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In: Collaboration, Writing

Phew! That was something special. Today I went to a book launch at ARC Disability Services Inc., where three more writers from their creative cohort have published an illustrated children’s book. Trent Griffin ‘The Kindest Goat’, Darren Smith ‘Friends at First Sight’ and Andrew Barton / Imogen Lambeth’s ‘Frank the DJ’ I have been to a lot of launches in my time. This one had a different current running through it. Let me tell you about one of the books. Frank the DJ is structured with real craft. Frank is a flying fox who hears music drifting through the air and decides he wants toRead More →

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In: Plays, Playwriting, Theatre, Writing

The average play these days runs about seventy to eighty minutes. I saw a show this week, Crossing the Divide by Shock Therapy Productions, and it clocked in at just 60 minutes. The old two-act with interval malarkey is fading fast (except maybe big musical productions). “A Night at the Theatre” is no longer the grand social outing it once was as far as contemporary theatre goers are concerned. Audiences want to arrive, experience the story, and then bugger off home to contemplate the aftermath. Shorter plays suit producers too. The shorter the play, the fewer the rehearsal weeks. Fewer hours for technical crew. ShorterRead More →

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In: Writing

In the earliest months of JUTE Theatre Company, before there were grants or programs or any certainty at all, back in 1992, the three of us had a running joke. We had many running jokes, but this one was a classic. Suellen walked through the front door of our rambling old Queenslander on Severin Street one afternoon, all grins, lit from within, and said, “Ask me what I do for a living.” What do you do for a living, Suellen? “I am an artist,” she announced. It was reckless and thrilling and slightly absurd. It was her announcement that she had stepped away from theRead More →

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In: Writing

There starts here. Here starts here. There starts there. All the same. The part where you move is the thing. There starts (t)here is a cute little slogan written on the wall of tourist car hire business I drive past twice a day on the way to and from work. It is not emblazoned, very subtle, blink you’ll miss it. The letter ‘t’ in ‘there’ is deliberately greyed out compared to the other lettering, blink and you’ll miss that as well. Clearly it is a philosophical statement, embracing the journey and the destination as part and parcel of same spiritual/mental/physical endevour of travelling from somewhereRead More →

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In: Writing

In #2 in my Bite the Rewrite series, I’m asking for some dogged forensic work. So are your scenes working hard enough? First draft, probably not. Sometimes you’re so deep in the playwriting forrest you are unable to identify anything specific about the trees. That’s when the old PPP can help. Plot. Psychology. Premise. This triumphant roughly aligns to ‘outer journey’, ‘inner journey’ and ‘meta journey’. Look at your first draft scenes. Without any doubt, there will be scenes there that are flabby. There may be scenes that are missing. There may be scenes that are too short, too long, too rambling, too tight-lipped. ThereRead More →

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In: Writing

You’ve written your play, first draft, wowie, and you reckon you have some cracker scenes and you think the whole thing is hanging together they way you thought it might….or that is until you read it out to yourself ( or worse, hear a group of actors reading it). The disappointment can be real. Suddenly those beloved characters are limp as lizards, flatter than the paper they are written on; the plot feels clunky like some old bike trundling along a pot-holed road to nowhere; the emotional life of the work is either desperately overworked or hopelessly bereft; and the whole thing is thematically soRead More →

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In: Writing

We all hate them. Deadlines. They have a hardline vibe that give creative people like you and me the heebie-jeebies. But I want to speak now for deadlines, how they are valuable, how we can benefit from them, and why we really should be more excited about them in general. This week I missed a deadline. I’m kicking myself. But I have some consolation. It reminded me that deadlines, even missed ones, serve a purpose. I just want to point out the etymology of the word ‘deadline’ comes from the term to describe a line drawn around a prison beyond which prisoners were liable to be shot.Read More →

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In: Writing

I’ve been immersed in my novel writing journey, navigating the newness of it like a bumbling inept explorer, frightfully overdressed in all the wrong gear, blundering through an intricate landscape of which I have no concept. I am the mapless, hapless, rudderless, clueless rambler. Setting off in bad weather with a set of mad ideas and a backpack full of laughably ill-advised equipment. I love it. I have to say I’m having an exquisite time. I’m not lost; I’m on my way… Much to do. I received the hot tip to check out the Australian Writers Centre online. I was looking for short story competitionsRead More →

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In: Writing

Standing ovations are a playwright’s GOLD. You know you’ve probably hit the sweet spot when a bunch of possibly jaded theatre-goers could be bothered getting up out of their chairs to give your show their appreciation and applause. And what’s especially nice is when an audience comes into a theatre completely cold —they do not know you, or your work, or the actors or not a single thing about the story about to be told—and within the space of a 115 minute performance they are warmed through with joy enough to bring them onto their feet with wild stomping and carry on. From Campfire toRead More →

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In: Writing

It is done. I have 10,000 words, many if them in the right order. The last morning of the retreat, the last morning of the 2000 word contract. Considering that the average novel has about 300 pages, and a 300-page book will have approximately 82,500 words, I’m about 8% there. With consistency, it’s possible to reach that word count by writing 500 words per day, seven days a week, for about five and a half months. That’s daunting. Even 500 words, and they also need to be the best words possible. Bookity, bookity, bookity goodness. Do I believe what I’m working on could be a novel?Read More →