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Sixes and Sevens

A couple of dozen six-sided white dice on a wooden surface, with dice showing different numbers. The image follows the post title 'sixes and sevens', an idiom that may have originated from a game of dice with that name
Photo by Riho Kroll on Unsplash

Part 1

It’s not about the cake

As my tagline states, this blog is ‘a place to practice the craft’. I meant the craft of writing, but it could also be the craft of living, engaging, witching, mothering. Launched a handful of weeks after the birth of my son, it has been many things — a creative outlet during the long days and nights of new motherhood, a digital sandbox to hone my writing craft, a place to find a writing community and make what are now old friends, a path to tread tentative steps toward intentional and ‘professional’ writing, and a repository for parenting mementos that I’m already grateful for, seven years on.

Those mementos include a post for each of Ruben’s birthdays. Number one was small on fanfare but big on joy; two a day of firsts with first tram ride and aquarium visit for him, first foray into fondant foolery for me; three was spent on the half pipe and dirt mounds of the skate park, inspired by his prodigious way with wheels; four an epic piñata and a dinosaur theme; and five, marveling at the wonders of the universe and his mamma’s baking skills as he sliced through an astronaut helmet cake to discover a solar system within.

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The Next Chapter

pencil drawing of a type writer with partial paper visible with words 'it was a bright and sunny'

‘ “It was a dark and stormy night…” The cliché line was written in font reminiscent of a typewriter’s singular offering, with a deliberate smudge of the printed words for added authenticity. The otherwise blank sheet of paper was wrapped around the platen of the typewriter cake* from the iconic Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book, with pastel icing of sage green and peachy creme, mint slice platen knobs, liquorice typebars, a musk stick space bar and keys of multi-coloured smarties. The aspiring author blew the candles and made her usual wish of publication before slicing through the cake as party guests whooped and cheered. That was me, Mek, 80s tragic, birthday cake baker, engineer, and increasingly, adopter of the label ‘writer’ as one of the many facets of my identity…’

That was a snippet of my 500-word statement that formed part of my application for a university course that has been on my radar for quite a while. Continue reading →

2017 Blog Navel Gaze

Grab your celebratory beverage of choice and join me as I reminisce on most viewed posts; a hilarious search term that landed a confused internet user on my blog; my wild card entry of a post that had a great impact on my creative output for the year; and finally, resolutions for 2018! Continue reading →

Storyteller Series

I was lucky enough to be featured on Nadine Tomlinson’s Storyteller Series. Nadine, a friend, fellow blogger and speculative fiction writer asked great questions on creativity and life — are there any other topics worth discussing? If you want to read my thoughts on those topics, head over to Nadine’s blog where you’ll also find posts in which Nadine shares insights on the creative process and writing inspiration. Thanks Nadine, it was a real pleasure!

Welcome to Storyteller Series, where I highlight writers, authors, and those who tell, publish, and promote stories. This month, I’m featuring Mek. She was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and emigrated to Sydney, Australia at the age of six. After taking the safe route of a chemical engineering degree rather than exploring her love of art,+…

via Mek: An Artistic Storyteller — Nadine Tomlinson • Speculative Fiction Writer

Matter of Fact

I’m chuffed to have received the One Lovely Blog Award! I was nominated by reader, writer, editor, minimalist poet, new blogger WREADITOR–  go check out his blog! The honour came with the responsibility of carefully selecting seven facts about myself to share. I hope they surprise and amuse you. Some contain facts within the facts, giving you even more inside knowledge! Continue reading →

Half a Haibun 5

half a haibun 5 on the verge collaboration haibun with Kerfe Roig

We send shadows through the air.

We look to the sky for the whispers of birds.

Are we on the verge of remembering feathers?

a flight of fancy

serendipity’s green light

d n a in dance

fibonacci hearts beat one…

one, two- counting yellow bricks

Collage from junk mail and poetic prose by Kerfe Roig
On the Verge. Junk mail art by Kerfe Roig

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Half a Haibun 4

half a haibun 4 quest for depth collaboration haibun with marissa bergenThe distinctive hips of swagger
Hair like Slash, moves like Jagger
Surely there is more to me
Than sex and drugs and what you see
A second thought, a need for pause
A giving to a needy cause
Revealed within the spotlight’s beam
I’m just as shallow as I seem.

cosmic zeitgeist pulse
launch of a fragile ego
orbit Trappist-1
soar high, ultra-cool dwarf star!
detractors light years away…

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Positive Political Action

I came across this via methodtwomadness’ reblog and had to share- check it out for a treasure trove of inspiration – changing the world never looked so practical and doable!

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Myfanwy Tristram

As you may remember, back in October, I went for a run and came back with a glimmer of an idea.

Remind me not to go running again: that little seed grew into a project that has taken up every spare moment since then. But today, most of the hard work is over. Today we launch Draw The Line.

Draw The Line

It’s been astonishing to watch, as what I’d conceived as a modest small press project blossomed, and more and more comic artists came on board (139 of them at the final count). Every single one of them is a superstar in my books, but it’s perhaps worth mentioning the bigger names, just to underline how the project grew so much bigger than I’d imagined. So, look out for work by Rachael Ball, Hannah Berry, Kate Charlesworth, Hunt Emerson, Kate Evans, Karrie Fransman, James Harvey, Lucy Knisley, Dave McKean, Fumio Obata…

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Half a Haibun 3: Behind the Scenes

Martini and some coins on a bar, photo by Leslie Reese
Photo by Leslie Reese

When Leslie shared her prose for our collaboration with me, I immediately wondered about the title ‘Naomi’. She piqued my curiosity further by hinting that it was a true story. Well, Leslie has now published an extended version, a charming vignette that welcomes the reader to an intimate bar with an interesting cast of characters. Get ready for some people watching as you nurse your beverage of choice… Continue reading →

Half a Haibun 3

This bartender doesn’t like me.  I used to enjoy reading great literature and could recite poetry…“what happens to a dream deferred?” – might still help me make enough of an impression that someone sitting at the bar won’t mind making up the coins I lack to pay for my beer.

sweet brown lacquered tones

shoulders elbows, eavesdroppers

ring marks – hops on grains

hops on trains, buses, and brains

fingerprints, the smell of coins.

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