Okay, so given I went to the Sydney Writers' Festival and plan to claim it as a tax deduction, I might as well spread the love. Right? Right. And as Katie C points out in the comments below, perhaps going blonde because you had a dream about it isn't the best way to move forward, necessarily. So. Here are some Sydney Writers' Festival Major Points I Won't Be Forgetting:
1. The Sydney Writers' Festival is not as much fun without my old friend and Standing There Captain of Industry Melanie Howlett standing in the sun with me waiting in line to see someone we both decided sounded maybe interesting but we were actually also deep in conversation about a mutual friend/wild plan to move away to Paris/the possibility of winning a Pulitzer even if you've never written anything apart from a fine selection of amusing emails. By the way, it should be noted that one of us has since moved to Paris and the other of us has still not written anything remotely approaching a novel, unless you include the facebook chats and gtalks.
2. Nothwithstanding point #1, the Sydney Writers' Festival is still an excellent event, although this year it seemed less exciting and perhaps less well attended, although I can't put my finger on why. The best part, for me, was the fact that I was staying about ninety seconds' walk from the main venues at Walsh Bay in a very cheap hotel with free breakfast and an endless supply of apples, which I ate almost constantly in a Lord of the Flies style survival technique due to the fact that on the day I left Melbourne my car was broken into and I had no money and had to live for two days on twenty-eight dollars. Hang on. That wasn't the best bit. The best bit was that I was staying close to Walsh Bay, by myself, and walking in to the first session in the morning and staying until the last session in the evening (usually a book launch involving free food and drink, which helped make the Lord of the Flies thing a little more Bridget Jones talking to Rushdie or similar). So, there I was, walking in for a day full of head-expanding learnings and I had no one else to talk to but myself. Despite missing Melanie, and being very pleased when Stew joined me on the weekend, I suspect I needed a bit of lonely contemplation after the madness of collaboration and performance that is the comedy festival. That was the best bit. Get it? Good.
3. Here's how the festival works in Sydney: you turn up, you look through the program of events and you go to those sessions that:
a) interest you because of an author
b) interest you because of a topic
c) interest you because it's something you've thought a lot about
d) interest you because you've never thought about it or are blindingly ignorant about it (eg in my case the science sessions, which usually have me stumbling out an hour later thinking things like "Wow - there are other galaxies! Who knew!" etc).
Most sessions are free, which requires lining up so you can get a seat. The sessions that aren't free are usually ten or twentysomething bucks. The free sessions are rarely disappointing, but if you know how to author-shop, you can spend your money very wisely indeed. Jeanette Winterson, for example, when you think about how much you pay for a Laurie Anderson gig, is clearly worth the price of admission and then some. Her presentation was astonishing. Writers these days have to be performers if they're going to do well out of book tours and festivals and I'd be fairly confident in predicting that every single person in that audience that day bought themselves at least one copy of one or more of her books. Which means that the low price of the tickets themselves must be beneficial to the author, as well as to the frenzied, cross and exhausted bookseller who is crouched in the foyer snapping "We don't do receipts I'm sorry" and barking at madam to please feel free to take a complimentary book bag on her way to the book signing.
Jeanette Winterson was brought up preaching The Word Of The Lord to strangers with her evangelical adoptive mother, Mrs Winterson, as she calls her. As a result, she says she is much better discussing huge topics with huge groups of people asking her curly questions (as she did in the session I saw) than she is one-on-one, when she can't look people in the eye and is diffident and weird (her description, not mine. I was so star-struck and in love that I'm afraid I was the stumbling idiot when it came to swapping small talk at the book signing. Also I was slightly distracted by a woman in crutches who had sat herself down next to Winterson at the signing table and was insisting on showing her a selection of her photographs while her dog licked Winterson's face ).
4. I enjoyed the launch and author's reading from a book called Poking Seaweed With A Stick And Running Away From The Smell, which I have since read and enjoyed possibly even more than I would have already due to having the author's voice in my head. I am of the opion that authors should do spoken word recordings of their books more often. It is a brilliant way to get to know an author's work. Anne Enright, who read a short story called Until The Girl Died from her recent short story collection Taking Pictures and whose Booker Prize-winning novel The Gathering I accidentally bought on the way home yesterday and am currently reading, has the most beautiful reading voice and style and I hope I don't forget how to read with it in my head as I get further into The Gathering.
5. There were many other sessions of interest but these were the highlights. I enjoyed a session on the Vietnam War that was populated by an audience of veterans making heart-stopping speeches about their experiences. I was fascinated by a session on writing about grief in which two brilliant women discussed their personal experiences, their writing, and made a few hilarious observations about dogs and middle age that made me think that writing is one area in which brilliant women can do what they like, unhindered by weird perceptions they might come up against if they were on telly, or standing on a stage. They were funny as hell and clever and prickly and opinionated and I was inspired by them, and by many others. Doug, who script edited our kids' TV script that remains in development (I hate that phrase. Might as well call it Limbo) was on a very interesting and very funny panel discussing writing for young adults, including a pearl of wisdom from Doug on using young people's language. Don't ever use the word random, he cautioned. High. Larious.
Anyway that's all I can manage, due to this becoming the novel I should by rights be winning my Pulitzer for. Hopefully more thoughts from the writers' festival will sift through the other more solid matter in my brain (phone numbers, what's for lunch etc) and I will expound more wisdom here. In the meantime, I have put aside the portentious dream of me being blonde and I plan to continue as a messy-haired brunette shambles, writing from the newly revived State Library (I barely recognise the place) and heading on towards a future of uncertain dimensions with the same head I've always had. Conventional of me, I know. But someone's got to be sensible around here.