So you might have noticed but I haven't been posting an awful lot here of late. This is not because I don't like you all, nor because I don't have anything to post about, but simply because of outright busyness.
The last few weeks have been what I can only describe as chaotic. In addition to the start of our teaching semester (and this semester I have 300 students, in 2 different units, in 3 different teaching modes), I've also been ramping up the organisation of the ACLAR conference which we are holding here in June, rewriting The Hunter to get it back to my agent, Cheryl (who made some awesome suggestions!) by next month, reworking my literary studies unit pretty much from the ground up, wrestling with the new online learning system that we have installed at the uni, putting together a couple of research grant applications with a colleague of mine, and, of course, trying to be a good dad.
So, of course, something had to give and sadly it's turned out to be ‘Musings…’
But don't abandon me quite yet! With a bit of luck the next few weeks are going to settle down somewhat, and I'll be back to some regular blogging. There's a few things I really want to write about, including the nature of criticism, some observations on the gender of characters, and I will probably mention horse riding (just for something different :-)
And if you are craving some slightly more regular blog updates from our family then I'm pleased to report that my gorgeous wife, Imogen, has rather taken up the blogging reins during the last month or so. One of the other things we've decided to do as a family this year is to try and visit at least one of the very many local fairs that happen around Canberra per month.Min will be blogging these as we do them, (as well as other random bits and pieces). So far we have visited the Lucky Dragon Chinese Cultural day at the National Museum, and the International Festival which takes over the centre of civic every year for a weekend.
So, anyway, that's just a quick update, apology, and explanation for my absence, but I will be back more regularly soon. Promise
Perhaps.
Showing posts with label The Hunter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Hunter. Show all posts
Friday, February 17, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
New Year's Resolution... (plus chickens, bikes and...other stuff)
I'm going to blog every week this year. Without exception. Except, obviously, for most of January...
Actually, I've been wanting to blog since the start of January – have had all sorts of things lined up to write about, but for some reason every time I start I get oddly ‘blocked’. Still, it doesn't matter, we're here now, and that's what's important.
So, first things first, Happy (very belated) New Year everyone! I hope you all had a lovely break, and my sincere wish for you all is that unlike me, you haven't had to go back to work yet.
This, by nature, is going to be something of a ‘newsy infodump’ of a post – so feel free to skip over it and come back next week if you wish.
Item 1 on the agenda: because this is a writing blog, after all, and because I know that you're all terribly interested in my desk, here's a link to the fantastic blog of Tristan Bancks (who, unlike other bloggers I could name, actually updates regularly) and the contribution he asked me to do for his ‘the writer's studio’ series of posts. I've always really enjoyed these particular columns on Tristan's blog – it's fascinating the multitude of environments and methods by which writers and artists and other creative people all accomplish similar goals. And, of course, it was lovely to be invited to be part of it.
Item 2: (and moving away from writing now, and into family news) we have chickens! For a few years now Imogen and I have talked about getting some chooks for the yard, but for various reasons (slightly insane dog, lack of chicken coop etc…) we have put off doing anything about it. Late last year, though, while wandering around at the fantastic Murrumbateman field day, we spotted these beautifully designed mobile chicken runs, and that (combined with the fact that our previously-mentioned dog had knee surgery last year and is no longer nearly as mobile as she used to be) inspired us to get our poultry acts together. So last week we picked up our 4 ‘girls’ (I use the quote marks there because, to be honest, there's about a 20% chance that at least one of them will turn out to be a rooster and then, soon after, dinner...) who are now happily scratching around in the yard. Their names (because I'm sure you all want to know) are Charlotte, Spot, Hedwig and Rosie Primrose. 100 points for anyone who can spot the theme…
Charlotte (or, Lottie - as she likes to be known)
L-R: Spot, Hedwig and Rosie Primrose
Item 3: just in case you're interested. Later this year I'll be turning 40 (Shock! Horror! (And, to be honest, parental amazement, I suspect))* by that point I would like to be just a little bit fitter than I am at the moment and so Toby and I, inspired by my sister's bicycle-powered lifestyle in Holland, have set ourselves up and started cycling into work/daycare every morning. There are lots of birds, playgrounds to explore, things to look at, creeks and lakes and, of course, singing. And I'm quite certain that riding along pulling an extra 30 odd kilos of boy, bags, and child seat on my already heavy bike is probably going to do my fitness ambitions no harm at all. One of these mornings, I'll take my camera along and post some pictures of the ride. In the meantime, here we are, arriving home after ride on a 34 degree, windy afternoon...
Item 4: 2012. It's going to be a very big, and busy year for me this year – semester starts again in just a couple of weeks, and then it will be into the usual breakneck world of teaching. In June I'm convening the biennial ACLAR conference here in Canberra (with my friend Shaun Tan and the incredible Professors Clare Bradford and Kerry Mallan as our keynote speakers) the organisation of which should make the first half of this year particularly ‘interesting’. After that, our little family are off for a three-week holiday in Vietnam and Indonesia, at least one week of which will be spent on a beach with my sister, her husband, their 3 girls, my parents, and an assortment of other friends and relatives. I've also got the 2nd of my ‘Hunter’ books to get written, and my fantastic new agent and I will no doubt get to work on finding a home for the 1st one.
Plus, as promised, weekly blog posts here :-)
So, anyway–that's pretty much everything happening in my world, at the moment. From next week I'll try and get back to some more regular and focused blog posts. Welcome back to Musings… for 2012, everyone.
*I'd also like to take this opportunity to apologise for the overuse of parenthesis in this post, and particularly for the awful nested example indicated here. (I know this bugs some people...)
Actually, I've been wanting to blog since the start of January – have had all sorts of things lined up to write about, but for some reason every time I start I get oddly ‘blocked’. Still, it doesn't matter, we're here now, and that's what's important.
So, first things first, Happy (very belated) New Year everyone! I hope you all had a lovely break, and my sincere wish for you all is that unlike me, you haven't had to go back to work yet.
This, by nature, is going to be something of a ‘newsy infodump’ of a post – so feel free to skip over it and come back next week if you wish.
Item 1 on the agenda: because this is a writing blog, after all, and because I know that you're all terribly interested in my desk, here's a link to the fantastic blog of Tristan Bancks (who, unlike other bloggers I could name, actually updates regularly) and the contribution he asked me to do for his ‘the writer's studio’ series of posts. I've always really enjoyed these particular columns on Tristan's blog – it's fascinating the multitude of environments and methods by which writers and artists and other creative people all accomplish similar goals. And, of course, it was lovely to be invited to be part of it.
Item 2: (and moving away from writing now, and into family news) we have chickens! For a few years now Imogen and I have talked about getting some chooks for the yard, but for various reasons (slightly insane dog, lack of chicken coop etc…) we have put off doing anything about it. Late last year, though, while wandering around at the fantastic Murrumbateman field day, we spotted these beautifully designed mobile chicken runs, and that (combined with the fact that our previously-mentioned dog had knee surgery last year and is no longer nearly as mobile as she used to be) inspired us to get our poultry acts together. So last week we picked up our 4 ‘girls’ (I use the quote marks there because, to be honest, there's about a 20% chance that at least one of them will turn out to be a rooster and then, soon after, dinner...) who are now happily scratching around in the yard. Their names (because I'm sure you all want to know) are Charlotte, Spot, Hedwig and Rosie Primrose. 100 points for anyone who can spot the theme…
Charlotte (or, Lottie - as she likes to be known)
L-R: Spot, Hedwig and Rosie Primrose
Item 4: 2012. It's going to be a very big, and busy year for me this year – semester starts again in just a couple of weeks, and then it will be into the usual breakneck world of teaching. In June I'm convening the biennial ACLAR conference here in Canberra (with my friend Shaun Tan and the incredible Professors Clare Bradford and Kerry Mallan as our keynote speakers) the organisation of which should make the first half of this year particularly ‘interesting’. After that, our little family are off for a three-week holiday in Vietnam and Indonesia, at least one week of which will be spent on a beach with my sister, her husband, their 3 girls, my parents, and an assortment of other friends and relatives. I've also got the 2nd of my ‘Hunter’ books to get written, and my fantastic new agent and I will no doubt get to work on finding a home for the 1st one.
Plus, as promised, weekly blog posts here :-)
So, anyway–that's pretty much everything happening in my world, at the moment. From next week I'll try and get back to some more regular and focused blog posts. Welcome back to Musings… for 2012, everyone.
*I'd also like to take this opportunity to apologise for the overuse of parenthesis in this post, and particularly for the awful nested example indicated here. (I know this bugs some people...)
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
(Not so secret) Agent!
so I guess that if I'm going to maintain my spectacular 2-posts-per-month average, then I better get something done here this afternoon…
As you may have gathered from the ongoing drought of blog posts here, I'm keeping as busy as ever of late. Tomorrow, for example, I'm heading up to Sydney for the day to run an all-day masterclass with the students at Sydney Girls High School, concentrating on tips and tricks for writing character (make them real, put a piece of yourself into every character, find the ‘truth’ in every character, make sure they have a relationship with the environment of the story… and so on)
I've also, of course, been buried in a veritable pile of marking for the last couple of weeks.
Oh, and (unbelievably) Toby turned 3 last week. This event was heralded by several parties, a trip up Black Mountain tower, a really quite ludicrous number of presents, more sugar than a 3-year-old's system can reasonably handle, one incredibly over-catered barbecue lunch, and two exhausted and somewhat confused parents asking themselves; “where on earth did the last 3 years of our lives disappear to?"
And, in the midst of all that, I do actually have a bit of writing related news.
You might remember me mentioning a while ago that I finally finished my most recent book. (Of course you remember, the damn thing has taken close to 2 years, and during that time I've been constantly banging on about it being ‘almost finished’.)
You might also remember me mentioning that this time, instead of pitching it to publishers myself, I had decided to submit it to a literary agent in New York to see if they were interested in representing it (and me).
Well I'm pleased to be able to announce that they liked it. So much so in fact that I'm now happily represented by Cheryl Pientka, of Jill Grinberg Literary Management! I don't mind admitting how thrilled, and completely surprised, I was to get such a positive response from Cheryl and Jill, as during the nerve-wracking wait for a response from them I managed, pretty effectively, to convince myself that the book had no merit whatsoever. I'm also excited because my new managers handle a lot of Australian writers, including several of my friends. (Actually, I owe a huge thanks to Melina Marchetta, who did the introducing here…)
And that's where I'm at. Early in the new year I expect to be launching myself back into The Hunter, and among the other things keeping me busy at the moment is the detailed planning and mapping out of the next 3 books in the series, which I should start writing in January.
In the meantime, I have a keynote speech to write, my teaching and grading for this semester to finalise, and then in a couple of weeks the family and I are off to Perth for holidays and weddings (not ours, obviously, we did that a while ago, now.)
So that's my news, and my litany of excuses for not keeping you all up-to-date. Hope everything is good with everyone who reads this (that is, of course, assuming I have any readers left), and that you are managing to ease your way into the festive season with a minimum of stress.
As you may have gathered from the ongoing drought of blog posts here, I'm keeping as busy as ever of late. Tomorrow, for example, I'm heading up to Sydney for the day to run an all-day masterclass with the students at Sydney Girls High School, concentrating on tips and tricks for writing character (make them real, put a piece of yourself into every character, find the ‘truth’ in every character, make sure they have a relationship with the environment of the story… and so on)
I've also, of course, been buried in a veritable pile of marking for the last couple of weeks.
Oh, and (unbelievably) Toby turned 3 last week. This event was heralded by several parties, a trip up Black Mountain tower, a really quite ludicrous number of presents, more sugar than a 3-year-old's system can reasonably handle, one incredibly over-catered barbecue lunch, and two exhausted and somewhat confused parents asking themselves; “where on earth did the last 3 years of our lives disappear to?"
And, in the midst of all that, I do actually have a bit of writing related news.
You might remember me mentioning a while ago that I finally finished my most recent book. (Of course you remember, the damn thing has taken close to 2 years, and during that time I've been constantly banging on about it being ‘almost finished’.)
You might also remember me mentioning that this time, instead of pitching it to publishers myself, I had decided to submit it to a literary agent in New York to see if they were interested in representing it (and me).
Well I'm pleased to be able to announce that they liked it. So much so in fact that I'm now happily represented by Cheryl Pientka, of Jill Grinberg Literary Management! I don't mind admitting how thrilled, and completely surprised, I was to get such a positive response from Cheryl and Jill, as during the nerve-wracking wait for a response from them I managed, pretty effectively, to convince myself that the book had no merit whatsoever. I'm also excited because my new managers handle a lot of Australian writers, including several of my friends. (Actually, I owe a huge thanks to Melina Marchetta, who did the introducing here…)
And that's where I'm at. Early in the new year I expect to be launching myself back into The Hunter, and among the other things keeping me busy at the moment is the detailed planning and mapping out of the next 3 books in the series, which I should start writing in January.
In the meantime, I have a keynote speech to write, my teaching and grading for this semester to finalise, and then in a couple of weeks the family and I are off to Perth for holidays and weddings (not ours, obviously, we did that a while ago, now.)
So that's my news, and my litany of excuses for not keeping you all up-to-date. Hope everything is good with everyone who reads this (that is, of course, assuming I have any readers left), and that you are managing to ease your way into the festive season with a minimum of stress.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Off we go again...
So, I'm sitting here in the main reading room of the National Library of Australia, waiting for a book to come up from the stacks, so that I can not embarrass myself at the IRSCL Conference I'm speaking at in Brisbane in July. I won't pretend I'm not a little nervous about this paper, for a whole pile of reasons that I'm not going to go into right at the moment, but I'm sure that when this particular book* pops out of the little hatchway things will get a lot better.
I hope.
Still, on the upside, the 20 minute wait between logging a book request and having it appear on the shelves gives me a chance to pop over here and post a long overdue blog.
Since last we spoke, I've been buried in writing stuff. I've also had the printout of The Hunter** sitting on the coffee table in my office, staring accusingly at me, and quite literally whispering "edit me... you know you want to...." into the back of my mind*** I'm really hanging out to get my red pen out and start slashing away, but am restraining myself until I'm in Perth next week, because editing is just the perfect way to fill the evenings while away from home.
On the subject of which, I'm about to head over for a couple of weeks at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, which is just one of my favourite places in the world to work. I'll be doing a series of their Youth Literature Days, which are always fantastic. Also talking at the WA State Librarians Conference this saturday, and doing some sessions with the lovely Coral Tulloch (who is almost wholly responsible for encouraging me to go to Antarctica a few years back) at the FCLC open day on Sunday 19th June. If you're in Fremantle, and near the centre, please do come on by and say G'Day.
Then I'm home again for a week, which will doubtless be spent bashing out the rest of the paper which has currently got me sitting at the NLA, then up to Brisbane for the IRSCL, then back for a week, then off to Noumea for a week of (Shock! Horror!) ACTUAL HOLIDAYS!
So I'm keeping busy.
In the meantime, there've been all sorts of things I've wanted to blog about, including this incredibly stupid article from the Wall Street Journal, which rests upon all sorts of broad generalisations, and provides a fantastic example of how to cherry pick a genre in order to prove your (uninformed) point, but sadly time has gotten away from me, and all sorts of other bloggers have done a nice job of unpacking the piece, in any case.
I also recently read up a whole lot about Mary E. Patchett, and specifically her 1953 book Ajax the Warrior as the foundation for a book chapter I was invited to put together. It was a fascinating little journey into one of the little known byways of Australian Literary History.
In any case, the trolley has just popped out with a whole pile of books on it including, I suspect, the one I'm waiting for, so I'm off to be a happy little researcher for the next little while.
*New World Orders in Contemporary Children's Fiction, by Bradford, Mallan and Stephens, (2008), just in case you were wondering....
** Formerly known as Orion, but I've changed the title.
*** Actually, this might not in fact be true. I've been reading a lot of Neil Gaiman lately, and I suspect it's messing with my subconscious....
I hope.
Still, on the upside, the 20 minute wait between logging a book request and having it appear on the shelves gives me a chance to pop over here and post a long overdue blog.
Since last we spoke, I've been buried in writing stuff. I've also had the printout of The Hunter** sitting on the coffee table in my office, staring accusingly at me, and quite literally whispering "edit me... you know you want to...." into the back of my mind*** I'm really hanging out to get my red pen out and start slashing away, but am restraining myself until I'm in Perth next week, because editing is just the perfect way to fill the evenings while away from home.
On the subject of which, I'm about to head over for a couple of weeks at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, which is just one of my favourite places in the world to work. I'll be doing a series of their Youth Literature Days, which are always fantastic. Also talking at the WA State Librarians Conference this saturday, and doing some sessions with the lovely Coral Tulloch (who is almost wholly responsible for encouraging me to go to Antarctica a few years back) at the FCLC open day on Sunday 19th June. If you're in Fremantle, and near the centre, please do come on by and say G'Day.
Then I'm home again for a week, which will doubtless be spent bashing out the rest of the paper which has currently got me sitting at the NLA, then up to Brisbane for the IRSCL, then back for a week, then off to Noumea for a week of (Shock! Horror!) ACTUAL HOLIDAYS!
So I'm keeping busy.
In the meantime, there've been all sorts of things I've wanted to blog about, including this incredibly stupid article from the Wall Street Journal, which rests upon all sorts of broad generalisations, and provides a fantastic example of how to cherry pick a genre in order to prove your (uninformed) point, but sadly time has gotten away from me, and all sorts of other bloggers have done a nice job of unpacking the piece, in any case.
I also recently read up a whole lot about Mary E. Patchett, and specifically her 1953 book Ajax the Warrior as the foundation for a book chapter I was invited to put together. It was a fascinating little journey into one of the little known byways of Australian Literary History.
In any case, the trolley has just popped out with a whole pile of books on it including, I suspect, the one I'm waiting for, so I'm off to be a happy little researcher for the next little while.
*New World Orders in Contemporary Children's Fiction, by Bradford, Mallan and Stephens, (2008), just in case you were wondering....
** Formerly known as Orion, but I've changed the title.
*** Actually, this might not in fact be true. I've been reading a lot of Neil Gaiman lately, and I suspect it's messing with my subconscious....
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