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Archive for the ‘On writing’ Category

Incendiary blogging

Posted in Great blogs, On writing, Philosophy and culture, tagged , , on 23 May, 2010 | 15 Comments »

Blogging, I’ve decided, can be a humbling and baffling experience.  The things I most love sink without trace, while the merely ornamental go on and on.  Yes, probably the former are my darlings and are thus in need of a good crucifixion.  But it’s the latter that really kill me. So Chris Clarke, writing recently [...]

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Breaking the sound barriers

Posted in How to live, On writing, Transformation and inspiration, Women who've carried the day, tagged , , , , , , , on 13 May, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Sometimes you’ve just got to be amazed at what people are capable of.  Take my friend, Julie, for instance.  Julie has just headed off on a two-month speaking tour of the US and the UK to publicise the book she has written, Breaking the Sound Barriers, and its subject matter: how children who are deaf [...]

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Year one is when?

Posted in On writing, Philosophy and culture, tagged , , , on 22 April, 2010 | 6 Comments »

Benjamin Kunkel has written an elegant article about the Marxist theorist, Fredric Jameson, for The London Review of Books. Given the technicality of the concepts discussed – including those of Marxism (the dialectic, superstructure, and so on) and “that enlargement of literary criticism” which became “all-purpose theory” — it takes something to read the article. [...]

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Launch of blog anthology this Wed

Posted in On writing, Philosophy and culture, tagged , , , , , on 12 April, 2010 | 17 Comments »

This Wednesday night is the launch of the first Australian anthology of blog writing and I’m featured in it!  The launch is at Readings in Carlton from 6pm.  I’ll be reading my bit, along with a lot of others. I got a copy of the book in the mail a few weeks ago.  It was [...]

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The lamb roared: Quotes from March

Posted in On writing, Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , , , , on 3 April, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Read a luscious edition of the The Guardian Weekly in March.  Didn’t know where to look first, so bursting was it with stimulation and that beautiful assured insouciance I don’t find elsewhere. The week after wasn’t a patch which just goes to show it’s a fine chemistry of reader, writer and possibly, weather. Nancy Banks-Smith, [...]

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In with the portrait, out with the interview!

Posted in On writing, Philosophy and culture, tagged , , , , on 30 March, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Recently, inspired by watching Out of Africa again, I started reading the stories of Isak Dinesen, alias, Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke, whose life on the coffee plantation in Kenya, at “the foot of the Ngong Hills,” from 1913 to 1931 is the subject of Sydney Pollack’s great film. One of the stories from the collection [...]

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How I learnt to love the pen with Darwin’s bulldog

Posted in Letter writing, On writing, Philosophy and culture, tagged , , , , , on 15 March, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Susan Lawler is a lecturer in genetics and evolution at La Trobe University who, a few years ago, started an unusual experiment in teaching. Frustrated by the poor writing skills of her first-year students, she hit on the idea of using letters to teach both writing and genetics in one fell swoop.  Rather than have her [...]

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Germaine and The Monthly

Posted in Literature, On writing, Philosophy and culture, Status of women, tagged , , , , on 10 March, 2010 | 4 Comments »

Until last week I thought The Monthly benign, mostly harmless, occasionally stimulating. Sure, it published articles by male writers over articles by female writers in a ratio of 4:1, and had a tendency towards husband-and-wife writing sinecures.  But if it wasn’t ideal, it wasn’t uncommon either (especially as some of my readers and me discovered when [...]

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33 rules for writing fiction

Posted in Literature, On writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 4 March, 2010 | 6 Comments »

The Guardian recently asked a long list of authors to nominate their ten rules for writing fiction.  Here are 33 of the best (note, rules of blog writing: always use a kooky number): 1. Read it aloud to yourself because that’s the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are [...]

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Further adventures of an anecdote

Posted in On writing, Philosophy and culture, tagged , , on 15 January, 2010 | 12 Comments »

Just heard that one of my blog posts will be included in an anthology of blog posts to be published by Karen Andrews at Miscellaneous Press.  The anthology will be called Miscellaneous Voices: Australian Blog Writing #1 and will be released in April. Ironically, the post chosen for the anthology is about the persistence of a great anecdote.  [...]

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