The Australian Association of Writing Programs

I reveiced a copy of Miguel Syjuco's book Ilustrado: A Novel published this year, and it is one of those books that, after reading, drift back into your  mind at random intervals. It isn't a book that can be pidgeonholed into a specific genre and uses an ingenious structure that incorporates excerpts, blog entries and two different styles to tell the tale of the main character, who is an emerging writer.

Has anyone found how good music can be for getting into the creative frame of mind?
I have been listerning to Fever Ray self titled and I am finding that it is helping set the mood for what I am writing.
Does anyone else have a 'writing song' or 'writing music'. I'm interested if anyone else finds the same thing?

So again I have copied and pasted the entire contents of a Word document in to a fresh doc and resaved it to get rid of all the extra rubbish that Word adds each time you save which makes it slower.
 
(Not to mention the old "I added a single word and it blew all my formatting,  pictures and chapter breaks and all the other cool things I have done, do now I have to stuff about fixing it all...".)
 

Really. It is a lot more interesting when you are a part of something rather than an observer. I can see there are 7 of you out there and it would be interesting to know a bit more about you...

Give it a shot.

I admit it I am a lowly Ma but I promise I am working (I use the term loosely lol) towards a PhD, as well as about a thousand other unfinished projects.

How do people cope with writers block? because I'm finding I am struggling with it in my 'hobby' writing ie my personal escape from adademic writing.

Top 3 strategies :

For lack of anyting better to share I figured I's post my musings on my career:

Currently doing a Ma in Art History I was considering doing a PhD, and I began to wonder why? What really are the benefits beyond Kudos, calling yuorself Dr and being able to look more fancy in a teaching job.

Why do people do them? 

I'll ponder some more...