Category: Writing

  • Hello and welcome … 2016

    Hello and welcome … 2016

    Hello to all my blog readers at the beginning of 2016, as the Year of the Goat (in Chinese Astrology) is coming to an end. And the Year of the Monkey is going to begin. I hope this year will be even better than the last one for you and yours. Here in the southern…

  • The Anna Karenina Principle

    The Anna Karenina Principle

    Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way(Leo Tolstoy 1878) Tolstoy’s Impact Tolstoy is a philosopher/narrator within his novel Anna Karenina.  He invites the reader to philosophize about happiness, as they read the doings, the thoughts and the feelings of his characters. The Oblonsky family’s happiness  is destroyed by…

  • Life is a Beach: a guest post by Ian Wells

    Life is a Beach: a guest post by Ian Wells

    Life is a Beach Have you heard the saying, Life is a beach? Have you ever strolled along a sandy shore? Scrunching wet sand deliciously between your toes? I have I’ve watched the spray fly, heard the waves pound marvelled at dolphins dancing enjoyed the birds’ aerobatic antics. I’ve felt the sting of the hot…

  • Poets In Praise of Love

    Poets In Praise of Love

    This beautiful poem fell upon my desk one morning out of the world wide web  : I am your moon and your moonlight too I am your flower garden and your water too I have come all this way, eager for you Without shoes or shawl I want you to laugh To kill all your…

  • Lambs in Spring

    Lambs in Spring

    Lambs in Spring The humid scorching heat of the sub-tropical climate engulfed us; the sun’s rays tore at our skin with ruthless intensity and sent us kids scurrying towards water, even if it was only to the hose in the back or front yard. Sometimes Mum would pile us into the jeep and head for…

  • the writer the narrator and the character

    the writer the narrator and the character

    Firstly:  All things are connected, but distinctions need to be made… This may seem academic—and it is—but sometimes a subtle distinction makes all the difference in practice: The writer is not the narrator of a text of fiction, and vice versa. It is easy to forget this fact, especially when you change from Reader (studying…

  • A Guest Poem:  “First Loves” by Roger Britton

    A Guest Poem: “First Loves” by Roger Britton

    Roger writes… One night, on hearing a piece of music, grief overwhelmed me. I sat down and wrote this poem, fifty-seven years after the event. I rushed into it with little regard to rhyme, rhythm or scan.   Ode to Jennifer The strains of Carrick Fergus reeled my memories in, while flooding tears filled my…

  • An Aussie bloke remembers: Guest post by Ian (Harry) Wells

    An Aussie bloke remembers: Guest post by Ian (Harry) Wells

    “Life in the Forties and Fifties” by Ian (Harry) Wells “Take-away” back in the forties and fifties, when I was a kid, meant a sum in arithmetic at school. Nothing else. Certainly not a source of food. There were no mega-giants like Maccas, KFC, Pizza Hut or the like, just “chippies”. A “big mac” was…

  • What is this thing called Voice?

    What is this thing called Voice?

    Voice as Metaphor The elusive concept of Voice is one of the most difficult aspects of the craft of writing to explain in words. Like persona in Jungian psychology, it is more easily understood as a metaphor; persona is often explained in terms of actors on the stage hiding behind different masks or personalities. In…

  • Welcome to a Long-Awaited Grandson

    Welcome to a Long-Awaited Grandson

    December 13th November, 2008 You can’t know the sheer joy and wonder of grandparenting, until it happens to you. It was around 4am when Grandad Mark’s mobile phone rang, waking us from our sleep. Thirty minutes earlier, our daughter Kate had rolled out of bed onto the floor in a cascade of waters. Your Mummy…