Blog Pieces

A WEEK INTO LOCK DOWN… …and I’m working out ways to control my roving mind – or is it brain function.  Whatever it is, it is flipping around all over the place and preventing me from keeping on task.   Are you having this problem? Or is it just me?  I need to switch off  the breaking news, in fact all the social media. I don’t need to know the latest cornovirus  figures. It only depresses me. The task I have given myself is to work on the sequel to ‘Mayhem in Melbourne’.   I have the first draft of the…

It is a little while since I posted.  It’s such an unsettling time. COVID-19 is on all our lips. When I heard about the lock down  I thought there’s an upside to this. I can really make headway with my book. No social engagements. Nothing to interrupt me.  Nothing I can do other than a quick trip for a few groceries. Everything to give to my book.  But it isn’t working out like that.  I can’t concentrate. My mind’s all over the place and therapeutic walks have all but vanished from my life. It is all the changes that are…

Last time I posted on this blog I talked about my writers’ block. I was suffering and feeling inadequate and somewhat miserable. The Internet is full of cures but I have found my own cure by chance. It may help you if you ever find yourself in the same state.  It is not a happy state.  Writers write I kept telling myself that. It did no good something was stopping me writing. Check out the book I have written here   My cure and I’m sure my writers’ Block is cured.   Walking! Instead of sitting at home and gazing at…

Hi there, This is a post with apologies. My aim is to post once a week yet the last couple of weeks have seen nothing from me. Why can’t I write?  Now my book is published I find myself word-tied. It’s as if words are NOT one the things I enjoy most in life. It’s as if one my greatest pleasures that of  playing with words and working out the best way to write something has gone. The challenged to make something funny or gripping or just plain interesting has disappeared. It  this Writers Bloc? It that what I have?…

I felt I had to post this picture of the pigeon.  He looks so fed up with the world.  I’m glad he decided to sit outside my inner-city bathroom window to display his feelings. He is so cute and I couldn’t help but laugh at him. Melbourne is being washed by continuous and heavy rain – much needed rain.  The place needed to be washed.  We have been coping with a horrible brown sludge that settled over everything after the last, much lighter, rain fall about a week ago.  The sludge hasn’t all gone yet because I can see rivulets…

As a newish arrival in Australian I think Australia Day is a good day for me to launch my book from my Website… Australia has been good to me and I like to celebrate that on Australia Day. Whatever day the powers-that-be-choose will be fine with me.  I am one of the many new residents here who want to thank the country for welcoming us. Mayhem in Melbourne -Behind the scenes at Caruthers Real Estate. My book is beside me on my desk and every time I look at it I want to shout ‘whoopee’ and ‘wow’ and thrust it…

I’m not going to tell you my goals.  Some Guru’s say that telling everyone commits you to sticking to them. On the other hand it could commit those you tell to keep nagging you about them. That’s something I don’t need. But that may work for you. We all respond differently. I have written my goals down.  I’ve kept the list short.  Experience has shown me that when I read them a month later if I have too many I’m daunted. It looks too hard and most of them drift away. I’m not writing down ‘lose at least 5 kilos…

A New Decade but not a good beginning. I have been holding off on writing anything about the start of this decade.  It is such a sad time in Australia for so many people that to say Happy New Year seems kind of cruel. As I watched the stunning and beautiful fireworks display over Melbourne city at midnight on New Year’s Day it was with mixed pleasure. Should we be celebrating with fireworks while beaches on the East Coast of Australia are crowded with thousands of people escaping the fires?  We wished each other happy New Year with hugs and…

The end of the year and it is time to review my year’s writing. This is a piece I wrote for my writing group.   Parade Day   I had an empty day at the end of the working week. Empty days are rare in my life especially since I began the on-line course, ‘Self publish your book with Joel Naoum’,  that has become very demanding. I don’t follow AFL so it took me a while to realise that it was the Grand Final Parade Day and therefore a public holiday. Not knowing this meant no social arrangements booked in.…

I have just read a piece by Australian author Ilka Tampke whose book, ‘Songwoman’ was voted the most ‘underrated book of the year’.  Her article in the Guardian starts by saying, ‘Writing is tough. My book went so unnoticed I won an award for it.’ Going unnoticed is the plight of so many of us writers. There could be an award for the most unnoticed book of the year. But I guess the underrated is better because not only was this book not noticed for some time, it was seen as a great book when it was noticed. Sadly, unnoticed…