Iris Lavell's Blog, page 21

Maureen Helen to speak at Book Length Project Group January

Critically acclaimed author Maureen Helen will be available to discuss her publishing experience at the Book Length Project Group on Sunday, 20 January 2013 at 10am. Her Memoir Other People's Country  (Harper Collins) was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier's Award in 2008.  Try the link to read more about this amazing book.

Book Launch

                                                                                                                                                                    
My debut novel Elsewhere in Success is due for release at the beginning of February, and to help me celebrate the Fellowship of Australian Writers WA has very kindly offered Mattie Furphy's House for the launch.

Critically acclaimed author Chris McLeod will be launching the book and we will have an opportunity to wet the baby's head with light refreshments, general chat, and philosophising about the meaning of life. Readers of this blog are welcome to attend, but if you are coming along, please RSVP at iriswriter@gmail.com. 

Details are as follows:

Date:    Saturday, 9 February 2013

Place:   Mattie Furphy's House, Fellowship of Australian Writers WA, Allen Park Heritage Precinct, Kirkwood Road, Swanbourne

Time:   4.30pm

RSVP: by 7 February 2013 iriswriter at gmail.com

Thanks to Fremantle Press for their great support, especially Claire M, and to Trisha and Pat and the rest of the hardworking people at the Fellowship of Australian Writers WA

 Author Iris Lavell (Photo: Matt Biocich)

Call for Papers January 11 - Reading and Writing Romance in the 21st Century

 
Contemplating romanceThe Inaugural Elizabeth Jolley Conference is being hosted by Curtin University in association with the Romance Writers of Australia on Friday August 16, 2013, and will be held at the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle, Western Australia.

They are currently calling for papers (300 word abstract - due January 11). Check it out for more details via the link provided. Sounds like a great event. I might go along. Hope to see you there.

Thanks Lynn A for alerting us to this event.

Here is the link:http://blogs.curtin.edu.au/elizabeth-jolley-conference/cfp  

Program worth checking out - In their own words: British Novelists

 In Their Own Words: British Novelists is an excellent series produced by the BBC worth checking out on You Tube. The DVD is available for purchase and shouldn't be too difficult to find. The Series incorporates rare footage of significant English Writers talking about their work and their beliefs, and takes us from a rare recording of Virginia Woolfe up to Salmon Rushdie talking about his earlier controversial work. 

Iris Murdoch says in the first episode Among the ruins 1919-1939   "As a novelist one is just the pupil of great novelists of the past."  We can read their works but this series provides an opportunity to hear some of the great novelists of the past 'in their own words.'

Here are a couple of links to get you started:

JRR Tolkien

Among the ruins 1919-1939

How a book gets published - You Tube clip

I came across this link via the First Writers Newsletter. It's from a Harper Collins Assistant Editor called Helen Bolton and provides a quick overview of how a book gets published. Thought readers of this blog might be interested. 

Happy New Year!

A quick scan of the Internet tells me that 2013 is the Year of the Water Snake (lucky for some, especially the Canadians, it seems!), the Year of the Stem Cell (some great things on the horizon there, with scientists cautiously optimistic), and, for Hollywood, the Year of the Film Sequel (producers also cautiously optimistic).

For me it will be yet another year of finding my feet (right down below my knees) and for surviving the weather.

I'm hoping for great things for the Book Length Project Group - yes, the name is a bit of a mouthful but in its defence, was only ever meant to be temporary until someone could come up with something better.  Nothing yet.

What's in a name anyway? We're lucky to have some excellent writers in the group, and a goodly amount of collective wisdom that will guide us through the joys of hard work ahead, as we spit-polish the manuscripts currently in development.

My predictions for 2013, channelled directly through my crystal ball:

There will be exciting news regarding members' publications, accompanied by critical acclaim and popular success, spreading across the group like wildflowers after a good rainNew friendships will be formed and transformative insights gainedSome of us will become irritating groupies of famous writers travelling to the Perth Writers Festival from far-off lands I see inspirational overseas travel for some, resulting in renewed vigour, energy and creativityThere will be pleasant dinners, morning teas, semi-boozy lunches for those who wish to indulgeSomeone may think about contemplating the possibility of an alternative name for the group, maybeSomeone will get a radical new hairdoOn the down side, as in 2012, housework will tend to suffer
Have a happy and safe New Year and I hope to see you in 2013.

Iris

Advice: The Problem with Advice

Gateway to the partially known

Fictional work is not for offering advice. It is to tell a story or explore something, or I'm not quite sure what. My advice to myself is to use it as a diving board. Don't think too much. Jump right in. Swan dive or belly flop. The experience can be transcendent, unpleasant, indifferent, but the exercise is still good for my health.

Writing to offer advice in a work of fiction? I don't think so. There is too much searching in the dark, too much contrivance, and too much intentional ambiguity, too much playing Devil's advocate. Too much uncertainty about the nature of social expectations and individual sensibilities. In any act of explorative communication, meaning slips around. It changes all the time.

In fiction, this slippage of meaning between writer and reader is a good thing. It creates the space for a story to develop beyond the page. Readers bring unique understanding, assumptions, and emotional profile to a story so that certain aspects of a story loom large, while others recede. The story adjusts itself to the reader, for better or worse.  At its best the work stimulates debate. At its worst, silence. Writer and reader are partners in the process of meaning-making.

Where does advice belong? If it belongs anywhere in writing, it seems that it belongs in the realm of Self Help. The contract between writer and reader is clear - the writer wants to give advice and the book-buyer is seeking advice (although possibly for somebody else - we don't often feel that we are in need of instruction on how to live our own lives. I wonder how many self-help books are bought as presents? I might be wrong.) And when it comes to instructing others on the how-tos or the rights and wrongs of something or other, how a person should help themself, flexibility of meaning is usually unintentional.

Giving advice carries with it an assumption regarding certain beliefs that the other person might have, and also carries the assumption that the advisor knows more than the advisee. Sometimes this is justified. Sometimes not. Regardless, a status discrepancy is established. The advisor assumes superior knowledge on a particular matter, and this circumscribes the relationship.  Advice can be respectful, as provided by the advisor to an American President (Sorry, I can't think of a stereotypical English, or Australian, Prime Minister, without thinking Yes Minister). Commonly, advice is proffered within a symbolic adult to child relationship, teacher to student, parent to offspring. To be an advisor is to assume a temporary position of power. The upside for the receiver of wisdom in this relationship is that, if the advice is wrong, he or she is not entirely responsible.

Some of us have an automatic aversion to advice. I know I do. I have an aversion to both giving and receiving. At this point I can't help thinking of Shaun Micallef's 'Wisdom of the Elders.' I'm the elder, in case you're wondering.

So in the spirit of 'playing opposites,' I have proffered some rambling advice here. For the uninitiated, playing opposites is a technique employed in performance rehearsals to help an actor discover hidden things about the character he or she is playing. An angry monologue is delivered with great self control and gentleness, for example; a loving speech with underlying irritability, or disdain. Something there for all of us, I think.

A final word of advice: It's worth remembering when reading or writing a work of fiction - you don't always get what you expect. And a good thing too!

Merry Christmas

Love, peace and happiness this Christmas

So these are ours; faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is Love.
-Corinthians 13:13

"If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace."
Thich Nhat Hanh

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities. ~Jean Houston

“Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind. Buddha

“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” Mother Teresa

First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.Thomas a Kempis (1380 - 1471)  

The Prophet Muhammad (s) said: “Do not turn away a poor man…even if all you can give is half a date. If you love the poor and bring them near you…God will bring you near Him on the Day of Resurrection.”
——— Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1376.

Peace is not in money, estate, bungalows and possessions. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul. Swami Sivananda
When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller

“Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are.”
—Hafsat Abiola


 

Peace

With the many sad events reported in the News, and coming up to the Christmas season, it's good to be reminded of the value of peace, and to take heart.

A book on my Christmas list is Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.  The publication was released in 2011, but is likely to have a long shelf-life. In this book Pinker traces the the history of humans and apparently brings considerable evidence to bear on his main thesis that we are living in the most peaceful time in human history. It appears that, overall, the trend for violence is down, down, down! Things are not perfect, but we are heading in the right direction.

The implication is that now, more than ever before, we should be able to cooperate and use our collective wisdom to address the challenges ahead.

Lisa Appignanesi provides a short, but good, review of the book on the link provided.

Good blog site for writers

In a comment on one of my earlier posts, Glen Hunting mentioned a site called This Itch of Writing.  The site is kept up by Emma Darwin, a novelist and short story writer. It is a good looking site that offers great suggestions for improving writing. Over done, over written and over here is one of the blogs worth checking out on the site.  Thanks Glen!