I arrived early up to Sydney this past Thursday to spend some time with my sister. In one of those twists of fate (or chance), she now works out in the same suburb where I used to live. I spent a lot of time walking around, taking photographs – making some people look twice in their cars as they drove past (it’s not the prettiest area) – and generally marvelling at all the development that had gone on since we left.
Twelve years ago.
That number always takes me aback, because whenever I return to Sydney, there’s a part of me that feels like I was only just there; there is a sense of homecoming I will never shake off, nor want to.
And here’s why:
View from the Sydney Writers Centre, Lavender Bay
View across harbour from outside Luna Park
Friday night drinks at the Rocks
The Museum of Contemporary Art
Harbour Colours
Taking a well-earned rest (and taking in great reading) at Mag Nation, Newtown
That’s a wrap! Post-Festival Roadshow drinks outside the NSW Writers Centre
I’ll write in more detail about the Emerging Writers’ Festival Roadshow over at our blog later this week, and I’ll let you know once that’s up. At our event in Newtown yesterday, where a group of lively and engaged group of writers came together to discuss matters writing-related, I said that as of 2013 I’ll be blogging differently. I’ve said as much to people in my closer acquaintance, not to mention at the Offset Arts talk the other week (although I didn’t publish that part in the transcript).
What does ‘blogging differently’ mean? To be honest, I’m not too sure how to define it. Blogging less, yes. In what manner? I’m coming close to deciding. Although I adore blogging, and will always adore it, the rate at which I’ve kept up this blog just isn’t sustainable if I also want to pick up my offline writing word count and output.
I said as much at the 2008 Melbourne Writers Festival:
(1 min 40 sec and beyond is the part I’m talking about)
I need to go be quiet and have more of a think. This thinking will involve such concepts as ‘planning’, ‘strategy’, ‘boundaries’, ‘guidelines’ – very things that chill the perfectionist that was broken in me back in the darker years of my twenties, but I need to acknowledge are important, at least in a potential sanity-saving respect.
But enough of that for a while – I hope everyone who attended the EWF Roadshow events on the weekend had a wonderful time. I certainly did. It was wonderful to meet new people, and long-time Twitter friends!
