My Genre

I find it odd being told that something is ‘my genre’. I was told this on Saturday in my writing group. I had brought along two short, humorous poems which were both extremely well received. One of the comments made later was that this was clearly ‘my genre’, and was much more enjoyable than some of my other, darker stuff.

I feel like I have to take it as a compliment, and I’m sure it was certainly intended as one, but I was also left feeling slightly off kilter. I mean sure, I appreciate that you’re suggesting that my voice is much more natural in this format, or that you connected more with the piece, for whatever reason, but there is still this niggling voice inside me that says “This isn’t what I want”. This isn’t the genre I feel most natural writing in. This isn’t the genre I feel expresses what I want to express. This isn’t the genre that is the first way I think of trying to get something out of my brain and onto a page. It’s a way, certainly, but not my preferred way. I like to write prose. I like things which are tinged with darkness. Nothing too dark though, I don’t want to exhaust or alienate the reader, but still a definite undercurrent.

I think deep inside me there is a nastiness lurking. The timing for this particular revelation is interesting because in my acting class last Wednesday I was asked to convince another student to give up something of great importance. For the purposes of the improvisation scene the thing I had to get from him was a job in TV that was going to be offered to him. If I could get him to withdraw they would have to give it to me. In the beginning I tried to undermine the job, to portray it as difficult, or not worthwhile, to paint the employers as bad people, but that didn’t seem to get much traction. It was only when I started probing about this his motives that I started to get somewhere.

It went something like this:

Me: Why do you even want this job?

Him: I don’t like my job now, I want something more.

Me: How long have you wanted to do this?

Him: About ten years.

Me: So why now?

Him: I take risks.

Me: You clearly don’t, you’ve been in a job you hate for ten years.

Him: …

Part of me felt like I had used all of my powers of empathy for evil. Part of me felt slightly dirty for having used those sentiments against him. But mostly I felt triumphant; I knew that I’d sewn the seed of doubt in his mind and I just had to chip away at it to get him to give up. Just at that moment the teacher called the end of the exercise, but I could see that the other student was a little bit shaken. And I felt powerful.

I seem to have wandered off the topic that I started on somewhat, but I think it’s all relevant ( I think it came from that bit about darkness). Just because I’m good at writing light-hearted verse about my fight with a can opener doesn’t mean it’s what I want my career as a writer to be. It was as though I was being tempted by praise to do what I always did before; keep doing what I was good at (read things I was praised for). This is not the time to do what I’m good at, this is the time to do what I enjoy, and get good at it. Practise it until I reach that same level of audience enjoyment.

Either that or I just admit that this particular woman likes funny poems and it’s not really deeper than that.

Melbourne City Adventure

Yesterday I spent the day in the city centre of Melbourne with one of my oldest and dearest friends. He is really into photography and has an awesome photography based business back in Hobart. We chatted, had lots of cups of tea/coffee and wander around taking photos.

These are some of the ones I took which I liked best.

An abandoned child’s shoe, which felt sad and was the referred to as ‘sad shoe’.

For some reason, inside an emergency shelter exhibit in Federation Square, there was this hockey trophy.

And a teacup full of macarons.

P.S: This is my one hundred and first blog post! Yay!

Quiz times

I recently submitted a (potentially) humourous quiz that I’d written to the Monash University campus magazine, Lot’s Wife. Unfortunately they chose not to accept the submission, they said it was not suited to their readership and that the concept was ‘overdone’ (they’re probably right). Regardless of this setback, I liked my quiz and feel like you should as well. Given that I can publish whatever I feel like on my blog, regardless of it’s quality or hilarity, I’m going to subject you to the banality and over-cooked-ness that is the ‘What is your style’ quiz.

What is your style?

I have recently come to the conclusion that I’ve accidentally become a hipster. In order to save you all from the same fate, I have developed this quiz to help you understand your style.

What is your preferred mode of transport?
A: Car
B: Public Transport
C: Bicycle
D: FixieWhat is your favourite band?

A: Macklemore
B: Whatever’s on the radio
C: Fiona Apple
D: You wouldn’t have heard of them.

What do you usually take photos of?
A: My friends
B: Myself
C: Nature or animals
D: Your food or cats

What is your favourite radio station?
A: Nova
B: Fox
C: Triple J
D: 3RRR

What is your preferred social media?
A: Facebook
B: Twitter
C: Tumblr
D: Instagram

Do you have any tattoos?
A: No, not yet
B: No, I don’t want any
C: Yes, on my back
D: Yes, on my calf/neck

Where do you buy your clothes?
A: Chadstone
B: Doesn’t matter as long as it’s cheap
C: Op shops or markets
D: Op shops in Brunswick

How do you listen to your music:
A: Through my iPad/iPhone
B: Streamed/downloaded online
C: I prefer drum circles
D: On vinyl

What’s your favourite item of clothing:
A: My ugg boots
B: Anything with no holes
C: My fisherman pants
D: My brown cardigan

Do you have glasses?
A: Yes, I wear them
B: Yes, but I don’t wear them
C: No, I don’t need them
D: I wear them, but I don’t need them

Your Results:

Mostly As:
You clearly still live at home with mum and or dad and they still pay for most of your stuff. As a result your style is more expensive that most of your university counterparts. Don’t worry too much, you’ll develop a more unique style when you have to pay for everything yourself.

Mostly Bs:
You are the typical poor student. You struggle through with whatever cash you can scrape together from some awful part time job or Centrelink, or both if you’re lucky. Your style is shabby chic, you try to look cool but it’s hard when you’re broke!

Mostly Cs:
You are a hippie. You are probably vegan, may have dreadlocks, love Wholefoods,  and do everything you can to stop the rape of the earth. Your clothes are fair trade, ethically produced and animal free.

Mostly Ds:
You’re a hipster. A big giant hipster. But it’s not that bad, you’re among friends here and I’m sure you’ll get over it as soon as it’s not cool to be into stuff before it’s cool.

Writing Games

Today I spent a couple of hours this afternoon with a group of people doing writing games. This was organised by through a Writers’ Meetup group and consisted of eight people, none of whom I’d met before as it was my first outing with this group.

After a brief period of chatting and socialising the leader of the group, Mat, called the afternoon to order. We engaged in three timed writing tasks, Mat gave us a stimulus for each section. I thought it was an excellent exercise although I must admit it was a bit strange to sit in a cafe in silence while everyone around the table scribbled in a notebook or tapped on a keyboard.

Given the two hour time limit each task was fairly short, I thought I would share with you the stuff I came up with for each task.

 

Task 1 Stimulus: must be set either in the past or in the future, use the following objects as inspiration, a tooth with a gold filling, dogs barking, a zebra in the city, a hunter. 35 minutes.

Task 1 Response: The ground is cold beneath me, the wind is chilly. The smell of my horse and the embers of the dying fire are potent in my nostrils. The dawn is about to break, I can hear the birds stirring in the branches above me.

In the distance a dog barks at some unseen menace, my horse shifts her feet nervously. She knows what we are set to do, she and I have been companions for a long time. Rubbing the ache in my left hip I get up and pack away my sleeping roll. The day is going to be long and challenging, as it always is, I should be on my way.

-

A dog barks as I try to sneak past it into the hen house, my belly complains loudly as I slip into the coop. I can feel the hunter close by but I have to stop to eat. He’s been chasing me for what feels like a lifetime, but it can’t be more than two seasons. I can hardly remember who I was before the hunter came.

The chickens are warm on my prying fingers, delicately extracting their prized produce. I wish, more than anything, that I could take back the thing I did, to turn back the clock and save my family, stop the hunter from being put on my trail but I can’t. I believed the lies of the man who came to my door that cold night, the man with the golden tooth.

-

In the dead of the night I wake with a sharp pang of pain in my jaw. The tooth that was taken by the wizard in exchange for my power, that damned deceitful golden mark. There is not a man alive who does not know me by that mark. I am the one who stopped the song, who ruined everything. I set things in motion that angered the King, destroyed the life of that poor trusting girl and sent that bulldog of a hunter on a path of misery.

I never thought that taking the songs of our people and asking an honest country girl to sing them could lead to this – the fracturing fabric of our world, the reordering of everything we hold dear. This was the wizard’s plan all along.

 

Task 2 Stimulus: This was a paragraph that Mat read out about a man washing blood from his hands and seeing a cut on his chin in the mirror. 20 minutes.

Task 2 Response: He stared into the glassy depths of the mirror prodding at the gash with his sopping fingers. Frigid droplet of water landed o his bare chest, his face twisting into a spasm of pain as he investigated the wound.

His lover lay on the bed, unconscious and bound, his bloodied body spread eagled on the stained sheets.

“We have to be more careful with our friends, my darling” he said to his reflection.

“One day they might get out of their ropes if we don’t concentrate on the knots. We wouldn’t want that would we?” His right hand reached out to stroke the cheek in the mirror tenderly.

Having washed the filth on his body, the results of his dark, debauched game, he returned to examine the slumped body in his bed.

“Well then, now we can see the corruption that hides inside you Peter.” The man stirred at the sounds of his name, but the beating, bloodloss and barbiturates kept him under.

“We wonder if he’s learned his lesson, that dirty filthy whore. Should we finish the job, my darling, or shall we wrap him up and send him back?”

The two voices inside him fought over what to do next. The demon on his left shoulder wanted to finish the boy off, but the angel on his right wanted to let him go.

“We’ll keep an eye on him, darling, make sure he doesn’t go back to skulking on the corner if we let him live. The Lord gave us this mission to save the fallen, not just to slaughter the sheep who stray.”

It seemed that the angel had won this round but at Peter now knew, or would if he ever woke up, the balance was delicate. A hair trigger waiting for someone to say the wrong thing and set it off.

 

Task 3 Stimulus: Tarzan flying through the trees after poachers. 7 mintues.

Task 3 Response: Gene: Cut, cut, cut! Honestly it’s like you fuckwits want me to have a heart attack! Tarzan needs to be ferocious, they’re trying to kill Cheetah, your motivation is that you want to save your friend.

Tom: Ok, ok Gene, calm yourself. I’m still trying to get Tarzan into my head. He’s such a foreign character, I mean he’s so wild, so different from me.

Gene: We all know that you got this part because of your rippling abs not because of your talent Tom, but just try not to be so shit, ok? Right. Action!

Gene: No, no, no! Where are the rifles? Fuck Penny! You’ve given the poachers uzes? We’re not in Vietnam!

Penny: Sorry Gene, I’ll… I’ll fix it, just… uh let me have a minute to get to the props truck

Gene: Time is money. This is your fault so it’s coming out of your pay. Right, poachers whatever your names are, we’re going to just do some more shots of running while Penny sorts out this uter cock-up.

 

It’s all very rough, but it’s a great thing to do every so often. Next time I go I’ll take my laptop, it was kind of hell to handwrite the whole thing. I will have to go to a few of the more sociable events where I can get to know the group a bit better, I didn’t have much time to chat with people.

Competition

This is just going to be a short one, I haven’t been posting a lot because I’ve been spending a lot of time doing, well, other stuff.

What is this other stuff? You may ask. Well, I have submitted my NaNoWriMo manuscript to a couple of publishers for consideration, so I’m quite pleased with myself for that – it may get rejected and if it does I think I might rewrite it. I feel like the story is good, and some of the passages are good, but there are a few bits which need some love.

I have also entered this same manuscript into the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. This award even has real money as the first prize! I had to print off three bound copies of the manuscript and drop it off to them, I thought it was terribly quaint. It did make it feel a bit more real, I’d written a book, when I saw the slab of paper on my desk with my name on it.

The third thing I’ve done is entered the Monash University Undergraduate Prize for Creative Writing. This one is a short story competition, which also has prize money! I wrote the story several weeks ago and I find it interesting that I can really feel the influence of the people I’ve been reading lately in it. In particular Poppy Z Brite’s novel Lost Souls and Hamlet.

I will keep you all updated on my progress – I doubt very much that I’ll win any of these, or indeed get published, but hey, you don’t win things unless you enter, and you don’t get published unless you start submitting to publishers (or self publishing) so it’s all valuable experience right? As always if it doesn’t turn out it’s all good material!

I’ve also been taking lots of photos of my food recently, so I will leave you with two to make you jealous:

This was baked eggs with spinach, olives, feta and some of the most glorious bread I’ve had for a long time. I had this at Riverland on the Yarra in Melbourne.
This one, while yes I admit, is not technically food was last night before seeing an excellent selection of live acts at the Thornbury Theatre.

My Easter Challenge

I saw when I was at uni the yesterday that there is a Monash University Undergraduate Prize for Creative Writing. It is in partnership with the Emerging Writers’ Festival which is happening in Melbourne in May.

I have about a week off from classes at uni for Easter and while I will be using this time to catch up with people and get ahead in my readings, I decided today to challenge myself to write a story to enter in this competition.

I have no idea what my story will be about, but that’s not really the point. The point is I set myself a challenge with a deadline and I stick to it! Like NaNoWriMo last year, but y’know, smaller. If writing is as much about habit as talent, I’d better make sure I keep plugging away at it.

I also attended a free lecture this evening presented by the Victorian College of the Arts on screenwriting, and in particular plot and character development. It was the second in a series of three lectures (I missed the first one because I didn’t hear about it until yesterday, very disappointing) by a British guest lecturer Stephen Cleary.

He packed and enormous amount of content into a 90 minute lecture and I’m very glad I brought a notepad with me! I will have to read over what I wrote to make sure that it makes sense later on. Right now it’s still just settling in my brain. Although he was quite focused on writing for screen, I felt like a lot of what he said could be generalised for other genres of writing. My friend, Jonathan, who invited me along, was interested to ask Stephen how his material relates to serialised fiction, for example comic books or tv series with extended story arcs and almost ongoing character development, something that was not clear from what he spoke about.

I will definitely be going back next week for the last of the three lectures, pen and paper at the ready!

So I guess that’s it, just a small update partly to inspire me, and partly to inspire some of you! Keep making good art!

Bright Sunshiney Day

Today I bought myself a new toy! I bought a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens for my camera. I have been reading a bit about fixed focal length lenses and I have come to understand that they are good for portraiture, as well as being faster (thus allowing lower light photos to come out better).

To test my new lens I went for a small wander (it was far too hot for a large wander) at Moomba. Moomba is a sort of carnival held each year in the second weekend of March on the banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne. It is famous for it’s activities for kids, it’s carnival rides, and for water related activities including the Birdman Competition (in which competitors don ridiculous costumes and leap into the Yarra), and water-skiing competitions. Most Melburnians would shudder to get into the Yarra, it has a bit of a poor reputation, but we all like to watch other people do it.

These guys are called Dog Paparazzi, they seem to be an art installation at Federation Square.

This is the view of some of the Melbourne CBD, with Flinders’ St train station, Princes Bridge and the Yarra. Fed Square, for reference, is to the right of this shot behind those trees.

Apparently people have taken to affixing love padlocks in Melbourne too. I like that this one is red. I also love the crispness, which I am attributing to the new lens! Yay for new toys and sunny days!