Tabor Adelaide Graduation Day 2012
Yesterday I dressed up all smart and official and headed off to Adelaide, about an hour’s drive from home. I attended the Tabor Adelaide Graduation Day for 2012. At the same event in 2011 I graduated, having achieved my Master of Arts (Creative Writing) degree. It was a wonderful day and I had a great sense of achievement.
A few months later I was invited to join the teaching staff and I started lecturing as an Adjunct Lecturer earlier this year. So far it is going really well and I am enjoying the experience – in spite of how it tires me out at my age. More recently I have agreed to teach a second subject next semester.
Today I was able to witness a number of close friends graduating. I also had the privilege of joining the ranks of staff members during the ceremony.
I would highly recommend Tabor Adelaide to any prospective students. Many of their courses – including the creative writing units – can be studied externally, and even overseas. Semester 2 does not commence until mid-July, so you have plenty of time to enrol. You never know – you could end up with me as your lecturer!
The writing courses are particularly valuable. I regularly write and then submit stories, poems and articles to publishers. When I started the course my strike rate was less than 10% – meaning for every 10 submissions, only one was published. My strike rate is currently 44% and rising. In a few months I anticipate that I will be getting a publication rate equating to one published piece for every two submissions.That’s very encouraging.
Good writing.
About writing, reading and lecturing
Regular readers of this site must be wondering whether I’ve dropped off the planet.
Both of my readers.
In reality, this site still continues to chug along with a steady readership despite not having new articles posted regularly. It must have something to do with the content written and posted here over the last six years. I missed writing anything for this site’s 6th birthday on March 6th. Happy Birthday!
Over recent months I have still been writing and very busy on writing type activities. Late last year I was offered a lecturing position at the university where I recently achieved my Master of Arts degree. This has meant a great deal of time in writing and preparing the lectures. My lectures are designed to help students new to tertiary studies on how to research a topic and then turn this into an academic essay. I am pleased that this is going really well.
More recently I have been asked to lecture in children’s literature to student teachers studying at the same university. This is an area I am very passionate about and have significant qualifications in this area. Not only do I write children’s stories, I have 35 years of classroom experience in using children’s literature to enhance student development. Furthermore, about a quarter of that time was spent as a teacher librarian. I’m really looking forward to teaching this extra unit in second semester.
Another thing I have been doing recently is getting back to reading more books. Over recent years the amount of reading I have done has shifted from books to more online material. I plan to redress that imbalance in the coming year or so; there are so many great books that I haven’t read yet – or wish to reread.
Another pressure upon my time for writing here since January has been my church life. Our pastor resigned unexpectedly in January and as one of the Eldership team it has been my responsibility to see that programmes still continue to move along. This has involved some preaching – a sermon takes many hours to write and prepare – a few extra meetings, and writing material, including devotional style editorials, for our weekly newsletter.
I trust I’ll find time to add new articles here on a regular basis in the coming weeks and months.
Good writing.
Random acts of kindness
On Friday last while waiting for my wife to come from her appointment I went for a cup of cappuccino in the hospital coffee shop. I lined up to be served and the lady behind me suddenly asked if I’d like a free cup of coffee. It’s not something that happens every day so it took me a little by surprise. She explained that she had plenty of vouchers for free coffees and was pleased to share one with me. I agreed, and then struck up a short conversation with her while waiting for our coffees to be ready.
This random act of kindness got me to thinking; what if everyone set out every day to display one act of random kindness to someone else, preferably a stranger? What a better world this would be?
How about it?
Here’s the challenge: try doing just one act of kindness to someone else every day. Not only will those people be especially blessed by your action, you, too will be blessed in amazing ways by making this world just that little bit better, kinder and friendlier.
It has been a long time
It has been a long time since my last post here – far too long. Sorry about that.
Late last year there was a family situation which required a great deal of my time and energy, and then my wife and I left Australia for a six and a half week holiday in Ethiopia, Morocco and Spain. I had limited internet access during that time so no posts appeared here. Besides, we were having too much fun exploring new countries and having wonderful experiences. I’ll be writing about these experiences and showing my 1000s of photos on my other sites, Trevor’s Birding and Trevor’s Travels.
While I was away I still kept up my writing. Every day I added new entries in a journal. In all I wrote nearly 140 pages describing what we’d done and seen, and responses to those experiences. Much of that journal will be expanded and posted on my travel site. The beauty of having a book to write in as my journal was the convenience factor. I didn’t take my laptop with me though I could have used my daughter’s computer. Instead, I could write in my journal anywhere: on the plane, in the waiting lounge of airports, on a train (we used trains a lot in Morocco and Spain), in bed or even in the garden.
Taking a notebook with you wherever you go is an important way of keeping your writing moving along and developing. You can jot down anything that comes to mind: a scene, a description of a character based on a real person, accounts of little scenes that may make it into a novel or short story, or even a poem or two as you are having a coffee break.
During my travelling time I wrote in my journal every day. But I also wrote a great deal of poetry. I usually can only produce a dozen or two good poems a year, but in the last 7 weeks I’ve written 55 poems, so inspirational was the journey. Some are haiku but most are much longer impressions of what I was seeing and doing. All the non-haiku poems were free verse. Some will find their way onto this site in coming weeks.
We went to Ethiopia first to visit our daughter who had been teaching in an international school in Addis Ababa. What they are doing there is inspirational and she is planning on returning in a few years’ time. After two weeks there, my wife and I, accompanied by our daughter, toured Morocco and Spain, spending two weeks in each. Many of our experiences will inevitably find their way into short stories, more poems and even a book or two. My wife has already come up with a picture book idea based in Ethiopia.
Good writing.
Culling my library
I am a confessed book lover.
Most writers are, I’ve found. If you want to be a good writer you are also a reader. That’s a given.
I am also slightly addicted to buying and collecting books. When I married – that was over 40 years ago – combining my library with my wife’s library created a big problem. She is also a bookaholic, and a hoarder of books like me. In our first year of marriage I built two large bookcases. Problem solved – for the time being. Then came along the children and they soon had their books too and their own bookcases. When they left home the problem was slightly improved; part of my library is now in my daughter’s home in Clare and a few are in my son’s home in Sydney. It’s alright; I’ve read most of those books.
About 5 years ago I bought another 4 bookshelves from a well known furniture chain from Scandinavia. I had fun assembling them and stocking them with books. You see, the problem had grown to a critical stage: there were large piles of books everywhere. Problem solved – or so I thought. Over recent months the situation has reached another crisis point: not enough room on the shelves for new and recently acquired books.
My office has been in need of a drastic makeover for several years. The situation would make any bomb site look tidy in comparison. Time for action, so over several hot days recently – it was too unpleasant working in the garden – I attacked ground zero.
My technique is simple: sort and chuck. (Some unkind people might have suggested ‘slash and burn’ would have been more effective.) I progressively sorted through every item on the shelves. Some items didn’t belong – like dozens of computer disks. It’s a BOOK shelf – not a storage cupboard. Some books were obsolete and went straight into our recycling bin. I don’t need a copy of a guide to Microsoft Windows 95 or Word for Windows 6 for Dummies or even a 1998 Melbourne street directory. I have a more current version of the directory and don’t need another, and the computer books are now many years obsolete.
The trouble was that I have trouble throwing away books. I can give them away, I can let people borrow semi-permanently, I can even sell to a second hand book dealer – but throw away! Never!
I’ve changed.
I have to be ruthless and dispose of any book I will no longer read. Some I want to read again – maybe, so I might keep a few. Over the next year the culling will continue until I have enough room on the shelves for the books I want to read again, or I need to use as reference tools.
Now… what about that huge pile of magazines?
Good reading, and good writing.