Friday 18 September 2015

Sunday yarning

Sunday yarning
By Siv Parker

I was reminded this morning that I had plans to gather together a Twitter conversation I had recently and post it to my blog.    
The thing about writing most of the time, is you can sit down to do some work on a summer's day and then next thing you know, it's August and you can't remember the last time you went looking for an online conversation.  So I decided to blow some cobwebs out of my small corner of Twitter, after having just returned from my annual writers excursion to Melbourne.  
Melbourne
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This year’s Melbourne trip revolved around two main events – an invitation to read at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival and another invitation to present a workshop at the First Nations of Australia Writers Network’s biennial national conference.


A stranger to the city, my romantic entanglement with Melbourne began thirty years ago when I read ‘Monkey Grip’.  
In the weeks preceding my trip, I packed for Melbourne by following an online trail to a video interview with the author of 'Monkey Grip', Helen Garner.  It was as if I had been walking through a cool forest, dark from a thick canopy above, that suddenly opened up into a meadow, warmed by the sun and cooled by a breeze that ruffled the wild flowers.
And it occurred to me later: have I started too late as a writer, to write what one day I might live to regret?  Will I be so in love with my voice that I blurt out things I shouldn’t?  Will I even live long enough to regret it, or leave a body of work that was underdone, raw, rotting, putrid?

This is how it is, the fear.  Just when you think you are getting somewhere, the creeping doubt floats to the surface.  The constant reminder, that we must never step outside the tiny world Aboriginal women are expected to expire within.

Amongst all my Melbourne conversations, one question from another black writer, put to me about my writing, stood out….’do you ever feel scared?’

No one has ever asked me that before, but I could answer without hesitation, ‘every time, but I do it anyway’. 
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I love a yarn and the best are when I just happen to strike up a conversation and follow it where ever it goes.




















































































Thanks to @Fluffula for the yarn!

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