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My notes were full but my heart was empty. Doug Toft travels beyond progressive summarization

Doug Toft discusses his struggle with summarizing reading notes and suggests that writing about what you read, as opposed to simply taking notes, can enhance understanding and retention.

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Well the book arrived this morning. Now I really am publishing slowly!

A collage displays a book titled "Destinations & Detours" in various views, including its cover, spine, open pages, and several copies packed in a box.
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Finished reading: Nothing Left to Fear from Hell by Alan Warner. 📚

This was so piteously moving. The lost cause, the delusional hopes, the petty snobbery, the misplaced loyalties, the few quiet voices of reason, and oh, that startling, poignant ending. The Young Pretender like you never knew.

A black and white print showing Bonnie Prince Charlie crossing to the Isle of Skye in a small boat with Flora Macdonald, surrounded with dangerous waves.
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Publishing slowly

I’m writing so slowly that you might be wondering if I’m ever going to get anything published.

Well wonder no more. I’m happy to say extracts of my memoir, ‘The Green Island Notebook’ are published in the anthology Destinations & Detours: New Australian Writing.

Published by Detour Editions, the collection launches here in Sydney on Sunday 2nd March 2025, and if you happen to be in the vicinity, I’d be delighted to meet you in person.

Book Launch 2pm, Sunday 2nd March, at Randwick Literary Institute, 60 Clovelly Road, Randwick NSW

The book cover of Destinations & Detours features a bird inside a yellow circle, with the authors’ names listed below.

Watch out too for news of how you can get your hands on a copy, wherever in the world you find yourself.

And this isn’t the only news on the publishing front. I’ll be sharing details of some further publishing adventures very soon.

But don’t worry, whatever happens, I’ll still be writing slowly.

Update: Oh look, I wrote another book: Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters.

A stylized illustration of birds surrounded by foliage is set against a yellow circle, accompanied by text highlighting an anthology of short stories by five Australian writers. The text reads, Five Australian writers journey through memory, time, and space in this anthology of short stories and reflections that take us from rural Australia to Ireland, China and back to the very heart of the vast continent they call home.

Randwick Literary Institute, the venue for our book launch, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2025. Here it is in 1957, and it hasn’t changed much since then:

A historic black-and-white street scene features a tram on tracks beside the Randwick Literary Institute building, surrounded by power lines and nearby pedestrians.

A dimly lit Randwick Literary Institute building is partially obscured by tree shadows under evening light.

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To care is to disobey

The book Pirate Care discusses how the act of caring for others has been criminalized, and it advocates for a grassroots political practice of solidarity against oppressive legal measures.

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I’ve found Natalie Goldberg’s writing prompts to be especially helpful. Maybe it’s the pleasure of a deck of cards I can shuffle and deal.

A card deck titled "Writing Down the Bones Deck" by Natalie Goldberg, designed to inspire and enhance writing skills, is shown alongside detailed views of individual cards and the packaging.
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A great strength of youth is to be able to say, with naive but powerful conviction: “How hard could it be?”

I wrote comics as a child and as a teenager I wrote poetry and plays. It wasn’t hard, I just did it.

What did you achieve then that you doubt now?

It’s worth leaning into that.

A quote asking "How hard could it possibly be?" appears above the website name writingslowly.com, with a yellow underline beneath the URL.
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💬 “We live in a warehouse of casts that have lost their moulds,” - Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (1988).

Making meaning where there is none?

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Making meaning where there is none

A quote by Italian author Roberto Calasso parallels the enigmatic environment of Piranesi’s world, in a novel where meaning is derived from seemingly disconnected elements.

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A photo of a toy train set from @manton brought back a fond memory: The first time I ever used eBay I was clueless and accidentally won three auctions. The result was enough wooden tracks to cross the whole continent.

My kids were delighted. Now In their mid-twenties, they still have some of that haul.

Old trains.