What Does It Take? the Myths

It's a good question. What does it take to become a published author? Or if you want more than that, what does it take to become a published, famous, well-paid (dare I say rich?) author? Let's look at the myths first.

1. It takes amazing talent. Hmmm, yes. If I had a dollar for every talented writer I've seen who gave up after a few months or a year, I could retire. It does take some talent, true. People who can't write anything that engages even the most sympathetic reader are plentiful, but sometimes that's not a matter of talent, that's just a matter of learning how to make the words work better for you (and that is possible). But the hard truth is - some people, no matter how badly they want to tell a story, can't write. I can't play the violin (I've tried), I can't play golf (I've tried), I could never be a fireworks expert (I'm scared of big noises) - so I have given up these things, even though I would kind of enjoy being the new Tiger Woods. Some people need to give up the idea of publishing their writing. Sorry, but it's true. Or they should at least give up submitting to publishers until they have worked really hard and reached a better standard of writing. (OK, you can throw things at me now. I'll duck - my talent there comes from ducking errant golf balls I, myself, hit.)

But if you have a bit of talent (we usually spot it in your voice, believe it or not), but not much technique - you can learn technique and you can improve - in leaps and bounds!

2. You need to know someone important in publishing. How do you know them? Are you memorable because you stalked that publisher into the ladies' room and harrassed her as she washed her hands? Or because you got drunk and confronted him about your latest rejection? If you Google the many blogs and websites maintained by editors and agents, you will see one thing that absolutely shines above anything else in terms of getting published - it's the writing that counts. Think about it.
Yes, some people get lucky and meet the right editor at the right time at a conference, but if the writing didn't sing, they would be one more writer in the queue.

3. You need lots of inspiration. How many writers sit down at the computer or blank page every day and feel inspired? Very, very few. When you've been writing for a while, you start to realise that inspiration is sporadic. Lack of faith in yourself as a writer is more prevalent. The only thing that will get you through, keep you going, keep you writing to the end of your project (no matter what it is) is showing up at your desk and writing no matter what.
This seems so obvious that I wonder why I'm saying it!! But the truth is that there are many writers who believe that the only time they can write anything "good" is when they are inspired. Rubbish!!! You have to write no matter what. That's what a writer does. And you would be amazed at the number of writers who say they can't tell the difference, later, between what they wrote when they "felt like it" and what they wrote when they struggled and persisted, despite the doubts.

Some realities coming soon.

SCBWI Conference photos

Bruce Whately (illustrator), Lisa Berryman (HarperCollins) and Jackie French - the Diary of a Wombat "team".
Ellen Hopkins, guest writer from the U.S. - her verse novels for YA make the NY Times best-seller lists.
Meredith Costain, speaking at the launch of her lovely Nibble, Rosie and the Bunyip.

SCBWI Conference in Sydney (2)

Here are some session summaries and high points:
Julie Romeis (Chronicle) - Trends in the US Market
While Gossip Girls and books like the Lightning Thief are hugely popular right now, in two years time it will be different. Write what you want to write and be a trend-setter, not a trend-follower. There are more novels being published now but there will inevitably be a move back to picture books. The huge funding cuts for schools and libraries have meant that publishers have had to pull back from publishing aimed at those markets, and look more at books that will sell in stores and places like WalMart (big retail).
There are more licenced characters and more "books with bling" (sparkles and glow stuff) - these are the covers that make kids take them off the shelves, and there are more fun books being produced rather than educational. There is also a big shift to graphic novels for as young as 5-6 year olds (Baby Mouse early readers). US publishers are interested in international authors but they still need to be writing something unique or different.

There was a session on picture books that I wrote the SCBWI report for - it will be up on the Australian SCBWI site next week, I believe, along with my report on educational publishing.

What are they publishing?
Linsey Knight (Random House) - everything from picture books to YA, and they are also doing a lot of series and mass market stuff. They buy in from overseas as well as local authors.
They are always looking for people who can tell great stories, are interested in chicklit for YA but it needs to be a fresh voice.
Anna McFarlane (Pan Macmillan) - are doing 41 books this year, of which 8 are new writers. She talked about the first-time authors and how their manuscripts were accepted - 4 from the slush pile, 4 from agents.
Leonie Tyle (Random House) - Leonie has recently joined RH and has her own imprint. She is looking for literary, high quality books, and plans to publish 12 books per year. She said the 9-13 age group are very savvy readers and consumers, and publishers are actively targeting them right now. She will be more interested in novels than picture books, but is putting illustrations in novels (this was an obvious trend - it came up several times).

New Voices
Sarah Foster from Walker Books talked about new voices in their program this year, including The Stone Crown by Malcolm Walker - this book needed a lot of work but the author's voice was strong and he had great characters, plus he was willing to do a lot of rewriting and work hard with the editor. Walker are also publishing a new series called Lightning Strikes, 10,000 words, aimed at upper primary (10-12) - pacey, funny stories.

Julie Romeis (Chronicle) talked about a book she had published while at Bloomsbury - Ophelia. She was attracted to the book idea first, but always she knows if she's going to love a book by the first page. The writing and voice leaps out at you.

Lisa Berryman (HarperCollins) sees that it's her job to recognise potential - voice is everything in a book to her, and it determines your response to it. She talked about Alexandra Adornetto and that her submission was perfect, as well as the book and writing were great. (If you haven't heard of AA, she wrote her first book at 13, and her second is about to be published.)

Steve Mooser (president of SCBWI International) was at the conference and did a useful presentation on writing funny books. I might post about that at another time.

Overall, the sessions provided a wealth of information for those who want to pursue publication. The main points that I came away with (and they were mentioned many times) are:
* That you need a great voice working in your story, and you need a story that has a different or unique perspective. Publishers look at thousands of manuscripts every year, and that first page has to be working in terms of voice and action to capture their interest.
* Publishers are constantly looking at marketing and how a book is placed out there - what will make someone buy it. Covers are important, but so are efforts by authors - websites and school visits in particular. Word of mouth will still sell more books than advertising.
* Series are popular but there are drawbacks - booksellers don't always like the idea of having to fill shelves with them. But kids like them, and they become collectables.

Thanks to all the publishers who attended the conference and were so approachable and patient.

SCBWI conference, Sydney (1)

Have just returned from Sydney and our bi-annual conference. Straight into teaching on Monday morning, but luckily I resisted the late-night gabfests (tempting though they were) and got some sleep while I was there. The Hughenden Hotel, where the conference took place, was also where many of us stayed. It's very old and historical, with a dungeon and lots of little rooms and things like ceiling roses and embossed tiles. Sydney was hot and muggy to us Melbournites, but probably just nice for the northern writers!

Guest US editor was Julie Romeis from Chronicle Books, with publishers from HarperCollins, Walker Books, Penguin, Random House, plus Leonie Tyle who is establishing a new imprint of her own at RH. Rick Raftos was the guest agent. They were all very generous with their information and advice, and I saw quite a few writers who were glowing after their manuscript assessments. We all ate far more delicious food than was good for us!! I went for a walk around the circuit in Centennial Park on Sunday morning, which helped me feel better about all those cakes.

I'll post more about individual sessions shortly, but I wanted to mention the pitch session on Sunday afternoon. This was interesting as, instead of participants having to write a pitch (like the paragraph in your query letter) and have it critiqued, they had to actually stand up and do a two minute presentation. Quite normal in the screenwriting world, but pretty scary for children's writers who've never done it before.

The publishers' panel was fairly brutal and honest, but they needed to be. I guess they were showing us (verbalising) what goes through their brains when they read someone's query letter and/or submission. It was a bit like Miss Snark in action. It soon became apparent who had a grip on what their story was about, and who was still talking in abstracts. Some people chose to read a bit of their story, which didn't always work. Others presented story outlines that really captured the audience's imagination.

One of the highlights for me was Ellen Hopkins, whose verse novels I greatly admire, not only for their stark subject matter but also for her poetry and the way she uses words on the page. Her session was moving and educational, and I also got to talk to her about verse novels the next day. And she showed us all that Nevada is not just Las Vegas, and there are some beautiful mountains and scenery up north.

Confidence Tricks

I have to admit that I have got sucked in to the current series of The Biggest Loser. I'm not sure why, but I think it's the people! While I enjoy transformation stories (can't stand novels or films where the main character never learns anything and stays the same), this has become more than just the potential of each person to achieve weight loss. Every time one of them opens their mouth, I'm watching their face and listening to the tone of their voice to work out what they are really saying. There's a fair bit of fibbing going on, I think! When the young guy came out and said a few snarky things last night and then laughed, I laughed too, just because he was being genuine.

Also, in last night's episode, the Blue team was given a really hard time by the Commando, leading to one person suddenly losing all their confidence and growing self-respect. Yet, another in the team came out of the really tough session overjoyed that she had won through and survived. Two completely different reactions to the same thing! I keep making mental notes about how I can use all of this in my fiction writing, because of course no two characters will, or should, react in the same way to the same thing.

How much self-confidence a character has says a lot about how they view themselves, how they see the world, how they will react to events and disasters, how they will tackle problems. In today's society, weight has become a huge issue - it's as if it overshadows everything about who a person really is. Even being too slim is liable to get you criticised. Your body weight starts to define you - if you let it. But it's so hard not to. You're battling the whole world, it feels like.

One of my favourite things about The Big Loser is that when someone is voted out, the producers follow up a couple of months later to see how they're going. The two so far have both come out vowing to keep up what they've gained - not so much the weight loss but the feeling of a healthy body and the knowledge that they can exercise and they can achieve what they want. On their own.

Is your character that tough? Probably not at the beginning of the story. In class yesterday, we talked a little bit about the middle of a story. After you've got off to a roaring start, and you know more or less what your ending might be, you are facing the middle - the place where your story might sag. Yet if what is happening in the middle is that your character is gaining what they need to win through, that's fertile ground to cover. What doesn't kill me will only make me stronger. It's a familiar saying, but in your story, that's what your character is doing. Gaining confidence, growing, learning new skills, gaining strength (inner and outer), overcoming many obstacles. You just have to make sure you're really testing them, really making them grow, rather than letting them off too easy!

Books and More Books

The last week has been total, full-on, brain-burning teaching stuff. Of all sorts. I'm teaching two online classes this semester, and although I've done it before, the five wonderful students who climbed on board with me for Poetry 2 a couple of years ago knew they were guinea pigs and we worked through a lot of material. This time, the students are expecting a top-notch learning experience, and I've been working hard to get everything ready. Of course, as with any institution, the problems that arise tend to be bureaucratic, and it can be stressful to work your way through each length of red tape without losing your temper. I hope our students beginning their classes tomorrow, via the internet, will view me as a calm, serene duck, and not see the madly paddling feet underneath!

On-campus classes also start tomorrow, and I have mostly dispelled my panic through careful planning and thinking through everything that needs to be ready, and using lots of lists. Once classes begin, everything gradually moves into a routine and settles down. It's the "beforehand" stuff that drives us to the brink. However, I'm looking forward to all of my classes, which is a good sign.

Since the brain has been sending out smoke signals (saying, "Give me a break, will ya?"), I've done little writing this week. There are some times when enough is too much, and although I wanted to write, I needed to sleep more. That hasn't stopped me thinking about the novel I'm working on. And deciding that the slippery feeling I'd been getting while rewriting the last 4000 words or so was a sign that I need to print out everything so far and have a critical read-through. When you're writing a scene and you can't work out what's supposed to happen next or why (and the original version is right next to you and it doesn't make sense anymore), that's the time to spend more brain power on that scene, and what comes before it, and less finger power on the keyboard. For me, anyway.

In a quick reading roundup, it has occurred to me that I've been reading quite a few middle grade and YA novels recently with a lot of violence in them. I had to read Tunnels by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, if only to make sure my novel wasn't in any way similar. It wasn't (a relief, especially after an agent expressed concern about this despite not having read Tunnels). There was a huge amount of action and violence in the second half of this book, much of which kept up the tension and excitement level quite well. But there were also huge amounts of description, too much, so that I had trouble visualising what was going on, and where. I do think some of this could've been trimmed for a better story.

I also read The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks. Brooks never holds back in his novels (I still remember one that starts with the father dead in the lounge room) but this one is very scary. He does a great job of description, and the setting is the dark and lonely moors in England. Tiny village with horrible characters, and two brothers who want to find out who murdered their sister. Then, for a complete change of pace, I read The Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge. I loved this, not just because it's set in Tucson (and I love Tucson) but because of the voice and the characters. Each character has their own story, each character evolves and changes, not just the main character. The dialogue is snappy and moves the story along, with added touches of humour. Two very different books, but I recommend both.

The Big 10

Earlier this week, StatCounter told me my blog had reached the milestone of 10,000 reader visits. Sounds like a lot, but that's over a couple of years! Still, it made me happy to know that a fair few people had dropped in to read stuff, and some of them have even left comments. I actually started this blog in 2004, firstly to record short reviews or comments on books I had read. It was like a personal reminder of what I liked and what I didn't (us writers are always on the look out for recommendations of good books to read). Then I went to New York and the Chatauqua Writers' Workshop, and wanted to keep some kind of diary that friends and family could read if they wanted. Four years later, I'm still here, and still enjoying it. It's a different kind of writing, and it's fun.

The photo above is from the "something old, something new" line of thinking. This is my old something. Apologies for the not-so-good photo but it's very hard to get away from reflections! Anyway, this is (obviously) a cup and saucer. It's from a very old porcelain tea set that we think belonged to our great-grandmother. It has been handed down and now what is left of it belongs to my sister and me. For my birthday, she had one of the last remaining cup-and-saucer sets mounted in a box frame for me. I never understand people who throw stuff out when someone dies - once it's gone, it's gone forever. (And I freely admit I am a hoarder.)

The "something new" is not out yet. It's not even on the UQP website, but I have seen the final cover for my new book Tracey Binns Is Trouble. It's out in May. I'll post a cover when I have permission.
Something borrowed? I promise to return the Estleman book on popular fiction to you really soon, T! And if you want to see blue things, you can look at the bluebells and pincushions on my Bush Notes blog.

Same Old, Same Old

Once again, the Weekend Australian Review has trotted out an article on creative writing courses. It seems as if I've read this kind of thing several times in the past couple of years. It starts as a whine about how creative writing degree courses are taking over from traditional literature courses, and continues in that vein. Tony Birch from Melbourne Uni complains that new students come to the course "naive" about how difficult it is to get published. Er, they're just out of high school, mate. How much do you expect them to know? Isn't that what you're there for, amongst other things?

Another point is made about universities sucking up massive fees from students wanting to do creative writing, but not giving the "product" the respect it deserves. Ultimately, isn't it up to the publishing world to publish a book? Since when does a High Distinction guarantee that a student novel will be published and sell lots of copies? Um, never. Everyone pays HECS fees at our universities now, no matter what they want to study. I quote from the article: "There are numerous mature-age students willing to pay universities $100-plus an hour to sit in a postgraduate writing class."

I have a solution for them! Come and study creative writing at TAFE with us! There, it will cost you $1.37 an hour and you'll learn just as much. In fact, you'll probably learn more, especially if you're looking for hands-on writing, workshopping and industry knowledge. OK, OK, promotional spruiking is over. Seriously, what really annoyed me about this article (apart from the fact that TAFE courses were not mentioned at all) was that nobody bothered to ask the students about why they were choosing to study creative writing and not literature or history or engineering.

There were various academics who talked about and around the subject; some even acknowledged that a uni teaching gig was good to have, and helped to pay the bills. They talked about how important reading is for a writer, and how students have to be made to read more. I hate to tell them this, but most people who want to be writers have to be encouraged to read more. It's one of those weird anomalies. But the article writer, Rosemary Neill, never once asked any students - why are you doing it? Why are you studying writing, and not just sitting at home (for free) and doing it?

Maybe that's a whole other article, one that would be five times as long. Because we do ask that question of our students, and we get a dozen different answers. Everything from career change or following their passion to job skills (we are a professional writing and editing course) and wanting to learn something specific like researching and interviewing. Believe it or not, we actually ask this question in the selection interview, before they even get into the course! It's an important question. You might be surprised how many people don't give "getting published" as their first answer. It's usually in there somewhere, but most people are aware that their skills need improvement, and they want to learn the craft. It's a great start.

It's All Useful

Years ago, I attended a screenwriting course. It was over three or four Saturdays (can't remember exactly now) and although we did watch a movie or two, mostly the lecturer talked and gave us handouts and homework. At the time, I thought I might try my hand at writing screenplays. I'd written a play (a teen rock musical with a composer), a bad movie script, and dabbled a bit, but I knew I needed to know a lot more before I could have a serious try at it. So I went along to this course.

I couldn't tell you now (without going back to my folder of notes, because I never throw anything out) what I learned about screenwriting in terms of formatting and opportunities and stuff like that, but I have never forgotten the work we did in that class on character psychology. It was the first time I'd ever worked hard on character motivations in terms of who they were inside their head and why. Abandonment, fear of intimacy, abusive parents, alcoholic parents, power plays, control freaks - I think I learned more in that class than I've learned anywhere since.

Have I written a screenplay since? No. But every piece of fiction I've written has included, in some shape or form, psychological backstory and motivation. I now research my characters in terms of psychology and what makes them tick. I know that I need to make sure that how they are behaving right now is consistent with past events and the effects of those events. Today I was researching the effects on a male character of consistent physical beatings as a child and teenager. Something in my story wasn't adding up when I wrote about this character, and I realised it was because I didn't really understand where he'd come from, and what the long-term effects of that abuse might be.

I say might because if you read any psychology articles or texts, the first thing they'll say is that no one can predict the outcome of a particular experience. There are a number of factors that influence what might happen later. But it's very easy as a writer to say, "Oh yes, this happened and so later on he does this, and is like that" without actually verifying that a drug addiction (for example) is a possible/probable outcome later on. The character could have become a hitman! Or committed suicide. Or suffered anxiety attacks and withdrawn from the world. But you need to know what the range of possibilities are.

So this screenwriting course introduced me to how to create psychological depth in characters. Great stuff! Writing short stories for adults over the years has taught me how to write tightly plotted, pacy chapter books for kids. Writing poetry has taught me heaps about imagery and metaphor, and using the best words in the best way. Writing radio plays taught me lots about strong dialogue. Studying a unit at university years ago on performance, that was mostly about how actors fill up the space on the stage, taught me a huge amount about action, dialogue and pacing.

I think if you want to write novels, don't limit yourself to just learning about how to write novels. Learning how to structure a screenplay will teach you lots about plot and cause/effect. Not to mention dialogue. Watching movies will teach you about showing and telling. How is that actor showing distress? Puzzlement? Embarrassment? Go and write some poems. Write lots of poems. Read lots of poems. Discover what language is capable of, if you use it effectively. And yeah, don't forget the grammar and punctuation stuff. That'll teach you how to write a sentence that says what you want it to, create the effect you want for the reader, without being obscure, overblown or confusing.

Where Did the Time Go?

I guess you have about the same number of hours in the day as I do - 24. Doesn't seem enough, most days, does it? I often wish for 28 or 30. But it's not going to happen anytime soon, and while I have had short periods of time over the past 6-7 weeks where I have been able to stay home and write (as opposed to going to work to earn money and NOT write), I've been thinking a lot about what happens to me when I do go to work. And do my 7 hours or so.

With all good intentions to come home and have a cup of tea and then buckle down to writing, what has happened is I come home and collapse into a comfy chair and my brain shuts down. I think the 6-7 weeks of some weeks at work and some weeks off (making up for the fact that I had to start back on 1 January while others were still cavorting, or camping, or chilling out) has given me a really good picture of my writing life. Or non-writing life.

I'm as clever as the next writer in coming up with excuses why I'm not writing. I was digging a ditch. I haven't been sleeping well. I had to clean the fridge. But all excuses aside, what I have seen in the past weeks is that when I have spent 7 hours at work, I don't write when I come home. Partly this is because I do spend 7 hours working. I have a part-time job, with a lot of things that have to get done, so we don't have lunch hours, for example. We have lunchtime meetings while we eat. Bad work practice, I know, but we are all part-timers and our department gets more done than most others with full-time staff. It helps that we love what we do, and we want to do it really well.

But it does mean that when I get home after a full day, I am stuffed. Maybe I'm getting old. Whatever. That's the reality. My brain says NO.
But right now, I am working on a revision of a novel that is important to me. It's working, it's developing, it's deepening. I can't afford to let the ball drop right now. I don't want to lose the momentum and the sense of being right inside this story and the characters. But I head back to work tomorrow, with no more time off in sight.

So, after some thought, I have decided that on the days I work (three of them each week, on average) I will have to get up very early and spend at least an hour on my revision before I go to work. I don't function exceptionally well before 7am, but it will be a lot better than being brain-dead at 5pm. It helps that my husband has just had his work hours changed and he'll be up at the same time (we'll fight for the shower first - something has to wake me up!). I may not last. I'm not a good morning person. But this is what has to happen for me to keep this revision humming along. Stay posted. I may, as my mother used to say, end up running off screaming into the bush.

Mailbox Problem

It doesn't really matter what's coming in today's mail - acceptances or rejection letters - when this is in there waiting. I did try to coax him out, but to no avail. He's obviously waiting for some important letter. I could spray him with insect killer but somehow I don't have the heart. So my husband can get him out for me. (You thought I was going to put my hand anywhere near that?)

Writers' Conferences

One of the best experiences for a writer is a writers' conference. It doesn't matter if you're new or more advanced, published or not, being among other writers who share your passion is inspiring. No more strange looks (you're writing about what?), no more sneers (so where did you say I can buy your books? nowhere yet?), no more guilt trips (what do you mean - you can't come to the beach/mall/playground with us, you're writing?), no more questions from family like "When are you going to get a real job?"

At a good writers' conference you'll get the following things:
1. You'll meet lots of other writers who feel just like you. You'll share experiences, the lows and highs, pass on good advice, re-inspire each other and make life-long friends. I know because that's happened to me!

2. You'll listen to other well-published writers speak and realise their paths to publication were long and tough, and what got them there was perseverance and hard work, not some magical, mystical talent. You'll realise that a little bit of talent goes a long way if you're prepared to listen, learn and practise, practise, practise. They'll inspire you too. I still remember Linda Sue Park and her two pages a day, no matter what. They'll also remind you that part of being a writer is to read, read, read.

3. You'll hear editors and publishers talking about what they might be looking for, what makes a manuscript stand out, what fads and trends are passing or passed, what their house publishes. They'll add to your market research (that you're already doing - right?) and put a human face on the rejection letters. They'll remind you that competent and pretty good doesn't cut it in the world today, and that you need to work hard to find your own story and tell it as only you can. They'll also remind you that they love books as much as you do, and they really are looking for new voices.

4. You'll also hear agents, hopefully two or three, talking about their business, how they work, what they're looking for. It'll sound a lot like editors, only more so.

5. You'll find new ideas springing into your mind, from things people say, things you see, things that pop into your dreams each night as you sleep after a long day of talking about writing and books. You'll take lots of notes, write down every idea that occurs to you, buy books that appeal to you, make a list of others to borrow from your library.

6. At a lot of conferences, you'll have a manuscript consultation option. If you've been working on a project and it's not ready, you may pass on the consult. But if you decide to take it up, you'll prepare the best submission you can, and think about what you want from the consult. No editor or agent will give you a contract on the spot, based on ten pages! But they might ask you to send the whole novel. They might ask you to talk about it more. They might ask you questions, about the novel and about you. Be ready. Make the most of it.

It's a good idea to "take stock" before a conference. What do you want from it? What can it give you? Why are you paying this money? Where do you sit in the row of writers that spans "complete newbie" to "well published". What advantages does that seat give you? What is going to be most useful to you in terms of sessions and talks? If you are published, is there a professional stream for you? (otherwise you are going to be bored by sessions that tell you what you already know). Are there agents and editors there you are interested in?

It's also a good idea to make a list of the things you are NOT going to do. 1. Drink too much and make a fool of yourself. You can almost guarantee that when you do, an important editor or agent will be in the audience. 2. Pitch yourself to agents and editors in their down-time when all they want is a drink and some peace and quiet. 3. Whine. It doesn't help, and it makes you look like a total amateur. 4. Show off, even when you have something to show. Say no more.

We have our second international SCBWI conference coming up in February in Sydney, and the program looks terrific. I love conferences, I love getting together with other writers, and I love coming home inspired all over again.

The Healthy Writer

We sit at our desks for long periods of time. We drink lots of coffee, maybe smoke, when we take a break (or even as we write). We eat chocolate or chips, or get fast food for dinner because we've got no time to shop and cook. We stay up late, night after night, or drag ourselves out of bed at dawn to write, because that's the only time we have in a busy family/work life.

The result of all of this is obvious. We are overweight, unfit and tired. Just like most of the population. We make resolutions to go to the gym, walk regularly, eat more fruit and veges, but it doesn't happen. Oh well, we sigh, just like everyone else.

Except we aren't like everyone else. When everyone else collapses on the weekend, or after dinner, and watches TV or naps, or goes out and parties, the serious writer is writing. Other people's R&R time is usually our writing time, especially if we have to work in a regular job to pay the bills. A writer who wants to write, and complete projects like novels and short story collections and film scripts, is writing when everyone else is chilling out.

The problem that arises from this is simply a physical and mental tiredness that stops you from writing at your best, and may often stop you from writing at all. I've blogged here before about how that tiredness influences everything about our writing, not just getting the words down on the page but also how you feel about them. If you are feeling bright and healthy and energetic, revision is a pleasure, not a pain. Rejections sting for a few minutes then you can shrug them off and move on. Words zing onto the page because you feel zingy!

What is the solution? Unfortunately, there is no magic wand for this stuff, but here are my thoughts on what makes me write better:

1. Sleep. I am an 8-9 hour a night person, and if I don't get good sleep, I fall in a heap very quickly. So I watch very little TV and go to bed early. Boring, huh? It works for me. I know there are people who insist they can survive well on 5 hours a night, but all the sleep studies now (and there are lots of them because scientists have realised what lack of sleep can do to us) show that it affects alertness, ability to process thoughts, ability to respond, moodiness, irritation, concentration, etc etc. It's actually quite scary what the effects are. Maybe they could add writer's block to the list.

2. Walking, or some form of exercise. It gets me off the chair, it lets my brain think more freely as I walk, it wakes me up, it gets me out in the world. I actually like walking in the rain (with an umbrella) better than anything. But I do have to force myself to do it some days, even though I know it will make me feel good.

3. Less coffee and alcohol. I limit coffee to one a day now, but it has to be a decent one. Not instant. And if I have it in a cafe while I'm writing or thinking about writing, even better. Alcohol - I'm always trying to do better there!

4. Where I write - making sure my computer use is not going to make my neck and shoulder condition worse, which was caused by that in the first place. So the chair and the desk and the keyboard and the monitor all need to be working for me, not against me.

5. Eating better. Skipping breakfast is silly. I've come to believe that breakfast sets you up for the whole morning. I hate lunch - it's the most boring meal of the day to me, but I try to have something with protein in it because of my iron and energy levels. Dinner is up to you! I hate sitting around after dinner feeling like a lump of lead is lying in my stomach, so if we've eaten something heavy, I'll go for a walk afterwards. That helps me sleep.

If I feel good physically, I feel great mentally. I want to write, my brain is full of ideas and words, I can tackle anything with energy and concentration. My biggest struggle is work - it exhausts me mentally and physically - but I can cope if I stay healthy. It's one of my big goals for this year, and I hope it feeds into my writing every day.

The Art of Revision

I've been doing more reading on revision this week, not just for myself but also for use in class. In trying to distill what you need to revise successfully, I came up with some pointers:

1. You have to read critically - that means read other published work. Books and stories in your genre or form, books outside your genre, any book that might give you a great or bad example of writing. Any book that does a good job of something you struggle with (at the moment, I'm working on deepening character - how to do this with a character who has a very hard outer shell). Read to see how accomplished writers work with words, with character, with plot, with theme. Stop reading just to put yourself to sleep at night and start reading as a writer. Learn from it. If you can't see what makes a great novel great, you'd better study it some more.

2. Find out how you can put distance between you and your writing. That might mean putting your story or novel away for a week, a month, a year, until you can look at it with a critical eye, and not fall in love with your own words again. It might mean reading it out loud to yourself, or onto a tape. It might mean psyching yourself into another mental realm and pretending that the novel wasn't written by you. Whatever works for you, whatever leads to you being able to cut ruthlessly or see where there are gaps and shallowness.

3. Learn to separate the stages of revision. Understand that there is structural revision (the big picture stuff) and revision on a paragraph by paragraph basis. And then there is line editing, on a word by word basis. That's where most people trim and tighten. Understand the difference between re-visioning and revision. Re-visioning means re-imagining your novel, seeing it in a new light, seeing other possibilities for it. That's where distance helps. It's also where mental space helps - it's almost a re-dreaming of your story, and that's not going to happen in half an hour, crammed into the end of the day.

4. Acknowledge to yourself, no matter how hard it might be, that fiddling around the edges and changing a few things here and there is not rewriting. True rewriting is retyping the whole thing from scratch, writing it as a new piece of work. You may refer to the original - some people don't even do that.

5. Only give it to a trusted reader or critique partner/group when you are sure you have done everything you possibly can, or are capable of at this point, to make it the best you can. Don't ask people to critique something that you know you can still work on, or something that is OK for plot but you haven't done the line editing. Why should they spend their time on your punctuation and grammar? Think about what you want or need from the critique. If you want to know if the voice works, say so. Ditto for plot, character, pacing. Make the best use of your critique person's time and energy.

6. Take your critiques seriously. Don't say, "Oh, they weren't good readers, they just didn't get what I was trying to do." If that's the case, that's your fault, not theirs. Take heed of all comments, consider them seriously. Some may be of no use to you. Most should at least raise the question of "Did I do that well enough? Why has that comment been made?" Don't take any critique personally. It's not about you, it's about the story.

7. If you have revised and revised and revised, learn to see when enough is enough. Do you want to revise again because you're too scared to send it out? Or do you really think another revision will help? If you are up to Draft 15, ask yourself what you are doing. Have you really done 15 drafts, or 15 "picking at the edges"? If the story isn't working after 15 drafts, you need to work out why not. You may have to abandon the story. It has still taught you an immense amount along the way. If you have to, let it go. Don't hang everything on one manuscript. Write more. That's what writers do.

8. If you revised a bit, sent it out and have 20 rejections, you have to make a decision. It's probably not publishable in its present state, but maybe only 100 rejections will convince you - how honest are you being about it? Is it fabulous? Is it a manuscript that sings? Or is it competent? Does it need another big revision? Suck it up. Do it. Or start something new.

Note: If it's a story that just won't leave you alone, you should keep working on it until it's fabulous. Otherwise it'll give you nightmares, interrupt your daydreams and intrude on your other writing.

The Wednesday Wars

I'm impatient. I hear about a great book and I can't wait weeks and weeks (months and months) for my local Borders to decide whether they're going to get it in from the US or not. So I order it on Amazon and then try to forget about it until the doorbell rings. I had heard a lot about The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt on the CCBC discussion list, and stopped reading the posts in the end when people started picking it to bits and giving away the story (I hate that - I always stop when they give spoiler warnings).

Last week, the Newbery Medal was given to a poetry book (yaaayyy!), Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! that hardly anyone had heard of. That's the nature of awards. The Wednesday Wars was an Honour Book. I started reading it and finished it in two days. I would've finished it in one day but I wanted to think about it and savour what was happening in the story. And now that I've finished, I'm still thinking about it. This morning, I was explaining to my friend G what it was about, what happens, what the characters' journeys are, and I realised that by doing this, I was seeing even more things in the book than I had on my own (I guess this is why some people join book groups, not just for the wine and socialising!).

To sum it up, I loved this book. Its most successful element, I think, is the narrator's perspective - how the writer has created a character who really does see the world as a seventh grade boy would. He believes the teacher hates him, he doesn't see that his father is a selfish, bigoted man, he doesn't understand his own abilities and capacity for learning about life, he can't see the point of reading Shakespeare. Yet, on his journey through the story, he gradually comes to understand all of these things, and more. He comes to see the possibilities of his place in the world, that he doesn't have to be what others want to force him to be.

That is a pretty amazing accomplishment in any novel. To slowly but surely unravel a character and depict him learning how to sort out what and who he is ... I'm not going to say that this is amazing for a middle grade novel, because I have read lots of middle grade and YA novels that accomplish this in such depth and subtlety that they leave many adult novels for dead. It is simply a wonderful novel. For a reader of any age.

I have also realised that what I don't like in children's fiction is a writer who feels they need to spell everything out. Kids are not dumb. There have been posts from teachers and librarians who have kids who love The Wednesday Wars. The same way they love The Dark is Rising, Northern Lights, Bridge to Terabithia, in fact any novel that invites them into the story by giving them room to imagine, speculate, wonder and work stuff out for themselves. That's why those novels last and the mass market series that are churned out, two or four a month, don't. There are some series that will endure (look at Little House on the Prairie) because the writers were passionate about the stories they were telling, and the themes continue to resonate. But I doubt any series that is written to a set formula will last beyond five or ten years. I guess that's the nature of the marketplace at any time, isn't it?

The Achievement Index

Yesterday, I finished the first draft of a novel for upper primary readers (or middle grade) - it came in at around 44,000 words, more than I expected, and has a couple of subplots that may need to be pruned, not to mention a character that started as one kind of person and morphed into another. Sometimes characters do that. This is the novel I started for NaNo, and had to abandon due to a very busy time working in Hong Kong, followed by an even busier time catching up when I got back (gee, thanks for making me submit the same student results three times - don't you just love antiquated data systems?).

But over the Christmas/NY break, the period when we all set goals and have high hopes for the new year, I simply committed to writing more. Writing regularly. And have recently found a website and blog of a guy who both makes me laugh and gives me some good ideas. Now Craig Harper is a motivational speaker but is also a personal trainer (and got his start in business as such) - he's also a funny writer who gets his message across, with warnings about irreverence and rudeness. He's not actually that rude - he just tells it as he sees it. Anyway, something I got from Craig's posts was the idea of an achievement diary.

We tend to whip ourselves over what we don't achieve. I set myself 2000 words today and I didn't achieve it. Whack! That's a recipe for depression. So I went up to my local KMart and found a simple diary for simply noting where I was and what I'd managed to get through each day. And also my energy level (because I have major iron problems and have to keep track). In my new diary, I record what I wrote, what I worked on (plotting, planning, thinking, dreaming, notes, ideas - they all count in a writer's life) and whether I have done the two other things that help me as a writer - meditation and walking.

Why meditation? Because I'm a perfectionist and AR and get really tense over minor issues. After years of meditation in a very On-Off way, I'm giving it a real go this year to help my stress levels. Why walking? Because I hate jogging, and I don't have time for the gym right now. So those two things help my writing.

But today, I didn't write at all. I dug a trench. Hmmm, yes, a real one. But because I've been writing regularly and reading writing books and thinking about writing a lot, I couldn't help but view my trench digging like a writer. Set the scene: local council requires entrance to property to have a culvert (in simple terms, the ditch/drain needs a pipe in it for water flow). Gateway looks fine, ditch currently shallow, two people with shovel, spade and mattock should manage.

We talk a lot in fiction about raising the stakes. First stake: excavation must be finished today so when large pipes are delivered next week, they can go straight into the hole. First complication: shallow ditch conceals ROCK. A variable kind of rock. At one end, we have compacted clay, but for more than half the ditch, we have the original road bed made up of compacted quarry rock and gravel set like concrete. We attack it. We chip, hack, dig, shovel - we are not getting very far. Second complication (raising the stakes): it rains. Initially, it drizzles, then it decides to pour for a a while. Dirt turns to mud. Rock stays pretty much as rock.

Further complications include: neighbour (whose driveway we are entering from) coming down to inspect our progress (but without offers of assistance, despite his ownership of tractor and blade); more rain; bigger rocks; our physical capacities deteriorating by the minute. I wish I could say a lightning bolt hit the ditch and blasted it out for us. I wish I could say the earth grew softer and easier to remove. This is not fiction. None of this happened.

But I did feel quite proud of our efforts. We excavated, by hand, a four metre trench, in the rain, and managed to crack quite a few jokes along the way. Why not lighten the load with some fun? I remarked on trying to imagine what it was like being on a chain gang (maybe I can use that one day), but mostly I thought about how different this was from sitting at a computer, making up a story. Instead of spending my hours inside my head, trying to be anyone except myself, I spent several hours totally inside my aching, tiring body, feeling every ache and pain, splattered with mud, soaked to the skin. I may never recover, but now it's over, it was great!

Money from Blogging?

Having downloaded the short course I mentioned previously (from Simple.ology) I worked my way through it and came out the other end, loaded with information and things to think about. The course told me lots of things I already knew, but also explained some terms and aspects of blogging that I didn't. So it was fairly useful. Am I going to act on what I read? Probably not. For the reasons I gave in my last post - I'm not comfortable having ads on my blog that I don't have any control over (see Kristi's comment under that post as a good example of what can happen).

I did consider becoming an Amazon affiliate, but again, they supply the ads and the format, and what I saw looked like it just wouldn't suit how I want my blog to appear. What was more interesting was the link to copyblogger, and the articles I read there. Everyone has a different perspective on this stuff - some people vow they are making lots of money, others say the ad game is too controlled by Google and the other big companies and very few bloggers are wealthy from it.

The question is - what am I supposed to be selling? My answer? I guess I'm hoping if you like my blog, you'll buy my books. But seeing as how most of them are kid's books, you'd need to either have kids or be one! Kind of reduces my customer base a little. And besides, my website does a better job of that than my blog does. As I said before, I just like the idea of writing something that other people enjoy reading, and maybe get something out of it (if they're writers and readers). It seems like I'm not destined to be the next Donald Trump. Just as well. I don't have hair that's booffy enough.

At the moment, I'm working hard on finishing off an online course on how to write picture books. It's due to start on 18 February, and it's for the TAFE where I work (Professional Writing & Editing course). I've been working on this for two years now, and some funding last year enabled me to write most of the content. Some of the material has been adapted from course materials I use in Hong Kong, but as I go along, I keep adding more and more. For instance, last week I interviewed Diana Lawrenson about her nonfiction picture books. That interview will be added as a link in the unit, and I have lots of other great links to articles as well.

The great advantage of doing it all online is the wealth of material that is now available on the net. Students can have access to information at the click of a mouse. Still, there's nothing like going to the library or bookshop and looking at all of the wonderful picture books that are around. So students need to do that as well. More and more people are choosing to study online these days - even some of our students prefer to study at home at times that suit them rather than come to the campus. I studied most of my arts degree by distance learning (before the internet so it was study guides and late night reading and thinking). At the time, it was a fantastic option, and I was motivated to keep going because I really wanted to learn, mostly about writing and literature. I'm still learning, and I still love it.

Thoughts on Blogging

I originally started this blog way back in January 2004 (can't believe it's been 3 years!), and have found it really useful to post photos and "what am I doing" stuff while I am away at writers' conferences and workshops. Taking good notes in sessions so I can blog about the topic has been a great way of helping me to focus and get more out of what I hear. It also saves me a million emails while I'm away. I haven't been using StatCounter for that whole time, but currently it says I'm coming up for Visitor Number 10,000. It's fascinating to use it to see where my readers are - especially on a day when there are eight people in Norway visiting. It makes me wonder how and why.

My focus here has always been books and writing. I also like to keep track of what I've read and post brief comments, not lengthy reviews, and often my comments will be from the writer's point of view - what did I learn from reading this book? Nowadays, there is a lot of talk about platform - how we should be using our blogs as a way to build our platform - but for me, it's about knowing that people are reading what I write and getting something out of it. Even if it's only a bit of a laugh!

However, since many of the newsletters I receive talk about what else your blog is supposed to be doing, I decided to follow up on a little course.

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

I'm not keen on having ads on my blog - especially when you have no control over them. As a writing teacher, I think it's part of my job to educate writing students about agent and publisher scams, and we are in this situation right now. A keen student is very excited about getting an agent. A bit of Googling on my part revealed it's a scam agency. We're going to have to break the bad news to him (I hate that kind of thing - people who suck up other people's dreams to make money). So if I ended up with one of their ads on my blog, I'd feel obliged to shut up shop and go home.

What I would love is more comments. Some of my favourite blogs, like Paperback Writer, Editorial Anonymous and A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, get lots of comments, but then these people are providing a great service with the information they give out. Why should I duplicate someone else's efforts? I agree that blogs can be a great way of connecting with other writers and readers, and this usually happens via the Comments section. So if you've got something to say, go for it!

Watch Your Language

Oh dear. Someone in the marketing department of the Victorian government has been using their thesaurus instead of their dictionary. Over the past few years, there have been a few TV ads encouraging people to move to country Victoria, particularly if they own a small business. The idea is to rejuvenate country areas by getting people to move there and start up businesses, buy property, send their kids to the local schools, etc. Great to see, and a good idea.

However, the latest ads (I saw one on TV tonight) have moved to trying to encourage people to move to Provincial Victoria. Firstly, Victoria is a state, so we don't have provinces. We have local government - councils and shires. And secondly, provincial is a strange word to use instead of rural or country. Who thought that one up? Because if you look in the dictionary, provincial as an adjective is defined as "an unsophisticated or uncultured person". (Australian Modern Oxford) Hmmm, not really the look they were going for? And look - there's website where we can all look at how to be "provincial" together. What was wrong with country and rural? Are they no longer trendy?

Setting the Burke Way

I've almost finished reading James Lee Burke's latest book, The Tin Roof Blowdown, and yet again, am marvelling at his descriptions, the way he evokes Louisiana over and over again with such beautiful language. Yet this is a crime novel. Mind you, crime writers often focus on a sense of place in order to help create the world of their novel in more vivid detail. Stuart MacBride's Aberdeen and Peter Robinson's Yorkshire are two fine examples. MacBride's descriptions of granite and rain are memorable, and add such atmosphere to what's going on in the story.

Some examples from Burke: "The wind had died, and the islands of willows and cypress trees had taken on a gold cast against the sunset. Clouds of insects gathered in the lee of the islands, and you could see bream popping the surface and occasionally the slick, black-green roll of a bass's dorsal fin on the edge of lily pads."
"Tolliver tried to keep his face blank, but when he swallowed he looked like he had a walnut in his throat."
"His elongated, polished head and the vacuous smile painted on his face seem to float like a glistening white balloon above the people around him."

And an example of description moving the reader from one physical head to another's mind. "The cream he used in his hair had started to run and she could smell it on his skin. It smelled like aloe and body grease and candle wax. In her mind, she saw a bullet punch through a black man's throat and, behind him, the skullcap of a teenage boy explode in a bloody spray." When a writer is using detail like this, it adds such extra depth to the story and its characters.

The novel is set during and after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and I got an extremely vivid picture of the devastation, much more so than all the newspaper reports and TV footage. The way that Burke uses the five senses brings the wreck of New Orleans and surrounding areas to life in a way that flat images on a TV screen cannot. "The rice and sugarcane fields were encrusted with saline, the farm machinery buried in mud, the settlements down by the Gulf reduced to twisted pieces of plumbing sticking out of grit that looked like emery paper... Drowned sheep were stacked inside the floodgate of an irrigation lock, like zoo animals crowding against the bars of their cage."

It's probably inevitable that the novel itself is fairly depressing, perhaps a reflection of Burke's deep dismay at the aftermath of Katrina, what people did to survive, how they died, and the depths to which people sank in order to make big money out of the repairs. Dave Robicheaux, the main character, seems destined to always make the wrong decisions, to back the wrong people, refusing to listen to anyone but his own flawed inner voice. Burke's insights into the brutal Clete Purcell failed this time to make me feel any empathy for the character. I was beginning to wish they'd both retire to the Bahamas and become retired fishermen or something.

After so many books about one character, where does a writer take it next? Redemption? Disaster? It seems that Dave R. has had so many disasters and deaths in his life that there is nothing left that could change him in any significant way. He seems locked into a downward slide to destruction - the only question left being, Who will he take with him? Still, if you love Burke's writing, this novel is worth the effort, if only for an inside look at Katrina and what happened to the people who lived there. As a sidebar, in the novel Robicheaux's daughter, Alafair, is writing a crime novel. Burke's daughter, Alafair Burke, recently published her first crime novel. Having found it in the library, it's next on my reading list.

What Planet is That?

Two items in the newspapers recently caught my attention and imagination. One was about a man who was moving a house. He'd separated it into three sections, and wanted to move it to some land near town but to do this, the sections had to be taken across the town bridge. When they were halfway across with the first part of the house, a man coming the other way on the bridge stopped his car and refused to move. The house section was too big to pass, and too big to reverse. The man in his car would not reverse, no matter what. In the end, they had to jack the house section up, on the bridge, so the man could drive underneath it.

The second item was about a man in England who has celebrated Christmas every day since 1993. He has a turkey dinner with mince pies and watches a video of the Queen's Christmas message, and opens presents he's given to himself. Now, another newspaper has declared that this is a hoax, and the guy is only saying he's done it to promote a single he's just released. But imagine if this was true?

We've probably all heard of or met people like this, and you wonder, "What planet are they living on? How could you behave like that?" As writers, we also think - that is too weird to write a story about. No one would believe it. How could I make that character credible? Sometimes it's enough to use them as a minor character in some way, like comic relief. Or as a villain. I knew someone a few years ago who I eventually realised had psychological problems and couldn't see the damage she inflicted on others. Could I use some of that in a character?

It's easy to create characters like us. We take a little of ourselves, little bits of several other people we know, add some oddities and complexities, and we have someone we can write a story or a novel about. But what this can lead to is continually writing about the same kind of character, someone you're familiar with, someone who doesn't light any fires under your story or your imagination, but someone who doesn't make life difficult for you as the creator.

It's a useful character exercise to take someone weird (or who seems weird to you - we all have different ideas of what is "not normal") and write about them. Write a story that shows who they are, why they behave the way they do, and what happens next. Does the man on the bridge hate the man with the house? Does he have a fear of reversing off the bridge because long ago he did it and ended up in the river and nearly drowning? Maybe the Christmas man lost his family on Christmas Day and he's trying to pretend they're still with him. Or his father has disowned him and he's extracting some kind of revenge.

Strong stories come from great characters who have good and bad sides, light and shadow, deep motivations, backstories that have affected who they are. Characters don't just have likes and dislikes - in fiction, they have obsessions and dreams, hates and loves, and deep, sometimes irrational, fears. In Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster says that one of the reasons we read fiction is to fully understand characters completely in a way we can never do with the people in our lives, even our nearest and dearest. To allow your reader to experience that in your novel, you first have to do it as the writer.

Last Word on Goals

It's now the 5th January so the goals thing is done. You've either worked yours out, or you're not going to bother. Kristi reminded me that setting too many goals is often our downfall. They seem so unattainable and the list so huge that we give up in despair. So my strategy this year is to have two writing goals - two general ones - and then set two-monthly deadlines. What is often left out of all the goal-setting and small steps advice is that most writers need deadlines.

Been meaning to write that short story all year? Nothing like a big competition closing date to get it done. Been thinking about rewriting that novel but never seem to find the time? A conference with a manuscript consultation appointment will move you every time! So I figure if I set small goals every two months - not too many - I will move forward. Small goals are things like rewriting something and submitting it by XX date. A magazine submission. A certain number of chapters revised. An article written and put on my website.

What are my two general goals? One is to develop a new method for myself of revision. I feel as if my revising of stories and novels in the past has been haphazard. Often I'll sit down and start a novel all over again because I can't figure out what needs fixing or how to fix it. Some people would say that's the only way to revise, but I'm not so sure. The revisions I've done of two novels for publication (with the help of editors) in 2007 showed me that, with editorial guidance, I can rewrite to a much higher level, but sometimes I'm not able to do it sufficiently well on my own, i.e. before the manuscript goes to an editor.

A couple of years ago, I felt the same about my plotting - it was a weak area and I made it my goal that year to read and work on that aspect. It paid off. Now I think I can do it with revision. The weird thing is, I can show any student or fellow writer how to rewrite and make their work stronger (comes from ten years of teaching) but it's still hard to do for myself. I've started reading Revision by Kit Reed, and have another book lined up after that.

My other general goal is to write more regularly. My strategy for this is to have several things on the go at once - several different things: a novel, poems, a picture book, an article. If I don't have time to work on the novel, I will be aiming to spend at least 15 minutes or more on a poem or something shorter. Linda Sue Park's two pages every day, no matter what, is the kind of routine that makes writing a habit that's impossible to break, rather than something extra crammed into your life. So my novel projects will continue to move slowly forward, but so will other things.

You Are Writing

You have some time alone at home and you think about writing. There are several things you could be working on, ideas jotted down, stories and a novel started, but you can't quite decide what to choose. You haven't written for a while, just a few days, but then you try to remember the last thing you wrote and you realise it has been several weeks since you picked up a pen, let alone turned on your computer.

Your computer for writing, that is. You've spent plenty of time emailing and net surfing - doing research and networking, you tell yourself - but writing? No. No wonder you feel a little unsettled, a little afraid. What if you sit down to write now and nothing happens? What if those ideas, those stories you started, now look like rubbish, not worth the effort? What if everything you have ever written is a waste of time? You tell yourself that's stupid, you are giving into writer's paranoia. Stop right now or you'll give yourself a good case of writer's block.

Block. Maybe that's why you haven't written for so long. Maybe you're blocked, and you didn't realise it. Except you're realising it now, with horror and dismay. How could this have happened? What about the novel you started? You've written 12,000 words of it. You started it during NaNo and had to stop because you had no time. It's probably awful. Most NaNo novels are. You could just put it aside and start something new. But what?

You feel like crying. You had four hours alone in which to write, and already you've wasted nearly two of them, riffling through papers and old drafts of things, agonising over whether it's worth turning your computer on, wondering how you could possibly call yourself a writer. It'd be easier to go and vacuum the carpet, or clean the bathroom - something useful - and think about writing another day, when you're up to it. When you're not blocked.

You pull a writing book from your shelf and open it at random, hoping for a gem of an idea to inspire you before you give up for today. Instead, you read a paragraph about a famous writer who has to force himself to the desk every day. And another paragraph about how real writers just write, no matter what. Showing up at your desk is all that's necessary. You think - how hard can that be? I should write. Maybe I'll just try to add a paragraph to the novel.

You turn on your computer and open the file. You remember what your novel is about, but you can't remember the last chapter you wrote. It's probably terrible. Should you read it? It might depress you even more. You scan the first part, then find yourself laughing. That bit was good. Aha, now you remember what happens in this chapter. Where did that idea come from? It's better than you remembered. You get to the end. You've left it mid-sentence, like a signal that you had every intention of coming back to it. And here you are.

What happens next? That's right. You finish the sentence and add another. A new idea emerges and you run with it, knowing that it's right, that it fits, that it will surprise the reader (it surprised you) and that it will lead to a new part of the story which will be fun to write. You love this character, and the central idea still excites you. Yes, you can do this!

Two hours later, you've written 2000 words. It's the most you've written for weeks. It felt great. It worked. See? All you had to do was sit down and write. How hard was that? Real writers write. Yeah.

Thoughts on Goal Setting

Today I received an email from someone who said they don't bother with resolutions because they never stick to them. It got me thinking about resolutions vs goals, and how we use them. For New Year, people seem to mostly make resolutions about personal issues - I will stop smoking, I will lose weight, I will spend more time with family, I will not kill my boss/spouse/mother-in-law. But goal setting is more about work, or at least achieving something that is important to you which requires planning and taking small steps.

You might want to try to get your novel published. So you have to write it, rewrite it (however many times), print it out, research suitable publishers, maybe approach agents, then send it out (however many times). One of the key things about goals is breaking them down into bits that don't freak you out, if you just do them one at a time. It's also good to have long-term goals, which could be your biggest dreams, and see how you can take small steps towards them too.

I first did goal-setting many years ago (probably about 18 years, I think) and had the weird experience a while ago of finding that piece of paper. That's what comes of being a hoarder. I do remember that at the time I wrote down things that I never thought would be achievable, such as attend a writing conference in the US and have a collection of poems published. In fact, nearly all of the things I listed have happened, because they were important to me and I really wanted them. You could argue that I was going to achieve them anyway, but I am not so sure. I do think that the simple act of writing them down makes them real, and helps you to believe they are possible.

I've been reading some articles about goals and planning lately, and they said that only 5 people in 100 do goal-setting, and only 1 in 5 follow through with their steps and achieve what they want. That's 1 in 100 who get there. Now you could think that shows that goal-setting is a waste of time, so why bother? To me, it says that anyone can be that one person, if you want it enough. If you're prepared to plan, set goals, work out the steps, take them one at a time. And imagine if you are that one person - wow, you're way ahead of 99 other people!

OK, I'll stop sounding like a goals evangelist now. Because I have to admit, even though I do goal-setting every year with my writers' group, I usually them put mine away and don't refer to them until December, when we all sit around and cheer those who achieved some of theirs. I do personal strategies instead, month by month, and follow those. So it has occurred to me that I should combine them and make them both more useful.

And if you're thinking about your own writer's goals for the year, you might like to visit J.A. Konrath's blog here. Some great food for thought.
(And the photo is there because I like it. It was taken at Lake Eildon a couple of years ago.)

Odds and Ends

Low tide, when all the rocks are showing. You can make that as deep and meaningful as you want! Or metaphorical. Often when we walk along this beach, several of the rocks have shags perched on them. As a kid, I used to think when Dad said 'like a shag on a rock' that he was talking about some mystical creature. And that the creature was alone and lonely. But down here, there's always more than one, with pelicans and black swans nearby.

2007 has ended, but I have to mention that one of my favourite books was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I discovered his short stories through some collections I have, plus another anthology that Meg Files recommended which has three stories from each writer in it. (Wish this was available and affordable in Australia for our students.) I've been reading another collection of stories by Alexie that I had to put down as they were a bit depressing - but that's more likely to be my reading mood at the time - I will go back to them. This book, which has won major awards, is fabulous. If you want a great example of YA voice, one that is real and startling and true, this is it. It was a brilliant reminder of what a writer can do in terms of original voice, story and theme by writing what they are passionate about. Is this novel autobiographical in any way? Does it matter? That's always a semi-interesting question but not very relevant to me.

I'm still looking for quotes that will entertain and inspire me in 2008. So far I like this from A Writer's Paris - The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. (Marcel Proust)
And from the author himself, Eric Maisel: It is never someone else's fault that we aren't writing.

Do I have goals yet for 2008? No. Don't rush me! They're hovering around the back of my brain like beautiful butterflies, waiting to land. If I make a grab for them, I'll be left with dust and broken wings. Yes, metaphorical to the end...

The Artist's Life

What a way to end the year. Last night we went along to Hamer Hall to a Tina Arena concert. Those familiar with her would remember her start way back in about 1975 with Young Talent Time. Even then, she had an amazing voice, and you would have thought instant, enduring stardom was on the cards. Not so. The music business chews up and spits out the gifted just like any other business that is about using talent to make money. Like many artists, she has had to work long and hard to "stay around" - she is one of Australia's top-selling singers yet for many people she's definitely not a household name.

The concert was fabulous, and went for over two hours. Her voice is absolutely amazing, and it was great to hear some older songs as well as plenty off her new album (above). I remember in high school that any time we had some kind of talent concert/contest, at least two girls would have a go at a wobbly, out-of-tune version of To Sir, With Love. Tina Arena revives it with her beautiful voice, as with several other classics.

In between songs, she chatted a bit, which was nice, and one of the things she talked about was being at school and singing professionally at the same time. Her mother wouldn't allow her to work in Years 11 and 12, but at the school's last assembly, her friends persuaded her to sing To Sir, With Love - I can imagine what that must have been like! She also talked about teachers who had nurtured and supported her, which made me think about my own high school teachers.

If you haven't heard her sing before, this is a link to a YouTube video of My Heart Will Go On
and another to Sorrento Moon. Anyone in France reading this will be very familiar with her - she is famous there and has released an album in French, although she now lives in London because she said in Paris she can't even go to the supermarket without being recognised. She is now 40 and, she says, has finally got to the point where she doesn't care what anyone thinks anymore. The new album is all her own - she decided what would go on it and how it would sound. She sounded more pleased about that than anything!

Thinking back to seeing her in YTT, and of her career since then, I feel that she epitomises the artist's life, whether it's in music, writing, art, acting, composition - you're in it for the long haul. There's a joke about how overnight success usually takes at least ten years, but it's true. I've been reading recently about writers who achieve success early and how many of them burn out or just fade away. They haven't done the "hard yards" that most people do, being rejected for years but persevering nonetheless, moving one step forward and being shoved back three, developing the thick skin you need to survive things like bad reviews. So here's to perseverance, to finding your place in the writing world and sticking to your dreams, no matter what.

Too Much Information

The trouble with people being on holidays, and not having work or study to consume their brainpower, is that they seem to feel the need to enlighten me on things I have no interest in, or that I actually know more about. Thus I have been lectured on locusts in Australia versus locusts in India and Africa. I have also been lectured on security measures when travelling to the US (by someone who has never been), among other things. No wonder I escape into fiction!

My reading, however, has been slowed down by a stick, specifically a bamboo stick that took it upon itself to poke me in the eye. OK, so I was holding it at the time, but I'm sure it had a mind of its own and decided to "get" me. Maybe someone slipped some paranoia into my drink over Christmas. Needless to say, I didn't let it stop me too much and finished reading one of my presents, A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. It's a YA novel, described as Gothic, but it's historical crossed with magic stuff. I did like it more than Twilight but that's probably because the main character had a bit more "gumption" and there were no vampires in it!

After sticking to one of my goals for 2007 (which was to only work on one project at a time), I've now decided that that is not working well for me - I feel like too many things are left unrevised or incomplete. So for 2008, I'm going to try to manage my writing projects better, and use my writing time more effectively. Sometimes I feel like half an hour is not enough to work on my novel project so I end up doing nothing. Now I'm going to try to use those smaller bites of time to work on poems or picture books. The forms are different enough that I can keep them separate in my mind.

Other goals are still in the mulling stage. There's no point setting a goal like "Get my novel published" as this is out of my control - it's someone else's decision. But I can say "Send my novel out to X publishers" instead. Mostly I think I want to manage my time more effectively. It seems to just dribble away. Having two new subjects to teach in 08 won't make it easy, but becoming more organised is probably the sensible thing to do.

Recent Reading Highlights

At this time of the year, I tend to read so much that I go cross-eyed, but I didn't want to end 2007 without commenting on some of the best of the past few weeks. A big cross-section, starting with Louise Rennison's latest, Luuurve is a Many-Trousered Thing. The cover above is the US one - do they think the American readers won't understand Luuurve? But it is a nicer cover than my plain purple one, I must admit. Although Angus looks very benign. Needless to say, this new addition to the Georgia Nicholson diaries made me laugh out loud. Five stars for readers under 14 (and me).

I also loved Val McDermid's new book featuring Tony Hill, and since I've commented on this before, I won't do so again. It's strange, but Sue Grafton's new one, T is for Trespass, had me yawning for the first four chapters, then I got into the swing of it. She has quite determinedly kept Kinsey, her detective, back in the 80s, so no mobile phones or GPS units or anything very technological. Just plain old detective work. When you read a lot of crime fiction, it's a jolt to discard the CSI expectations and move back in time!

While I loved Meg Rosoff's first book, How I Live Now, I thought the second, Just In Case, had such an annoying main character that I almost didn't finish it. With the third, What I Was, I was blown away by the wonderful writing, and the way in which the quiet plot unfolded. Another main character on the outside, but this time he had enough complexity and self-awareness to create an empathy that grew as I read on. Highly recommended.

I've just finished Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce. He wrote one of my favourite kid's books, Millions, and I was sorry that so many of the character and story bits that made it stand out for me were lost in the movie. Framed is similar, in that there is a narrator/main character who is totally convincing in his naivety and view of the world. Like the character in Millions, Dylan has his own passions and obsessions even though he is only about eleven, and these very subtly drive most of the story.

Anything disappointing? Well, yes. The Alibi Man by Tami Hoag. I guess I never really warmed to the main character, the mystery seemed a bit flat and predictable, and I'll no doubt study this one again to see what it was that didn't work for me, and try to work out why. On my pile or being read now I have The Writer's Book of Hope by Ralph Keyes (am reading a couple of chapters a day) and the latest issue of Blue Dog, which is one of Australia's best poetry mags right now. I'm also dipping into a collection of short stories by Nancy Kincaid, and the Lonely Planet guide to France. And looking forward to reading Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld - nabbed it in a book sale. Will it live up to its hype?

Christmas Get-togethers

Even the birds down at the beach are doing it. The pelicans looked like ministers delivering sermons! There's been the usual talk this year about not saying Merry Christmas because more than half the world is not Christian so it's not appropriate, etc etc. It was good to see this morning's paper showing lots of people from all kinds of backgrounds, getting together and having a tree and decorations and presents, just because, whether you're religious or not, it's great to make time to talk and share and celebrate life in general.

Over on Kristi Holl's new blog, Writer's First Aid, she's been talking about fitting writing into a busy life - how do you manage it when you aren't a full-time writer? How do writers with jobs and kids and family find time to write? I've been reading The Writer's Book of Hope by Ralph Keyes this week, and he devotes several pages to this. What's interesting is the number of writers who say they wrote their first novel by finding half an hour or an hour here and there, and sticking at it until it was finished. When you really want to do something, you'll do it. What was even more interesting was how many of those writers said that now they're writing full-time, they're not getting any more words on the page.

Keyes says, "In addition to having to schedule time effectively, writers with day jobs have access to a rich, ongoing source of material." He also suggests that when you are driven to write and don't have time to squander on too much worrying about what you're writing, you write from the heart, giving it all you've got, and you stop thinking about the censors. By censors, he means all the people who would rather you didn't write, or want you to write something "nice".

It's true that when I'm not working (i.e. on holiday), I probably don't write a huge amount more than when I am. But what happens is my brain frees up for other things, like coming up with new ideas and new ways of tackling revision. It also allows me headspace for revision - because true revision means seeing the work in a new way that includes those brilliant flashes on how to fix or change things and make them better. Sometimes I get frustrated and feel like I'm writing the same old thing, and having several weeks free often means that suddenly I discover new story ideas.

The free time also means I can read with more effect - a strange thing to say, but I mean that if I'm reading writing books, the information sinks in better. If I'm reading fiction, I'm more aware of reading it as a writer. Somehow, even if it's only for two or three weeks, writing full-time makes me feel more like a writer. I'm making the most of it!

Favourite Quotes

In today's Sunday Age, Angela Pippos mentioned that she'd given all of her female friends a fridge magnet that said: Well Behaved Women Don't Make History. Snap. I have that on my fridge already, along with a few other gems. I love quotes that say something to me, even if it's dark or silly, but especially when they make me laugh. So my favourite on the fridge is I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow is not looking good either. I retyped that one and put it above my desk at work.

A friend has given me Don't annoy me. I'm running out of places to hide the bodies. And my other fun one is If you can't be a good example you'll have to be a terrible warning.
For a couple of years, I've had a quote from Clint Eastwood stuck on the front of my work diary: I tried being reasonable. I didn't like it. And another near my desk from Eudora Welty: I'm often asked if universities stifle writers. I don't think they stifle enough of them.

Another favourite was a car sticker: My only domestic quality is that I live in a house. Someone stole that one off my car! And I still have one in my home office that says: It's always darkest just before it goes totally black.

I have to admit I can see a theme here, and no doubt budding psychologists would have a field day with most people's choice of quotes and homilies. But for 2007, this is what I've had stuck on the front of my diary: Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "Press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. (Calvin Coolidge)

I haven't decided what will go on my diary for 2008, but I'm on the look-out for something both funny and inspiring. All suggestions gratefully received!

Agent Article

After being a speaker at the Pima Writers' Workshop in May this year, and meeting and listening to two great agents - Emmanuelle Alspaugh and Stephen Barbara - I put together all my notes and information and wrote an article called Tips on Getting an Agent. It's just been published in the AbsoluteWrite newsletter.