Look at all the stuff goin' on!

yeah. things got a bit hectic. running around the day beforehand trying to get ready for the festy. then running around at the festy, who the hell has time to blog? not so well planned out, then.

and now, what? a week later? haven't had time to blog. arg.

okay, in a nutshell. festy was good. saw some innaresting people saying stuff that made me think. also saw some less-than-innaresting people saying stuff that made me think. maybe that's the point. every year for the last three years i come back from the festival and the first thing said is "that wasn't quite what i'd hoped for". lots of ground being covered that i'm kinda familiar with, so not so many epiphanies for yours truly. but maybe that's not the point of the festy. even when people are saying stuff you don't agree with, it still makes you think about the topic of conversation, and in newcastle almost every topic of conversation is an interesting one.

one thing you can't argue with is that since i came back I've been jazzed to the nines and getting some real good work done. been feeling creatively empowered. and when you're creatively empowered you do satisfying work, which makes you feel even more creatively empowered, which makes you do more satisfying work. a lovely feedback loop.

so yeah. my muse got the big recharge. I made four zines to take up, while i was there I got a sample of my novel to Tara Wynn from Curtis Brown (fingers crossed that something comes of that), since I've been back I've finished the wee cartoon with the walking lizard that's been hanging around not done for ages, I started another cartoon starring a character of mine called Jumway, I've been revising and re-editing my novel, I've started planning a chapbook of poetry... all good.

re: the actual festival, highlights for me were the GDS open mike/Voiceworks launch where I got to see the mouthpiece poets in action and the contributors to the Vworks CD in action too; the cardigan press launch of Normal Service will Resume, where some fine short stories were read to a small and wonderfully attentive crowd; at the "Me and my fictional friends" session I got to see Gerald Roche in action and buy his wonderful book Fox Story, as well as hearing Rachel Leary's excellent story "Milk" and watch spunkrat Anna Hedigan in action; I got to see Cristin O'Keefe-Aptowicz in action about a zillion times as she strutted the stage MCing the GDS open mike, did poems at the final night Newktoberfest, and talked dirrrrrrrty at the brainy sex/sexy brain session (though I was disappointed there wasn't more brain and less sex in that one, but I suppose anecdotes about internet porn are crowd-pleasers); the booyah Skipping Girl Posse were in action once again (I have photos but I'm not sure how to put them on this blog); and I got to catch up with Tanya who makes Nerdling, who was nice enough to invite me out to her place outside newcastle so I could play with the beehive she's just inherited (bees! bees! bees! eeeeee!).

And of course there was the zine fair. Oh, the zine fair. Surprisingly, people actually bought copies of my novel, which was nice, because it meant I could have dinner and pay for petrol on the drive back home. I got lots of exxo zines, and I think maybe now I'll tentatively promise to very slowly review them over the remainder of the year. Maybe. But it was ace.

The other acest thing was the drive to and fro. Hanging out in the big red bus ov luv with Craig, Ed, Tom and Anna was so cool - you get to bond with people on 13 hour drives in a special kind of way, drifting in and out of consciousness as one does if one arises at 5am. So thanks guys all y'all for making the drive such fun. Submarines, Dogs on Tuckerboxes, Paterson's Curse, truckstop vegie burgers - all good. All good, good, good.

So yeah. A good festival experience tempered with some cautionary instances - a bit too much cigarette smoke leaking from the ventilation pipe in our hotel room for comfort, a few too many unprepared panellists and technical snafus - but on the whole a worthwhile trip up north to hang with people who are smart and funny and interesting. and sometimes drunk, too.

And, of course, the bees.

Spent the day writing an article about a 3D animation of a bucket-headed robot that dances, then did a shitload of proofreading work on Going Down Swinging (there's a weight off my mind), then tackled the monster inbox. The real one. The physical one sitting right there to my left. Fucker was overflowing. Fucker. Was a typical paper-shuffling late afternoon, throwing out lots of letters that were about events that happened ages ago, stuffing things into the filing cabinet (closed drawers mean I don't have to lookat all the important papers I'm ignoring in there), and found a cheque for $260 bucks for a poetry gig I did in Bairnsdale back in August. Lovely. Now it's very small and unintimidating.

The whole experience left me with a feeling of achievement, especially the wad of letters I posted afterwards, some of them forms that had needed filling out and sending for months. Virtuous, that's me. This virtuous feeling is only slightly tempered by the fact that while I was doing this paperwork I should have been working on my one-week-overdue-almost-out-of-time-before-newcastle-in-which-I-can-finish-it walk cycle animation, wherein Jerry the Nerky Lizard walks to centrestage, picks up a can of chicken soup and winks at the camera. I'm not even finished with the walk yet.

I'm going to maintain my position that watching Futurama and Powerpuff Girls DVDs all night instead of tackling aforesaid walk cycle was an exercise in furthering my knowledge as an animator. Yeah. I was breaking every scene down into basic compositions. Honest. Well, it's kinda true.

Now, on to Saturday's program.

And the winners are:

How did plagiarism become cool? - 10am, TPI upstairs

Sampling, collaging and stencilling. Probably worth a look. Hopefully not too many diatribes on offer. Also hopefully not too many "whatever, man" non-outbursts either.

Form and Formlessness - 10am, Watt Space.

Well, whaddayaknow? A clash. I almost feel obliged to go to this one, even though there's a worm in my brain that says I don't write poetry anymore, so say goodbye to that. Last time I did write a poem it was more form-ful than form-less, and I've been reading some interesting stuff about the emergence of free verse, and these guys are kinda career poets, so they'll probably have something interesting to say about the form vs. free verse thing. My position on which some days just makes me feel like a fire-less oldster. sigh.

Dealing with Printers 101 - 11am, Snap Printing

EEEEEeeeeeeeeEEEEEE! Tour of a printing house! Publishing geek heaven! Do we get showbags?

Small-town writers - 12pm, Watt Space.

If I'm not off sniffing toner on the other side of town (don't sniff toner kids), I'll duck in and check this one out, cos Steve Gumerungi Hodder was for me the standout at the GDS open mike last year and I just wanna shyly go up and tell him how much I like his hiphop poem "Here 2 Stay".

Magical Mystery Writing tour: number 2 - 2pm, PAN entrance

aw, this just sounds cute. Bring some change for the ferry and come along for a writing/sightseeing tour with the option of "guerilla spoken word". ooh. Bet they go to Stockton.

Recording Spoken Word - 4pm, City Hall Newcastle Room

Recording tips and such, yeah? You get to walk away with a CD of your own spoken word. Sounds fun. Bet they run out of time. And discs. Poets and spoken worders have no understaning of the word "time limit". Hope the facilitators are ready to get nasty…

Brainy sex/sexy brain - 4pm, Civic Rehearsal Room

I'm just going cos of the word brain. I'm so fucking predictable. Plus Cristin Aptowicz is gonna be there. She's cute.

Lip Magazine launch - 6pm, Palais Upstairs.

Mildly curious about this one. Mildly.

Cardigan Press Launch - 8pm, Salar.

Cardigan Press are THE best indie publishers in the whole universe right now, so everyone has to go to Salar for this launch. The book, Normal Service Will Resume is fuckin' brill. Oh, and I'm reading and I've got a story in the anthology. Biased? nah.

And that's Saturday dealt with. I'm puffed.

I talk too much.

aX + ((b-5)*3.12) sleeps until the festival!

Printed out the program last night. Sat on the toilet this morning before school and read through, putting a little star next to the panels I think I'll be interested in going to.

And the winners are...

Thursday 2nd

Reader's Salon - 8pm

We'll have just pulled into Newie around now, and the Salar Couch Cafe is the comfiest cafe in Newcastle. It also stocks this fucking amazing fruit juice brand that does the most tastiest raspberry juice. Yum raspberry juice. I think I drank their entire stock last year. Plus, Tash Cho is reading that night and she's ace. Also keen to see Tim Gaze, whose work I'm familiar with from publishing him in Going Down Swinging, but who I've never met.

Friday 3rd

Collaboration - 10am, Civic Rehearsal Room

I worked on a collaborative project for the first time ever this year, and learned some good stuff, even though the project didn't turn out so good. I'm interested to hear what the panellists have to say about strategies for making sure you get the most out of collaborations, whether they work or not.

Me and My Fictional Friends - 10am, Watt Space

The first clash of the festival comes early for me. I want to see the Colab. panel, but I also want to see what that big spunkrat Anna Hedigan has to say about writing about real people and the consequences thereof. She's hot, ya know.

Fandom and Writing - 11am, PAN Downstairs

The second clash of the festival, hot on the heels of the first. Fanzines and fansites and fan-fiction too, I think, so I'll probably clarify if they're talking fanfic on this one, and then head along accordingly. I'm interested in the fanfic side of things after spending three months writing stories about 1940s Australian comic characters and 1800s Australian pulp fiction heroes.

The verse context - 12pm, Watt Space

This one's about trends in contemporary poetry, so I'll be putting my beat-up old poet's hat on and going along to glom what's on offer. Hopefully there'll be something interesting happening here.

Slush Puppies - 12pm, Civic Rehearsal

Those clashes keep on coming, don't they? This is about publishers talking about how they deal with unsolicited manuscripts. I'm planning on working the shmooze this year a bit, since I've decided it's time to bite the bullet and try for an agent, so anything that publishers are involved in this year, you'll find me at. True dinks.

Fridge Magnet Poetry as Stickers - 3pm, TPI House, Pod.

This one just looks like a bit of fun for after lunch, and Tai Snaith is a wiz, a kack and a gun, so I'm there with tiny pieces of tinkling metal attached.

I'm getting my book published - now what?- 4pm, Watt Space

I'm facilitating this one. We're talking about ways of proactively ensuring that your post-publication experience is the nicest and most effective one it can be. Publishers, published novellists and novellists about to be published chewing the fat. Should be interesting.

Betty, Veronica and other women in comics - 5pm, PAN Upstairs.

Gender issues in comics. Always an interesting topic. A bit of a clash with the publication panel, but I'll duck along for the second hour and ask some curly questions myself.

and then it's off to...

Voiceworks #54 launch/GDS open mike - 7pm, King Street Hotel

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, all the way from NYC, is MC-ing the night, so it's gonna be a total fucking riot. She's got enough energy to light up newcastle all by herself. I met Cristin a couple years ago when she came to Melberg to run a slam series, and we hit it off great. I showed her the sights of melbourne, including the shitty film they show you when you go to the Rialto towers (which we reprised a capella on stage the night afterwards), the goats tethered by the side of the merri creek near Rushall Station, and some other stuff too. A couple poetry readings, I can't remember.

Voiceworks 54 is a spunky mag complete with spoken word CD that has some really piss-funny stuff on it. Everyone's gonna be there.

The word is Nerd - 9pm, TPI House, Pod

I might sneak out of the launch a bit later and go see what's happening here, because Tanya from Nerdling zine will be participating and she's ace. Plus I have a hidden past of D&D, an ongoing superhero fetish, an ability to quote whole chunks of Star Trek and a love of Buckaroo Banzai, so I might just be in with a chance at this competition to see who's the geekest of them all...

Jesus God, is that only Friday? I'm exhausted typing this OUT, let alone contemplating how I'm going to get to all of this stuff. And I haven't even LOOKED at the Electrofringe prog yet. This is going to be one of those "can't talk, gotta sprint to the next session" festivals, isn't it? Damn you, festival programmers! Your irresistible program has damned us all! Us ALL, I tell you!

Tune in tomorrow for the next instalment of what Adam wants to go see.

aX + ((b-5)*3.12) sleeps until the festival!

aX + ((b-5)*3.12) sleeps until the festival!

Printing out the program now. Have to confirm the people who're coming up in the big red van. Five people in the bus of love. Leave 5am Thursday 2nd, arrive around 8pm that night. Then ginger beer. These are the rules.

Still have to make a few changes to the three Jutchy Ya Yas I'm bringing up as my part of the zine fair and the beer + zine dealie (for an extra dollar you get a zine with your beer - that sounds fair). Started work (too late) on a zine that'll be a little A6 storything using the diagrams from Professor Julius Sumner Miller's Millergrams. With all the homework I've got, and the fact that I've got to at the very least partially lay out Going Down Swinging before I leave, even the simple proof-print-and-photocopy needed for Jutchy makes me slightly nervous, so don't anyone hold your breath for the as-yet-untitled Millergrams zine.

I don't want a repeat of last year, when I spent at least half a day photocopying while up there and missed out on the first (and always most important) few hours of the zine fair. They'll be copied here in Melbourne or they won't be allowed to come. that's final.

Very excited about the electrofringe program this year. Now that I'm a novice electronic artist, the electroprogram has a spooky and intoxicating new relevance to me.

Bought two zines today - Oompah Lumpen 4.1 and American't. Last week I got the latest Wild Oat in the mail.

I'm so tired I'm just making lists like a two-year old of the things I saw today. A horsie and a steam-roller. The end.

aX + ((b-5)*3.12) sleeps until the festival!

aX + ((b-5)*3.12) sleeps until the festival!

Also moved house. Again. I'm a crap nomad, but at least the last purge of unwanted stuff served me well. This is the most painless move I've ever experienced. Helps to have three weeks to move.

aX + ((b-5)*3.12) sleeps until the festival!