So need to vote for me, but I still recommend reading the top five.
The link was unwieldy but googling "NZ Writers' College short story competition" brings it up pretty easily.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
No News Yet - And How do you Join?
No news on the short story competition yet.
And - those who successfully have - how did you become a follower? Did you have to have a google account? Many can't get to the blog, or once in, can't become a follower. Any ideas? especially Brian, Jasmine, Nick?
Cheers,
Teufel
And - those who successfully have - how did you become a follower? Did you have to have a google account? Many can't get to the blog, or once in, can't become a follower. Any ideas? especially Brian, Jasmine, Nick?
Cheers,
Teufel
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Link worked
Just to say the I successfully followed the link from this blog to the list of finalists - some had trouble from my email as it was such a long name.
Teufel
Teufel
I am a Finalist in a Short-Story Competition!
In haste: I am one of 25 Finalists in the NZ Writers' College Short-Story Competion! You can see my name "in no particular order" on their web page now, and tomorrow you can see if I've made it to the top five. Winners are being decided by five "real" writers, including Charlotte Randall, and there is also a "People's Choice" vote tomorrow, so if I make it to the final five, please have a look, read my (and any others') efforts and vote accordingly. Please also feel free to circulate to anyone who might be interested, and/or vote.
Most of you probably already have an email on this subject, sorry for the triplicate in some cases. But it's so exciting! I haven't been Mentioned in a National writing competition since 1997. I should enter more often!
I tried to insert the link to the website here, but it was too long for the blog format, so I might post this without it then try again with it.
Hasta manana!
Teufel
Most of you probably already have an email on this subject, sorry for the triplicate in some cases. But it's so exciting! I haven't been Mentioned in a National writing competition since 1997. I should enter more often!
I tried to insert the link to the website here, but it was too long for the blog format, so I might post this without it then try again with it.
Hasta manana!
Teufel
Friday, October 26, 2012
Douglas Adams Quote
The QI Elves@qikipedia
A common mistake people make when designing something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools DOUGLAS ADAMS
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Pity-following
Quote from my latest follower:
"Signed up as a follower. Partly because I liked it, partly because the last follower seemed to please you so much."
Both excellent reasons! Follow Nick's lead and be one of the early-adopters who can look back smugly when I'm famous and say you were in at the beginning.
It does make me so pathetically happy.
Teufel
"Signed up as a follower. Partly because I liked it, partly because the last follower seemed to please you so much."
Both excellent reasons! Follow Nick's lead and be one of the early-adopters who can look back smugly when I'm famous and say you were in at the beginning.
It does make me so pathetically happy.
Teufel
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Flaws, Heroes & Pillars of the Earth
Today's topic was to have been something along the lines of:
A flaw in a hero doesn’t bring the hero down : rather it
demonstrates that flaws do not spoil a person. We are all flawed. We can be
great despite them and with them and even if we never manage to rid ourselves
of them. Give Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth a quick read and muse upon the intertwining of good and evil, including one character doing something dreadful without which much of the action would never have occurred; Philip supporting various political
intrigues, including some which bring about the very situation that is to make his life and the good he is working so hard to create so very nearly impossible.
I have read a couple of headlines over the last week or so (but not yet taken the time to read the articles, sadly) suggesting that - gasp - flaws may have been discovered in the character and / or life of Sir Edmund Hillary. See above.
Mervyn Thompson had some whopping great flaws. Yet he was one of the greatest creative types and one of the most sincerely loving people I have ever come across. Despite everything.
Stephen Fry had the whole running-off-with-his-family-friend's-credit-card thing, after years of underachieving (for him) at school and stealing lollies and money from the boys and masters.
Plenty of characters in Pillars of the Earth (to briefly get back to the point) could have thrown their hands up in horror at either their own terrible shortcomings or their latest disaster - yet when they didn't, when they kept putting one foot in front of the other, after the style of the Large Woman Walking With Shopping Bags near Totton, or Dori and Nemo (just keep swimming ...), there always came a moment where life rushed in again and they were once more in the flow.
Even when character A (not to spoil the story for those who haven't read it yet) learnt what character B had once done, s/he didn't go and tell on her/him, he/she had the good sense to keep it in the past and keep going.
Yet with all this sturdy fortitude and gumption in the face of sometimes the most appalling adversity, those who deliberately use foul means in the quest for fair ends are not approved. Those who make the best of whatever has already been, morally questionable or otherwise, have life turn out the best for. To turn a cliché round inelegantly.
But the phone beeps, so I must away in an attempt to complete the most essential of three-days-ago's petty work before the close of e'en. Does God exact day-labour, light denied? Only if the bed's been stripped but not yet made.
Still foolishly holding to the hope of future regularity,
Teufel
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Briefly
So brief tonight, just to say there's no time to say anything. Also, did anyone I sent a link to this blog last week manage to get in? Many emailed me to say they couldn't get access. I followed the link from my own email and got in fine - was this because I was recognised as the author? It didn't use to be a problem.
I'll try again to send things around next time, but now away to more mundane things.
Toodle pip,
Teufel
I'll try again to send things around next time, but now away to more mundane things.
Toodle pip,
Teufel
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Please Comment! And Follow!
Allow me to prostrate myself and beg for comments and / or followships. Two followers is better than none, but lots would be even better. And do feel free to pass this link on to anyone you think might be interested - the more the merrier! -Teufel
Stephen Fry Tweets Me; Churches Full of Surprise Priests
Well, I really, really, really didn't!
But here I am, some months later rather than precisely about one week, once again determined to write weekly, if briefly, and occasionally even cogently.
Big news! I have a new follower! So exciting. Thank you Brian! I'll probably email this out to everyone again, more for the older stuff than this, but IF I really do start writing weekly, and IF the regularity leads to some degree of relevance, it might almost be worth looking in from time to time. Stephen Fry has. Yes, he really has. I tweeted him after his bunjy jump, wittily enough for him to take up my invitation to read one of my posts - the one about admiring Dorothy L. Sayers. And he replied (favourably) after reading it! I resisted the temptation to crow about it at the time, thinking of the future, when we'll be bosom buddies, chatting about our latest publications and keeping up a sort of Sand-Flaubert correspondence, and not wanting him to be put off by the idea I might just be some common or garden stalker, trying to get the attention of the Great Tweeter himself. Ah well, the damage is done now: next time he drops in to this blog he'll shake his head in sage disgust at my pettiness.
Anyway. Must be brief, as much to do that I ought to have done yesterday but didn't.
While at Russell for the recent Birdman competition (mad mid-winter-festival wharf-leaping weekend) I thought I'd attend Sunday service at the famous Christ Church - the one riddled with bullet holes, and boasting the grave of the first Pakeha woman to be buried in NZ - instead of just gaping like a tourist as I usually do - and who should I find officiating but Paula Franklin, ex Otamatea Repertory, and husband Gary (drop-dead gorgeous PE teacher of my youth) also on the committee. It was Sea Sunday, and I was reminded of the beautiful setting of the hymn "For those in peril on the sea" by Marion of Minstead Players, in Minstead - part of our rehearsed reading of Nick Mellersh's life of John Newton, the author of "Amazing Grace." We sang that hymn, but with the normal, not-quite-so-stirring tune.
Last time I went to a beautiful church service - largely for the singing and the beauty of the old building - but I also find, despite being probably more strongly agnostic now than ever, that I derive benefit from a traditional church service, even while not believing more than about 25% of it. I think I veer more and more toward Lloyd Geering's view that despite the non-existence of an actual, supernatural "God" (although I'm more agnostic on that point than him), religious practice is good for us, and helps focus us - he says, of Bible stories etc, "Use all of it - the myth, the stories, the legends, the morality" (I'm paraphrasing horribly - might look it up one day but not today). Not just of Christianity, I think he would agree, but myth and deep tales of all traditions, that have taken a kernel of perceived truth and embroidered it to enhance its power to grab our attention and to remain in our memory.
Anyway, I believe I started a sentence about last time I went to a service in a beautiful old church - lo and behold, the priest that time was a dear friend of my brother Brian's, met on-line and through published journals via poetry a few times over the years, but only met in the flesh once, at Brian's funeral. I managed to convince myself that it wasn't her after all, but it really was! She'd been a priest for years, and I'd just never known. Paula Franklin, on the other hand, had only recently been ordained fully. Who knows where we'll end up in life, eh?
Well, must away - the day nearly done and only about a tenth of my list of things to do done. 'Tis so often the way. Ho Hum. Toodle Pip. Until next Wednesday or Sunday. Really really really!
But here I am, some months later rather than precisely about one week, once again determined to write weekly, if briefly, and occasionally even cogently.
Big news! I have a new follower! So exciting. Thank you Brian! I'll probably email this out to everyone again, more for the older stuff than this, but IF I really do start writing weekly, and IF the regularity leads to some degree of relevance, it might almost be worth looking in from time to time. Stephen Fry has. Yes, he really has. I tweeted him after his bunjy jump, wittily enough for him to take up my invitation to read one of my posts - the one about admiring Dorothy L. Sayers. And he replied (favourably) after reading it! I resisted the temptation to crow about it at the time, thinking of the future, when we'll be bosom buddies, chatting about our latest publications and keeping up a sort of Sand-Flaubert correspondence, and not wanting him to be put off by the idea I might just be some common or garden stalker, trying to get the attention of the Great Tweeter himself. Ah well, the damage is done now: next time he drops in to this blog he'll shake his head in sage disgust at my pettiness.
Anyway. Must be brief, as much to do that I ought to have done yesterday but didn't.
While at Russell for the recent Birdman competition (mad mid-winter-festival wharf-leaping weekend) I thought I'd attend Sunday service at the famous Christ Church - the one riddled with bullet holes, and boasting the grave of the first Pakeha woman to be buried in NZ - instead of just gaping like a tourist as I usually do - and who should I find officiating but Paula Franklin, ex Otamatea Repertory, and husband Gary (drop-dead gorgeous PE teacher of my youth) also on the committee. It was Sea Sunday, and I was reminded of the beautiful setting of the hymn "For those in peril on the sea" by Marion of Minstead Players, in Minstead - part of our rehearsed reading of Nick Mellersh's life of John Newton, the author of "Amazing Grace." We sang that hymn, but with the normal, not-quite-so-stirring tune.
Last time I went to a beautiful church service - largely for the singing and the beauty of the old building - but I also find, despite being probably more strongly agnostic now than ever, that I derive benefit from a traditional church service, even while not believing more than about 25% of it. I think I veer more and more toward Lloyd Geering's view that despite the non-existence of an actual, supernatural "God" (although I'm more agnostic on that point than him), religious practice is good for us, and helps focus us - he says, of Bible stories etc, "Use all of it - the myth, the stories, the legends, the morality" (I'm paraphrasing horribly - might look it up one day but not today). Not just of Christianity, I think he would agree, but myth and deep tales of all traditions, that have taken a kernel of perceived truth and embroidered it to enhance its power to grab our attention and to remain in our memory.
Anyway, I believe I started a sentence about last time I went to a service in a beautiful old church - lo and behold, the priest that time was a dear friend of my brother Brian's, met on-line and through published journals via poetry a few times over the years, but only met in the flesh once, at Brian's funeral. I managed to convince myself that it wasn't her after all, but it really was! She'd been a priest for years, and I'd just never known. Paula Franklin, on the other hand, had only recently been ordained fully. Who knows where we'll end up in life, eh?
Well, must away - the day nearly done and only about a tenth of my list of things to do done. 'Tis so often the way. Ho Hum. Toodle Pip. Until next Wednesday or Sunday. Really really really!
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Batley House, Jill Marshall, and Writing Again
Wednesday 28 March 2012 9pm NZ Time
It's hard to believe I haven't written here since Miriam's birthday last year.
Recently I am writing again, new stuff, and getting old stuff into shape, and organising life so there's more time for it, and much of it is due to an on-line course Mum and I signed up for, taught by Jill Marshall*, during which a group of us on the course had a one-day seminar with Jill up at Batley House on the Kaipara, the scene of the love story by Rae Roadley, "Love at the End of the Road," published by Penguin late last year.
Rae, one of the group, generously offered her lovely house as venue, and invited us all to stay overnight. I was nearing the end of her account of falling in love with man, house, and Otamatea, and it was thrilling to settle down to sleep in a big room upstairs, all well fed on schnapper caught by husband Rex, as well as a plate we'd each brought, and an evening of wine and good conversation under the country sky, dogs and cats milling around, with the sound of cattle, sea and a rather vigorous wind all close at hand - in fact something like roof iron was flapping just above my head as I turned off my light and was stunned by the utter darkness through the curtainless windows, before falling into a deep and refreshing, eight-hours-in-one-go, sleep. Earlier, a sky full of stars took my breath away as I roamed the driveway in search of mobile coverage to talk to children abandoned with their father overnight for the first time ever without me, brother having a birthday in Auckland, and father staying with old friends in Paparoa.
Driving the half-hour along winding metal roads, like reading Rae's book, every second letter box, every second page, contained a name I had gone to school with - Batley House is, after all, just past the end of Bickerstaffe Road, so on Saturday morning I flew past my dear old Otamatea High School as I did maths in my head, constantly revising rate of travel, how much tar seal I thought there might be, how much slower I'd be on the metal, how late I was going to be (arrived one minute early in the end!).
Thanks to Jill, both in terms of the content of her course, and the motivation factor of sitting down to do it, not to mention her enthusiasm and energy, I have now begun writing a book I've been carrying in my head for the last four years or so, which I hope to complete in a matter of a couple of months, and planned out a couple more, as well as tidying up my first novel, currently known as "Alchemy," for publication on Kindle, through Amazon.
And thanks for Mum, for finding the course and signing me onto it, and thanks to Rae for her hospitality, and thanks to Barbara, Jo, Zana for being such interesting people to rub shoulders with and get ideas from, and thanks to Rex for putting up with us, and to Niven for looking after the boys, and to Viktor E. Frankl, whose book on his experiences in Concentration Camps during World War II, and his strand of optimistic psychotherapy known as "Logotherapy" or "Tragic Optimism," having been at the back of my mind for the last seven or so years, I have finally read. I find his philosophy of life to my taste, and the timing of it has converged with the Batley trip and novel-writing course to provide another form of motivational push.
My time is up, so perhaps another time I will explain the Frankl reference more fully: tonight, suffice it to say that he got himself through hard labour in freezing conditions, underdressed and poorly shod, while suffering from typhus, with all the horrors of the Nazi torture regime, where the job was too hard, the strength was almost non-existent, and to show weakness was to be shot and left lying in the snow, by vividly imagining himself lecturing, after the war, in a well-appointed university lecture theatre, on how he had got himself through the worst of times.
My times are not at all worst, but I hold his example in mind when dealing with normal challenges that occasionally do seem impossible, or just too much if not too hard - and indeed, I hope I'm not jinxing anything by saying so, but many things seem to be coming together well: writing, home-schooling, fitness, ballet, household organisation -
But enough.
I must away, and with luck and / or good management, I will return to post again in precisely about one week!
(I know I've said that before, but I will, I really really will!)
By the way, was anyone else a little taken aback at which bits of Stephen Fry's comments on bunjy jumping the NZ Herald yesterday felt it necessary to *** out and which remained? Something like "Suckmothering Arse! I c*cking did it!"
I love Stephen Fry and find his creative approach to swearing very refreshing, even though I don't exactly share his vocabulary. I guess his swearing is as literate and articulate as the 15-year-old boys's who sat at the back of the bus when I was a younger High-School student wasn't.
Good night!
Teufel
* Author of Jane Blonde, Doghead, The Two Miss Parsons, amongst others.
It's hard to believe I haven't written here since Miriam's birthday last year.
Recently I am writing again, new stuff, and getting old stuff into shape, and organising life so there's more time for it, and much of it is due to an on-line course Mum and I signed up for, taught by Jill Marshall*, during which a group of us on the course had a one-day seminar with Jill up at Batley House on the Kaipara, the scene of the love story by Rae Roadley, "Love at the End of the Road," published by Penguin late last year.
Rae, one of the group, generously offered her lovely house as venue, and invited us all to stay overnight. I was nearing the end of her account of falling in love with man, house, and Otamatea, and it was thrilling to settle down to sleep in a big room upstairs, all well fed on schnapper caught by husband Rex, as well as a plate we'd each brought, and an evening of wine and good conversation under the country sky, dogs and cats milling around, with the sound of cattle, sea and a rather vigorous wind all close at hand - in fact something like roof iron was flapping just above my head as I turned off my light and was stunned by the utter darkness through the curtainless windows, before falling into a deep and refreshing, eight-hours-in-one-go, sleep. Earlier, a sky full of stars took my breath away as I roamed the driveway in search of mobile coverage to talk to children abandoned with their father overnight for the first time ever without me, brother having a birthday in Auckland, and father staying with old friends in Paparoa.
Driving the half-hour along winding metal roads, like reading Rae's book, every second letter box, every second page, contained a name I had gone to school with - Batley House is, after all, just past the end of Bickerstaffe Road, so on Saturday morning I flew past my dear old Otamatea High School as I did maths in my head, constantly revising rate of travel, how much tar seal I thought there might be, how much slower I'd be on the metal, how late I was going to be (arrived one minute early in the end!).
Thanks to Jill, both in terms of the content of her course, and the motivation factor of sitting down to do it, not to mention her enthusiasm and energy, I have now begun writing a book I've been carrying in my head for the last four years or so, which I hope to complete in a matter of a couple of months, and planned out a couple more, as well as tidying up my first novel, currently known as "Alchemy," for publication on Kindle, through Amazon.
And thanks for Mum, for finding the course and signing me onto it, and thanks to Rae for her hospitality, and thanks to Barbara, Jo, Zana for being such interesting people to rub shoulders with and get ideas from, and thanks to Rex for putting up with us, and to Niven for looking after the boys, and to Viktor E. Frankl, whose book on his experiences in Concentration Camps during World War II, and his strand of optimistic psychotherapy known as "Logotherapy" or "Tragic Optimism," having been at the back of my mind for the last seven or so years, I have finally read. I find his philosophy of life to my taste, and the timing of it has converged with the Batley trip and novel-writing course to provide another form of motivational push.
My time is up, so perhaps another time I will explain the Frankl reference more fully: tonight, suffice it to say that he got himself through hard labour in freezing conditions, underdressed and poorly shod, while suffering from typhus, with all the horrors of the Nazi torture regime, where the job was too hard, the strength was almost non-existent, and to show weakness was to be shot and left lying in the snow, by vividly imagining himself lecturing, after the war, in a well-appointed university lecture theatre, on how he had got himself through the worst of times.
My times are not at all worst, but I hold his example in mind when dealing with normal challenges that occasionally do seem impossible, or just too much if not too hard - and indeed, I hope I'm not jinxing anything by saying so, but many things seem to be coming together well: writing, home-schooling, fitness, ballet, household organisation -
But enough.
I must away, and with luck and / or good management, I will return to post again in precisely about one week!
(I know I've said that before, but I will, I really really will!)
By the way, was anyone else a little taken aback at which bits of Stephen Fry's comments on bunjy jumping the NZ Herald yesterday felt it necessary to *** out and which remained? Something like "Suckmothering Arse! I c*cking did it!"
I love Stephen Fry and find his creative approach to swearing very refreshing, even though I don't exactly share his vocabulary. I guess his swearing is as literate and articulate as the 15-year-old boys's who sat at the back of the bus when I was a younger High-School student wasn't.
Good night!
Teufel
* Author of Jane Blonde, Doghead, The Two Miss Parsons, amongst others.
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