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Varuna – the silly summary
Jul. 10th, 2006 09:37 pmI am back. I have missed all sorts of people and all sorts of things. Not the cold. Varuna was warm and wonderful. I have a signed copy of a poem about bananas by Iggy McGovern, who was our resident Irish poet.
I kept telling everyone at Varuna I suspected mayhem was happening on the blog during my absence, but it was mild mayhem. Thank you Kaaron, and Elizabeth and Russell.
What else happened?
Other stuff wot I did:
- checked out weekly paper for novel
- got mentored
- Swapped food talk with the caterer
- Gossiped madly
- Discovered I sound severely up myself when hiding lack of confidence
- Bought a bunch of Strand Magazines from the 1940s for 50c each from an op shop
- Read Iggy’s amazing banana poem, inspired by the comment on the fridge telling us that there would be no bananas for a bit cos they were too dear
- Walked along the cliff-face
- Got remembered by folks in the town (the gourmet choc person tells me you can get 99% choc couverture in Australia and has promised to email me the suppliers name)
- Gave two talks. The first was in Sydney to the Australian Jewish Women in the Arts and the second to Blue Mountains people. Feels strange talking so much about a novel. I fear I may have jinxed it.
- Had dinner and a lovely evening with Ted Scribner and his significant other in Blackheath.
- Discovered that more people think I am odd and eccentric than I believed possible. They all tell me it’s a good thing. I wail “But I want to be normal.”
- Bought choc (research, of course) and other essentials.
- Got addicted to word counting.
- Said 'hi' to the Three Sisters and gave them all the messages people ask me to give.
- Smiled at tourists (more research)
- Worked out the usefulness of rocky outcrops in plugging holes in fiction.
- Kept wondering why people had told me Katoomba was cold. (“They breed you hearty in Canberra,” someone said.)
- Had email and blog withdrawal symptoms.
- Missed people (those silly comments that floated into your ears mysteriously from distant places – that was me)
- Met an Irish poet (Iggy McGovern)and a Sydney writer (Gabrielle Carey) and an ABC Book Show person (Lyn Gallagher). Talked to Peter Bishop at vast length and kept thinking over each word I said later on and realized how stupid and painful I am (And I thought I had grown out of that when I left my teens!)
- Finished the novel I created the Winchester map and the 1298 calendar for. Yay!!!
On the way back I had lunch with Felicity Pulman. The next Janna book is at proof stage. Nail-biting time.
Books wot I read:
Linda Jaivin bio of a famous Chinese dissident/muso
The Pooh Perplex
Aurealis 36
Jenny Pausacker Getting Somewhere
Lytton Strachey Portraits in Miniature (though I skipped most of the historians)
Thornton Wilder The Cabala
GK Chesterton The Man who was Thursday
Stephanie Bishop The Singing
Rudyard Kipling Rewards and Fairies (only half - the rest is for tonight)
I kept telling everyone at Varuna I suspected mayhem was happening on the blog during my absence, but it was mild mayhem. Thank you Kaaron, and Elizabeth and Russell.
What else happened?
Other stuff wot I did:
- checked out weekly paper for novel
- got mentored
- Swapped food talk with the caterer
- Gossiped madly
- Discovered I sound severely up myself when hiding lack of confidence
- Bought a bunch of Strand Magazines from the 1940s for 50c each from an op shop
- Read Iggy’s amazing banana poem, inspired by the comment on the fridge telling us that there would be no bananas for a bit cos they were too dear
- Walked along the cliff-face
- Got remembered by folks in the town (the gourmet choc person tells me you can get 99% choc couverture in Australia and has promised to email me the suppliers name)
- Gave two talks. The first was in Sydney to the Australian Jewish Women in the Arts and the second to Blue Mountains people. Feels strange talking so much about a novel. I fear I may have jinxed it.
- Had dinner and a lovely evening with Ted Scribner and his significant other in Blackheath.
- Discovered that more people think I am odd and eccentric than I believed possible. They all tell me it’s a good thing. I wail “But I want to be normal.”
- Bought choc (research, of course) and other essentials.
- Got addicted to word counting.
- Said 'hi' to the Three Sisters and gave them all the messages people ask me to give.
- Smiled at tourists (more research)
- Worked out the usefulness of rocky outcrops in plugging holes in fiction.
- Kept wondering why people had told me Katoomba was cold. (“They breed you hearty in Canberra,” someone said.)
- Had email and blog withdrawal symptoms.
- Missed people (those silly comments that floated into your ears mysteriously from distant places – that was me)
- Met an Irish poet (Iggy McGovern)and a Sydney writer (Gabrielle Carey) and an ABC Book Show person (Lyn Gallagher). Talked to Peter Bishop at vast length and kept thinking over each word I said later on and realized how stupid and painful I am (And I thought I had grown out of that when I left my teens!)
- Finished the novel I created the Winchester map and the 1298 calendar for. Yay!!!
On the way back I had lunch with Felicity Pulman. The next Janna book is at proof stage. Nail-biting time.
Books wot I read:
Linda Jaivin bio of a famous Chinese dissident/muso
The Pooh Perplex
Aurealis 36
Jenny Pausacker Getting Somewhere
Lytton Strachey Portraits in Miniature (though I skipped most of the historians)
Thornton Wilder The Cabala
GK Chesterton The Man who was Thursday
Stephanie Bishop The Singing
Rudyard Kipling Rewards and Fairies (only half - the rest is for tonight)