Ballet wasn’t my thing as a kid. I did a few lessons, apparently, but I don’t remember going. My ballroom dancing years came later and I enjoyed those. In contrast, ballet felt prescriptive, disciplined – tough. Not that ballroom isn’t, but to stick with ballet requires a special kind of determination I obviously don’t have. I…
Today I celebrate… the Australian arts and literary community. Today is the National Day of Action. I will be attending several events in the city over the coming days, learning, connecting and catching up with friends. (Including the Emerging Writers’ Festival National Conference – come say hi!) Artists are participating in many different ways….
It’s been a great month for books, so I’m going to get straight into matters. It’s not often I can tally how long a book will take me to complete but I can in this case: I read This House of Grief by Helen Garner cover to cover in the nine-and-a-bit hour car journey from…
As I write this, Gmail is down. Or next to down – crawling along at glacial pace. So I’m taking this window of time to do my weekly celebrations check-in. It’s almost finished! Only a couple of weeks until we reach the one-year mark. And then I’m going to let it go. I’ll explain further…
Sometimes I think about this question: “What if the internet had existed while I was in high school?” Of course, it already did. But only in embryonic form compared to what it looks like today. I like how my first email address was given to me in my first week of university in 1997. Pre-university,…
This image seemed most appropriate to use given we’re now in winter and Melbourne is shrouded in clouds today. What am I celebrating/enjoying this week? The latest ‘self-made success from self-publishing‘ story in the Guardian. I know there’s the saying ‘Don’t read the comments*’, but when this topic arises I can’t help myself. They’re often a…
(Part 1 can be read here.) Rotorua If you scroll down to the bottom, you’ll find an entire video devoted to the sights we saw in Rotorua and I can see why it is such an important tourist destination. I want to especially highlight Rotorua Canopy Tours. The tour was three-hours of adventure, but I…
What’s happened this week? Well, the internet lost its collective minds over Game of Thrones; I’m back to putting together slowly, glacially slowly, a project or two and remain behind in all of my blog reading. There is one thing: Bookings for my Winter School Blogging Workshop at Writers Victoria have opened. If you become a…
We landed in Auckland just after 2.30pm on Sunday 1st May. By the time we’d cleared the airport, collected the campervan, shopped for groceries and ate an early dinner, it was dark and raining. Adam and I both had thumping headaches – the toll of the previous few days had caught up with us. But…
