Seeking "letters to Lindsey"

I’ve done lots of media jobs in my life but never hosted a TV show. But now I am. I figure I’m the oldest trout on the telly! Well, in this country anyway, as opposed to the United States where it seems possible to carry on forever if you’re Barbara Walters, who is 80. So at 65 I’m a mere chicken. And an increasingly wise one! It's what happens when you've been around a few years.

Anyhow, the show is Letters to Lindsey. Think of it as an agony aunt show with ‘uncles’ as well as ‘aunties’, who sit around our table and answer problems sent in by viewers. Our panellists aren’t just there because they’re good talkers but because they’re experts in their field. The weekly show is on Triangle TV in Auckland, 7pm Fridays, and on Stratos (channel 89 on Sky and 22 on Freeview) across the country, 8pm Saturdays.

Here’s a brief video promo.

We’d welcome emails about any problem that’s getting you down. We’ve been running for only a few weeks but have already canvassed a wide range of dilemmas – from drug addiction probs through teen pregnancy woes and employment and migrant issues. This weekend the programme’s all about sex and intimacy. Next week: where are the new heroes and role models for kids to look up?

The world's full of problems, of course, so if you’d care to share a burning issue (treated anonymously, of course!) my producer Deb Faith would love to hear from you. You can either send it to me or directly to her at info@tritv.co.nz

Speaking of letters (of the alphabet) is language misuse driving you nuts? Me too, sometimes. So you might enjoy www.loginisnotaverb.com, the work of a man who cannot abide how we’re messing with new words like login, carryout, lockdown, signout and checkout, not to mention that ubiquitous little verb, text, which of course used to be a mere noun.

Then there are the adjectives which have become nouns, like creative and corporate. Sigh. One's pedantic nit-picking can go on.

Nutting out great story lines

I just went to a terrific one-day seminar - Christopher Vogler's 'The Writer's Journey' Workshop. It's so great when someone is able to make things fall into place for you.
I've known for years about the work of the late Joseph Campbell, the much admired scholar/historian who wrote The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It's been sitting on my bookshelf for years and I kept looking at it thinking "I must get into that" but never did. After a few half-hearted attempts to penetrate his academic prose I put it back on the shelf. Which was fine except that I found myself, for the second time, with a novel at the 30,000 word mark and stuck on how to proceed.
Vogler, who has heaps of Hollywood script-writing and doctoring experience, demystifies Campbell with his own work. He's written a series of books which outline the essentials for every great story, whether on paper or screen. I raced home from his workshop dived into a novel with Vogler's notes in hand, analysing it at every step to see how well it conformed to Campbell's formula (which he worked out from studying ancient plays and myths going back thousands of years). Twelve hours later I was thoroughly convinced. And was intrigued to realise that in writing my first two published novels I had instinctively followed the magic pattern.
You don't need to attend a whole workshop as Vogler, bless him, has put the basics online as a free download.
It contains the text of a career-changing memo about story that he wrote to his Hollywood bosses way back in 1985. Mr Vogler is a nice guy. As we talked during a break I told him how much I enjoyed hearing his opening address. He talked about how reading Campbell's work was a huge revelation for him - so big that it was as if he felt an arrow of purpose shooting through him from 20 or 30 generations back - and that in that moment he knew exactly what he was here on Earth to do. Lucky guy - lots of us spend a whole lifetime trying to figure that out!
His breakthrough moment has been extra important to him, he said, because he's had no children, and the fact that his books are out there helping others with the secrets of good storytelling is hugely important to him in the sense of legacy. So... back I go to my manuscript...
Thanks to the great gals at the Romance Writers Association of New Zealand for bringing him to New Zealand!
See him here too

Go the girls in graphics!

With the internet so full of moving pictures it’s good that the web also hosts an older form of visual entertainment – comics and cartoons. They may be dominated by boy power (zap! kablooey! aaargh!) but cool trends are arising that are just as much for girls as for guys.
Back when Superman ruled there were female figures too, such as Wonder Woman — “beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, stronger than Hercules, and swifter than Mercury”. So far, so Grecian.
We’ve moved on. Check out http://sarahzero.com for an online graphic novel that is updated every few days. Its creator works “without elves, fairies or wizards, without pirates, ninjas or zombies, without monkeys, penguins or dinosaurs, without sad girls, cat girls or robot girls”.
A Toronto designer simply named Stef draws Sarah Zero, who is a feisty redhead “struggling to find love and validation on the internet”.
Graphic novels and comics both tell stories via sequential art, but paper comics are shorter, usually less than 30 pages, while graphic novels can go on for 600 pages – or be online for years. At www.girlgenius.org there’s a story staring another feisty heroine, Agatha Clay, that’s been running since 2002.
Its creators, Phil and Kaja Foglio, recommend it for teens and up, pointing out that it contains “lots of running around in Victorian underwear, occasional innuendo, a certain amount of violence and the occasional ‘damn!’"
Canadian cartoonist Kate Beaton has a brilliant little site at www.harkavagrant.com, chock full of comic strips that poke subversive fun at figures as famous as Jane Austen, the Wright Brothers and the Kennedys.
At www.lillicarre.com artist Lilli Carré has a quirky page full of sparse black-pen drawings that shift and vibrate, along with pages from her books to browse and enjoy.
If all of this makes you think that here’s a field in which you, too, can play, here’s a really useful blog, http://dw-wp.com, where the ‘dw-wp’ is short for Drawing Words and Writing Pictures. It’s been set up by cartoonist Jessica Abel to help others learn cartooning skills and get published. Don’t think you have to be a great artist. Some of these sites reveal that it is the possession of a sharp wit, not ace drawing ability, that makes for the most engaging comics and cartoons.
* This text is from my 'Webmistress' column in Next magazine, September issue, published Aug 16. Check out the mag's Facebook page too, at Next Magazine NZ.< .