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I hit 10,000 words!
I suppose I gave it away in the title but oh my God! 10,000 words! Here’s what happened on each day. Day 5 was the Friday. Nothing got done on Friday. I was really exhausted. My sleeping patterns were out of whack and I was trying to fix my ear issue. I thought I could go out to meet my union colleagues and friends for drinks and come back and write. The drinks part happened and was fun but the writing part did not happen. So I had zero words for Friday. I had about four to five thousand words at this point to write in order to hit 10,000…
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Day 3: So many emotions
Day 3 and I am just grateful. I didn’t get to sleep until five am because I was just so thrilled that I had met my goal. You get a high after you write and type everything in. But I did sleep in bursts till about noon. I would wake up, do some work related things, sleep a bit, write a bit and so on. I woke up at noon and went over to the main house and the office to meet Shannon who is the director here at KSP Writers Centre. I gave her some things from Sri Lanka and she offered to do a pharmacy run for me.…
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Day 2: A cat is here!
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
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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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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I won the inaugural KSP – Varuna Foundation Fellowship
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…
