Writing with children

I have been contracted to work on a project called A Map of a Dream of the Future. I am being employed as a writer going to primary schools to run creative writing workshops for 10 - 12 year olds. In these workshops I am to help the students write up their ideas about climate change, resilience, and living in Tasmania, and vision what their lives will be like in another 40 years taking into account all of these elements. I am very interested to hear what the children have to say as I am sure it will really illuminate my understanding of the world.

I have been hunting some literature to read to help me come up with exciting, thought provoking workshops for the students. So far I have come across a little library of books about teaching using the Steiner method. Steiner specialises in helping children to free their imagination so I can way to get my teeth into reading these books. I sure it will be good soulfood for my imagination too.

Distractions from writing

Pickled Beetroot. Done.
Pickled Cucumber. Done.
Pickled Artichokes. Done.
Rhubarb Chutney. Done.
Distractions from writing. Done.

Forests at Copenhagen

Right now I am capturing footage for a video being made for the Copenhagen climate change conference starting on the 7th December. The video is an education tool to help people understand that forest management practices often have huge carbon emissions that are not being accounted for. In Tasmania each Autumn forestry initiates burn offs of the recently cut clear fells. These burn offs fill our gorgeous Autumn skies with massive mushroom clouds. The burn offs carbon emissions are not being accounted for. The ability of forest to absorb carbon is also not being accounted for. Tasmania's forests are an asset to a world trying to minimise its carbon consumption yet we still log and burn them. Hopefully this short sighted practice will be regulated against by the global community.

Melbourne shiny and new

Sometimes the big cities do my head in. Wandering around Melbourne CBD before my meeting yesterday I had a gentle panic attack about humanity, consumption, brainwashing. " Oh how humanity is a fucked up consumption machine fixated on superficial beauty and throw away goods", that sort of thing. I had to buy a few things - a trolley suitcase, a pair of stockings. But it was ridiculously hard to find a quality item that would not break in 5 minutes. Case in point - the first pair of stockings had runs in them as I brought them out the packet, the second pair I exchange them for had a ladder within an hour. Throwaway, disposable culture. It makes my heart break for the wasting of the planet.

Taking the apple challenge

We have two prolific apple trees which gave us almost ten crates full of apples last Autumn. Many apples still remain under the house in cool storage and I am trying to put them to use before the next season floods us with another harvest. This weekend I made a double batch of apple and ginger chutney which smells delicious. I am downsizing Christmas spending this year and intend to give those that will appreciate it some of my pickling bounty. So far I have pickled onions, made onion jams, Burmese pickled mustard greens, mustard green Kim Chee and apple and ginger relish to give as stocking fillers.

I haven't tasted the mustard green Kim Chee yet - it has to sit somewhere warm for week before use. My mustard green Kim Chee was an inspired invention after failing at my attempt to dehydrate mustard greens to make homemade wasabi. Once dehydrated the mustard greens lost their eye watering goodness. My batch of cabbage Kim Chee made a few months ago has been a surprising success so I hope the mustard green version lives up to high standard of the cabbage variety.

We finished harvesting our leeks but half way through got quite sick of eating them. So I have dehydrated the second half of our harvest too keep in jars for adding flavour to winter soups. Now I am waiting for the pea bush seeds I planted last weekend to sprout so I can plant them in the space left in the garden by harvesting the leek crop. There has been alternating days of warm weather and rain here in Hobart the last few weeks which is perfect growing conditions.

My roses look divine, massive plump skirts of crimson, pink and yellow. I inherited the roses form the previous owner and even my husband, who previously called the roses weeds and threatened to put them through the chipper, has embraced their spring glory.

Sci-fi Horror

Over the last two days I have taken part in a Genre Scriptwriting course with Stephen Cleary from Arista Development. He is a fantastic teacher with a quick, analytical brain that can pull apart a story and see what is working and what isn't in seconds. It is really inspiring to see someone so immersed in story and so assured of the importance of the role of the storyteller. Storytellers help us to reflect on ourselves, on our mistakes, on our regrets, on our desires, on our hopes. Stories excite us, scare us, challenge us.

I was particularly inspired by Stephen's analysis of the horror genre. I am not a fan of slasher horror or horror porn (gratuitous violence for the sake of it). But I do love the dark, the wild, the unknown. I have a horror film sloshing around in my head - it is a low budget sci fi horror to be shot in the small town of Maydena on the frontier of the Tasmanian wilderness.

It is hard to find time to do justice to all my projects, stay sane, have a social life, exercise, eat well etc. Some big things like writing another feature film script get pushed to the side as more immediate needs of clients, work and life eclipse my time. But Stephen's workshop has help to fertilise the seedling of my sci-fi horror story, and I can feel it now growing and twisting through the cracks of my mind down into my arm and onto paper.

Green home

I just had our house and studio assessed for its power and water use. Mostly it seems we can improve our power efficiency by adding under floor insulation and extra insulation in the roof. Another suggestion was to add styrofoam cladding to the outside of the house - ugly and and toxic.

Despite the elaborate amount of techy gear I use for editing I was pleasantly surprised to find out our power use for our home and studio is relatively low, partly because we don't run alot of appliances and also because our wood heater is so efficient. We now qualify for the $10,000 no interest Green Loan so we can more readily afford to add insulation and get heat saving window fittings. With solar panels on the way we are slowly making our way towards a green retrofit home and studio.