Australia Day

Last year, 2009 - I spent a relatively un-Australian Day of celebration. Just like the adverts, I spent the day on the lounge, but we were watching a Project Runway marathon. No barbeque, no flag waving and nothing really patriotic. This probably had a lot to do with my state of mind at that time. It wasn’t a particularly good time of my life.

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This year however, I was determined to be a little more productive.

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2010 Australia Day for me.

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First thing this morning, I took a trip to the local hardware store and bought a trailer load of concrete, brackets and bolts then spent most of the day in the sweltering heat mixing concrete with a shovel and pouring piers for a deck. Not the most patriotic thing either, - (that part came later in the evening) - but next year we will have somewhere to hold a decent barbecue.
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It has become a Bathurst tradition for families to gather in Peace Park, on the lush green bank of the Macquarie River, to celebrate Australia Day. This was our first time and it turned out to be great evening. Awards were presented to deserving individuals; for sporting, charitable and environmental achievements. There were fire jugglers, young musical talent, fireworks followed by the outdoor screening of a family movie (Night at the Museum 2) on a huge inflatable movie screen.

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All in all it was a productive and very enjoyable day. Flags were waved and I’m proud to be Australian!

A Place Of My Own

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For the last few years, my own little place in the house has been the back corner of our sun-room. It is four metres long but less than two metres wide, separated from the rest of the room by a couple of bookcases. My “office” is actually a step up from what I used to have so I can’t really complain.
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Sometimes it is hard to concentrate on my writing because the other three quarters of the room is taken up with my wife’s sewing table and the kid’s electronic corner. This techno-marvel contains the stereo, the latest in games machines including Rock Band for the Play Station - complete with guitars and drums and the kid’ computer. It is a rare occasion when I am in the room by myself. I’ve also come to the conclusion that there isn’t a single activity my boys enjoy that does not involve lots of noise.
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The other problem with my current work space is that there is not enough room to set up my painting equipment and leave it out until the project is completed. Packing every thing up at the end of a session is a pain in the creative process.
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Now for the good news. The council have approved the development application for my new studio. We ordered it today and it should be ready in four to five weeks. I can hide up the back yard in my studio to write in peace and set up my paints with a table to cut matt-boards and for my light-box. I’ll even have enough room to run some small art workshops and to set up an evening writer’s group.
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Life is good. A place of my own!
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Generosity

It amazes me sometimes how generous people can be. I was searching Youtube the other night and stumbled across an amazing band from Orangeburg South Carolina in the US, called I Nine. I listened to a few of their songs on Youtube.

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The band has a delightful acoustic sound. The lead singer Carmen Keigans, looks and sounds a little like Jewel with a hint of Avril Lavigne every now and then but her sound is haunting and unique.

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The following day, I went to my local music store and was disappointed that they were unable to locate the bands album to order in for me. I started a search on the web for somewhere to buy the album and found Carmen’s web site.

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Not only does Carmen have a beautiful voice, she is a wonderfully generous person as well. When she found out I couldn’t get the album here in Australia, she e-mailed all the songs and a couple of bonus tracks to me.

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I was blown away by Carmen’s generosity.

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If you haven’t heard I Nine perform check out this link to the Youtube video of their song ‘Change Nothing’

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZhT89-5ilY

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Another of their songs you should look out for is ‘Seven Days of Lonely’

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Thank you Carmen, you are brilliant.

Adopting a Koala

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My family and I recently returned from our annual holiday. This years trek was to Port Macquarie on the North Coast of New South Wales. One of the brochures at the resort where we stayed had information about the Koala Preservation Society of NSW and the Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie.

We decided to visit the Koala Hospital and take their free tour. The Koala Hospital is run by volunteers and they get very little funding to carry out their work. The hospital has koala admissions of between 200 – 300 sick and injured koalas each year. Most that recover are nursed back to health and released into their home range. However some, like Seaview Farida, a juvenile female koala will probably need to remain at the hospital or a similarly protected area for the rest of her life.
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Farida’s story.


Farida was brought into the hospital in August 2009. She was found on the ground in Seaview Avenue, Port Macquarie, with a wound to her right wrist and forearm. Little Seaview Farida had suffered a rather gruesome dog attack that left her with extensive damage to her right hand, part of which needed to be amputated.

By mid-September, Farida’s wounds were healing well and she was healthy enough to be moved to one of the outside yards. Although she survived her ordeal beyond all expectation, it is unlikely Farida can ever be released. She can use her injured hand to help with manoeuvring in her tree, but it is useless for climbing. Without the ability to travel easily and quickly between trees and to climb high to seek food and shelter, Farida would likely become the victim of another predator.

So Seaview Farida is now a permanent resident at the Hospital.

The Koala Hospital has an adoption scheme to help raise the money needed to look after the permanent residents and to continue their great work. We were so touched by Farida’s story and those of the many other koala’s in their care that we decided to become part of the adoption scheme.


It is amazing how good it feels, just doing this small thing to help one of Australia’s iconic animals and the people who look after them.
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For more information about the Koala Hospital, you can visit them at the Macquarie Nature Reserve, Lord Street, Port Macquarie. (Definitely worth a visit.)

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Check out their web site - http://www.koalahospital.org.au/

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Updates to Web Site

I have just spent some quality time updating my personal website.

http://jefferyedoherty.googlepages.com/





The site is a place where I can showcase some of my work. It is split into two sections, WORDS and PICTURES.

WORDS is where my children's writer persona lives and PICTURES is where I keep my art gallery pages.

It is easy to display my art on the internet but much harder to do so with my writing. Posting stories on the net is technically self-publishing in an electronic format. This could cause major problems when trying to negotiate sales of those stories to publishers. I have however added some short excerpts from several of my writing projects.

I have also added some new paintings to my galleries.

Drop by and take a look.
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NaNoWriMo - Winner

50,349 words!


I was actually doubtful that I was going to make the challenge this year. I kept up there with the daily word quota but I was hoping for a couple of 3000 or even 4000 word days to get me over the family holiday and 21st Wedding Anniversary that also fell in November. I had to take the laptop on holidays with us but I did scrape home with a win.
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The most surprising thing this year, I was planning to work on three junior novels in a series, planning for about 24,000 words each. I was hoping there was enough story in each book to reach that length. After 50,000 words, I found I still have about 5000-6000 words more to do to complete the storyline for the first book. (It will be shorter than that once edited).
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The other cool thing is that I came up with a surprise ending, much better than the one I planned. The characters just led me there. Now, it's time to put the story away for a month or two and finish editing my Chapter Book - 'Paper Magic'
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Next year, I'm booking our holiday in some other month. November is not for lounging by the pool. It's for writing. 9Actually, every month is for writing but November especially.

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NaNoWriMo - Week One

NaNoWriMo Week One

Ok. Week one of (NaNoWriMo) National Novel Writing Month is over and I am sitting at this moment on a respectable 12699 words. This is despite the fact I have just come back from a wonderful 21st wedding anniversary weekend away with my wife.

Now it’s time to get back to writing. In 2007 and 2008, by this time into the challenge, my stories were starting to take strange, unplanned turns.

I found out about NaNoWriMo toward the end of October, 2007 and entered the challenge with the simple image of the main character returning home from the cemetery where he had put flowers on his dead girlfriends grave. She had been killed a month earlier when a drunk classmate ran her down in a car. On the way home, he meets his girlfriend who begs him to help her save the boy who killed her. I had no other ideas about the story and basically explored what happened next to explain her appearance. The seat-of-the-pants method was quite fun but the final product, though it had some interesting concepts, was a complete confused mess.

I planned a little more in 2008 and did much better. Thanks a lot to the book cover art I created as an inspiration to keep writing. I still use it as my desktop graphic. It’s also the main reason I want to try and break into the book cover design industry. 2008’s effort was much more cohesive, but still ran off on several tangents that took me away from the story I envisioned.

This year, not only am I on track with my word count, I am on track with the story too, without the problem of losing the freshness of the story by over planning. There have been a couple of surprises for my with the story, some interesting new characters who have turned up out-of-the-blue and two of my bit part characters seems to have pushed their way to the front of the stage. But the main storyline is still true to the plan.

The above picture is of Clang, one of the bit part characters. He was an AI computer program placed inside a robot cat. Clang decides he likes being a cat a little too much and conveniently loses his vocal programming and now only obeys the commands he wants to obey.

This year I didn’t set out every scene in the outline, I picked the major plot points of the story and made signposts to use as a guide. I know I have to get the main character from where he is to the next signpost and I work out what events would believable get him to that point. It seems to be working and I have come up with some interesting events I couldn’t really have planned in advance.

Interesting times, but enough of this for now, I’m going back to my writing. I’ll post another update next week.