This is an interesting time. We’ve lost four people in the last couple of months. One family member and three friends. I’m finding it a little hard to attend more funerals and try to give words of comfort. The only ones that are coming now are ‘I’m sorry for your ...

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One thing that has been on my mind a lot of late is plagiarism. If I look I can find a number of examples of plagiarism but I’ll only give you one example because it’s fairly recent. John Hughes was nominated for the Miles Franklin award. At some stage it ...

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Tonight I’ll be showing off. Not that my writing is any good, because in this story it’s entirely the opposite. I currently have no books waiting for me to scribble words about them. I’m currently on page 532 of a book of short stories, there’s only 1,229 pages in this ...

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I’ve upgraded to the new WordPress since the last time I wrote. It’s causing me much angst, I seem to have lost access to some of the normal parts of the blog. This means I’m not giving you a photo of the book. Not a big problem as it’s one ...

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Hello and hello! In all the fun and games to do with the Seventh Australian Discworld Convention a week and a half ago, followed by the upheaval of Passover I completely forgot to write for my blog. I shouldn’t have forgotten, Monday this week was the tenth anniversary of me ...

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Yes, another Verandah. This issue is from 2012. If I understand correctly, Verandah has a new team every year. It is supported by The Deakin School of Communication and Creative Arts. In 2018 some of the team were in my classes. It’s going to be interesting to see where their ...

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I’ve picked up a book that at over 900 pages might possibly keep me going for a few weeks. It is dense reading with many short stories and some critical articles about those short stories. The first few pages are about Writing About Fiction. As I was reading those pages ...

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I write this just prior to going to bed. I’m not planning on staying up to see the new year in, it’s not something I see relevant to me in 2018. I might regret this decision in 2019 but my body is telling me I’m tired and I’m going to ...

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I’ve been a little slack with writing over the last few months. I’m part of a writing group and we meet online every two weeks to catch up and discuss each other’s writing. When I say ‘discuss’ I really mean ‘pull it apart and give each other ideas on how ...

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I was struggling with reading new books. I tried several books in a row but either didn’t like them or couldn’t read them. I put it down to being all newed out.  This is a term I coined a few weeks ago to explain why I couldn’t read anything new. ...

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This is yet another apology. I’m finding I’m swamped with work and not over-endowed with energy and time. I see a couple of options for ensuring I get all the important things done. One is to sleep less and the other is to drop my blog. I have considered dropping ...

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Yes, another book I studied for uni. This one is challenging to read but well worth it. Written by an Indigenous lady who has a more of a handle on allegory, symbolism than I ever will and what is likely to happen to both the Indigenous and the world if ...

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As at the time of writing I am that close to finalising the last couple of assignments to complete second year uni it’s not funny.  One assignment I just need to make it look pretty and then submit. I should just bite the bullet and do it so I can ...

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Hello and thank you all for your patience. I’ve not felt good about ignoring the blog for this long but it’s been a necessary thing to do. When a university subject (Website Design) decides to take a twelve week syllabus and squeeze it all into six weeks I find it ...

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It’s now the beginning of Trimester 3, 2017.  I’ve successfully completed 14 units of a 24 unit course, I feel like I’m on the home stretch. If all goes well over summer I’ll have two full years under my belt and only need to complete eight units to have my ...

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