Month: February 2021

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A Fine Event Today

carolyncordon

Take one event, at a great venue, with a fine presenter, and writers who are willing to be deeply involved with what is happening, and you can certainly get on and produce some awesome pieces of creative writing!

My only regret about this day was that I neglected to have a photograph taken. Apart from that, it was a great day for the production of beautiful words!

If you couldn’t be at this event, and live near Gawler, we will be getting together at the end of March, and every month, in some way and form, usually at the Prince Albert Hotel, Gawler. A hotel accustomed to being there for creative writers, where the Adelaide Plains Chapter and Verse writing group meets, every Thursday afternoon at 4.00pm.

Photo not taken today, but the three on the left were all present today.

Why not come join us sometime? If you’re prepared to be involved, do the writing exercise, and homework, and will be supportive and friendly, you are most welcome!

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My Regular Big Event!

carolyncordon

Today, February 28 is the last day of February, the last day of Summer, and the day of my favourite event of the month. Today is the day my favourite Big Event happens. This Big Event isn’t necessarily big in terms of people attending, but it is huge in terms of the wonderful things that can happen.

The event is the Gawler Poets at the Pub event, incorporating both a writing-related workshop, and after that a Poetry Reading. The event takes place at the Prince Albert Hotel (known as the P/A to regulars, and it has lunch happening too. I am one of the two coordinators of this event, and it is a small part of what the writing group I’m the President of, does.

So Alex Robinson, my co-coordinator, is also the Treasurer of our group, which is the Adelaide Plains Poets. He collects the money, and also brings along books we have as a prize for one of the little mini competitions we hold during the afternoon’s happenings. These new books are donated by a wonderfully eclectic bookshop close to the P/A hotel. It is the Gawler Bookshop, and I love popping in there every now and then to say hi, and thank you to the lovely Ally who owns the store, and can find or get in for you any book you might ever want, I suspect!

So this morning, right now, I’m getting ready to head off to Gawler to the P/A for the workshop our guest for the day will present. The guest is Valerie Volk, and the subject for her workshop is ‘Poetry from Pain’. This is a subject dear to my heart, and to my savings too, because I’ve written and sold my own books touching on this subject. One is my memoir about having Multiple Sclerosis ‘Mick Jane and Me – Living Well With MS’, and the other is a poetry collection about my own story about being sexually abused as a child, teen, and young adult ‘damaged children, Precious Gems’.

So painful things for sure, both of them, but the writing of those books has been therapeutic, and I’m in a much better space in my life now, having written the pain out of my head and onto the pages of my books.

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How Many Is Too Many?

carolyncordon

Ah, an interesting question this one, and the answer can depend of so many different things. How many houses is too many? I have just the one, and and satisfied with that, other people might have many houses, and there are various answers in between. I know a chap who has several rental properties, as well as his own home. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he said he has a holiday home as well.

This man has retired, and obviously earned good money at his job, and saved, or invested, or something. I didn’t have as hightly paid a job as he did, when I was ‘a worker’, and so I certainly have never had enough money to buy a rental property. My my husband and I , both more or less retired, both live good lives. We have enough of what we need, and sometimes too much of other things, but not often.

This is a way to live a good life, I feel, having enough, and not too much, of what we need, and some of what we want. We have enough money to pay our bills, almost all of the time. When we want things we usually have enough money to but them, and sometimes there’s money left over to buy extra things.

If I had lots of vegetables, more than we need, that would be a problem, trying to deal with the excess produce. If I had rental properties as well as the house I live in, I’d worry about the upkeep, getting the rent, looking after the people living in these houses …

Things like flowers, I don’t think you can have too many of them growing in a garden. If there are plenty, you can pick them and have them on display inside, while leaving others in the garden still, to look at, and enjoy. Trees, I’m sure you can have too many of them in some instances, but most of the time, having lots of trees is a wonderful thing!

Those lovely trees can attract birds and other creatures into yard, and most of the time that is a wonderful thing. But if you are growing fruit and vegetables, sometimes lots of birds can be a problem, unless you have ways to keep your produce safe. At our place we have a few strawberry plants growing in hanging baskets, and we decided that this year, we wanted to actually eat our strawberries again, instead of the birds getting them.

So we were fortunate enough to have some extra money, and bought some bird netting, so now we are able to eat some of those lovely strawberries, which always taste better than any you get from anywhere else! There aren’t lots and lots of strawberries, but just enough for us to have some every now and then.

So I think the best way to go is to have an ample sufficiency of what you like, and not much at all, of what you don’e like!

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Some Good News About Rejection!

carolyncordon

Plague Invasion, the anthology I put together last year, using works sent to me from all around the world, as well as my own country of Australia, has been given back to me by the publisher I gave it to, unpublished, and instead of being sad or upset, I am happy!

I spoke with Michael Bollen, from Wakefield Press today, and while he said it was a good anthology, he would not be able to have it ready to be launched in July, for the Gawler and Adelaide Plains Festival of Words (Recovery). In the face of these crazy Covid times, the publishing would is running hot, with many people writing books, and wanting to be published.

So I am both sad the anthology won’t be published by Wakefield Press, but happy to have this ‘baby’ back in my hands, to self publish book myself! It’s been a while since I looked at what I’d said about the terms for publishing this anthology, so I’m going to have to go back and look at it all. I’ll be sending out a form to all of the people whose work I’ve accepted, which will happen I expect, in late March.

So if April comes around, and I haven’t emailed you an author agreement form please contact me on my email address, kittycordo@gmail.com

This doesn’t feel like a rejection to me, it feels like getting my child back, after they’ve been away on a holiday! I have enough pieces for this Anthology to be a fine book as it is right now, so won’t be accepting any new works for Plague Invasion. But if this is a successful endeavour, there may well be a new anthology once this one is launched, sold, loved, and admired!

I have never done such a large project, and while I am thrilled with how this book will likely look, it’s still a very new thing for me, but I saw the time for this anthology was now, and many people wanted to be involved in such a project. The Covid issue has twists and turns, good, and bad, and this process of getting the anthology has been a bit like that too.

But the anthology will happen, and will be launched at the Festival in 2021, and I am so glad. Now, to get onto the artist for the front cover again, and see what he comes up with!

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What If ‘What You Know’ Is Rape?

carolyncordon

Write what you know, they say, whoever ‘they’ are … But what if what you know isn’t fluffy kittens, or interesting garden tips and tricks, or wise dogs with funny thoughts. What if what you know, is how it was to be sexually abused by a family friend, gang raped by some young men I’d idolised, and sexually abused by work colleagues?

How would I write about that, when the reality of it was something I rarely allowed myself to think about these days, happily married to a good man, mother of a fine son, and safe from the predatory behaviour of workmates, because I’m now a writer, and not working in a office, with Happy Hour an excuse to all get pissed, and ‘see what happens …’

Well actually, I have written about the sexual abuse, a poetry collection I put together and got published in 2011, one year after my diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis, which I am now learning, may in fact have links to sexual abuse – who’d have thought it? Well the body knows about these things, and some researchers have looked at these things, and noted the statistics about sexual abuse, and about Multiple Sclerosis are similiar … coincidence? I wonder.

Maybe there is another book in that thought, but at the moment, I’m working at feeling settled, and safe. This past week with all of it on the media, and getting hooked up and unable to escape, and feeling and remembering things I’d thought gone. A dear friend pointed out that what I’d written on Social Media sounded exactly like Complex PTSD, with memories hitting me, things I’d barely remembered, humiliating, frightening things I don’t want to remember, but my body and brain remember, whether I like it or not.

At the moment, I don’t feel that is the next book I want to write. I have a novel to finish, and a poetry collection to put together, on much happier subjects … What I am interested in doing with these sex abuse issues though, is to run workshops or at least one workshop, looking at finding peace through poetry. Being able to write things down, and making it into poetry, can be a healing thing, the idea of therapeutic creative writing is far from a new thing.

I know this, I have a book to prove I know it. I also have a blog, where I have looked at these issues, http://www.damagedchildrenpreciousgems.wordpress.com the blog having the same name as my poetry collection on the subject. So if anyone out there in South Australia is interested in such a workshop, let me know, I’ll happily present it!