May 30th, 2010
bring on the adverbs
I am painstakingly working my way through 90,000 words examining their arrangement on the page to see if I can achieve greater fluency, clearer descriptions, less cluttered dialogue and an elegant solution to every tiny problem I encounter.
That is my goal. I won’t achieve it. There’ll be clangers and clumsiness, excess and irrelevance and even a fair old swag of self-indulgence. But I’m slaughtering my darlings as cold bloodedly as I can. Having rewritten most of the book I’ve waded through a veritable Thermopylae of blood, and I’ll keep up the slaughter as long as I have to.
The perfect text will always hover out of my reach, but at least I’m trying.
I’m always astonished at how some writers don’t do this. I’m thinking of a piece I read recently, posted in the public domain, by an unpublished writer as an example of his writing skills – not an informal communication, or even a blog post. Numerous spelling mistakes, punctuation mistakes and clumsy expression pointed to little time spent polishing, cutting, polishing and cutting again and again.
The competition for readers is intense; the competition for publishers is three times as intense. I know typos slip through, apostrophes can be wild and faithless creatures and trained proof readers can miss errors. But if every line is plagued with such mistakes it signifies either a sloppy, unprofessional approach or an eagerness to get the piece out before it’s ready. Either way, it’s not good.
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May 27th, 2010
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May 25th, 2010
For someone who likes to finish what they start, blogs can be infuriating. An endlessly gaping cyber maw that must be fed no matter what other claims you have on your time. This is only a problem for the conscientious like myself, however. But I will not abandon it, as so many abandon their blog to drift on the sea of ether like a virtual Marie Celeste - even though I am still up to my weary eyeballs in the sequel to The Book of Love.
Numbers of visitors to this site are rising steadily, three thousand per month at the moment, so I’d like to give a big shout out to all my Russian followers, particularly Lyudmilla who wants to marry me or sell me viagra. Russia is currently racing Australia for second place in visitor numbers – first place, of course, goes to the Americans, (hi guys). I’d like to think the Russians are keen because my lead character, William, in my current book, has a Russian background. I’d like to think that, as I say, but the reality is that probably a third of my visitors have one tiny blinking red eye, a line of code trailing behind them and an ISP way closer to the Arctic than any of my readers.
The search terms that bring people to my site are always interesting. Increasingly people find their way here through Googling me, The Book of Love, Hachette, the Queensland Writers Centre, manuscript development and so on, but other popular search phrases this month are US Imperialism, old sensual crones, pajama parties in the sixties, bare Italian tits and phillipa jam. Curious …
The majority of these visitors land, look around and nip off, the next group stay over an hour. And the others fall at all points between. Sixty five percent of my core visitors have me book marked and I’m linked to, among others, a Polish forum for teenagers who want to chat about their desktop icons.
But then I have over a dozen websites book marked, from weighty news sites, to writing/publishing gossip/tips/agonising to interior design sites, a number of Italian picture sites, writer friends, a food history blog, columnists, celebrity trash, vintage lingerie, cartoon illustration and a film review site.
And no doubt all of these sites have those ubiquitous Russians, with their love of old photos, marmalade recipes and my book, flocking to them as well.
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May 20th, 2010
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May 18th, 2010
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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 13th, 2010
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May 12th, 2010
A few years ago, when I decide to write, I read an article on obstacles in romantic fiction. The author of the article stated that the writer must find an obstacle that will keep the lovers apart and fuel their desire. This obstacle could not be anything that could be cleared up by a good talk between the couple.
I remember thinking that most of the time obstacles in romantic relationships usually stem from not talking to one another. Lovers can avoid talking for many reasons – the assumption that the desired one should be a mind reader, or will judge the other harshly or probe for weaknesses. Or perhaps the lover doesn’t have the language to describe their feelings or would rather escape into a bottle or work or television instead of talking it out.
I‘ve been giving some thought to my male protagonist, trying to work out why he’s taking the stance that he is – which is basically not talking and subsequently letting his perceptions of his love relationship become wildly distorted. I look back over his life, (I know this guy pretty well by now), and see control has been a big issue for him and that he’s a linear problem solver who likes to act. When faced with a crisis he cannot solve, both in his work and relationship, what does he do?
He has a few drinks – that’s a given. He tells his closest male friend nearly everything, keeping the relationship stuff mostly to himself. He’s not going to go to see his girl and say ‘we need to talk’ because what if he did that, told her he’d never stopped loving her, but finds out that she has stopped loving him? Too painful, too humiliating, not doing it. Instead he’s going to do a Clint Eastwood and ride off into the sunset because his own heart scares him more than all the guns and outlaws out in that there wilderness.
What does she do? Tells her closest friend, has a cry, eats chocolate and examines his every word from the last six months for any hidden meaning she may have missed. Does she go and see him and say ‘we need to talk?’ No she does not. Because she’s angry and he’s a selfish pig and can come to her for a change.
A good talk might have saved all the agony, but nobody is willing to put his or her cards down first. Not talking, for a host of reasons, is the classic obstacle for couples. Particularly now when divorce, religion, and social pressures don’t provide the external obstacles they once did.
Sebastian Faulks says in the introduction to his short biographical book, The Fatal Englishman, that when writing about real people he resisted the urge ‘towards unity that finds it’s best expression in fiction, when the events can be shaped and patterned to echo the themes, while characters can be made, within the limits of their realistic capacities, to behave in a way that adds further harmony.’ He continues by saying ‘The lives of real people, unlike those of fictional characters, seem to exert a small but constant outward force away from order.’
In real life then, my two characters, both too stubborn or fearful to sort it out probably move onto the next partner and do it all again, until there is no happy ending, just regrets, and eventually compromise and maybe a hint of wistfulness.
But, lucky for them, it’s not real and I’m looking for harmony and thematic unity. So my man stops on his way to the sunset and says to himself, ‘Hmm, I sure do miss her. Maybe she’s worth the risk. I’ll go back and see if we can talk it through.’ And my woman thinks, ‘I don’t mind doing all the emotional heavy lifting – as usual – I’ll go and find him and tell him how I feel so he’ll feel safe with me, and then we can talk.’
Most couples avoid having a ‘good talk’ until they are dragged in front of a counsellor or so much is at stake they can no longer avoid it. And I consider this to be an excellent obstacle. Not as exciting as the king forbidding such a union, or being separated by war and never losing hope, or even battling social prejudice to be together. Not talking is realistic, it comes from within the characters and therefore is within their capacity to deal with it, and thus allows for a vast landscape of psychosocial hills and gully’s for the novelist to explore.
Sebastian Faulks, The Fatal Englishman, Vintage, 1997
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May 10th, 2010
One of my very first educational experiences as an art student took place at the feet of a lecturer - we sat on the carpet and he sat on a chair - assigned to aid the First Year’s transition into this strange new world. He’d been a sculptor and conceptual artist but had moved into art theory and history. On our first day he told us that art, sex and religion, were the only areas our society sanctions as being legitimate spheres in which to experience ecstasy.
Wow. I really was at art school.
I’ve never forgotten his words - they intrigued me when I first heard them as much as they still intrigue me now, many years later. Discussions along these lines took place every day. I was expecting a little more emphasis on the technical side of art, but this was the early eighties and conceptual art had slouched into the nation’s art schools, an unfiltered Camel between it’s fingers and a copy of Baudrillard under it’s arm. Learning to paint was simply a matter of being tossed into a white cube studio space with the necessary materials and being left to figure it out in between tutorials on Julian Schnabel and Jeff Koons. So where was the ecstasy?
I’m not talking about the satisfaction of acquiring skills, or being overtired and spinning out on coffee and cigarettes or even completing a painting or other artwork to general acclaim. I never knew what that lecturer really meant until a couple of years later, when on an ordinary day, I stapled some paper to the wall, picked up a stick of charcoal and began to draw. About half an hour later, while totally absorbed by what I was doing, I suddenly understood what he’d been on about. I find it hard to explain but extinction of the self comes close, extinction of self and unity with the act or idea.
Three years later I had a similar intense experience, again while drawing. I don’t know the physiological basis for it; there were no paint or turps fumes around, nor chanting or drumming. I don’t want a reductionist explanation of it nor do I see it as having any mystical significance. But last week, after a long, hard day of writing I experienced a similar feeling. No, it wasn’t hysteria or relief or a lifting of pressure – although maybe that lent an edge to it - but more a rightness or unity, a submergence of the self in a creative act. It verged on the sublime. Three times in twenty-five years of creative work. Maybe I haven’t been working hard enough.
Those three occasions, particularly the last, reconfirm my own belief that whatever the outcome of the finished work, whether it hangs on a wall or whether it gets published, all the royalties and sell-through and rights sales and reprints and reviews can only stand in the shadow of such transformative creative moments. It’s why we do it, and keep doing it – nothing comes close, except, as my long ago lecturer said, maybe sex and the religious experience.
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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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In Cold Blood
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