The people that you meet

Sometimes it's worth the effort. Whatever 'it' may be. However much effort may be involved.

Tonight the Fibrotown library played host to two fab Australian writers. Dianne Blacklock and Ber Carroll made the trip down from their various parts of The Big Smoke to talk about their new books, their writing journeys and, surprisingly, their sex lives (well, technically, how their sex lives do not end up in print, but my line was better, right?).

I nearly didn't go. I'd made all the plans, tweeted Dianne (whom I didn't know from a bar of soap) to tell her I'd be there, lined The Builder up to leave our bathroom renovations to get home on time. And then it rained. And it was cold. And we had visitors in the afternoon, which put my quiche making/washing up/bathing children/feeding children/getting showered/getting dressed plans out the window. It would have been so easy to give up, put my slippers on and stay home.

But how often do fab Aussie writers come to the Fibrotown library? Not often enough. So I went.

It was a great talk. Funny, informative, personal. They covered the process of writing, the process of writing with children (quite a different process), where ideas come from, how ideas become books. And the aforementioned sex, of course.

Afterwards, I somehow ended up at the pub with Dianne (how these things happen is just a mystery to me) talking about writing. For hours. We'd never met (though I did remember reviewing her first book for CLEO, back in the day), but that didn't seem to matter much. It never does when you're talking about writing, I find.

An unexpected bonus on a Wednesday night. Definitely worth the effort.

You can meet Dianne too - she's on Twitter here and on Facebook here. Her eighth novel, The Secret Ingredient, is out in November (that's her current book in the image), and I'll be inviting her to the Fibro for an intimate discussion about how to blend personal observations and details into fiction - and still keep your friends.