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!
