Newcastle Adventure: Day 2 and 3

Um, before I get into this, I’m pretty sure the TV in the common room next door just said “Sixty Thousand Wizards”, this is an important fact I think you need to know.

So. Wow. How has it only been 3 days? I am having such an amazing time, and I don’t know where to start! The beginning, I suppose, yesterday morning.

My first volunteer shift was kind of a bit odd. I think they’ve rostered too many tech vollies and there was a lot of standing around and “go with those guys and see if they need a hand” – I hate that kind of stuff. I’d much rather be doing something, or be doing nothing, then awkwardly hovering near other people working. For a while I dubbed myself “the official lead gaffer of the 2011 TiNA festival”. 

From there I went to the mentor meet and greet. My mentor Kaylan is pretty amazing and she said the magic words “no, I think going to uni to study writing could actually hinder your career as a writer”. Thank Christ. Because if she’s said she thought I should go back to uni I would have given up the whole idea all together. Go and get a trade, you know? Carpentry or something. I also met some other excellent people, like Joe, who just casually mentioned he has a feature film coming out next week, and Van, who wrote Black Hands/Dead Section, a play I worked on at uni. The mentor meet and greet morphed into the artist meet and greet, which I sort of stuck around for, and hovered on the edge of. There are some amazingly talented people here, some fun and enthusiastic people, and so far, no wankers. The impossible has become reality.

Then, suddenly, there was a group of 15ish of us, and we were walking, and it was so very cold. We detoured by someone’s hostel, and then waited in the shelter of Customs House while the wind blustered until the bus arrived. Then all of us piled onto the bus, much to the *great delight* of the *super enthusiastic* bus driver – it turns out it’s not just a Translink thing… most bus drivers hate everything.

Alex’s house is only the most amazing house I’ve ever seen. It’s like a grown up house with nice floors and a beautiful kitchen and antique furniture (including an old school dentist’s chair) but Alex has filled it with awesome things like Daleks and a H2G2 poster and a pool table. The important stuff. We ate cherry pies in the shape of Tardises …. Tardi? And drank Sonic screwdrivers:

Then we played the most excellent game of fuck, marry, kill – except it was make out with, repopulate the earth with and throw to the zombies. Nathan Fillion was the eventual winner, with Arthur Darvill a close second.

Then there was a taxi adventure home again and a fabulous night’s sleep.

This morning it was the most amazing breakfast – Belgian chocolate crepes at this amazing place with Sian (another new friend I sort of knew from the internet) and Alex and Fin and some of Alex’s friends and some people I didn’t know that I probably should have introduced myself to. It is difficult to be polite when you are starving and there are crepes covered in chocolate and strawberries and also there was tea. That is my excuse. I can probably introduce myself to them tomorrow or the next day, it’s that kind of environment.

Then I went to a Cryptic Crossword workshop – I thought I was going to hate it, but actually I kind of loved it. I’m not going to pretend that my brain didn’t break quite a few times, but there’s a real logic to cryptic crosswords, and a knack, and some fun little tricks, and once someone points them out to you they become more and more obvious. I took some notes, at one point I said “Crossword writers make me angry” and at another point someone else said “Words are so great”. I think those two things probably sum it up quite nicely. Afterwards, team awesome, which consisted of about 6 or 8 of us who’d just done the workshop (having never really done cryptic crosswords before) totally kicking the shit out of the giant cryptic crossword on the wall. Fuck yeah.

Sian and I went on an adventure to find hats for the ball tomorrow night. We were both rather successful, mine has silver sequins. Sian is also from Brisbane, and we have decided to encourage each other to op shop more often upon our return – because op shopping is rad. Yay for new friends.

Then I went to a workshop called “Building Fictional Worlds” which couldn’t have been more different to the Crossword one, yet just as fulfilling. It was a quiet, calm atmosphere and there were only a few of us there. We did writing exercises around building and creating and managing your own fictional world.  I was so surprised by the stuff that came out of my brain. I went it with a mind buzzing full of cryptic crossword clues and top hats and came out with pages and pages of notes about a world I had never thought of before. And it’s amazing how creating geography creates peoples and issues and tensions and hierarchies. My fictional world is a planet made out of space debris; it has 5 moons, one of which is made out of smashed together CD players. The magnetic poles are made of actual magnets.

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus" - Mark Twain 

Right, so what then? Oh yeah. “Would you Rather” at the festival club, which was super fun and ridiculous, but I facebooked all about it, so I won’t repeat. Except to say that “It’s a load-bearing emu” is the best phrase I’ve heard in a long time. I think someone should start a band called The Load-Bearing Emus.

“Lizzy!” I hear you say, “what a packed and busy, amazing day, you must have been so tired you went and had a little nap!” Well, dear reader, thanks for essentially calling me a pussy. SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK and also, I still had a volunteer shift to do. So, 6pm rolled around and I switched back into tech mode. Only this time I actually had a good time, and felt useful. I helped Dale, whose role I’m not 100% clear on, to move sound equipment across 3 different venues. There was some total fail – we lugged speakers and a projector and a screen and a desk and a heap of other shit up rickety stairs only to be told half an hour later that it wasn’t needed, so lugged it all the way down again. Also an ironingboard is being used as a keyboard stand. Also one of the venues is someone’s house. ALSO I totally sprung Dale saying nice things about me on the phone to the Production Manager – so that was nice.

Vollies get one free meal for every shift they do – tonight I had a delicious steak in mushroom sauce with surprise mash potato hiding underneath it. Best.

Oh yeah, at some point in there I bought a belt, lost my EFTPOS card, found it again, met ANOTHER taxi driver – he used to live in New Farm, Brisbane and accidentally bought sparkling water only to tip it down a sink 5 minutes later.

Have I convinced you to come to TiNA next year yet? 

What about now?

Newcastle Adventure: Day 1

Well, I wasn’t sure if I was going to blog while I am here, but my adventure has been so excellent already, I just had to tell someone about it. Who better than the bloggeroos?

What is this wonderment? Read on...

I think I went into a bit of shock when I saw how tiny the plane was. It was tiny – not like a ‘4-seater, let’s just pop out to the island death trap’ tiny, but still… small. And the hostess didn’t even look at my ticket. I had this sudden panic that they were putting me on the wrong flight and I was going to end up somewhere bizarre and remote. It didn’t help that someone said the word “Charleville” right after I sat down. Who would want to go to Charleville I ask you? Oh that’s right, that’s where Boyfriend is going tomorrow for 7 weeks. I was pretty sad about that actually and when I got into my seat, I had a few little tears. But we then literally spent half an hour waiting to take off, and I didn’t want the lady next to me thinking I was crazy slash afraid of flying, so I dried my eyes and ate some candy. Good.

Upon arriving in Newcastle, I instantly struck up a friendship with my taxi driver, whose name is Kerry, and who has offered to be my personal driver for the week, should I need one. What? Is this real life? Does this happen? I have his mobile number, it’s so strange. And excellent.

Kerry didn’t know anything about TiNA, which was momentarily frightening, but every one else I’ve encountered so far has known instantly that I’m “here for the festival”. The guys who run the backpacker’s I’m at are awesome, and super chilled out. Which made me feel better when at first they couldn’t find my booking, and had also put someone else in my room. It’s ok, they kicked them out.

I went in search of the place I had to go for the volunteer induction. Couldn’t find it, asked someone: “oh, you’re here for the festival” – it wasn’t a question. Found it. Found out where I need to be tomorrow. Got a map and a *lanyard* (love a good lanyard) and went on my merry way. Busses are free on the main street until 6pm (fucking wow!) so I got one of those into the “city”. I’m not trying to be rude; I know what people from real cities think of Brisbane, but oh Newcastle, you so small!

I ate some Pad Thai and tossed up between my two options for the evening: drinking at the pub where I am staying, possibly meeting people, possibly drinking too many $3 drinks OR going to Avenue Q at the Civic Theatre. Tough choice, but I eventually decided on option 1 and began walking back, via the mall.

There were some people, and they were shouting. I briefly considered walking the other way in case they were youths who were going to harass me. But do you know who it was? Only the only person in Newcastle that I know, Alex and her brother, Fin. What is this? Some sort of fiction? Alex and I have never actually met before tonight, but why let such extraneous details get in the way?

There were other people, they led us to a red door beside a sign saying “construction site: do not enter”, we entered. Past a blowy vent, up a rickety stair and into this open, white walled, polished floored space. Suddenly, I was ripping pages from books, and making these:

I’m not really sure how that happened. We talked about Doctor Who and the festival and the relative merits of taping or stapling the cones.

It was the best introduction to TiNA and NYWF I could have hoped for.

33 Week Challenge Week 19: Write Something Every Day for a Week

There is something fairly amazing about having the inspiration to write. I think perhaps I spend 98% of my life in a permanent state of writer’s block and the other 2% in a state where I think of so many things it’s hard to get it all down. I have ideas while I’m sleeping, I have ideas at work… I get most of my ideas in the shower actually. I like to think that it’s 98% writer’s block and not 98% unimaginative, but I suppose it’s a possibility.

So, I’m pretty sure it’s not in my original list but I have been thinking for some weeks now that I should make one of my challenges “write something every day for a week”. And when sudden inspiration hit last week, I made myself do this, and I couldn’t be happier. 3 characters had already fallen, not fully formed but I would say, fully loved into my mind a few weeks' prior. One character in particular makes me so happy. Firstly, I never write lead female characters for some reason, and here she is, a wonderful, excellent girlperson all ready for me to send off on adventures. Secondly, she is from the future. I was worried that I had started to write some sort of River Song fanfiction at first, but no, she is her own self, her own person, and also she has smiley faces on her shoelaces.

When I was younger I started a couple of “novels”, and they would always inevitably turn out horribly. I am quite good at coming up with snappy, opening moments, I am the queen of first chapters… and then I would just flounder. I’d know about 5 major plot points I would want to happen but I had this bizarre belief I had to start at the start and plow through to the end. I’d dawdle by trying to write character descriptions of characters I hadn’t even written yet and plot arcs that I had no control of. Disaster.

Then I turned to poetry. NEVER read the poetry of your youth, if you wrote it. You will come to hate your teenage self with a passion. My teenage self was obsessed with long, rambling lines of poetry sandwiched between bad rhyming couplets. I don’t know what she was doing, but it was rarely good. It got a little better, but I never really enjoyed writing poetry anyway, so I’m not really sure why I tried.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered the joy and wonder that is comedy. WHY had I been trying to write deep, emotional things when I could be writing puns and hilarious gag characters? (For those playing at home, please see Grumpy, the friendly dwarf). And yes, I turned to play writing. WHY would I write tens of thousands of words when I could write ten minutes of frivolity? Especially when Underground Productions so kindly accepted not one but two of my scripts into it’s short play festival?

And yet, when this idea fell into my head, I knew instantly that it was a novel, and I also knew that some bad things were going to happen, and some things might be sad or unfair. But I also knew that it would have moments of comedy, and also that the tone wasn’t going to be sad and dark and gloomy. I have placed my main character out of her time, and this leads to some pretty amusing encounters with people, objects and things that my readers, but not my character, are completely familiar with. Also, my other two characters are kind of an amusing pair of petty criminals, and I enjoy their banter greatly.

I recently posted this excerpt on my tumblr, it’s one of the first things that came to me. Yes, I had the idea in a Laundromat.

***

Terry opened his eyes. His forehead lay on the filthy tiles of the Laundromat, a piece of lint playing gently in a breeze near his left eye. His right felt puffy and sore – she’d punched him. Oh God, the knitting needle. He looked down. It was still embedded in his leg.

“So. You be taking all the shinies from the washing boxes?”

Her boots came into view, the laces had little smiling faces on them at regular intervals. They looked at him. He found it difficult to match their gaze.

“You be taking the shinies no? Those shinies not for you to be keeping.”

Her accent sounded normal, but she spoke all wrong. It irritated him.

“Why are you talking like that? Stop it.”

She kicked him. “Why you be talking like that… like you be from the moves”.

“The moves?”

“The moves! The movies.” After a pause she added,  “the films,” but the word seemed to sit strangely in her voice, as though it had never been there before.

Terry stared up at her. She glared at him fiercely from within a pile of scraggly, blonde hair. Dirty blonde his mother would have called it - sort of a dull colour.  But it framed her young face like a lion’s mane, and gave her a presence he found intimidating. Or perhaps it was the knitting needle she’d imbedded in his thigh, he suddenly thought – one of those.

***

In fact, quite a few things came to my mind in that Laundromat. It was the week I was knitting, which is quite an amazing way to have ideas can I just say. You turn a lot of your brain off, but you also leave a lot of it on… and some of that is the creative part. It’s kind of genius, really, which is why it’s so tragic that the first line that popped into my head was:

“There’s a girl sitting in this laundromat and she’s knitting!”

Genius, Lizzy, really inspired. I can’t imagine where that idea came from, can you? But really though, what was important was the voice that came with it, the man’s face that appeared, the backstory that started to form.

What was also important was that I knew that while I had dreamed up a fairly exciting and interesting scene, it didn’t have to be the first chapter, and I didn’t have to follow linearly, or know what was going to happen next. I started this week with nothing, and I’ve come out of it with 4000 words. I did this by sitting at a blank page and writing headers like, The Girl doesn’t like Coles and The Girl finds herself somewhere strange. Then I would look at that header, and ideas would start to flow, and I would write punchy, opening-esque scenes to go with each one. One day perhaps I’ll have 100s of scenes like this, and I’ll start putting them in order, and there’ll be joining up scenes and auxiliary characters and you know, a proper plot and it will all look lovely. Or maybe I’ll continue to write disjointedly and all over the place, and that will be a narrative feature I shall use to tell this tale. Who knows? The point is, I feel like I could go on doing this till the 2% runs out, and maybe even increase it up to 3%, or 4. It’s been a great week.

I take way too many of these photos in my pj's.

Just quickly, I’m going to TiNA (This is Not Art) in Newcastle in just over a week and I’m pretty smegging excited. Alex and I are going to meet with our faces and I’m going to volunteer in some capacity and I’m going to go to a million events while I’m not volunteering and I’m going to stay in a youth hostel in a city I’ve never been to before and it’s all going to be amazing. I can tell you with honesty that I would not have done this before this year, before these challenge blogs.

Also, a shout out to Eloise Kemish and Kath Chown who are both ladies I don’t really know all that well but who have recently told my face that they read and enjoy my blog. It really means a lot to hear that from people, and I thank you both, and every one else who secretly lurks on this page for lurking, and for reading and for validating my existence. You guys are all the best.

Also to Alex, who wrote the best blog today. It made me smile while processing timesheets at work, which is an unthinkable thing.

33 Week Challenge Week 18: Run the Bridge to Brisbane

Spoliers

Well, fuck. I just ran 10km.

Last year I would have told you I was allergic to exercise, now I’m an orange belt in karate and just ran the Bridge to Brisbane. It’s an identity shift of epic proportions.

This is actually one of my biggest challenges, because far from being a weekly thing, I have spent considerable time training for this one. I’ve endured shin splints (one of the worst pains of my life) and I’ve run in a storm. I’ve become psychologically connected to the same 90 minutes of music to the point where I’m not sure I can run to anything else. More to the point, when I hear those songs in other contexts, I can’t be sure I won’t just drop what I’m doing and run away. Sometimes, that’s all I want to do.

I actually enjoy it. Well, that’s a stretch. I enjoy the feeling you get afterwards, and the feeling you get after certain little wins along the way. A few weeks ago I was aiming to beat 5km without stopping. I was running through New Farm, exhausted, and had just about given up. I was only a block from home and I honestly didn’t think I could go any further. Then, the little voice in my ear said “Time: 35 minutes, Distance: 5.05 kilometers” – I literally whooped. If that feeling wasn’t good enough, the look on the face of the jogger passing me the other way made it totally worth it. Sort of stunned understanding. I’m pretty sure that was the day I then proceeded to run another 1.5km.

I apologise if this is boring you. It would have bored me last year. Lots of things have changed about me this year. I’m more spontaneous, I say ‘no’ less often. I make more time for myself, but I often spend that time doing more interesting things than incessantly scrolling my twitter feed. I mean I still do that too, but not always.

I’ve never been a competitive person, I mean, I’ll get shitty if I lose at monopoly just like anyone else, but I can drop it easily. But this year, mostly due to karate, I’ve been all about pushing myself to be better. Sometimes this means I get really angry in a karate class because I’m not as good as I think I should be. But then it means I try harder, run faster, or further, kick higher. It means I actually put in the hard yards and practice at home (unheard of… piano lessons, cello lessons, singing lessons, drama lessons, physical theatre classes, a short lived string of high-jump successes in primary school – they can all attest to that). Now I’m competitive with myself.

And yesterday, I beat my only Personal Best. I ran the Bridge to Brisbane in 1 hour and 12 minutes.

I have to say, I did get a little bit competitive… there was this guy dressed as Darth Maul a couple of meters ahead of me for the entire length of the course. He was wearing a plastic mask over his entire head, a full, black costume and knee length boots. Oh yeah, and a double light sabre. I was thoroughly impressed with him, but I kept thinking “if he can do this dressed like that, the least I can do is beat him over the line”. I just couldn’t catch him though. Every time I saw him, he was just that little bit too far ahead. And then, in the last 500m, I pulled something else out, and I practically sprinted. You bet your ass I beat Darth Maul.

 Using the wifi at work, hello river!

Completing this challenge also draws to a close another one, raise money for charity. I raised $300 for the Red Cross – thanks so much to everyone who donated. I’m now going to add my own contribution and send it off to them, I do hope they buy themselves something special, a new dress, or those special earrings they’ve had their eye on for a while. Or you know, foreign aid and needles… one of them.

I've turned anonymous commenting off

It's nothing personal, it's just that I can't stand not knowing who is saying things. Particularly because I can't reply to anyone, anyway... but it's so much worse when you're anonymous. You should be able to post with a google account or openID... sorry if you don't have those things. If you whinge enough at me I'll turn it back on. But let's face it, you're probably not going to do that...

L

It's hard out here for a nerd

Oh lordy is it hard out here for a nerd at the moment. There is so much nerd glory in my life I’m running out of time for things like eating and sleeping. Let me fill you in…

Doctor Who  (no spoilers for “Night Terrors”)

For the first time since becoming a Doctor Who fan, I am watching episodes with other fans. That is to say that no one else knows anything more than I do, and I have to wait! Oh Moffat* do I have to wait! I’m really enjoying it though, I thought it would be agonising, but actually it just makes it feel all the more exciting. Dissecting each episode after it comes out with fellow Who-fiends, many of whom are only into it because I wouldn’t shut up about it near them, is the best! After 2 viewings, I feel pretty great about “Let’s Kill Hitler” – so many answers! So many new questions! I absolutely adore Alex Kingston and Matt Smith is ever more owning the role and making it amazing. I am hoping that Season 7 will be the Doctor and River. I do love Amy and Rory, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like their time is coming to an appropriate end. Hopefully Rory will only have to die one or two more times – a body can only take so much.

Game of Thrones

Just got into this. It’s the best fucking thing. One episode to go. No one tell me how it ends or I’ll fight you. Holy Moffat is this show amazing. I can’t even… form logical sentences about it, particularly because of how episode 9 just ended. You know what? I can’t even write about this at the moment, but here, laugh uproariously at this image, as I did.

Torchwood: Miracle Day (STOP. Rant time. There will be many spoilers. ALL the spoilers for all seasons ever.)

So I’m only watching Torchwood due to some sort of perverse desire to torture myself now. I feel like it still deserves it’s place in my nerdblog because 1. It’s Torchwood, 2. I have a strong loyalty to Captain Jack, who I am pretending is TRAPPED in this terrible story line and can only be RESCUED by my staring at him and wishing a lot, 3. I am devoting a lot of energy to caring about it, because I am a nerd.

WHAT IS GOING ON TORCHWOOD? Firstly, Jack is not gay, and by making him ‘act’ gay you have kind of ruined the whole point, which is that his sexuality is fluid, flexible and not a defining feature of his character. Or rather, the fluidity is a defining feature, but no 21^st Century category is. Now, I have no issue with the 1920s love story/back story with Angelo… it was sort of sweet and interesting. Well it was, until it suddenly had little to nothing to do with the plot. Also the bit where Jack gets all uppity because Angelo has an issue with the idea of two men loving each other could have been saved with one extra sentence. Jack says something like “god forbid two men could love each other!” and all that needs to be added is “trust me, where I come from you can marry an eight-tentacled creature from Zerk, if you want, which you wouldn’t.” That’s something the REAL Jack would have said. Also Jack fucks some random guy from a bar but Ianto gets cock blocked by tinned beans and then dies? Are you serious?

Secondly, there are no aliens. This is Torchwood, outside the government, beyond the police, tracking down ALIEN LIFE ON EARTH and….  Need I go on? I want aliens.

Thirdly, is this not the same time stream as say… Amy and Rory’s? Did they just casually forget to mention to The Doctor that no one can die and governments are burning people alive and also everything is a police state and there are terrible storylines running rampant through the streets of America? This is one of the reasons I am holding on, I am watching in the vain hope that this will somehow be explained, I don’t even care if it’s a Russell T Davies ‘woops never mind it actually happened like this’ switcheroo special.

Phew, now I’m angry. Better finish with…

POTTERMORE

You KNOW I got early entry. So, so exciting! I have been all over the first book and there are so many things to discover! It very much has a great J. K Rowling feel. It’s a like a super mega version of how her website used to be (/is still?). One of my favourite things was the story of how Petunia and Vernon met, and better yet how shit went down when they had dinner with Lily and James. Also reams and reams of wand lore, one of my special interests.

Exciting News: I’m a Gryffindor!

More exciting news: Microsoft Word not only recognises the word Gryffindor, it autocorrects it to have a capital G.

I’m really, very happy with my wand also, it’s 14 and a half inches, which is exceedingly long… this might be because I am tall but also (I hope) because according to Ollivander’s wand lore, big personalities and great witches/wizards often have long wands.

Go on, have a little snigger about my “long wand”, you’ll feel better and no one can judge you, you’re probably home alone, eating nutella and writing a blog about your nerdy fucking life. No wait… that’s me.

*I now use Moffat in place of the word god… in Moffat we trust.

P.S No challenge last week… obviously, but there’s a big one this week! Get excited! If you want.
P.P.S If you want to be my friend on Pottermore (and you do) I'm NifflerSand142