What's a Write Out?

If you live in or near Melbourne, you'll be able to participate in what I think is Australia's first Write Out next Saturday afternoon. Where I teach at Victoria Uni TAFE (in Professional Writing & Editing), we're always keen to try new things, especially when they benefit our community of writers (that's everyone who's interested!). We've been running very successful Writers in Conversation events for a couple of years, and now have a range of short courses as well as our diploma course and online subjects.

So - what is a Write Out? It's an afternoon of writing, in the cafeteria at our Werribee campus. Imagine a large room (with food and hot drinks, of course, for energy!) full of writers, all ... writing! For those who need some sparkers, there'll be writing prompts, exercises and games. For those who just want to come and write, and feel inspired to get stuck into their current - or a new - project by being surrounded by hardworking writers, there'll be a corner for you, too. That's the corner I'll be in, by the way, surrounded by pirate gear to inspire me.

Bring notebooks and pens, or your laptops (charge them up first because power points may be scarce), and if you think the noise might distract you, bring earplugs, too. Or your mp3 player to listen to. Everyone is welcome to come along and it is FREE.
Where: Cafeteria, Building 1A Werribee campus of Victoria Uni, Hoppers Lane, Werribee.
When: Saturday 17th July, 1pm-3.30pm.
More info: email Isabelle.Lebouder@vu.edu.au or phone 9919 2681.

Style and Language or Plot?

What makes you love someone's books? Yes, it's the genre or the subject or the characters. But a novelist who writes different kinds of novels can still command a following, simply because they write so well that you feel like you'd read anything of theirs! I've felt this way about a few writers over time - Elizabeth Berg, Anne Tyler, Alice Munro, T.C. Boyle (even though at times TCB is so confronting!), to name a few.

Recently I read a Berg novel that left me floundering. Dream When You're Feeling Blue was a great read - I was particularly interested in how she dealt with historical details - until I reached the last 20 pages. At that point, the plot took a bizarre turn that, as a reader, I totally rejected. Perhaps if she had extended the novel by another 20 pages or more, she could have convinced me that what the characters did at the end was believable. Instead I felt short-changed, and somewhat tricked. Nevertheless, I do love her writing, her way with words, her ability to create a 'real' world and engaging, complex characters.

Sometimes we continue to read an author because they deliver the same quality goods, time after time. And then you grow out of it. I have loved Janet Evanovich's novels for years, and judged them by the number of times I laughed out loud or at least smiled. However, by Number 13, the whole scenario felt tired, very tired. There are only so many times a character can bounce between two hunky guys while solving crimes with a multitude of disasters along the way. When dollars for book buying are scarce, this is the kind of book I've stopped buying.

And sometimes, thanks to the public library nearby, we try someone new, or someone we haven't read for a while, and see how it goes. Some years ago, I did read a Nelson DeMille book - Plum Island. It was OK. And I watched the movie, The General's Daughter. So while browsing my public library shelves (something that's a lot harder to do online!), I thought I'd give The Gate House a try. Now, I have to admit that the story didn't totally grab me because the main character seemed a bit lame. Writers - beware lame characters! But at some point, around a third of the way through, I became aware that something strange was going on with the writing.

There was one chapter where the two characters kept smiling. He smiled, then she smiled. Then he smiled, and again, and she smiled. He smiled a lot more than her, maybe because he was lame and couldn't come up with anything more to offer her. But... hang on a moment ... isn't that the writer's job? To give us more from the characters than just a whole heap of smiling? If Mr DeMille was trying to convey that the main character was lame and all he had in his armoury of responses was a smile, then I think he needed to do a bit more work on his writing. From this reader's point of view, it wasn't technique, it was lazy writing, and maybe his editor needs to take this into consideration, too. (I know everyone always blames the editor, but I've worked with some great editors who do pay attention to this stuff and don't let you get away with it.)

Oh well, maybe I'm starting to sound like all those people who complained about JK Rowling's over-use of adverbs and dialogue tags. But writing is a craft, and a major part of that is both your use of language and your ability to rewrite and give the reader something that feels fresh and alive. That's what we have to work with - words. So let's make the most of them!
Have you got a great example of lazy language to tell us about? Or maybe you think that plot is more important and you can cheerfully ignore ordinary writing?

Hatchet Job

That's hatchet (small axe) - not Hachette, by the way. But it's what I'm faced with right now. My big historical pirate novel, Pirate X, is to be published by UQP next year. I've been working on this for around ten years (on and off) and I guess it's a lesson in perseverance. Originally it was 120,000 words, whittled down to 115,000. That was before I learned how to make huge cuts to plot, rather than just a few words here and there. Then I went to an SCBWI conference in LA, where the person who read my 40 pages for a manuscript consultation basically shredded it with no encouragement whatsoever. (Warning: Beware compulsive shredders. This person was not an editor or agent or publisher.)

That was enough to make me put the book away in my bottom drawer for a couple of years and try to move on. But it wouldn't let me go. I wrote other pirate stories in the meantime, which sold very well, and kept talking about this story during school visits. Because kids wanted to know how come I was so obsessed with pirates! So finally I was able to go back to the manuscript and start again, keeping in mind that despite a lot of positive responses from publishers originally, they all said it was too long!

Draft Number 7 was where the hatchet first came out. I ended up with 80,000 words, and something that was starting to get a lot more interest from publishers, but ... After eight years, and many many thousands of words in different drafts, I had a hard time standing back from it and seeing what else needed to happen with it. Funnily enough, that was when I started teaching a new subject called Story Structure. No longer could I just think about how structure worked, I had to teach it in a way that showed students what it was and how to apply it to their own novels and scripts.

Cut to June 2010. I had a contract for Pirate X. The manuscript had a deadline. And when I pulled out all my research and then looked for what new references were now available, I received a bit of a shock. One new reference in particular basically blew the first half of my novel out of the water! I checked - yes, this new information was solidly backed up. What should I do? Continue on my original path? Or take in the new research? When I pulled out the manuscript (draft 8) and read it, the way was clear. That version had a big, saggy, boring middle. If I was a bit bored reading it, what about everyone else?

Decisions were made. New material was noted, with timelines and dates and names. A new beginning was necessary. After nearly two weeks, I'm still only about 25% of the way through the hatchet job on this novel, and I'm not worrying at this point about either characterisation, setting or the quality of writing. It's all about plot and structure. About hacking and cutting and moving great chunks around (or deleting them). I hope that in about a week's time, I'll have a "rough cut" of the novel that I'll print out in order to see what I have. It'll be rough, it'll be jagged around the edges, it'll probably still be bleeding! But hopefully it'll be story with pacing and excitement and plot twists and tension, and then I'll fix the rest.
(By the way, Queen Anne's Revenge is the name of Blackbeard's ship which does feature in my novel. Unfortunately the cafe wasn't open the day we were in Beaufort, NC.)

Now I Am Bigger

Today - Monday 28 June - is a pretty amazing day for me. Two of my books are being released on the same day! As tomorrow I'm having a celebration for Now I Am Bigger, I thought I'd highlight this book today, and One Perfect Pirouette in a couple of days (it's being launched after the school holidays).

This is what the back cover of Now I Am Bigger says:

Now I Am Bigger captures all the excitement and wonder of a small child's world, when every day brings something new – new teeth, new words, new shoes, new bed – and every little change is very, very BIG.

And this is from the Penguin website (who distribute the book):

When you're very little, time doesn't mean anything. What is an hour? A day? Are we there yet? Time is measured in growing, and in accomplishing new things like walking and growing teeth and eating by yourself, and most exciting of all, discovering the power of words and learning to talk. So much of little kids lives is about is now - 'I can wear real shoes now with laces'. I wanted to try and capture their world, where everything, almost every day, is new. It's a very busy, intense and wonderful time!

It's a picture book, with beautiful illustrations by Nina Rycroft, published by Working Title Press. Working with Jane Covernton and Nina was a great experience, with a beautiful result. The story in the picture book is told in poems. It takes a child from birth to around age three - that time when you move from your cot into your first big bed (remember?)! The poems work on sound and rhythm, rather than rhyme, and I love to read them aloud.
In fact, tomorrow I'll be doing exactly that, at Story Time at my local public library. I'll be faced with around 20-30 little kids, and it'll be a good test to see if I can keep them enthralled!!
Here's a poem from the book:

DOG

who is this?
not my mummy
she isn’t furry

who is this?
not my daddy
he doesn’t have
a wet black nose

who is this?
not Grandma
she doesn’t bark

who is this?
not Grandpa
he doesn’t lick

who is this?
this is Dog
furry, wet-nosed
barking, licking
Dog

hello, Dog!

Also this week, Dee White is featuring me on the Boomerang Book Capers blog - it's a busy week indeed.

Truth in Fiction

One of the things that children's authors often do is school visits. Some people dread them, but I've found it's a great experience and a chance to find out what kids think about all sorts of things. But it did take me a little while at the beginning to get the hang of it. Firstly, the kids don't want a pile of facts, nor do they want to hear advertisements for your books. What they want is stories - more stories like the ones you wrote, or stories about the stories!

Farm Kid was my first verse novel for upper primary readers, and although it started as a bunch of poems about me on our farm way back when, it did develop into a story about a family who lose their farm because of a severe drought. I show photos of a lovely green farm, and then I show one of a Victorian farm paddock that is totally dead. Just one lonely rabbit in the middle. And then I tell the kids that I wrote a fictional story about a family losing their farm because, to me, the newspaper articles never showed the real truth of that situation.

Then I say how often fiction can tell the truth and make something real in a way that facts never seem to manage - and the kids always get it! I see them nodding, and looking at the photos again, and I read some of the poems. This always makes me think about books that have pretended to be memoirs and turned out to be made up, and how this makes readers angry (not to mention publishers who then have to pulp the book). It's something we demand of fiction and non-fiction - the truth - but in different ways. Perhaps with fiction it's more about the emotional truth of a character and a story, and this is part of where voice comes from.

Today, in Australia, our government politicians went into a room and when they came out, we had a new prime minister. Julia Gillard. At lunchtime, there was a press conference on TV, with Ms Gillard delivering her first speech. Very lovely it was, too. Well-delivered, passionate, and said in a voice that promised many things, including a new and better future. And I thought again about truth in fact and fiction, and why we get so upset about politicians who lie and deceive. Perhaps it's because they continually offer hope (whatever you hope for, they'll promise to deliver) and so rarely carry out their promises.

We'll see how our new PM goes, and whether she'll be just like all the others. In the meantime, I'm going back to reading novels where the author has delivered on their promise between those pages!

Sydney and the CBCA Conference

I've just spent five days in Sydney, with two highlights - a school visit to Avalon Public School, and the NSW Children's Book Council conference. It was a long but enjoyable bus ride to Avalon, with views out across the ocean and a great people-watching opportunity. The students asked excellent questions and I was welcomed by everyone.

The conference went for two days, and featured speakers such as Marcus Zusak, Bob Graham, Glenda Millard, Ursula Dubosarsky, Tohby Riddle and James Roy. There was a bookshop that I tried to stay out of (without success) and lots of fellow writers to catch up with. The conference went well and everyone enjoyed it. I got to meet lots of teachers and librarians and talk about books.

On Friday evening, we were entertained by the launch of Jackie French and Bruce Whatley's new book about Queen Victoria's underpants - including a version of Queen Victoria (above) who did indeed show us her underpants! It was quite funny to visit the Queen Victoria Building the next afternoon and see the statue of the real queen out the front. I also wandered through the Strand Arcade, which was built in 1890, and took photos to add to my historical research of that time.

One of the most interesting sessions was a panel of four publishers talking about ebooks - when are they planning to release ebooks (most said now) and how will the marketplace change. It wasn't at all reassuring to hear them talk about how they think writers and illustrators might be paid, or how much. One said she would happily pay her authors 50% of nett receipts, but her bosses would never approve. They also said they thought the prices of ebook readers would come down a lot in the next few years (like DVD players are now about $30 whereas once they were $1000), but also maybe the price of ebooks. Gulp. So instead of 15% of maybe 60% of $14.99 (if you're lucky), authors will get 15% of 60% of $4.99.

And after that session, on my walk along George Street, I ventured into the Mac store and watched about 20 different people playing with iPads, and not one person was reading a book. But also things are so up in the air at the moment, with so many possibilities and new options (and disputes looming), that I think it's impossible to predict where any of this might be in two years time.

So I'll keep writing, and instead of walking through the city, I'll be back walking in the bush - leaving skyscrapers behind and focusing on the tiny little cities that inhabit old, wet logs!

The Book Community Around You

Quite a few years ago, I presented a radio show on 3CR, a community radio station here in Melbourne. It was called Writers At Work, and it's still going, now hosted by Jan Goldsmith (Jan joined me in the last year or two I did the show, and then carried it on). Now there are quite a few community radio stations around, providing people with the opportunity to have their own show and share their interests and passions with others.

Last week, I sat on the other side of the panel and was interviewed by Denise Hughes (who is also a PWE student) on WynFM. Which was a lot of fun! Denise records the show and then Jacqui, who runs the Collins Bookshop in Werribee, creates YouTube videos out of them, using photos and book covers. I'd never thought of doing this before - the focus on YouTube seemed to be film. But Jacqui has done a great job, and her bookshop has its own "spot". The first part of the interview is here, and it's been uploaded in four parts, so you can just click on the next one to continue listening.

Also this week I have been organising celebrations for my two books that are coming out very soon. Somehow they have both ended up being released on the same day - 28th June! But again, my local community have been really helpful. Now I Am Bigger is being launched at Story Time at my local library, and One Perfect Pirouette will be launched at the Sun Bookshop in Yarraville. Dates and times announced here soon! Also, a friend of mine has a stepson who happens to be a terrific graphic designer and has his own business, Juncture Creative, so he's been doing invitations and bookmarks for me.

In the drive to be on the bestseller lists (a nice dream...) or even just to get a bunch of great reviews for your new book, it's easy to forget the support and encouragement that's all around us. Thanks, everyone!

Eeek! Ebooks and Downloads!

The book news this year has been all about e-books. Ebooks. E books. Well, maybe the consensus has come down on the side of ebooks. Who knows? BEA used e-books (and there has just been a conference called DigitalBook2010). The sellers are using eBooks (I guess to line up "capitally" with iPad and iPhone). Borders are now advertising their Kobo eBook reader. Maybe the sellers (as usual) will determine what we call these things. For now, they're all crowding into the market and the reviewers are scrambling to assess which one is best, or which one might do everything you want it to do. No one has yet advertised one that will vacuum my lounge room while I read, so I'm holding off for a while.

But while I was typing this, an email popped up, as they are wont to do. This one was from Optus (an ISP and mobile phone provider here in Australia), who wanted me to sign up for their new plan for the iPad. $50 Pre-Paid gets you UNLIMITED^~ data. Notice the funny little symbol next to the word "unlimited". I clicked on their handy little Buy Now button and in the fine print was told this:
Unlimited data voucher:Any data or credit on your service must will be used before unlimited data can be accessed. No rollover on Unlimited data expires after 30 days.
What on earth does that mean? Do I get free unlimited data download or don't I? What do I have to pay to get it? And isn't that a weird way to look at it?

My interpretation is that I pay X dollars, and I have to use what they give me first (3GB) and then after that everything is free - but only for 30 days. Then what? And this is the huge issue that is quickly emerging here in Australia. Maybe not overseas where mobile/cell phone costs are different and based on different modes and plans, but here the companies are falling over each other, trying to offer seemingly amazing deals, which nobody can understand when it comes to the "fine print". It's not just me. Quite a few reviewers are commenting on this as well.

This was all brought home to me this week when a friend told me about her latest phone bill. She has an iPhone, and has probably a dozen apps on it. She leaves it turned on all the time for incoming calls, but her latest bill shows that every night, the phone has been connecting to the internet without her knowledge and downloading updates for the various apps she has. For half an hour at a time, not just 5 or 10 seconds. She said she had set the phone not to do this, but it is still doing it.

I said to her that my impression was that that was where the big money was going to be. Not in the phones themselves, but the apps. "They're cheap," she said. "A couple of dollars each." But there are now 255,000 apps available, and quite a few of them are between $5 and $15. Not cheap. And not when they are using your download time to update themselves. So where does that leave ebooks?

A lot of people have a problem with the ebook being "unshareable". I don't lend many of my books, but I do have a sharing system with some of my friends. And when I lend to someone and they love the book, they buy one of their own. But so far, many ebook readers don't allow "sharing" (although this does seem to be changing a little). I was horrified when Amazon was actually able to "take back" books that buyers had downloaded. Connecting to Amazon for a new download apparently gave them access to what was on your Kindle and they decided to take some titles back! I'd like to see them do that with the custard pie I ate today.

Compared with 12 months ago, ebooks have leapt into our world with a resounding thump. All those in publishing who were saying true taking up of ebooks was 2-3 years away yet have been proven waaaaay wrong. Now publishers and suppliers (like Apple and Amazon etc) are battling over price structures and who gets a cut of what. As an author, I can see a lot of feathers flying out there in the arena at the moment, and am cautiously checking my contracts to see what I agreed to in terms of ebooks (up till now it's usually been phrased quaintly as "electronic publishing" or something similar). Any contract that says ebook rights will be negotiated separately in the future gives me hope.

What is happening now is both exciting and scary. I'm not buying an ebook reader until the dust settles a bit. I still remember someone years ago who had a Beta video player!! And I want to play with them first. I want to see what each one does, and whether they do what I want in terms of reading needs. I already know an ebook reader would save me several kilos of luggage weight when I go away. But I want more. Anyone for a version that vacuums?
And what do you think about ebook readers? Do you have one? Are you going to buy one? Do tell...

First Draft, and then...

It's easy to hang on to your first draft. And hard to let go of it. Especially when it seemed to come in a fantastic rush of inspiration. It was like a gift, seemingly so perfect and original when it burst out of you that you can't imagine how it could be improved. 99 times out of 100, that usually means it needs a heap of reworking! Yes, very occasionally (less often than you think) a story does come like a gift, placed in your lap with reverence and awe. I've had one or two poems like that, and hardly had to change a word. Goodness, one of them was even semi-rhyming and every rhyme worked like magic. It's never happened again!

But mostly what we come up with in a first draft is actually us finding our way into what we really wanted to say. It's only in subsequent drafts that we hone in on the real story, the real poem. And I think it's only in those drafts that we find ways of deepening and strengthening what was, very often in the beginning, more like an anecdote. Developing layers of meaning and creating something that leaves the reader with "something to go on with" takes time, patience and, most of all, a willingness to acknowledge that the piece needs more.

Often in workshopping, that's the puzzle to be solved. What you read sounds great, reads well, flows, entertains. But at the end you are left with a sense of ... and? You can't quite put your finger on it but something is missing, something that would satisfy the deeper part of your reading self. You're not sure what it is, but it's not there yet. This can be a huge challenge when it's time to make your comments. To say "something's missing" is of no use to the writer. "What?" they ask. "What is it the piece needs?" And unless you can answer, you're no help at all!

Today, I had to answer this question for someone, and despite years of workshopping and grading student writing, I still struggled to define it. I said words like "substance" and "depth" and "meat". They sound a bit pathetic, don't they? And theme didn't quite cover it, because when you talk about theme, sometimes people go haring off and starting inserting messages instead. It's partly about showing instead of telling, but it's more about what's holding the story up underneath. How would you define the urge to tell a story that "means something", without falling into moralising?

In the end, I came back to the question: why? Why does the character feel like this? Why do they perceive the world in this way? Why do they need to behave in this way, react, act, think? What drives them? How can you show this through the story, without explaining? How can you go beyond the surface to the hidden depths? What, in the story, will subtly reveal what's really going on? Lots of questions, but that's fine. A one-line prescription doesn't work for anyone. It's only by questioning, over and over, that we gradually sink further and further into what truly propels our characters through a story.

And no, this wasn't War and Peace we were discussing. It was a picture book! Thank you to the person I was talking to, because it made me really think about it yet again.

Mentors and Monsters

This week I've been reading a very interesting book of essays, lent to me by my friend, T. There are some great experiences between these covers - yesterday I read about a woman whose mentor/monster was Susan Sontag. It can be a crucial turning point in a writer's life, to have the kind of mentor who changes your writing, your way of regarding the life of writing, and how you put words down on the page. Mentorships have been gaining in popularity here over the past few years. First the Australian Society of Authors offered them, then the Victorian Writers' Centre. I read some of the early reports from the ASA scheme, and those being mentored talked of having someone experienced to simply engage with and bounce off. No manuscript editing was involved (a common perception of a mentorship - like having a personal editor).

One of my favourite essays was by Alexander Chee, whose 'mentor' was Annie Dillard. He uses the term loosely, as she was a teacher who had a great influence on him. What I found interesting was that, like many others writing for this collection, he didn't really understand her influence until later. I loved the line: "In that first class, she wore the pearls and a tab collar peeped over her sweater, but she looked as if she would punch you if you didn't behave." When told they had to hand in their drafts triple-spaced and questioned it, she replied, "I need the room to scribble notes in between your sentences."

Other contributors talk about famous writers as mentors who barely talked to them about their writing but nevertheless inspired them in some way. Joyce Carol Oates, as I imagine many writers would, talks about several different people who influenced her - The Rival, The Friend, and the early influences of particular books. Julia Glass talks of finding an editor who becomes a lifelong friend, mentor, muse and confidant, as well as editor of her novels. Elizabeth Benedict describes her relationship with Elizabeth Hardwick, as do several other writers in the book. Hardwick was a teacher at Columbia and seemed to have had an effect on many of her students, both positive and negative.

As well as finding this collection quite inspiring, it's also making me curious about the novels the various contributors have written. Alexander Chee appears to only have one novel published so far that is still in print; Mary Gordon has four or five. Without spending lots of dollars, I'd like to track down their work and read it. On the other hand, Jonathan Safran Foer's insistence on calling his early romances with girls attempts to "mate" sounded so weird that it coloured the whole essay for me! And set me thinking about another blog I'd read recently where a writer's performance at an event had put that person off his books forever.

This writing life can be so tenuous at times. And it's clear from this book that new writers can be so easily influenced by the literary and/or famous. While the ASA mentorships sounded helpful, I've heard of others where a new writer has been influenced by their mentor to change and rewrite crucial parts of their novels, damaging both plot and an original, vital voice. Is this the mentor's role? To me, this is the danger. One writing teacher here in Melbourne is notorious for creating whole classes of students who come out at the end of the year sounding just like him. How can this be a good thing?

Yes, it's easy to be influenced. What female poet (including me!) hasn't gone through a stage of sounding like Sylvia Plath? But if you read widely, and read as a writer, you move through it and past it, and your writing and your own voice grows and strengthens. What it takes is practice, weeks and months and years of reading and writing LOTS. Not just one piece, or one style, or even one genre. We have so much to draw on these days - it's like an incredible banquet. If all you do is stick with the chicken wings, you won't get far.

When Readers Respond

Sometimes I think that writers of fiction for adults miss out a bit. They don't get to do school visits, and although the famous ones get fan mail, no doubt, I wonder if they ever get a group response. Book clubs don't count because that's people talking about your book without you being there, and you rarely get to hear what they say. And I've stood in book signing queues and heard what adults say to their favourite authors. Mostly it doesn't bear repeating!

But kids are so honest that it's scary. They speak from the heart about what they thought about your book, and what they liked and didn't like. I'll never forget a letter from a kid who said one of my books was great but "my brother said it was boring". It made me want to withdraw the book from all of the bookshops and rewrite it. Last week I received an email from a teacher-librarian at a school I'll be visiting next month (Avalon Public School). Two of the classes have been reading my verse novel,Farm Kid , and I was sent a collection of their responses. Instead of being asked to "analyse" the story, they were simply asked to write about how it made them feel.
Here are some of them:

This book is great with its descriptions but it is also very sad and this is probably the only book that does not have a happy ending which is why this book is different to other books. It has made me realize that it is not easy to live on a farm. Kye Year 4

I think Farm Kid is a sad book and a happy book. The contents of Farm Kid make you really think about life on the farm. Zack is a wonderful character and he must have such a hard life with all those complications. The mum and dad must be really worried about Zack and his sister growing up. Emma Year 4

Farm Kid was a very funny, exciting book at first but then it gradually got sadder and more emotional. I loved Farm Kid especially when Zack talked about his friend that was a bit of a dare devil. This was one of the saddest books I have read or been read to. Issy Year 5

It is like losing a part of yourself. A sad, sad situation for any child like Zack. Adam Year 5

I think that Farm kid is a very moving and emotional book because they make jokes about bad things and the little one line sentences can tell a whole paragraph of a story. Louis Year 5

It hit a spot. It touched my heart. I am crying in my heart. Zacharey Year 5

Farm Kid is very emotional. Every poem gets sadder and sadder. Then finally they have to move. The first poem about the farm – I like the way it repeats ‘farm is’. It is funny at first but it doesn’t have a happy ending. At first I was a little shocked that it was actually the end. Julia Year 5

I'm planning to put all of the responses on my website because they are amazing. They are all different - they see different things in the story. Yes, it's sad (although it does have a hopeful ending) but for me it was always about telling a real story, not a Hollywood or Disney version. Thank you, kids, for all of your responses. That's why I love writing for children.

Australian Kids Left Behind

Here in Australia we've just had this year's NAPLAN testing. Think "No Child Left Behind" transported (like a convict) to Australia, then add a government website that displays all the schools' results so the media can heap scorn on poorly performing schools, and that's what we've got. Many, many people are against it. Teachers were going to strike and refuse to administer the tests. John Marsden has made it clear that he thinks they are damaging and ill-informed. But somebody in our government decided it was a great idea. Maybe they'd been on a junket to the USA at the height of NCLB and thought: Gee, we could do that, too.

So I was fascinated to hear that Diane Ravitch, who was Assistant Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, and a great proponent of NCLB, come out and say I WAS WRONG. Here is a quote from her interview published in Slate:

People are being punished because of test scores. We've created a system where Mrs. Smith is going to teach nothing but what's tested. The arts aren't tested and the sciences aren't tested, and the conservative response to that is, "Well, test everything." But the problem is—and this is another thing I found myself recoiling from—then you'll do nothing but test. People tend to scoff at anything that's subjective, but it's the essays and the projects that make it fun for kids and give them an opportunity to show comprehension.

I don't know a huge number of people in the US, but many I do know are either teachers or know teachers. NCLB was wrong from the beginning, just as NAPLAN here is wrong. People will say, "What is wrong with testing if it shows which schools are under-performing?" I would say, "Under-performing according to who?" I was recently at a school where I was supposed to be doing writing workshops with the kids. That was fine. What wasn't fine was that I was supposed to teach them how to write a story that would get a good NAPLAN mark.

I teach writing all the time, to adults, who have a much vaster reading and life experience to draw on in order to write a good story. Most of the time, they don't succeed. Much of the time, despite my experience as a teacher and writer, I struggle to give their work a grade. We have transparent criteria, based on collective experience, that we use, but sometimes it's still like trying to measure air. How on earth can a government testing system possibly test story writing and create marking criteria that covers every single child in Australia?

How can you mark a story by a child who is a refugee, writing about their life, against a story by a child who has written about their summer holiday in Bali? Except of course some bright spark decided to make that easier by stipulating the thing they all have to write about. I thought we got rid of that antiquated story-writing tactic back in the 1950s. Well, never mind my gripes about creative writing. I'm on the side of the teachers who say that what inevitably happens is they have to teach to the tests. Again, I've heard many US teachers say they had to stop reading aloud in the classroom - in fact, they had to stop most things that weren't directly related to the tests.

And they wonder why kids hate school? (See Ravitch's comment again above.) She also said:
To me it's almost self-evident that No Child Left Behind is a failure, but people will say, "Well, Congress doesn't think so." It's like everybody agrees except for the teachers, who are the ones who have to do it.
And that is already our biggest problem here. Julia Gillard has signalled quite clearly that she's not backing down on NAPLAN at all, and has reluctantly agreed to make some changes to the website in order to make sure teachers did administer the tests this month. But once something becomes ingrained in a government system, they sure do hate backing down and dismantling it. Never mind the money they waste on other things.

Gillard is also supposedly running an enquiry into school librarians. As I've said here before, there are hardly any left so that won't take long. The bottom line is, if you really want to fix a state school system, you put more money into it. Not by giving kids laptops, but by giving them real, everyday, useful resources like books, more teachers and school librarians. It doesn't matter what medium kids will use in the future for work and leisure, if they can't read well, they'll fall further and further behind in this world. Nobody needs a test to tell them that!

Being Famous or Not

A few years ago, two other writers and I got together for a day in San Antonio to talk about writing and publishing, and share our experiences and ideas. One of the things we did was to look at a book I had bought called Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer by Bruce Holland Rogers. It had a lot of great topics in it, including discipline, procrastination, rituals and whether you should quit your day job. He also talks about "Matters of State" - meaning depression, affirmations, negative thinking and those around you who may encourage or block your writing.

The strange thing is that we sat there and did an exercise from the book called Pig Will and Pig Won't. Strange, because I've just gone through that book twice and I can't find it! Pig Will and Pig Won't are from a picture book by Richard Scarry. How the mind does like to trick us. Nevertheless, the exercise is about imagining what might happen if you are incredibly successful with your writing - what might be the great things about this, and what might be the negative impact. The results, when we shared them, surprised me. We all had entirely different ideas about both answers. (And if I could find my notes, I'd share them, but this must be my week for losing stuff, so I'll add them to the textbook, bill, magazine and brochure that are somewhere in my office).

I remember that some of my negatives were to do with not being able to walk down the street without being recognised, and much higher expectations on your next book. The positives are always to do with being able to give up your day job! Except then you have to entertain yourself at home seven days a week, and procrastination becomes a major issue instead of a small worry. All this, of course, was brought back to mind by the documentary I watched on Saturday night. It was "J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life", made in 2007 while she was working on the final Harry Potter book (first broadcast Dec 2007).

I missed the first half, but in the second half the interviewer seemed to decide to get tough with the questions. Hence we had something along the lines of "The media says you have 574 million pounds - do you have that much money?". To which she eventually answered that she didn't have that much but she did have many millions of pounds. And the result of this is that she gets asked all the time for money. She has an assistant to help her respond to requests and decide to whom she will donate. And she does give away a lot of money, mainly because "unlike most politicians" she knows what it is like to be very poor and what it does to your quality of life.

99.9% of us will never earn as much as JK from our books. Most of us are doing well if we come anywhere near earning a living. Hence the term: don't give up your day job! But, going back to Pig Will and Pig Won't - what does being a famous writer actually mean? What restraints and extra expectations might it put on you? Can anyone understand what it means until it happens to them? When you're writing your first book, there are no deadlines, no one waiting for it, no one to tell you how it should be. With the second book (and those thereafter) comes a new set of expectations, issues and challenges. Something to think about.
And now I'm going back to find that darned Pig exercise!

Old, Old Books

One of the things I've been researching this week (among many others!) is books that were published in the 1890s, and specifically ones that could have been in a person's own library (this person was a school teacher). I found some great sites that sell antiquarian books online, and was even tempted to buy a few. Although there are some excellent booksellers in Melbourne so I think I could find some gems here if I wanted to.

Some of the books published back then are ones we still read today - Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde. Some sound so pedantic and boring that I can't imagine anyone reading them, even in 1900, e.g. The History of the Town and County of Poole; compiled from Hutchin's History of the County of Dorset....to which is added a Supplement, containing Several Curious and Interesting Particulars; with Many Additions and Corrections by the Editor.

There also wasn't much around for children. In Australia there was Coles Funny Picture Book (which had a few pictures but was mostly poems, some of which are 'badder' than Andy Griffith's current efforts). How about Songs for the Little Ones in Twilight Hours by Mrs Arthur Goodeve? Or The Black Cats and the Tinker's Wife by Margaret Baker, with illustrations in silhouette? And this is probably not for children, but I like the sound of A Prisoner of the Reds: The Story of a British Officer Captured in Siberia by Francis McCullagh.

All of these books were published in cloth-covered hardback, usually with embossed covers and spines, some with gold edging on the pages. I imagine that when new, they'd make a fine shelf of black, green, red and blue, with touches of gilt. In the picture above, they're showing their age now. But it took back to me the bookcase we used to have in the hallway in our old house. Most of the books had belonged to my grandfather, and I think he'd brought them with him from Scotland. I do remember the collection included The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, and some farming books.

What I also remember is a two-volume encyclopedia, published in 1898, which I used for school work. How was this possible? (Because I'm not 108.) Well, it was only really useful for things invented and in use before 1898. If we studied anything on steam engines or the Crimean War, it was perfect! But if I needed something on Mahatma Ghandi or aeroplanes, well... I had to look elsewhere. It had no photographs, only line drawings, and both volumes were huge and heavy. Yes, I'd love to still have it, and I have no idea what happened to it. I can't even remember the title or publisher. But I still remember trying to heave it off the shelf without dropping it on my foot.

If nothing else, in this age of ebooks and POD and my own groaning bookshelves, it was a reminder of times when books were not a common thing to buy or have in the home, and certainly not for poor people. Paperback publishing tranformed the availability of books to anyone and everyone, as did the Little Golden Books for kids. As I try to keep up with the latest on ebooks and iPads and Nooks, I keep feeling this hankering to go and buy something with a bit of gilt edging!

Always Learning

Recently, when I went to the Association of Writing Programs conference in Denver, one of the things I wanted to investigate (and then think more about) was the possibility of an MFA. Specifically, a low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. There are only about five colleges in the US that offer this - no university in Australia offers any kind of Masters that comes anywhere near what I am looking for. Low-residency means I could go for two-week summer/winter schools and complete the rest online with a tutor.

That wouldn't worry me at all. I did nearly all of my BA via distance delivery, and it suited me well at the time. It's probably the main reason I enjoy teaching online myself now. I wish online had been available back then! And the piece of paper is a by-product for me. What I want is the in-depth study, the opportunity, time and headspace to explore the ways in which I can make my writing better. I always want to make it better. When I stop wanting that, I think I'll stop writing. I'll go back to reading even more books than I do now, and thinking about how nice it would be to have a great garden.

But there are often opportunities closer to home. Last year I blogged about going to a talk at a local library given by Stephanie Laurens. I have no intention at all of writing historical romance, but I do write historical fiction, so I thought it was worth the effort (not much, honestly) of getting in my car and driving to the library. So simple to do, yet so many people who want to write don't even do that. She had a few things to say that made me think, most specifically about her level of discipline and the number of hours she spends every day on writing. A bit mind-boggling!

Today I went to another local library (I am blessed - a brand new library branch has opened within walking distance) to listen to a crime writer talk about writing crime novels. I had a feeling that for some of those there he was a little disappointing, but that may just be me trying to mindread, based on how they introduced themselves. 60-70% of those attending were only just starting out on writing, and more than half of those weren't really wanting to write crime. The writer, Jarad Henry, talked a lot about getting your facts right - who investigates crimes, how the police work, what actually happens at a crime scene.

I thought it was great. I picked up a few things I'd got wrong, a few more that I'd got right, thanks to interviewing a homicide detective a couple of years ago. In case you're wondering, yes, I write children's and YA fiction. I've also written a crime/mystery novel for older kids that hasn't sold yet, and one for adults that is for pure pleasure (but it'd be nice if it got published - I'm not holding my breath!) Mostly, I just enjoy listening to professional writers talk about their processes, their path to publication, what they've learned along the way.

I came home feeling inspired and enthusiastic all over again. Going into a bookshop and staring at the thousands of books on the shelves is not inspiring at all. All it tells me is how many books are out there! Listening to another writer talk about their writing life makes me realise, yet again, that it's not just me. I enjoy learning from others and I hope that never ends.

Learning From Other Forms

One of the classes I am teaching this semester is on story structure. Yes, we spend 15 weeks on nothing but that! I guess that's a reflection of how important I think it is, but also a reflection on how often I see it as an underlying fault in much of the writing I have to assess. One of the books I use a lot is Plot and Structure: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting and Plot That Grips Readers from Start to Finish (Write Great Fiction) by James Scott Bell. It's clear and well laid out, and has plenty of useful advice.

There are other books on plotting that I use bits of - The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler is one that deals well with using the hero's journey as a structure for films. Story by Robert McKee is another screenwriting book that is just as good for novels. And this is the thing - a lot of script books are valuable for novel writers because they tackle the issues to do with structure so clearly and so well.

We often talk to students about not confining your learning of writing skills to the one genre or form you want to write. Novelists can learn a lot about structure from screenwriting, but they can also learn a lot about dialogue. Studying poetry and having a go at writing it can teach novelists a huge amount about imagery and making the most of detail and description. I learned quite a bit about researching my fiction through books on nonfiction writing.

This week, my fellow teacher in story structure pointed out something I'd never thought about before (thanks, Michael!). He said that when you write a film script, you usually write a treatment first, or as well, and that of course a treatment is presented in a certain format (present tense, for a start). But he also made a great point about how to use it. If your script needs work, go back to the treatment and work on that first rather than messing around with the script itself. That way, you can easily see in those 12-15 pages where to change things, and experiment a bit, without making a bigger mess of the script itself.

I had been talking about outlining for novels, and of course the same thing would apply. Rather than struggle with the 300 pages of your novel, first go back to your outline (or synopsis) and rework that. If you've written it properly, it makes the revision so much easier. As I outline via diagrams, this would be really useful for me. This is what I love about teaching and writing - there is always something new to learn, a new idea or method that someone suggests that just might be the key to a problem you're wrestling with. Nothing is ever wasted!

Can you "Grade" Creative Writing?

The answer to this question presupposes that you believe creative writing can be taught. You can assume I do, because I teach in a creative writing course! But I like the way we emphasise the word "professional" in the title of our course, because we all believe that part of our job is to teach students about the real world of writing and publishing - not in order to put them off, or make them give up, but to be realistic about what it means to be professional, and to become published.

I had a conversation today with two students about their Thursday morning subject, Industry Overview. We have a number of guest speakers in to talk about various writing and editing "jobs", and we also talk about getting published. Today we had two publishers/editors talking about what they do and how they do it, and it's entirely understandable that students go away feeling a bit depressed about how hard it all seems.

My answer to them started with "If it was easy, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't mean anything". We all get rejections, especially in the beginning, and understanding how it all works, and how to get better - how to get "publishable" - is part of learning how to be a published writer. The exceptions really are the exceptions. Most writers spend a lot of years learning how to improve, and if you don't go in with the willingness to learn, you may have a very short writing career.

But the issue of grading comes into this, too. As teachers, we wrestle with this constantly. You could say "who are you to stick a grade on a short story or a poem?" and that is a good question. But we're teachers because we've been out there in the industry, we're published, we have (usually) a lot of years of experience behind us, and most importantly, we want to share that knowledge and help others (yes, there are some teachers who don't, so steer clear of them). We talk about assessment criteria, about that indefinable "wow" factor in a piece of writing, about revision and craft, and about students taking risks rather than writing safe.

What I have discovered over the years is that nearly all students want grades. They may not like getting a C instead of an HD, but they want to know where they are. It's human nature. In a professional course, regardless of all the helpful comments a teacher might make, or all the feedback in a workshop, a grade gives a writer an indication of where they are with that piece and what more needs to be done with it. I can't tell you how many times students have left their assignments in a box in our office, disregarding all the feedback we've spent a lot of time writing, all the suggestions, and just wanted THE GRADE. And the reality is: the grade is only one part of it. Every piece submitted is still a work in progress.

The grade tells you where you are now with that piece. But you as the writer decide where that piece will be in the next draft, the one after, and the one after that. I was at the Association of Writing Programs conference in Denver this month, and I went to all the sessions on grading and assessment. I was really interested in what other writing teachers thought about this, how they approached it, and discovered we all had similar experiences. I did get a lot of great ideas about how to further refine my processes and relate this to students. But someone raised a really good question - how do you grade a work in progress?

And the answer is - you grade it as a work in progress. We often see students workshop a story or a poem, then put it in for their final assignment with hardly anything changed, despite having received some really good feedback and suggestions. I liked what one person suggested. She gives first drafts a grade based on that version, and discusses with the student how they can go about revising in order to improve that grade. Yes, a bit of a carrot and stick process. But it feels like the process you go through in order to get published. Yes, this draft has potential, but it needs this and this and this, and then it might be publishable. That's a carrot most writers understand!

Have you ever done some kind of writing course? Did you get grades? What did you think about grades and the value you placed on them? I'd love to hear the student's point of view. (And yes, I have been a student - I love being a student - and I like getting grades, too. But I like constructive comments even better.)
And by the way, you've got one more day to put your hat in the ring to win a picture book - see the post below.

Win a Posse of Hammerhead Sharks!

Yes, I'm giving away a copy this week of my picture book, The Littlest Pirate and the Hammerheads. Posted anywhere in the world, or Australia.

All you have to do is respond in the Comments here, and tell me the answers to these two questions:

1. How many hammerhead sharks feature in the story?
2. Does your local bookshop stock any copies of this fun picture book? (Yes, you might have to go and ask!)
Or I guess you could say Fishpond or Amazon or Boomerang was your bookseller!
The Littlest Pirate and the Hammerheads

You've got until next Friday (30th April) to enter.

The Best Part of Research

There is nothing quite like writing about a distant place through many drafts of a novel, imagining how it might have looked 300 years ago, placing your characters there and having them walk, listen, watch and engage - and then getting to go there yourself. I have just returned from a trip to the U.S. where the first week was a conference, but the second week was all about on-the-ground research for my big historical novel, Pirate X (due out August 2011).
One of the first places my character, Will, goes to is Bath in North Carolina. It's up the Pimlico River, and it situated between Bath Creek and Back Creek (photo of Back Creek above).

In my head, I imagined there to be hills and forests around Bath. The only illustrations I have found have been of streets and houses. So when I finally drove into Bath last week, I was a bit astonished to find it's flat! No wonder they chose this place as the first capital of North Carolina. It was on water deep enough to dock largish ships, and there was plenty of room for houses and taverns, as well as a forest of pines that they harvested for turpentine and pitch. We spent most of the afternoon there, going through the four old houses and churches still standing, while I imagined Will walking along the creek and hearing the sound of wood chopping and sawing. Fantastic!
Earlier in the week, I had been in Charleston, South Carolina, and the pirate and dungeon walking tour I went on was terrific. Thanks to a great tour guide who answered all my questions and gave me some extra information for my novel. (No thanks to the guy who was our guide on the ghost tour that night - he was so bad that it's a wonder someone didn't leap out of their grave and thump him!) The Pink House above - literally called that - was one of the first taverns in Charleston, frequented by pirates in my era (1718) and well-preserved.

I think I took more photos of houses in Charleston than anything else. They were so amazing, and I would have loved to go through them all. The mansion above is one of many similar on the Battery and East Bay Street. I did visit the Rhett-Aitken House, which was fascinating, and reminded me a little of Ripponlea here in Melbourne.
South Carolina was full of blooming azaleas everywhere we went. These glorious bushes are at the entrance to the Boone Hall Plantation near Charleston (there is some great video footage on their website that will show you some of what we saw).

I made this research road trip with my friend, Kristi Holl (her blog on the trip is here) who was researching the Civil War, so I got to learn about that, too, including seeing an original field hospital at the Bentonville Battleground. I think we both went home with our heads full of the 18th and 19th century, totally re-inspired to start work again on our novels. What a way to write!

Denver Writing

First day in Denver and it snows. Now, it has never snowed in Melbourne as long as I've lived there so this was fun!
One free day, so we took a tour out of town. Too much snow to go up to the Rockies, but we went into the foothills, and to Red Rocks, where there is this amazing auditorium made out of the natural amphitheatre. The acoustics are amazing. Huge rock formations all around. You could do a poetry reading here without a microphone and be heard right up the top! Also saw elk eating grass on front lawns around houses, and some buffalo. And went to the Buffalo Bill museum. Hey, that's a tour - you go where they take you, and very often things you think will be boring are quite interesting!

The Association of Writing Programs conference started today. Non-stop sessions from 9am to 5.45pm and then more stuff on after that. Sue and I have tried to make sure we don't double up on sessions (there are so many to choose from, and sometimes there are three things on at once I want to go to). Today I've been to sessions on: getting students to write more fantastically, writing as smart girls, issues in grading creative writing, student mentoring partnerships, how to create poetry lovers in high schools. Plus the book fair,which I barely touched on - just wandered around for a while and talked to a few people.

I'm taking heaps of notes, and then Sue and I talk afterwards and write down all the ideas that have sparked for us from the sessions. Sue went to one this afternoon about using social media in the classroom - lots of great suggestions there for Facebook and everything beyond. Tonight we picked the brains of some of the great people who run various Writers in Schools programs. It's such a wonderful opportunity to meet other writing teachers and writers, let alone the information gathering. All I have to worry about now is the weight of my suitcase on the way home with all the magazines and books I'm collecting!