May 16th, 2010
In twenty words or less tell me why you write
I write because I have to. Writing really helps me to quieten the little voice in my head!
Do you have any formal training in creative writing? And how long have you been writing?
I have been writing on and off since I was a teenager, but didn’t really explore the option of getting serious about writing until about six years ago when I started writing my first book NOT LIKE MY MOTHER. I have a communications degree and worked as a journalist for ten years. I also have a Masters degree in Creative Writing.
What do you consider to be your successes as a professional writer?
I have had a number of short stories published, and have obviously been published as a journalist, but I feel my real success has been in actually completing my first novel NOT LIKE MY MOTHER which took me five years to finish (yet to be published!). It’s about something very close to my heart, the injustices of the Balkan wars. I really wanted to try to convey the horrors of what happened through fiction to try to create awareness in a non-confronting way. It tells the story of three generations of women who experience love, war, displacement and loss.
You were selected to take part in the QWC/Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Programme in 2008. What were some of the highlights? What impact did it have on your writing and professional development?
The highlight of the program really was getting to sit down one-on-one with a Hachette editor and get valuable feedback on my manuscript. Bernadette was so positive and supportive, and really made me realise that I am a good writer. While Hachette’s marketing team ended up deciding the time wasn’t right to publish my manuscript (apparently people don’t want to read about depressing things like war in the middle of a GFC!) I was really honoured that Bernadette loved my work and fought hard to try to get it across the line.
What do you really love about writing?
I feel a real sense of comfort and peace when I write, and so while I get really chuffed when people read and like what I write, it is a purely selfish past time.
Rejection comes with the job of writing, so how do you get over it and keep going?
I developed fairly thick skin back in my days as a journo, but when I got my first rejection letter for a short story I had written I was devastated. It gets easier every time you get one, and I really try to stay very humble about my writing. If it gets accepted and published then that’s a bonus, but in the meantime I take great joy in writing and nurturing my creative side.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on the first draft of my second book THIRTY SOMETHING AND SINGLE AGAIN. A chic lit novel that regales the tales of a woman who finds herself back on the single meat market, after having been married to her high school sweetheart for twenty years, and discovers it’s not quite like it used to be.
What books are you reading and where is your favoured reading spot?
I tend to have numerous books on the go. Currently I’m reading Wild Lavender by Belinda Alexandra, Commited by Elizabeth Gilbert, Ben Naparstek in Conversation – Encounters with 39 Great Writers, and Starting out in Shares – The ASX Way.
My favourite reading spot is curled up in bed under the doona on a rainy day.
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May 9th, 2010
In twenty words or less tell me why you write
I write to bring to life the characters that live in my dreams and to see what hey want to tell me.
Do you have any formal training in creative writing? And how long have you been writing?
I wouldn’t say I have formal training. I did a minor in Creative Writing at University but the teacher was so nasty I didn’t write again for ten years. I’ve always written. As a child I wrote books and books of poetry and I have many half started novels. I began writing again in earnest about five years ago and have written a book a year since then.
What do you consider to be your successes as a professional writer?
I don’t really consider myself to be a professional writer yet because I am not making money out of it. I think I would say that any success I have had has been due solely to persistence.
You were selected to take part in the QWC/Hachette Australia
Manuscript Development Programme in 2008. What were some of the highlights? What impact did it have on your writing and professional development?
For me, just being chosen was a highlight. It was very affirming. The opportunity to sit down with Vanessa from Hachette and get her feedback on my novel was completely wonderful. I found Kim an inspiring lecturer and I got so much out of what she told us, especially with regard to plotting.
The chance to spend the week with seven other writers from around the country and just focus on writing and sharing ideas was invaluable. The gift of the ongoing friendship with those writers is a total bonus and a delight.
Being part of the program gave me lots of confidence which has led to me throwing my hat in the ring in other competitions and I think it made me feel legitimised in my writing – that it was more than a hobby.
What do you really love about writing?
I really love starting a new story. It’s like I’m heading off on a wonderful journey with new friends and we have so many opportunities to get to know each other better.
Rejection comes with the job of writing, so how do you get over it and keep going?
I’ve had plenty of rejection. I consider myself a bit of a writing bridesmaid – as in “always the bridesmaid never the bride”. I am much better with rejection now than I used to be because I have come to understand that it isn’t personal and has almost nothing to do with me at all. I have to say a standard rejection letter or e-mail doesn’t even affect me anymore. I do find it harder when I get very close and still can’t quite get over the line. To help me get through it I go to the second-hand bookshop and read a book by an author in my genre, usually one with two or three books, and preferably a book I don’t love and I think “Somehow he/she got over the line so there’s no reason I can’t too.” (You don’t want to choose anything too awe inspiring in these situations because that just fuels the feelings of inadequacy!)
What are you working on now?
I’m working on some women’s fiction with romantic undertones. At the moment I’m about 2/3 of the way through a novel.
What books are you reading and where is your favoured reading spot?
I am reading lots of chic-lit and women’s fiction because that’s what I write. Apart from that I just finished Barbara Kingsolver’s, The Lacuna which I loved and The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I didn’t. I have a wing chair in my living room that I love to read in. I snuggle in there with a cup of coffee and float away.
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April 28th, 2010
In twenty words or less tell me why you write.
I started writing because I had a yen to do it. I continue to write because I am a writer.
Do you have any formal training in creative writing? And how long have you been writing?
I’ve been writing stuff since high school. Fortunately, I started writing stuff I was prepared to share with the world almost exactly ten years ago. I have no background in arts or humanities (I did health sciences for reasons I am still grappling with), but I did a postgrad in professional writing, editing, and publishing a few years back so I would have such a huge discrepancy between what I did in sunlight and what I did in the wee hours. I started a proper Masters in Creative Writing too, but I didn’t get far. I’m not sure if or when I’ll get back to that.
What do you consider to be your successes as a professional writer?
Background stuff. I have to say this, because (to use fishing terminology) I’m yet to land the big one (whether in writing or in fishing). This will sound wanky and it’s quite accidental I assure you, but I seem to be awfully well connected these days. A big part of this is longevity: I keep turning up. As a result I have lots of people in the industry whom I know and who in turn appear interested in what I’m working on. I figure one of these connections has to pay off eventually. My job is just to keep turning up. It’s worked for me so far.
You were selected to take part in the QWC/Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Programme in 2008. What were some of the highlights? What impact did it have on your writing and professional development?
The most valuable thing I took from the MDP (can I call it that?) (yes, you can, ed.) is a cohort. Writing is a lonely profession, especially when the people around you are sick of hearing about your latest plot development or character trait. While the eight of us from 2008 are scattered throughout the country, we still keep in touch and share each other’s triumphs and disappointments. It was especially important for me since, almost immediately following the program, I relocated away from home with nothing but a pair of small children and a whippet for intelligent conversation. A motley bunch of writers at the end of an email address was in incredibly valuable source of sanity.
The other important thing I took away from the program was a far more mature approach to the business side of publishing and an understanding that a good author-publisher relationship is a partnership, not a hierarchy. That single piece of knowledge has served me well through the rollercoaster of the last eighteen months.
What do you really love about writing?
I don’t know of anything quite as satisfying as nailing a sentence. Really nailing it: every word in its place and no fat. I think to achieve any kind of longevity as a professional writer, one has to really enjoy the nuts and bolts. You might have a crappy day at the keyboard, but if you nailed one sentence, you’ll go to bed content as a baby.
Rejection comes with the job of writing, so how do you get over it and keep going?
I’m not sure rejection gets any easier over time. The tragedy of rejection is the mismatch in expectation. As the writer’s expectations rise, so the rejections become harder and harder. To be honest, the rejection that has most upset me—the one that absolutely skewered me—arrived just this year. It’s not a case of getting over it and moving on. You move on precisely in order to get over it. And some of them you never quite get over. You work on and try to forget it happened.
What are you working on now?
Two things: a non-fiction anthology (as co-editor) and my fourth novel. Both projects are related to rock music and Brisbane. The anthology will most likely be published at the end of this year. The novel will be published, I hope, before I die. I’ve just made the call that I intend to write a chapter of the novel each day until it’s done. Tonight is my first night and instead I’m writing this. Good start, huh?
What books are you reading and where is your favoured reading spot?
I wish I had a favourite reading spot other than bed, but young children make the act of languid reading outside of bedtime impossible. I figure I’ll find one again in a few years when they are able to entertain themselves. I’ll set up a comfy chair on the deck maybe. At the moment, I’m reading The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson: non-fiction about US imperialism and militarism. This is my light reading while I take a break from the second half of Lolita (I like it, but it’s intense). I’ve got another six or seven books lined up after those. Probably my favourite reads from the last six months or so: Disgrace by JM Coetzee knocked me sideways (and I now refuse to allow the film to sully my picture of it) and Devil May Care, the new James Bond book by Sebastian Faulks was so much fun I read it in a few days.
MDP cohort minus one
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April 19th, 2010
In twenty words or less tell me why you write
I write to examine what it is to live and because it’s more fun, challenging, infuriating and satisfying than anything else.
Do you have any formal training in creative writing? And how long have you been writing?
I’ve kept a journal for over twenty-five years. It started as a way to remember what I did during my wild days. I did a BA in literature in the eighties, thinking it would teach me how to write, but it only taught me how to be critical.
Since 2002, when I wrote my first novel ms., I’ve been serious about writing and have spent a few hours practising every day. In 2005, I completed a Masters degree in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland.
What do you consider to be your successes as a professional writer?
Finishing my Masters degree.
Twice runner-up in the Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize, once for memoir, once for a short story.
Publication of short stories in reputable Australian journals such as Griffith REVIEW, Island, Idiom 23 and Hecate
An international publication in Asia Literary Review.
Being awarded Griffth REVIEW’s prize for most promising new writer in 2008.
Having an illustrated excerpt of one of my short stories published in The Courier Mail.
Signing a contract on my novella Thrill Seekers with Ransom UK (due for release later this year).
Winning a spot on the QWC Hachette manuscript development program in 2008.
Finishing three full length works to a decent standard!
You were selected to take part in the QWC/Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Programme in 2008. What were some of the highlights? What impact did it have on your writing and professional development?
A definite highlight was connecting with so many wonderful writers and maintaining that connection. Having editorial feedback from a professional editor like Bernadette Foley was also invaluable, as were Kim Wilkins’ editing workshops.
It helped me see my work as a commodity more than an artwork, and to understand how the publishing industry works.
Surfing with Favel and Chris was the non-writing highlight, as was our reading night.
What do you really love about writing?
I love to stay home and play with words. I love losing myself in the story, time disappearing. I love being shocked when my characters say or do something unexpected. I love the huge puzzle a novel becomes, the challenge and joy of working it out. Best of all - unlike when I imagine something I’d like to draw or paint and it turns out looking like a two year old’s attempt - I love writing because the vision and the resulting work are more or less equal.
Even when my writing drives me crazy, I still can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.
Rejection comes with the job of writing, so how do you get over it and keep going?
ARGH! Rejection hurts. But sometimes it’s for the best. I try to release a piece of work once it’s done, send it out into the world without any specific expectations, and re-draft and re-send it tirelessly if it returns. I have to trust the work will find the best home and audience, at the right time. Unfortunately, waiting for that time is sometimes very long.
Rejections are writers’ badges of honour. The bigger your pile of rejections, the closer you are to a YES! As Mickey Rooney once said, “You always pass failure on the way to success.”
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a new novel set among the cane fields of Far North Queensland in the late nineteen-sixties, tentatively titled, “The Farmer’s Wife”. I found a Joan Crawford quote to use as a sub-title – . “Love is a fire. But whether it’s going to warm your heart or burn down your house you can never tell.”
I’m also keeping a blog at http://www.edwinashaw.wordpress.com
What books are you reading and where is your favoured reading spot?
I’m reading The New Diary by Tristine Rainer to reinvigorate my journaling practice, and Open Secrets by Alice Munro. I recently discovered Marge Piercy and have two of her novels sitting on my bedside table. Lefty stories about women – with sex! Love her. Margaret Attwood’s The Year of the Flood is also on my list of books to read next.
I recently read MJ Hyland’s This is How. Very clever but rather grim.
I’d like to say my favourite reading spot at home is the window seat with the Poinciana leaves brushing the sill, but I rarely sit there. So I’d have to say – bed. I love reading in bed. I love books.
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April 11th, 2010
In twenty words or less tell me why you writeI write because I feel incomplete if I don’t.
Do you have any formal training in creative writing? And how long have you been writing?
I have always written stories, ever since my critically-ignored debut Grade 3 story, the haunting yet brilliant “Ghouls on The Loose”. I didn’t take writing seriously until I left school, where I narrowly avoided a career in journalism and escaped to a creative writing degree. I finished the course, stayed for honours, and haven’t looked back.
What do you consider to be your successes as a professional writer?
I would hardly call myself a professional writer, as that is a very rare beast indeed. I make little to no income from my writing, but I still do it. Every time I see my words appearing somewhere else than on my computer screen, or in my head, I count this as a success.
You were selected to take part in the QWC/Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Programme in 2008. What were some of the highlights? What impact did it have on your writing and professional development?
While my manuscript turned out not to be commercially appealing enough for Hachette Publishing, the time I spent on the retreat was invaluable. Talking to the editors and mentors was fantastic, and it felt like a huge validation of a part of my life I take very seriously, but not many others do. The highlight for me was meeting the seven other participants in the programme, each of whom was a very different person, with very different writing styles, but who had the same passion for writing as I did. It is these relationships that I hope will continue for a long time.
What do you really love about writing?
What do I really love about it? My favourite thing about writing is something you can never quantify, or really explain properly. It is the simple act of writing, where you are neither worried about how to start, or where you will end. The moment where you are thinking of absolutely nothing, and the words are racing across the page—this is what I like best about writing.
Rejection comes with the job of writing, so how do you get over it and keep going?
For me, it’s being realistic about what a writing career is. Unless you are insanely talented/lucky/well-connected, you are not going to achieve success as a writer overnight. You’ve got to start off by reading and writing as much as you can, start submitting to small short story comps, submitting unpaid work for university magazines, street press, your uncle’s accountancy newsletter—anywhere you can. You will get rejections, and this does mean that you’re not good enough. Yet. I guarantee the more you write, the more books you read, the better you’ll get. Don’t expect immediate success, but do expect to improve.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a second draft of the manuscript I took with me to the QWC/Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Programme, as it has been picked up by Text Publishing, and will be published in the first half of 2011. As well as that I’m working on a handful of short stories and articles. Got to keep busy!
What books are you reading and where is your favoured reading spot?
The job I have to support my writing is as buyer for indie bookshop Avid Reader in Brisbane, which affords me the great privilege of reading preview copies of upcoming titles. As such, I’ve been recently enjoying new novels by Ian McEwan (Solar) and Joshua Ferris (The Unnamed), and catching up with backlist classics like Don DeLillo’s White Noise. My favourite reading spot is lying on my couch at home, in the evening, with my feet up against the window, with no one saying I can’t stay up all night to finish a book if I’m enjoying it.
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April 2nd, 2010
I started to write in late 2006 and, as I had read it can take up to six novels before you are ready to try your luck at being published, I churned out three manuscripts, finishing my third when, in mid 2008, I saw an ad for the Hachette Livre/Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program. Applications were open to all Australian commercial fiction writers. Eight were selected, including myself, and we attended a five-day retreat with two publishers from Hachette, an agent, a published writer, a bookseller and the head of the QWC. We attended seminars on how the industry works, had individual feedback sessions with the publishers, time to work on our manuscripts and make the improvements suggested. It was a brilliant opportunity and a memorable five days.
I invited Bernadette Foley, publisher with Hachette Australia, to explain the origins and aims of the program.
A few years ago I met Kate Eltham from the Queensland Writers Centre and we got to talking about the many fiction manuscripts that are sent to agents and publishers before they are fully cooked. That is, there might be the germ of a good idea in the plot and the writing might be competent, but with more work and redrafting the manuscript could be far better, and capture the interest of the editor or agent who is reading it. We wanted to say to debut writers: don’t be impatient, and relish the redraft.
From this discussion was born the QWC/Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Program. Its primary aim is to help writers to understand the writing process a little more so they come to see that working on a text over more than one draft will nearly always improve the quality of the manuscript, and give them an insight into the realities of the publishing process.
A very happy outcome of the program is that Phillipa’s BOOK OF LOVE is being published today, 1 April 2010, and her second book will come out this time next year. Also, Favel Parrett’s novel will be released by Hachette Australia in 2012. We are truly delighted to welcome these authors to our list and congratulate Phillipa on the release of her fabulous novel.
We don’t want people to feel that securing a publishing contract is the be all and end all of the program, though. If they go away from it with a fuller understanding of the publishing and the writing processes then we will have achieved something useful, something good.
We will run the program again in November and this time it will be open it to commercial non-fiction writers as well. All the details will be on the QWC site.
Finally, all of us at Hachette would like to thank Kate Eltham and the QWC team and everyone at Arts Queensland for their enthusiastic support of the program and for driving it with such energy and grace.
Over the next two months I’ll be posting interviews with the other seven participants, starting today with Favel Parrett.
In twenty words or less tell me why you write
I get stressed when I can’t write - and when I can’t surf. I’m no good without those things really.
Do you have any formal training in creative writing? And how long have you been writing?
I have been writing seriously for about five years, but there was always writing before that too. In my early days, I used to create a zine called NUMB and I loved it! All the letter writing (yes, in the days before email) and the community of other writers I met in that world.
Formal training - I am completing a diploma in Professional Writing here in Melbourne. (SLOWLY because I need time to write!)
What do you consider to be your successes as a professional writer?
Winning a place in the QWC/Hachette program was my first big success and it was pretty exciting. It really helped my confidence in applying for things and sending my work ‘out there’. Since then I have won an Australian Society of Authors Mentorship and had a few stories published in Australian journals.
I also just found out (while travelling in Bhutan) that Hachette are going to publish my book, Past the Shallows and it still doesn’t feel real! I think I’m in shock.
You were selected to take part in the QWC/Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Programme in 2008. What were some of the highlights? What impact did it have on your writing and professional development?
Highlights were the people. I think I have made friends for life, and friends who understand rejection and working alone and all the stuff that comes with being a writer. So thanks Luke, Azra, Chris, Monique, Edwina, Simon, and Phillipa.
Angela and Kate from QWC were fantastic and very encouraging. Kim Wilkins gave us some excellent tips and Vanessa from Hachette was so lovely about my writing. She gave me a lot of confidence and has kept in touch to see what I’m working on.
It was a fabulous experience and I would love to do it all again.
What do you really love about writing?
Sometimes I don’t love it. Sometimes it’s really hard and everything is terrible and you want to chuck it all out the window. But when it’s working, when you capture something – get it right - it feels amazing. When words come together with meaning and feeling there is nothing else like it!
Rejection comes with the job of writing, so how do you get over it and keep going?
Last year I decided to go in for as many things as I could. Short story competitions, journal submissions, manuscript prizes, trying to hook an agent … all of it. It was a great way to get motivated and create more work.
It was also an excellent way to get used to rejections. I got lots!!! Lots and lots and I even started to get used to them. Of course some rejection letters are harder to cope with than others – like when your novel gets rejected – or when you get a letter from an agent that starts, ‘dear author’ instead of your name. But if you are going to be a writer, you just have to keep going. Keep submitting. Focus on your work and just keep writing.
What are you working on now?
I am working on some creative non-fiction stuff about Bhutan, and writing a novel set in Zambia and Botswana.
What books are you reading and where is your favoured reading spot?
Love reading on the tram. Love reading in the bath (bad for books though – don’t try with library books!). Just read Griffith Review – The Fiction Issue. Some great Australian writers including Edwina Shaw from our Hachette/QWC group!
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Azra Alagic:Fellow Traveller Number 6- Hachette/QWC Program
for a good feed ...
