The lovely Jackie Kerin emailed me the following photos from the Indigenous history launch, which included a smoking ceremony to celebrate the launch of The Yalukit-willam: First People of the City of Hobsons Bay, which I unfortunaly couldn't make as I was at another session.
You should also check out Jackie's blog, where she has posted her highlights from the festival - but a picture of yours truely!!
Enjoy!
Hello hello!
Ahhhh, another busy day!
I was lucky and was able to sleep in an hour and eagerly headed back to Williamstown for two workshops: Editing and turning Fact into Fiction.
Editing was first with an editor from Macmillan.
It was so interesting.
She talked us through making the new edition of Cookery The Australian Way (due out in about August).
It was so interesting. She had proof pages, photos, mock-ups, everything.
Did you know that it costs over $120,000 in production costs alone to make it?! Insane!
No wonder publishing is so fickle and hard to get into!
She talked about some common editorial mistakes and we read an article and discussed it.
Although it wasn't very focused on the technical aspects of editing (marking a document, the symbols etc) it was really interesting and informative.
I had a hour break between them, and during that time I sat outside with some other people in the editing workshop.
We chatted about books, writing and festivals, and one of them bought up the fact that this is one of her favourite parts of festivals - sitting down, sharing a coffee and talking to other festival go-ers.
She was quick to say that's why she liked WLF - other, larger festivals don't have the same feel.
I was quick to concur, bringing up my musings on The World Science Fiction Convention versus Melbourne Writers Festival - they can be found here.
After the break, I had Fact to Fiction with Lisa Lang.
We read excerpts from Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, which was fascinating and brilliantly written and now I must go out and buy it.
Lisa was extremely knowledgeable and spoke with clarity and ease while describing what it's like to turn true events into fiction.
We did two writing exercises based on the Lindy Chamberlain as well, which were interesting and challenging.
Over all: another great day.
Why oh why can't this go on longer!!
