Today, after shopping, a movie* (The Help**) and a DVD buying splurge (buy 2 cheap, get one free) I hurried home, threw the groceries into the kitchen, then hurried off again to the launch of 'The Word Mine', a brand spanking new local centre for writers and readers.
It was fun. There was wine, cheese, crackers, wine, lovely savoury things, wine, lovely sweet baked things, wine, readings, a raffle with many prizes, mostly of a bookish nature but some of which included wine (drats, I didn't win the $300 limited edition Macquarie anthology) much writerly talking, many jokes, and wine. There was also Robyn Annear*** (one very entertaining lady) launching, with the help of some fangled machine, a bunch of old library cards at us, and everyone got to write a word on their card, which might or might not eventually be used as part of a poetry competition. I'll let you know if the steering committee chooses my word. Anyway, the prize will be a year's membership and a bottle of wine. I'll definitely be signing up as a member. I might even volunteer for a spot of envelope licking or the like.
*We saw the trailer for 'War Horse', based on the bestselling book my Michael Mopurgo. Aaaaah.
**The book, about writing a book, by Kathryn Stockett, was rejected 40-45 times, depending on your source, and went on to become a bestseller - heartwarming stuff for the battling unknowns of the world.
*** Robyn introduced us to the little known but very useful and possibly writerly relevant verb 'to penelopise' , meaning to undo one's work to gain time, derived from "Penelope", the wife of Odysseus. After the Greek hero was declared MIA whilst returning from the siege of Troy, many power hungry suitors approached his wife Penelope and pressed her to marry again. Certain that her hubby would return at any moment, she said she'd marry one of the suitors once she finished weaving a certain tapestry, but she would weave away all night and then undo her night's work in morning to keep the suitors hanging. Some scribes at the launch saw this as being a lot like writing all night only to hit the delete button come morning.
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2 comments:
I love this word penelopise. My dog's called Penny, so it has many applications in my life. I can take her for a walk, come in and discover she wants another walk, go out again...
I blogged about it and included a link to this post and also to your profile. Hope that was okay.
By all means,spread the word and link away. The English language has already lost far too many cool words like glad-warbling and thrunched, so we need to build it up again. The more people who know about penelopising, the better. I hope to hear it enter general conversation soon :)
And give Penny a pat from me.
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