The Writers in Action, Through my Eyes!

It all started out as a normal day, I was going to Uni once again with my friend Sarah, we were to start our new elective ‘Writers in Action’ which was a four-day intensive subject that was based around the writer’s festival held here in Mildura.

Photo by: Carolyne Rickard

As we walked into the Uni hub there were heaps of people that had come from far to take part in this subject and of course there were many students from Mildura as well. First things first, this was the handing out of t-shirts and name tags, I thought I could have walked out then and there, how nerdy could this subject get. Give it a go Clare, I kept telling myself, as we walked into the lecture theatre Sarah and I took our usual seats at the back right-hand side of the middle section of seats. We both sat and looked on a mixture of things on our phones to pass time, Facebook, Snapchat, Sarah’s Tinder account and of course many horse saddlery websites to see what we could buy. As our lecturer, Susan Gillett, spoke further about the assignments that we had to present I was thinking that I would never understand what we will have to do, and me become a writer, yer right! Then finally it was time for a break, Sarah had her mind set that she was going to drop the subject, due to the fact that she would have to miss a game of netball. Once we were all seated in the lecture theatre again Sarah would not come back into the room, she had already done the damage, I was left there on my own to take part and hopefully past the last elective that I will ever have to do for Uni all by myself. Anyway resume to the same position Facebook and saddlery websites, as I tune in and out of what was being said by Susan, then she asked us to write what was in our head “tune into your inner Zen” and GO. I wrote...

            Shopping List:
            milk
            apple juice
            dishwashing detergent

            Inner Zen – What to write

            About Cherokee? Or maybe Emma-Kate

Susan started to speak again and a few of my peers talked about the different things that they wrote, they all sounded so smart. So I put my hand up and said that I wrote my shopping list and to my surprise there were many of the other students had written the same thing. Susan had us do the same activity once again, this time my train of thought was based more on my horse Cherokee and what training I will be taking her through next.

Susan then began to talk about the different types of writing styles that we could apply for our writing task, I found that a lot of these I could use within my teaching to get kids to explore their options. By this stage I was beginning to listen more to Susan, as she had captured my mind and drawn me away from my technology device. I began to see the subject and Sue more friendlier and fun to be participating in. Sue then began putting us into our groups for our first project, I thought that I would be a great online producer as I have absolutely no idea about how to edit my work let alone other people’s work and I am a terrible writer and there were no other options that I could choose from. Once we got into our groups we spoke about the jobs that each of us had and I began to set up a blog spot for our team and also a Facebook messenger chat group so that we could all communicate.

Photo by: Clare Wilkinson

That night we all attended our first talk in the program, which stared Jason Porter an American writer who wrote a book, well that’s how I looked at the situation. I was still struggling to understand what was so fascinating about these people, they write books and people buy them end of story, but not for them it’s not. These people could talk about their books for hours, how they came about the story, what the characters mean to them and so on. When the night had ended, I was starting to like this Jason guy, he had a very dry and entertaining sense of humour, he was a friendly guy and was quite a catch to the audience and he was kind enough to take a selfie with some of my group members.

Photo by: Clare Wilkinson

The next day I was dreading going to the festival I just had no interest about listening to people talk about their stories. First up for the day was the Mallee writers, Michael Meehan, Carrie Tiffany and Kerry McGinnis. Michael and Carrie weren’t that great to me, it was Kerry who intrigued me, I even brought one of her books. She just reminded me of my grandmother and all of the older women from the bush, she was entertaining and erotic in her own kind of way. She had also done all of the hard yards that had got her to where she is now, true woman from the bush.

As the festival went on I was struggling to stay positive and focused on the festival itself, so myself and one of my group members thought it would be great if we captured ourselves with as many authors as possible in taking selfies. It was our spin on the festival, we would get up close and personal with these people just to show that they are still normal everyday people. The next few days I just amused myself by taking selfies with the writers and making our blog look entertaining and pleasing to the eye.

Photo by: WIA Student

Once the festival was over and everyone went back to their homes, I had then realised the friends that I had made during this experience. I looked to Sue more as a WIA mother and my group members closer than I did before. Even though some of my group members had a few moments, I still found the experience unlike none I have had before.