Thursday, April 30, 2009

Tom Collins House Writer in Residence

And that would be me. I'm very grateful for this opportunity because, as all writers know, the hardest thing to find is uninterrupted time to write. To have a place to go to every day with no demands being made on you by the outside world is an incredible luxury. The last time I had this was last year when I had the use of an unoccupied flat for four weeks. I was amazed at how much more work I managed in a day without the distraction of phones, housework and garden and I'm hoping for the same over the next four weeks.

There's an added frisson to be working in such an historic building. It was the home of Joseph Furphy after he moved to Western Australia from Victoria in 1904. He, as Tom Collins, wrote the Australian classic Such Is Life. The heritage listed house is now the headquarters of the Fellowship of Australian Writers WA.

Stay tuned.

6 comments:

Laura E. Goodin said...

Best wishes for a time of white-hot writing intensity!

Helen V. said...

Thanks, Laura - and I hope Script Frenzy went well.

Laura E. Goodin said...

Well, I did win in terms of writing 100 pages of script (yay!), but the script itself is unfinished (boo!) and boring (boo!), but I tried a few things out to see how they went and therefore learned a bit (multi-yay!).

After my next batch of editing deadlines are met, I'll go back to last November's NaNoWriMo opus and see what I can salvage from it. I just reread the first couple of chapters, and was surprised at how much less yucky it was than I remembered. Maybe the same will happen for this script in a few months....

Satima Flavell said...

Happy scribing, Helen! I'm looking forward to reading the fruits of your stint at TCH.

Jason Fischer said...

Good luck Helen, hope it all goes well for you. What a great opportunity, and well deserved :-)

Helen V. said...

Thanks, Jason. I've already got quite a lot of organising work done so I hope so.