Sunday 14 December 2014

Great News!

When I was in the UK last year researching materials and settings for my dark ages novel, I met Veronica, a visual artist who is a friend of one of my ex-students. Veronica lives in Dolgellau, a small village I had chosen as a base of operations for my research activities in North Wales. She took me to her local upon my arrival and made me welcome. Later in the week she showed me one of her favourite walks, the Precipice Walk, which has views of Cader Idris and surrounding country. We spent a wonderful afternoon foraging on blackberries and talking about nature, culture and language, one main topic being the eventual loss of minority languages unless the speakers themselves stop reverting to English whenever communication becomes difficult.

We have kept in contact since my return to Australia and recently Veronica emailed me about Stiwdio Maelor, a new studio complex she has established in Lower Corris, a small village 10 miles from Dolgellau. The studio offers residencies for one to eight weeks and contains two spaces for visiting artists and one for a visiting writer. Each space has a bedroom and an artist or writer’s room and, because there are no telephones, television or internet, one can focus completely on one’s creative projects without interruption. The surrounding areas contain many walks through the beautiful Welsh landscape.

Front of Stiwdio Maelor
Photo by Veronica Calarco
I had been planning to go back to the UK for further research and for visiting friends, but had only considered doing this when my wife, Jo, could take long service leave and we could travel together. However, once the chance of a residency came up, Jo encouraged me to apply, which was incredibly supportive of her. I did apply and this week I received the news my application has been accepted.

So, I’ll be taking up an eight-week residency in early March next year, during which I will work on the second draft of my novel. I am thrilled to be going back to Wales, especially as I will be there in Spring, a season I have never experienced before in my previous travels to the UK, Ireland and Europe. And I am enormously grateful for the chance to spend a great block of time on my writing. I’m sure my adventures there will prompt some poems, too, and I will make sure to keep you all informed of my goings on.

The writer's room: no distractions but the view out the window.
Photo by Veronica Calarco
As being a writer is generally a lonely profession, I have always felt we should celebrate our accomplishments with those sympathetic communities we find ourselves in. Thank you for sharing my news. If you have had any recent achievements, let us know about them in the comments below.

Happy reading, musing, writing
Earl

Tuesday 18 November 2014

Common Writing Errors--Introduction

Although I left my permanent teaching position late last year, economic considerations meant that when a couple of sessional contracts came up I took them on. The result of this decision is that November is marking month. And because I am dealing with students of a similar standard to previous years, I am seeing the same errors in their work. Many of these also appear in manuscripts I assess privately or through organisations such as Writers Victoria. Consequently, I feel that a discussion of such errors may help beginning/emerging writers avoid them.

Below are the areas I usually cover when advising students and new writers about sources of error:

1.              Presentation/Formatting
2.              Grammar/Language
3.              Content
4.              General Observations/Advice

My intention is to deal with these areas in subsequent posts. However, as a taster of what is to come, I want to deal with one problem I frequently see: that/which confusion. I realise different countries or regions vary their approach to the treatment of—apologies for the jargon—restrictive clauses (those that are essential to the meaning of the sentence) and non-restrictive clauses (those that can be removed without affecting the meaning of the sentence). In Australian publishing, however, ‘that’ usually introduces a restrictive clause and ‘which’ introduces a non-restrictive clause, as in the examples below:

The intruder smashed the statue that was in the hallway.
(There are other statues in the house, but the intruder only broke the one that is in the hallway.)
The intruder smashed the statue, which was in the hallway.
(There is only one statue in the house and it is in the hallway.)

Basically, then, if you use ‘which’, you need a comma in front of it. And if the clause is in the middle of the sentence, you also need a comma after it:

The intruder smashed the statue, which was in the hallway, and then made off with the treasure that was hidden inside.

Does the idea of this series appeal to you? Let me know what you think by posting me a comment. And if you have a suggestion for a topic, please let me know.

Happy reading, musing, writing
Earl

Monday 27 October 2014

Why Welsh?

In my previous post I mentioned my interests in Celtic mythology and Welsh language and history. These came about for a variety of reasons, some to do with the fact I have Welsh ancestry on my father’s side. My paternal grandmother was born in Cardiff County, Wales, and came to Australia in the 1910s. I remember when I was told this as a child I felt some sort of kinship to the country. My father then said that if I couldn’t roll my r’s like the Welsh do, then I probably had missed out on the gene. I couldn’t, and so for a long time I chose to forget this aspect of my ancestry.

My father was born in Australia, yet people who met him often commented he seemed more English than Australian. This was likely due to the influence of his immigrant parents, his father having been born in Bishop’s Stortford, Essex, England, and who had also come out to Australia in the 1910s. Given my mother was born in Antwerp, Belgium, my heritage wasn’t so definite. And possibly because of this mix and the natural tendency to uphold one’s birthplace above others, for years I considered myself Australian before anything else.

That all changed after my reading of both Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Robert Graves’s The White Goddess and I fell in love with Celtic mythology. The stories and poems comprising the Matter of Britain—Arthur, Taliesin and Merlin, bards and druids—sang to me in a way that others hadn’t. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t roll my r’s. I had Welsh blood in me (and Scottish, when I went farther back in my ancestry); and I could even rationalise my Belgian heritage by pointing out the country was named after a Celtic tribe, the Belgae, some of whom had also settled in Britain.

Since the mid-2000s I have thrown myself even deeper into my love of all things Celtic. I have travelled three times to countries of the Celtic Fringe and have read and researched materials for a Dark Ages novel. I have started learning Welsh through a group operating in The Celtic Club in Melbourne. It is a hard language to learn, especially some of the pronunciations, and my progress is slow, though I am determined to become fluent eventually. My r’s are coming along nicely.

Do I still consider myself Australian rather than English or Welsh or Celtic? That’s a hard question, as it really doesn’t have only one answer. I am Australian by birth and by language usage. I barrack for Australian teams. I hold to Australian egalitarian values. However, even though I have travelled in and through Australian landscapes and appreciated their beauty, I feel more comfortable in Celtic landscapes, the mist, the mountains, the bright and dark green foliage. I prefer autumn, winter and spring to summer.

Since my visits to the countries of the Celtic Fringe, to Wales and Scotland in particular, I now know that deep sense of longing for home the Welsh call ‘Hireath’ (pronounced ‘Here-eyeth’, with a stronger ‘r’). I can’t wait to get back there, for immersion and re-connection. In the meantime, I can at least inhabit it in my imagination, through language learning and through book research and my writing. More about these activities in future posts.

Happy reading, musing, writing

Earl

Tuesday 30 September 2014

What to Expect

You might be wondering about the shift in focus of this blog, which is exemplified by the change of name. As I mentioned in my previous post, I took a redundancy package from my teaching job at Box Hill Institute and am now a full-time writer and part-time freelance teacher, editor, manuscript assessor and mentor. The previous blog reflected my teaching emphasis, even if it didn’t quite fulfil the promise I made to discuss how I used The Writing Cycle in my teaching and my own writing. While I still want to discuss that topic, I also want to include other creative areas, so that the blog will become a forum for what interests me, things like Celtic myths and symbols, myths in general, poetry, speculative and literary fiction, Welsh language and history, the Dark Ages, the Matter of Britain, and what is commonly termed the sacred.

There seems to be an agreed perception that in order to make a living from writing (at least initially), one should specialise in one form of fiction, say, whether it be paranormal romance or military SF, and present oneself in social media as a principle exponent of that speciality. For example, one’s blog posts should be about facets of the speciality, or reviews of others in the field, or interesting research titbits, or the actual writing process. I can see the sense in this approach, but I don’t think it is the only one. My own range of research interests is wide and all of them feed into my writing at one time or the other, which itself can be of different forms (poetry, fiction, non-fiction), so I see no reason in narrowing my focus to only one of these interests or one of the writing fields.

My choice of title for this rebooted blog reflects this decision. The word ‘awen’ is Welsh for inspiration, for the muse, and I see my work as responding to whatever the ‘muse’ (however you define this) gives me. I remember reading an interview with Ted Hughes at the time he was made Poet Laureate, and when he was asked what he would write his answer was something along the lines of ‘being faithful to the muse’. I happen to agree with this approach, though, like Hughes and many other writers, I don’t believe in waiting for the muse to give me something. As William Faulkner is reputed to have said: ‘I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning’.

Basically, then, this blog will feature those elements that contribute to my ‘awen project’, my attempt to follow what the muse has given me. I may discuss these ‘givens’, or the research involved in turning a given into a poem or story, or the writing techniques I feel may be useful for myself or for others. I may discuss other interests that are tangential to my experience, exploration and expression of ‘awen’, yet still somehow connected to these. I hope you will enjoy what I have to offer.

Happy reading, musing, writing

Earl

Wednesday 17 September 2014

A New Start

Hi Everyone

I know it's been a long time since I posted anything to this blog. Life, as usual, got in the way, and other things had higher priority. In fact, major things have happened to my life, like the fact that in September last year I took a redundancy package from my teaching position at Box Hill Institute.

Over the last year I have been adjusting to life as a full-time writer, which has meant new regimes and new ways of making money. I can't say I have fully acclimatised to my new lifestyle, but at least I have other income streams happening while I concentrate on my writing projects.

Although I am doing some sessional teaching, both in games writing and in poetry writing, I plan to shift the focus of this blog into my new creative directions. What these are I will describe in future posts.

Meanwhile, for those interested in writing poetry, I am teaching a 'poetry for beginners' course at Writers Victoria. Below are links to a course description and an interview I did about poetry, language and publishing. Maybe I'll see some of you there.

Light Up Your Words: Poetry for Beginners

Q & A With Earl Livings


Cheers
Earl