Watch Your Tone

Tone in fiction is a strange thing, not often talked about these days. We hear a lot about voice - does the writer have an original voice? Does the narrator have a unique voice? Does each character have their own voice? And then editors say voice is what they look for - a weak plot can always be fixed but a voice that's not working? Forget it. And sometimes you hear people discussing style. The use of language. The cadence of sentences. Imagery and metaphor. Literary novels are more likely to have style than genre fiction.

But tone? What is it? How do you define it? I used to know when my mother was mad - her tone changed to snappy and short. And if I was mad, she'd say, "Don't use that tone with me." (Hardly fair, if you ask me.) I'll start by saying tone is embedded in the decision about whether you are writing comedy or tragedy. A comedy signals right from the start that it's meant to be funny. The narrator jokes, his or her view of the world is humorous, we see funny things happening. Yes, there'll be some tragedy in there somewhere, but overall we expect that tone to stay light, and we expect a good laugh.

Tragedy, of course, is the mirror side. Lots of drama, serious relationship stuff, catastrophes and character change and growth. Some humour in there works well to leaven the darkness, but the tone will be clearly straight-down-the-line and the work will provide angst/or and page-turning material. Nothing fluffy.

What happens when the tone jars? One example is the YA whiner, the narrator who spends the whole book complaining in a hilarious way that isn't very hilarious by page 30. In fact, by page 40 you want to reach into the book and give the character a good slap. Another is the novel that at heart is about a serious issue, but the writer decides to try and make the issue more palatable by pretending the novel is a comedy. Lots of snappy lines from the main character, and some slapstick here and there, heavily dosed with dialogue that "tells us what we need to know about this issue". That's a book that fails to engage, for sure. No one likes being lectured to, even via dialogue.

Another kind of novel where tone fails (but not completely) is a story which is patently unbelievable, so therefore reader expectation is that we'll go along for the ride here and have a good laugh, with lots of humorous wordplay and situations. Except when you look at the plot, most of it is about serious relationship stuff - boy/girl, mother/daughter - and also stuff about peer pressure. And all the serious stuff is treated very seriously. So all the funny stuff seems a bit odd.

My last example is a movie I saw years ago with Nick Nolte in it (sorry, can't remember the title) which started out very clearly as a comedy. Funny, witty, etc. Then 20 minutes in, it turned into a serious drama. What happened? Did the director bail out and the new director change his mind? How did that happen and no one noticed? That's the thing about tone. It has to be consistent. What the reader picks up in the first 20 minutes or 20 pages is like a blueprint for the rest of the book, especially in terms of tone. You deviate or play with it at your peril. And really, what would be the point? Don't you want your reader to be so inside your story that they wouldn't notice if the roof fell in? Inconsistent tone might not be as immediately noticeable as a character whose hair changes from blonde to brunette on page 50, but it will make the reader uneasy and doubtful about whether you can really tell an engaging story.

(If you can supply any examples of books where you think tone was an issue, I'd love to hear about them.)

Two Writing Books

Some time ago I was sent a review copy of Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method, and although I read most of it, I never got around to commenting. Now that I'm into that time of year when teaching is finished and my brain is slowly coming back to its more creative mode, funnily enough this is when I like to read books about writing.

At first, I wondered why Weinberg would write a book about writing - he seemed to be a software guy who wrote technical manuals. But it's probably the reason why he comes at writing from a different perspective, what he calls the fieldstone method. Most of his book is about ways of gathering pieces of writing, without a fixed aim in mind. Rather, you write many things and then decide how to place them together (like building a stone wall). His first rule is: Never attempt to write something you don't care about.

I like the huge amount of writing exercises he provides. Certainly you'll never have to worry about writer's block with this book. I'm not so sure about his theories on how you put it all together - how you take those pieces and construct a wall/novel. But if you are the kind of writer who isn't anal about starting at page 1 and writing to page 300 via your outline, this book might be very useful. Weinberg also has a blog about writing, which has some good pointers on it.

My second book is one I have only just started reading, but I bought it because another of Lyon's books - The Sell-Your-Novel Toolkit - is one of the best I've read on getting your novel out there with query letters, marketing and approaching agents and publishers. The new book is Manuscript Makeover, and I'm always on the look-out for ways to tackle revision. So far I have read about working from the inside out (the heart of your novel) and the outside in (matters of style and language). I'm already taking notes, and making a great working list of elements I need to look at in my current work, and address. Even down to things such as the first and last sentence of every chapter and scene, and the first and last word of each paragraph.

It's too easy in revision to do a bit of tapdancing around the edges, to cut bits out and correct some grammar and think you're done. I like her suggestion of slow reading - to read some of your novel in a quiet space and "become" your character, totally immerse yourself in the experience on the page and see if the emotional depth is happening. If not, imagine how you would feel in this situation and then put it into the story. Another word for tapdancing in revision is skimming - this book won't allow you to do that, if you use Lyon's approach. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.

Also on my pile of writing books (not yet read) is a new one on writing for young adults by K.L Going - Writing and Selling the Young Adult Novel. There aren't many around on this topic. Sherry Garland's book has been the one I've mostly used in class for years now, so I'm keen to see how Going's shapes up.

Getting Rid of Books

I've been wanting to get new carpet for some time now, but I have to admit that the biggest reason not to is furniture shifting. It would be bad enough having to move beds, chests of drawers, couches etc, but I can't bear the thought of the bookcases. Because I'd have to take all the books out first. So instead I had the carpets cleaned, and left the bookcases where they were.

But it does mean shifting a lot of stuff, and then you start looking at it all, piled up in the spare room, and wondering why on earth you have most of it, and surely it could all be thrown out or given away? And then it gets back to the books. Do I need that many? Will I read them again? Many of them, yes, I will. All of my nonfiction is mostly for research, and I have a lot of kids' books from when I and my daughter were young. (And some from my grandfather's era.)

I also use a lot of my books in class - I put excerpts in my class readers for discussion, I read bits out loud as examples, I pass them around for students to look at (but rarely lend them, I have to admit, having learned that around 50% never come back). But still ... probably 20% of my books could go. Somewhere. To a good home. To the charity shop. To friends. But can I do it? No. I can throw out most clothes without too much angst, get rid of old knicknacks, TVs and videos that no longer work properly, even CDs that I am sick to death of.

Books? Getting rid of books is too hard. Buying more is way too easy. Something has to give. I might have to grit my teeth soon and weed out my shelves. Soon.

After the Critiques

I love my writing group. And I also know them very well. Which means when I have something critiqued/workshopped by them, I can kind of guess what they will say - but only in terms of how they will approach it. Some members will pay particular attention to sentences and grammar, and making sure they understand what I meant to say. Others will come at it more organically, and focus on what they think is underneath the words. One person might talk about structure and pacing, and tell me where things slow down or don't sound credible. Another might pick on particular bits they didn't like and try to explain why.

What am I to do? Do I regard all of these critiquers as pseudo-editors and try to please them in the hope that this will lead to publication? Do I throw up my hands and say they are all wrong, and they just didn't "get" what I was trying to say? The first thing I do is put away the copies of my work with all their comments on and just leave them to sit for a few days. Immediate intake is ill-advised. That's when your feelings are sensitive and you are most prone to dive into defensive mode. It doesn't help. Each person had their reasons for saying what they did. A knee-jerk reaction to their comments is a waste of energy.

Sometimes I leave the comments for several weeks or more. It's amazing what I see when I come back to them - I understand and interpret their suggestions in a very different way. I am removed from them now, so I can be more clinical. I have had time to think about what I was really trying to achieve with the work, and now I can look at my group's comments and put them in context.

The rule with workshopping is if nearly everyone is saying similar things, you'd better take notice. If everyone is saying different things, you choose what is most useful to you. But what if the workshop group is your class? And what if they are also new to this whole critique idea, and are pretty shy about saying what they think? Or they dive in and are too brutal? You have to take that into consideration too. Where are they coming from? Have they genuinely tried to be helpful? It's only by listening (sometimes to tone of voice) and thinking and reading the comments later, when you have calmed down, that you can decide on this.

My problem is that most times in a workshop (not with my group), I am the teacher. I am immediately imbued with the status of "she who knows best". Yeah, right. There have been a few times where I have hated something that has gone on to be published and done very well, thank you, for me to know absolutely that my opinion is not absolute. In a classroom, I will certainly be the most experienced person there, both in terms of being able to critique effectively and also in terms of knowing a fair bit about the publishing world. But I am not the editorial goddess there.

So I have students who dispute what I say. Who question my comments. Who say, "What do you know?" And they are right. To a certain extent. But only so far. They haven't yet accrued 100 rejection slips. They don't yet spend several hours every week reading industry news, blogs, newsletters and information, looking at new books, what is being published and how the market is currently operating. They are just focusing on writing the best they can, and hoping they might get it published. I figure part of my job as teacher is to make them aware of how publishing works, how editors think - and guess what? Editors can be just like the rest of us. They can love something and want to publish it, when a lot of the world is saying, Good gracious, why?

So I am never going to tell a student that what they have written is unpublishable. How could I possibly know that? But I am going to give them my best opinion on things like grammar, presentation, characterisation, POV, setting, plotting, theme, preachiness, dialogue, and voice. And forgive me for putting grammar and punctuation first, but if they are poorly done, it's very hard to appreciate the story or the characters or anything else. A story needs to be readable and understandable first.

So if you have written anything like the following, maybe you need another edit?
Before she went to the beach, she put moose in her hair. On the way to the beach, they went by the longest root.
In the middle of the night, I tried to crepe up the stairs.
The chainsaw cut me in half. As I walked across the room ... (this last one always gives me a vision of legs walking on their own, which, trust me, was not what the writer intended).

It's like anything else - only experience in a critique group or workshop will eventually help you to recognise what is useful and what is not. It takes time, like improving your writing takes time. And many drafts. And the bottom line is: if you think your critique group or teacher is wrong, then send your work out and test the market. If you want to be published, that really is the ultimate test. But don't automatically disregard those comments. They might be telling you something you don't want to hear...

Character Journeys

Some years ago, I either read or heard a statement about characters in a story that went like this: Every character in your story is on their own journey. The main character certainly is, but so is everyone else - without that, they are either one-dimensional props, or are left hanging in space. It was one of those revelatory moments for me - I had never thought about it like that before (we all have long periods of being dumb about things to do with writing - it's reading and listening and thinking that gets us past them!). Up until then, my focus had been the main character - what he/she wanted, how he/she did or didn't achieve their dream or goal.

That, of course, is the core of the story. Fred has a dream to climb Mt Everest and will do anything to achieve his dream, even beg money off his hated mother and agree to take the bank manager with him to Nepal (I use Fred in class as my running example of story/plot/motivation/complication - one day Fred will make it). But when I realised that giving every significant character in my story a journey, a desire, a goal, is what enriches and complicates the plot, and makes a short story into a possible novel, that's when I think I finally started to "get" what I needed to write something more than 10,000 words.

For others, it may be different. I've seen the light go on for students when we talk in depth about character motivation, and I keep asking them "why, why, why" about what their characters do and how they react. I've also seen it happen when we talk about setting and description and link them to characterisation and point of view. Everyone has different things they discover about how to write better, and it often results in a big leap forward in the quality of what they write.

So for me, it was this thing about a character journey, combined with the question: What is the highest point in the story for this character? That goes along with the other question, funnily enough, which is: Does this character have a high point in the story? If not, why not? If we bring it back to the journey (the hero's journey, if you like) it's the climax, the supreme ordeal, the moment of greatest change or challenge. It's the turning point for that character. It is where we finally start to see whether they will live or die (sometimes literally).

Another mistake I used to make was to rush that highest moment in the journey. When it's the main character, that point means you are close to the end of the novel. Wow, only twenty more pages to go, I think. Even less if I get a move on and get through it faster. Big mistake. Rushing the climax takes away the tension, the full exploration of what it means, and the potential of the resolution. If you read articles about dramatic scenes, you'll know that the intensity of drama in a scene usually determines how long that scene will be. The most intensely dramatic scene should be your climax, so there's a good reason why it may well be your longest scene. Not, as I used to write it, the shortest.

It's helped me a lot to imagine each character's journey in my stories. It especially helps for the antagonist - instead of being a cardboard villain, she/he has their own story, their own journey, their own desires and dreams. OK, that dream might be to burn down the school, but for that character, it's believable if we understand why. We don't have to agree, but we do want to see what motivates that character to walk that particular road to the end, no matter what.

The World of the Novel

In a long list of basic essentials we cover in our introductory fiction writing course, Fiction Elements (also now available online), is setting and description. It's funny how students always put it last on their list of "what I need to know". We talk about theme, and how, if you start a story with a strong theme or moral you want to impart, it can often affect the story and make it seem pedantic or preachy. We talk about character and dialogue and plot - in fact, we've made plot into a whole new subject called Story Structure. But setting and description?

One of the common reactions is "nobody does that anymore". Meaning that the days of opening a novel with six pages of description, a la 19th century fiction, is long gone. We're told that readers today are impatient with too much description, and because we all watch so much TV and so many movies, that description only needs minimal space in a contemporary novel - let the reader imagine the rest. We're told about info dumps, meaning that more than six lines of description at a time is considered overkill and today's reader will skip it.

That may all be true - to a degree. But what I often find, in reading students' writing, is that they ignore setting and description at their peril. Whether it's a fantasy novel, a horror novel, a literary story set in an artist's studio, or a comic novel set in New York - the first thing a reader is going to look for is how real the world of the story is. Tell me a scene takes place on the corner of 12th Street and 27th Street in New York, I'm going to wonder what else you got wrong. Tell me the main character is inspecting her ankles, feet and toes, and then tell me she discovers she has turned into a tiger, I'm going to wonder what that writer is visualising, because it doesn't make sense to me.

At the Pima Writer's Workshop last year, one of the guest speakers talked at length about what happens when you visit a location in your novel. Suddenly, details come to life, and you notice the kinds of things you wouldn't think of putting in the story if you were guessing, or making it up from seeing a couple of movies. Smells. Tastes. The kid in the corner of the restaurant flicking ice cream at his mother. The fox that put its head up above the fern. The drunk man who walked into a lamp post and burst into hysterical laughter.

I'm not saying you can't imagine all this stuff and put it in your story. Of course you can. But first you have to realise that it needs to be there. What Michael Connolly calls 'the telling detail' is vital to helping your reader visualise your fictional world, not any old world that's been done to death in a hundred fantasy novels or chicklit novels or stories about going home again. Your world, as much as your characters, is what draws the reader in, making them believe for the time they are between the pages, that this world exists somewhere else and is real. That requires work, research and imagination. Here are some quick examples:

"The sun was hanging on a string just over the horizon, pink and lurid, and the tourists were busy packing up their sunblock and towels and paperback novels while the dark people, the ones who lived here year-round and didn't know what a vacation was, began to drift out of the trees with their children and their dogs to reclaim their turf." Mexico - T.C. Boyle (from After The Plague)

"The Saturday morning we went to pick up the china it felt almost as if we were going to a wedding. Watches were checked and the house carefully locked as if we would be away for a long time. My father drove us into town and parked in the loading dock at David Jones. With the help of a storeman, he loaded the box of china into the boot. My mother watched their every move. Back home, she held the front door open for my father while he carried the china over the threshold." China - Margaret Innes (from Love and Desire)

"She stood on the harbour in the freezing cold, mask in her hand, her breath white in the air, and shivered while Dundas hosed her down. She'd been back to recover the hand with the limb kit, the dive was over and this was the bit she hated, the shock of coming out of the water, the shock of being back with the sounds and the light and the people - and the air, like a slap in the face. It made her teeth chatter. And the harbour was dismal even though it was spring. The rain had stopped and now the weak afternoon sun picked out windows, the spiky cranes in the Great Western Dock opposite, oily rainbows floating on the water." Ritual - Mo Hayder

Probably none of these excerpts are ones you'd point to and say, "Wow, how amazing". But my point is that I opened each of these stories and easily picked out a bit to use as an example. I could have used a number of other excerpts - each of these writers created a fictional world that worked, detail by detail, to engage and draw me into the story. Where setting and character interact, you will get an even stronger effect. Something to look for next time you read?

YA Fiction Roundup

I'm halfway through marking student work - have finished commenting on 25 lots of Chapter Ones and short stories, with another 25 or so to go next week. At this time of year, it's hard for students because they have several major assignments (usually writing that needs reworking after workshopping) to hand in. They oughta try it at my end! Anyway, I am still reading - helps to maintain sanity, especially the serial murder crime fiction. Only kidding. Kind of.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac - Gabrielle Zevin
Naomi falls down some steps at school and hits her head, resulting in memory loss covering the last 4 years. She remembers up to about seventh grade. She doesn't remember her parents' divorce, or how to drive a car, or how to speak French. She ends up in a relationship with a guy with mental issues of his own.
I had to trust that the author had done her homework on amnesia, although at times I doubted she'd got it entirely correct. However, it's an interesting story, not overly predictable, with other layers of meaning in photography (what are you really seeing?) and secrets. The main character is very real, and the way she deals with her problems is typically frustrating as she makes the kinds of mistakes we probably all would.

Pip: the story of Olive - Kim Kane
This is an Australian novel - I wasn't sure what age it was aimed at. The main character (and her imaginary sister) is in Year 7, but at times she felt about ten years old. On the other hand, the language used is quite sophisticated and I wondered if any Grade 5 and 6 kids would persevere with it, as the story doesn't have that much action.
Olive has a workaholic mother and a missing father. She goes to a private school and loses her best friend (only friend) to another girl. As a result, she finds instead that she has a twin sister - apparently imaginary although she just appears. I got the sense that the sister was meant to be like an alter-ego, inspiring Olive to do things, like look for her long-gone father, that she wouldn't otherwise attempt. There are lots of nice moments in the story but it fell a bit flat for me.

Lock and Key - Sarah Dessen
I've been a long-time fan of Sarah Dessen books and this one didn't disappoint (although it's not my favourite). Ruby has been alone with her alcoholic mother for about ten years, since her older sister left. When Mom takes off, Ruby tries to continue on her own but the landlord finds out and she ends up living with her sister, Cora, and her husband, Jamie. Over the back fence is Nate, a popular boy at the new upmarket school Ruby is forced to attend. She has a lot of resentment going on - why did Cora leave and never contact her again? why can't she go to her old school? why can't everyone just leave her alone?
As always, Dessen's story is about relationships. Nice Nate is leading a not-so-nice life. Harriet who makes jewellery and is her family's black sheep is even more of an expert than Ruby at keeping everyone at arms-length. Ruby's only friend at the new school becomes so grudgingly. None of the interaction between the characters is easy, but it continues to grow and change throughout the whole story, so that you end up feeling very satisfied, even though not everything has a happy ending. We read to find out about life and relationships more than anything - how other people manage it - and this book shows the gradual breaking down of Ruby's defences in a believable, engaging way.

Trust Me! and Ford Street - all you wanted to know

Not that long ago, I went to the launch of Trust Me! - I'm a proud contributor and rather than describe the launch (which was great fun, with 20+ authors signing copies), I thought I would interview the publisher, Paul Collins. Ford Street Publishing is his 'baby' and a fine, sprightly offspring it is too.

1. What led to you starting your own publishing company?

I actually started out as a publisher back in the 70s -- I published science fiction and Australia's first heroic fantasy novels. I had no intentions of being a writer. Unfortunately, back in those days the major publishers only distributed their own books -- and they weren't remotely interested in publishing fantasy or science fiction! So small press distributors, with one or two reps, abounded. They also folded regularly. After two did this to me, the second taking all my stock and owing money, I embarked on a writing career. Macmillan now distributes smaller publishers, so I've basically returned to what I wanted to do in the first place. I also felt a little stuck in the writing groove. Last year I had something like twenty books published. It was more like work than enjoyment. I now call the tune, and it's great.

2. What has been the most difficult aspect? The most encouraging, so far?

The challenge will always be name recognition, getting Ford Street titles into shops. The distributor's reps will always push their own books, and this is a given. I would, too. But I think with time booksellers/librarians will see that Ford Street titles are quality fiction, and dare I say it, better edited than some books from major publishers. I'm often appalled at the glaring errors that are appearing in books lately. I know the trend in the US is minimal editing, but I suspect that trend has crept its way into Australian publishing.

3. What do you think the role of a small publisher is in today's publishing world?

I think we catch the ones that "got away". The first book I contracted was Pool by Justin D'Ath. Both of his major publishers rejected it. When it appeared on the CBCA's (very short) Notables List, from which the short-list is chosen, I bet his publishers got the fright of their lives lol. Small presses take the risks that major publishers won't. I've published Trust Me!, an anthology comprising fifty contributors. Much larger publishers have published similar anthologies, but they received the contributions free, citing they were for charity, and besides, such large anthologies can't work financially because of the large contents page. Well, Ford Street has just made it work, and contributors were paid. Small presses can make this sort of enterprise work because the publishers work for free. I don't pay myself. Major publishers have huge overheads: rent and staff costs being in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions per year. I have neither, and I suspect other smaller publishers have minimal costs.

4. We are often told that fantasy and paranormal fiction are "hot" at the moment - what's your perception of the various genres and sub-genres of spec fiction in Australia right now? What's selling? (in adult and kid's books)

Ah, if I had the answer to that question I wouldn't be telling. I'd be "doing". But the one stand out at present is Stephanie Meyer. She even appears in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2008 list. Now that's impressive.

5. Do you think Australian publishers are dealing with spec fiction in the best way, especially in terms of looking for new writers, publishing new writers and marketing? Are authors well treated? (e.g. Orbit advertised for 10 fantasy manuscripts and are going to work on them with the authors in a residential workshop soon)

Publishing has become pretty much a fly by the seat of the pants affair. It's 80% flop and 20% success. In days gone by publishers nurtured authors, spent money on them, grooming them. All of that's gone by the wayside. Now, if your novel's not "ready to go", it's doomed. Budgets have been cut, staff reduced to such an extent that the good editors can no longer afford to be in the business. Those proficient editors still around do it because of their love of working in the industry -- it really is a labour of love for them. Only the A-list authors get publicity budgets -- the B-listers either sink or swim. If you swim, you find yourself elevated. If you sink, you're gone. Flick. Just like that. People ask me why authors do it - - they "do" it because they, like the best editors, love doing what they do. Few authors in this country can survive on their writing alone. Most are either receiving social benefits, grants, receive awards (which pay), have hefty ELR/PLR/CAL returns because they've been prolific (it's this category that I fit into) or do a lot of festivals and workshops in libraries and schools, or take on miscellaneous jobs like assessments or part time jobs.

6. The Quentaris series was a collaboration between you and Michael Pryor in terms of developing the concept, creating the series "bible" and then selling it to Lothian. What was that process like? Can you describe it?

A couple of major publishers knocked back the concept - - more fool them, the first series went to 26 titles. Ford Street is now publishing series #2. It was originally Michael's concept. He asked me if I wanted to collaborate. Together we developed the guidelines and approached Helen Chamberlin at Lothian. She took it and published six titles a year for four years until Hachette bought Lothian. The scenario has been added to over the years, and now it's changed completely with Quentaris a floating city, thrust into the rift worlds via a vortex due to the Spell of Undoing. Michael and I are still having fun with the series, and there's no sign of it slowing. Alyssa Brugman has written book #2, The Equen Queen, and James Roy is now writing book # 3, The Gimlet Eye. As you'll note, it's now sequential, and the books are fully illustrated. The website's at www.quentaris.com

7. Ford Street recently published an anthology called Trust Me - why did you want to produce something like this, rather than another novel? What has been the response so far? Do you see it primarily as a school text? Who do you hope will buy and read it?

Truth be it known I was asked by an educational publisher to edit an educational text. I commissioned what I thought were sixteen pretty good stories. Then the crunch came. The publisher disagreed. I promptly gave the advance back and decided to publish myself. I let the authors know that it was now a trade book, and they could ramp up the stories, which they did. I also invited other contributors, such as poets and illustrators, because I wanted a Kids' Night In type book. The end result has been fantastic. I've seen five reviews to date, all of which have been excellent. It has great potential as a school text, yes, but it's trade quality, too. I suspect it'll be going into reprint very shortly. According to the reviewers, it's managed to get boys reading, so in response to the last part of your question, I think anyone who has a boy who's a reluctant reader, should try Trust Me!.

8. Where do you see Ford Street heading in the future?

I'm pretty much happy with the way things are presently going. I'd like to score some foreign rights sales, some awards for the authors. I'd like to employ someone to help with the workload, and this will only happen when I get that best-seller. It's a matter of time. Right now it's a seven days and nights a week career. Luckily, I am supported by people such as Grant Gittus (graphics), Nancy Mortimer (marketing), Liz Foley (FaceBook) and my partner, Meredith Costain (editing), all of whom have rallied around me free of charge. My brother has also printed a lot of bookmarks and stickers. I suspect all small presses rely on this sort of support.

9. What have you got coming up?

Forthcoming 2008 books include Jenny Mounfield's The Ice-cream Man, Dianne Bates' Crossing the Line and David Miller's picture book Big and Me. All three are issues based, so have levels deeper than just genre fiction. I have high hopes for all three. As for 2009, I'm already looking at publishing a Gary Crew picture book, a non-fiction (my first!) title by Sue Bursztynski and the third Quentaris book by James Roy.

10. What's the best way for people to find out about Ford Street?

The website is kept pretty much up-to-date: www.fordstreetpublishing.com. I also have an option for people to join the mailing list. Anyone who gets on that receives free posters, catalogues, bookmarks, as they're produced. I also email a Ford Street News every now and then. People just have to email me at: earthborn@smartchat.net.au to get onto that list.

Thanks, Paul - that's a fantastic response and useful info for all of us. (and my apologies to readers if the formatting goes haywire again!)

National Libraries - not just books

We've just had a budget here. Everyone hangs out to see if they've got tax cuts, or bonuses, or interest rate reductions, or maybe more money for education and health. Sometimes what seems like small stuff gets ignored. Like the cut in funding this time to the National Library of Australia. I know the NLA does things like archives copies of every publication produced in Australia. I know they have a great research library in Canberra. I know they host writers' events (I went to one last August). I know they have been producing a great history book series for kids called Making Tracks.

What I have also discovered, thanks to an article in The Monthly by Gideon Haigh, is that the NLA also holds an amazing range of artifacts (like Chinese woodblock-printed sutras from 1162), it is endeavouring to archive an enormous amount of web material that disappears daily, and is trying to retrieve some very important Nobel laureate material from 1980s computer disks. The Library is, on many counts, about preserving history through printed materials.

I blogged recently about digital photos - how my photos taken with my old SLR camera and printed on photo paper will last a very long time, and my digital photos on my computer might disappear at any time, thanks to a virus. The NLA is also breaking new ground in doing things like digitising old newspapers (so you can find stuff in them). As well as dealing with five semitrailer loads of material that gets deposited with them each year.

So what did the government do? Well, they cut funding, didn't they? Just like most governments, federal, state and local, are cutting funds to libraries all over these days. Who needs books, for goodness sake? One of the reasons I'm fond of apocalypse stories (the ones where the world ends for some reason) is that nearly always the thing that saves the survivors is they find books. Books that survive techno-meltdown, nuclear disaster and plague, let alone the power going off. Books that tell them how to do things like build houses, deal with injuries, make their own power and restore communications.

Funny how books can do that. Because they survive. As a librarian said, the Chinese book from 1162 can still be opened and read. Ten years from now, anything on CD or DVD will probably be unreadable, unless you've got a player stashed out in the shed somewhere that you can resurrect. But seeing as there are dozens of them in the local rubbish dump every week, how likely is that? Yep, buy more books. Treasure them. They'll last. Gee, you can even read them again in 20 or 60 years. Or give them to your kids!! Fancy that.

Critiquing/Workshopping

The past three weeks have been filled with workshopping of students' writing (some people call it critiquing - I think workshopping applies more to groups perhaps). Many of the students are in their first year of study in our writing course, so giving and receiving comments can be a very confronting experience. You may have been working on your novel for several months or years, and this might be the first time you have had a group of critical readers provide you with feedback. It can make you doubt everything you thought you were trying to do.

Or the story you have offered up might be the first "real" story you have ever written. Before now, everything you wrote was just for fun, or for your journal that no one else reads. How do you cope with people saying things like "I don't think you need the first paragraph" or "You've used a lot of repetition and it didn't work for me" or "You are not deeply enough inside the character's head so I didn't really get into the story". You might think your prose resembles Proust on a good day, or you might secretly feel that everything you write just plain sucks. Either way, the feedback is going to come right at you.

Giving feedback is a skill. It's hard to be critical without being harsh. It's hard to make comments on someone else's work when you think you don't know anything. Who am I to say what works and what doesn't? you ponder. Well, you're a reader, for a start. You read published books. I'm betting you've read quite a few that have made you think How the heck did this get published? This guy can't even write a coherent sentence. You stand in the bookshop or the library, read the first couple of pages of a novel and put it back. Something didn't appeal - the voice, the character, the plot that was beginning to unfold - and you move onto the next one.

In a workshop, you have to read everyone else's work. You can't just put it back. You have to put aside your aversion to fantasy or romance or what you think is literary pretentiousness, and focus on craft. Did the opening grab me? Why not? Did the voice work? Why not? Do I feel like I want to read more about this character? Am I already starting to care about what happens to her? Why not? The first part of workshopping is to see what works and what doesn't in this piece of writing. The second, and more important, part is to try and make helpful suggestions.

Why is this more important? Because it works two ways - it stops the writer from feeling like they're in a black hole (everyone thinks my beginning sucks, but I have no idea how to fix it!), and it adds greatly to the skills of the workshopper. It's a two-way street. Learning how to read your own work critically and then rewrite it effectively is one of the most difficult skills for a writer to learn. The best place to start learning it is in a workshop. It's not just what they all say about your writing, it's what you see in other's stories and the constructive suggestions you come up with that will feed back into your own craft.

Group workshopping that is a bloody free-for-all is not worth one cent of your time and effort. Good feedback is a lesson in tact and diplomacy. As the writer, you have to remember it's not about you, it's about the words on the page. You want readers? You want to get published? The workshop will help you down that path. Although having a critical reader or mentor can be a wonderful experience, I've also seen some people whose mentors have influenced their work and not helped to make it better. The group provides a variety of readers and comments - even though not all may be useful, you learn to take what is and make your writing better.

The Depths of Character

A character template is a handy thing - you start with gender, age, family background, physical description and, of course, the thing your character most wants or needs (the thing that drives them throughout the story). Really, that thing is what they believe will make them happy, just like us real people. A guy might believe a Maserati will make him happy, a girl might believe having Mr X fall in love with her will make her happy. But the question goes deeper than that. What both of them really want is to be loved and made to feel special. The guy believes the Maserati will attract the kind of gorgeous girl who will love him for himself, not the car - the car is "bait" and will make him look cool. Sadly, this kind of guy usually still loses out, or finds a girl who rips him off.

The girl who wants Mr X, on the other hand, may well find he is a horrible person and falls in love with his friend, Mr Y, who loves her and is perfect for her. Both of these situations could make a story. So you can ask yourself - what does my character believe (at the beginning of the story) will make them totally happy, and what actually does make them happy by the end? Just that shift alone develops your story in more depth, and in more interesting ways.

Another question to ask is what your character is most afraid of. Not spiders or heights, but deep down. Are they afraid of being abandoned? Of being poor? Of being unloveable? Some people have a fear of intimacy because of things that have happened to them - major betrayals, significant deaths. If you can place that character deep into the one situation they are most afraid of, you have instant conflict and a meaty story problem that is both external and internal.

You could ask what your character's secret dream is. Is it to win Wimbledon, when he is a good tennis player but not a world-beater? Why do people have unrealistic dreams? How close will he get to achieving it? What will he discover along the way? That he is a failure? Or that he is really the world's best coach and he finds a kid that will win Wimbledon and who he can help? And again, what does that dream really mean? Does he want fame and fortune, and sees tennis as a way to get it? He can still have it by being a winning coach, perhaps. Or maybe he ends up envious and vengeful.

I also like to ask what happened to my character in their life that makes them who they are. With someone who is only, say, 12, probably the thing that will affect them forever is going to happen right in my story, so I have to work with knowing enough about them to make the story real and meaningful. I also need to think about how they will deal with the terrible things that are about to happen to them, and how they will change and grow.

In writing about someone who is 40, I look at their childhood and their teen years. There is great potential to give a character backstory that deeply affects the story you are telling in the here and now. Did she witness a murder? Did he lose his father? Not every character has to be abused, by the way. It might be a good idea to avoid that, as it raises a whole other bunch of issues that may have nothing to do with the story you want to tell. Be judicious about this - you are the architect of this life. I like to ask students to write about their character in this way - what was something that happened to them as a child or teen that somehow changed the way they saw the world forever? What is their world view now? Optimist or pessimist? Do they believe in God or not? Are they cynical or fatalist? Are they trusting or wary? WHY?

I do a lot more than this - small things and large. It depends on the character. Some of them, like Tracey Binns, spring into life as if they were just waiting for me to come along and find them. Other characters I struggle with and have to write a lot of the story before I "find my feet" with them, and then the revisions change a fair bit. There are lots of small writing exercises that can help. A fun one I set in class is this: your character rushes out their front door (you decide where they're going and why they're in a hurry) and finds something dead (you decide what) on their doorstep. Write a scene that shows how they react, how they feel, and what they do about it.

Getting Inside Your Character

In all of my classes at the moment, we are workshopping (critiquing). This means I am reading and commenting on around 52 lots of pages over 3-4 weeks, ranging from short stories to picture books to novels, which includes fantasy, crime, literary, humorous, YA and little kid's stories. For many students, this is their first experience of getting multiple comments on their work, from people who may not read the same genre or have done any past critiquing of other's writing. It's a lesson in diplomacy, tact, encouragement and helpful feedback.

The one thing that comes through for me is the lack of depth in characterisation and point of view. It's totally understandable - you come to class, you spend a lot of time reading, writing, discussing - and then suddenly you have to produce something. It's been hard enough taking in all the information and how-to stuff. To put it all into practice at once is a big ask. But my main feedback in 90% of what I am commenting on is: you are not deep enough into knowing your viewpoint character and seeing the world through their eyes, speaking with their voice, acting with their impulses and motivations.

My new book Tracey Binns is Trouble is just starting to get reviews (brilliant one in the Sunday Age today - very exciting!), and as part of my own publicity efforts, I created a Tracey Binns website. What was fantastic about this (apart from the fact that I had a lot of fun with it) was the way in which it really helped me get even further inside the character of Tracey. I had to stop being me (old, boring writer) and become Tracey (12 year-old smartypants with lots of energy and kid humour). I imagined what the site would look like and sound like if I turned it over to her, what kinds of stuff she'd put on it, what she'd say about things like Teacher's Notes that the publisher kindly gave me to add in.

Tracey is not polite. She likes to say what she thinks, she has some weird likes and dislikes, but she also is good at sharing - so she shares her favourite recipe with you. As I am writing another book about her, creating this site became part of getting back inside her head and hearing her voice and what she says about the world around her. She'd love you to visit!

Very few people are going to create a website for their character, especially when the book isn't even finished, let alone published. But it's that kind of character development and work that helps to create a strong voice in the work, and also goes a long way towards the reader feeling that this is a real person, with a story that is interesting and engaging. In class, we start with character templates and timelines, but that's just the beginning. There are other methods that help - free writing, drawing pictures, imagining dreams and daydreams, interviewing the character, writing other stories about them - and all of them help the writer move more deeply into their head and heart. I think it's an essential part of what brings a story alive, and worth the hard background work.

Where Reading Takes You

First of all, let me send out a million commiserations to all those poor Australian kids who had to sit government-orchestrated tests today. Trust me, whatever the results try to tell you - you are doing OK. And the tests are crap. You want to know how your teachers feel about those tests? Read this. I cannot believe that this government is venturing down the road of No Child Left Behind. To me, it's like saying our teachers are useless and need a good testing kick up the rear end to make them better. NOT. Who knows more about the kids in their classroom than a teacher? Who knows more about where those kids come from? For crying out loud, we have kids entering our schools every year who don't know which way up to hold a book! You think a test is going to solve that?

OK, time out for a few moments while I try to calm down.

What does reading do? I've already gabbed on here about what reading does for someone who wants to be a writer. I'm seeing students right now who want to write children's books who read 5 or 10 and think that's it. No, it's not. You have to read 20 or 40 or 100, and then think about who those books are speaking to, what the voice is doing, what the language is doing (not dumbing things down), how things like pace and action and dialogue are all working together to create a "cracking good read" (shades of Basil Brush there).

But it's much more important for us to think about what reading does for our kids. I was talking to someone today (Hi, M!) who said her son (8) is writing a book. And he's doing a pretty good job of it too, even with the grammar and punctuation. Straight away, I asked her, "Is he a keen reader?". Yes, she said. And that just proved to me yet again that reading lots of books leads to an innate, basic understanding of not only how a story works, but how a sentence works. If you read plenty of books, of any kind, or poems, articles, even encyclopedias, you just come to understand how sentences work. You don't need to know subject-verb-object in parsing terms, you just know it by reading it over and over.

I read something today about the nose-dive in the amount of reading that 18-30 year olds in the US do (it was from a magazine called Narrative) and how the editors have decided to try to do something about it by focusing the magazine on that reading age group. But they also talked about much younger readers - how kids in the 11-13 age group are also reading less. There's been a lot of stuff about this recently, and every project designed to get people reading again is great. But it does ultimately come back to schools - primary schools. If someone isn't reading by Year 7, you're unlikely to get them back.

There is a big push here to refund schools so that they all have teacher-librarians (a dying breed). A librarian from the NT blogged about how he wasn't sure if it was worth going back to uni to train as a teacher-librarian. Hello? If you are already a teacher or a librarian, why do you have to go back and pay HECS and study some more? They teach or work in a library, they love books, they love reading, they want to get kids to love reading. Why do you need one more piece of paper (that cost you more than a few thousand dollars) to prove it?

I have commented before about how reading is reading, and any kind of reading is great. It is. But now I'm going to go one step further and suggest that what fiction reading can do is set your imagination on fire. It takes you to other worlds, it shows you things about the world in a way that facts seldom do, it tells the stories of other kids like you, it shows you about issues like refugees in a way that newspaper reports don't (or show falsely). Reading a book takes stamina, but a great story will carry you away to a world you didn't know existed. A poor reader who finally finds a book they love, a book that transports them, that gives them hope and courage - how is that reader going to find that book on their own?

New Syndrome reported

In the Age newspaper this weekend came the information about a new syndrome, and I believe I am suffering from it. It's LLHCS - Late Life Holden Caulfield Syndrome, recently discovered by Michael Leunig, writer and columnist. He named it after Holden in The Catcher in the Rye, a character who "saw clearly the world's phoniness and despaired because people always applaud the wrong things."

Leunig also says that along with this syndrome, as he gets older, his bulls*** detector just seems to get stronger and stronger. This could be a curse or a blessing. I'm with him there. My tolerance for BS at work is getting lower and lower which, when you work inside what amounts to a bureaucracy, is not a good thing! As for the rest of my life, no doubt my friends would say, "That's not news to us!!"

On the other hand, George Clooney observed that this may finally be the time in US history where young people are going to stand up and vote at last, and have a say in who runs their country. I guess it might all come down to their BS detectors too. Have they got them turned on to full power yet?

More CBCA Conference notes

This is the wonderful Liz Honey, signing one of her books after our poetry session. Talking to people now about the conference, a week later, means I am remembering more of the highlights and things that stuck in my brain. Such as the way that, as the conference went on, more and more people started to say how sick of the word literacy they were. How often it was used an excuse for doing stupid stuff like testing (instead of helping kids to enjoy reading), how so many "experts" used it as a topic to beat their chests about and make a noise while contributing little of value. How it is used as a big stick to threaten schools and teachers. So inevitably the suggestion came that we ban the word and go back to talking about literature. I'll say yes to that.

There was an inevitable small stoush over the CBCA shortlists being elitist, and how any "popular" book that made it to a shortlist was a token gesture (to whom, I wonder). The other main point of disagreement was over what some called "trashy" books, suggesting they should be banned or children actively dissuaded from reading them. One would have to ask why. Reading is reading is reading, isn't it? I'm often amazed at those who do studies on reading and forget to include things like websites, comics and nonfiction books, focusing only on fiction. Lots of people don't read fiction, but they do read. And then of course there are people like me (and I have discovered some of my students!) who will read anything, even the back of the cereal box at breakfast.

There were lots of book launches, not just mine, and piles and piles of new books in the Trade Fair. The Fair is definitely freebie time, and I came home with several new books that were being handed out like those food samples at the supermarket. I avoid the food and love the books. (I also have to celebrate winning a door prize at the Saturday night dinner and - lo and behold - the prize was books. Yaayy!)

One interesting panel session was about the survival of picture books. Ann James would have to be one of our best illustrators in Australia, yet she said although she is doing better work now than ten years ago, she is earning less, due mostly to deep discounting practices, where a creator can end up being paid five cents per book for deep discount sales because those royalties are not based on RRP. Five cents compared to $1.30? Tell us about it! Unfortunately, the guy from ASO, where a lot of those dd sales often go, said he had no idea that was the case. I say unfortunately because after the session several people said they had heard him speak before and he certainly did know that was the case. Logically, how could you not?

One issue that did come up in informal delegate discussions quite a few times was the cost to attend the conference. I knew several people who couldn't afford to go, even for one day, although the keynote speaker talks were open to the public for $25 each. However, if you wanted to attend the whole thing, you were looking at around $700. Not a problem if your school or library pays for you, but out of range for most others who were genuinely interested. Who do we want to attend these conferences? Obviously teachers and librarians from schools and public libraries, and other professionals in the children's book arena. Does the CBCA want new authors there? What about those interested in books simply because they love reading and maybe have kids? It's an ongoing problem - obviously they have to cover costs, and venues now are expensive, as is catering and organising. It is something to think about before the next one.

CBCA Conference

Where to start? Some terrific keynote speakers were the highlight for me. Shaun Tan (below) spoke about his life as an artist and illustrator and used an amazing array of images. This one is from his book The Lost Thing. He also showed his drawings from his first day and second day of school, and one of a T Rex from when he was seven - absolutely gobsmackingly good!
Another great speaker was Neil Gaiman. His session was one that was open to the general public, who swelled audience numbers by a hundred or more. He included poems based on fairy tales in his talk, and said some very interesting things about the craft of writing and ideas that come from 'what if'. Emily Rodda was also good, and made us laugh.

My favourite speaker of all, though, was Bernard Beckett from New Zealand. Text launched his book Genesis and Bernard spoke for about five minutes. I could have listened to him for another hour or more. He was very genuine and passionate, and kept everyone entranced. I have bought a copy of his book, which was recently optioned for a movie. The guy from Text made a point of saying how they were actively looking right now for great YA novels (got one in your bottom drawer? it has to be really good!)

The top photo is of Elizabeth Fensham launching my book Tracey Binns is Trouble. She said some lovely things about the book and read some bits from it. The launch was in the trade fair so it was very noisy, but we gathered a small crowd. (Yes, that's me hovering in the background.) I was pleased to be able to get Tracey's website up before the conference, and it was a lot of fun. Plus an excellent way to get even more in tune with the character. She kind of took over and wrote the site herself.

On Sunday, I chaired a session called Wild About Poetry, and we had Liz Honey, Meredith Costain and Moira Robinson on the panel. Lots of issues raised and discussed, and the outcome is a proposal for an Australian Children's Laureate. Now wouldn't that be wonderful! All we need is some money. And lots of people to get behind the idea. In the final session I sat behind two women who are part of the conference committee for the 2010 Brisbane event, so I hinted in a big way that another poetry session would be very popular.
More reports soon.

How/Why do you Read?

My day started today with Blogger sending me a comment from a post I wrote a long time ago, about Melina Marchetta's third novel On the Jellicoe Road. The commenter castigated me for criticising what was apparently his/her favourite book. How could I? How dumb was I? It was a reminder of how differently people read, and the reasons why they read. I can't tell you how many times we have read a novel in class (Cold Mountain was a notable) and had a number of students absolutely loathe it, and a just as vocal group love it. House of Sand and Fog is a great novel for dividing a class between those who support one character and those who are barracking for the other.

Why does this happen? For the same reason some viewers love Lost and others hate it, and some viewers love House and some hate it. I often look at the highest rating TV shows, or the bestsellers list in the Saturday paper and wonder how on earth that show or that book became so popular. It's about personal taste. The biggest divide I've seen (which still seems a bit strange to me) is between the science fiction fans and the fantasy fans. Both seem to think the other group has no taste at all!

Very often it's about who you are and where you are (in your life) when you read a book. I was given a copy of The God of Small Things but it took me a year to get around to reading it because I never felt in the right frame of mind - in other words, I felt too darned tired to get my head around the language and ideas. I was glad I waited because eventually I loved it. I read a lot of crime fiction, but not indiscriminately. By that I mean that there are certain authors whose voice and characters I enjoy, and others who leave me cold or fail to engage me by page 30. One divide in crime fiction is between those who are Hercule Poirot fans and those who are Miss Marple fans (and never the twain shall meet).

Sometimes we try to read a book at the wrong time. It's a funny book when we feel depressed and not in the mood for silly stuff (even though we might need it). Or it's a literary novel when our brains just can't cope. Although this blog is called Books and Writing, I don't really post reviews. I write comments on books I read because they stir me in some way, either positively or negatively. Often I will write about a book from a writer's point of view - what I learned from it - rather than purely a reader's stance.

I always have a pile of books next to the bed (and another one in my office, plus a library pile). At the moment I'm reading Creativity for Life (writers' and artists' book), Killing the Possum by James Moloney (YA), Firebirds Rising (anthology of fantasy short fiction) and Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman (crime). And sometimes I dip into a short story collection by T.C. Boyle, and I've got Best American Short Stories 2007 waiting. Oh yes, and the new Sarah Dessen YA novel. If I am going to comment on any of these, it'll be because I have an opinion - not a paid one, either - and I'm keen to share it and hope someone else out there wants to chip in.

At the beginning of this year, we asked students to follow Chris Baty's example (the NaNoWriMo guy) and make two lists - one of things they love in books and one of things they hate. It's an interesting exercise because it really tells you the kind of book you want to write. One student said he hated books that used haunted objects. Another loved books with slapstick humour. It's a great thing to do - you might surprise yourself if you try it.

Books about Dying

I've just read two books in a row in which a major character (or the main character) dies. And in one of them, the viewpoint is first person. Obviously in that story, the death is on the last page. I didn't mean to read these together, but that's the order they were in on my book pile. First up was Miss McAllister's Ghost by Elizabeth Fensham, who managed to win a CBCA award with her first book, Helicopter Man. First thing I have to say is the title doesn't do the book justice. Apart from anything else, I kept expecting a ghost story, which it isn't.

The three kids in the story meet a very old woman, Miss McAllister, when the youngest, Wilf, sees her at the window of an old house and thinks she is a ghost. But she is very real, if very old, and during the course of the story, turns around the lives of the three. Their parents are not only busy working, but Dad is prone to thumping them all or throwing things, and is not someone you'd go to for advice or help. I'm not going to tell you who dies, but it's another reason I don't like the title because I think it gives the ending away. It's a quiet story about people thrown together in an unlikely way, and has humour and surprises to keep you reading.

The second book was Before I Die by Jenny Downham, the story of a seventeen-year-old girl dying of leukemia, so you know the ending before you start. I was wary of this book, even though I'd heard good things about it. Being in first person meant it was going to tread that fine line of melodrama and sobbiness - however, the voice of the narrator is tough and angry, and her situation leads her into all kinds of risky behaviours as she attempts to complete her list of ten things to do before she dies.

It's a very real story, and made me cry simply because it wasn't sentimental at all. The scenes at the end are written so well that I wondered if the author had been very close to someone who died like this (it was a stark reminder for me of when my sister died). When I Googled for information, I discovered that Downham has not had this experience but is an actor and is good at working her way into a character. She kept a diary for two years as Tessa, the narrator, and the amount of time she spent working on this book shows in the depth of characterisation for all of the characters, especially Tessa's father.

I think writing about death is, in some ways, like writing about sex. The more simple and clear and direct you are about what your characters feel and think and do and say, the more you evoke the "real-ness" of it. It all comes back, yet again, to your use of language, your choice of words, your ability to be in your narrator's or character's head. In a world where we see people die, either for real or in fiction, dozens of times in a day (more if you watch an Arnie movie!), the fact that we have writers who can make one death in a story meaningful is a wonderful thing.

Books vs What?

Tonight I happened to be watching a bit of a TV show on archaeology, during which they looked at a 16C drawing of a tattooed woman. Someone said, "Why is this the only thing we have? How can we know what other people of this era looked like?" The obvious answer was, "Because they didn't have cameras back then, with people taking a million digital photos of everything that moved or looked mildly interesting." But it is an interesting question, one that historians grapple with, if they're any good. Who records history? Why? Is the history of war, for instance, recorded mostly by the victors? Is our social history recorded by the rich and literate? In that case, where are the stories of the poor and illiterate?

This question has given rise to the oral history, where someone interviews a wide range of people in order to get their experiences of being alive during a certain time. In Australia, Wendy Lowenstein has done this with Weevils in the Flour, and in the US, Studs Terkel is famous for his oral histories. They tell us the realities of poverty, starvation, and women killing themselves with Lysol because they couldn't afford a more expensive poison.

But this led me on to thinking about other issues with recording who we are, as well as what we are creating that reflects our lives. Think about this - any photos that you take right now are almost certainly digital. If you save them on your computer, or on a CD, or on a USB drive, you have absolutely no guarantee that they will survive. Your computer will die (any writer will have had the experience or know of someone who has lost everything through a hard drive failure). CDs, once thought to be the ultimate indestructible storage, are now being shown to fail within five to ten years. I've had a USB drive fail on me recently, and another that is showing signs of dying.

If you print out your photos from your digital source, as I do, they are often printed on cheap paper with cheap inks. How long will they last? Not as long as those old prints your grandparents owned, that's for sure. If you print them on your home printer, probably even less. As for text, again anything on your computer can be gone in an instant. (Computer failure has overtaken "the dog ate my homework" as the prime excuse for late assignments - no, we still don't believe most of them.) When I got married, we asked the celebrant for a copy of the ceremony text, which she printed out on her thermal printer - I don't dare go and look because I know from experience that it will have faded and now be unreadable.

Scrapbooking? How many people are using acid-free products? If not, within time your paper and glue will both cause staining and irreparable damage. A friend of mine spent many years on a family history and has spent the time and money to have it printed on acid-free paper and bound in leather. Gee, just like they did in the old days. Her work will still be around in 500+ years. Not much else that's being produced right now will do the same.

What if we have some kind of nuclear winter (caused by goodness knows what)? What will survive? For a start, anything digitally stored will probably be useless. Remember all those old 8mm home movies? Who still has the old projector setup so they can be watched? And if you transfer them onto digital video, in twenty years time you'll be in the same boat. I may well sound like a total Luddite, but for me, digital technology and storage is incredibly fast and convenient, but I never assume it will last. Books will. And so will language. We are still reading texts produced hundreds of years ago (with a little translation help) because they were recorded on paper and stone and parchment - things that, despite weather and other disasters, have lasted and endured.

I suspect that the paperless office will continue to be a myth, simply because at some level, most people believe digital records are not permanent. As for the ongoing razzamatazz about ebooks and digital books and all that other stuff - yes, our next generation may well discard books as a way to educate themselves and entertain themselves. But if it all disappears, they'll be back begging for a library card in five seconds flat!

Outlines Stage 2

This week I started reading a book on writing called The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. Although Truby usually focuses on screenwriting, this book, he says, covers novels as well, in terms of looking at how to develop a novel-length work. In the beginning, he tells you to put aside your traditional methods of structuring a story (hero's journey or three acts) and approach it from a new perspective. Initially, this means putting character and premise together and looking at how and why your main character changes during the course of the story.

So off I went. I've been working on a new novel, but having trouble with the first few chapters. I had already worked out the plot - what would happen, the climax, etc - but I couldn't work out how to get my characters to that point (one problem was a jump of two weeks with nothing happening). I decided to use Truby's initial planning steps to try to work out what was missing in my story. I answered all the questions, I had the premise and story design, I figured out his seven key steps for story structure (weakness and need, desire, opponent, plan, battle, self-revelation and new equilibrium). It seemed to be kind of working for me.

Then I stopped. I remembered how I had done a similar thing once before for a novel, and in the end it was no help at all. It made the novel into something I had never intended, and something I had a really hard time writing - and getting right. After eight drafts and some major changes, I think this novel is still not working. I tried too hard to "make it right" before I wrote it. That's not the best way for me to work. I got too cerebral about including all those key elements that a story should have, and lost my grip on character and voice.

Character and voice, for me, is what counts most in making a story work. I can always come back later and fix plot holes or add tension or rewrite beginnings and endings. But if I get off the track with the character, if I analyse or diagnose or try to put that character into a straitjacket of shoulds before I tell my story, I kill everything. I start doubting what I'm doing. I lose the voice. And strangely enough, I have a much harder time keeping the plot together.

I think that's one of the things we have to learn as writers - what our happy medium is when it comes to outlining. I mentioned in another post that mostly my outlines are diagrams and lots of scribbled notes. It took me a long time to realise that, messy though it seems, that is what works for me. That, and sometimes a grid of major scenes to back it up. No outline at all makes me extremely nervous, because I need to know where I'm going. Too much planning and setting down what must go into the story freezes me up.

So no more Mr Truby. I'll read him again when I'm much further into this novel, and the character and the momentum are leading me where I need to go. Your happy medium might be starting with one sentence and then writing into the wild blue yonder. Or it might be a 50 page detailed outline of each scene. How-to writing books are great, and often very useful, but you also need to know when to put them down and just write.

Playing with Words

Earlier this week, I created the following as a bit of fun (OK, so I was procrastinating instead of working on my novel!)

THE NOVEL WRITER’S DEDICATION

Write placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be
in a room of your own.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all publishers.
Write your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive writers,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser writers than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your deadlines.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of publishing.
Exercise caution in your business affairs,
especially your book contracts;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what marketing potential there is;
many persons strive for websites and platforms;
and everywhere life is full of shelf hangers.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection for your editor.
Neither be cynical about your rewrites;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
they are as perennial as the grass
and if you don’t improve your novel
you’ll have to rewrite it again.

Take kindly the counsel of your writing group,
gracefully surrendering the things that suck.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you against reviews.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of low sales and deep discounting.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
so many words per day,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a writer of the universe,
no less than the poets and the screenwriters;
you have a right to put words on the page
but not to expect people to appreciate them.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is reading as it should.

Therefore be at peace with your agent,
whatever you conceive him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life
keep peace also with your writer’s soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
the world of books
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Keep writing.

(yes, inspired by the Desiderata).

Outlines vs Vague Thoughts

One of my big jobs this week was to write outlines for two books (my biggest job was to mark around 40 student assignments, but we won't go there). These two are supposedly going to be Books 2 and 3, featuring the same character. When I wrote the first one, I had no intention of writing any more. It seemed a complete story to me, with a fairly resounding ending. None of this Hollywood doubling back and tricking the reader at the last minute with a new monster being birthed. Then the publisher said the character was so good, how about another story featuring her?

Of course. (Lesson 1 in writing and publishing - never say No way, Jose when a publisher asks you to write a book, unless it's something horrible that would destroy your rep forever. You can always negotiate what the book might be, and get it closer to what you want.) In this case, it had been a while since I'd written the first one, and I also really liked the character. Not sure where she came from, but we get on well together.

Then it became 'We'd like to see outlines for two more books, please'. Hmmm. I don't have any problems with outlines, especially the ones done my way. My way starts with scribbles and circles and arrows all over the page, then it progresses to more diagrams and grids and notes. When I'm happy, I start writing. But that's not what a publisher wants to see. Because they'd never understand my scribbles and diagrams in a million years.

A publisher wants to see it all written out, like a summary or a short version of what the whole thing will be about, who will be in it, what will happen, and what the outcome will be. It's also good to indicate what the outcome will mean to the characters, the result of their journey. For me, this is not a synopsis. A synopsis is when you have written the whole thing and rewritten it, and then you write down everything that happens so an editor or agent reading the first three chapters can see whether you've got a solid grip on the rest of the story.

These outlines are saying what I'm going to write about. What I have planned will happen. There in lies the rub. What if I change my mind? What if a better idea or ending presents itself halfway through the writing? What if I get to Chapter 4 of my planned novel (according to the outline) and I hate it and it's not working how I thought it would, and I want to burn it? That's why outlines freak me out a bit. What if I get it wrong?

The plus side of this, however, is that while I had a good idea for Book 2, Book 3 wasn't even a twinkle in my eye. I had to start from scratch and explore a whole new idea. I came up with something I liked, then I came up with something big and exciting that really made it all come together. And in turn, that showed me where the weakness lay in Book 2. That's what I'm working on right now - how to find that big, exciting extra element that I think Book 2 still needs to pump it up to a top-notch story. It's mostly there, but I want to add one thing more...

April is Poetry Month

Actually, it's only Poetry Month in the US. Australia doesn't have a Poetry Month, or even a Poetry Week. I think we have one Poetry Day on 1 September, but my guess is that more Australians know that 17 September is World Talk Like a Pirate Day than know about Poetry Day. Arrrrr!

There are currently lots of websites and blogs promoting poetry for kids, in the classroom and generally. The CCBC Discussion Board is talking about poetry anthologies, and the ongoing issue of why more teachers don't teach or use poetry in the classroom. Mostly it seems to be because they don't know how to teach it. A few people have commented that if a teacher doesn't enjoy poetry and doesn't read it, there's little likelihood they'll include it in their classroom activities.

Some of the other issues are about "killing" a poem by dissecting it to death, using poems in classroom comprehension tests (another way of strangling a poem) and the teacher who reads out loud in a way that condemns a poem to the Boring Bin in a second. People also complain that they don't understand poems, that they're "too hard", and I can sympathise with that. But who said you have to understand every single thing? That is the joy of a poem - when it speaks to you on some other level that you can't pin down, but it makes you feel that you have just experienced something amazing and true. And there are hundreds of great poems that are easily understandable and still offer much to the reader. Accessibility in poetry is not about dumbing down!

When Billy Collins was Poet Laureate, he created a website of 180 poems for teachers (or everyone) to use - poems that weren't obscure or meaningless, poems that would provoke discussion, poems that showed the world in a different way. Even if all you did was read one poem per day out loud (without analysing it), you could create sparks of inspiration and maybe the desire to write a poem or two.

I like the idea of reading lots of poems and simply talking about what one of the poems says to you, then writing something in response. I don't think you can give kids a whole bunch of poem exercises to complete without first surrounding them with word music, imagery, rhythm and language possibilities. I think if a teacher enjoys poetry, they can't help but pass that on to their students (of any age). I like nothing better when I teach poetry writing than sharing my favourites. Here's one by Billy Collins - Introduction to Poetry. And another by Margaret Atwood - You Fit Into Me. Anyone got favourites of their own?

CBCA Shortlist

Around this time of year, some major awards here in Australia announce their shortlist. So we have the Miles Franklin, the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the Australian Children's Book Council Awards. If you have a book in the running, it can be a nerve-wracking time. In 2005, my book Farm Kid was shortlisted for the NSW award, which was a huge surprise for me. When it won, I made the most of it and celebrated and went to the awards dinner in Sydney. It was like a huge, excellent, late Christmas gift, something to totally enjoy.

This year Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!) has been shortlisted for the CBCA Younger Reader awards. I can't tell you how many fingers and toes I had crossed! I could hardly walk. Although the Newbery Medal in the US doesn't have a shortlist beforehand, the effect on book sales and everything else that goes along with being a children's author is the same. It's mind-boggling, actually (I've talked to others who have been shortlisted and won or had Honour books), and exciting. And sitting around on Tuesday morning waiting for the shortlists to go up on the CBCA site was unbearable. So I went to the movies.

When I was a teenager, one of my favourite movies was Anne of a Thousand Days, so I really wanted to see The Other Boleyn Girl. It was great - lots of strong minor characters to fill out the story with subplots, two very different actors in the main roles, and a different perspective also on Anne. Yes, I did manage to forget about the shortlist announcements until the movie was over. Then I arrived home to a lovely message from my publisher on my answering machine, and the sight of my book on the website. It took a while to sink in, but the champagne helped!

There is now a long gap until the winners are announced - 15 August - which allows for lots of discussion and time for kids to read the books and decide for themselves. This year there will be another Junior Judges happening, where schools can get involved and be part of it. In early May, the CBCA conference takes place here in Melbourne, and I'm going to be leading a session on Sunday on poetry for children (which was organised months ago).

Yes, I am trying very hard here to sound serious and "worthy" - my friends would all laugh and give me a good poke in the ribs, because they know that inside there are a dozen elephants still doing a mad, happy dance! So now I will go off and do some writing, because I have a deadline, and later on I'll let the elephants out and we'll watch the footy and drink nice wine and celebrate some more!

Awards and Rewards

Last night, my writing group went along to the FAW (Fellowship of Australian Writers) Awards night. We had received a Commended in the community writing group section for our group novel. Of course, we thought we would have won if we'd been able to submit the whole book! The rules said only 30,000 words, so we had to cut it off halfway and say it was only Part One. Mind you, as someone in the group said, if we'd been able to put the whole novel in, we would have been struggling to finish it in time! As it is, here we are at the end of March and we're still about 10,000 words away from finishing (we think).

Still, the competition was a great impetus for us to do something different. We have all created characters for the novel that now seem real - we sit around the table, plotting what comes next, and refer to each other by character names. Plotting is such fun, with everyone throwing in ideas about who will do what next. At the function last night, another writer asked me how we did it, and then seemed amazed that we managed to plot and write without huge arguments.

I think the key is ego. None of us want or need our part of the novel to be "the best" or the biggest or the most exciting. We're more interested in enjoying the process and seeing where it will lead us. One of us has developed a very snooty, nasty character and is now loving being able to write in her voice and "let it all hang out". Another writer has created a male character and is practising her skills in terms of voice - making sure he sounds like a male. We intend to self-publish the novel when it's finished, just for ourselves.

The great thing about the Awards night is seeing so many people so excited about winning or receiving acknowledgement that their writing has been judged as darned good. In many ways, our society hates high achievers and likes to cut them down to size. The FAW Awards give prizes and commendeds to more than 100 writers, and it's a celebratory occasion. Some people come from interstate to receive their awards, and it's lovely to share their happiness. The awards also are for younger writers - one young man who won a poetry prize said his English teacher had told him that poetry was obviously not his strong suit, and it was good to have another educated opinion on that! No doubt he'll take great pride in showing her his certificate.

There are always writing awards around. The new Prime Minister has announced two major prizes for fiction and nonfiction writing worth $100,000. Yes, that's nice, but wouldn't it be better to spread it around a bit more? Sometimes you hear people say that there are too many awards, but I think it's great to have many rather than one or two. Judges differ widely in their choices (just look at the State writing awards for children's and YA books compared to the CBCA choices for their awards) and it means more books get promoted and praised.

We writers tend to tuck ourselves away in the back room and write, hoping for publication and recognition, hoping we'll find readers who love what we've created. Prizes and awards, both large and small, help us to feel validated, help us to keep persevering, just as much as actual publication does. Every bit helps. And I can't say enough good things about my writing group (go, girls!) - their encouragement and critiquing skills have kept me going over the years, more than anything else. If you can find fellow writers who understand what you are trying to achieve, and who can offer you (and you, them) that vital support, that's a prize in itself.