How to avoid writers 101

Street art, Berlin

Did it feel like you were being watched today? 

If you were in Sydney it was more than likely you were being scrutinised by professional ‘people watchers’. They would have almost certainly taken notes too. Detailed notes.

So as a public health and safety warning - watch what you say on the streets of Sydney this week – it may just end up on the pages of the next bestseller.

It's the Sydney writers’ festival this week.

Sydneysiders, you may have noticed an influx of tweed & cardigans. Library bags and ink stained fingertips. The plethora of people reading whilst propped by a tree or lounging on a grassy knoll*. Or realized that every bench in the CBD has been commandeered by pen toting types, waxing lyrical about Proust between furiously scribbling notes.

It has been said that you shouldn’t befriend a writer. Not because occupational isolation has left them defunct of rudimentary social skills. Writers are generally affable types - when highly caffeinated and not forced to stand in direct sunlight.

Though they will use you. And more than likely without you even being aware of it. I’m not suggesting that they will fossick through the back of your sofa for loose coins whilst you boil the kettle. But they may just silently extract elements of your personality and graft it into a character in their novel.

This wouldn’t faze most people. In fact it could almost been seen as a compliment if a writer has decided to create a character based on you. You of all people! Think of it as an honour!**

But if you have a particular character foible that you don’t want to have fictionalised, and you reside in Sydney, perhaps it’s best you lay low for the next week. 

Or if you must get out, to buy the milk or insist on topping up your precious vitamin D, here is a quick guide to help you identify writers. It was written for people wanting to look like writers.

Besides the obvious – carrying a notebook, pen or book – there are a few odd pointers. Take a deep nasally whiff of the suspect writer. If they smell “nostalgic” then step away.  Or if they are wearing a used duct tape rolls, step away quickly.  Clearly they are keen on cracking this writing malarkey (why else would they have googled “How to look like a writer”?) so they would be hunger for any stories. Even yours.

*Note the pre-requisite for lumbar support for writers - the hours spent battering away at keys in a dark room results in appalling posture and bones brittle from vitamin D deficiency. So

**Of course as a writer I am somewhat biased and will paint personality pilfering in it’s most positive light – it’s most honour worthy light

Bleeding Knees Club

"A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence." Leopold Stokowski

There was little silence on Friday night. I was back in business and writing my first gig review since being back in Sydney. Though it wasn’t strictly business, in fact I had my dancing shoes on and hot shoe shuffling up a storm.

And what a gig to whet the appetite for live music! Bleeding Knees club, Dune Rats and Sures - three Aussie bands who pack a punch with their swaggering surfer/garage rock.

Gig reviews were something that I dearly missed whilst on the road. I attended a slew of gigs in Europe, but there is nothing like having your name on the door list and revelling in live music for free (prefect for a pauper like me!).

You can check out the review here.

Day of Yester

I'm missing ten days in the outback; and fret over a slew of threadbare days from Kathmandu. I only have mere fragments of time from Hungry and Bucharest. Then there are vast tracts of unaccounted days from London. For sections of my travel journal are so bald and patchy it makes John Lithgow look like a spokesperson for ‘The society for ridiculously lush manes of hair’*

I wrote with the upmost regularity whilst on the truck**. Flicking through the pages the legibility is poor, reflecting the state of roads in third world countries, and the content enormously over-wrote. Some entries I thought would only take up a handful of lines, but rambled forth into two or three pages; typically incoherent ramblings, rehashing the most mundane details of the day. Though looking back on it, the ‘mundane’ occurrences are often the most memorable, like - storing toilet paper in every pocket, communal peeing on roadsides around the world, pouring buckets of water into squat toilets (to be clear my whole journal is not solely about bowel motions and toilets), border crossings with stony faced guards armed to the teeth, broken conversations with friendly Iranians, tea with Turkish mayors, meeting local militia, sleeping in a sleeping bag brimming bottles of drinking water in Tibet or cooking on a Yak dung fire.

It wasn’t always a bed of roses on the road. In fact, many beds where literally fields of thistles and faeces. So there were the hissy fits but also absolute hilarity. I tried to include these aspects in my journal as in the words of Oscar Wilde ‘I never travel without my diary. One should gave something sensational to read in the train.’ So I tried to get to the guts of daily life and record sensational snippets of campfire chat as well as the smells, sounds and sights. I tried to recapture the smell of rotting fish, not just airy fairy wisps of happenings.

Now that I’m back in Sydney, I intend to keep journaling. I face the dilemma of lack of discipline and fear of nothing to write – the same issues as on the road. Does anyone else have these issues? I’m putting together a post with tips about how to successful keep a journal.

*‘The society for ridiculously lush manes of hair’ is an entirely fictional entity. Though if you feel compelled to start said institution please do consider me for membership, even just for the novelty factor of having a founding member with a bird’s nest of frizzy locks a la Ron McDonald esque

** I was part of a group who spent six months driving Overland from London to Sydney, camping on roadsides, beaches, abandoned airstrips and quarries

How do you do?

I've tentatively dipped my toe into the world of writing with some success, however I want to submerge myself.

Ballpoint Arcade is my office. My desk space. This is a place where I will sharpen my pencils, rifle through my tatty, torn notebooks, surreptitiously sniff crisp new paper before rigorously wrestle with words. It currently looks shiny and somewhat sparse. But fear not, there will be reams sheets of scribbles, piles of dog-eared books, rainbows of post-its, stacks of yellowing newspapers and inky ballpoint pens rattling about. But unlike my real world desk you needn't worry about the sweet smell of decay from the occasionally forgotten banana skin, wedged beneath a raft of papers.

The intention of the blog is to pull up my socks and step up my game. Move past half finished stories and create a new system of filing ideas that doesn't involve napkins or cereal boxes, so budding ideas may bloom. I'm getting professional. Not just aiming to get published but also to hone my writing and editing skills.

I have drawn up a calendar of writing competitions to act as deadlines. They include a range of genres from fiction, essay, creative nonfiction, poetry - as I want to push myself. I'll be taking direction from those who know best - writers. By reading and reviewing books of all sorts from writing how-to guides, cozy murder mysteries, sic-fi, chick lit, classics, nonfiction, fantasy to speculative fiction.

Whilst I plan to write daily, I'll only be posting here three times a week. I'm currently balancing a couple of other writing projects including a travelogue about my recent 9month overland journey from London to Sydney.

Please stop by, nibble on an iced vovo, sip on a cuppa and stay for a chat. Book recommendations are warmly welcomed as well as opinions on the weather and writing.