Melbourne Writers Festival, Day 3:

I'm sitting in the greenroom at the MWF. Outside the rain is falling so heavily that it's difficult to make out the other side of Flinders Street. The State Emergency Service was on the news just before I walked down here, pleading for commuters to leave work early and get out before the front came through. They're forecasting 120kph+ winds to hit the city at around about 6.00pm. Plus hail. Plus possible snow down to 500 meters

There's a mass exodus happening out there at the moment.

I have a panel session at the festival at 6.30.

In a venue that seats about 500.

Should be interesting.

Other than the fact that we seem to be warming up for the end of days out there at the moment, Today's been really good, if more than just a little hectic. Started with a radio interview at 0900 this morning, and haven't stopped since. (The interview was fun, even though my inner-arts lecturer reared his ugly head, and I accidently described my book as 'postmodern', which is never a good idea on local a.m. radio...)

1100 saw me and Scott Westerfeld talking about the way we plan and use setting in our writing. This seems to be something of a hot topic at the moment, as I seem to find myself discussing it all over the place. He had cool illustrations from his next book (Called Leviathan, out October) and photos of the Alps. I had photos of my trip to Antarctica. Lots of ice, all round...

After that, it was a dash down Flinders Street, via a greasy HJ's burger (that's Burger King for our American friends) to talk at a teaching conference about good books to use in the classroom. This turned out to be something of a nerve-wracking experience, as I'd planned to talk (among other things) about how I use the works of Morris Gleitzman to teach tertiary level creative writing. Nobody bothered to tell me that Morris would be SITTING IN THE FRONT ROW! He didn't throw things, or look pissed off, though, so I think I got away with it.

Then another run up to the State Library, to meet the lovely Erin, who'll be chairing my festival session tomorrow, then back to the hotel for a brief bit of down time, and now here again. Phew.

After this panel, (which is, oddly enough, on the use of setting for VATE exam students) I'm off to dinner with a whole bunch of other Aussie YA authors, including the excellent Kirsty Murray, and my friend Julia Lawrinson (who I think is one of Australia's most under-rated writers..)

After that, assuming I don't get all Mary-Poppinsed away during the walk back to the hotel, then I'm going to bed.

And this time tomorrow, I'll be home again. Woot.

Melbourne Writers Festival...

Hi everyone...

So, I'm sitting in a cafe in Federation square, making good use of the free wireless, on my second coffee of the morning, and trying desperately to convince myself that I'm actually *not* nervous about my first Melbourne Writer's Festival schools session in a couple of hours. No, I'm really not. I mean, I'm just talking about writing. How hard can that be?

The fact that my session is sold out is also not doing much to calm my nerves...

I had a lovely time yesterday, doing a seminar session in the adults part of the festival, alongside the amazing Margo Lanagan. (That's her on the right) One of the things I love about being a writer is that I get the opportunity to listen to all these other writers talk about their process, and I've never heard two people say exactly the same thing. Everyone writes in their own way, and often the tiny differences in process from one person to the next make such huge differences in the stories that people are able to tell. I love it - the whole 'lack of rules' thing - it appeals to the anarchic side of my personality, I think.

Margo was particularly fascinating to listen to. I'm two thirds of the way through 'Tender Morsels' at the moment - try as I did, I didn't manage to get it finished in time for our session together, but that was largely because I keep stopping to re-read pages, just to swim in the language and storytelling. The last time a book did this to me was Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. Margo's book is proving to be one of those that fascinates me because it's something I know I could never, ever, even when I'm at my absolute best, come close to writing.  I just don't think that way about story and narrative, and I envy her her ability to do so. I'm certain that her approach to planning and writing, which is very different from my own, is a big part of the reason she can write the way she does, but - and this is the cool part - I know that if I tried doing things her way (She approaches her novels by thinking of them as short stories which just need to be vaguely linked in some way, but then allowed to run off on whatever tangents the story desires/requires) then I'd write complete rubbish. 

Anyway, it was fun. And writing about it has distracted me from my nerves for a few minutes, which is also good...

So, today I'm talking about Into White Silence, which should be a doddle, you'd think. This afternoon I'll be meeting a couple of people I've been looking forward to putting faces to for some time now: Author Scott Westerfield, and Librarian idol Andrew Finegan; the three of us are on tomorrow morning, in a panel session which should be a lot of fun.

Anyway, my coffee is nearly gone, and through the window I can see all sorts of student-y people walking through fed square, so I'm going to head over to the festival green room and see what's happening.

Have a good day, everyone...

Festival Time!

Next week I'm off to the Melbourne Writer's Festival. This looks like it's going to be a fantastic week, and if you're in Melbourne, please come and see me. It'll be my first time away from Toby and Min in eight and a half months, so I'm bound to be lonely and in need of friends :)

On the bright side, though, I'm involved in some great sessions, with some *awesome* people:

This Sunday, the 23rd, I'm part of a Professional Development Masterclass on the ins and outs of writing Young Adult Fiction alongside the fantastic Margo Lanagan I'm really, really looking forward to this one, as I haven't seen Margo for years (Actually, Margo was one of the first writers I ever interviewed, on stage at the 2000 CBCA conference in Perth). Since then, she's produced some of the most challenging and beautiful writing to come out of this country, including several brilliant anthologies of short stories, and most recently the stunning Tender Morsels, which I'm reading at the moment.

Then, on Monday 24th, I'll be talking about Into White Silence. This should be a pretty enjoyable session; I'm taking a lot of my photos from my trip to Antarctica, as well as all my research materials, and will be talking about the entire writing process, and how it's changed the way I view narrative. I'll be keeping it fairly open and informal, with lots of opportunities for questions.

Tuesday morning, I'm really looking forward to meeting Scott Westerfield for the first time. I'm a big fan of his work, especially Peeps, (which is how a vampire novel should be written. No sparkly vegetarians here...) and his Uglies series, so actually meeting and being involved in a panel session with him will be fantastic. We're going to be discussing Place, in Space and looking at the role and importance of setting, especially in regard to speculative writing.

On Tuesday afternoon I'm talking about The Imaginative Landscape alongside fellow author Tony Birch, whose novel Shadowboxing I currently have parked on my desk, waiting for me to finish Tender Morsels, so that I can get on to it.

Finally, I'll be doing an in-conversation on Wednesday afternoon - sort of a general meet the author type thingy, which will involve a lot of discussion on just about every topic under the sun.

All in all, it promises to be a really interesting few days, so please do come along if you can. It'd be great to meet some new people. (Or old people, for that matter...)