My Brisbane Writers Festival experience

This is just one of the many collage pictures I have made to try and represent my experience at the Brisbane Writers Festival. Not sure I've fully managed to cram my excitement, creativity explosion and sheer joy into one picture. But it's been fun trying!

                                                     

I spent two days at the festival and each day and session was incredible and inspiring. First up was an urban explorer talking how once deciding to do a story on the phenomena he had to join urban explorers in their risky ( and often illegal) activities before they would talk to him. He found in urban exploring what he hadn't in archaeology and he was hooked. He had incredible stories about the underground in London, the Metro in Paris, old abandoned psychiatric hospitals in England, half built skyscrapers in Dubai.

There was a downside to all this as well what with governments lumping these explorers in with terrorists. Fear at what they simply don't understand.

I immediately rushed downstairs after the session to buy his book. The historian inside me was intrigued and excited. On another level I instantly felt excited about the notion of going for it at any cost and figured this book from this cool amazing guy could me a new found sense of adventure!

One of the most poignant sessions I went to really had nothing to do with my writing... Or did it? The session was about the mind. There was a philosopher, a former psychiatrist who went through a breakdown and then a stroke, a gifted medical practitioner who suffered terrible depression and nearly once sliced her own arm off with a scalpel. Both the last two had written books about their recovery. The final panelist was a fiction writer, mostly of science fiction. Phew! What a panel! Luckily the moderator was very good and each got to speak in turns and there was even a few jokes... Which is bound to happen when talking about the mind among crazy medical people, a
sci-fi writer and a philosopher!

Plenty of things were discussed. Is the mind and the brain different? The mind/body connection, plus how medical professionals deal with being on the other side of the table as patients. Somehow even Doctor Who was mentioned ( which went down well with us all!) and the latest movie Lucy ( which didn't ) at one point the philosopher stated that the only people who can use just 10% of their brains are the writers of that movie script!

What resonated with me was Kate Richards and her struggle with mental illness. Some of the things she described I really related to. She referred to how she felt people were living in her mind. Some were benign and others were malicious and as clever as she was she was so far into her mental illness that it took her many years to realise the voices were a figment of her own mind.

Her book is called 'Madness: a memoir' and sounds like it would be a heart wrenching but important read. Her book came about only due to the fact that she wrote copious notes and journal entries over the years even when at her worse. So despite not always recognising her own words or even knowing what year she wrote some entries she put them together in a book.

Like Kate I have kept journals a lot over the years particularly when I was very ill. I'm not sure if there is a book in them though!

So onto another session which was two debut authors, one Australian and one Irish. Both having books with the word 'Thing' in the title and both having written fiction based on real events they had each witnessed to various degrees. Their books sounded incredibly researched and are on my to read list. Particularly Mark Mulholland's book ' A Mad and Wonderful Thing.' His own brother was arrested and gaoled for being part of an IRA bomb plot. Mulholland grew up with what he called 'charming' men who had this double life as killers for a cause. He said his protagonist, a conflicted IRA member is representative of Ireland and is also a mixture of all those charming men.

Now I couldn't go to a writers festival and not see some sessions on crime novels could I? One was focussed on villains. What makes a good villain? Why do we like them ? Are they just a few brain cells away from us? This session introduced me to a fabulous Scandinavian author
 Yrsa Siguroardottir and I have already bought one of her books.

Another panel was incredibly interesting and just nicely gruesome! Speaking of dead bodies and what happens at a crime scene as well as what crime scenes are usually actually like. We had an ex cop crime fiction writer and a forensic investigator who intrigued me greatly. He had some interesting theories and though he has not written fiction I imagine his text books on the subject would be invaluable to crime writers and enjoyable for true crime fans (like me!)

I did a workshop on feature writing. I figured I knew a fair bit about the art but my problem rather was my perfectionist streak that keeps me from finishing or even starting pieces. But I Learned a hell of a lot! Three hours of useful information. Caroline Overington was a brilliant teacher and she writes features for the Australian Women's Weekly on people like Hilary Clinton so we all ate up every word she said!

Oh and Frances Whiting popped in to say hi to us all.  It was almost surreal. The next day as I was waiting to be picked up after checking out of my hotel I was scanning the paper and there was Whiting herself with a brilliantly funny article. To think she had smiled at me and happily chatted to all us amateurs just the day before!

Phew! What a weekend!

Judging a book by its cover.. or a Blog as the case may be

I should be writing a blog right now. I should be coming up with something funny or informative to share with the world. What am I doing instead? Fighting with Blogger! That’s right! I hate the way my blog looks and I have been trying to fix it.

I am still not entirely happy with it but decided enough is enough for tonight and it will just have to do. But I am frustrated. There are so many nice looking blogs out there so why can’t I get mine to look nice?

First of all there seems to be a limited number of designs I can choose so that is not helpful for a start. Of course I am trapped within the realm of blogger rather than being able to make my own webpage but perhaps that is best for now. I can’t remember the last time I did anything with webpages and I have forgotten most of the HTML I learned for Ebay and Mypace. Small steps I think.

So I decided I could at least add some functions to my Blog. My twitter feed would be a great addition and it was so easy. I just clicked on a little button and this nice helpful box appeared and I popped my Twitter name in there and then it was on my page.  But then it disappeared. WTF? Where has it gone? Oh the box is there and it says Twitter but the feed is gone. So I click on the helpful little button again and I notice for the first time that those boxes that keep coming up at the bottom of my screen are actually Internet Explorer telling me that it is editing the page to prevent cross feeding. There is nothing I can click on to tell it that I want cross feeding and to leave things the bloody hell alone!

So I have given up. I will dredge through Internet Explorer tomorrow and try and find some settings to turn off so it will not interfere with my blog appearance. Or I may just take the short cut and ask hubby how to fix it! He will know right? He knows everything. But then again it has been a while since he has done any internet stuff. He does the most complex 3d animation work but I bet when I ask he may well just look at me blankly and I will be left on my own.

So this is how it is now? Writing comes with the necessity to be able to work with these gadgets and thingybobs in order to make your page look good so someone will want to read it? Are there people out there that click on a link to a blog and then close the page without reading it because they think the blog looks so last year or there is no twitter feed box or labels listed? How do they know they are not clicking away from the next big thing in writing?

If there had been blogs at the time what would Hemmingway’s have looked like? Or Jane Austen’s? Would they have even bothered? What about twitter or facebook? Can you imagine the tweets from Charles Dickens? Or Oscar Wilde?  Social media can be a great thing but you have to wonder if it is necessary. People managed to be successful writers before the internet was even invented. Was it harder for them or was it in fact easier?

But we live in a society where we do have the internet and we do have social media and so I suppose I should cut the whingeing. I know full well of course that appearances do matter.  They draw people in. People are not so stupid as to keep reading if they don’t like the content but chances are the look of something has had something to do with them being there in the first place.

It brings to mind of course the old adage that we should not judge books by their covers. We all do of course often in the greater arena to which the term applies such as judging people by the way they look but also about books themselves. There is so much more to books these days. Covers are an art form in themselves. They are designed to sell books, to hook people. A great cover will make you pick up the book and then depending on the kind of browser you are you may buy it based on that alone or read the blurb on the back. That too has to be great. It has to make you want to read the book. Chances are of course that the blurb is the most well written part of the book but once you are hooked you are hooked.

I have in the past been influenced by covers. I actually admit here to the whole world that I have bought bottles of wine because I liked the look of the label. Pathetic I know but there you have it. Sometimes the wine is great, other times average and sometimes so bad I will never buy it again.

So what does it all mean? The saying of course indicates we should not judge things merely by appearances for good or bad. A lovely label might equal crap wine. A horrible book cover may hide a masterpiece of fiction. A badly dressed slovenly person may be the best friend you could ever have if only you gave them a chance.

All these things are true but as human beings we are attracted to certain things. What is nice and attractive is different for all of us of course but many of us can not help ourselves if we see something that is visually appealing. We should then perhaps once attracted, pay close attention. Where is the wine from?  Is this a genre of fiction I usually read? What does the blurb or first paragraph tell me about the book? Is this person as nice as they look or do I feel uncomfortable with them once I have engaged with them?

Wise words indeed but it still does not answer how we manage to find the gems in the rough. The boring looking Blog pages which are actually great reads . The books with hideous covers that are masterpieces. Or the people who look scary but are in fact amazing.  What will make us look deeper to find these or will most of us not bother? It would be nice to think my writing will stand out no matter how it is presented but if I’m wise then I will help it along and make it look as nice as I can.

So that is my job over the next few weeks. I will come up with a great picture and try and iron out the problems. At some point I will probably move to wordpress so I have more options and maybe create my own website. No doubt all this will be fodder for future blogs so stay tuned.

In the meantime have a think about what you judge by its cover and how does that work out for you?