Thursday, March 26, 2009

Advice of the Indefinite Time Period

I was going to blog about a number of things:
But instead I've just come across some of the best advice for a writer since "show, don't tell". In an interview with David Elfick, director of the new film Two Fists, One Heart. He and the writer, Rai Fazio, spent ten years in script development and his wisdom runs thus:

Writing is rewriting.

All writers, print this out large and stick it up in your workspace. Get it tattooed across your knuckles.

***
GTH - River, of course. I'm just in awe. And my I also take this moment to congratulate this long-time reader and commenter for topping 30 points in the GTH table!
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3 comments:

  1. Kath LockettThursday, March 26, 2009 at 10:44:00 PM PDT

    GTH - dark clouds representing your thoughts. And the say about friends and crack - tough luck my friend, you'll be wiping butt crack for at least another three years!

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  2. RiverThursday, March 26, 2009 at 10:58:00 PM PDT

    30 points? Really? Huh. Yet other commenters frequently have far better guesses than I do. Kath is right, three years of wiping. Hint: don't have a second child until the first can reliably wipe his own bum. Of course if you want them close in age feel free to ignore me. There's downsides to both methods. On the one hand with babies born close together you'll feel as if you're never going to get off the nappy merry-go-round, with children born further apart, you'll get used to an independent child, then find yourselves diving in all over again but you'll have forgotten just how bad it was........And here you are just getting used to Charlie, you probably don't want to think that far ahead.

    ReplyDelete
  3. RiverThursday, March 26, 2009 at 11:01:00 PM PDT

    Oh GTH, like Kath said, clouds representing your thoughts. In this case the swirling clouds representing the swirling emotions you and Mele are currently going through.

    ReplyDelete

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An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32