I have just wrapped up a weekend of comic making workshops as part of Castlemaine Fringe Festival. Over two days, I had 13 engaged, creative and generous participants who came up with wild, funny and touching stories.
I love running workshops. I usually tend towards introversion, but when I’m facilitating, something clicks and I am in my element and buzzing. It is a reciprocal, fluid exchange where the energy and presence of each participant coalesces into an incredible collective experience of learning, sharing, and integrating multiple perspectives.
The festival is now in its second and final week. It has been so so good. At the opening night street party, I took dance lessons with the Rural Hot Bitches (a regional subsidiary of the Real Hot Bitches), caught up with friends I hadn’t seen in ages, and witnessed the return of Lady Fun Times with a medley of their finest performances (there were a few tracks that made me twitch with vague muscle memory, but I remain a rusty retired member for now).
I’ve also enjoyed encounters with the unexpected, like an impromptu mini concert by a talented pianist who chanced upon a Guerilla Piano in the space where my son and I were playing table tennis. Then there was the play I went to on a whim, unsure of what I was in for — Constellations by Nick Payne, the debut production of local theatre group, The Black Stich Players.
Far out!
The script is something else — such clever rendering of complex ideas: time, reality, quantum physics, love, loss, grief — all the big stuff, but with humour and levity mixed in with the heartache and darker, at times squirm-in-your-seat, emotions.
Actors Letty and Harry Tseng brought the story to life with performances that showcased the mastery of their craft. Their characters (a physicist and a beekeeper) meet across infinite timelines and circumstances and grapple with life, death, terminal illness, end of life choices, and ultimately — love, which exists outside linear concepts of time.
Maybe love is what holds past, present and future together in infinite quantum lumps? But of course, it depends on the observer and the act of observing.
Ideas of quantum physics are never too far from my mind, although ask me to explain the concepts and um no, I cannot. I understand it in an embodied way rather than anything cerebral and ready to articulate. I did a cursory internet search before writing this issue and landed on the fun fact that 2025 is the Year of Quantum Science. No doubt most people have big thoughts on alternative names for this year, but somehow I think ‘Quantum Science’ can capture all of it and none of it at the same time.
There are a few more sessions of Constellations between now and April 6. Go and observe it if you can!
LoA to LOL
An imminent return to university
There’s a second year elective that’s popular among the RMIT Professional Writing and Editing cohort: Leave of Absence. For three semesters now, I have been working my way through its vast curriculum.
Some students undertake LoA and never return, forever missing classes while experiencing occasional pangs of anxiety at 23:59 every other Sunday.
Initially, I planned to take just one semester off, conscious of the slippery slope I was entering. I wanted to prepare for semester 2, 2024, with my heart set on the writing stream of Towards Publication.
Unlike other subjects in the course, entry is by application and requires 30,000 words of a manuscript to accompany an expression of interest. I’m thinking 30,000 words is a compelling EoI, but what’s another 500 words between friends?
So, I took Semester 1, 2024 off to prepare, but three tendons in my dominant hand went SNAP and I required major hand surgery part way through that semester. This ruled out uni for 2024.
Now, in my third semester of LoA, I am preparing for that same subject in Semester 2 this year. I have my 30,000 words, thanks to:
uni assignments
Jami Attenberg’s 1000 Words of Summer in northern hemisphere summer 2023
a random, self-devised writing sprint in December 2023 that I’d forgotten about till taking stock of all the handwritten words that existed across countless notebooks
NaNoWriMo 2024 (we will not speak of the 50,012 words from NaNoWriMo 2016 that I’ve mysteriously lost).
I will miss the freedom of LoA, which I’ve embraced wholeheartedly. Paired with discipline and an acute sense of urgency to create create create in the finite time we have *here*, I have not really stopped writing and drawing and doing, even while limited to my left hand. But, I cannot wait to go back and see old friends and walk up and down the stairs of Building 94 and reset my Canvas password 204,657 times so I can read the 204,658 announcements that don’t make it across to emails. And I can’t wait to learn and share and grow in the company of other writers.
In typical Mek style, I have left it to the final month to finesse my application, so between the first week of April (like any day now) and Mid-May, when it’s due, I will be making some of my 30,000 words make sense (it doesn’t need to be polished in its entirety). Issue 36 of The Raptorial will be lean, and the only other creative project I’ll entertain in that time will be my April zine (I am doing a zine a month this year).
Speaking of narrowing my focus, in Issue 34, I’d promised Part 2 of ‘In search of homeostasis’ where I was going to share ‘… more on the documentary and further reading, and consider the local, present day possibilities and hurdles around the environmental, psychosocial, and economic conditions that make or break Blue Zones.’
That is quite the promise haha.
While I’ve drafted bits of it, at time of writing it is 21:59 on this final day of March, so I’ve made the call to postpone Part 2 for now. Remember what I said about those 23:59 flashbacks?
Raptorial Writes
A monthly writing prompt
Make a zine! There is something so freeing and playful about crafting a little zine and mixing illustration with collage and text and washi tape and whatever else you want to add to your pages.
Fold an 8-page zine (check out this video tutorial if you don’t know how), then every day, for a week, keep an eye out for moments that make you go ‘ha!’ or ‘hmmm’ or ‘woops’. Carve out time each day to capture that moment in one of your pages. At the end of the week, give your zine cover art and a title.
Set a timer for 30 minutes and write, draw, collage, paste and whatnot!
I’d love to know how you go! Post your zine to Instagram using #RaptorialWrites, or share it in the comments here. Happy zine making!
Raptorial Bites
A monthly short story book club
This month’s read is Lara Vapnyar’s Siberian Wood, which was published in The New Yorker in September 2023. If you prefer audio, here's Vapnyar reading her story: