Reading and Writing Weekly Round Up

Short Reads:

Oh my goodness! This week, I found this quite extraordinary article from Jo Case, pondering whether her memoir ‘Boomer and Me‘ killed her marriage.

Recently, I wrote a small memoir piece about a 40th birthday weekend away, which I showed to my husband to read.

Let’s just say that he was left wondering if he had attended the same weekend away. Our interpretations of events could not have been more divergent.

This is why I have such admiration for memoir writers. ‘Truth’ is such contested territory. No two people will ever view the same event in the same way.

As Jo writes, You can only write what you see as the truth at the time. Sometimes that means hidden truths, the ones you sense but don’t see, are unearthed in the process. And what happens next can be unpredictable. 

In Jo’s case, what happened next was the breakdown of her marriage, something that is apparently not uncommon when authors publish a novel.

Eeek! Read the whole thing here.

On a completely lighter note, I had an absolute ball reading the tweets coming out of the Romance Writers of Australia annual conference, this year held in Melbourne.

For the first time, the keynote speaker was a MAN! Not just any old fella, but romance royalty himself, Graeme Simsion.

I’ve heard Graeme speak before, and he’s a total gem. But on this occasion, he outdid himself with pearls like this

If you’re on twitter, it really is worth having a read of all the tweets. Just search under #RWAus15. (Should be #Someofthemostpracticalwritingadviceyou’llevergetataconference)

Long Reads

If reading has ‘seasons’, then I am certainly in the spring. After a series of beautifully written but dark and ‘wintry’ novels, I have emerged into a season of light and fun.

This week I finished off Confessions of a Once Fashionable Mum. My goodness – does Georgia Madden have an eye for a joke and a pun. Fingers crossed I’ll have an interview with her later this week where she might share some of her comedy writing secrets.

Now, I’m deeply ensconced in The Bit In Between, by Claire Varley. My 6 year old asked me the other day why I was laughing out loud, for no apparent reason. Yes, it’s that kind of book. An actual LOL, and not just some stupid thing you put on a text message so that people understand not to take you seriously.

Writing

Well, if my reading has entered spring, then you could say that my writing is still firmly stuck in winter.

I’m deep into re-drafting my full-length novel, and the saying ‘it’s always darkest before dawn’ keeps popping into my head.

Right now it’s a mess. But I read this fabulous interview with the author of In My House, Alex Hourston, who spoke about so many things I could relate to (like that weird moment, when you’ve been hanging out to sit down at the computer, then you do, and you think ‘no, I can’t actually do this AT ALL!) and finished her interview by talking about the importance of tenacity.

So, that’s gonna be me.

Tenacious-C

(with apologies to Jack Black and the gang)