Caroline Reid Writes

  Junk Journals - covers A whole month of poetry! How sweet is that? An initiative of Red Room Poetry, you can head over to their website and check out all the wonderfully poetic things that are happening between August 1-31.   I'll also be releasing details very soon of how you can sign up for my newsletter. Yeah, I've been dreaming about setting up a newsletter for loyal followers for quite some time now, and Poetry Month is just the right motivation to make it happen. The first newsletter will offer discounts to my upcoming (return) season of SIARAD in September, plus specials on the print and audio book. I'll also have more information about my hand-made Poetry Prompt Journals.     Junk Journal - interior I learnt how to make Junk Journals recently, at a great place called The Adelaide Remakery. What fun! So, I've added my twist to them, and have been busy making Punk As Fuq Poetry Prompt Junk Journals (I know, it's a mouthful) - a fun resource to help inspire ...

I thought about getting a writing mentor for a long time. Then I came across two things (well, three) that decided it for me. The first was the Australian Writers Mentoring Program founded by Kathryn Heyman to offer high-level mentoring to new and emerging writers. I read everything on the website and researched the mentors, including Toni Jordan. Then I read an essay over at Writers Digest, How I Stopped Sabotaging My Writing Goals: Confessions of a Late Bloomer by Andrea Jarrell. In that essay she writes: "working with a more experienced writer has been an essential part of my path." For me, that was the clincher. And I knew after reading three of Toni's novels that she seemed a good fit. I just had to find the money. Got a book in you? A mentor can help get it out. I talked to my partner. He agreed that it was worthwhile making the investment in me and my writing. It would mean giving up that annual holiday to the Bahamas (haha .. we don't have an annual hol...

Goal setting. I love it and hate it. I'm a list girl, so I love making long lists of things I intend to do. But I hate it because I know even as I write my list that I'm probably not going to achieve half of what I set out to achieve. I've resisted setting goals the usual way this year. Inspired by author and thinker Mark Manson, I've taken time to ponder how successful my approach to goal setting across different areas of my life truly is. For the most part? Pretty unsuccessful. I usually have too many goals which means I end up with a 50% success rate (or less) which leaves me feeling pretty shit.  This month I read Manson's blogpost Your Goals are Overrated where he discusses why it's more effective for us to focus on changing our habits rather than achieving goals. What he says makes a lot of sense to me, so I'm going to try it out in different areas of my life (exercising and meditation for example) as well as in my writing life. The approach foc...

photo: elle ds photography Decadent December has dawned. So much I haven’t blogged about. What the hell happened to 2017? My year was dedicated to up skilling and finding employment. That old chestnut. When  most of your adult working life has been arts projects and casual/part-time employment in the arts, education and disability sectors, the future can look grim. So I completed a Certificate 3 in Individual Support (Disability and Ageing) and got some work with Tutti Arts , a terrific company making arts accessible to people living with disabilities. I worked a cross a range of programs – visual art, performance and writing poetry. Poetry has been where it’s at this year. It feels like going back to my roots. I remember writing poems as a kid, feeling pride at having set something down that told a story or explored an idea. I wrote a poem about Ned Kelly, about digging, and at fifteen one that asked questions about identity (though at the time I didn’t ...

--> choose your own word I like things that others have used – books, clothes & furniture, houses, paths, words, ideas. Last year I borrowed an idea from a friend and loved it so much I’m using it again. The idea is this: throughout the year write down  your celebrations, successes and happy moments on scraps of paper and place them in a jar. You may decorate the jar ( I did). On new year’s eve celebrate the year that was by reading aloud what’s written on each scrap. You may do this while drinking a bottle of bubbles (I did). Then burn the paper, thus making way for new riches in the year ahead. That’s it. So simple, so good. Here are some of my 2014 celebrations: Received bag of fresh, sweet home-grown peaches from a friend; took a voice class; did excellent job of chairing forum for Adelaide Writer’s Week; cried at Nick Cave concert; laughed at Miley Cyrus concert; signed up for yoga classes; Nonu (my dog) had his first play date at the beach … you get the...

--> ESP is sometimes referred to as the sixth sense, a hunch, intuition, premonition, telepathy, vision, second sight. Something that exists outside of the normal sensory perception of living, ESP seems to be about feeling, sensing, and trusting. I think that to be a good artist you have to have an element of ESP because creativity is about feeling your way and trusting that the way is going to lead you to the best of creative worlds. The kind of ESP I discovered today is different, but related, and I made the discovery by working through a personal family situation. Here’s the story … One of my nephews has just crossed the numerical threshold from childhood to adulthood and is feeling confusion, weirdness and the challenge that a loss of direction can bring, plus the usual crappy stuff you have to deal with when you’re 18. He’s looking for a job, not an easy task for anyone, especially not a shy young man who seems to have no CV and minimal life skills. So, he’s ...

Don Barthelme So it's 2013. Resolutions? Yup. Some. There's the health (more exercise, less booze), family (talk to them), environment (spend some time in it) and the writing (finish the damn collection). Then there's all the in-between stuff, the nit and grit, breaking things down into itty bitty bits so I get things done. It's the only way I know. And then there's the not knowing ... Heading out of 2012 and into 2013 I've been obsessed with the writing of Donald Barthelme. Currently reading his 60 stories and Not Knowing - the Essays and Interviews . He has this to say, and I've copied it out and stuck it on my door: 'The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made.'  and this:  'Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how.'  and then:  'The anxiety attached  to this situation is not inconsiderable.' Barthelme makes me laugh, and humour can be a rare thing in the serious ...

Talented? Or just hard workers? 2012 has been my year of learning the art of grant writing, and I'm pleased to say I was successful in my first grant application (Yay for ARTS SA !). How did I manage it? I started writing it months in advance, asked  a dear friend if I could have a look at one of her successful applications [the dear friend say yes, thank you Emma Beech ], and then spent hours getting it 'just right'. I also had two people proofread it and give constructive criticism. I was going to write a more detailed 'how to write a successful grant' post.. but when I started looking around this amazing world wide web I discovered there's already plenty out there on this subject. I'd just be repeating heaps of others, so here's where I direct you to Lisa Hannett's website and her most excellent blog on 'Applying for Grants' ). I recently completed a two part workshop with Lisa at the South Australian Writers Centre, and what are t...

A back injury sees me lying in bed this weekend with Patrick White's 'The Vivisector'. 2012 is the centenary of White's birth and even though he died in 1990, he has a new novel coming out later this month published by Random House. 'The Hanging Garden' was unfinished but is, according to Geordie Williamson , in The Weekend Australian's Review 'not incomplete'. David Marr claims the manuscript is one in a series of three novellas; therefore it's internal narrative stands on its own 'and unfolds in prose that is polished to the deep lustre we expect from White.' I love Patrick White's work, though I confess to not having read the heavyweights Voss, The Tree of Man , The Solid Mandala . What I have read is his short stories; Flaws in the Glass - a self portrait; his plays (I've yet to see a production - word on the street has it that the recent Adelaide Festival show was amateurish and I refuse to go and see a depressingly medi...

Maybe I'm turning into a the kind of obsessed writer who goes on and on about who they admire and why etc etc .. see Hugh Jackman post - mind you, I do have a male heterosexual friend who says he'd turn gay for Hugh Jackman .. Maybee, maybee not, but I do know that when I read Margo Lanagan's short story 'Singing My Sister Down' from her album Black Juice , I was blown away. (Album'? I meant 'collection', though I'm guessing Margo is a little bit rock n roll - Black Juice would def work well as a band name or music album.) my very own signed copy of Sea Hearts  'Sister' which I read last year, is the first short story I've read for the longest time that made me cry. When I spoke to Lanagan this week at Adelaide Writer's Week, which was dedicated to her, I gushed and said I didn't know that writing could do what she did in that story and she replied 'Nor did I. It wasn't until I read the proofs that I realised...

I love Hugh Jackman. There's something about the all-singing, all-dancing, WAAPA graduate, Aussie male Wolverine that I find irresistible. What's Hugh got to do with writing, you might ask. Everything and nothing. Today I've been working on a story. Not all day because I'm a recovering procrastinator but I found this little quote from Hugh (while I was procrastinating) and it helped me  get started (after i watched the video):    "If you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people." Oh, Hugh!  So true!