Exciting new times for the Book Length Project Group and a name change for this blog

Well the time is right for a changing of the guard for the Book Length Project Group. A lovely new team (old friends and members of BLPG) will be taking over the coordination of the group, which will continue to run as usual on the third Sunday of each month at Mattie Furphy's House in Swanbourne, Perth, Western Australia. The new coordination team consists of three wonderfully talented writers, Dr Louise, Emily and Kristen.

Louise

Emily

Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the lovely Kristen. 

To save any name confusion, I'll be changing the title of this blog in the next few days. I still have to think of a good name but it will probably be one that defaults my own name (or I'll be the one defaulting to my own name!). I'll maintain all the old posts for those who want to look back.

A heartfelt thanks to everyone who has attended the Book Length Project Group during my time as Coordinator and a very special thank you to all the generous and talented guest speakers that we have had over that time.

Also thank you to The Fellowship of Australian Writers WA, to Pat, Trisha and Peter for their hospitality and for providing the Book Length Project Group access to the wonderful venue of Mattie Furphy House over the past two years, and into the future.

And my very best to the new team. Exciting, creative, productive times ahead!

The poet and the crime fiction writer

The Book Length Project Group is fortunate is having two wonderful guests along to our next meeting on June 15, 2014. It will be interesting to see what sort of cross-pollination occurs when Poet Rose van Son and Harper-Collins Crime Fiction Writer and Writer in Residence at the Fellowship of Australian Writers, Felicity Young, meet with the group to discuss their writing process and share their knowledge.

A little about these two highly accomplished writers:

Rose van Son’s poems, stories and articles have appeared in The West Australian, Westerly, Landscapes, Cordite, Australian Poetry, Indigo and more.

 

She has won places in the Tom Collins Poetry Awards, the W.H. Treanor Poetry Awards, the Peter Cowan Patron’s Prize, the Fremantle Press Tanka Prize, City of Perth National Haiku Awards, paper wasp haiku and The Heron’s Nest.   She is Creatrix editor for Creatrix online.

 

She won first prize in the KSP Short Fiction Award, 2000.

 

She has read at the Margaret River Writers’ and Readers Festival and has judged the 2009 Julie Lewis Poetry Prize and the ECU Talus Prize.

Her poetry collection (Sandfire) was published by Sunline Press. 

Felicity Young is Writer in Residence at the Fellowship of Writing WA in June. She has seven novels published and is working on another. I am currently reading her latest novel, The Scent of Murder, and finding it engrossing and thoroughly enjoyable. Look out for a review of the book here in the coming weeks.

With her permission I have copied her bio from her website:

Felicity was born in Germany and attended boarding school in the UK while her parents travelled the world with the British army. She thinks the long boring plane trips home played an important part in helping her to develop her creative imagination.

Felicity settled with her parents in Western Australia in 1976, became a nurse, married young and had three children. Not surprisingly, it took ten years to complete an Arts degree (English lit) at UWA.

In 1990 Felicity and her family moved to a small farm 40 kilometers NE of Perth where she established a Suffolk sheep stud, reared orphan kangaroos and embarked upon a life of crime writing.

Felicity will be holding two workshops on writing while she is  at the Fellowship. What a great opportunity for the local writing community!

Writing tip 27 - a cop-out

The truth is that, offhand, I can't think of one for this week, but I did have a quick scan of the Internet to check out other writers' blogs and found this one that provides "21 harsh but eye-opening tips from great writers".

I'd suggest a visit. You'd have to love some of these from the likes of Hemmingway, Twain, Orwell, Vonnegut, Parker, Gaiman and others.

Now I'm going to stop using semi-colons. Again. What are they for anyway? We've always had an uneasy relationship!

Writing tip 26 - Embrace constraints and set limits

Embrace Constraints

If you are not in the habit of seeking out TED Talks, I'd recommend that you do so.

In a talk called "Embrace the Shake" Artist, Phil Hansen, talks about how an unexpected limitation, and what he calls 'thinking inside the box', ultimately freed up his creativity.

 

Sometimes having unlimited choices is not the best for creativity. Imposing constraints on the project might encourage the artist into experimental or problem-solving mode, so that s/he is forced to create within that self-imposed set of rules. The rules provide walls to push against. No form, no freedom.

It's worth considering. If nothing else listen to the talk by clicking on the "Embrace the Shake" link here, or above. Hansen has made some fascinating art by embracing his limitation.

Set limits

Slightly different, but there are a couple of things I want to mention here.

The first I learned when I was researching and writing up my PhD thesis. That is to set limits around the size and scope of the project. You probably have enough ideas for several books. If you stick to one idea at a time, it will help you to keep control of your project.

Another way of setting limits is to try imposing time limits on daily writing. Set yourself an hour, five hours, or half an hour of regular writing time (or any other number that contains the writing as your time allows) and work within the constraints of that limitation.

Writing Prompt

Choose and impose a strict limitation on a small (or large) writing project as an experiment to see how this changes things.