Getting all hippie on you

Run for the hills. Now. I'm about to get all warm and fuzzy on you. The truth is, I needed to at some point. I know where my heart is: yoga. Now, now. Don't scoff. It's the IN thing you say. Oh... but even it if were the IN thing, I actually think it's so widespread now, it's not just a fad. It's here to stay.

So to ride on the back of Elsie's Yoga Kula, Hilary Rubin's Yoga Podcasts, the 20 Minute Yoga downloads and so forth, I'm working on, yes you guessed it! Another yoga podcast. Isn't it enough with the existing ones, I hear you ask? Nope. Not like this. I can't spill the beans just yet, but it's a niche market for a niche need that is only serviced very perfunctorily and not in Australia directly. Once we're ready to roll, I will post the url and where to find it. We'll be all over Podbean and definitely on iTunes Store.

On another note, we didn't win the Live and Love thing. Boo hoo. Well, I'm dusting off and getting back on the horse. Now there's another comp on from mishmash. I'm going to kill two birds with one stone and use the Getty images/footage/music for the sizzle reel for my doco. Totally cool or what??? So, stay posted and look occasionally at the Not A Chance blog, for the trailer that will be hitting screens across the world soon.

In the meantime, I've started to look at bedtime stories. Not naughty ones. Children's lullabies, the kind of thing you want to hear when you're under six. So if you have kids, post me a comment, I want to hear the kind of things they're into.

The legals

It's all a matter of paperwork these days. Writers are forever doomed to dot i's and cross t's. So it is with me. Post National Young Writers Festival and pre-production of documentaries, as well as post, contracts need to written, invoices sent, tax returns read. Gawd! Will it ever end.

However, thanks to the guys at My Artist Career, life can be that much easier. Also thanks to AbaF. Those of you who have not yet heard of the Australian Business Arts Foundation, check out their website. It's aimed at visual artists but we can all benefit from it, including that lonely creature: the writer.

Both websites have templates for contracts, budgets, proposals, all sorts of those nifty things we hate drafting and should leave to the legal eagles. They also have info on all aspects of becoming profitable artist. Yes, there is such a thing. I used to live with one and am now in the process of working towards becoming one. So peeps, really, start reading up.

You thought I'd forgotten you

No, I had not forgotten you. The truth is I've been busy peeps. Still busy now. In fact, I should be finishing off my marking for Charles Darwin University right now but instead I'm trawling the web for fascinating tidbits to share with you.

First up: Faber and Faber workshops. For those of you who came back from NYWF you heard Antonia tell of her experiences with the Faber Academy. I heartily reccommend checking their website. I've decided I'm going to scrape together body and soul or even apply for some kind of grant to do a course with one of my faves in London: Hanif Kureishi.

Second, casualties in drug wars in Mexico. This is aimed squarely at one poet laureate at the National Young Writers Festival who claims he is not part of the problem. Considering that without demand there is no supply, you'd better have a read of what the Economist has to say about the recent death tolls in Mexico from drug cartel wars.

Finally, a little on my own projects. The Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) and TEN Network put out a call for project submissions for the new channel ELEVEN that is being launched next year. Yours truly and her new collaborator, the fabulous Robertus Dekker, cameraman and editor extraordinaire, put in a submission. Nothing big, we have to keep it under wraps peeps, but we had the help of David Franken with it, who is launching the new Apollo Awards. SciFi geeks, here is your chance, go forth and find this new civilisation where no one has been before: the global scifi award ceremony on webcast.

Very very quick little update on production

So what has happened since my film needed to be uploaded and resubmitted? Well, it's been accepted by the panel, after being uploaded Tuesday night. You can now view it on http://www.liveandlove.com.au/view-and-vote-video?v=uw0Skt_JTBQ

This will be a short post, because I'm meant to be marking assignments for Charles Darwin University and finishing a sizzle reel with my editor.

The aftermath

I landed back in Brisbane exhausted after 5 crazy days of TINA and NYWF. It was one of those days where things were bound to go wrong. First, I left behind my Paperchase silver pencil case behind. It's not REAL silver people. It's just stainless steel with a silver coloured coating. However, it comes with memories. That was just the beginning.

At Brisbane airport, the baggage carrousel had a problem and was stuck until the baggage handlers came to fix it, thereby making my editor Rob, and the subject of our possible new documentary, Gia, late to pick up gear from a producer who's nice enough to lend it to us and then onto a shoot. Gia was having a glamour photo shoot done and we were going to film her during that shoot.

One of the employees at the photoshoot place happened to be a tranny on the verge of making physical changes to become a woman. She was already living as a woman in her workplace. She was our lucky break, but with a catch. We had extracted permission from the photoshoot people to film the process, including the makeup artist, but they never agreed to interviews. In the middle of Gia telling a story, the employee piped up her own contribution to Gia's statement, injecting a bit of drama into something that was turning out to be quite drab. The manager of the shop swooped down in damage control mode, and said she had only agreed to us filming the process not interviewing her employees. The worst thing was that this piece of spontaneous interaction was exactly the stuff of documentaries.

In the middle of this little drama, we were on another deadline for the re-submission and re-edit of my new short film Life Doesn't Stop, for the Live and Love HSV awareness campaign. We had received an extension to the general deadline because the organisers liked the film but objected to one of the lines in the film. Unfortunately, that line was central to the storyline. This meant a complete rewrite of the script and re-edit of both images and voice-over.

By the time Gia's photoshoot was over it was 4 pm and the deadline was 5pm QLD time. Due to daylight savings, we had lost one hour of grace as the judges would be convening at 6pm EST in Sydney. Not an easy situation obviously. The organisers were going to present us alongside the shortlist, so our chances would be greatly enhanced if we finished in time for 6 pm.

Sadly, due to having to edit on my laptop, and not on The Edge's lovely MacPros, we finished editing around 6:30 pm Queensland time, by the time we had outputted the file to a format we could upload, it was 7:15. Uploading it was another saga, because I could not get my MacBook Pro to see the Brisbane City Council Library network, which is where we were editing, as it was the closest venue to the photoshoot.

So we were one and a half hours late for the submission. I still do not know how it went. Fingers crossed the judges saw our film. It was a very fitting return from a very busy festival to an extremely busy worklife. It's not about to slack off either...

It's a wrap!

I intended to attend far more panels on the last day of the National Young Writers Festival, but in the end, all that I managed to get to was the final reading: Bullshit Stories. Between farewelling other writers, getting the lowdown on the acid party which I had managed to miss the night before and trying to find the Japanese Digital Art Exhibition venue I got to the Festival HQ at around 3 pm.

Don't get me wrong, I woke up bright and early, fully intending to go to So You Think You Can Pitch workshop and pitch presentations. Missed them too.

However, the final event of the NYWF was amazing. Hosted by Liam Pieper, the reading opened with the witty merger of Bejamin Guerney's chronicle of his day, peppered with Groucho Marx quotes. Geoff Lemon told three stories one of which was bullshit and all of which were riproaring hilarious. I'm still not sure about the whole Bill Clinton footing the taxi for three Melbourne uni students high as kites, but who am I to quibble about these things. I wasn't there after all...

Simon McInerney had written a beautiful short story about a fat young man who saves a fitter one from death by car engine fumes, only to swap attitudes to health with him. It had elements of magical realism, spades of self-reflection and a sweetness that is rare these days. The self-effacing Irishman had written the story over the course of the festival, in between bouts of drinking and carousing.

Somehow or other, I ended up reading from my Morning Pages, a story about my childhood and the claims of my family that it's all bullshit. The Morning Pages are a habit I have adopted from an article on creative expression. You're supposed to start writing them as soon as you wake up, keeping a notebook by the bed just for this purpose. You have to limit yourself to half an hour or once you've begun you may never put the pen down. It's not meant to be coherent. In fact, sometimes all that happens is that I write a list of all the things I have to do that day, rather than anything interesting to another reader.

This time however, I had produced a little nugget I was quite pleased with and decided it could see the light of day. It was never meant to see the light of day, much in the same way that stillborn babies might be kept in a jar somewhere in the back of a cupboard for sentimental reasons. Never shown to anyone. A dark secret that is only revealed when someone asks to see them.

It was well received. I was quite proud of this unedited, naked child of mine.

Zora Sanders told tales of good Samaritans, Rhys Rogers read a letter from a bullshit artist to the studio where he works.

Once everyone had revealed their babies to a cooing audience, we all decamped to the Festival Club, where we proceeded to finish off the remaining tins of alcopop and bottles of diet beer left in the bar. We partook curry enroute from this amazing place whose name as per usual starts with Taj on Darby Street.

At the end of the night, the coordinators of the festival sang Auld Lang Syne and hustled us all out the door, with the promise of another house party to attend. Mindful of a very busy Tuesday to come, I went back to the hostel with a visual artist who had come to TINA just as an audience member. Bless.

Upon waking this morning I felt a sense of loss. No more TINA. No more Young Writers Festival. No more young writers to debate points of style, disagree on ethics with and dig into their dark pasts. It was to the grind for all of us.

And that folks, is a wrap. Stay tuned for the follow ups on the bookmarks I promised emerging writers.

Overseas tips and trips

Our panel, Expat Elite grew a bit yesterday from its original half dozen attendees at NYWF. It was very valuable to listen to the experience of John and Bryan, both of whom were foreign nationals living in Australia and working here. Their decision to come here to further their careers as writers was what really made a difference to their advancement. Kavita's own decision to work with English language media in Chile also made her career progression as a writer possible while working overseas. It really did give me food for thought. It made me realise that the time spent overseas could have been combined more effectively with my writing, even if it had just been morning pages every day of the thoughts and experiences collected over the time spent in Canada or Europe.

Antonia's other panel, following ours was I Should Have Read That By Now. It had Ben Law confessing to not having read any Australian writers, LinTan to only reading superman comics and Plato (what a combo). Christopher Curries admitted that he was only drawn to Jewish guy in Brooklyn novels and Kirsten Reed admitting to reading the summaries to classics. Lin Tan was actually surprised at the guilt Ben and Christopher felt when other people asked them if they had read something or not. Antonia's habit of reading the entire Booker Prize list every year was very admirable, considering I'm a binge reader who falls in love with one writer and finishes everything by that writer first before progressing onto the next.

The Vices panel hosted by Voiceworks as a convenor dug deep into the bad habits of writers like being on Facebook for far too long, or snorting Charlie to the point of being counterproductive. It was interesting that they all concurred on one thing: doing anything to excess cannot be done simultaneously with good writing. You have to exercise self-relfection and writer after the event, or all that will come out will be random words you don't even know how to read upside down.

I missed the Year 12 Formal hosted by the Crack Festival. I even had a date. My friend Rachel Howe had just dropped in out of the blue and asked a question at the Vices panel. She asked me to join her group of friends to go to the Formal in a posse. I accepted, only to pike later on because I had made the finals in the Spelling Bee held that evening. The View Factory, the venue for the NYWF Spelling Bee, locked us in too, so I had to stay til the end. I tripped out with the word tambouritsa. Don't ask.

The night ended at Is It Time To Go Home Yet? a reading held at the Royal Exchange. Will Kostakis delighted everyone with his anecdoates of publishing houses organising talks for him that he bunged up by being completely inappropriate. Mandy Beaumont read one of her debauchery poems to the delight of the audience. One reading went a wee bit long, which resulted in the open mic part of the night being cut short.

At the end of the reading, I headed out with fellow writers to Darby Street in search of some late night nourishment and ran into Rachel. She invited me to come along to a party that I later heard turned into an acid fest. Since I'm not into that sort of thing and piked for other reasons anyway, I didn't end up sharing poached eggs and fresh rocket with all the acidheads from the NYWF who were at the party.

Instead, I woke up this morning, trying to figure out where to go and missing most of the panels for the day. The Japan Media Arts Festival had moved venues and I didn't arrive in time to see it. I'm now off to the Lowlands bowling club to listen to Famous Bullshit stories. I'm really looking forward to listening to Simon McInerney read the short story he crafted during the festival. He has been one of my hostel roommates and after getting to know him a bit, I'm sure it's going to be quite a reading.

Panels, panels, everywhere

The round up of the last coupla days is kinda crazy. I'm running off to listen to the panel Vices, with Ronnie Scott in it. Just had a look at the glut of zines out there in the Zine fair. It was way too much to digest and take in. I ended up reading a zine called Paper Bag Girl written by the girl on the top bunk of the hostel where we are all staying. And this is very telling. It also explains why publishers, agents and anyone who is a content commissioner will only listen to you if they have heard of you before. Because there is way too much out there. Way too much. I can't stress that enough.

On another note, my fellow panelists from this morning's Expat Elite were awesome. John, an Irish doco maker turned out to be a very humble, intelligent person who advised Aussies not to leave for greener pastures because it's pretty sweet right here right now. Simon, an American writer based in Melbourne said the exact same thing. Having said that, Antonia and Kavita, the two other Aussies on my panel found their experiences overseas to have been really valuable, but it means they have been disconnected from a local network and are currently forming one. Antonia suffers from a problem we all wished we had, her novel is about to be published, she has an agent, has been to the faber and faber workshops and lived in Paris for 4 years but knows no-one in Sydney in the literary world.

Gee, I do wish I had THAT problem. But in all fairness, I experienced the same thing when I returned from Europe in 2002. Having said that, I didn't have a publishing deal at the time and I've been chasing the dream ever since.

So there you go, another day at TINA, another day at NYWF and I haven't even gotten into the panel Ben Law and Antonia were in about things you know you should have read by now.

Stay tuned.

The Crack Theatre Festival

It's a blast! I swear, never seen such a variety of acts in one evening. I hunted down the Crackhouse, the main venue for the Crack Theatre Festival, part of TINA, last night, only to find that the Caravan of Doom had just started its act. Between the chainsaw, the weather girl in a spangly bikini, the punk transvestite not wearing underwear and the use of the naked body as a costume, it was entrancing.

They played with the idea of being a performer, becoming self-concious on purpose in order to transition from one act to the next and managed to involve the audience in some of their shenanigans. The stage was not a stage, the action took place amongst audience members, luring them into a sense of co-creation. One adjective for it would be mesmersing. I was repelled, fascinated and swallowed up by their performances, forgetting the setting and the lack of stage props.

I left the Caravan of Doom in the middle of passing a hat to go do a reading for National Young Writers Festival, in an event called Well Hung Parliament. I now realise that I should have written something viscerally sexual, like the MC did, instead I chose to write a piece of political fiction. It was well received, but from that point on, the evening turned into a political rant with unprepared ramblings coming from most of the writers. One poem did make me wonder if setting a theme like Well Hung Parliament is not akin to provoking writers into being witty when there is nothing left to be witty about. The general feeling at the reading was one of disappointment with our current political state. It was disheartening.

In order to lift our spirits, we, the writers, decampted en masse to the Crackhouse, to watch the mad cabaret put on by The Last Tuesday Society. The spangly, glittering performance was the perfect foil for post-election blues. Brisbane's own BURN Collective gave the evening a boost with their Scary Story Slumberparty. They set the scene beatifully with fairy lights, a young mother in a housecoat, lights out, torches and pillows. Sadly, none of the stories were scary... I left in search of social entertainment only to be pulled into a discussion of Brisbane Festival by a Melbournite who was bagging Under the Radar. Our city rivalrly was interrupted by an invitation to a warehouse party somewhere in Hamilton, which I declined, thinking of the festivities to come in the next three days.