Sandy Fussell's Blog, page 7

What do you do when you accidentally throw half of your manuscript in the trash and ….

…by the time you realise it, the trash has already been collected?

I know the answer because that’s what happened to me this week. I threw out the pencil-edited second half of my manuscript. While I still had an electronic copy of the original (and a backup), a pile of first round notes and revisions were gone forever.

Here’s what I did next:

1.  Shrug. After all, I still have the original and surely there wouldn’t have been that many pencil notes.

2.  Panic. Because those notes and revisions were the most brilliant ideas and refinements I’ll ever have.

3.  Take a deep breath and get real. I know my first round edits are usually rubbish. Perhaps they’ve actually landed where they belong.

4.  Briefly consider cleaning up the office. My desk looks like an archaeology dig, with layers for the various things I’m doing all at once.

When my manuscript was still there – on the bottom of the pile in a plastic container folder.

5.  Remind myself this is not the problem. I’ve always worked like this. Einstein worked like this. He said: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?”  Too right. #IStandWithAl

6.  Ask myself why this happened. Well, my child is in pain all day and it’s a slow process through to a solution. My best-friend sister has a potentially fatal illness having already survived 6 separate cancers. My day job is looking shaky. I’m making life-wide changes as the love-of-my-life retires soon. Plus other things that can’t be mentioned here because they are not my business to tell.

7.  So my concentration is elsewhere. On more important things. People that need me things.

8.  My priorities are where they should be. Half a manuscript of revisions and edits lost is nothing a chocolate bar can’t fix.  I’ll just do them again. They’re still in my head and they’ll be even better this time because I’ve had a practice run.

9.  Catastrophe averted.

 

 

Southern Sea of Words

Five years ago an invitation arrived all the way from Albany, WA to visit Great Southern Grammar School. I excitedly said Yes but it wasn’t to be. My youngest son fell ill and interstate travel was no longer an option.

Fast forward five years and the invitation was repeated. The festival had a fabulous new name: The Southern Sea of Words.

Southern Sea of Words Literary Festival

Here I finally am – with Sally Murphy, Dianne Wolfer, Leanne White and Deb Abela. That’s me hiding behind Leeanne’s book He’s My Dad and Sally’s Roses are Blue. I’m good at hiding in full view in a photo (Sally is just copying me! *grin*)

Missing from the photo are all the boys - Danny Parker and Philip Gwynne

Christ Church Grammar School Library

It was definitely the best of times. First stop, Christ Church Grammar School, the alma mater of the enigmatic Jon Doust (who kept popping up in person and in stories over the six days I was in WA.

Christ Church Grammar Library is one of those spaces that just shouts “you are welcome” and “we have books” – thanks to the leadership of librarian Mary Hookey. The kids were wonderful (they always are).

Then on to finally catch up with the super enthusiastic Karen Bradbury and finalise those years of emails with a hug.

It felt a little odd to be festivalling swordless – I’ve given up taking my bokken on planes – it makes life too complicated.

I had heaps of fun with my Minecraft Workshop (as I always do), I learned some new origami from a young master in my Sad the Dog session and loving having a captive audience to listen to me talk about curation and the Internet as a final session with adults brought the festivities to a close.

 

Curation Workshop

Sad the Dog Origami Workshop

Minecrafting a Story Workshop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The flight schedule is cleverly designed to keep everyone in Albany all weekend (if you don’t leave early Sat you have to wait until late Sunday night). What a wonderful delay. Sunday morning was spent at a SCBWI  get-together and after that, based on a recommendation from Diane, Deb and I set off for the National Anzac Centre.

Albany

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I could have stayed for hours and in fact, I did stand for hours (with lunch in between) in front of the scrolling stories session. I now know a great deal of Australian WWI history whereas before I knew embarrassingly little beyond the Anzac battles and Ypres where a great uncle died.

Entry into the museum came with an identity card which swiped to reveal individual information at key points in the exhibit. I was disappointed to be allocated a German soldier. I wanted to hear an Australian story.

But Lieutenant Ernst Junger turned out to be a fitting choice. A career soldier, he later became an entomologist and six beetles were named after him. As if that wasn’t already a serious enough claim to fame, he won the Goethe prize for literature.

So there was irony my card. It was always meant for me. Junger further redeemed himself in my eyes, when he was dismissed from the army during the Second World War for being associated with a plot to assassinate Hitler.

I’d love to go back. To Perth, the Museum and to Great Southern Grammar.

5 of This or 10 of That – It Ends Here

I’ve read all those posts about crafting snappy, snazzy blog post titles. I’ve even listened a little and I can see the appeal of 5 of this or 10 of that.

What blogger/author/person of the world could resist the allure of such headlines full of promise.

There’s ten ways to solve almost anything. Look what happened when I typed 10 Ways to… into Google.

10 ways to live, 10 ways to die, 10 ways to sleep better, 10 ways to have more money, 10 ways to trick your brain, 10 ways to get out at cricket, 10 ways to become a more confident person, 10 ways to burn fat while you sleep.

… you see my point?

I love lists. I run my life somewhere between Wunderlist and Trello – wonderful time saving products that help me organise everything from the weekly menu to my latest manuscript.

I like bullet points and simplicity but I am no longer a sucker for blog posts with list based headlines. I am tired of reading the same thing over and over again.

It ALL ENDS HERE.

Of course if someone comes up with something completely different, I might just click again.

And its true that I did write one once. 5 ANZ Books that Should be Made into Movies. Oddly enough, it got a lot of views.

Maybe I’m wrong but this weekend I culled my feedly feeds. I was particularly sorry to see LifeHack go. I find the occasional gem there. But I can no longer face thirty blog posts of exactly the same  5 or this or 10 of that format in the hope of finding one with a dot point I haven’t heard before.

I think the Internet is finally running out of lists.

Week 3-4 #STUBC16: Where I Want to Visit

Week 3 of the Student Blogging Challenge is  free choice and Week 4 is “About Your World”. Some of my students are doing Activity 7 “The Place I Would Like to Visit Most”. That sounded like fun so I’ve joined in.

Anyone who knows even a little about me knows the answer to that question. I want to go to Japan.

It’s been on my bucket list for years. I even wrote eight books about samurai Japan while I was waiting to go. And I’m still waiting.

But I’m getting closer. As soon as #2 son is well enough to go back to face-face schooling and keep it up for a month, my family will be on a plane. I promise. Watch this space.

I have all the brochures and I know exactly what I want to do. A three week train trip from north to south and hopefully a side trip to Cambodia (where Samurai Kids Book 7:Red Fox is set) because I would love to see Angkor Wat. I want to place my hand against the stones and feel their green agelessness.

First, I want to visit Japan and see all the things I’ve written stories about – a nightingale floor, Edo castles, mountain temples, the Jigudurani Valley, snow-covered forests of Hokkaido, museums filled with samurai artifacts and maybe a taxidermy Hokkaido wolf. Most of all I want to breathe deep – to take it all in and mix reality with everything I’ve imagined.

Image and Sounds and Attribution

Week 5 of #STUBC16 is about images and sounds and attribution. I’m exploring a number of different approaches below using three pictures of Jigokudani (Hell Valley). I had these pictures in my research notes but I hadn’t recorded where I found them. I used TinEye reverse image search to locate the originals and find their attribution details.

 

This is a Creative Commons licensed photo found on Wikipedia where I can also find the attribution text. It’s a long string of words so I chose to add it to the Attribution tag of the image and if you hover your mouse over the image, you’ll see the attribution:

 

 

This photo from Getty Images is only licensed for reuse as an embedded image and Getty Images supplies the embed html that permalinks to Getty Images and the attribution information. I’m not keen on the permalinks or the ugly way text is superimposed on the image or that I can’t centre the image (The Getty Images forum says it can’t be done and a search of the Internet for html tweaks work hasn’t found anything that works).

Interestingly, TinEye turned up multiple sites where this image is used illegally and without attribution. I won’t be going that but I won’t be using another picture from  Getty Images either.

 

 

This last image is an illustration from Samurai Kids Book 2:Owl Ninja showing the Samurai Kids bathing in a not pool in Jigokudani surrounded by the macque snow monkeys that use the pool to keep warm in winter. It was drawn by Rhian Nest-James who illustrated all eight books in the series and kindly lets me use her work on-line.

I’ll definitely be visiting Jigokudani.

Something Special Happened to Me this Week

I’m often called upon to defend my enjoyment of Twitter.

I love the exchange of knowledge, the hubs of creativity and gathering of like minds.

I love the way people champion causes and spread the word.

And I love when Twitter reaches out with a special message for me. Thank you Aisha and Saara with the beautiful reading voice.

Week 2 #STUBC16: Commenting & The Time I Taught Someone…

It’s Week 2 of the Student Blogging Challenge (#STUBC16)  and this week the focus is on commenting with activities based on commenting on other blogs and determining what a good comment looks like. Easier said than done.

But #STUBC16 is about sharing and lots of helpful links were provided to past blog posts, student examples and video instructions.

What Makes a Good Comment According to STUBC16

A good comment is polite, helpful and might offer constructive criticism. The tricky part is engaging in conversation. The easiest way to do this is with a question. Read the post carefully first, find something that interests you and ask a question about that.

Saying “That was a great post” is not a good comment. A comment should add to the conversation for example “That was a great post. I was interested to read about your football game. I play football too.” Don’t forget to include a link back to your own blog. (At this point I hastily added links to my blog posts on the comments I made. I learned something!) Not too many exclamation marks. (Oops!!!)

Being a bit radical

I have to be honest and admit that if someone I knew commented on my blog with, “This post is awesome” I’d be happy with that comment. I would take it as a personal compliment. Oddly enough, if someone I didn’t know said the same thing, I would think it was an empty comment. So maybe there’s a bit of context involved in blog comments.

The Time I Taught Someone

My mentoree students are blogging on the topic The Time I Taught Someone so I decided to do that too. I’ve taught many things to people of all ages. I’ve taught friends to crochet and do tapestry. I’ve taught rooms full of adults to use various software. I’ve taught classrooms full of kids how to write a story. I decided to go with what I have the most fun teaching.

Origami. All over Australia, I’ve taught kids how to fold three favourite simple origami shapes. A samurai kabuto helmet (also makes a very handy bookmark) – easy. A ninja – super easy. A happy dog – so easy even a preschooler can do it.

International Women’s Day: Power Voice

The sound of African drumming reverberated through the Wollongong Art Gallery last Friday night. It was hard to resist thumping along with the rhythm.

There is only one word to describe drumming (I’ve long been a fan of Taiko drumming) and that’s: powerful. Very fitting as the name of the International Women’s Day event I was attending was Power Voice run by the South Coast Writers Centre (SCWC) and the Women’s Health Service ISLHD in partnership with the Wollongong Art Gallery and the Illawarra Women’s Health Centre.

I was there to make a small speech and announce the winners of the writing competition I judged. It wasn’t an easy task because there was an enormous diversity of responses to the theme: “Womanhood in words. What’s your story?”

The diversity served to emphasise that many women are truly one woman, and that the same is true in reverse. Womanhood is a shared voice. This thread continued to weave through many of the competition entries. My personal favourite entry was the poem I chose as the winner in the Poetry section. The first line spoke of one woman and as the words flowed, she metamorphosed into all women.

Mignon Lee-Warden sang a stirring ballad celebrating the activism of Harriet Tubman. This led to two concurrent discoveries – Harriet Tubman’s inspiring story and that my SCWC co-worker is a talented musician.

Harriet Tubman was a slave who after escaping, returned at great personal risk to help other slaves escape. She used songs to provide instructions to navigate their escape through a system of safe houses and places. This was known as the Underground Railway. Here’s a version of the song with some information about Harriet:

Helena Fox-Dunan gave the most poetic and heartfelt keynote speech I’ve ever heard. I’ll let her words speak for themselves. The full transcript of her speech can be found here on her blog.

Last, but certainly not least, I sat next to a young girl whose mother was drumming. She confided that she was not good at music like her mother. I told her how I learned to play violin but I was so terrible everyone left the house while I was practising. So I gave up.

“You must never give up your dreams because of someone else,” she told me.

We talked about other things. I told her how I loved to write.

“It is a wonderful thing to follow your heart. You must always do that,” she said.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“I’m in year 3.”

So that would mean she was probably eight or nine. The future for womanhood is looking bright.

My #StellaSpark

From the Stella Prize website:  [Your] Stella Spark is the book by an Australian woman that struck a spark for you, igniting ideas, creativity and a passion for great writing. Take a photo of your Stella Spark book or share the story of why you chose it.

The moment I heard my #StellaSpark was in stock I raced (yes, raced) out and bought it because the author’s previous book is my almost #StellaSpark. The book had the most wonderful cover and inside were the most wonderful words. Oh how I loved it.

And I loved one particular line most of all. I carried it with me wherever I went. I often quoted it because it described something about myself that I had never been able to put into words.

Little did I know this book was destined for greatness. Ten months later it won the 2015 Miles Franklin Award. My #StellaSpark is The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna.

Initially my #StellaSpark did not spark creativity but an inert awe. I was frozen by it’s wonderfulness and my own creativity stumbled. Even reviewing it was impossible because the task felt too enormous. My words would never do the story justice.

Inspiration did come,  slowly and forcefully, powerfully. It’s with me still. I never managed to write that review for The Reading Stack. I left that in the hands of a more capable reviewer.

The line that sparks for me whenever I think about it is this one: I ran from wall to wall, my cells spinning me around the rooms, one after another.

I know that feeling. I just didn’t know it was my cells spinning. Until I read The Eye of the Sheep.

Student Blogging Challenge – I Am

I’ve signed up to the 2016 Student Blogging Challenge as a mentor to 30 students, mostly from the USA, plus one each from Australia, England and Puerto Rico.  The post topic for this week is I Am. I’ve just checked in and there are already 18 posts on-line, a diverse range of personalities and interests.

I thought if I’m peeking into their lives, they should get to peek into mine. It’s only fair!

So here is my I AM post, especially for you guys. You know who you are….

I AM me. I live in Australia, on the east coast near the ocean. It is a small town with about 5,000 people but the nearest city is only 20 mins away.

I have two very different jobs. I am an Information and Communications Technologies Consultant which means I spend a lot of my day answering questions about computers and software. I am also an author and this blog sits inside my website. Sometimes I combine these two jobs like when I teach a Minecraft Writing workshop. I use Minecraft to show how to structure a story.

My favourite sport is hockey although I don’t play anymore. Soccer and gridiron are also popular in my house. I like to write (fancy that!), read, hang out on the internet, do jigsaws and lego  and make things with origami.

My family and I all like animals. We have two Burmese cats, tropical fish and a tree frog. Past pets have included deerhounds (although there are no deer around here!), lizards, parrots, turtles, snakes, ducks, chickens and guinea pigs.

I think it’s important to be honest and to be a good friend. I like to volunteer because it feels good to help out and I get to meet new, interesting people. I am quiet but I am not shy. I often visit schools to talk about being an author.

I wish I could paint and draw manga. And play a musical instrumental. I wish I could run faster. But mostly I am happy with who I am.

I made an avatar – for the first time – but it doesn’t link to my blog. My WordPress blog sits inside my website and nothing seems to work if I post on Blogger. So I had to embed a link in my comments  while I’m working that out. I’m also learning other new things. I had to look up ‘freshman’ and ‘varsity’. We don’t use those words in Australia.

I also have an About Me page on my website.

 

 

Blog Posts Worth Posting About: Children’s Books Daily

One of my favourite blogs is Megan Daley’s Children’s Books Daily. Megan must be one of the most dynamic, innovative and enthusiastic librarians in the whole world. Inspiring too. I never miss a post and I learn stuff all the time.

Today’s post, Books for Early Independent Readers , subtitled “My Child is Reading Chapter Books and I Can’t Find ANYTHING for Them To Read” was about reading options for keen readers who are ready to move beyond chapter books.

The book recommendations and tips are worth a read alone (so you should take the hint and go as soon as you finish reading this post) but what reached out to me was the last three paragraphs – a discussion of the difference role of classroom readers and self-selected library books – and the importance of both.

I immediately wanted to cut and paste this everywhere but there’s a law against that (and so there should be) – instead here’s an allowable snippet:

Books borrowed from a library or purchased from a bookstore are self-selected, recreational reads and are how young people develop an emotional attachment to reading and develop lifelong reading habits. 

You’ll find the rest of the post here. Go now.