Writers' Retreats

Over on my other blog, Bush Notes, I have been posting more photos from the bush at Lancefield, but this beauty doesn't belong there because I saw it in Hong Kong. It was almost as big as my hand and obligingly sat still long enough for me to photograph it. On this particular day, I was in Stanley on my own, wandering around and enjoying some quiet hours.

At this time of the year, the desire for silence and solitude is almost overwhelming for me, especially after such a busy year. I planned three days alone - reading, walking, sleeping, daydreaming, meditating. No writing unless I felt like it. No work. No appointments, not even social ones. Except for a trip to Borders first thing where I bought a wonderful book (more on this in a moment). By 2pm yesterday afternoon, I was fully into my little retreat, relaxed and contemplating a massage at my local Chinese massage place. Then my daughter arrived unexpectedly, with her usual dramas going on, and my retreat disappeared.

However, today I am back on it again, daughter dispatched to the outside world, while I take the phone off the hook and retrieve my reading books, preparing to settle down into the silence again. The book I am reading is called A Writer's Paris by Eric Maisel, and I was immediately taken into it when I read about the art of flânerie - strolling. "The flâneur is an observer who wanders the streets of a great city on a mission to notice with childlike enjoyment the smallest events and the obscurist sights he encounters." He calls flânerie "delicious, dreamy strolling" but he also calls it ambling, which is what I love to do in Hong Kong.

In fact, as a writer, I love to do it in any place that intrigues me. I am planning a personal three-week writer's retreat in France next year, and I intend to spend as much time as possible on strolling/ambling and simply being there. Writing will no doubt happen, but I am beginning to feel that a retreat needs to have a different purpose. I am used to having time off work and cramming in as much writing as possible before deadlines descend. This is not a writing retreat. This is a writing frenzy. A retreat restores the imagination, silences the everyday babble in the brain and allows ideas and dreams to emerge.

I haven't yet formulated any goals for 2008. But if you're a writer and feeling out of touch with your writing, maybe you can put a retreat on your list of goals. It may mean you rent a hotel room on the coast for a weekend, or borrow someone's house in the bush. It may mean you send the family away and you stay home with the phone off the hook. The key to a retreat is solitude, and allowing yourself to indulge in it. I'm planning for my next one already.

Book Reviews as Blood Sport

Somewhere on my desk (don't ask - it's been my goal all year to have a clear desk and tidy office) there is a quote that equates book reviewing to fox hunting and other blood sports. I was reminded of this by some reviews in this weekend's Weekend Australian Review. Glyn Parry used to be a YA writer, a writer who told it as he saw it, warts and all. And got roundly slammed for it by various reviewers and librarians, to the extent that at a Children's Book Council conference he kind of told them all to get stuffed.

So it was no surprise to me to see he'd written his first adult novel, Ocean Road. If you want to write realistic, hard-hitting stuff, you may well turn to adult fiction if the gatekeepers in YA have given you a hard time. However, Parry might well have listened to Garry Disher, who writes adult and children's/YA fiction, who once said that the world of children's/YA publishing was much kinder and supportive, and he preferred it.

In a review of Ocean Road, Richard King has seen fit to make comments such as "The problem with the book is the lack of an interesting voice at its core." This after quite a few nice comments. And "the narrator's internal life seems to be almost non-existent". Somehow, I can't imagine Parry, whose original YA voice got him into such trouble, writing an adult novel that has apparently been deemed dull. I'll have to go and have a look for myself.

In other sections of the Review, Graeme Blundell manages to spend nearly all of his meagre eight column inches rabbiting on about a series of male crime writers' new books, and gives Sue Grafton 16 words. Hello, GB, try having a look on the latest crime writers' display of books in any bookstore and it'll be at least 50/50 male/female. Wake up, lad. I read Val McDermid's latest while in HK (I love Tony Hill - how could you not when VM finally starts to give us some wonderful, intriguing backstory), Grafton's T for Trespass was good but not brilliant, while Tess Gerritsen never gets a mention. Shame!

But the Review did give us a piece on Kathryn Fox, Australia's latest answer (so they say) to Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs. Fox talks about starting her first novel and taking herself off to writers' workshops (presumably to find out more about writing???) where she was "amazed at the outright amateurishness of many would-be novelists, their lack of appreciation of the industry's fundamental conventions." Sorry, Ms Fox, but I take issue with your scorn. Everyone has to start somewhere, just like you, and it's not as if the publishing industry puts out a guide for amateurs.

In fact, the course I teach in takes pride in educating new writers into how the industry works, how to be professional, how to rewrite, take editorial advice, workshop, edit, negotiate, etc. It's part of the learning curve. Expecting beginner writers to understand how it all works from Day One is like expecting aspiring professional tennis players to understand what it's like to play at Wimbledon. You have to learn as you go, work your way up to it, take on board every bit of help and guidance you can as you go along.

The writers that make me cringe are the ones who have been around for a long time and refuse to understand it's a business. They are pining to be discovered, and blame everyone else for the fact that they are not published and famous. Ms Fox may well have come across some of these in her own quest to write and be published. Get used to it! It happens in every industry, and most particularly in the arts. Don't disparage other people's dreams. Get on with your own.

Writing Over Christmas

In a discussion loop I'm in, the topic this week is writing over the holiday break (Christmas-New Year). I was surprised at how many people seemed to be locked into writing in order to meet deadlines, or editing to meet deadlines. Why? The editors are unlikely to be in their offices, waiting with bated breath for said manuscripts to turn up. And this time of year, most people are in a state of chaos in their everyday lives, trying to fulfill family obligations, deal with kids off school, buying gifts, cooking etc. Who needs to be writing/editing? Who could guarantee to do a great job of it?

I wonder all of these things because I have no deadline, other than some I set for myself. For the first time in many years, we have no plans for Christmas Day (other than maybe finding somewhere to feed us and then do the dishes, i.e. a restaurant). There are places we could go, places we have been invited, but we might possibly stay home, take the phone off the hook and veg out. I might write. Read. Sleep.

The urge to write is always there, but I recognise when the brain is out of action. And that's now. Instead, I am reading, planning to watch some movies, walk, relax, maybe get a massage for that troublesome neck problem my poor computer use created. I know the time will come when I'll have to write because I can't not write any longer. Sometimes it's good to just stop pushing the words out and wait for them to want to emerge on their own. In the meantime, I'm thinking about my two current projects - both novels - and allowing myself to ponder over some new ideas for them.

Poetrix Launch

One of the things I do is help to produce a magazine called Poetrix. We publish it twice a year, and have done so for nearly fifteen years. This is a long time in the world of small mags, especially when you consider that we put it together by hand (because the binding would cost us at least an extra $1 per copy). For each issue, we receive and read between 500 and 600 poems, and the editorial group all read everything. Then we have a big meeting where we make final selections.

Earlier this year, the FAW (Fellowship of Australian Writers) asked if we would be interested in reading at Federation Square sometime, so we thought December was a great opportunity to launch Issue 29 of Poetrix. We invited all the contributors who lived in Victoria to be guest readers (and eight of them came along, which was terrific) and several of us read poems by interstate poets.

The venue is quite inspirational, in the Atrium in the area above the BMW Edge theatre. They had a great sound system there that meant outside noise became irrelevant, and people wandered in and out of the space (some even stayed to listen). The photo above is of one of our readers, Helen Cerne, and part of the audience, with the background of the glass walls and ceiling. This triangular web is characteristic of Fed Square, and is also on the walls outside. Thanks to everyone who was involved - it was a very enjoyable afternoon, and ended with an even more enjoyable Western Women Writers' dinner! It's going to be hard to top this with our celebrations for Issue 30.

What I Learned From Reading Fiction

When I was a teenager, I learned an awful lot of British history from reading Mary Renault, Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt and Catherine Gaskin. I also learned about shipping dynasties and Cornwall mining from Winston Graham. I started reading fantasy based on the Arthurian story when I discovered Mary Stewart, and who wasn't introduced to dragons via Anne McCaffrey? Of course, my passion for crime writing started early too. I had a teacher at high school who offloaded her old books onto me (thanks forever, Kay) and my early reading included Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain and Raymond Chandler. If you still like reading those books and want more, the Goldfields Library has a great page of "If you like this writer, other writers like this are..."

These days, we are often expected to read nonfiction if we want "reliable" information, yet I know many fiction writers who research their material just as deeply as nonfiction writers do. I commented recently on a book by William Dietrich about Attilla the Hun. While I was away, I read a crime novel by Barry Maitland - Silvermeadow. It told me a huge amount about modern shopping centres or malls, how and why they are constructed (leading to demise of the high street shops) and the theory behind them.

Silvermeadow is a fictional shopping centre that could be any huge centre near you. There is quite a bit of information about the Gruen transfer theory, and the following is from Wikipedia:

In shopping mall design, the Gruen transfer refers to the moment when consumers respond to "scripted disorientation" cues in the environment. It is named for Austrian architect Victor Gruen (who disavowed such manipulative techniques) and lately popularized by Douglas Rushkoff.
The consumer's decision-making consciousness subsides and he or she is more likely to make an impulse purchase because of unconscious influences of lighting, ambient sound and music, spatial choices, visual detail, mirrored and polished surfaces, climate control, and the sequence and order of interior storefronts, etc.
The effect is marked by a slower walking pace and glazed eyes.

Being a crime novel, of course there is a murder and a body found in the rubbish compactor at the back of the centre, but the information in there about how huge shopping centres are designed to be like little cities, with everything planned to lull people into a sense of wellbeing so that they give in to impulse buying ... well, it sure made me think twice about what I do when I go into one! This is the kind of thing that fiction does so well. By creating characters you care about, you also become interested in the information they discover along the way.

As writers, we have to avoid info dumps and shovelling in huge dollops of the factual material we slaved so hard to discover in order to make our stories "real". But by giving the info through the character, having a character who needs to find out this stuff, it makes the job easier.

Unlikeable Main Characters

This was a question that came up several times during my classes in Hong Kong - even in those I did with school kids. What happens when you create a main character who's not very likeable? Does it matter? Isn't it interesting to the reader to find out why he/she is unlikeable? Wouldn't the fact that the character changes and becomes OK by the end of the story make the reader keep reading?

Mostly, no. There are always exceptions, and the one that everyone tends to quote is the guy in American Psycho. Because lots of people read that book, or said they did. But did they read it to find out what happened to the main character, whether he came good? Or because it was so violent and disgusting that they were waiting for him to get his come-uppance? Some people read it because it was cool to say you had. I've never heard of anyone, even reviewers, who said they liked it, and liked the main character.

Like is probably a misleading word. What we usually talk about is empathy - we feel something for the mc, perhaps pity or some kind of identification, and we grow to care about them. But that usually only happens if the writer gives us something in the first few pages to latch onto. Something hopeful. Something that suggests this character has another side that we might like if we're let into it a bit more. We keep reading because we hope the character will redeem him/herself, show they aren't so bad, show they can change, show that they will come to understand the world and themselves a little more. (OK, my him/her and them is a bit mixed - please ignore it.)

The most common reaction to an unlikeable main character is to stop reading. Who cares if he/she dies? Wins through? Changes on Page 299? If we're up to Page 20 and the character is awful or stupid or apathetic or depressing, we stop. Plenty more books out there.

The villain, of course, is a different animal altogether that I've talked about here before. This issue came up because of a book I've just read. The Watchman by Robert Crais. If you're a Crais fan, you'll know that his detective is Elvis Cole, whose sidekick is Joe Pike. Inscrutable, iron-faced, unfeeling Pike. Now Pike gets a book all of his own, with Cole as the back-up. If you want to read something where the main character is unemotional, cold-blooded, and acts like a machine, and then see how the writer gradually unpeels him, little by little, to reveal his vulnerable side, this is the book for you.

Crais never overdoes it. All the way through, Pike remains the consummate soldier of fortune, able to kill without compunction when required. Yet every so often, we see a little crack of light, and even though most readers probably won't finish the book "liking" Pike, I think they'll understand him better and feel that empathy I mentioned.

A Writer's Health

Day Two after returning from Hong Kong and I've gone down in a heap. Exhausted. Yet there is a pile of mail to open and respond to, bills to pay (how come they don't stop while you're away?), paperwork to fix, and then there's work tomorrow. Yet the topic of writing and health has come up several times with friends, in different ways.

My friend K has said many good things to me about being overtired, unwell and not eating properly, all of which are sound and excellent reminders. The great thing about HK was eating lots of fresh food and walking miles every day. I have come back feeling physically good, and want to continue. Hence regular drinking of Chinese tea, walking, and buying fresh fruit etc for eating. But the mental tiredness is a big issue. December is a good time to evaluate the year.

I have written around 110,000 new words, rewritten about 50,000, and edited probably another 100,000. For my teaching, both in Melbourne and in HK, I've put in about 100 hours of writing on class materials, manuals and online modules. I've helped to produce two issues of Poetrix magazine, reading around 1000 poems and then proofreading. I can't even begin to calculate how much student writing I've read and graded and given feedback on - probably 80-100,000 words.

Good gracious - no wonder I feel so stuffed!! And no wonder some recent rejections (of various writing kinds, not just manuscripts) have depressed me more than they usually would. A writer has to develop a thick skin to survive, and an ability to say, "OK, how can I make this better?" When you're really deep-down tired, it's much harder to get up off the ground and fight back.

It's also harder to write new words. My friend T, who managed her 50,000 words for NaNo by way of writing 15,000 of them in the last two days, said on her blog that there were times when she was so tired that she was writing absolute nonsense, not even connected with the story. As writers, we tend to think that because we sit all day, we don't need to look after ourselves as well as someone who does labouring work, or who plays top-level sport. That's not true at all. It's the lack of sleep, bad eating habits, coffee/alcohol/ciggies (pick your poison) and lack of exercise that affects our writing more than we realise.

There was an article in the Weekend Australian yesterday about the effect of less sleep on kids - one hour less a night can mean a sixth grader learning at the rate of a fourth grader (just one example). Sleep is vital to writers too - it's where we restore our imagination and creativity, either by dreaming or simply giving our poor brains a rest.
There's a great recipe for better writing - sleep more! I'll be in that.

Memo: Writing Zen

After my day at St Catharine's School (where I talked to over 1000 students, plus did writing stuff with about 300 more), my friend A took me to a nunnery to calm down! Actually it was the garden next to the nunnery, with wonderful rocks and trees and a huge pond with fish and a waterfall. Just the best thing for zoning out for a while.
However, there was one thing that struck me as something to remember as a writer - the gold temple above is called the Temple of Absolute Perfection. Never a state I'm likely to achieve in my writing, so no point stressing about it. We always just write the best story we can, and maybe perfection is over-rated! We finished our visit with a cup of tea in a restaurant behind a waterfall.
This is my memo to myself about concentration and focus. This man paints pictures on bottles and domes - but he is painting on the inside. He uses a long, thin paintbrush and does it very, very carefully. Again, however hard I work on my writing, he puts my level of concentration to shame, but maybe it's something to aspire to.

In the last few days of my Hong Kong trip, I read the latest Louise Rennison/Georgia Nicholson book Luuurve is a many-trousered thing... and, true to form, she made me laugh. All of the books in this series look deceptively simple to write, yet she manages to create the point of view of a self-obsessed teenage girl while being funny and portraying really effectively what it's like. There's not much around in YA that's humorous so I'm not surprised these are so popular with both teens and their mums!

Into China

Rather than venture into Guangzhou (Canton) on my own, I decided to do a tour. This was mainly because our sortie to Dong Men quickly showed me that past Shenzhen's shopping area, hardly anyone spoke English so if I needed to find out how to get somewhere (or even catch a taxi) I'd have no hope. The tour was great - once I got over feeling like a sheep being herded everywhere - and I saw lots of fascinating things, including five of the terracotta warriors, a huge jade ship, one giant panda stuffing her face with bamboo, and a backstreet local market in Guangzhou that was astounding. I have restrained myself from posting my photo of the pile of gutted frogs. Instead here is a nice photo of a cage of snakes. Everything in this market was being sold for eating, and that included snakes, frogs, turtles, eels, scorpions, toads and fish.

While I did get some photos of the giant panda behind a window, this guy was outside eating an apple - lesser panda (red) - and not at all bothered by us lining up along the fence to take photos. In fact, he looked kind of bored.

We also visited a kindergarten to hear a bunch of little kids sing to us, plus the Six Banyans Temple and a memorial to the founder of modern China. Plus a few other things.

Today I had a "time out" day and went to the movies. Quite a few people here had recommended Lust, Caution and said I should see it in its original version as it was likely to be cut for Australia. It was directed by Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) and was wonderful. One of those movies I shall be thinking about for days.

Yesterday I visited the Correctional Services Museum at Stanley. Lest you think I was desperate for entertainment, I actually thought it was the police museum. Instead I got the history of prisons in Hong Kong - very interesting, even if some of the photos made me feel a bit sick. Back to Australia tomorrow. Feels like I've been here for six weeks, not two!

For NaNoWriMo, I think I've managed about 12,000 words. Nowhere near 50, but a lot more than if I'd never bothered to try. I'm now a fair way into a new novel, so we'll see if it's any good or not when I'm back in work mode and feeling less critical and more clear-minded.

Hong Kong Diary - more

Like many cities in the world, Hong Kong has its Christmas decorations up, and some of them are truly amazing. This is a centrepiece in a large building in Central, (the photo only shows one part of it) with twirling chandeliers and a massive tree covered in coloured balls and these things all around it. I think they are meant to be poinsettias. In front of the big shopping mall in Causeway Bay, the decorations are purple and silver, with angels and glass domes.

On Friday morning, Sue and I went on a Chinese cultural tour, which began with a one hour tai chi lesson on the harbour front. This is the "experts" group giving us a demonstration - note the backdrop that was our view as we scooped and swayed and stepped. The tai chi master leading the session had a Madonna mike on his head and kept us all moving (not necessarily in time, mind you) - it was fun and invigorating. And amazing to be doing it while looking across at all those skyscrapers. City views here are terrific, even better at night with the light shows. A lot of the buildings have neon Christmas pictures and images on their fronts. We also learned about feng shui, and drank lots of tea in a tea house (I have now got a nice store of lovely teas to take home, including lychee and rosebud tea).

On Thursday we ventured across the water to Macau. A one-hour ferry trip and you're in another country. Well, still part of China really, but we still had to do the immigration thing at each end. Nothing more painful than standing in a queue in front of a group of businessmen off for an "anything goes" weekend, and having to listen to the pontificating.

We arrived too late to see much, unfortunately, and only managed to look around the cathedral ruins just before they shut the gates. The streets were still fairly lively, but apart from the casinos, Macau seems to close down much earlier than Hong Kong. This photo is one of many shops selling the local nougat and shortbready cakes - this woman is actually selling slabs of meat (like jerky?) but we weren't tempted by that. The nougat was another matter.

We ended up at Fernando's, a famous restaurant on the southern island, and I ate drunken steak (drowned, I think, in red wine and a ton of garlic) and Sue ate Portuguese grilled sardines. Macau still has quite a Portuguese influence, especially in the old buildings and food in many of the restaurants. It'd be good to go back in daylight and see all the historical stuff that we missed out on.

The ferry back was "interesting" - whatever ticket you booked, you could go back earlier if there was room, so each ferry sailing had a standby queue. If you missed out you had to run for the next standby queue (and I mean RUN). We used a bit of strategy and went three ferries ahead to get a place! Long day all the same.

Our classes have all finished - I have a day at a school on Monday. Everyone has been great - lots of enthusiastic students, very different from having a class for a whole year. I have done hardly any writing since I've been here (NaNo is pretty much a wipeout for me - I'm trying not to let the failure depress me too much) but I am gathering such good material for poems and stories again that I figure I am still being a writer!

A Day in Shenzhen

On Sunday we ventured into China, and went a little further this time, past the Lo Wu shopping centre and on to Dong Men. This is an older area but only by about ten years, I think. It was a very busy shopping centre/streets but here the shops were much better in terms of brands and quality (much of Lo Wu is copies). One huge store sold nothing but shoes and boots. We also found a Starbucks, a McDonalds and a KFC. I have noticed that in the 12 months since we were last in Hong Kong, coffee chains like Pacific Coffee and Starbucks have sprouted everywhere. (Starbucks in Australia note - wireless internet here is FREE.)
I have no idea what this huge bell is all about - something historical, I imagine. The streets were full of people, mostly strolling and looking in shops. Hardly any signs with English so even in the railway station we had to ask for help. Lots of interesting people to watch and listen to. Sue took a photo of a noodle shop that had about thirty people outside, all eating bowls of noodles with their chopsticks.
Lo Wu was less overwhelming this time because we knew what to expect. Hundreds of shops but mostly selling the same things. I was looking for a new wallet but there were only about 6 different kinds (all copies) and when none of them were what I wanted, that was it. No point looking further. I did buy a Tshirt and jewellery, but that was it. Very restrained!

More Hong Kong

Today, we had our first sessions with the Women in Publishing group here - they're a professional organisation whose members are either editors, publishers or writers (or connected with the industry in some way). We use the Helena May Centre which is a wonderful club with a long history of women's activities in Hong Kong. Today I was looking at a World War I first aid/bandage rolling group. Late this afternoon we went to the Flower Market north of Mong Kok. There are four streets (a whole block) of flower shops, selling every kind of flower you can imagine. There was even a shop selling those plants that catch insects in gourd-shaped flowers (can't think of the name of them) and a few shops selling deep blue roses. The orchids were beautiful - one table full above, but there were many, many more.

This woman on the street corner is shovelling charcoal to cook chestnuts and yams, and was not happy when she saw me taking her photo. The smell of the charcoal was not nice at all!

Letter from Hong Kong 1

I'm back in Hong Kong again for more teaching and training. A busy two weeks ahead, with some R&R planned too. Today I spent the day at Yew Chung International School in Kowloon Tong. Did NOT get the day off to a good start when I got off at Kwung Tong station by mistake. A very kind man directed me to the right station, and I was only five minutes late, but luckily my sessions had been rescheduled so I had time to catch my breath and calm down (I hate being late!)

Hong Kong is the same as always - busy, busy - and the streets are more packed with people at night than during the day, even rush hour. Everyone loves being out and about, and the shops stay open till midnight usually. Although we are staying further towards Central on the Island, we are still in Wanchai and found ourselves yesterday going back to familiar places for photocopying and eating out. But we will venture further afield once things slow down a little.

Sue has lined up a cooking class (she really wants to learn how to make dumplings) and on Friday we plan to try early morning tai chi in the park and learn the art of Chinese teamaking. We are near Lockhart Road which has a large number of bars along it - a lesson in names and titles. Try Devil's Advocate, Old Chinese Hand, Wild Coyote, Typhoon and Agate. Most of them are full of tourists. We think we will avoid the Kangaroo Bar.

I am hoping to write while here - NaNo is hanging over me and my word count has come to a grinding halt. But there's not much I can do about it when I am totally brain dead by the end of the day. Maybe tomorrow...

Research Sideways

I've just finished reading The Scourge of God by William Deitrich - a historical novel about Attila the Hun. I hadn't read a big historical novel for a while, but I wanted to do some research on that era and thought I'd start with a novel - one that came highly recommended for historical accuracy. At first, there was so much information that I struggled with it, but once I got to know the characters a little, the story started to take off. There are several point-of-view characters but the main one is a Roman called Jonas. As with many historical novels, this person never actually existed, but most of the other characters did. A fictional narrator gives you a bit more leeway with the novel side of the project.

Deitrich did a great job of depicting both the cultures and life of the time, as well as the geography. Jonas begins in Constantinople, and then travels north into what is now probably Romania, then west into France where the huge final battle between Aetius and Attila takes place. His description of that battle, which some estimates put at over half a million soldiers on each side, is terrific, both in the single viewpoint of hand-to-hand combat and the overall fighting of hundreds of thousands. Some say three hundred thousand died in one day.

At the back of the book, there is a chapter on how he researched the story, and how little evidence there was of what really happened. The Huns didn't believe in reading and writing, so there are no written accounts from them. What there is came mostly from Romans. Deitrich talks about how he visited a number of museums and sites, trying to gather as much material as he could, but there isn't even a reliable picture of Attila, just a portrait made many years after his death with no evidence it was created by someone who knew him. Still, the level of detail in the book shows that Deitrich found enough to enrich the book immensely.

We are so used to having everything at our fingertips these days - TV, 24 hour news, internet, research libraries - that to write about a whole race of people who had no interest in recording their 'doings' is a real challenge. Which brings me to my research. I've been struggling for a while with a story, thinking it was fantasy but gradually realising that somewhere in my subconscious I've dragged the story up from a historical base. But what? I didn't do ancient history at school, and while I've read historical fiction over the years, I couldn't figure out why I could 'see' this story but had no idea where it was set. The word barbarians kept coming up, though.

Then I did some research on weapons, and immediately found that the ones I had in mind were used around 400-500AD, which led me to Goths, Vandals, Visigoths and Huns. Aha! I had my era at last, and my location - southern France. Now, this is a very weird way to go about researching a story - write a third of it before you know where and when it's taking place! But that's the way it happens sometimes. As for reading novels as a form of research - I can highly recommend it. You gain a 'feel' for the place and time in a way that normal historical reading rarely gives you, and you can then move on into more factual stuff as you need it.

NaNo Pros and Woes

I wonder how writers around the world are coping with NaNo. Why did the originators choose November? As my friend T says, why wasn't it NaJoWriMo? Except the No actually stands for Novel, so that doesn't pan out. However, it does seem that November is not a good month for Southern Hemisphere writers, due to study/marking/VCE exams/uni exams and anything else you can think of that signals the end of the year approaching (including the dreaded Xmas decorations already up in the shops - and no one has yet produced a plastic tree that comes anywhere near the real thing).

In the US, it's only the almost-end of their first semester. No exams, just that funny celebration called Thanksgiving. My best memory of Thanksgiving is working at the American Club in Sydney (much younger days, thank you) and carrying out massive turkeys on platters, then watching various men with their knives, both electric and manual, hatcheting said turkeys into lumps. Their dads taught them many things, but obviously not how to carve a roast properly.

So I imagine all those US writers beavering away (because of course there are no beavers in Australia), free of student encumbrances. What about the UK? It hasn't snowed there yet. Are they all still drowning their sorrows over their World Cup loss? Or do they not bother with NaNo? Are they instead off to the soccer, I mean, football? Are any writers in Asia or Africa doing NaNo? If you care, check the regions on the site, I guess. I'm just wondering...

And of course trying to excuse the fact that I am sadly behind in my word count. At Day 11, I should have racked up a tidy 18,000 words or so, but I think I'm up to around 8,000. Today, I had oodles of writing time, but I was in the bush (literally) and, having worked out, miraculously (or not so miraculously, if you are one of those people who reads your instruction manuals all the time) how to do ultra-macro photos on my camera. And the first results are up on my Bush Notes blog. What a beautiful day it was. And to top it all, I came across two fox cubs. Do not say the words vermin or extermination, please. Not yet. Let me just marvel at the experience.

Time to Read

A lot of people say to me, "How do you read so many books? I don't have time." As many of these are writing students, I don't have much sympathy because I believe you have to read widely in order to write better. Reading as a writer teaches you lots of small but vital things about writing that you don't really learn any other way. I'm always thinking, Wow, that's a great piece of dialogue - I must give that to my class to read. And sometimes I give them a writing exercise based on it.

How do I read so much? If I'm working at home, I read at the breakfast and lunch table. I read at night instead of watching TV (or as well as - most TV shows don't require 100% concentration!). And I always read for at least half an hour when I go to bed. On the weekends, if I'm not working, I read as relaxation. When we go up to the bush for the day, I spend a lot of time sitting under the trees, reading. I always take at least three books in case I run out. I am a fast reader, I guess, but only through practice.

Being a fast reader means that books I don't like so much get read pretty quickly, but if they really don't appeal, I toss them. Once upon a time, I'd persevere but not any more. Too many other good books out there to read.
I've just finished The Day the Gypsies Came by Linzi Glass. It's set in Johannesburg in the 60s, and has an awful cast of characters, nearly all of whom are very unlikeable. The main character is weak and doesn't act until the end, when it's too late. I struggled to finish this, but in the end I was glad I did for one reason - the relationship between the main character and the Zulu gateman, Buza. It was wonderfully written, and made the ending, despite all the other horrible things that happened, worthwhile.

NaNo vs Research

I decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo, even though I know I won't get anywhere near the 50,000 words. It's an incentive, mainly because two writer friends have also signed up and we are going to compare words. Mind you, one of them has had a head start by going off for a four-day writers' retreat and she'll probably come back with 20,000 words under her belt. But that's not what it's really about for me. It's more that I want to get back into the writing habit. This time of year is the hardest in terms of finding both headspace and motivation for writing. I'm just spending too much of my time reading and commenting on other people' s stuff.

But I have managed around 6,000 words so far (not all of them in NaNo time - I started early), and have come up against a small wall - the one called research. I'm at a point in the novel where I am about to make some things happen to the main character, but I'm not sure of the details of the situation, and I need to know them accurately, so the outcome works (otherwise what follows on will be "wrong"). It's a bit like in a crime novel, where you want someone's arm to be crushed in a certain machine, but if that machine doesn't operate in such a way for that crushing to happen, you can't write the scene. Sorry if I'm being confusing. I'm one of those paranoid writers who can't bear to talk about exactly what they're writing about.

So do I stop and go away and do research? A bit hard right now as it will probably mean interviewing an expert, and I don't have time. I could resort to books - I've already tried the internet and it doesn't have what I need (amazing but true!). I might just have to fudge it and hope that what I guess to be the correct situation is pretty close to accurate. And race off to the library as soon as I can.

My other option is to stop working on this novel and go back to the YA novel I was working on last month. Except I have no idea what happens next in that one either. This really is the biggest problem, I think, for many writers who can't do it full-time. The physical writing is not the issue - I type fast enough to do 1000 words an hour. It's the place inside my head where I plot and experiment and go what if? It's too full of other mush. Patience, I think, patience. NaNo is not a stick, it's a carrot!

Writers and Printers

Where would we be without our printers? Even in this age of the "paperless office" (yeah, right!), and even though quite a few publishers now accept email queries, if not email submissions, we still live and die by our printers. Gone are the days when a dot matrix printer was acceptable - now most people expect laser quality. It's hard to believe how disposable printers are made to be, as if our whole intent now is not only to use more and more paper, but to also have printers that are incredibly cheap and if the drum wears out, it's cheaper to buy a new printer than a new drum. Hello, landfill.

Everyone has their most-loathed manufacturers, both in printers and computers. Many years ago I had a Compaq laptop and the service provided when it broke down was so abominable that I swore I'd never buy anything with Compaq on it again. (Try, for example, being told that the power unit had to be sent to Scotland to be fixed! It'd only take 4-5 months.) And the fact that HP bought Compaq didn't improve things. I and my friends have a long history with HP's inkjet printers that defies all logic.

A printer that will print page numbers only at the top of the page, not the bottom? A printer that ignores all page settings and always gives you 1cm margin at the top? A printer that sucks up extra pages whenever it feels like it? And we all know that the reason printers are so darned cheap these days is because the manufacturers are making billions out of charging us megabucks for the ink refills. And most of the time, the ink hasn't actually run out, it's just down to about 20%, which is "below operating capability".

But a recent purchase by friends really wins first prize for manufacturer sneakiness. They bought a fairly expensive model so they could print photos and things for school projects. As the supplied ink cartridge ran out not long after purchase (because of course you never get a full one with a new printer), they took it up the street and had it professionally refilled. Before they knew it, the computer screen started showing messages warning them that since they hadn't used a manufacturer's cartridge, their warranty was now voided. (Same cartridge, mind you, just new ink.)

You might say, fair enough, because there are people who use ultra-cheap replacements and then claim there's something wrong with the printer. But hang on a minute, even HP produce a slightly cheaper version of their own cartridges. What is so bad about using a different brand of replacement anyway? Aren't we entitled to find a cheaper brand?

However, the final straw has been that now the printer won't print at all. It keeps telling them there is a paper jam, when there isn't. There is nothing wrong with this printer, other than the fact that somehow HP have found a way to make it shut down if you use the "wrong" ink. Bad move, HP. You have finally, irrevocably, joined my list of manufacturers whose products will never grace my office again.

And if all the people who have been badly treated by BigPond ever get together and boycott them, they'll be out of business in a second. We need effective complaining campaigns, we need to make manufacturers get their act together and we need to stop buying plastic crap that doesn't last the distance. OK, I'll get off the soapbox now.

Nearly Cross-eyed

This week is marking week (or grading, if that's what you call it). Giving students a number or a letter for their writing is always a tricky business - after all, I'm not a publisher, so how will my HD or Credit or 15/20 really have any bearing on what a publisher might accept? But it does, somehow. As a professional writing teacher, part of what I am supposed to know is the elements of good writing. I would hope also that I recognise great writing when I read it. The one thing I try not to be is subjective. Therefore, although a horde of really bad vampire novels from students a few years ago completely turned me off the genre, if a current student wants to write a vampire novel, I'll give it my best as a teacher in terms of comments and constructive critiquing. I must say, though, that anyone who still doesn't know how to use commas and fullstops after two years drives me nuts!

One of my favourite quotes is "All the colleges in the world cannot turn a bad writer into a good one. But good teaching can teach you how not to write." Alistair Cooke. I've seen quite a few students over the years who have started out as fairly ordinary writers, but worked hard and eventually found their own voice and style, and then surged ahead in terms of producing very good writing. I've also seen students who have talent and can write terrific pieces, but don't have the persistence and stamina to complete a whole novel, or even rewrite a short story to a publishable standard.

It's as if they thought it would happen like magic - that they'd come into the course, write a few gems that would gain instant acclaim, and then a novel would appear. Without having to actually sit down for hours and days and weeks and write the darned thing, of course, or (heaven forbid) rewrite it several or a dozen times. I've also seen one or two talented poets who have written some great poems that everyone has raved about, they've had a couple published in magazines, and then decided they don't need to rewrite anymore, or even take much notice of comments. And their poetry has started to die on the page and become messy or unfocused.

After a whole year of working with three classes (an average of 40-50 students usually), it's interesting to sit back at the end and think about each student and where they might be heading and what they'll do next. There are some who never surprise me - a couple of years later I meet up with them and they're often doing some job like shop assistant or takeaway cook. Nothing wrong with that, but they're not writing either.

So it's this time of year also where I ask them - how are you going to keep writing after you graduate? Who is going to make you write? No one. No one except you. If you want to be a writer or a poet, now you have to set your own goals and deadlines, practise your craft, read widely, and continue to feed your inner writer with words and images and writing. Self-discipline and perserverance are the hardest skills to acquire and, in the long run, may well be the most valuable. Your writing will continue to improve, forever and ever, if you feed it regularly and write on a regular basis.

Reviews

On one of my Yahoo group lists, there are posts at the moment discussing what you can do about awful reviews, apart from jump off a cliff. Some people have suggested extracting one sentence (the most positive one, even if you have to take it out of context) and using it on your website. As in "While the beginning of this novel was heart-stopping, the rest of it put me into a coma" - you take out the "this novel was heart-stopping" and discard the rest.

Another tactic was to make the reviewer a character in your next book and kill him/her off. It's easy to understand why famous writers who get dozens of reviews simply stop reading them. It can become a form of self-torture. Reviewers have all sorts of agendas, hidden and open. Sometimes an editor will select a reviewer because they are known to have differing views on a topic (especially any kind of political book). It might be that in the past, the reviewer has been slighted or insulted in some way by the author, so it's revenge time.

The hardest thing is not to respond. Occasionally people do, especially when a review is patently unfair or biased, or just plain wrong in its assertions. But I've been in the position of being reviewed by someone I'd got on the wrong side of in the past, and when I saw that person's name on the review, my heart plummeted. With good reason. Friends commiserated with me, but to complain would have made me look petty. You have to take it on the chin, and move on.

In this morning's newspapers, there are two reviews of Alice Sebold's new novel The Almost Moon. You would think the reviewers had read two different books. One reviewer called it the worst second novel she'd ever read. She also said "this story is one hell of a sorry mess". Ouch! The other reviewer liked it. She didn't rave over it (so reading between the lines, you could think maybe it wasn't as good as she'd hoped) but she did say "a powerful study in the sadder, madder forms of love". After The Lovely Bones, I imagine any novel Sebold published next was going to suffer in comparison. Let's hope she ignores the reviews - by now she's probably half-way through her next novel, and just as well.