It's not spring in Canberra yet

Up in the bush, the acacias are starting to flower. Most are budding but this one (getting more sun, probably) was in full flower. In my backyard, the clematis is also flowering, and up the street, someone's cherry tree is in blossom. Still, this morning it was down to 4 degrees. The afternoon was almost tropical, but as I am off to Canberra tomorrow for Children's Book Week, I am watching the weather, and Canberra is still veddy veddy cold. So the suitcase is being packed with woolly things.
Or it would be, if I could get my act together. I think it's something to do with not being able to throw oodles of books and stuff into my car and set off for a school, knowing I can always race outside and gather more things. No, I'm going to be flying, so I have to choose. I recently had a lot of sample pages and galley proofs laminated (part of my talk is on how a kid's book gets published) and I hadn't realised how much heavier the pages would be. My special carry folder won't fit in my suitcase, or the overhead locker in the plane, so I have to leave it behind. Curses! I want to take everything, and can't. And despite letters beforehand, only one school has said yes, bring books for our students to buy. So do I take what I have, and risk excess luggage? Or leave half of them behind and wish I'd lugged them with me?
Considering it's me who is going to carry this stuff, I will have to err on the side of my osteopath (who would frown at heavy weights as well as poor lifting techniques).
The best bit is choosing two books off my "to read" pile to take with me. Airports are great places for getting lots of uninterrupted reading done, apart from those uniformed people who want you to get on the plane a.s.a.p. So I've chosen Sarah Dessen's new novel, and an older novel by Lisa Gardner (I'm currently reading her crime novels and doing a lot of thinking about her pacing and chapter breaks - very useful if you want to look at tension and page-turners).
Now, where are my possum fur gloves?

Online learning

Where I work and teach, there has been a push for several years to get us to provide our courses and/or subjects online, particularly so we can offer them to overseas and remote/rural students. While some people shudder at the idea of studying via the computer without the stimulation of the classroom, I actually did most of my degree by off-campus delivery (no online technology in those days!) and recognised then and now that what made it work for me was the terrific study guides and course materials.
In some ways, writing is a great thing to study via the internet. When this push first started, they funded some of us to go online and become students for a while, testing out for ourselves what worked and what didn't. I chose to study the Writer's Digest Advanced Short Story course, and really enjoyed it. Mikki Hayden was the instructor, and as well as a structured series of units, I had access to their online library of articles and resources. What made this course especially memorable for me was that 9/11 happened about four weeks in, and several people ended up dropping out because of different ways in which they were affected by it (family or friends dying, living close by, etc). They did explain this to the rest of us, and then we all took a deep breath and kept going with the course.
So, in creating new materials and writing new content for my units, I keep all of these experiences in mind, plus the knowledge that younger students these days are much more used to using technology and the internet for study and fun. Still, how do you replicate a great classroom discussion about plot and pacing in a historical YA novel, or repetition and irony in a poem by Billy Collins? Or the experience of workshopping a chapter of your novel, or your poem about death that was based on your uncle dying last week? In the classroom, the teacher is able to push the discussion along, or introduce a new idea quickly, or temper someone's comments when they've become less than constructive. How do you do that online when mostly it isn't happening in real time, so a rude comment can be up there for several hours or days?
All good questions, which is why we keep going off and doing more training and talking about these issues and how to resolve them.
But beyond that, I think offering subjects online provides a great resource for any writer who wants to increase their skills, get some unbiased feedback and feel like they're not so alone. Even a writer in the middle of a huge city can feel isolated and depressed about what they're trying to achieve. Who cares? How can I know if I'm on the right track or not? Is this story any good?
When I did my degree, a large part of it was focused on writing - it was the first time I was able to get feedback on my stories and poems from experienced writers/readers who didn't know me from a bar of soap. So their comments were, to me, more valid because they weren't there to pat me on the back - they were there to show me how to improve.
At the moment, I'm working on creating online content for three different subjects - writing picture books, a preparatory unit (like a short "taster" for our professional writing course) and helping another teacher, T, with our fiction subjects. We're about to completely restructure these latter modules and develop a whole new approach that we hope will give students a stronger grounding in the basics of fiction writing. Phew! Hopefully, they'll be ready to run in 2008.
In the meantime, we are still teaching our usual classes on campus, and trying to write when we get the time and headspace. This is usually when that "writing full-time" dream starts to surface, and I start double-checking that I've bought a Lotto ticket this week!

Why I Love Blogs

Friends often ask me - why do you read blogs? Why do you waste your time? They're boring, aren't they? Well ... no. I loved Miss Snark's blog, and she gave out a heap of relevant, straightforward info on how to get an agent (and not be a nitwit) that couldn't be duplicated anywhere else. I will forever be grateful for her Crapometer and the opportunity to put up a bit of my crime novel for evisceration.
I have about ten blogs that I read regularly. Three of them are by people I know personally, and I find it really interesting to read what they write, simply because they are writing for an (imaginary) audience, so it's different from what they'd tell me on the phone. They are aware of audience, and they are writers, so they write, rather than blather on like raving rabbiters (whom Miss Snark would banish to Rabbitania).
I have other blogs I dip into occasionally, to see what's going on. There are lots of blogs that I read via links from other people (e.g. recently I was reading the Neilsen-Hayden blog - a lit agency in NY - about the current A&R uproar that's going on - it was fascinating, if only because they were talking in NY about an Australian issue, and some of the comments were both insightful and hilarious).
Blogs tell you what's going on. What people in the industry are thinking and saying right now. Writers' blogs are great because they are written by writers. Think that's obvious? Try reading blogs written by people who don't seem to know what the English language was invented for. Yes, those are the time-wasters for me. Don't go there.
Blogs are also great for people who want to have a say about something. Right here, right now. No pussy-footing, no trying to be nice. So I loved the following blog. It tackles that bugbear of children's writers everywhere - the celebrity author who writes crap books and gets paid big bucks for them. Yes, we all know that editors justify this by saying the money the celebrity books make bankrolls unknown writers. I get that. This blog talks about this dilemma from the editor's point of view. Let's face it - what writers need is for book buyers to start asking for good recommendations and stop buying X or Y because Madonna or Billy Crystal wrote it.
The revolution is coming (I have faith!) - I believe this because of the number of people who have commented on how they don't buy books from A&R anymore because of the lack of quality. We live in hope.
If you buy children's and YA books, how do you choose? I look at CBC shortlists (because the books must be there for a reason), but if they don't appeal, I search the shelves for something I do like. I read reviews, and note books that sound interesting. In bookshops, I read blurbs and first pages.
I see and hear people, often grandmothers, in bookshops asking what they should buy for little Jack, and being given "safe options" - classics or prize winners or the latest hot thing. The sign of a good bookshop is staff who read. Readings has tons of shelf recommendations - from staff who've read something and want to tell you about it. But all bookshop staff need to be more adventurous in their reading.
By the way, am I the only person who thought that Neville pulling the Sword of Gryffindor out of the hat was a bit too convenient and doesn't hold up logically in the plot? (this is a HP7 question). Well, I know I'm not the only person because I've checked out some of the discussions! Quite a few people, however, seem happy to glide past that question with comments like "The hat has always provided Gryffindors with what they need in dire times". Huh! I'm not convinced. The curse of the writing teacher ... to pick out plot glitches.

Want to Write a Poem?

yellow mountain watching

azure skies over bush again
fat woman arrives, cleans about
looking rough and raucous
the only cumbersome part--that mountain
watching near silence
where cat awaits

now yellow mountains fade
into azure beginnings
then cat once more

You, too, can write a poem - fill out the word boxes and this site writes the poem for you. I have to say, what came out surprised me!

The Publishing View from an Editor

Interesting blog on the Guardian website which talks about book publishing from an editor's point view. Louise Tucker is, as she says, an editor for one of the big four publishers in the UK. They publish 400 books a year. She is defending some of the perennial complaints about publishing - not enough editorial input to books, too many awful celebrity books, etc, and suggests that if people want better publishing of better books, they should buy at full price and not at Tescos (or here it would be KMart/Big W).
As I've read this today, after reading all the stuff about A&R in Australia, I found her arguments were a little bit hollow. But I do think that many editors do the job because they love it, and in spite of the bean counters. I've heard more than one story of an editor fighting to publish a book they love by a new author, and being shot down by either marketing or the bean counters.

The A&R Furore

This week, writers everywhere in Australia have been madly discussing the A&R letter - namely, a letter that booksellers Angus & Robertson have sent to smaller book suppliers/distributors threatening to stop buying their books through them. If you go here, you'll be able to read the Sydney Morning Herald blog, which includes not only the original A&R letter, but a very pithy reply from Tower Books.
One thing that should be made clear (and kind of is in the two letters) is that this letter is from the A&R Head Office that manages most of the stores. However, there are other A&R bookshops that are franchises and presumably not under the HO thumb when it comes to managing their stock, although this was not totally clarified for me.
Last weekend I did a book signing at A&R in Box Hill Centro Shopping Centre, and the couple running that particular A&R couldn't have been nicer or more supportive in what they did with publicity and encouraging people in the shop to buy my books. I suspect that they are franchisees, although I didn't ask. A few years ago, we had a Collins branch at our local shopping centre, and the couple running that were forced out by Collins HO through a series of very shifty moves. We've never had another bookshop there since.
I don't understand what A&R hope to gain from this. If Borders coming into Australia has proven one thing, it's that bookbuyers want choice. We don't want just The Da Vinci Code (well, I never wanted that book!) or the latest Harry Potter (I did buy that, but at the bargain counter at KMart) - we want to be able to browse, find new authors, get what we want, when we want it - or we'll go to Amazon.
The best bookshops in Melbourne for browsing are Readings and (for me) the Sun Bookshop in Yarraville. I don't know what it is, but whoever selects books at the Sun is great at choosing things that I cannot resist. But I shop at Borders too because they have the best selection of books about writing, and a great children's section. I never shop at A&R because their shop at Highpoint never has anything I want. They simply don't buy in a stock of decent books for the serious reader, and they always seem to have bargain tables full of the most awful, cheap books that I wanted to put into the mulcher.
For me, this letter thing (and Tower's reply) confirms what I've suspected, and others agree with me, that the A&R buyers and buying division have been doing a very bad job. It's like they're supposed to be buying fresh vegetables and they keep stocking tins of baked beans.
I presume Tower Books (and others) are going to tell A&R to go jump. Judging from the 129 comments (so far) following the blog entry, so are all the bookbuying customers.

Clive James on writing

On the ABC's Talking Heads program tonight, guest Clive James was asked about how he deals with writer's block. His answer: "No, I've never had a long block. And the reason... The way I've actually developed as a writer, over the years, is I've learned not to panic when it won't come. Because when it doesn't come, that's part of the process. That tension of not being able to do it means somewhere in your brain you're sorting out something that's too complex for immediate expression, but it will be when it's sorted itself out. The expression "sleep on it" comes out. Sometimes I work in my sleep - I know I do - because I wake up more capable of expressing what I have to say. But to become a professional writer, it's necessary to reach the stage where you can live with the tension when it's not happening, because that's part of the process."

You can read the transcript of the interview on the ABC site here.

Conquering technology

An old friend of mine, Doris, used to say that inside her computer were two little green men on bicycles, and the harder they pedalled, the better her computer went. When it stopped working, the little green men were on strike.
Whereas for me, having seen many computers go Phhhttt!! or remain black-screened (or even pink-screened, like one of mine years ago), and seen many computer users turn into hysterical wrecks, or at least throw a decent tantrum, when their computers have died, I'm the cynical kind. If it can go wrong, it will. And usually in ways you can't predict. Witness the successful transfer of most of my stuff onto a new computer last week, but before the remaining files and programs could be sorted out, the old computer was accidentally dropped from a height of about two metres. Less said about that, the better.
However, my new tech phobia related to fiddling with my website. I'm happy to update it and add new book covers, but the thing that I kept putting off required me to download code from Paypal, after creating Buy Now buttons, and insert it into my webpages where needed.
I've been avoiding this task for two months. I kept telling myself that when my brain felt more tech-inclined, it would happen. A pathetic excuse.
Finally, I have done it. Last week I spent a bit of time on Dreamweaver, playing with a new site I'm creating - the confidence level increased, and today I thought, Do it now.
So I did. I have four buttons on my site to allow overseas readers to buy some of my books (I am trusting that I have done everything required to make these work!). I can't sell my Penguin books directly to people in Australia though, as I'm not allowed.
And I can't sell my out-of-print picture book as even I don't have copies to spare anymore. My plan to print more in Hong Kong, as I have the rights back, fell in a heap after I discovered that the illustrator does not have the rights back for the illustrations. It's a long story...

It's a Cat's Life...

No, she's not dead. She's now hogging the big heater in the loungeroom. During the day, if the sun is out, she finds the warmest spot outside to sleep. Our other cat, Roko - large, black male - prefers to find the highest spot, usually the back of the couch when inside, and sleep up there with one eye open to make sure everyone is behaving.

Differing views

In the Review section of the Weekend Australian (4-5 Aug, 07) there is an article about an English writer, Scarlett Thomas, who writes what seems to be spec fiction with an experimental edge. She talks about receiving a letter from Phillip Pullman (of Dark Materials) which questioned why she was writing in the present tense, like "many young novelists".
To quote, Thomas said: "I wrote back and said the problem with narrating in the past tense is that you get a sense of somebody sitting comfortably in a rocking chair at the end of the narrative saying, 'Let me tell you a story'. You know, everyone's fine and they survived. There's a sense of a kind of after narrative, but I wanted a sense that there might not be an after. You're there in the present and everything could crumble at any moment."
Pullman responded again and said: "OK, I take your point about the rocking chair, but the present tense is like having the narrator talk breathlessly into a tape recorder while they're doing everything that they're doing..."
The article doesn't say if they agreed to disagree! But it does show that everyone has different ideas about past or present tense - I guess the main thing is to know why you're using one or the other, and be consistent. I see a lot of student work where the writer slips from past to present and vice versa, and doesn't realise they're doing it. We (as in teachers, two of whom teach editing where I work) talked about this the other day. You can teach how to use verbs, how to form each of the tenses, and practice them in sentences in class, then test correct usage. But that is doing it in isolation - how do you teach someone to recognise "slippage", or even to understand the effects of past or present tense on how the story is told, its tone, style or flow?
I think that, after you've done the classroom stuff, you have to read and see it in action. It always astounds me how few books many of our writing students read, and its one thing I try to weave into the classes throughout the year, especially in areas like children's and YA novels. If you want to write the things, surely you should be reading lots of what is out there at the moment? But also I try to get students to read like writers - to think about language and character and dialogue and all those other things that make up a story - enjoy the story first but then go back and read again to learn.
At the moment, I'm reading a few Jacqueline Wilson books. She has been out here recently for a short tour and I missed seeing her at the Reading Matters conference. She is hugely popular in the UK, and becoming more so overseas, so I thought I would read several books and think about what she is doing. (I read The Illustrated Mum a couple of years ago and didn't like it, but my writer's curiosity has sent me back.) I was quite surprised at the amount of what some editors would label telling. Yesterday I finished The Suitcase Kid, today I'm reading Dustbin Baby, and it's interesting how strongly these two books rely on a narrator to simply tell a story. There is plenty of action, but there is also a lot of the narrator's voice explaining. I'll read on, and think more about this, and how it works.

Writing but not writing

While the 100 words of my YA novel has been sagging (400 on Monday and none since), I have been doing other writing. My writing group is attempting to write a group novel. We have worked out a plot, each taken a character and written about 2000 words so far. It's multi-viewpoint, and each piece is in the first-person voice of the character. This way we avoid any problems with trying to create a consistent style or voice. The big challenge is plotting. Yesterday we ended up creating a timeline, to sort out what is happening when and in what order (e.g. X can't phone Y before 8pm because Z has to talk to W first and provide that piece of information). We also have some minor characters who have to be woven into the story without having voices of their own, so B is in a scene with R, but we still have to work out who B is, what his motivations are and what he is actually doing there, so that the person writing as R can complete the scene with the right information.
Sound complicated?! It is, but as we sit around the table and work it all out, we are having a lot of fun, and we are also writing something that is exciting, challenging and interesting. And for some of the group members who normally don't write much, it's invigorating and satisfying. There - lots of energetic adjectives!
The other writing I have been working on is actually an interview which provided a lot of great background information for a story idea I'm developing. I did vow last year that I would only work on one project at a time, but when other things pop up and the energy is there to follow through on, I'm going with it! It's another way to get over the winter blues - have several projects that excite and interest me, and keep me moving.
Last night I had dinner with two fellow teachers and a friend who was teaching with us and has resigned. Her new life is about writing - that was what she wanted to focus on for the next 18 months (she writes plays) - and she seemed very happy with her decision to forgo a regular wage and some security for the opportunity to write. There's no doubt that her writing will benefit hugely from the focus and concentration. We are all a little bit envious, but then she has no other commitments or dependents, so she is free to make that choice. We wished her lots of luck, and gave her a voucher for Officeworks (all writers need stationery!).

Scary computer stuff

Today was the day I had been avoiding/putting off/trying to ignore for several weeks. The day my husband took on the task of moving my files and programs onto a new computer. I had backed up everything (I hoped) onto a small hard drive and given instructions - minimal but clear - about where things had to go, file- and directory-wise.
Then I went to work. And spent most of the day either trying not to think about it or crossing my fingers.
Came home and he's all grumpy. Uh-oh. What happened?
Well, the transfer worked fine, but when he was carrying the old computer (which I wanted to keep for a while just in case) outside, he tripped on the steps and dropped it. Not a good thing to happen to a computer. It won't talk to us anymore. He's still working on it.
In the meantime, I have realised that all my bookmarks in my net browsers are gone. Thankfully, my emails and address book moved OK, thanks to good instructions from Eudora. The bookmarks may be a benefit. I have to try and remember what they were, so any I don't use regularly are gone from my memory as well as the computer's.
This will be an ongoing process. Patience is required.
Saw an interview tonight on the ABC with Tom Keneally, and laughed at some of the things he said. Talking about writers, he said a novelist has to believe the world wants and needs his/her book - that requires a huge amount of confidence and a huge amount of ego (paraphrasing here). He also said his family has kept him sane, and that being on your own all the time as a writer encourages dark things like self-doubt. A writer needs to go out in the world to talk to people, and it's why he likes talks and book signings. It's a chance to see that people actually do buy and read his books - I know the feeling. Often you feel like no one knows your book even exists, and if they do, they're going to ignore it!
It occurred to me that school visits do the same thing for a children's writer (provide that contact with real people and real readers). Good to keep in mind.
In August during Children's Book Week I will be in Canberra for three days, doing nine school visits. Once upon a time that would have scared me witless, but I'm getting better at it. I just wish the kids would get my jokes more....

100 x 100

Monday of last week, I started the 100 x 100 thing (running via a YA group I'm in) where you commit to writing 100 words a day for 100 days. At the same time, I made a personal commitment that, when possible, I'd try for an hour of writing instead of 100 words. So it's been 12 days of meeting either the 100 or the hour, and yesterday I ... didn't.
I could say it's because it was the day I set aside to clean out two rooms in my house - the two that accumulate the biggest amount of stuff that eventually gets to a point where we have to do something or we can't get into the rooms. Sadly, one of these rooms is my office. After doing Randy Ingermanson's seminars earlier this year, sorting out and clearing out my office was a big goal for this year. The other room was just full of junk - bits of computers, discarded things like clothes for the charity shop pickup, old books and papers, old bits of cars - you name it, it was probably there. So I spent the whole day on it.
There was still no excuse for not writing a measly 100 words. Except ... I had decided to use this writing thing to work on a new YA novel and because I haven't planned enough of it out yet, I'm winging it. Which I hate. Because I start to feel like I'm writing a load of rubbish that will all have to be taken out again later.
Someone (might have been E.L. Doctorow) once said that writing was like driving on a dark road, and you only see as far ahead as the headlight beams allow. At the moment I feel like I'm driving along at about 100km an hour, shining a torch.
For the next few days, the 100 words or one hour will have to be spent on planning and character work and building new plot possibilities, or this novel will be put out with the stuff for the charity pickup!
In the meantime, reading continues. Finished Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan, which is about a young boy who becomes a Ranger rather than a warrior. Has the standard evil lord who is trying to take over the world, etc, but also some humour and good characterisation to carry it. Also read Dead Weight by John Francome, a crime novel set in the world of horse racing. When someone is touted as the next Dick Francis, I get suspicious. Francome is not bad, and is different to Francis in that he uses several different 3rd person viewpoint characters. I've always like Francis's characters and thought they carried his plots with extra dash, but then I am a first person kind of reader. Francome kills off a character unexpectedly and this raises the tension level for the rest of the book quite considerably.
I tell students (and constantly remind myself) that you have to raise the stakes and keep the tension working in a novel, no matter what genre it is. Being too nice to your characters ends up being pretty boring!

Winter Blues

I received an email from a friend yesterday who said she'd had the winter blues, but she was over it now. It sounds like a strange thing to say, but here in Melbourne it's actually a recognised condition, due to not enough sunlight (well, that's one explanation). After years of telling us to stay out of the sun, now we need more of it in winter. Vitamin D and K, I think.
We see it in classes at uni - this is the time of year, running into mid-August, when students are likely to drop out. Especially from night classes, where the effort required to come out on a wet, cold, dark night to class each week can get too much, and if you come down with the flu, it's another big strike-down that's hard to struggle back from.
As a writer, you'd think that staying inside by the heater, writing and reading ... what more could you want? But the cold and wet and darkness does start to get to you.
Gradually, the book you're working on starts to seem like the biggest load of garbage you've ever written, you feel like you'll never have another decent idea ever, the rewrite looming when the editor's comments arrive will be impossible (and she's going to hate the story now anyway), and all the other stuff that's crowding into your life threatens to smother you.
A desert island starts to look like a viable option. One where there is no electricity, no pens or paper, and no one wanting anything. But with lots of sunshine and lazy days. Aahhhh....
Not going to happen. Instead, you (and that does mean me, too) have to find ways to revive, restore and re-inspire.
1. A good movie, at the cinema, that you can get lost in. No, haven't seen the new HP yet, so might go this weekend.
2. Poetry. Billy Collins' poems are the best for this, I find.
3. Footy, or any sport where you can go outside and scream your lungs out.
4. Long walks, even if it's raining. The winter air is terrific for recharging your energy.
5. Finding something new to try. Something active that gets you out of the house.
6. Lunch with a bunch of writers, and no one is allowed to grizzle or grumble. You all have to celebrate being writers, talk about great books you've read (and swap titles), and celebrate your achievements.
That's a start, at least. And the next time the sun is actually shining outside, I'll be out there, gathering as many rays as I can.

Close Reading

It's that time of year again, where we've spent a lot of time in class developing characters and plot, writing, talking, reading and analysing (generally focusing on character and plot again), and a modicum of workshopping. Now I want to get serious. I want to get pedantic. I want students to examine sentences, words, figurative language, metaphor, and get down to nuts and bolts on style. To me, this is how you figure out what a writer is doing.
So the Poetry 2 students copped it first. Last year I put the Short Story 2 students through it. They moan, they groan - I don't care. I believe if you really want to improve your writing, you have to get down to the nitty-gritty. You have to take a good example and pull it apart, to see where the joins are, examine word choices, think about why the author chose this word over another, why this sentence is short and that one long, and how all of these things create the work in front of you.
From this, I take students into the same examination of their own writing, word by word, phrase by phrase. It's slow. It's heavy on the brain. And if you do it properly, if you tackle it as a writer wanting to learn the guts of what makes writing work, it's a goldmine.
But always for some, it seems pointless (and if I'm honest, I have to say maybe it's the way I teach it). After teaching for ten years, I have no sympathy. If there's something offered to you that will help you be a better writer, why would you say no? (You can supply your own answer here.)
A little more on The Overlook - review by Simon Clewes in the Age last weekend came to the same conclusion as me. Skimpy book.
Evanovich's latest had me laughing out loud - great antidote to winter chills.
Now I'm reading Ranger's Apprentice, the first in a YA fantasy series. Heard a lot about this and got a copy from the library (spent too many $$ at the bookstore lately). It's got me hooked because of the humour. Could well be the cold here in Melbourne making me yearn for a good, warming laugh.

Grumpiness is catching

When you live with someone, you can't help but be affected by their moods. For a writer, this can be a problem. If they are driving you nuts, it can keep you from your writing, or make you so uptight that you can't concentrate.
You can't get into your novel when someone else's grumpiness is crowding you. Or if you are writing humour, maybe someone else's joy can overshadow your fun. Moods create atmospheres. A lot of writers do things like putting on certain music to help create the writing atmosphere they want. But when the house is grumpy ... it takes a lot of willpower and the ability to shut out everything and everyone to write what you want, when you want.
Luckily, I've had lots of practice.
Another 800 words today. Total for the week since Monday? 6,800. That's because I decided to do the 100 x 100 (100 words for 100 days) from the YA writers' list I'm on. And when possible, stretch that 100 words to one hour of writing.
So far, it's going OK. Onward and upward.

Critiquing

One of the best things in the world that a writer can have is someone who is a great editor and critiquer. I am super lucky because I have two. My friend K is also a children's writer, so she 'gets' what a children's novel needs. She also understands stuff like the level of complexity - you can have a lot more in a children's novel than you think - what you can't be is obscure.
She has just done a critique for me on a novel that I've been working on for about four years (on and off, because I have to have time out between drafts). She saw an earlier draft, which she really liked, despite its problems. I had changed a lot this time around, including point of view and a lot of the plot, and I wondered what she'd think of the new version.
Her insightful comments were terrific, and I love it when someone is really picky. Even little things that jar can pull the reader out of the story, and it's hard to pick them up yourself. I plan to return the favour soon.
My other friend T is also a great editor. She's picky in a different way. She doesn't write or even read children's novels, so she critiques from a different perspective. She's the person I go to when I know something is wrong but I can't figure out what it is. Through discussion, we often succeed in identifying where the problem lies. She is also merciless.
Now, neither of these two are going fix everything, and neither should they. Ultimately it's still my job to get the manuscript to the best I can before handing it over. They're not there to fix my punctuation and spelling, although they might pick up occasional awkward sentences. The grammar stuff is MY job, and this is something I try to drum into students.
An editor picking up an unsolicited manuscript is not going to bother reading something with five or ten mistakes on every page. There are always some people who honestly believe that the brilliance of their writing will overcome the obvious fact that they don't know how to punctuate a sentence so it's readable. The sad truth is: if you can't construct a good sentence, your writing is not going to be brilliant.
Or publishable.

Books to heat you up

Finished The Overlook by Michael Connolly. Felt let down. Wondered why.
Read an explanation in the back of the book that said he originally wrote the story as a serialisation for a newspaper. It ended up as 48,000 words, and then when he decided to turn it into a book, it gave him the freedom to add stuff and deepen the story.
Sorry, Mr Connolly. Didn't work. Should have left it as a serialisation and then I wouldn't have paid $29.95 for it and felt ripped off.
I went back and checked a couple of his earlier books (because I can get really picky about sentence stuff) - in The Overlook, hardly any sentence has a comma in it. Not necessarily because they are all simple sentences, but because nobody put commas in where there could have been a few. In earlier books, not only are there commas (correctly) but the sentences are more meaty and have more impact on the style. Was this comma-less writing from the author, or the editor?
Will I ever know? (I'll stop being pedantic now, but this stuff impacts on style and substance so much that you can't really ignore it.)
On the other hand, I'm now reading the new Janet Evanovich - Lean, Mean Thirteen - and loving it. Must have laughed out loud six times already. Great winter reading, and lots in the story to warm you up (not the least of which is Ranger).

The Writing Life

Over on Speculating About Fiction, my friend T has been speculating on what a writer's life entails. The full-time job, writing eight hours a day and doing nothing else? Or fitting writing around a life that includes a job, family, hobbies and other commitments?
I posted a comment, then thought I might expand. I've had this conversation before with my friend K, who is a full-time children's writer in Texas. And it came up again with my 7 Day Writing Plan recently. I found it quite difficult to sit in the chair for a solid two hours, seven days in a row! And felt like a writing wuss. You read all the time about writers who go into their office and shut the door at 9am and don't come out until 5pm. I think: If that was me, I'd eventually go nuts. I love being home alone and writing, but not eight straight hours. Apart from anything else, my RSI would kill me.
So I ask, how many 9-5 writers are spending 8 hours pounding the keyboard? Feel free to comment or reply to my question!!
K and I decided that the full-time writer's life is actually a mosaic of reading, research, thinking, planning, diagramming, letting the subconscious help out, daydreaming, and typing. That's what, to me, being able to write full-time does. It gives you total headspace for your book. You live the book. You dream it. You can hold it in your head. You think up new stuff for it, you solve plot problems, your characters grow and become more real, you have time for extra research for setting and atmosphere as well as facts.
Not being a full-time writer means:
1. When work takes over (or family, or whatever that's unavoidable when you have a life to manage), the book moves back. And if you're out there too long, the book moves so far away from you that it takes you quite a bit of time and work to get back inside it again.
2. You can't hold the book in your head. Sometimes you will, for short periods, then you lose your grip on it again. Instead, you learn to make lots of notes. Lots of them.
3. You can only work on one book at a time, in terms of your devotion. I've tried juggling several, and have given up. The books suffer. You have to decide which one matters the most to you, and give it your all. If it happens to be the one that turns out to be not publishable, you feel like you've wasted valuable time.
4. When your time is precious, but you want the book to be publishable, you can fall into the trap of making it too safe. It's a dilemma.
5. But the other side of this can be - if you are earning a living with your job, you are able to write whatever you want. The money doesn't enter into it. It's a juggling act for most people.
6. Being a teacher of creative writing adds to the problem. I am often inspired by my students and my own enthusiasm for what I'm teaching. But reading, commenting, workshopping and grading their writing can kill my writing zest for weeks at a time.
Over the years, I think I've developed my own writing methods that suit my life - I do a lot of thinking and planning (more than I used to), so that when I sit at the keyboard, I can type fast and get it all on the page. If I get stuck, I go for a walk or do something else for a while. Usually when I come back to it, away I go again.
I wrote 21,000 words in the 7 Day Plan I committed to. I couldn't have done that if I hadn't already known probably 60% of what I was going to write (because it was a 7th draft, starting from scratch again). A completely new novel would be half that pace.

Revision

Today was six hours of revision. Minus a quick lunch break, plus a quick trip out into the rain to try to find a window (have to replace the whole window, and of course it's an odd size). I keep telling myself, don't complain about the rain, because our water storages for Melbourne have only just passed 33%. But when you want to get out and do stuff, the rain is a pain (on the plain).
I've recently discovered the blog of Paperback Writer, who puts up a lot of stuff about writing, plotting and revision. She has also put up some interesting links for a heap of other stuff, including using Wikis for plotting, and a site where you can get copyright free photos and images.
I'm feeling pleased, not just because I've put in quite a few hours, but because a new series idea looks like something I'm definitely going to develop (research required, but that's OK). It's true - the more you write, the more ideas you have and the more things become possible.
I'm still reading the new Michael Connelly. And have noticed that hardly any of his sentences have commas in them. Many of them are short, that's true, but even longer ones don't. It doesn't affect clarity. It adds to it. What it does affect is a sense of flow somehow. It also feels a little like I'm reading at a sixth grade level.
What really bothers me is that instead of being engrossed in the characters and story, which I expected, I'm picking on sentence punctuation. Either revision is making me overly anal, or this book is not up to Connelly's usual standard. I am totally resisting doing a sentence comparison with Echo Park, his last book. Until I've finished reading.