Better late than never!
I’m writing this retrospectively, typing content into in a blank placeholder post I created in December 2018.
I made a lot of blank placeholder posts last year. This was primarily because I was simultaneously in my first year of full-time employment and coping with some serious family illness at home. I also established a literary journal in partnership with one of my closest friends. Life became busy and my writing fell somewhat by the wayside.
This felt depressing. Earning money in order to live is a fundamental, evidently worthwhile goal; however, my personal ideal is also to be able to buy time in which to be creative. I continued to jot down my ideas and submit poetry here and there, but seldom developed my scribbles as extensively as I might have liked.
An email out of the blue changed this. The team at Meanjin got in touch with me via this blog – which had been growing increasingly dormant – and asked if I’d be interested in writing for them, having read some of my previous work in other publications. I jumped at the chance, and the resulting article can be found on their website here.
Their email also spurred me on to update this blog more frequently and to fill in the blank placeholders, even if just as a personal commitment to creative endeavour. Updating this blog feels like an act of ‘self-care’, to use wellness jargon; sort of akin to dusting a digital home. Committing to writing posts regularly makes it easier to commit to writing other things more regularly, too.
So many thanks again to Meanjin for that small piece of encouragement which came at exactly the right time. It was greatly appreciated.
In other news, Cicerone Journal began publishing its first issue over the course of December 2018. As I write this post content from the future (April 2019), we are now in the process of finalising pieces for publication in Issue 2!
It’s so exciting to work hard on a project and to see that work pay off. Cicerone Journal is now well and truly (a)live, with a website, a Facebook page, and even a Twitter account. It has received submissions from around the world and is slowly but steadily building a network of readers and regular contributors.
In 2019, we hope to contribute more to our local literary community by hosting events and establishing more of a physical presence. We’ve got plenty of ideas and a few grant applications on the boil – so fingers crossed…
In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you’ve any enquiries, or if you’d like to send us your work. We’re always keen to hear from readers and writers and we encourage you to reach out.
All the best to everyone for 2019.
