Posts by Kerry Weston
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You may mock, but there is something useful to be learned from writing M&B pulp. 50-55,000 words is the required length, roughly 180-190 book pages. I know this because I wrote one. Oh, the shame!
My only excuse is that I did it when I had two wide-eyed, sleep-defying children under three and a husband working 12 hour shifts. It's all a bit of a blur now, but writing a few pages of bilge every day or night actually kept me sane. And you do figure out exactly how long 50k words is, in terms of how to structure the story, build the tension and get the climax in the right place. Because you know you're writing rubbish, it kind of frees you because you don't take it, or yourself, seriously. It was alot of fun and I do remember lots of hysterical laughter and falling off the couch when I'd gone especially OTT.
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Hamish Keith's memoir, Native Wit, which I'm enjoying as a thoroughly engaging personal journey through an emergent New Zealand culture. Oddly, he skimps a little on himself:
Yeah, i chomped through this and thought the same - suspect Hamish got up to way more than he lets on here. I suppose nz is too small to have really frank memoirs, or at least not publish them till one's pushing up daisies.
Alice Hoffman - The Third Angel and The Probable Future. Lightish fiction, just right for holiday reading for sheilahs. Kind of offbeat, sometimes eccentric characters, twisty and vivid plots and unfurlings, I find her stories quite spellbinding.
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I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced the phenomenon of turning into one's mother (or father, if you're a bloke) in terms of how how you conduct a relationship?
I found it was becoming a mother that changed how I behaved as a partner/spouse. Example - I started baking the exact cakes & bikkies my mum used to make and some of her pet phrases came rolling off my tongue, usually unspoken by me in usual chat. When I got the chance I made a huge garden reminiscent of my father's - it was like I was recreating my childhood somehow.
I must point out that my dad died when I was 6, so i have sparse memories of the parents' relationship and no idea whether I repeated any pattern of who was dominant, the organiser, prime nurturer etc. And I suspect that my two long term partnerships (10 yrs each) both foundered because I didn't live up to expectations of wifeliness. I don't think the men concerned could have stated what those expectations were either, it seems more subconscious.
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Oooh! Look at that. Got an envelope.
Thanks Gio. I don't mind looking like a dumb cluck. Truly. I don't - honest :- b
I've been dying to poke my nose in those cantankerous threads about copyright, but I fear I'd be wolfed down for brekkie by those people we're not allowed to call techies in case they're really softie artists as well.
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Islander -
Kerry W - am happy to talk about work process & routines - why not pm me?
Thanks, I'd love to, but neither of us has the pm "envelope" icon on our user bits. Anyway, I've sent a message to PA, asking Russell or whoever to enable it for my user, so then you can pm me and we can go from there. Sound ok?
I've been hard out doing the prep for painting the house ...groan.
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I've managed to resist having a cell phone at all. Even though I acknowledge their usefulness, I'm resisting as long as possible. I think it's the fragmentation of attention that bothers me.
We just had a series of performances, resulting from creative workshopping - 90 minutes or so - and we were asked to turn off/leave phones outside. It was the first time in ages I'd been in a theatre where there was total silence and focussed attention. It was amazing. A very unifying experience.
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Islander, I like your philosophy. I wonder, apart from fraught times, do you impose a discipline of writing so many words a day, regardless of what they may be?
I share the inability to create when family/friendgroup are fraught. For me, it's meant I've lost the flow - for a while there I had "another world" I stepped into every time I walked in the studio door, it was alive and constant, but worldly concerns have pushed it underground.
I also wonder if your process has evolved over the years? There's a lot I'd love to ask you to share but don't wish to impose :>
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I've just done a five day creative processes workshop with 60 people, culminating in a series of stage performances and short films. We were encouraged to work in media we weren't familiar with and in groups of four - six. Coming from a visual arts & writing background, I went for music/sound. Had 2 afternoons & 3 evenings to come up with a collaborative piece for 7 people based on water that had to be mythic, have a betrayal of trust, an amazing transformation and the line "My poor fool was hanged."
It was freaking hard. Seven strangers trapped in a room for hours on end trying to find connection and flow....
One person never shut up and talked over everyone else and commandeered it and everyone let her because they panicked about not getting it finished. Except me. Of course. Snapped and let her have it with both barrels. And still she wouldn't shut up - but half the group started tuning her out after that and essentially connected with each other to push it further. Wished I'd done it sooner.That pressured group dynamic is quite fascinating. And for the first time in my life, I sang on-stage, some of it solo. Think Marianne Faithfull after a hard night.
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Is it transfixed attention or nothing for you people?
Actually, yes. I'm picking the txt-addict pulls up at the vinegar stroke to txt someone and let them know they're coming.
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Thanks, Joe. The most cover-your-eyes, crouch on the floor trip over the gentle Annie was in a Leyland diesel house bus, 1950s vintage. It grumbled slowly up the hills, inching to the tops, then swooped down the crazy curvy bits with the driver pouncing on the vacuum brakes. I was sitting up front and as we rushed down the last hills, lurching and swaying out over the edges, I saw nothing but sky and a blur of treetops whooshing past. I ended up on the floor, head in hands praying, (not looking, not looking) while Al furiously pumped what was left of the brakes - it was the drive of his life.