News - Lisa Shanahan

Lisa Shanahan is at Writing NSW.

1 years ago

The closing date for enrolling in my writing workshop, ‘Fierce, Funny, True: Writing for Children’ at Writing NSW, is only a few short days away now! There are a couple of reasons why I said yes to the invitation to teach a six-week, in-person course. Firstly, I'm a firm believer that a longer course facilitates a deeper exploration of the complexity of writing for young people and secondly, that being in-person grows a greater sense of connection. Trust is fundamental to any kind of learning, but it's absolutely foundational to the courageous risk-taking that writing requires. The American Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor has some hilariously, pithy writing advice. She says, ‘the materials of the fiction writer are the humblest. Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.’I love O’Connor’s reflection, even if it is a little acerbic. Fiction is about everything human. It’s about everything dusty. Often when I am stuck when I’m writing or I feel like I’m running out of ideas, I know it’s because I’ve become disconnected. Slowly it dawns on me, as I sit at my desk, that I need to get out more. I need to be in the world. And so I’ll head out to a shopping centre, or to a park, or to a cafe, to be near other humans. In my journal, I’ll catch random snippets of conversation, snatches of description, and sometimes the smallest glimpse of a tiny moment. A few years ago, I was in the city for a medical appointment and I found myself funnelling my way up from Town Hall station, trudging along with hundreds of other pedestrians through the bottom concourse of the QVB. I was preoccupied by my own thoughts but also feeling vaguely irritated by the erratic pace of all the people in front, stopping to abruptly check their phones, as if they were the only people in the world. As I dodged around them, I found myself beginning to bristle. Then we all got jammed up in the small food court in the QVB and everything slowed down, near the Chatime Shop and the Sushi Show store. And it was around then that I felt the little nudge to stay awake—to look up, to pay attention—and so I glanced left, and that was when I saw a young man with a dark bushy beard stand up from behind his table near the Luneburger Bakery. I saw him wave at a young woman serving behind the counter. Then he placed both hands over his mouth and held them there for the longest second, before blowing her a two-handed kiss. He blew an extravagant kiss to that young woman, who was smiling right back at him, in her ugly plastic hair net. She laughed out loud, and he blew one more kiss, and it sailed unseen over all the heads of all the people sitting at their tables, tucking into their German pastrami seedy rolls. The young woman’s cheeks pinked up, and she waggled her plastic-gloved hands back at him, twinkling them like stars, as if to say, ‘I’d love to blow you a kiss right now, if I wasn’t so horribly constrained by these gloves, by such a hideous thing as health regulations.’ And they both laughed, and he left, and she went back to serving pastrami rolls and the traffic jam unclogged, and I was swept away, my whole being leavened by that one tiny, fleeting, human moment. Not all the snatches I write might go on to become books or even scenes, and that’s fine, because so much of good writing is about learning to see. It’s about learning to pay attention, learning to capture the textures of this world and in particular, capturing what it means to be a child, and being able to translate that playfully into fiction, into character, story and place. If you’ve signed up to be a part of my writing workshop at Writing NSW in a few weeks time—thank you—I’m beyond excited, and I cannot wait to meet you! If you’re yet to join or you're feeling hesitant, I hope you might reconsider and say a big, wild ‘yes!’ I can certainly promise that it will be good fun, and altogether human! I’m confident the course will be helpful, and that you will come away feeling hopeful, as we explore together what it takes to write stories for young people that are fierce, and funny and true.Here's the link to enrol! Hope to see you soon.Book Now: writingnsw.org.au/whats-on/courses/fierce-funny-true-writing-for-children-2/(Illustration of Lily and her invisible dragon by the brilliant Gus Gordon from our book together, 'Big Pet Day' published by Hachette Children's Books ANZ)#writingforkids #writingforchildren #writingtips #loveozpicturebooks #loveozkidlit #LoveOzYA #loveozmg #writingcommunity #writinglife #WritingNSW ... See MoreSee Less