Woollahra Writers' Festival - 21 November 2009

The Woollahra Writers' Festival was a great success and lots of copies of 'Putting pen to paper' (Green Olive Press, November 2009) were sold.

Charlotte Wood gave a presentation called 'The Heart of the Matter: 10 ways to bring your writing to life'. Her top ten tips were:

1. Earn your adjectives
2. Put your verbs to work
3. Use things
4. Read more, and more widely
5. Don't talk too much about what you're doing
6. Listen to criticism - but only when you are ready
7. On second and subsequent drafts, think about shape. Keep it simple
8. Believe. Ask, is this true?
9. Know your own bone
10. Keep digging

Golden days, golden ways?

Numerous books bemoaning the demise of the English language can be found gracing bookshop shelves - from Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The zero tolerance approach to punctuation to John Humphrys Beyond Words and Lost for Words. There are as many words in praise of the English language, such as David Crystal's The Stories of English.

There are books that tell us how to use the English language; books that tell us how we used to use the English language (Melvyn Bragg's The Adventure of English), and books that tell us what to do if we don't know how to use the English language or don't understand how to read the books about the English language (Patricia T O'Connor's Woe is I: A Grammarphobe's Guide to better English in plain English) to name but a few.

There's no doubt about it: books about words are big business. And it's no wonder that writers get themselves tied up in knots.

As a writer and editor a fair proportion of my book collection is given over to books related to words, language, writing, grammar and style - some new, some not so new. Recently I rediscovered Strunk and White.

William Strunk Jr wrote The Elements of Style as a course textbook and privately printed it in 1919. It was published in 1987, has gone through three editions and over ten million copies of the 'little book' have been sold.

The Elements of Style is divided into five succinct sections covering:

• Elementary rules of usage
• Elementary rules of composition
• A few matters of form
• Words and expressions commonly misused, and
• An approach to style.

Despite being written for American readers, there is much that is of relevance to English readers. The section of style provides some useful pointers, including the advice to 'write in a way that comes easily and natural to you, using words and phrases that come readily to hand'. I know people who follow Strunk's advice to the word:

'Quite often the writer will discover serious... flaws... calling for transpositions. When this is the case, he can save himself much labour and time by using scissors on his manuscript, cutting it to pieces and fitting the pieces together in a better order.'

Who needs a computer anyway? Scissors and glue can be so much fun!

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

I’ve got a thing for books. Some might describe it as an obsession; I prefer to call it a lifelong passion. There’s something comforting and reassuring about books. A simple stroll along an aisle of books in any decent library is enough to evoke feelings of wonderment and awe.

Bibliophiles generally fall into two categories: those who love books for what they contain; others who love books for what they are (as objects). I flit between both.

Books as objects are admirable treasures. Traditionally made books, with elaborate bindings, are relished as products of skilled craftsmen; they are pleasing to the eye, to the touch, and to the nose (have you ever noticed how every book smells differently, or that their smell changes over time?) They are good to have around, to look at, or to hold.

Then there is the content. The ‘mind-dump’ from inspired and inspirational people, the ‘literary-offspring’ of millions of people. An astounding 206,000 books were published in the UK in 2005 alone; to get through them all would require a reading rate of almost 4,000 books per week. There would never be any time to read previously published works.

Books contain so many thoughts; so many ideas; so many paragraphs; so many words. There is so little time.

Still, I am all for giving a lot of reading a go. Over the past few months the pile next
to my bed has been stealthily, quietly growing. It has gained sufficient height, sufficient wobbliness and is positioned at such a precarious angle to now warrant the prestigious title of ‘The Leaning Tower of Pisa’.

All in all, over 50 tomes are part of this architectural feat. They are a randomly positioned, hierarchical-free lot (there’s not a hint of the traditional literary canon, no rhyme nor reason; in fact, Marcus Clarkes’ His Natural Life is sandwiched between Hilary McPhee’s Other People’s Words and Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, all three are stacked on Marion Halligan’s Cockles of the Heart and Deborah Dean’s The Madonnas of Leningrad. I am hoping that there will be no holidays to Nepal in the near future as I have no idea I am going to extract that particular Lonely Planet from its current position). And I am determined to get through them all – eventually!

I think I’ll start now. If you hear a crash, and a few choice words, you’ll know I’ve just extracted Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry!

Recipes

Preparing olives

Once you have harvested your olives – a sometimes precarious activity involving a ladder, a basket and lots of shaking – they need to be fermented before they can be eaten.

Wash and drain approximately 5kg of fresh olives in water. In a separate container – such as a large plastic tub, dissolve 400g of sea salt in 3.5 litres of water. Stir in half a cup of white wine vinegar. Make one or two deep scores in each olive with a knife, before placing them in the container. Place a plate on the top of the olives to ensure they are completely submerged, and then seal the container, and leave for about a month.

Once your olives have fermented, add garlic, herbs, or lemon juice to flavour, or enjoy as they are.

Olive and Fetta Bruschetta

8 large vine-ripened tomatoes, roughly chopped
200g fetta cheese
Handful of roughly chopped black olives
2 cloves garlic
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
6 slices sour dough bread
1 handful of torn fresh basil

Mix the tomatoes, olives, fetta, basil and one chopped clove of garlic together in a bowl.
Brush the bread with the olive oil and then rub with remaining clove of garlic. Place the bread on a hot grill plate until golden on both sides.
Top with the tomato mixture, drizzle with balsamic vinegar.
Season to taste, and serve immediately.

The things we hear

Travelling on public transport can be an interesting experience, to say the least. It can give rise to an unhealthy mix of sorrows and pleasures – you can never be too sure that you aren’t going to be chicken-wing tackled between stops by the person you are sitting next to; whether you will have to politely engage in conversation with an alcohol-fuelled, dishevelled-looking would-be philosopher; assist a harassed looking mother to wipe her baby’s vomit from the shoulder of a bewildered businessman; or find a gold coin.

I was recently travelling into the city centre by bus when I overheard a high school student ask a fellow traveller, ‘Excuse me, how do you spell albatross?’

Coleridge was on the curriculum again. It made me wonder how many essays about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner had been written in unusual places. Whilst at university a lecturer once confessed that he marked student essays in the bath, after someone had complained about smudge marks appearing on his handwritten text,

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

In the case of my lecturer, it is probably fair to say that there were way too many ‘drops to drink’. Way too many.
After a few seconds, the man on the bus responded by confidently – and correctly – spelling the requested word. [He too, I conjectured, had obviously studied it at school.] The bus continued winding its way into the city.

God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!--
Why look'st thou so?'-'With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross.

Shortly before the man alighted from the bus, he turned to the student and, his voice full of doubt, said, ‘I’m not sure that albatross is correct. You’d better check the spelling’. What is it about those birds? The albatross appeared to have been giving the man as much consternation as the Ancient Mariner himself!

The Olive Branch is brought to you by the Green Olive Press: http://www.greenolivepress.com/. We look forward to receiving your thoughts, musings and contributions at: editor@greenolivepress.com