Such a lot is happening that I haven’t had a chance to blog about the talk I did at the Western Force match on Saturday night.

Well, probably it was dampened a bit because the Force lost by one point. Very disappointing for them and for the fans watching.

But I survived the night and was actually amazed that being small didn’t make me invisible. Glen Mitchell, well-known sports commentator, introduced me to a noisy room of corporate sponsors and fans who were sampling the finger food and availing themselves of the free drinks. As I climbed onto the stage, I thought that I just had to get on with it, do my talk and not worry about who was listening. I just had to do my best.

But when I opened my mouth, the room fell silent! I was so schocked, I almost forgot my speech. You could have heard a valve pop out of a rugby ball - if the balls have valves - during the whole presentation.

Afterwards, the Minister for Sport came up to me and congratulated me. But what had amazed both me and Glen Mitchell was how quiet the crowd had been, especially as they’d been talking over the live band and Glen’s interview with one of the players earlier.

So I escaped the rugby scrum and actually enjoyed the match. But I didn’t make them win, so I’ll have to review my speech for next time. Maybe I should have been talking to the players.

I’ve talked about how hard it is as a writer to constantly submit work and then wait for what seems like months to hear about any results.

Finally, the waiting - and all the hard work - has paid off. A story I entered in a national competition has won first prize!

When I got the letter yesterday, I was bouncing off the walls. I really couldn’t believe it. This was an adult short story, so it wasn’t my forte, and I’d really sweated on it to make it different and engrossing. The theme was disability. Initially, I thought I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything, which seemed sort of strange, but that’s just how it felt. What I was struggling with was finding an idea that was not new, but thought provoking. And I wanted to draw it from a different angle.

I’m going to put it on my site, so bear with me while I master the technical side. It’s called ‘Sophie’s Rose’. It was the winning story in the Victorian Fellowship of Australian Writers National Literary Award, in the Jennifer Burbidge Short Story Award. I’ll put a link to it in the next blog post.

Oh, and there’s an awards ceremony for all the winners in this huge competition in Melbourne at the end of March, and I’m seriously considering going. Why not? Time to celebrate some success! 

It’s always hard to pitch to adolescents, to know what they want, what they will hear.

When I prepared the ‘Surviving Year 12′ presentation, I thought about what kids these days are experiencing, how they view the world, along with what I went through as a teenager and what would have helped me. I came up with a package that I trialed on Year 12’s at All Saints’ College in January.

Grace Itzstein, the Career Counsellor at All Saints’ College, has just sent me through some feedback from the students. It was reassuring to find out that my talk hit the mark, that the students did get something out of it. On the day, it was hard to tell, and of course it was particularly difficult for me because I can’t see my audience. Even though the feedback from staff was encouraging - “Janet, they were silent, so that means they were listening!” - I still wanted to get an evaluation from the students themselves.

You can read their comments here

Thanks to all those who let me know that I’m on track with my presentations! 

I’m quaking in my cycling shoes because on Saturday night, I’m doing a presentation at the Western Force Team Event at Subiaco oval.

I can just see it, thick set rugby players as tall as skyscrapers towering over little me, all of five foot four inches. I’m going to get a cricked neck from peering up at them. Maybe I’ll need a loud hailer to be heard. Even when I’m standing on the stage, I’ll probably still be looking up at them.

I’m sweating over my speech because if they can’t hear me, they probably won’t even see me. I need to make some sort of impact right from the start, grab their attention. How about a firecracker? No, maybe a bit dramatic. Maybe if I wore a few pairs of stilettos and several lumber jackets, they might think I’m one of them.

  I’m going to open with a congratulatory remark about the team having blind side flankers in their membership. Now that’s real equal opportunity!

If I survive the night, I’ll let you know how I go.

 

I think writers should be classed as saints because we have to be so patient.

Day after day, we churn out work, send it off to publishers, magazines, or competitions, and then wait. And wait. And wait. So much work has been put into bringing a piece of writing to life - coming up with an idea, getting the words down, editing, polishing, reworking. And then all that work is met with silence as the months drag by.

The key, I know, is to keep writing and submitting, and not to focus on the results to the point of neglecting your writing. But it’s hard when you’ve done so much and there’s no feedback because the deadlines are months away, or the publisher takes his/her time.

I’ve got quite a few short stories entered in competitions that don’t get judged for a few months, not to mention the manuscripts waiting for acceptance by a publisher. So I’m going to resist the urge to down pen (or computer keyboard) and wait for a response. Instead, I’m going to soldier on.

I’m facing the biggest challenge in my writing career. I’m about to start on a three month intensive writing course which requires submitting up to three pieces of work a week. I’ve decided to devote this time to my young adult novel, which has been languishing in the background. It’s time to really get going on it and se if it has potential. I know it will be a very tiring time, but it will also be rewarding, because I’ll get feedback on my writing. Feedback! Bliss! There’s nothing better than to network with other writers and get constructive feedback on your writing.

So I’ll keep you informed of how I’m going. Who knows, maybe at the end of three months, there’ll be a nearly complete novel. And this project should distract me from camping out at the letterbox, or constantly checking my emails for those longed for results! 

I’ve changed my feeds in Feedburner. The new one is:

RSS feed

Make sure you update your subscription so that you don’t miss out on a post!

Just in case I’ve given you the wrong technique of pasting the link into your news aggregator - as I am still learning all this techie stuff - here is the actual feed url:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/InsightOut

 

I took advantage of the slightly cooler weather today and caught a bus into town to pick up a library book that was waiting for me. I was standing at some traffic lights when the audible signal indicated it was safe to cross. Just as I gave Lucy, my guide dog, the signal to move forward, a lady stopped me with a question.

She sounded Asian and her english wasn’t good. She wanted to know where the shopping centre was, and a particular bank.

It’s not unusual for me to be stopped by tourists asking directions, but it always amuses me. I’m not sure why they think a blind person would know where to find shops, streets etc. I had to tell this lady that there were many shops in the city, and that I didn’t know where that bank was. Luckily, another man overheard and helped out, pointing out where the big shops and the bank she was looking for, which he could see across the road.

In saying that it surprises me that I get asked directional questions, in another way, it makes sense. I am pretty aware of where I am, the streets around me, and where particular shops are located. I have to know. I keep a mental map in my head all the time. On buses, I often answer passengers questions of the driver about where a certain street is. I even tell them I’ll let them know when they’re there, which astounds them!

So even though I had a bit of a giggle, it’s quite a sensible thing to ask a blind person for directions. 

Last night I had a dream that made no sense at the time. But in the morning, I worked it out.

In the dream, I was on a train. The train stopped at a station, and I left my seat to get off. I knew the station and was sure it was time to disembark. But then I became aware of my Dad. He told me to “stay on the train”.

I didn’t want to stay on because I didn’t know where the train was going. It all seemed so foreign to me. But I did what he said and sat back down. As I looked around, I noticed that the train itself looked different, somehow unfamiliar. But my Dad’s words hung around me: “stay on the train”. Despite my discomfort, I stayed on that train.

In the morning, I realised what the dream meant. My Dad died nearly fifteen years ago. I’ve always missed him, even more so now that I am in my own business. He would have been a great business mentor for me. The message of “stay on the train” was really telling me to not give up on some new business ventures I have in mind. There are two in particular that I’ve been toying with for a while but have been unsure about how to develop them. I almost gave up on one of them entirely.

But today, quite by chance, I’ve pushed through one of the blocks to one of those ventures. I’ve found the right contacts to get me started on something I’d love to do - blogging for other businesses. There’s so much information on the internet about how easy this is to do, but it’s difficult to know where to start in such a huge potential market. I am going to start small with someone I know, and take it from there.

Dreams tell us a lot about where we’re at, what we worry about. Sometimes I find my dreams keep me inspired and motivated. If a particular scene in a dream stands out, no matter how disjointed or crazy it seems, I know I need to analyse it.

Now I’m definitely staying on the train.