Sign: Leo
City: Melbourne
Country: AU
Signup Date:
09/04/06
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Saturday, June 07, 2008
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Hal Spacejock
Current mood: Brain-drained
Get Your Cyborg Name
I first met Hal Spacejock in the Forgberg Casino. Grainy predawn light seeped in through a skylight making dustmotes dance over him. He'd fallen asleep on one of the slot machines and was muttering about the price of dock fees, valet parking and Seraphian land slug gin.
He looked so cute slumped over the slots, his tux untucked and skewed, lipstick smeared across his brow and one red stilletto hanging from his pocket. I pulled him upright and marvelled at how a trail of drool stretched from his mouth to the slot machine and glinted in the light. He jerked awake with a yell that swamped me in the odour of stale alcohol and his hand flew up dumping a glass of slug gin over my favourite wig which fizzled and whined then limped away to lick its wounds.
Had I known at the time that this would be a scene repeated in dozens of bars in dozens of galaxies I might have walked away without giving him my name but, on that fateful naive morning, I gave Hal Spacejock my name. Now, Hal Spacejock, his sidekick Clunk and all their many problems haunt my life and you can guarantee they'll pop up at the most inconvenient times, like a coldsore before a hot date. He's clumsy, he's annoying, he'll drive you insane, he'll make all your wigs quit and take out a joint law suit against you, but there's something about Hal that you just have to love.
If you'd like to learn more about Hal Spacejock you can download his biography for free here:
Don't expect to see me in it. To not have my "Hal" problems immortalised is worth the extortion I've been paying to Clunk to have me wiped from the files.
7:36 PM
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Monday, August 20, 2007
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Awww... famous last words
Current mood: I’m not moody!
Well... just when I thought I was on mentoring leave, the Owls with Bushy Eyebrows program... is that what it's called? No wait... Little Owls... found me another mentee. Apparently being too busy to remember to say no is a yes! Mean people really have easier lives. I'm planning to be an evil grouchy old woman one day, just for a break.
So, right now, my karma is in need of a boost, and it's only a short voluntary mentorship.
Once again, the mentee is already better educated than me. She's into very cool Vampire books by people like Stephenie Meyer and Laurell K Hamilton. Stephenie Meyer has first chapters on her website, and I must say she has a great voice, nice humour, looks like good stuff.
What genre are Vampires exactly? Dark fantasy? Horror? Both? I'm not too knowledgeable about the Vampire genre. I did like the Black Crusade's Love Vampires tho. Still, most of my new mentees questions revolve around writing and discipline so far. Don't laugh. I know where I go wrong with my discipline, and maybe the mentee will listen to me better than I listen to me. ;)
Anyway the bookshops need to stop lumping all things speculative under the heading Science Fiction and then people will be a lot less confused about what type of mentor they need.
Dear Bookshops,
The heading you need is Speculative Fiction not Science Fiction. Science Fiction is one of the sub-genres of Speculative Fiction. His siblings are Horror, Fantasy (Urban, Modern, Mythical and their evil quadruplet, Epic - don't be fooled by his green tights and flashy robes... pure evil), New Weird, Alternate History, and rarer things like Gonzo... oh yes... you'll have to take a few books off your mainstream shelves and stick them in that one group of shelves in the corner... hmmmm... oh I see now.
Anyway, I've fluffed up my eyebrows and dived back into the mentoring mode.
Wish me luck!
3:55 AM
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
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"HOW TO BECOME A CHILDREN'S WRITER"
Well, my mentoring time is done for the moment. I like mentoring and will do it again once I sort my life out (an ongoing project that I've already invested many many years in). In the meantime, if you want to learn what I know about getting started as a Children's Writer in Australia then you can read this:
"How to Become a Children's Writer"
Just starting out as a children's writer? Trying to get your head around the Australian marketplace and wondering where to seek help?
"How to Become a Children's Writer" has the answers.
Packed with facts about the craft, submitting, as well as tips from writers and industry professionals and lists of contacts and local publishers.
Still have questions? "How to Become a Children's Writer" has its own Blog where you can ask! There will also be links to other helpful sites and discussions, and a chance to learn even more. 'Becoming a Critical Reader' is the first topic. Please visit http://macdibble.livejournal.com/
9:38 PM
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Saturday, July 21, 2007
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SUCCESS!
Current mood:  contemplative
I'd like to say that I'm a successful mentor but that would just raise questions about what a successful mentor is, and how the term should be defined. For instance, has everyone who has given me advice contributed to every publication I've had? You know the answer. If you're a writer... you really know the answer.
Enough waffle! The real news is that my mentee got published!
It was a couple of months ago now, a small mag but since I told her to build up her bio with mag publications to aide her chances of novel pickupedness from the slushpileness and she has started down that path successfully, I do feel I had a small hand in her initial success. The fact that the story didn't take into account all my advice, just shows me how small a hand that was.
My mentee has a feel and passion for writing and she'll do well. Transforming that to publication is the difficult bit.
I wonder where I'd be today if I'd been that good when I was 18. But, of course, there was no way I could've been, and the evolution of me as a writer is a long and complicated process involving sticking a lot of odd stuff into my head and swirling it about until it makes a strange kind of sense. At 18 my head really was emptier and more jumbled than most 18 year old heads.
7:51 PM
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Monday, January 22, 2007
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Life on the Mentorside
As you know, I'm a little time poor, so I'm not your ideal mentor. Added to that is that people I critique tell me I'm too hard on them. So I admit, I was a little nervous entering into a mentorish relationship with a tender new writer. Don't want to break one!
But all fears were unfounded. Not only does the mentee enjoy getting professional feedback, she has unstoppable enthusiasm and isn't needy at all. It's been very easy so far.
I thought it would all be one way, but I think energy feeds off energy. So the mentee is lending me her outlook in a way - her excitement, her hopes, are sparking memories of how it used to be for me. And, you know, I've recognised similarities, things that never go away, like wondering if your work is good enough, losing direction, pulling punches because it's easier to write, needing to lift the importance of stories, pushing the limits, procrastinating... (that's not my mentee that last one... thats just me).
It's a good thing to do this Mentorship stuff, even if it just makes you go, "Oh yeah, this is what it's all about!" It makes it almost worthwhile chewing through the restraints each morning to get up. ;)
My links:
www.macdibble.com | Blog for Children's Writers | My Anything Blog
10:27 AM
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Tuesday, November 28, 2006
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I Have a Mentee!
They found me a match!
And my first thought was, that if you stood me at 18 next to this girl who is 18, you couldn't find two more different people!
The mentee is in university. I found out about university at 18... and I'd already been working for a year. Kids from my highschool didn't go to university. Even if I knew... I couldn't afford the bus fare to get there let alone anything else.
The mentee can write. I couldn't write at 18, and what would I say anyway? I worked all week, and spent what I earned all weekend. I was stuck in a town that was famous for its powersite, coalmine, underwear factory, marae and sinking houses. You know that working town mentality... the one that drives teenagers wild? Yep. That was me. Silly, giggly, overdrinking, wild driving... not a writer.
But surprsingly, our writing content has a lot in common, and her goals are goals I can help with. Which is great. I was expecting a more needy mentee but an 18 year old like I was, wouldn't be in the mentorship program, would they? They be too busy knocking back beers with their mates on the bonnet of their vauxhall and having donut comps.
Writing for Children Blog | www.macdibble.com | A Blog on Anything
3:30 AM
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Saturday, September 23, 2006
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Still waiting for the perfect short person
"Do you like our owl?"
I don't really have big eyebrows. This is just owl banner for mentors from the Absynthemuse Mentoring Program.
They sent me this note:
Hope and Lis are here to orient you as to what's expected in this
mentoring process you so graciously volunteered for without thinking.
They must know me!
7:03 PM
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Saturday, September 16, 2006
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Becoming a Mentor
The cry, desperate and soulful, drew me across the cosmos...
or, for the realists amongst us... a post at the forum Write4Kids lead me to this post at the livejournal of Agent Obscura:
Wanna corrupt a short person? There is a teeming mass of young writers, ages 13-22, who need a guiding hand, a grizzled writer's experience, and a tall shoulder to lean on. Someone like you! At Little Owl ( http://mentoring.absynthemuse.com) is a free mentoring program online co-run by Elisabeth Wilhelm, youthful editor of Absynthe Muse (http://www.absynthemuse.com), and Hope Clark, saggy editor of Funds for Writers (http://www.fundsforwriters.com).
We hook up mentors--saggy, wise writers with publication credits or teaching experience--with mentees--a completely off-the-wall group of young writers who want to soak up your wisdom like sponges--to work towards an agreed-upon writing goal over a course of weeks or months. This program is offered as a service to young writers all over the world who don't have access to writing groups, classes, or a support structure in their home towns that allows them to flourish as writers.
This is your chance to give back! Help out a budding writer through email and chat, no matter where you are, or what you write, and get that warm, fuzzy feeling in your stomach that you're doing something profoundly moving for a young person. We have over 170 mentors listed in a wide variety of genres and writing areas, but we always need more! If you'd like to learn more about the program, check out the Little Owl site: http://mentoring.absynthemuse.com
If you yourself can't mentor, please consider passing the message onto to someone who can!
Thanks,
Elisabeth Wilhelm
elisabeth@absynthemuse.com
Hope Clark
hopeclark1@aol.com
P.S. We're in particular need of speculative fiction, YA fiction, and poetry mentors!
P.P.S. We're also working on establishing a mentoring program at a school in an incarceration facility for teen writers there. We're seeking mentors who have special interest in working with troubled teens. Also, we're seeking writing-related material donations for the mentees. Please contact us for more information!
And I thought, 'Tall shoulders? Saggy? Grizzly (or was that grizzled)? Speculative fiction? They're calling ME!'
And then I thought, 'Do I have the time? No way, but should that stop me?'
So I signed up and they asked a really difficult question: why?
It's a good question. All the good questions are hard to answer. I know I'm good at teaching sf to children, I do it all the time. I approach teaching from a self-taught background so the way I teach is simpler, more accessible as it requires no prior knowledge, and it's more relevant because that's how I learn. It just wasn't possible to get a decent education in NZ in the 70s at least not at any of the schools I went to... and I went to more schools than most kids. I think I was one of the kids who didn't have access to any support to become a decent writer... a decent anything.
So now I'm waiting for my short person to corrupt. To give what I wish I could've received.
The Beast of Moogill - a blog on writing | www.macdibble.com - my webpage | The Blog of Moogill a blog on everything
8:26 PM
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