New Website goes live!

My new website is now live - you can find it here! It outlines my plans for freelance work in environmental communications and creative workshops. I'll be Tweeting about this work on a new Twitter account here!

Also I'm delighted that the second of my blogposts about Green Books is now up at Brighton Blogger's Book after Book blog, you can read that here.

Coming Soon!

I've recently been working on a few ideas around offering creative workshops and environmental communications services. I've set up a website, which will go live very soon (once I've bought a domain name).

Updated to add - you can see the new website here!

NaNoWriMo

So I've finished NaNoWriMo early, I had written my 50000 words by midmorning today. It felt like a real achievement! It's been hard work but I've been lucky to have had plenty of time to work on this and was determined from the start to try to finish early. So what have I learnt from the experience?

a) Although to date I have mostly written haiku, short poems and flash fiction, I have proven now that I can at least write enough words for a much bigger piece of work.

b) Just writing with the aim of reaching a given total word count is liberating, as it means you just write without worrying about the quality.

c) at the same time just writing like that means that I didn't get stuck on polishing the first paragraph to perfection only to find myself left with nothing to add to the one perfect paragraph (having said that, the first paragraph is probably the best paragraph in the novel!).

d) but oh, this isn't a novel. Not at all. It's a very rough first draft, which, with a lot of editing and polishing, may one day resemble something like a real novel that people might want to read. (So that's what I'll be doing over the next year or so!)

e) It's useful just to write through the plot dilemmas, in this draft I have characters talking about where they want the plot to go, at one point a character actually says she wishes the author could sort out a particular aspect of the plot (hang on a minute, maybe I should keep that! It could be a nice post-modernist twist to the novel!?)

f) I had always thought that I would find research so tedious it would put me off ever writing a novel but in fact I really enjoyed the research aspect. I think it would be more tedious for me if it was historic research where you need to get all the facts as accurate as possible. Given that my novel is speculative fiction set in the far future then I have a lot more freedom to do what I want with my research. (I've had great fun with extrapolating some elements of the contemporary world into the future!)

So now I'm going to catch up on all the research information I identified but never got the chance to read properly then I'll start looking at the 'novel' in a few weeks time and get it into some kind of decent shape.

And I won't keep talking about it, promise!

How was NaNoWriMo for you?

Poetry Update

I'm reading short stories and poetry at Havers and Blethers, Captains Bar, Edinburgh at 7.30 on Monday 1 and Thursday 4 August. I took part several times last year and it's generally a very entertaining evening. So if you're in Edinburgh, please feel free to pop along!

I'm reading a short story at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 4pm, Tuesday 23 August. It's part of the Edinburgh City of Literature. Story Shop project and I'll be reading in the Spiegeltent, which is huge, so there's plenty of space! It's a free event and you don't need a ticket, so if you're in Edinburgh that day, you know what to do....

I'm reading with Mary Johnston and Jane Mary Wilde at Wordpower Books, 43-45 West Nicholson Street, Edinburgh at 11am, Saturday 24 September.

Sketchbook holds a regular kukai (haiku contest). The latest one was on the theme of rainbows and one of my haiku was awarded joint 4th place! You can read all the haiku here. Two of my haiku also get a mention in editor Karina Klesko's comments on the vegetable haiku thread and one is mentioned in editor John Daleiden's comments on the same thread.

I've recently been taking part in the One Minute Writer Prompt, which is a great way of practising writing, you just write for one minute on the given topic, no polishing or anything. I've won the Writing of the Day a few times and even Writing of the week (here and here)!

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks to other webpages where you can find out more.

Poetry Update

Just to let everyone know that I now have a Paypal account and wherever you are in the world you can now order a signed copy of my chapbook Unthinkable Skies directly from me. The book costs £4.50 and postage is £1.00 within the UK, £1.50 elsewhere in Europe and £2 for the rest of the world. Please leave a comment or email me on Juliet.M.WilsonATgmailDOTcom for more information! Alternatively you can order the book from Calder Wood Press or from Wordpower Books.

The CD of selected poems from Unthinkable Skies with music from Belvedere Mountain Express will be launched on 20 June on CD Baby where it will be available as a download only. You will be able to order a physical CD (including the text of the poems and lovely packaging as seen here) from the Belvedere Mountain Express website.

I have some poems in the Biggar Poetry Garden in the Scottish Borders until the end of August. If you can't get to visit the garden, you can now read the poems here.

And just a reminder that my poetry reading that was scheduled for 11 June has now been postponed until 24 September. More details on that nearer the time.

As ever, text in red takes you to other websites where you can find out more.

Summer Courses

You can now book for my two summer courses at the Office of Lifelong Learning, University of Edinburgh!


10am - 4pm Monday 1 August Creative Writing Inspired by Nature to be held at the Water of Leith Visitor Centre. You can find out more and book a place here.


10.30am - 3.30pm Monday 8 August and Tuesday 9 August, Introduction to the Water of Leith. You can find out more and book a place here.


In other news, I'm delighted that one of my haiku (you can read it here) has been set to music by Tom Cipullo as part of his Insomnia cycle, which will premier at this concert of the Mirror Vision Ensemble at the Weill Recital Hall in the Carnegie Hall, New York on 24 May.



As ever, text in red takes you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Water of Leith

I will be teaching Introduction to the Water of Leith again this summer for the Office of Lifelong Learning at University of Edinburgh. The course will run 8/9 August. Full details will be available on the Office of Lifelong Learning website by the end of April. I'll also post the most up to date information on the Workshops and Courses page of this blog. In the meantime, I've set up a website to support the course. This includes photos and links that add to the material covered in the course. The idea is that students who have attended the course can get access to extra material and it also hopefully will inspire some other people to attend the course. You can find the website here, I've set it up as a Wordpress blog. It won't be updated in the traditional blog way, but I will add to it as I get extra photos or links for it.

Rainforest Rescue

WWF and Sky are working together to help save one billion trees in the Amazon rainforest and protect around three million hectares from deforestation. That’s an area of rainforest roughly the size of Belgium. Sky Rainforest Rescue will work with local communities and the government in the Brazilian state of Acre to help make the forest worth more standing than dead. The project will:



* support local people to preserve their forests and adopt sustainable practices on their land. * help local people find new market opportunities for sustainable rainforest products like rubber, and get fair prices for their goods. * support the Acre state government to monitor deforestation. * engage with governments and international bodies to address the causes of deforestation in the Amazon



It's a project that promises to make a big impact on the rainforests in Acre, an area in the north-west of Brazil that covers an area equivalent in size to England and Wales.



It is easy to be cynical about multinational companies such as Sky getting involved in conservation projects, but the money needs to come from somewhere if we are to save the Amazon and Sky do make significant commitments to environmental sustainability, which you can read about here.



You can find out more about the project and how you can get involved here.

(WWF phoned me recently and asked me to commit to a sizeable donation to this project. However I'm not in the position to make new charitable donations at the moment so this blog post is in lieu of a donation).

As ever, red text in this post contains hyperlinks to other webpages where you can find out more.

Biggar Poetry Garden

Biggar Poetry Garden is at the top end of the High Street in Biggar, a market town in South Lanarkshire. The Garden has been created by Biggar Museums Trust Brownsbank Committee in partnership with the Biggar Public Art Group and South Lanarkshire Council. There are plaques around the garden with quotations from Scottish poems about plants, alongside the plants to which they refer. The Poetry Garden also containes display boards of poetry, including poetry from a range of Scottish poets. I'm delighted to have just found out that some of my poetry will be featured in the display boards for three months starting from June this year!

As ever, text in red takes you to other webpages, where you can find out more.

Influential Environmental Blogs

Wikio put together a list of the Top UK Environment blogs every month. The rankings are put together by Wikio a news and blogs search engine that also put together Top Blog rankings for various categories including environment, politics etc. I wasn't aware of this listing until Wikio emailed me about it and I was delighted to find myself listed! You can find the list here. Thanks to everyone who links to this blog and helped me gain this listing!

The value of campaigning

There has been a fair bit of good news on the environmental front over the last couple of days:

The UK Government seems to have given up on the idea of selling off England's forests.

Nocton Dairies have not been given permission to build a huge factory farm for cows in Lincolnshire.

Japan has suspended its annual whaling cull after pressure from the environmental group Sea Shepherd

Plans for a polluting coal fired power station in Sabah Borneo have been abandoned in favour of renewable energy.

These victories have come about largely as a result of campaigning from environmental organisations and concerned indlviduals. But while we celebrate these successes there's still a lot of bad news for the environment:

Polar bears could be facing extinction

The Tanzanian Government seems intent on going ahead with the road through the Serengeti, despite international outcry and concern this road could end the areas great migrations.

This article shows how devastating a road can be if it passes through pristine areas of forest, those areas don't stay pristine very long.

It's good to see that people across the world are increasingly campaigning on these issues:

Amazonian peoples call on Brazil's president to stop the Bel Monte dam

It is vital to be engaged, to take part in campaigns. The first four links in this post demonstrate that campaigning can be effective, while links 5 - 7 to show how much more needs to be done!

And finally a question - can we find a balance that enables sustainable economic growth that allows us also to conserve wild areas and biodiversity?

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks to other websites where you can find out more.

In the media

photo by Elise Le Mer, Whole Earth Foods

Here's a photo of me in the recording studio speaking to a local radio station during my recent day in London as part of my prize for winning the Whole Earth competition. I haven't got links to any of the radio shows and I don't yet know if the podcast has been taken by anyone, but there's an article in the Edinburgh Evening News, which you can read here.

Off to London!

I'm off to London today to do some radio interviews for Whole Earth Foods as part of my prize in their recent Good Life competition.

I took the photo yesterday along the Water of Leith. I was impressed by the beautiful rich autumnal colours in the fungi and the birch bark, which contrast so nicely with the delicate fresh green ferns!

Back soon!

Save Our Woods

This year has been designated International Year of Forests. The United Nations General Assembly declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests to raise awareness on sustainable management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests.

Celebrations and awareness raising campaigns are happening across the world and in the blogosphere (including The Tree Year project, which I'm taking part in).

It is ironic and depressing therefore that the UK Government has chosen this year to sell off England's public forests. Only England's forests, forestry is a devolved area so Scotland and Wales forests are not included in the sale (though you can read here of some of the issues that have faced Scottish forests recently). However, everyone in the UK (and beyond) should be concerned about the sell off, different governments borrow each others' ideas, and what happens in England can happen in Scotland and Wales in the future, and we are still one country. In Scotland for example there may well be jobs lost at the Scottish branch of the Forestry Commission if the sales go ahead.

The Scottish land rights activist Andy Wightman wrote in the Observer last weekend with some excellent ideas about the future of forestry in the UK. It would be wonderful to see a future where forests are owned by communities and conservation organisations (and being generous, some people claim that is what the Government wants). However there are two problems with this 1) money, most communities and conservation organisations cannot afford to buy forests on a large enough scale 2) capacity, most conservation organisations and community groups need to make cuts in these financially difficult times and do not have the managerial capacity to take on more forests.

Save Our Woods is a new website, complete with a discussion forum and campaigning advice.

As ever, red text in this post contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more

A Round Up

I was delighted that my Open Planet Idea was shortlisted, you can read my post about Open Planet here and you can read more about my shortlisted idea here. The next stage is that the short listed ideas are to be evaluated and then the winning one will be taken forward by World Wildlife Fund and Sony to be made into a feasible technology / app.

I was equally delighted to find that a flash fiction piece I wrote has been accepted and published by Easily Inspired. You can read it on their website (advisable not to download anything from this site as MacAfee have security concerns about it, if you're being extra cautious you may not want to visit at all, but then you miss out on my story!).

I'm writing a series of blogposts about the birds to be found on the Water of Leith and in the wider Leith area of Edinburgh for Greener Leith. You can read the first two posts here and here.
I am also writing a series of reviews for Sabotage. You can read them here.

I've also just found out I've won a competition (not a writing competition!). I'll post more here when it's announced!

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks to other sites where you can find out more.

Cuts to the Countryside

The UK Government is planning sweeping cuts to public spending. Many of the cuts affect wildlife and the environment. For example there are plans to privatise Natural Nature Reserves and ask wildlife charities to run them. RSPB and other environmental charities have an excellent track record of running wildlife reserves but they need money to do this. It seems unlikely that this government (which likes to present itself as the greenest government ever) would in the current economic climate give charities extra cash. So it looks likely that wildlife will lose out.

One piece of good news though is that money for wildlife friendly farming looks set to stay in place. This means that farmland birds, which have really declined in numbers recently will continue to be given the protection they need so that their numbers have some chance of recovering. One example that shows very clearly how wildlife friendly farming can make a difference is the recent increase in number of corncrakes in Scotland.

Today, Crafty Green Boyfriend and I joined 20 000 other people to march through the centre of Edinburgh to protest at the Government Cuts. It felt like a real flashback to the 1980s when we were students protesting against the Thatcher Government. It was less well organised and there was less chanting, but I guess we'll have plenty of chances to improve our protesting skills over the next few months.

New Caledonian Woodlands

New Caledonian Woodlands is a not for profit organisation and social enterprise in Scotland that exists to enhance the natural environment, inspire positive environmental behaviour change and improve mental and physical well-being. They do this via a range of environmental projects with a focus on hands-on conservation activity. These are the projects coming up before the end of the year:

Coppicing in the Community Weekend Away, Gordon Community Woodlands - Friday 5th to Sunday 7th November.

Surprise Christmas Weekend Extravaganza - Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th December.

Christmas Spectacular Tree Planting & Craft Day - Sunday 12th of December.

If you are interested in taking part in any of these events please check out their website or e-mail dawn.hickieATnewcaledonianwoodlandsDOTorg for more information.
 
There is a lot more to browse on their website too! For example you can take the New Caledonian Woodlands Planet Pledge to reduce your carbon footpirint with support from the organisation. You can find out more about that here.

Off to Montrose

We're going away for a few days to Montrose. We'll be doing some birdwatching at Montrose Basin and then I'm reading at this poetry event, as organised by Rachel who blogs here.

When we get back I'll make my decisions about the environmental writing e-learning course (see this post for more information). So this is your last chance to express interest, and if you have expressed interest already, I'll be in touch soon!

Environmental Writing Course

I've just started teaching a course on Environmental Writing for The University of Edinburgh's Office of Lifelong Learning. A couple of people mentioned on Facebook that they would be interested in doing this course as an e-learning course. So after discussing it with my supervisor, I am now able to offer this course as an e-learning opportunity for people who live outside the UK. (This is to avoid undermining the viability of the course at the University and to avoid making arbitrary decisions about UK geography). In the first instance I'm offering it as a FREE pilot course, using weekly email exchanges and asking every participant to fill out an evaluation form so that I can assess how successful the course is and whether it is worth offering in the future, including the possibility of developing it as an online group learning experience.

The original two people who expressed interest will be taking this course and I am opening it up to probably another three people. So if you regularly comment on this blog or are a friend of mine on Facebook, live outside the UK and are interested in taking this course as an online learning opportunity then please let me know why you're interested in the comments below and I'll put names in a hat and choose!

The e-learning course will start sometime soon after I finish teaching the course at the University, probably mid-November.

Greening the UK Election

We've got a general election coming up in the UK. I'm not going to say too much about this, as I'm not a political commentator and there are plenty of political commentators out there blogging about the issues and the election from numerous angles. However, I think it's important for everyone in the UK to be aware of the issues and to think about how this election might affect our futures. For me the most important issue is of course the environment and I'm not convinced that any of the major parties have consistently well thought out policies in this area.

There are ways to make your views known to your election candidates:

You can join in the Real Debate at 38 Degrees and vote for questions to be put to the manifesto writers in a forthcoming debate.

Friends of the Earth have a guide to the debates here.