Margo Lanagan's Blog, page 15

Portuguese Tender Morsels

Singing My Sister Down poster

Just realised the email announcing the play had a poster attached!
(Designed by Lucy Tann.)

Singing My Sister Down, a production of the Sydney University Dramatic Society

SUDS presents a dramatic adaptation from Sydney writer Margo Lanagan's award-winning book of short stories for young adults, Black Juice.

Wed–Sat, 11th–21st August, 8pm.
Cellar Theatre, under the Holme Building, Science Road, Sydney University.
Admission: $2/3/4/5.

'In the winter you come to the pit to warm your feet in the tar. You stand long enough to sink as far as your ankles—the littler you are, the longer you can stand...but in summer, like this day, you keep away from the tar, because it m...

Chugging on.

The short (1000-3000 word) piece that's due on Friday is rough-drafted and I'm looking at it sidelong, thinking it needs to shape up a bit.

I started the final short story that's to go into Yellowcake, the collection that's coming out next march from A&U, and who-knows-when from the US and UK; those contracts and schedules aren't sorted yet. Anyway, this story is supposed to help lighten up the collection a little, so I have to mix in a lot of milk-of-human-kindness, humour and affection. You ...

Because it's July...

...and just over a year on, and I'm stuck at work tooling around on the Internet, here's M. T. Anderson's brilliant speech from the Printz Awards last year, about how smart children and teenagers are. And he's no dummy himself.

Crikey, another week's gone by!

Not much to report here - still working on a short story (but that'll be a given for the next 6 months). This one was due last weekend; I think I'll have it done tomorrow. I just have to ramp up the tension in the second half, so that it's more of a surprise when the little guy kills the overbearing one.

Must get this story and another (a shorty - only 3000 words!) completed by the end of July. There's a third one it would be good to get substantially started on by then, too.

Didn't win a Shirl...

Wanna see my Writing Room?

Spike/Meanjin takes you there, as well as for a short, sweet tour around the inside of my head.

Ghostpigs and gah

Catherynne M. Valente says what I think (except I never could have dreamed up the ghostpigs on their guitars) over here. She writes about the horrors of reading boring beginnings in a way that makes it sound almost fun. But it isn't; those of us with obligatory-reading responsibilities know. Thank you for speaking our minds, Catherynne.

July already

I see that I was not very prolific blog-entry-wise during June. Apologies. I was run off my feet.

I went to my grant assessment meeting, and then I read more applications for another, bigger assessment meeting. That one's done now, so I'm only doing 2 jobs (tech- and story-writing) from now until near the end of July, when the next, huge, batch of applications, and the Vogel longlist, will hit and make things impossible again.

I finally got so bogged down in that short story I told you about th...

Pushing, erm, rocks uphill

Yes, two actual weeks have passed since I updated. And not because nothing's been happening. I've been working my three-days-a-week job, reading grant applications like a machine (an intelligent, discerning machine, natch), and hacking apart a short story and putting it back together.

When I sent it off, this story, I thought it was done. (This has happened with whole novels, too.) I thought it said what I wanted it to say. It was for an anthology with several editors, and they discussed all t...