The Hodgepodge, a writer’s journal
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Re-discovering the Benefits of a Writing Residency
One of the problems with being a writer and working from home is that your attention is constantly being tugged and pulled in different directions. If you combine writing with any other kind of work – and, let’s face it, most of us have to do that, it’s all too easy to let that (paid) ...
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Clifden, Galway and a memory of my father
I said I’d finish my Clifden Arts Week posts talking about Colette Bryce, who I heard as my final poetry reading at Clifden. I really enjoyed hearing Bryce read her work – and was delighted, later, to find a Selected poems at the wonderful Galway bookshop, Charlie Byrne’s. I’m particularly interested in writing about childhood ...
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Wild and Woolly
I’ve wanted to go to Shetland Wool Week ever since I first heard of it – which I think would have been in 2013, when I first went to Shetland. As a long-time attender of Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show, the thought of a week doing woolly things excited me. So, when Helen took off ...
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Clifden Arts Week
Arrived in the bus from Galway – a mesmerising trip through the countryside – to be whisked by Australian/Irish poet, Robyn Rowland straight to a reading by Tom McCarthy, who was a last-minute replacement for Paul Durcan. It was a fascinating reading, not the least because McCarthy placed himself in opposition to Durcan politically in ...
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Yeats and an Airbnb disaster in Dublin
The highlight of Dublin for me was seeing the amazing Yeats exhibition at the National Library. It was to be mounted for a year only. Already it’s been up eight – and no wonder! It’s superbly curated, with a wealth of information presented in enough different forms to appeal to the casual tourist, the informed ...
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A Night with John le Carré, George Smiley and Ms Hospitality.
I planned all these different blogposts while I was sitting on the long-haul flight from Melbourne to Edinburgh. I thought I might do something on surviving the flight, for starters. A reader and writer’s ‘capsule survival kit’ – and I think I will. Hint: it’s won’t be about colour coordination, cashmere or uncrushables. I half ...
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Secondary Worlds and Cityscapes – Continuum Convention, Part 3
Weird fiction is a term that traditionally referred to macabre fiction of the 1930s. This fiction was not strictly horror or gothic fiction, but added a supernatural other – sometimes using ghost stories, sometimes using mythic tropes – to everyday reality. Weird fiction sets out to make the reader uneasy – it’s related to Freud’s ...
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From Ballads to Gaslight
In terms of sheer value for money, Continuum Convention is one of the most information-packed opportunities for writers and readers, providing you’re interested in genre fiction. From Friday evening until Monday morning there are panels exploring different topics – not all writing topics. There are also panel sessions on Dr. Who and other t.v. series, ...
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Continuum Convention 13 – the first course.
I attended the very first Continuum held in Melbourne and loved the immersion into a completely different world. I went because I was writing a dystopian novel at the time, The Airdancer of Glass, and it was professional development for me. I thought. Instead it was this wild ride into different worlds – some familiar ...
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Nostaligia
I was thinking the other day it would be fun to teach a class that explored the fiction of nostalgia. It’s because I’m reading Sophie Hannah’s latest Poirot book, The Closed Casket. It’s taking me an inordinate amount of time to read – not because of the book, I hasten to add – but because ...