This morning, with my wake up cups (3) of tea, I read the VWC’s magazine ‘Victorian Writer’, the 'Getting your writing out there' issue. The advice given by Melbourne poet Peter Bakowski particularly stuck in my mind - he says that the "three P's" are essential for any writer wanting to be published: practice, perseverance and positivity. People often go on about the first two, but forget to mention that you have to keep a gigantic barrel of optimism on tap as well.Then, after a teeny bit of writing and a spot of shopping, it was off to the movies for ‘Daybreakers’, a vampire movie that bravely tackles intimate human topics such as greed, megalomania and fear of death, as well as big picture matters like evolution, ecological niches,
the husbanding of natural resources, famine, political dictatorships, parental tyrannies, the making of civilizations and society's attitudes towards its disenfranchised citizens, all while giving us an insight into vampiric haute couture (1930s Blade Runnerish), kicking ass, wielding knives, firing guns, shooting crossbows, impaling vamps and driving very fast to get away from bad guys in soldiermobiles. Add combusting bodies, lots and lots and lots and lots of blood and gore, and you’ve got a fun, but deep (well, up to your knees, maybe mid thigh), movie.Then it was cups of tea and bikkies and discussing vampire societies, gravity, time, branes and other scientific viscera.
Now it's time to close up the blogshop and get ready for a day of glorious writing tomorrow.
2 comments:
Yeah, I agree about the positivity thing. When I enter a competition I go back to writing quite happily for the months when "they" have my masterpiece. And when someone else wins and I get no feedback, I become negative and don't write much. (I put words on the computer screen every day. It's just that they're no good).
Then my natural optimism reasserts itself and I start all over again.
Positivity.
It can be the hardest of the three. When I get a bit down, I remind myself that writing is supposed to add to my life, not detract from it. Breaks every now and then are good – they remind you what the world is like without writing and help you to assess whether or not it’s worth continuing. As long as you keep going back to the keyboard, well, that answers that question.
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