I attended the Annual Getting Published Seminar yesterday. The topics covered included copyright, author contracts, ABNs, marketing and promotion, literary agents, publishers, editing, artsACT grants and more. Overall a very useful seminar for people wanting to understand how the industry works. I picked up some tips on applying for grants - especially for emerging writers. The trick is to focus on activities that will develop you as a writer and to show evidence that you are in the field for the long term - ie. you take it seriously and want to make a career out of it. This is difficult to do if you don't have any work published but I think I can add a few sentences in that show my motivation better. I also bought a book - which on first glance seems to be very interesting. It is call Fiction first aid by Raymond Obstfeld and gives techniques to sustantively edit your short story or novel. Heaps of great ideas to fix up problem areas and what the symptoms are. I think I shall have to schedule a writing night each week so that I make sure I keep progressing with it. Otherwise I'm not going to get anywhere. I have been putting it off lately - indeed that is what I am doing now!

We have just got back from Tasmania where we have been for a week. We caught up with all of the family (thanks for having us) and I miss them already.

The main point of the trip was to attend Alicia (Nathan's sister) and Matt's wedding. It was a cold and windy day but the rain held off for the ceremony. Once we were inside the boat and motoring up the river it was all nice and warm. The informality of the boat was great for catching up with all of the family and making sure you mingled. Olivia (Nathan's sister in law) is about two weeks away from her due date with her second child and she did a great job to not be in hospital for the wedding.

Norm and Alicia

Each time I go home I feel really homesick and sad to be leaving all our family. We end up using a lot of our leave travelling home to see them and it would be nice to be able to catch up on weekends instead. Especially now that we are thinking of having a family, suddenly city life and good jobs seem less relevant in the scheme of things. The challenge will always be finding jobs that we enjoy in Tassie that use our skills. Anyway maybe we will have to think of a way to get Nathan into a profession in the long term that he can do in Tassie.

As always when I have some time off I am reinspired to write, clean, cook and craft. It is easy to be invigorated when you are rested and not stressed by work. I will try my hardest to keep this focus and space - not let work take over.

We met up with Claire and Chris, Lynne and Roger for a weekend over Anzac day at Metung near Lake's Entrance. We had a lovely 4 day trip - mostly chatting and sipping wine. On Sunday, we took our kayaks and the others hired some doubles and we set out around the lake. It was great to go paddling with other people for a change as it is usually just Nathan and I.

April 2006 Kayaking at Metung

We didn't get a photo of the marvellous boat that Lynne and Roger hired on the second day of paddling to bring out lunch. It was a 4 sleeper with a toilet and kitchen. It was a surprise to us when they motored into the bay. Claire and Chris were great company and didn't power off too quickly in their speedy double. We saw goats on the islands in the lake and three sea horses in the shallows!

I picked up some fingerless gloves that are salt tolerant and cant' wait to try them out. It should help protect my inner thumbs in the wet and from rubbing when paddling.

Nathan and I got up super early to make it to the 6.30am start of the Ballon Fiesta a couple of weeks ago now. It was bitterly cold and unfortunately too windy for the balloons to actually float about. They put up a couple of balloons but kept them tethered to the ground. Hopefully we will go another year and have better luck with the weather. They had a couple of good days during the week of the fiesta with up to 40 balloons going up. It looked spectacular on the news.

Apr 06 in Canberra

Apr 06 in Canberra

This saturday we attended Pete and Bronte's Wedding. It was a great day (though cold) and a beautiful ceremony and reception. Bronte looked fabulous and it was nice to meet their families.

For the rest of the Easter weekend I chopped and pruned in the garden, planted a few more plants and bulbs and moved the Orange tree into the garden from its pot. Nathan mulched the choppings and we finally have the garden in a tidy fashion again. That will be the most of the work until Spring. You'll be glad to know tha there are olives rippening on the tree as I type. I think in another week or so I will have to pick them all and pickle them. This will be the first year that I have had a crop. Last year I had three olives. There are also a heap about 6 pumpkins just about ready to be picked. There always ends up being more hiding under the leaves than I expect. They will make some nice soup. Everything else has just about finished - I tried some of my rhubarb for the first time this year and it was very tasty with apple in a pie.

Hope you all had a good Easter.

It's amazing - last night I started a white cubic zirconium standard round brillant and I have finished the pavillion and transfered it in one night! Going back to a synthetic stone and doing a simple pattern it is so much faster. Its for my sister but I don't think I will make her birthday on the 6th May. Still we shall see I have two faceting nights left before we go to Tasmania for Nathan's sister's wedding.

I can't show you a photo as it is at the Lapidary club on the transfer jig. Next week I will make sure I take one to show you though the finished product is much more interesting.

Check out the MoodGym. I was interested to try out the techniques it suggested in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. (Background: I have been interested in depression ever since I had a friend commit suicide and I noticed unhappy patterns of feelings in my day to day life.)

I have been reading about happiness from a range of psychologists and self help literature and so far have found the most successful and illuminating help to come from the Buddhist principles and philosphy (not focusing on the religous side). See my recent reading for details. I have found there is considerable relationship to Cognitive behaviour therapy with what they propose. It seems strange to me that it is now seen to be a revelation that CBT might be a preventative tecqnique when it has been espoused for centuries by Buddhism.

The MoodGym might be more to your liking though as it is simpler and quicker to digest. Overall though the practice of any of these techniques that change the way you think will be difficult and take dedication and time. Good luck. I have started it and already am learning things about how I think and how the brain works. It doesn't aim to treat serious depression but has useful tips for sometimes unhappy people to be able to feel better and happier in their lives.

Well I thought I would catch you up on the history of my novel and what it is about. Currently I am writing a novel that began in November 05 with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). My friend Claire got me into it and then pulled out to tackle her artistic projects. I stuck with it and ended up writing 50000 words in a month. That formed the basis of my novel.

I started with a small idea - What if there was a planet which could not see the stars, sun or moon due to a thick cloud covering and one day it disappears? What would people do and how would they react to this news. I have set it in a reasonably well advanced society with books, guns and politics in contrast to a lot of other fantasy novels which are set in the middle or dark ages. I had two main characters in mind, a boy and a girl who eventually meet. They both see the stars and bring them to the attention of their societies eliciting a very different response. Lori is thrown in prison while Tom is brought into a plan to find out more and travel across the sea to converse with a society that has not been contacted for hundreds of years.

I have 50000 words + and an fairly well established plot. The plan now is to craft the story with characters, description and dialogue with the aim to publish it. I didn't have a strong idea at the start of how the novel would turn out - it evolved as I wrote it. I started with Lori's story because to me it seemed the most interesting. I started with a brief backgroud of her life but rapidly skipped to her journey after being kicked out of home. I knew I needed her to be displaced from society so there were a number of events that came to mind to separate her from her society and change her perceptions of what was true and normal in life. I created characters for her to meet and influence her choices. I followed her journey sequentially through time until I felt I had finished her story and it was time for her to meet Tom.

That is when I began Tom's story. This was around week 3. Probably late in that week. I had a huge spurt of writing after a slow start when it became clear that a few hours when I could find it was not going to get me to the outcome I wanted - a NaNoWriMo winner! I did a solid two day weekend of writing and forced myself to put aside my fears that ther writing was stupid, not meaninful, not going anywhere and boring to read. I just kept going. I made the numbers up and got plenty of bare bones plot down with some character and environmental ideas outlined.

I now need to create more wonder and fear in my novel, more reflection and depth of characters. It is quite easy for me to say "Yep, that's what they will do" without thinking how huge an endeavour it would be to travel by ship from a country that doesn't much have ocean going craft due to lack of navigational skills; how strange it would be to arrive in a new place and meet a new society after having been isolated in your own culture for all of your known history.

That is now my task, to make the situation real and engaging.

Colette, Aaron and Felix came round for dinner last night - it was great to see them and chat. On reflection, we managed to not speak about work at all the whole night.

I had let our lizard Laurie out around the lounge room for a walk in the afternoon while I cleaned his house. After an hour or so we hunted around for him and he was in none of the usual places - behind the couch , under the coffee table/tv or in the curtains. Eventually Nathan found him in the rowing machine. He had crawled inside of it and was out of hands reach. We had to unscrew the side of the machine before he moved into a place we could grab him. Felix was not overly impressed by Laurie - but it could be that he didn't understand what he was looking at. Laurie was rather cold when we got him out so I think he was grateful to be back in his heated house. It is now rather cold in Canberra and unfortunately I feel like I have started hibernating already - reluctant to go outside or do much after coming home from work other than snuggling in the warm.