Author Archives: brunswick123

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About brunswick123

It is time to update my matter of fact and frankly rather boring 'about' description. I spent my working life in universities first as an academic and later as a Faculty Dean and finally a decade as University Vice-President moving steadily further from my humanities background to a commercial and staff management series of roles. University life surrounded by challenging young people and colleagues intelligent and curious [mostly!] was wonderful, but I decided in my fifties that I wanted to focus on my dream of 'being a writer'. I dreaded dying without at least trying to fulfil a childhood dream. So I spent the next five years learning to write fiction, so different to writing academic books! and supported myself working part time as a consultant with universities in Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands and England. Since 2007 I have spent half the year living in Europe and half in Australia and yes, I follow the sun. I do not 'do' winters. Now my time is devoted to writing and to my passion for travel, especially hiking for weeks at a time and usually alone. I am incredibly lucky. I want to connect with people with similar passions - writing, travelling, walking, pondering the big questions - and this is the purpose of this blog. Over the coming months I intend to work on my blog to make it more appealing and accessible. All comments and advice welcome.

Much encouraged

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I took my first baby step last Friday with a tiny blog about my writing aspirations and lo, only a few hours later, I received the report on my novel manuscript which I had sent to Writers Victoria for a professional assessment by an independent author/editor. The assessment is very positive and encouraging and so I begin the task of pondering and revising with a light heart. Yes, this sounds all very conceited I know and there is a long way to go, I know; for now I will accept the pat on the back.

Interestingly, I could respond to most of the report with a ‘yes, I felt that but did not know how to improve and now I do’ or ‘okay, I thought it was not working in that scene and you agree and suggest a nice alternative’ or ‘hmm, I wondered re the sequencing there and so do you’. There was one major surprise, which I shall return to here when I have worked it through.

my first time

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No, not what you may be thinking. Rather, this is my first foray into the world of blogging. Having spent much of my life working with words and ideas, it is time to enter this new [for me] form of sharing and commenting, especially as the ‘hero’ in my work-in-progress novel is an aspiring blogger and novelist so we have art imitating life or, more accurately, life imitating art in my case. Speaking of ‘walking’, this is another great passion and in May I intend to walk the Via Gebennensis from Geneva to Le Puy; last year I walked the Via Podiensis from Le Puy to Pamplona and the year before part of the Camino from Leon to Santiago, setting my novel in the wonderful history and romance of these great traditional pilgrimage paths. Writing and walking as two different quests for meaning and an authentic voice: sounds pretentious I know, so let’s stress the fun of it all. This is why I took early retirement from universities 7 years ago and now have cleared the decks to write and to wander.
No more excuses!
Let us see what happens!