Williamstown Literary Festival

Writers write stories. But how do we know if our stories are good?

One way of knowing is entering our work in competitions. The Ada Cambridge Prize is run as part of the Willy Lit Fest and the Novel 2 class of VU was asked to help shortlist the short stories. As a reward the volunteers received a free ticket to the festival.

The 6th Willy Lit Fest was held on the 1st to the 3rd of May 2009. It is a fantastic opportunity for writers of all ages to find out if their stories are good.

Some writers like to plan before they begin their story. From Lucia Nardo I learnt a funky and fun way to produce a writing plan in visual form using magazine images.

Then you have to write the story. From Garry Disher I learnt how to start my story. Disher gave many examples of where to get ideas and begin writing. One important thing Disher noted was he believes in writing for yourself and not for publication.

Once your story is written and you think it is pretty good, you might send it out to a publisher. And if they think it is pretty good it gets published. Part of the publishing process is working with an editor. Sarah Brennan and Tess Moloney explained why the editing process is vital and how an editor can help you publish your work.

Once the story is published it's all about promotion. Claire Saxby, Corinne Fenton and Glenda Millard discussed how the book promotion process works and the difference between showing off and promotion.

So I guess, if you have a good idea for a story and finish writing it, it must be good. If the story is published, it must be great. It you promote it, without showing off, and people buy it and read it, it must be excellent. And if you want to know more about writing good stories attend the 7th Willy Lit Fest in 2010.

Rhiannon Lacy

Chris Baty, the Willy Lit festival and student successes

Hugh Deacon, Lucia Nardo and Denise Hughes 

at the after-celebrations of the Williamstown Literary Soiree

(where the Ada Cambridge Awards were announced)

Well, it's been frantically busy in PWE this last week. We had the fantastic Chris Baty, originator of NaNoWriMo -- Mr Motivator, I reckon he should be called -- in to speak to a combined Story Structure and Novel 2 class, and then the Willy Lit Festival. I feel as if I'm coming off the Melbourne Writers' Festival or a good speculative fiction convention -- wanting to sit down and write, write, write. I hope you're all feeling the same!

Watch this space for student reviews of the different events...

Congratulations to our students who did well at the Lit Fest: Lucia Nardo and Hugh Deacon for being shortlisted in the Ada Cambridge, and Lucia for winning a commendation, and Denise Hughes for being shortlisted in the Seagulls Poetry Prize. Hugh, Denise and Marlene Gorman also all gave spirited readings in the People's Choice Awards for Fiction, and Megan Green and Louise Crossley read in the People's Choice Awards for Poetry. (I didn't hear their readings so can't comment on them, but did hear Denise, Marlene and Hugh! Well done, all of you, for participating.) Margaret McCarthy, one of our teachers, actually won the poetry section, so congratulations to her.

I also believe Lucia Nardo led a fantastic session on working out who you are as a writer. Students who attended this workshop were raving about it -- and I know it would've been great because we had Lucia do a session for us PWE teachers earlier this year. Lots of fun and insightful, and we have the colourful result pasted to the office wall (just in case you've wandered through and wondered what that collage is.)

Happy writing, everyone!

Tracey Rolfe

Fancy yourself as a reader?

The Williamstown Literary Festival run a People's Choice Awards every year -- it's a great chance to showcase your work, put it up before an audience and let them judge you. Several of our students have won it in the past.

Details from the flyer are:

Two sessions will be held - the Prose Awards at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday 2 May and the Poetry Awards (poems should have a link to a nautical theme – the sea, ships, sailors, the bay) at 2.30 p.m. on Sunday 3 May.

Join a fabulous line-up of writers as they share the magic of their written words. Poets, novelists, short-story writers, song writers - anyone who loves to write - are invited to read. Others are invited to listen as the writers take us on their own personal journeys - thought-provoking, engaging, insightful, amusing - and then nominate the reader whose work they have most enjoyed. The People's Choice Awards will be given to the reader who gets the most votes at each session.

Please note: There is a limit of 4 minutes per reading, and readers are booked on a ‘first come, first served’ basis, so potential readers are urged to book their spot via the website . . .

Follow the link above to the website if you want to book yourself a spot. The word is that the prose section is almost full, so if you want to enter that you'd better get in quickly, but there's still plenty of room for poetry. So, if you've got something suitable, why not give it a go? Best part is that you can take your own cheer squad!

Tracey

News from the trenches

Well, the term's quickly wrapping up. Sherryl and I came in today to be part of a panel, along with Christine, Julianne and Sue, for Industry Overview. The students were split into groups and each group got one of us to interview for five minutes, and then had to devise further questions to interview us in front of the whole class. I hope the students found it interesting and productive. I know I did. I learnt things about some of my fellow teachers that I'd never known before!

This week the five students involved in shortlisting for the Ada Cambridge and I met to have our shortlisting meeting. These students have been busy reading all of the stories and ranking them so that we could come up with a shortlist of ten stories to be passed on to the final judges. These ten stories will all be published in a booklet that will be available after announcement of the winner at the Williamstown Literary Festival. It's an interesting process, and one of the students is going to blog about it for me, so I won't say too much here, except that we came to our decision without the need to spill any blood, which is always a good thing.

This last week, we've also had the Poetry Bus -- I haven't heard any reports of this yet, but Kristin Henry is always a terrific reader and poet -- and Paul Mitchell and Lisa Gorton are great too, so I'm sure it was a brilliant night. (I'll see if I can get someone to write us a report). 

In other Rotunda news, our next event is Sherryl Clark interviewing satirist John Clarke on 23 April, which promises to be hilarious. (Venue yet to be announced.) If you're interested, you'd better let Bruno know fast, because he's already had a mountain of interest. Email Bruno if you want to go (bruno.lettieri@vu.edu.au). It's $5 for students or unwaged people, and $10 for everyone else.

In the meantime, you students will be on your mid-semester break. I hope you'll all be doing lots of writing. I know we teachers will be!

Happy writing!

Tracey Rolfe

Students from the Ada Cambridge shortlisting panel (from L to R): 

Melinda Hall, Andrew Mead, Rhiannon Lacy, Andrew Ellis and John King

News from the trenches

Well, the Novel 2 class (or at least selected members) is busy reading stories for the Ada Cambridge Award, which is an award for a piece of short biographical (or autobiographical) writing, and is part of the Williamstown Literary Festival. (If you click on the name, you'll go to their website and can have a look at what they're offering this year.)

In the meantime, we've just heard that Megan Green, one of our students, has had a request from the State Library of Victoria (in association with the National Library of Australia) to include her articles on the recent Black Saturday bushfires for their bibliography database. The articles were published in a newspaper, but one of the library's researches found them online and decided they had "cultural historical significance", which was what they needed for inclusion -- so, as Megan says, it pays to have a blog and website! And I guess it also shows that you just never know where your work might end up.