For those who weren’t able to make it to our June meeting, we road-tested our new venue – the Metis room upstairs at the Canberra City Hellenic Club. This proved to be a bit of a winner, with members taking advantage of the opportunity to grab a coffee or a drink, or even dinner, before the meeting. The Chess Club next door proved to be very rowdy and based on the uproarious cheering, we can only imagine there were some very devious queen-takes-rook moves and dramatic checkmates going on. (Or maybe that was the crowd watching the State of Origin downstairs…)

Our scheduled session with Ian McHugh was unfortunately not able to go ahead (there is a happy ending to this, though), so we enacted our cunning Plan B. This was a round table discussion on was “What advice would you give your younger writer self?”, which generated some thought-provoking conversation. A sample of the advice offered included (paraphrased and possibly embellished by Leife):

  • Angus: make your villain someone you admire, make them the hero of their own story.
  • Rik: get that first draft done; polish the sucker later.
  • Dave O: Find your writing community. You will blossom like a flower in spring.
  • Louise: authors are human beings, not divinely appointed, godlike beings (which means you, yes YOU, have a shot at this); AND give yourself a deadline.
  • Juliette: don’t let anyone distract you from writing. Don’t let them tell you it’s not a real job or it’s a worthless activity.
  • Shauna and Amelia: Start earlier.
  • Tim R: make reading fun. Put the non-productive, non-fun things aside. Read and write the stuff you enjoy.
  • Simon: Take chances. Write the crazy stuff.
  • Leife: (Paraphrasing Ira Glass) You have good taste. Keep at it and one day you might measure up to your own standards.

And because Leife is actually writing this post, here’s a handy vid of the Ira Glass advice that struck a chord with her.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

And that happy ending you were hoping for? Well, if you missed the June meeting, or if you were there, but disappointed you didn’t get to hear what Ian McHugh has to say about getting your short stories published, we’ve rescheduled him for our July meeting:

7.30pm, Wednesday 19 July

The Metis Room, upstairs at the Canberra City Hellenic Club

See you there!