sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Five Cool Things About Winter

by

Tomorrow is officially the first day of winter here in Australia, and I have a confession to make: I am NOT a winter person. Give me blistering sun any day of freezing cold – though my real favourite is hot enough to swim, mild enough not to HAVE to swim. Anyway, to me winter is cold and damp and miserable. But, in the spirit of my quest to put a positive spin on stuff, I thought I’d devote a post to the good things about winter. So, here goes – five cool things about  winter.
1.        1.  Rain. Yes, I know I just complained about the damp, but I must admit that I love the sound of rain, and having lived for the past ten years in the Wheatbelt and seen the horrible impact of drought, rain has acquired an even deeper meaning for me. As I’ve listened to the rain in the past few days, I have been thinking of my farming friends and rellies, and knowing that the rain is making life just a little easier for them.
2.     2.    Soup. Warms the soul, fills the tummy – but is most delicious when it is cold and miserable outside.  I made a big batch of potato and leek soup last night, and as I write this am still digesting  my lunch time helping. Yummo.
3.         3.  Fleecy socks. They’re warm. They’re fluffy. And my newest pair is hot pink. What’s not to love?
4.      4.    Snuggling up in bed. I don’t love being cold at all – but I do love pulling the doona up just a little bit higher and feeling warm and cozy in bed. It does beat the feeling of tossing and turning trying to cool down on a scorching summer’s night.
5.        5.  It’s short.  Perhaps the best thing about winter in my part of the world is that it is short. There are only a few months of the year when it truly is cold and miserable. The rest of the year the days are mild, the sun shines, the birds sing and life is good. 
Roll on Spring! And Summer.

Five Cool Things About Housework

by

Housework. Chores. Jobs. I don’t think I know a single person who likes doing housework. It’s dirty, time consuming – and it seems that as soon as it’s finished, it starts again. But, I have promised myself to find positives in every area of my life, and as I was up to my wrists in dirty dishwater this morning, I started composing the following list. So, here goes – five cool things about housework.
1.       1.  Cleanliness. When the work is done, my house is cleaner. And  much as I don’t like housework, I like dirt and germs even less.
2.       2. Exercise. Bending, stretching, moving. I struggle to fit time into my routine for structured exercise 9even my wii-fit has grown cobwebs the past few months), but I hand out two loads of washing every day, I iron, I sweep, I pick up… I suspect I’m finding my 30 minutes of exercise 9and then some) without even trying.
3.     3.   Less fear of visitors.  When my house is clean, and a car pulls into my driveway, I don’t get that heart-stopping moment of “oh no – what will they THINK”.
4.       4. Think time. When I am doing something repetitive, I find my mind is on anything BUT what I’m doing. It’s a great time to process  story ideas, figure out plot problems, chat to a character. Case in point – this blog post was drafted in my head while I washed the breakfast dishes, so that when I sat down to type it, it just flowed onto the page.
5.       5. Rewards. Leaving the best to last, my favourite thing about housework is that when it’s done – I  can reward myself.  Nothing delights me more than saying (to myself) “Well done, Sally, you’ve done such a lovely job of the housework you deserve a coffee break” (or facebook break, or chocolate break, or TV  break, or whatever is relevant to the time of day). 
Have a great day!

Five Cool Things About Writing for Children

by

One of my students at my teaching dayjob asked me recently why I needed a day job if I am a ‘real’ author (as opposed, I guess, to being an unreal one). I explained that , like most authors, I need a day job to supplement my income. She was a bit puzzled by this, and went on to ask why I bother with writing if it doesn’t make me enough money. 
Although I answered her with several reasons, I’ve been thinking about this conversation – and all the wonderful things I love about being an author – and have decided  to kick off a new semi-regular series of posts (semi-regular meaning I’m not sure how often I’ll do it) celebrating the good stuff in my life by talking about the good parts of being an author.
So, here goes – five cool things about being a children’s book author:
1.      1.   Holding a book in your hands with your name on the cover and knowing that you wrote it. You.
2.     2.   Holding that same book and knowing that kids (and maybe adults too) are going to read it – and picturing that happening.
3.     3.  Getting to go into schools, and to festivals, or online venues such as blogs and forums, and talking to kids about your books and the sheer joy of reading and writing.
4.     4.  Getting to do silly things and pretending it’s research for your next book.
5.     5.   Fan mail! Young readers say the nicest things – sometimes through snail mail, sometimes by email, and other times in person. I have had notes scrawled on the back of festival programs, or corners torn from notebooks, which have become prized possessions.
These are not the only five cool things about what I do – and not even necessarily the top five things, but they are the first five things that came to me when I started to write.
I’ll be using the five cool things format again to talk about different topics. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I’d love to hear what YOU think is cool about writing for children.

Puzzles and Stuff

by

Have just spent a fun half an hour doing virtual jigsaw puzzles of the covers of Toppling and Pearl Verses the World, after fellow shortlisted author, Chris Bongers pointed out that Mrs B has a great interactive website which has puzzles and  other activities for shortlisted titles in the CBCA Childrens Book of the Year Awards for the past three years. How very cool.

The Toppling page has links to teacher’s notes, a cloze passage, a domino topple and a domino game, while the Pearl Verses the World page has teacher’s notes, a cloze passage and poetry activities. And, of course, both pages have a 20 piece jigsaw of the book covers. There are similar pages for all the other shortlisted books in the Picture Book, Younger Readers and Early Childhood categories of the awards.

What a fun way to get kids interested in the shortlisted titles – and a great help for teachers and librarians  wanting to focus on the awards! Well done Mrs B for putting so much work into creating this resource – and thanks for challenging me with the Cloze passage. Was very relieved to get 100%

Foreign Editions

by

My beloved brought home some mail from our other house on the weekend, and I was delighted that one of the packages contained author copies of Snowy’s Christmas – in Korean.  It’s my  first ever foreign language edition – though there have been UK and US versions of some of my books – so it was a novel expereince seeing my story in a form I can’t actually read – in spite of looking almost the same as the Aussie version.

Here’s the Korean cover:

And here’s the Australian one:

 
You can see there’s only minor differences. The  gold star on the Korean version says ‘World picture book’ in English – with some Korean text which I presume says the same thing. And the publisher’s logo is on the top corner. Apart from that there’s a tiny difference in the shade of green used.  Internally, it’s hard to spot the differences, but I would love to know how the translated version reads.

It’s interesting to see how overseas editions are altered for different markets. Pearl Verses the World is coming out in the USA later this year, published there by Candlewick, and the cover seems the same. However, the UK version not only has a different cover, but also a different title. Here’s the Aussie version:

and the UK version:


I absolutely adored the first cover, but love the second one too – in fact, I think, equally.

What do you think?

by

There’s been lots of mirth at my house tonight as the Murphlets (my offspring) see me enact new control techniques I learnt today. See, in my day job I’m a teacher, and I have spent today (as well as a day last week and another set for next week) learning classroom management strategies. Some of these are things I’ve known and used for years, others are new, but either way I have come home full of these strategies and ready to try them out. So the Murphlets have been privy to the stare, the minimal verbal command, the gesture, and even the square-off. They’re on to me and know I’m trying out new techniques – so there has been lots of laughter – but at the same time every time I have tried one of these techniques I have reinforced the things I learnt today – and it’s been fun.
You see, whenever we are taught something, we are certain to retain only a portion of what we learn.  But research (and common sense) shows that the sooner we put that learning to use into practise, the more we will retain. So, home from a day of Professional Development (PD), I’ve been busily using those skills so that they stay with me.
Why am I telling you this? Because, if you’re a writer, or an aspiring writer, chances are you are regularly learning new skills – through reading blogs like this one, or attending writing workshops, or reading books on writing. But are you using those skills? All of them? Online especially it is really easy to click on links and read blogs and articles and writing advice. And when you read them you probably nod in agreement or have lightbulb moments when you think “ahhh – THAT is what I need to try.” But do you then sit down and put those things into action? Do you actually write after you read? I know I don’t always do it. Sometimes I think will use the skills  later, but other times, if I’m really honest, I am quite happy to just keep clicking and reading because I can pretend to myself that I’m learning when what I’m really doing is avoiding a deadline, or even avoiding facing the fact that I’m not writing.
Having admitted this so publicly, next time I learn a new writing skill, I’m going to attempt to use it straight away. Because I need to keep expanding my skills base in writing as much as in teaching – maybe more. What about you?

https://sallymurphy.com.au/2011/05/103/

sallymurphy.com.au