Jane Austen – bear with me, I’ll move on to the writing workshops for kids! – is a perfect example of a writer who entwined place and character together seamlessly. Her characters could only come out of places like Bath and Sussex, because their concerns were all about life in a small village where visitors like the agreeable Mr Bingley and the arrogant Mr Darcy meant the possibility of marriage for the young ladies of the village.

I went out for a drink with some literary folk a month or so ago. We talked about creating a sense of place in books, and someone asked me whether my characters sounded different because they were in Melbourne, rather than any other Australian city or coastal town. I’m not sure I know the answer! But I should definitely explore it. Jane Austen’s characters speak from their background – and so should mine.

Which brings me to the writing workshops in the Easter holidays – we’re going to explore story world building and developing characters in separate workshops. Regardless of which workshop kids choose to do, both themes will contribute to a greater understanding of how character and place work together.

It doesn’t matter whether kids prefer contemporary worlds set in real places or fantasy worlds, the workshop will help them to build their backgrounds complete with maps.

The second workshop focuses on developing characters – it’s only when we know our characters well that they come across authentically. We’ll dig deep and discover not only what our characters like to do in their spare time, what their favourite foods are and who they hang out with but what they secretly desire and what they most fear.

The workshops are for 8-12 year-old children. Children can choose to do both workshops.

The writing workshops cater for children who are passionate readers and writers, as well as children who need a little more encouragement.

Dates

• Tuesday 9th April – 10am-1pm – 8-12 year-old kids – mapping a story world
• Thursday 11th April – 10am-1pm – 8-12 year-old kids – creating characters
• Tuesday 16th April – 10am-1pm – 8-12 year-old kids – mapping a story world
• Thursday 18th April – 10am-1pm – 8-12 year-old kids – creating characters

Venue
All workshops will be held at Side Door – 72 Willsmere Rd, Kew. It’s a fabulous space, with an indoor section for writing and an outdoor section for breaks and games, and is next door to Flatiron, fashion and homewares store. All participants will receive a Flatiron voucher for 10% off purchases on the day of the workshop – something for the parents! For more information about Side Door, please see www.flatironmelbourne.com.au/side-door/ or email Emma Bangay at emma@flatironmelbourne.com.au  

Logistics

BYO – drink bottle and snack.

All writing materials will be supplied.

Cost for each workshop is $50. Payment must be made by Friday 5th April.

Karen Comer
Acc. no: 1119 3537
BSB: 063-791

Please email me at karen@karencomer.com.au to register your child and bring the signed form  – link here – to the workshop.

Please forward this post on to your friends and family. I’m really looking forward to working with your children to create some amazing stories!

 

In light of the recent events in Christchurch, I offer a poem from a South African academic and a political speech from a US senator, both written and presented in Cape Town.

Where the rainbow ends

Where the rainbow ends
There’s going to be a place, brother,
Where the world can sing all sorts of songs,
And we’re going to sing together, brother,
You and I, though you’re white, and I’m not.
It’s going to be a sad song, brother,
Because we don’t know the tune,
And it’s a difficult tune to learn.
But we can learn, brother, you and I.
There’s no such tune as a black tune.
There’s no such tune as a white tune.
There’s only music, brother,
And it’s music we’re going to sing
Where the rainbow ends.

Richard Rive

Richard Rive was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1931. Although it was written about apartheid, it seems just as applicable today.

A ripple of hope

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.

Each time a person stands up for an ideal or strikes out against injustice, he or she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Robert Francis Kennedy

Senator Robert F. Kennedy was at the University of Cape Town on June 6th, 1966, in a controversial trip. His speech became known as ‘The ripple of hope’ speech, because it spoke to so many people.

Never underestimate the power of language to influence people and encourage change. Ripples and rainbows – they’re more than just an aesthetic.

 

What did you love to do when you were a kid? Sometimes we were most authentic when we played as kids and anything was possible.

I know a primary school teacher who, as a little girl, lined up her dolls to teach them. Sometimes it was the alphabet or a song, sometimes it was something she had learnt at school that day and sometimes she read them a story. Today, she is an excellent teacher.

I have been talking with a woman in her twenties who has recently left her hospitality job. She told me she doesn’t know what she wants to do – she needs some time to think.

‘What did you love to do when you were a kid?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, I want to study horticulture – I want to be outside,’ she answered. She knew.

I’ve been reading one of my old journals from when I was 11, as my protagonist is 12 and I’m thinking about what’s important to 11 and 12 year-old girls. I’m equally admiring/cringing at my eleven-year-old self – so perceptive for a kid yet so ignorant at the same time. And the writing style – well, let’s not go there!

Here are a few diary highlights –

• I handed in my project called My hobby – writing stories.  I used my silver and green ‘special’ texta for the bubble writing heading.
• There’s also a folded piece of paper in the back of the diary. One side is a page from one of Dad’s chemistry papers on a water treatment plant – the other has notes for a short story called, ‘You, me and the dead.’ I must have been going through a goth stage perhaps! The handwriting looks older – maybe I was 13 or 14?
• On the 10th November, 1984, my friend Jacinta and I made a chocolate cake in Mum’s butterfly cake tin. I have that tin now! And I still love baking and eating chocolate cake.
• A couple of days later, I reread Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery and wished I could be a famous author like her.
• I listed some of my favourite words, like ‘shimmering.’ In a recent writing course, Kate Forsyth reminded us that words with ‘m’ sound comforting and nourishing – home, mum, womb …
• I described my room like this – My windows are opened but my curtains are closed. When the wind blows they are pressing themselves against the windows like old women gasping with horror.

Three and a half decades later, I’m still writing. Are you still doing what you loved as a kid?

 

Creative collaboration is one of my favourite things to do, especially when one is collaborating with someone as talented as interior designer Caroline Touzeau.

Caroline, an interior designer with over twenty years experience, has recently launched her new website. She asked me to work with her to write the website and newsletter content.

This is the second project Caroline and I have worked on – Caroline was the interior designer for our home renovation a couple of years ago. So we have discussed not only words and posts and stories but curtains and paint chips and carpet!

You can see some photos of my home on Caroline’s website. It’s called – unsurprisingly! – the library house.

Caroline, her assistant Chrissie and I had a wonderful time deliberating over cabinetry, fabrics and tiles. They are also literary ladies who are part of a bookclub – thank goodness they appreciated my love of books!

I love Caroline’s sense of the possible, her discerning eye and her ability to envision both scale and detail. Our family of five love our home – it’s everything we wanted it to be and more – and expresses both our quirks and values.

Caroline has recently styled a home that’s featured in this month’s Australian House and Garden magazine, which is also a part of St Joseph’s Open Houses on March 24th.

Photos are by the talented Tim Shaw at Impress Photography.

I hope you enjoy looking through Caroline’s website and sign up for her newsletter at the bottom of her home page to keep up to date with her projects.

 

 

 

Lovely blog readers, my head and heart are full indeed. Both are full of shiny gems of knowledge, creative ideas and wonderful connections. I’ve spent four days in Sydney for the final part of Kate Forsyth’s Story Doctor course and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) conference.

As with any industry, it’s fabulous to talk shop with like-minded people. The other participants in Kate’s course were wonderful and I met lots of creative people at SCBWI. We discussed matters from social media, picture book illustrations, honing pitches and much, much more.

Kate discussed dialogue in her course, and I attended a masterclass on dialogue at the SCBWI conference with Zoe Walton, a Penguin Random House editor. Kate uses a different-coloured highlighter for each character to highlight their speech. This makes it easier for her to identify any anomalies – a seventy-year-old character is unlikely to say, ‘Yeah, nah, all good,’ while this might be usual speech for a thirteen-year-old character.

Zoe suggested we think about the actions we use to describe our characters while they’re talking. Actions are important – you don’t want two talking heads without context! But it’s also essential to avoid characters who are continually nodding their heads, biting their nails or sighing!

And I met with a publisher who liked my work! She has asked to see my full manuscript when I’ve finished editing (taking in all of Kate’s sage advice) in a couple of months.

And now, it’s back to reality with a proofreading job coming in next week, a memoir for a client to edit and three children who like to eat something other than a ten-minute pasta or sushi.

Just like the proverbial iceberg, fiction manuscripts can sometimes show only the surface problems. And that’s why I went to Sydney last weekend for Kate Forsyth’s Story Doctor writing course.

Kate is the writer of over forty books for children and adults. My kids loved her Impossible Quest series and I love her historical novels, particularly The beast’s garden and Bitter greens.

I’ve been to two of Kate’s courses before, both in Sydney, so I knew that Kate would help me understand exactly what I need to do to look at my children’s novel with fresh eyes.

Kate taught us to look beneath the surface of our manuscript and check for common structural mistakes. We went through structure and chapter openings and closings, voice, point of view, narrative distance … yes, all in six hours!

I could take what Kate taught in six hours and spend six years applying it to my writing!

But instead, I’ve spent a few hours every day this week – after my paid editing work – taking Kate’s suggestions and working it into my manuscript. I’ve deleted one chapter entirely and dispersed another chapter throughout my book. I’ve given one chapter which had been bugging me for ages higher stakes. I’ve added a few lines here and there to help the reader connect more with my protagonist.

My structure is tight now – nothing is superfluous, everything is working hard to contribute to the narrative arc of the story. I’ve examined my iceberg from both above and below the surface.

I’m back in Sydney this weekend for the final part of the Story Doctor course – time to focus on polishing my language. I’m also going to the SCBWI conference – a chance to learn writing techniques in workshops and listen to publisher panels.

Family meals have been a bit skimpy this week – bolognaise from the freezer, baked potatoes etc. I suspect next week might be similar …

One of the pencil notes in the margins of my tattered Yr 11 copy of Macbeth, says – ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ is theme for Macbeth. Another note says ‘Macbeth is easily manipulated by Lady Macbeth.’ Miss 12 says my 16-year-old handwriting is exactly the same today. Hopefully my understanding of Macbeth has matured, even if my handwriting hasn’t!

My husband and I took a group of Mr 15’s mates to see Macbeth performed in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens this week by the talented Australian Shakespeare Company. It was the coldest night of the week – as Macbeth said to one of the thanes, ‘t’was a rough night’ – but we huddled on picnic blankets and low-rise chairs in coats and watched the performance.

Mr 15 and his mates are studying Macbeth at school this year – such synchronicity that the play was also performed this year! The boys have studied Shakespeare before but hadn’t seen a play performed. They hadn’t started the play at school yet and I did offer to give them a brief synopsis but they decided they’d wait to watch the play unfold. (Who’d want to listen to a mate’s mum discuss literature when you could discuss so many other interesting topics!)

We all enjoyed the play, and the boys had lots of questions at the interval. I was impressed by the way they engaged with the story and could predict what might happen in the second half of the play. It’s certainly easier to understand Shakespeare when either reading it aloud in class or seeing it performed – too hard to read it by yourself.

One of the themes is that of prophecy – the three witches share their prophecy with Macbeth that he will become Thane of Cawdor, then King of Scotland. From that point on, Macbeth acts to fulfil the prophecy, even though at one stage he decides to let chance have his way – ‘If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me/ Without my stir’.

Perhaps this is why I don’t like reading – or believe – the horoscopes in the papers. How can I possibly fit into one of 12 types? And if I’m told I’m going to have a bad day, will I believe it because it rains on the day I’m going to an outdoor theatre performance? But if I’m told I’ll meet with opportunity, will I be grateful I had the chance to introduce teenage boys to a Shakespeare play performance?

The boys were all very grateful they saw the play – or so they told me! We’ll see how well they ‘screw their courage to the sticking place’ when it comes to writing an essay on Macbeth next semester.

 

I am equally divided – happy the kids are back at school and life is back in its usual rhythm but disappointed that all the unscheduled days are gone. Perhaps you feel the same?

Our holidays were lovely and relaxed – swimming, long meals with friends, kids constantly in and out of the house, more time to read, watching lots of cricket and tennis on tv, salads and ice-cream for dinner – perfect!

One of my wonderful brothers gave me The Little Library Cookbook by Kate Young for Christmas. It’s a recipe book, based on food mentioned in classic books. So there are 100 recipes from Harry Potter,  Love in the time of cholera, The book thief, Winnie-the-Pooh, To kill a mocking bird, Like water for chocolate, etc – and Anne of Green Gables.

Perhaps you remember the scene from Anne of Green Gables where scatter-brained Anne works very hard to make a layer cake for Mr and Mrs Allen, the minister and his wife. Anne is worried about whether the cake will rise but ‘the cake did rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and feathery as golden foam.’ Anne, ‘in her imagination, saw Mrs Allen eating it and possibly asking for another piece!’ However, Mrs Allen has a peculiar expression on her face after taking the first mouthful because Anne has used anodyne liniment instead of vanilla in the cake.

Mindful of Anne’s disaster, I concentrated very hard when baking this cake, because, as Anne says, ‘cakes have such a terrible habit of of turning out bad just when you especially want them to be good’. While it baked and then cooled, Miss 12 and I watched the 1985 version of Anne of Green Gables with Megan Follows.

Well, I have to say – with all modesty – the cake was delicious! It was light and moist, and Mr 9 decided it had become his number 1 cake instead of my chocolate fondant cake.

Flushed with success, I’m now planning to cook the crab and avocado salad from The Bell Jar and an enormous round chocolate cake from Matilda. I’ll keep you posted.

My favourite days of the year are these grace days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. There’s a sense of slowing down, of breathing space, of clarity.

There’s time to bake a show-stopper of a dessert for three hours or there’s fifteen minutes to rustle up something for dinner using leftovers. There’s time to watch the cricket or play it in the backyard. There’s definitely time to read a book for more than twenty minutes.

There’s time to be really present with family and friends, to ask about plans and dreams for next year, and there’s time to play with the kids and let them make a big mess because there’s time to clean it up.

I find that because my mind isn’t filled with excursion notices and basketball training and how-can-we-run-out-of-milk again, that there’s more space to plan and dream. It’s more than just relaxing – it’s reminding myself of what’s really important and how I can make space for that.

It’s so lovely to have no plans or obligations – just spontaneous bike rides with the kids, walks with our newish puppy, reading on the couch (in the middle of the day!), watching the cricket, drinking my new literary tea (thanks, KK!) and maybe trying out a recipe or two from my new cookbook.

Wishing you lots of time for your passions and dreams, and your family and friends over these grace days.

Thank you for reading my blog this year. I hope you had a lovely Christmas and that 2019 is wonderful for you! I’m taking a break from blogging for a few weeks – see you soon!

Karen x