February 2012
16 posts
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Novel fragment featured on Home-For-Writers →
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The Greatest (Fiction) Books of All Time, As Voted... →
Great list … but unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly reflects male authors. It will be wonderful when female literary fiction authors are given equal recognition to male authors. I wonder what a 21st century list will reveal? Will time be enough to change this trend?
Many have argued that the issue of recognition of female literary fiction authors is more deeply structural - that the literary...
Harrell Fletcher's Interviews with Children →
Some of the most amazing things humans have ever said.
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The Turning Land, the Constant Sea: excerpt 2
Little Namu paddles his colourful, boy-sized longboat from the shores of sharply jagged island toward the ever-retreating horizon. He likes to follow the trail of the moon. The destination is not important. Finding a point where the ocean’s ripples light up like a trail of silvery stones, Namu moors. Arms pull his lifeless right leg into position. He can now maneuver his small body to lie atop the...
Excerpt of The Turning Land, the Constant Sea... →
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The Turning Land, the Constant Sea
In the mornings when he journeys back to shore, Namu’s boat is followed. Tracked. Tracked by pulsating mushroom fields of translucent jellyfish. Tracked by swarming spheres of silver-blue carangid fish. Tracked by the golden onslaught of butterflyfish, by the trailing rainbows of fusiliers and pretty pastel clouds of delicate damsel fish. Tracked by the diaphanous silk of scarf octopi, by eels...
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A Clear Midnight
wwnorton:
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, Night, sleep, death and the stars.
-Walt Whitman
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How to Date a Writer →
All about the value in writers setting up dates to write in the company of each other.
Anything is easier than writing. But if you want to write, you’ve got create the conditions that will help you succeed. That writer sitting across from you is also struggling to make their dreams come true. Help each other get there.
My friend P and I are going to have our weekly writing date today -...
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bathos
noun
1. a ludicrous descent from the exalted or lofty to the commonplace; anticlimax
2. insincere pathos; sentimentality; mawkishness
3. triteness or triviality in style
(Source: dictionary.com)
What a fantastic word! On first reading it doesn’t quite look right, close as it is to ‘pathos’. But having a word for ‘insincere pathos’ is brilliant. I’ll have...
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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind →
Sounds like an amazing story … and I love that the memoir has been made into a beautifully-illustrated children’s version to spark the imagination and courage of little ones! Definitely would love to share William Kamkwamba’s story with the Ligingi Community Learning Centre in Uganda.
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Murakami's advice to writers: just put in stuff...
Image source: Paperbackgirl
I just listened to a recent Selected Shorts podcast, ‘The Strangeness of Everyday Life: Two by Murakami’ (22 Jan 2012). As I listened to the stories ‘Lederhosen’ and ‘Ice Man’, I couldn’t help but think of Paperbackgirl’s hilarious piechart of recurring Murakami themes. I noted indeed cats, bizarre dream sequences,...
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Wild at Heart: ancestor worship, upside-down trees... →
Could a travel article title possibly appeal to me more??
The Millions' Guide to Litifying Your Tumblr... →
Thanks to these guys, my dashboard has got litified in a big way!
January 2012
23 posts
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“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing,...”
– Alan Watts (via neil-gaiman)
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Novel design and Snowflake Pro
There seem to be many authors who take diametrically opposed views to one another about the best way to go about writing novel. There are those who meticulously plan before they start writing. And then again there are those who advocate a more intuitive, unfolding exploration, letting a mysterious creative force somewhat external to themselves carry them along.
A couple of years back I attended...
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“I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that...”
– Dave Eggers, What is the What (via bookmania)
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Melbourne Poetry Map: Audio Graffiti →
“MPM : AG is an online poetry collection which launches a new Melbourne story as told by some of its leading spoken word artists and poets. These are maps to another Melbourne – by people who live and write here, people who leave their stories and their hopes like invisible murals on bleak city walls.
With access to a computer and a portable music device, you can experience the city...
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The Whale Rider: negotiating the customary, the...
As a child, I always sought out a single lonely shelf in my local area’s libraries. The 398.2 ‘folk tales and fairy tales’ section of the Dewey Decimal System was my nirvana. I would always quickly and greedily exhaust that shelf’s often-beautifully illustrated offerings and long for a fresh shelf at a new library.
I don’t know exactly why my young self was...
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BBC World Book Club's interview with Witi Ihimaera... →
The author of one of my favourite books interviewed by my favourite literary broadcaster Harriett Gilbert on my favourite books podcast, BBC World Book Club. Bliss!
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2012, 30 ... all signs point to new practices!
A blog has been on my mind for some time, but let’s just say I am not always the most quick to snap up new tech trends. I blame (justifiably or not) years in Timor-Leste and the adoption of a certain ‘village’ mentality, as my partner would put it! Adjusting back to the networked big smoke has taken a while. I think I was probably one of the last people in Australia to get a...