Unblocking the writer

Writer's block.

Sometimes we get it because we have no ideas. But lately I've been encountering it for a different reason altogether. Could it be that sometimes we are afraid of what we need to say? When we write fiction we must acknowledge the ugliest parts of ourselves... and we must acknowledge that they are ugly. The struggles of our characters are played out in miniature within ourselves.

Here, then, is the challenge:

Dare to set pen to paper. Dare to face what we are and always have been. Dare to express what flows out of yourself. Dare to devastate, to destroy. Dare to create the deeply flawed. Dare to give a face, a name- a beating heart- to cruelty. Dare to dream of danger. Dare to imagine that somewhere is an ordianry person with the passion and the fierceness to stand and say: this is wrong.

In the beginning...

I was lucky enough to receive The Doll's House, volume 2 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics, for Christmas. Yippee!

Mr. G begins the volume with the following paragraphs:


"In the beginning...

"But of course we never see the beginning. We come in the middle, after the lights have gone down, and try to make sense of the story so far. Whisper to our neighbours 'Who's he? Who's she? Have they met each other before?'

"We get by."


What an insightful reflection on stories, fictitious and non-fictitious alike.

Book Images

This image, and other incredible book-related images, can be found here.

Fresh M.I.L.K.

The original M.I.L.K. collection was the result of a global photography comptetition to capture humanity's "Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship". If you've never seen it before, it's beautiful. I can't find a proper website, but there is some useful information here.

Now a fresh competition, Fresh M.I.L.K., has resulted in a new collection of beautiful photos. The collection can be bought in book form (of course!). The book is entitled Friendship Family Love & Laughter. The image above is my favourite of the new lot- it looks just like a daydream!

Highlights '09

I'm subscribed to quite a few book blogs and book news feeds. At this time of year, a lot of 'best of ' and 'highlights' lists start coming through, pointing readers to the best books of the year. But the problem with book news is that it's all about new realeases. I started reading books towards the end of the 20th Century- I have the whole history of print to catch up on!

So these are (some of) the highlights of my '09 reading:

January - four weeks off in Toowoomba and Brisbane
   -The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell (1946)
     A fascinating look at a fascinating topic
  -The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett (2001)
     A magically intelligent cat and clan of rats figure there's always money to be made in faking rat plagues.

March-April - Semester 1
   -Beginning Logic, E. J. Lemmon (1965)
     An excellent guide to formal logic. I read it for uni, and it rocked my socks!

March 31- I meet Shaun Tan and a friend leaves the country
   -The Arrival, Shaun Tan (2006)
     A gorgeous graphic novel about the strangeness and beauty of immigration. I cried.

June - cruising on the Nile in Egypt
   -I was reading, but I don't quite remember what. The view was distracting me. =P

June/July - London & Oxford, England; and Wicklow, Ireland
   -The Inkworld trilogy, Cornelia Funke (2003, 2005, 2007)
     Because you have to read fantasy in Oxford.

July - a very long flight home
   -The Ghost, Robert Harris (2007)
     A surprisingly engaging modern thriller from a historical novelist.

August-October - Semester 2
   -The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (2008)
     Brilliant. =)
   -The Magicians, Lev Grossman (2009)
     Equally brilliant. =)

mid-September - an awful sickness strikes
   -Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen (1811)
     Thus completing my aim to read all of Austen's novels.

November-December - mixing up my reading habits
   -Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman (1988/1989)
     The first installment of the classic Sandman comics. An excellent read.
   -Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (1990)
     Read it.

(As always, I've posted links to authors' sites where possible. It's not my fault if their sites aren't helpful. Where these weren't available, I've posted links to the best information I can find about the book. Sometimes this means Amazon.)

In Praise of Libraries

It's a stressful day at work. Customers are being difficult and there are SO MANY of them! I need a safe place. Lucky for me, my workplace is located very close to my local public library. There is nothing I find more relaxing than sinking into a comfy red chair tucked in a corner behind rows and rows of shelves standing at attention, listening to the intermittent beeping of scanners. That sound- the beeping- is more relaxing to me than waves on the seashore.

I thought I'd take a moment to praise your local library. Having worked (in the past) for my local public library corporation for a good five years, I know a thing or two about the place.

People have a tendency to think of libraries as places that house books. This is true, but it's not the primary function of a library. Libraries are there to serve the public. They are there to provide both entertainment and information. They are there to foster a love of reading in children, and to provide the tools of research to adults.

If you haven't been to your local library for a while, here's a few ideas on how to rediscover the amazing world of public information. The library does more than loan fiction!

• Put in a request for an inter-library loan on that out-of-print book you've been having trouble getting hold of (I recently did this with an esoteric book about philosophy of language, and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it came through!)
• Make use of your library's subscription to the world's newspapers and journals. Whatever your interest is, chances are there's a regular publication on it!
• Check out foreign language collections for easy texts in a language you're trying to learn (kids' picture books are great for this!)
• Borrow audio books (let's face it, they're too expensive to buy) and listen to them in your car, or on MP3 on the train

Good Omens & The Finn Family Moomintroll

I have recently being trying to mix up my reading habits to include different mediums. A few weeks ago I thoroughly enjoyed the visual challenge of reading some comics- but that's another post. Another medium I've been trying is audio. It's been years since I have listened to an audio book (I did listen to them quite frequently as a child), and I'd forgotten what a heady experience it is.

Recently, I've been listening to two audio books.

The first is The Finn Family Moomintroll, written by Tove Jansson and read by the incredibly talented Hugh Laurie. The Moomin stories were favourites of mine as a child, and it has been a rather magical experience (albeit strange, with childhood memories popping up all over the place) to hear Hugh Laurie perfectly represent each character with a different 'voice'.

Find out more about the Moomins here.

The second audio book in question is Good Omens, written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (oh why, oh why have they never worked together since!?), and read by Stephen Briggs. If you never read any other comic fantasy, read Good Omens. Or better yet, allow Stephen Briggs to read it to you.

The story is both hilarious and thought-provoking. It follows Aziraphale, an angel, and Crowley, a demon (or an angel "who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards"), unlikely partners in crime who face impending Armageddon and realize that they've come to like Earth the way it is, really. There are many other characters you won't soon forget, many of them endearing. (Read more about the book at Gaiman's webiste, here.)

Stephen Briggs lends to all this an actor's talent, giving different characters distinct voices and often making me chuckle out loud as I sit and listen through my earphones.

I can't recommend it highly enough. Buy it for someone this Christmas. Or buy it for yourself. You deserve it, right?

Personalized Stationery?

Apologies for the short break in posting. The past week has been rather involved, so I hope you will forgive me!

I very much can't afford (and very much don't need) personalized engraved stationery, but I still had fun designing it at the Smythson website.

Who doesn't want their envelopes lined with tissue paper?