achievable, I think, given that I've already got about 15000 words written, the planning done, and the pace of the book is much higher than my usual stuff. Once it's done, I might be looking for a few beta-testers, so keep an eye on this blog if you think you might be interested.

I've got another interesting research project coming up, too, which will also involve a little crowd-sourcing, but it's early days on that one at the moment, so you'll just have to wait for details. For now, it'd be a good idea to start working out who you think are the ten most significant Australian children's writers. Ever. Only ten, possibly fewer... Give it some thought.

There's also a re-deign of my Anthonyeaton.com website in the pipeline, but that's a few weeks off, too. I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, I've been watching Masterchef, and enjoying it almost as much as last year, though I do wish Matt Preston would stop washing his reds with his whites. It's quite disconcerting when he shows up there in pink pants. This might just be me, though...

Yesterday, during a workshop here at the uni, we had to do a quiz to determine our procrastination habits. I put off doing mine until later, which I found funny. It did make a point though, and so on that note, I'm going to stop rambling away here, and get onto my symposium paper.

Cheers everyone,

t