{"id":4330,"date":"2011-03-21T06:30:55","date_gmt":"2011-03-20T17:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=4330"},"modified":"2011-03-21T00:20:08","modified_gmt":"2011-03-20T11:20:08","slug":"nz-book-month-here-i-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/03\/21\/nz-book-month-here-i-come\/","title":{"rendered":"NZ Book Month, Here I Come!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>March is NZ Book Month<\/a>, but up until now the excitement and enjoyment that I had anticipated has largely escaped me due to—you know, the February 22nd earthquake and its aftermath. But quite some time ago I accepted an invitation from the Dan Davin Literary Foundation<\/a> to travel to Queenstown and Southland, as part of NZ Book Month, to run a series of writing workshops for Year 12 and 13 high school students and also to give a public presentation while in Invercargill.<\/p>\n

The workshops will focus on the essential elements of good writing—what my fellow author and poet, James Norcliffe<\/strong>, described as the “laws of fiction” in his guest post here<\/a> earlier in the year, “stern injunctions” that the aspiring writer disregards at their peril—as well as some tips on professional practice. The workshop will also include a specific SFF section, with a module on world building, because I am primarily a speculative fiction author—and proud of it, too.<\/p>\n

In the public presentation, I will talk about my personal path to international publication as well as what it means to be published overseas, and also about writing speculative fiction in NZ.<\/p>\n

Putting together the workshop, including exercises and handouts, as well as the presentation, has been a harder than usual task given events of the past few weeks. But yesterday, as I collated everything together and packed it for the plane today, I really felt that first buzz of excitement, that moment when I really “got”, not just that it’s NZ Book Month (hurrah!) but that I’m part of it, after all.<\/p>\n

It feels doubly nice to be leaving town for such a positive reason: I am definitely not “fleeing” my poor battered Christchurch, or even having a spot of respite yet, but doing something constructive—I hope— for NZ literature by helping grow our next generation of writers. I have done my prep, and despite the earthquake et al still feel I have a little left in the tank, so I hope my contribution will be judged a positive one. I welcome the opportunity to make it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March is NZ Book Month, but up until now the excitement and enjoyment that I had anticipated has largely escaped me due to—you know, the February 22nd earthquake and its aftermath. But quite some time ago I accepted an invitation from the Dan Davin Literary Foundation to travel to Queenstown and Southland, as part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-what-im-doing","category-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4330"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4339,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4330\/revisions\/4339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}