Writing {on the Fringe} Festival @ Goldfields Library

Where there's a festival, you'll find it's fringe equivalent close by, and hopefully you'll have a feast of events to gorge yourself on. Sometimes though, just working out which events you want to check out can take as long as the festival itself. How do you choose a horse for the Melbourne Cup each year? Close your eyes and randomly stab at the page? Pick out a nice sounding name? Create a beautifully cross-referenced and colour coded system that takes into account every possible contingency?

Mapping out your program for the Write {on the Fringe} Festival, running alongside the Bendigo Writers Festival, may prove to be just as difficult. Filled with more events than an interview with a footballer is filled with metaphors, it's going to be hard to not be frozen by indecision.

What matters most when deciding between a songwriting workshop with a chart-topping rapper or a demonstration from your favourite local book-binder? Is it the cost of the ticket versus your interest in the topic? Scratch that, all the Fringe events are free. What about prioritising local and regional names? Sorry, caught out again. The program is built on artists from regional Victoria and it offers access to established local names and emerging artists from Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine and more.

Maybe you could just focus on work that combines words and art? Hmmmm, exhibitions of collaborative work between writers and artists, photography based on fairy tales, zines and comics. Distance between venues and access to coffee? It's all on at the Bendigo Library, recently renovated, extended and now with bonus cafe.

This really isn't helping narrow things down for you is it? Tell you what, you could just use my approach - turn up, go to as much as you can humanly squeeze in between coffee infusions and make sure you get a taste of everything. Or start working on that cross referenced spreadsheet now.

(Originally written for the Fringe as a PR peice for use in local media. Published instead on Capital Community Facebook page, 7th August - see screen grab below.)