Just thought Id offer a swift hello ( I was brought up right yunno) and begin to partake. I'm a bit like the last guy on the newbie thread, trembling, if not excited to get my feet wet. Where to start is the burning question. I guess writing comes from what one has read, does it? The style is emulated in snippets extracted from the memory bank of all those novels archived away. I guess, similarly to my fellow newbie I'm a bit lost in the thought process. Unlike him I've had little experience in the field, apart from the occasional blog entry, and oh a short escapade somewhere else, where a women got on the forum proudly exalting to all and sundry " i have a new laptop" to which I retorted "who gives a rats" and really it all fell apart from there on in. So after a year off I'm back to revisit the den of words, doubt and indecision...mmmmm...best I move on, and give the pen a wiggle elsewhere. What do you think? Did I pass?

You admit to being a Kiwi then ask if you pass. They're a contradiction in terms, mate. However, pass or not, you probably know enough Australian to get by on a Pommy blog. I've only joined today myself, so I have no idea whether this will appear anywhere. I've come in from a Yank blog where they wanted to correct my spelling all the time. Being an Aussie, my English was impekable, but there you have it. I've just posted a few of me 'pomes'. You got any you wanna show?

Dilapitus

Hi, and welcome to WriteWords,

If you need any help navigating the Site then feel free to ask.
It can be a bit confusing at the start. As Part Members you can join one writing group (Click on Groups at the top, left - next to Archive - and you'll see the complete list). Have a look round the groups and see if you'd like to join one to upload a piece of work, or you can just upload it into the Archive, but it's likely to be overlooked if you leave it there.



- NaomiM

No I haven't posted anything yet. I don't have anything to post.I enjoyed the tone you used in your reply, as I haven't heard it for a few years. Aussies have a way with words that Americans would find difficult to appreciate, so I think you'll feel much more at home amongst the Poms who enjoy sarcasm, and self deprecating language. The Americans take themselves to seriously to be taken seriously. They use language that's so polite, that it rings insincere. That's what I can't grapple with. I'll go and check out your poems when I get a chance. Gotta shoot to work.

Yeah, I had to back out of that Yank site, even though the poor buggers meant well. I kept thinking I was in Disneyland where a decent fart would have been frowned upon; discouraged even. I think it's the freedom thing that causes it. Freedom to make money and freedom to be bloody stupid. That's no freedom I want for me or mine. We Antopodeans have never known what freedom is, so we think it has to be bullshit. Now I'm fully grown, I know it's bullshit. Only kids believe in that rubbish. The very fact you were born into this dump means you're unfree, and the job is to do something about it. Erich Fromm - one of my mentors (Gawd have I got some mentors and the lot of them are pessimists like me) - says we've all made up our minds to do nothing about it, and the Yanks are leading the charge. Mind you it pains me that the Brits and the Anzacs go right in after them. I'm a bit of a closet reformer, so you can imagine how that went over amongst the Septics. And I thought of emmigrating to Kiwiland when I saw how your governments didn't suck up to the bullies as much as our stupid lot did.

I've just had a publisher back out of an acceptance of my latest novel - Thunderbolt: the Uralla Covenant. It's about a bushranger with guts and principle, government lies and the fact that (and I quote our most intelligent poet, Les Murray) Australian history is bullshit. Each of us inmates here at WriteWords has a blog so I'll bung a synopsis and a sampling of me prose on mine for you. I'm publishing it on my own and will sell it to stores out of the boot of my car. I have a Holden Statesman, so if there's a buying frenzy I'll be prepared. You're gonna hate me for this, but in that book I make the NSW police look like a bunch of mongrels (what??!! I hear you say). And I have two state parliament members battling with the Police Commissioner to get records that prove my thesis. What a pantomime. Farce, really. I have no delusions about the police state called Australia.

I have to admit to playing a leading role in the press take-up of the Dr Haneef Affair here. 'The Australian' published a letter of mine where I took on the Federal Police. The Oz gave it pride of place on the letters page. I got hundreds of letters telling me to piss off over to Darkeyland if I loved 'em so much. It got out of hand at that point, and the whole thing unravelled. I'm of the opinion that there aren't enough writers speaking out. Edmond Burke might have been a Pom, but I think he was right when he said that evil prevails when good men shut up and just watch. There's been far too much of that going on in the West and for too long, to my mind.

I've always admired people who could speak a foreign tongue. I've been meaning to ask what Bom Dia Gente means. I know it's Portuguese (guessing), but that's about all. Is it Gidday Mate? (Ten points to the tall fulla in the grey suit). Right, so I'll go and put on a bit about my novel. It's 148,000 words (450 pages), and falls into the category of historical fiction, being about real events which I've dramatised and stuck dialogue to. It's aimed at correcting our history books which have promoted an official lie for a hundred and forty years. I have a ripper of a novel coming up in its wake, also a historical novel about the most famous civil trial in history (circa 34 CE) which is also about exposing official or institutional bullshit. I have an attraction to humbug and cant. I have to rush off to bed; it's nearly morning.

My sentiments.

In Wikipedia referring to Fromm:

"Automaton conformity is changing one's ideal self to what is perceived as the preferred type of personality of society, losing one's true self. The use of automaton conformity displaces the burden of choice from the self to society"

As much as I love New Zealand I found it to be a largely conformist society. I found a sameness in everything, and everyone that was driving me batty, so I had to get out. I couldn't think straight. Everyone had the same opinion, same clothes, same preferences, same, same, same....well....I had to go fishing. In the end I decided to get out, and came to Brazil. When I first arrived it was fantastic because I couldn't understand anything anyone said. The sounds, smells, and rhythm of life was encapsulating. Since then I've discovered a society that is bureaucratic, corrupt, and violent but invigorating. Breaking the law is a national pastime. Bribes are commonplace. Illegal gambling, drug trafficking and money laundering are supported by the Police and Politicians. In short my world has been turned upside down and although I don't condone it, I do see the humour of it all. Trying to understand it is complex.

But now I have time to read, think, contemplate and enjoy life which I don't think I did when I was in New Zealand. I was a conformist. Working to pay the mortgage, drinking to escape the boredom, and paying taxes. In Brazil it's a game of survival tactics. It's a completely different ballgame.

Surprisingly most middle class Brazilians speak 2 languages, the second being either English, Spanish or French. Or at least dominate one or two and have a smattering of understanding for the others. Conversely, most English speaking countries have no need to speak another language given that English has become global. Did you know China has the most English speaking people in the world now?

"Bom Dia Gente" literally means "good morning people" but figuratively is more alike "hi guys".

I'll go and check out your blog...is it listed here?

I figured you were in some exotic place. Well, I suppose if it was good enough for Hemingway, Conrad and Graeme Green, who are we to argue? My exotic place was France. I abandoned Oz for the same reasons you quit NZ (Fromm would have had a field in both) to go to the US. That was a let-down (bigger and uglier) so I ended up in France, and spent fifteen years there. I'm back in the Oz dungeon trying to accept that it's all in the mind no matter where you are.

As to where my blog is to be found here, I really couldn't say. I'm as new as you are as a day-old-chick. I find it by going to My WriteWords (top right hand corner), then under My Profile, I go to My Blog Posts. My This, My That, My, my my. But enough about me. What do you think of me? He-he. The nice lady (Naomi)who welcomed us both would be the one to ask. She's allowed to talk to nutters if they're new and there's a remote chance of their recovery. I should imagine that if you search for Dilapitus (top left hand corner)type that name in and press GO, you may just find my site. If not, I'm usually down at the Y of a Tuesday night in the billiards room.

I envy you the opportunity you have for a novel in the steamy, anarchic atmosphere you're in. I guess poetry would be out of the question, eh? Fortunately for me though, with all the changes (not reforms, mind)here in Australia, I don't have to leave the country to find the political corruption, the sorditity, the graft, the . . . well, all the stuff you described in Brazil. And it's still the place where being the same, thinking the same and dressing the same is as obligatory as ever.

In researching for my bushranger novel, I became aware of the roots of conformism in Australia. If you didn't conform, you were outside the law. This Fred Ward character of mine (aka Captain Thunderbolt) was just like you or me living in a time when if you thought for yourself and acted accordingly, you were a trouble-maker, and political dissidence then meant an unofficial bullet. That's the basic theme of the story at one level.

In that novel, I made the point that we never had our fight with the Crown; no Boston tea party. The half-baked attempt at Eureka in 1854 was a typical Oz botch job. No, we didn't have the pecker for it, and to make up for it, we went off to the Transvaal to shoot the crap out of the poor buggers there who did have the pecker to stand up to the British Crown - the Boers. I live here but I have no pride in being Australian. In fact I'm struggling bear the shame of being human, and it comes out in 'me pomes', as I call them. You'd hardly call it poetry.

My problem is that I have five novel projects running concurrently. That's so because that's how the ideas arrive - like cards being dealt; no order whatsoever. But you can't miff the muse by being picky. In fact I can feel a 'pome' coming on right now, so I'll leave you to it.

Dill

PS - Did I mention that I've got a new laptop? he-he. By the way, I've assumed that you're stuck out in the jungle with a pedal-operated PC at some roadside internet jungle. Am I gilding the lily a bit there?

Hey Dilapitus,

What do I think of you? A dilapidated platypus flaying verbiage in vain?

Not quite, I enjoy your writing and encourage you to keep flaying mate! Indeed you have a mentor in Clive James who gives it out a plenty with eloquence and humour. I mention him because I'm reading Cultural Amnesia at the moment. Chocka with wonderful aphorisms from icons of literature, music, art. He's an Aussie you can be proud of fella! Similar to John Clarke, waxing lyrical, whilst we muse and chortle. At least that's the way it is with me. Just a blast. We all need mentors eh.

Found your blog. When I get a chance I'll pay a visit. I admire your passion, and attitude as it hurtles off the page. Keep going mate, get it out there. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks after all, you are your own best critic.

Oh, my jungle is a metropolis of wired souls scrambling for a voice lost in deceit. It's an impossible paradise, plump with contradiction. Where is it?

Keep me posted.

Clive's my hero, or one of them, even if he talks with a thumb or something planted in his posterior. I still think he affects the nasal thing just so he sounds like a footballer. I don't mind. His wit is pure delight. And we get treated to Clarkie every Thursday night on ABC-TV government organ).

That was a joke, that bit about what do you think of me. Not well expressed, I admit. Sorry about that. One tries, but not all whacks hit the clanger at the top of the pole. I've read your profile and see that you are indeed in the big smoke. Cripes. I feel like a hayseed.

I've got more to post soon as I save up to pay the full membership fee. I'm keen to develop the art of poetry. I've overcome the crap put on me by poetry masters back in the fifties, so I'm gonna make a concerted effort to surprise them all in their graves. I just got a damned good crit on my first shaky 'pomes'. I'm working on them to get them right, then the world's my oyster.

Let me know when you post something. Mustn't squander our four week trial.

keep at it, don't listen to them.

cheers

Dill