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Joanne Fedler

Sydney, New South Wales, AUSTRALIA


Joined December 16th 2007

Number of Posts:
96

Number of Comments:
249

Karma:
2



'Look at your wounds. That's where the light enters.' Rumi

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Secret Writers Business is One Year Old Today: what a year of blogging has taught me

December 14th 2008 23:56
A year goes by very quickly when you’re not updating your blog everyday. It is exactly a year ago that I was lying on my bed with a bad back and I stumbled across Orble’s invitation to submit three blogs. I was confined to my bed for at least another two weeks with several uninspiring Angelie Jolie movies for company when I decided to pen a couple of posts, not imaging anyone would ever read them. I mean, people have lives, right?



A year down the line this is my analysis of the experience:

• During the first six months, I updated my blog at least twice a week, sometimes three times a week, because all the blogging theory is ‘keep it moving, keep it fresh.’ I was also trying to finish a draft of my new book. My blog became an insatiable monster, needing to be fed frequently and I found my creativity for my book ran dry. I had a very low creative season for several months, something I have never experienced before in the writing of any of my other books. So I backed off. So blogging did not help my writing or inspire my creativity. It had the opposite effect.

• Over a year I earned approximately $30 on Adsense, which is about $2.50 a month. Not enough even for a large coffee at any of the coffee shops I frequent, so no, blogging has not made me rich.

• Over the course of the year, I noticed that hits to my personal website increased, but it was hard to say whether this had anything to do with my blog or with other factors such as the success of my book Weiberabend in Germany which has now sold around 80 000 copies. Also, hits have gradually increased even after I slacked off on my blogging. So, no I am not convinced blogging drew people to my website or inspired them to buy my books.

• I did meet some interesting people through my blog, so thanks to everyone who visited and left comments. I particularly appreciated the thoughts and sentiments of Cibbuano, David Connell, Lady Henrietta Muddling, Mrs M, Chris Champion, Michaelie, Louie, katyzzz, Ash, post-modern critic, Mister Smith, Amy Huang, Dianna G, Raven, JP Shaw, Tracy, Jayne Kearney and several others whose names I forget. I only got one really revolting visitor who thankfully seems to have moved on to other blogging pastures in which to spew his misery. I found much to appreciate in the blogs of several members of Orble, including Cibbuano (who introduced me to ‘From London to Brighton’), Jeanne Dinini (the most generous blogger I know), David Connell and Lady Henrietta Muddling (who share my love of David Mamet and Glengarry Glen Ross) and Chris Champion who is my Leonard Cohen co-fan.

• At times I found the content of some of the blogs on Orble disappointing and the dialogues between members off-putting. I am a fan of open adult debate, but at times I found the comments very personal and it did make me less inclined to involve myself in commentary.

• Thanks to Jon and Cibbuano who were very responsive to any queries I had about navigating Orble. You guys are doing a great job.

• Given my teaching load next year and several other deadlines that are growling at me from behind bars, I can’t be sure what sort of time I will have to devote to my blog. What blogging has taught me is that it's best to wait until you have something useful to say, instead of just blogging for the sake of it. I got to a point where I got tired of the sound of my own voice, and imagined readers would too. I think there is great value in holding back - a bit like conversation, only saying something of value instead of talking for the sake of it.

• Thank you to Orble for the experience. It was an interesting experiment and overall answered many of the questions I have about the value of blogging.

• I wish everyone at Orble a great Xmas, Channukah and a safe and happy 2009.

www.joannefedler.com
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Loving Leonard Cohen

December 9th 2008 00:15
At nineteen it was really cool to be depressed so my friend Kirsten and I listened to Leonard Cohen, over and over again, wishing we had oranges that came all the way from China and faded blue raincoats that were torn at the shoulder. We fell into a melancholy, note by note, bolstered in our loneliness by Leonard’s loneliness. We figured if we listened to him long enough we’d learn how to forget ourselves in poetry, and to wring out lines like:

‘Remember when I moved in you?
The holy dark was moving too
And every breath we drew was hallelujah’ (Hallelujah)

or

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic til Im gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

or

Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love. (Dance me to the End of Love)

or

And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
Well never have to lose it again (The Tower of Song)



But this past week, a student of mine gave me the dvd of Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man with artists like Nicholas Cave, Antony and Rufus Wainwright singing Leonard’s songs, and though they are intense like manic depression, and sharp as poetry is, I discovered something I never got as a teenager – the humour. Cohen spent many years studying with a Buddhist teacher, Roshi, and himself became an ordained monk. Listening to the interview with him, I was struck by the humility, the egolessness of the man, which necessarily comes with a sense of humour, because he who knows that the ‘I’ is a fiction of the ego, can’t really take himself too seriously.

The Tower of Song starts off

Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on
Im just paying my rent every day
Oh in the tower of song

I went out and bought his Book of Longing, which is a collection of his drawings and poetry, and it is filled with self-deprecating humour like:

‘Layton’s Question

Always after I tell him
What I intend to do next,
Layton solemnly inquires:
Leonard, are you sure
You’re doing the wrong thing?’

Book of Longing
Book of Longing


or how about this one:

The Moon

The moon is outside.
I saw the great uncomplicated thing
When I went to take a leak just now.
I should have looked at it longer.
I am a poor lover of the moon.
I see it all at once and that’s it
For me and the moon.

I’m in love with Leonard all over again, but this time I’m laughing.

Leonard Cohen singing Hallelujah

www.joannefedler.com
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How to create interesting stories about ourselves

December 4th 2008 09:19
I have just finished teaching an 8 week course of Life-writing through the Eastern Suburbs Community College. Last night, in our final class one of my students asked a great question: how do we know whether anyone else will be interested in what we’ve written?

Just asking that question alone is a good start.

One of the worst mistakes we make as writers, is thinking that everything that happens to us is of interest to other people. It isn’t. When we write in journals with no intention of anyone else reading what we’ve written, there are no boundaries, and neither should there be, on self-indulgence, sloppy emotion and half-processed thoughts. In fact that initial uncensored slobbering onto the page is a necessary step in taking our writing to the next level when we’re writing for audience of more than one.


Before I start to write anything, I find it useful to set an intention and ask: who is this for? Who is my audience? When we write, I think it helps keeps us focused if we know that we are writing towards someone. The energy of that trajectory is very grounding. When we make that mental leap from ‘just for me’ to ‘someone else’ we engage a metacognition, which is not only engaging with our writing but is objectively always interrogating our writing with the question, ‘why will someone else find this interesting?’

Consider the following four sentences:

‘Last night I watched Survivor.’
‘Last night I masturbated while I watched Survivor.’
‘Last night I deliberately didn’t watch Survivor because I hate skinny girls who can go a whole day with only eating sea lice and tree sap.
‘Last night I pretended I was on Survivor, stripped down to my underwear and thought of all the ways in which I could double-cross the people who trust me.’

What is the difference between the first statement and the others?

The first will in all likelihood evoke the response : So what? Who cares? It is unlikely that anyone will find it of any interest whatsoever, unless it is a detail in a pattern of building a character who spends all night in front of the tv and whose only excitement comes from watching others on reality tv.

By contrast, the other three statements potentially beg curiosity or create an affinity by either making the reader want to know more about the character who is speaking, or in the recognition of a shared emotion.

When we write biography or memoir, more than ever we need to keep our ‘so-what?’ wits about us. Our dull-ometers need to be highly attuned, given that self-indulgence is really both the cornerstone and impulse of all auto-biography. The difference between what’s readable and what’s not is our own awareness and discernment of facts that evoke a yawn and facts that pique curiosity.

I am offering Lifewriting as a four week course through the Eastern Suburbs College in March 2009. Details and registration are available at www.escc.nsw.edu.au

Lifewriting course at ESCC



www.joannefedler.com.au


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Choking on a White Ribbon - the joke of politicians prioritizing violence against women

November 24th 2008 01:57
I wrote Things Without A Name because what I saw a counsellor for abused women over my years in that field left its scars on my psyche and because those stories forced their way through my memory and onto the written page.

So when I heard there was a White Ribbon breakfast being hosted in my area, I sent my cheque in and joined the queue for scrambled eggs and pledging a commitment to this issue


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Can you trust memory to tell you the truth?

November 16th 2008 00:35
I started keeping a journal from the age of sixteen, a kind of confessional about how crap it was to be in love with a boy who didn’t even know I existed, and how gross I looked in culottes or leg-warmers or whatever other fashion-item seemed to be in vogue at the time. As I progressed in emotional vocabulary and experience, my journals became more of a friendly place in which to ponder the big questions about life such as ‘is it strictly speaking infidelity to kiss someone else while dating another man?’ and if not, would having an erotic dream about him also count as infidelity?’

My journals became an integral part of my daily routine – just as some people pray, or drink, or wank before falling asleep, so I wrote in my journal. ‘This is how my day has been, these are my hopes, my loves, my deepest neuroses.’ I spoke to God directly in those pages, detailing what I found charming, inspirational and unacceptable about the world around me


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Disappointingly, Steve Toltz didn't win the Man Booker Prize for A Fraction of The Whole

October 18th 2008 03:42
Big books scare me. Anything teetering towards the 400 page mark gives me indigestion, the way any kind of commitment tends to. If a book looks like it could assist a small person to reach the top shelf, if it so happened to be at hand, I generally don’t want to read it.

So perhaps I’ve been tamed. Or perhaps it’s just that this book is so fucking damn fine that you’re bloody sorry it’s only 711 pages, because if it were 7111 pages, you’d have read right to the end


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The genius of David Mamet - what writers can learn from a brilliant movie

October 13th 2008 00:49
I have a thing for smart Jewish men. Jerry Seinfeld. Steven Spielberg. Steve Toltz. Jackie Mason. Not Woody Allen. I think I grew up with too many neurotic Jewish men around me and that whiney anxiety spurs me to silent contempt. Not to mention the small indiscretion involving his step-daughter.

My latest discovery is probably old news to people who know movies, but I was only introduced to David Mamet in the past few weeks. My father recently came to visit and he and I conducted some ‘write and illustrate your own story’ workshops for Bowen library over the school holidays (he’s a cartoonist). In preparation for our joint venture, my dad brought me a copy of David Mamet’s book On Directing Film and said ‘read the first chapter


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The inside rules of the publishing game

September 25th 2008 06:39
I was contacted by Business Beagle who wrote a post after he attended a session at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival, having paid $63 to hear a group of publishers say how impossibly hard it is for writers to get published.

Really Long Link
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How to make a career as a writer and get published

September 23rd 2008 00:56
A few weeks ago I gave a talk at UTS as part of their Verge Arts festival about how to make a career as a writer and get published. Here is an edited version of my talk.

1. THE POWER OF CLARITY


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UTS Verge Arts Festival 2008 – Writers’ luncheon

September 8th 2008 05:32
I began my career as a law lecturer so I have a soft spot for universities and the young folk who mill around their halls and grassy verges in search of meaning and edible canteen food. Some of my happiest memories, my most inspired debates, my most contested opinions were formed at university. In fact, if I could have just pressed the pause button on my own life, I would have loved to have remained a perpetual student, endlessly scrabbling around in theories, politics and philosophies that titillated my brain. Universities brim with that elixir of life – possibility.

UTS, Sydney
UTS, Sydney

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Recent Comments

Comment by Joanne Fedler
on Choking on a White Ribbon - the joke of politicians prioritizing violence against women

January 13th 2009 20:15
Teresa, you are quite right. All physical abuse is grounded in a deep pathology and various forms of accompanying mental and emotional abuse and I've seen so many people in abusive emotional relationships. It all stems from the way men think about women and that is such a huge ideological issue to tackle.
I am so glad you got out. Well done. You are one of the very few who ever leave.
Hope you find or have found the happiness you deserve.
Jo

Comment by Joanne Fedler
on Zoolander sequel in the works

December 15th 2008 10:53
Aw c'mon Cib - a Zoolander sequel! How cool is that?? Personally, I can't wait to see more models blow themselves up and to see Ben Stiller strut his stuff again. Zoolanders up there as one of my all-time favourite spoofs. I'd love a sequel, even just for a couple of laughs.
Jo

Comment by Joanne Fedler
on Loving Leonard Cohen

December 9th 2008 05:07
It feels good to be moved together with someone who sways just the way I do. Thanks Chris. Leonard's poetry opens my heart, and I just tumble in.
I love your Leonard stories.
Jo

Comment by Joanne Fedler
on Choking on a White Ribbon - the joke of politicians prioritizing violence against women

December 1st 2008 02:10
I agree Cib - in the right context, the footballer would have been great - talking to a group of schoolboys or men who need a decent rolemodel. But those of us who came to the breakfast have all been intimately connected with the issue. It was the wrong context for such a speech.

And yeah, my Pa taught me if you're going to express an opinion, do the research first.

Jo

Comment by Joanne Fedler
on Young People F***ing @ the Canadian Film Festival

December 1st 2008 00:17
Ok this looks like more than enough fun. Definitely want to catch this.
Jo

Comment by Joanne Fedler
on Can you trust memory to tell you the truth?

November 16th 2008 03:13
David, you've said it so well. I like the way your teacher put it. I think that really reaches into the heart of how we as writers can use memory. I know just what you mean about writing about a place from history, revisiting it and finding how the mind and heart have alchemized it into something utterly different from the reality. It excites me. It scares me.

Chris, some of my journals entries are so eloquent I don't recognize the person who wrote them. And some so embarassingly inarticulate I wish I'd burned them. Do you go back and reread yours and if so, do you also find yourself surprised by things you would never have remembered had you not written them down?

Jo

Comment by Joanne Fedler
on Conversations With My Gardener

November 10th 2008 07:25
David, I loved this film - this is a great review, and I agree with all your observations. It was soft on the spirit and easy on the eye.
Thanks,
Joanne

Comment by Joanne Fedler
on Tsotsi

October 30th 2008 01:38
Great review, David. I think it is an astonishing film and really shows you the humanity of people who have been dehumanized by Apartheid. I found it very moving and heartbreaking, but it tells the truth about a beautiful struggling country.

Jo

Comment by Joanne Fedler
on Submissions Sought for "Wisdom of Our Mothers" Anthology

October 26th 2008 23:28
Thanks once again for a fabulous opportunity to submit a story to a worthwhile project, Jeanne.
Much appreciated,
Jo

Comment by Joanne Fedler
on Babette's Feast

October 22nd 2008 03:03
This is one of my favourite movies of all times.
Love it, agree with everything you've written about it. It is also for me about her generosity and the abundance of living life to the full in each moment.

Jo