Nothing Much… Yet Everything

Nothing much happening this end at the moment. At the same time, a writers’ life can be very interesting – so here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

TEACHING

Last Friday, I taught my Problems in Wonderland: Stories That Matter workshop at Manly Vale Public School. As always, I was amazed by the children’s imaginations – there were mermaids, haunted castles, cities on Jupiter and escaped crocodiles, as well as grandmas falling into fires and school expulsions (I’m telling you, kids’ imaginations are magnificent!!). Here are some photos:

Who knows what a character is…?

Great! Now what’s a ‘well-drawn’ character…?

Oooo, good answer!

You have a question?

Well first of all..

And then you’d…

Finally… kaboom!

And there’s your story. Okay?

LUNCHING

After that, I met with my wonderful literary agent Alex Adsett for lunch…

Ladies Who Lunch!!

CHARITY WORK

Then on Saturday, nine members of my writers’ group, the Northern Beaches Writers’ Group, met up to discuss the logistics of completing the KSP Write-a-Book-in-a-Day challenge next month. We’re attempting the challenge on Saturday 6th July and I can’t wait!!

NBWG members soon to attempt the KSP Book-in-a-Day challenge!

Run by the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre, the Write-a-Book-in-a-Day challenge is designed to raise money for state children’s hospitals. For our group, this is the Westmead Children’s Hospital and, in particular, their Kids Cancer Project.

It’s all for The Kids Cancer Project at Westmead Children’s Hospital.

So, at 8am on Saturday 6th July, we’ll be given a setting, 2 humans, 1 non-human, 1 issue and 5 random words. With that, and that alone, we have to write, then illustrate, print and bind an 8,000-word children’s book, all before 8pm that evening. Wow – can we do it? We’re sure going to try! Because every cent we raise is going to help sick kids. We’d of course love your support so, if you want to make a donation, just go to the official Write-a-Book-in-a-Day website at:

https://www.writeabookinaday.com/index.html

Then select ‘Sponsor a Team’ on the left hand side, followed by ‘The Kids Cancer Project – Westmead (NSW)’. After that all the teams should come up – find ‘Northern Beaches Writers’ Group’ and that feel-good feeling of donating to charity will soon be yours!

WRITING EQUATION

In the course of our writing-strategy discussions, one NBWG member Zoya Nojin (published children’s author) shared the following basic story-writing equation with the group. It’s so succinct, I thought you might like it:

X wants Y because Z but C

Cool, huh?

ARTICLE

Today, my contributor copy of Images arrived (the quarterly newsletter of the Society of Women Writers NSW), wherein there’s an article about the workshop I taught there in April. See page 11!

Winter Edition of ‘Images’
The Society of Women Writers Inc

INTERVIEW

Now this coming Wednesday, I’ve got an interview with The Manly Daily booked in, all about the Book-in-a-Day challenge. So that should be fun. Then…

PHOTO SHOOT

On Thursday, a Manly Daily photographer will be taking photos of the Northern Beaches Writers’ Group to accompany the interview.

AND THEN THERE’S LIFE…

In amongst all that, it’s been my daughter’s sixth birthday, my son and daughter’s annual dance concert, and the guttering on our porch just bust – so it’s just as well I’ve got plenty of freelance work at the moment! Rain, rain, please go away. Your rainbows are pretty, but the mess you’re making on my porch is not!!

Rainbows are great…

Burst gutters are not!

What have you been up to this week?