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Day 2: A cat is here! Day 2 of the KSP - Varuna Foundation Fellowship
Day 2 and I woke up joyful today. Joyful because it was such a wonderful thought that I could write and everyone was going to be mindful of that. That no one would disturb me, no one would interrupt me, no one would think to themselves “She is free – let’s get a hold of her.” Also annoyance because my article was overdue and I needed to get it done so I knuckled down to do that while battling my ear going strange again. I made a mental note to see my doctor as soon as I get back to Melbourne. I figured out the A/C and I had a…
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Day 1: Home on my back, home where there is a bed Day 1 of the 2018 KSP-Varuna Foundation Fellowship
Oh good heavens, day 1 and am I tired. It was a whirlwind weekend with a wedding and various wedding related celebrations and the attempt to pack a bag that does not want to take on pairs of shoes, two saris and related accoutrements and another trenchcoat. “Do you think this fellowship will be useful?” my mother asks, as I decide where the notebooks will go: main bag, carry on bag or laptop bag? I look at her. I know what she means – Sedition took twelve years to write because I also had to live and it ended up on the back burner a lot and even after finishing it,…
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Well at least the website is looking a bit snazzier
First of all, sorry about the radio silence on the website of late. The website was hacked and was down. It didn’t affect anyone who visits it – all it did was place pesky links all over the site. But it did take a while to sort out. I had to figure out exactly what had been tampered with. Right now, I am pretty sure I got everything but if you see anything strange, let me know. And then I decided to change the look of the site a bit more. I hope things are now easier to find on the site and that things are easier to read. So…
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Frequently Asked Questions About Becoming A Freelance Writer: All the frequently asked questions about freelance writing you ever wanted to ask
Marisa Wikramanayake answers a few of the frequently asked questions about being a freelance writer.
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Foundation Fellowship update: a bit about Gin and Tonic
Preface: I have won the inaugural KSP-Varuna Foundation Fellowship and ahead of my first week stay at the end of May, I am trying to research and write as much of my chosen book Gin and Tonic as I can. I thought I would bring you along for the ride and hope you keep me accountable. What have I been upto with regards to the foundation fellowship? Today I thought I would tell you a bit about the book I want to use the foundation fellowship to work on. When my ideas for stories come to me, they now tend to come to mind with Sri Lankan characters or settings. I…
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How to set your freelance rates for 2018 Bonus: free worksheet
A few years ago, I created a post about how to set a freelance rate similar to this one. It was very popular and I thought it was time to revisit the topic at the start of 2018. I have learnt a lot from my colleagues and from running a business since then. I hope this helps you. You can also get a free worksheet to help you with some of the calculations. Before we start: 1. There are several methods/means of arriving at a freelance rate and I will go through all of them. Figuring out the numbers for all of them will help you figure out the best…
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I won the inaugural KSP – Varuna Foundation Fellowship Here is what that means
What is a writing foundation fellowship? In A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf argues and advocates for women to have a room of their own to write in where they are free from all the other duties and responsibilities one has to undertake in the business of living or running a house or working and so on. Male writers in the past have often benefitted from having a spouse who could keep everything going while they had the free time and space to write. Writing fellowships vary in what is involved or offered but this idea of having time to write free from other concerns underpins the KSP-Varuna Foundation Fellowship…
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9 things I did not expect in 2017 & Happy New Year! I was kind of taken by surprise and gawping in shock most of the year to be honest.
2017 has been a year full of ups and downs. Or at least for me, a lot of things that I well – did not expect to happen. Not to me. I am still quite giddy and grateful and in other ways also sad. We had a lot of unnecessary violence, hate and tragedy this past year. I did not expect… so much travelling I did not expect to travel as much as I did. I criss crossed Australia for the IPEd 2017 Editors’ Conference in Brisbane as a speaker and for the MEAA for union meetings. You can catch up on my conference updates here. I did not expect……
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IFTTT and how to use it – a screencast This is also my entry for the screencast challenge
So earlier on in this post I explained that IFTTT saves me a lot of time looking for work opportunities. And people at the conference wanted me to explain more about IFTTT and how to use it in detail. At the same time Malini Devadas and Hilary Cadman challenged us all to try screencasting so I thought this was a perfect way to try and screencast a quick explanation of how to build an applet in IFTTT. I am rather soft spoken and stilll figuring out how to get my headset mic to record me at a louder volume so please use headphones when watching the following video: Unable to…
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Building alliances – a panel on organisations working together
So I was asked to be on this panel about building alliances which mostly came about because I had previously contacted IPEd with ideas about how IPEd and MEAA could collaborate. The panel consisted of myself, representing all things MEAA, Juliet Rogers of the ASA, Sherrey Quinn from ANZSI, Queensland Writers Centre’s CEO Katie Woods and the Rosanna Arciuli from the Copyright Agency. In a nutshell we definitely agreed on several points: It was vital for us to band together on several big theme issues because there was power in numbers no matter which organisation spearheaded the issue and campaign. Such big theme issues that we cared about were copyright…
