Resistance to Reading

Last week I requested a book from my local library - a historical novel - that was set in an era close to one that I'm researching. I was curious as to how the author had gone about weaving the historical detail into the story. It's something all historical novelists wonder about, I think - how others do it! But I'm struggling with this novel. I've read about 50 pages so far, and I feel like nothing has happened. There has been plenty of detail (that I examined with my writer's eye!) but the main character and the story are just not grabbing me.

When I get to this point with a book, I ask "Is it me?" Am I just not in the mood for it right now? Usually I know. I put aside The God of Small Things for nearly a year because I knew I wasn't in the mood for it - it was going to be a book that would require concentration that I just didn't have. When I did finally read it, I loved it. So it's a question worth asking. I've been reading a wide range of stuff lately, so I know it's not that I'm wanting more crime fiction (I can get on a roll with that and read ten in a row).

I think the problem with this particular novel is that it isn't offering me anything substantial. I have a writing book on my shelf that talks about how "a story is a promise". While we hear things like hooks and story questions talked about - in terms of that first chapter - what we really want in a novel is the promise of a great story and interesting characters, and I think this one (so far) is letting me down on both counts.

The main character is passive and her secret passion feels boring and derivative, and the story promised in the blurb is still a long way away from me, even after 50 pages. Maybe I'm too impatient, but I'm about to give up on it. I'm resisting any more pages because I don't want more of the same. But ... this got me thinking about how kids read. How does a child feel when they are expected to read a book, expected to enjoy reading, and yet find it a total chore?

Imagine everyone around you kind of watching you read. Teachers, parents, maybe siblings or friends. You're probably not too good at reading, but you know you're expected to do it, and do it well. But when you try, nothing interests or excites you. The grownups keep telling you that you just have to find a book you like. You think, How hard is that? But every book you take off the shelf is boring or stupid or has a lot of big words that you don't understand.

So you pretend to read and hope one day it'll happen for you. And maybe it will, or maybe it won't. There are lots of kids in your classroom and the teacher leaves you alone if you're pretending to read really well. As an adult, I have the option of throwing a book across the room if it bores me. As a kid, you have to read whether you like it or not. At this point, I think is it any wonder Andy Griffith's books sell so well? If you're resistant to reading, and suddenly there's a book that's rude and funny and makes you laugh out loud, and makes reading something you can do and something you WANT to do, wouldn't you want more of them?
(And no, I'm not going to say which book is going straight back to the library because it probably is me!)

Set Yourself a Writing Challenge

Every year for the past five years, a teaching colleague and I have set off for Hong Kong, where we teach writing classes, run PD sessions, do lots of writing consults/critiques and I do school visits. Our aim is simply to get people writing - any kind of writing. Last year we did a session on writer's block - this year we're taking HK writers on a writing walkabout. It's all about challenging people to think differently about their writing, to break out of "rules" and "shoulds" and enjoy the process and the ideas generation experience.

Last year, we set up a writing challenge - write one page a day for 28 days, and report in weekly by email. We had eight writers take it up, and when we arrived in HK, we got together and compared notes. It was a lot of fun, and many of the participants said they'd written a lot of pieces that otherwise might never have seen the light of day! I've tried similar things on my own. Once I bought a small school notebook and wrote a poem every day for 28 days. Yes, some of them were awful, a few were OK and a few were worth working on.

What surprised me the most was that, several years later, I found this notebook and realised that more than half of the poems I'd written had re-emerged later as new poems - or should I say, I'd thought they were new poems, but in fact I'd written a very early draft of them during the 28 days. Nothing is ever lost! It's simply filed away in your brain somewhere.

Now, of course, the ultimate writing challenge is gearing up. The conversation among writer friends is about "Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year?" Nano is the National November Write a novel in a Month frenzy. Last year, a friend who usually only writes short poems spewed out 160,000 words in the month! Others are inspired to write whole drafts of novels they've been thinking about for ages. Sometimes a writer will sit down and something completely new and unexpected will come out.

One day, that'll be me (the unexpected one). For now, I'm actually working on a different Challenge altogether. It's Angela Booth's 100 Day Challenge, working on nonfiction. I only have to do 20 minutes per day (I won't bore you with my list of tasks and goals) for 100 days. Let's see, that's ... 2000 minutes of writing, which is 33.33 hours, to be completed by 1st January 2011. Not 50,000 words in one month, but I figure I'll get just as much out of it, and along the way I'm cultivating the writing habit.

So if you feel as though your writing has been stagnating, or you're blocked in some way, the best strategy for moving yourself up and out of there is a challenge. Buy a notebook, commit to writing a page a day (or a poem a day) for 28 days, and stick to it! You will be surprised at what happens. Give it a go.

How Historical Does Fiction Need to Be?

This seems to be my year for writing a lot of historical fiction, mainly the Our Australian Girl series, but also a big revision of my pirate novel, Pirate X. I have one book about writing historical fiction on my shelves but it's old and pretty useless, so I was interested to see a new one out - The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction: Researching and Writing Historical Fiction by James Alexander Thom.

I've only just started reading it, but already he's saying some interesting things about what historical fiction is, and what history is. A few years ago, there was a bit of a stoush about Kate Grenville's book, The Secret River, with historians complaining that she'd taken liberties with "the facts". Thom makes some good points about this, such as:

To be blunt about it, much of the history of many countries and states is based on delusion, propaganda, misinformation, and omission.

Certainly, I think people now realise that, for example, in war that the history is written usually by the victors. And that the history of women and the poor is almost non-existent because scholars and historians of the time believed it wasn't relevant or important. Thom also says:

A good historical novelist has the same obligations as a good historian: to convey a truthful history, not perpetuate pretty myths.

He seems to be the kind of historical novelist who prides himself on deep research and accuracy, and perhaps that's a choice you make when you write historical fiction - whether you are going to stick to the facts you discover, or make history fit your story/plot.

I'm sure you've heard the saying, "Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story". With some historical fiction, it can be more a case of truth hampering a well-constructed plot. There's nothing worse than a plot that ambles along in a series of small episodes that don't ultimately go anywhere, and sometimes history is like that. Life does just trot along. Perhaps the key is in choosing a period in history where there is some cataclysmic event that you can lead up to, that will be your natural climax. From there, you have to make sure your characters also have the same rising arc in their personal journey through the story.

In revising Pirate X, I used, as extra research, two new books that hadn't been published when I wrote earlier drafts. I decided to take the new (different) material into account and change my story, but ultimately what I really focused on was the characters and how events affected and changed them. I think there is a spectrum in this genre - at the one end you have HISTORICAL fiction, where the author sticks absolutely to the facts and can cite a bibliography.

At the other end is historical FICTION, where history is a background but the author adapts if necessary. Pirate X is much nearer the first than the second, but I have quite a few imaginary characters in among the "real" ones. The key for me is to try to imagine what it was like back then, to imagine myself into my characters, and see through their eyes. That's the real challenge for a novelist.

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Novels for Research

The other day, someone asked me if I ever read novels as part of my research, and my answer was, "Yes." I know some writers would throw up their hands in horror, because there's always the spectre of accidental plagiarism, or the suspicion that you'd possibly end up writing more like the novelist than yourself. But I read lots of books all the time, of all kinds - it's when you stick to one author that problems like that can arise.

So why would I research by reading fiction? The same reason I watch movies. The atmosphere. The setting. A good writer takes me into their imaginary world (even if it's based on fact - which most historical fiction is) and helps me to imagine my characters in a similar world. For me, it's another version of actually going to that place. I was lucky to be able to go to South and North Carolina this year to do more research for my novel, Pirate X (due out in 2011).The trouble was that much of the coastline is now filled with houses and tourist developments, but it still helped when I found an isolated area to imagine it all looked like that once.

However, I wasn't able to go to Nassau, and I'm sure it looks nothing like it did in 1717 when it was a pirate hangout, filled with tatty tents, garbage and empty bottles! However, I did get hold of an old copy of James A. Michener's Caribbean, and skimmed parts of that for a sense of place. I did the same with sailing ships by reading some of C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian, and watching the Hornblower series and Master and Commander. I also crawled all over the Endeavour replica ship in Darling Harbour, Sydney.

Some time ago, as part of my research for a completely different story, I tracked down a copy of The Scourge of God by William Dietrich, which is about the Romans and Attilla the Hun. The level of detail and description in this book is astounding, and when I later visited Toulouse, it gave a whole new resonance to what I saw in the museums there. Historical fiction for me began (as it did for many readers my age) with Georgette Heyer, Mary Renault and Anya Seton, among others, but books like Dietrich's go far beyond these in terms of historical detail. I often read something that leads me into new research, and books with good bibliographies are even better.

Authors like Dietrich and O'Brian also remind me that surface research never works - that there's always more to discover, if you persevere. Occasionally Wikipedia has led me to something useful (usually if the entry has a good bibliography), but more and more I'm going back to books as my best source of the kind of in-depth information I need. What I'm finding the internet useful for now is images! I use old photos and images and maps a lot, and these can be both easier to find (thanks to library collections) and more valuable for things such as finding an image of a character.

Currently I'm working on the Australian Girl series, and I now have a collection of old photos I've printed out of children around 1900. In those, I have at least three characters - when you know your character really well, you can look at photos and think, Yes, that's Abigail. She doesn't usually look that tidy, but I think her mother made her dress up for this! It's a lot of fun to do it this way.

SCBWI conference - Sydney

It certainly was a great conference, with lots and lots of authors talking (dinner each night was incredibly noisy!), meeting each other for the first time after being FB friends for ages, meeting publishers and editors who turned out to be completely human and nice (!), and plenty of information to send you home with your brain reeling. In Australia we tend to cross paths with each other in all sorts of places - above are two fellow authors that I've met in Canberra, in Sydney and online - Mo Johnson (L) and Tracey Hawkins.

This is Nette Hilton, whose latest book, The Innocents, was launched at the conference. Everyone who's read it says it's creepy (in an excellent way!).

And this is the line-up of publishers who shared with us all sorts of information about the process from submission to bookshop. I think the part that had most authors feeling a bit stunned (the "pre-published" ones anyway) was the list of things, in their own words below, that you must not do:
* do not ring/call me
* do not tell me everyone loves the manuscript
* do not tell me it will win awards
* do not send it to me if I don't publish that kind of book
* do not send me gifts of any kind!
* do not put stuff in your envelopes, like glitter, fairy stars or sand!
DO:
* read the submission guidelines and follow them
* your research so you know what I publish (one publisher said 95% of what she is sent is not what she publishes - that is astounding)
* send your best writing
* only send when the manuscript is REALLY ready - many people submit too soon (often sending what is really a first draft)

And the quote of the conference? From the lovely Susanne Gervay who had everyone in stitches: Plaigiarism is good because it guarantees good writing. (She really was joking!)

Barbara Trapido and non-plotting

Having listened to a number of authors talk about their writing over the past few weeks, I thought I'd heard every variation of "to plot or not" - until I listened to Barbara Trapido talk about her process. Her descriptions of how she writes a novel started with "a habit of talking to made-up people" and then writing down their conversations. No plot. No idea of a plot. Just lots of pieces of characters and conversations that gradually fall into patterns, and then into a story. She says they are puzzles that fit together rather than plotting.

For her, the characters are the plot. The story is there "under the water somewhere" and if the characters are well-realised enough, it will come together. She also said "your brain is grinding away and making this intricate spider's web in which everything connects". But she admitted that she finds chronology the biggest headache - where characters go and when, the plans of houses, moving people around. I think this involves a huge amount of trust in your subconscious, believing (or perhaps knowing after doing it for a long time) that it will all work out. She did originally throw out bags full of pages before things started to work with her first novels.

I also went along to a library event this week with crime writers, Michael Robotham and Malla Nunn. Often crime writers are the ones who will talk about plans and plots and clues and red herrings, but both of these writers said they have no idea what will happen next - they just keep writing. Michael said often he'll be about 10,000 words from the end of the novel before he starts to see what the ending might be. He also said he's written 30,000 words of something and had to throw it out.

The seminar I went to with RJ Ellory and Peter James was like an extended conversation rather than a class. Ellory keeps a notebook of what he has written so far - events, characters, etc - but he also doesn't plan ahead. Several authors mentioned Jeffrey Deaver who apparently writes 150 page outlines for his novels! I have to say that I need to know where I'm going in order to write. I might change my mind, because all kinds of things can happen as you write, including characters who take unexpected turns and detours or reveal new information. But I diagram what I think will happen, and keep it as a safety net.
What do you do?

Louise Welsh - crime fiction writer

Melbourne Writers' Festival - Session 4

Before this session, I'd read one of Welsh's books about a guy who performs as a magician-come-illusionist. It was one of those unsettling books, in which the main character is not very likeable and you end up feeling sorry for him more than anything. So I wondered what the author would have to say. Firstly she talked about the issue of being sensationalist as a crime writer - how far do you go with the blood and gore? And what ethics should we have as writers? She didn't really answer it for herself, but crime does has a broad range of subgenres, so it's up to the reader.

She said that she thinks all crime novels are quests, both internal and external, for the main character, and she likes the idea of a character going off into the wilds (probably mentally as well as physically). All of her main characters so far have been male, but her comment on that was that putting yourself inside another 'person' is a huge leap, so changing gender is not that much further. She was asked whether there was a continual challenge to be innovative, and she said most writers don't think about that - but I had to disagree with her!

She likes to use historical objects, and touch them, as a way of reaching back into the past. In the same way, her characters are reaching for the truth but it's not always possible. A book takes her three years to write, but the level of intensity changes. The last 6 months are intensive, but the first year involves a lot of thinking. She's become more of a planner, and spends a lot of time laying the foundations of the novel, using mind maps and taking lots of photos.

She did a Masters of Creative Writing and then joined several writers' groups early on. She had two short stories published quite quickly, then nothing for ages, and finally her first novel. The degree gave her the confidence to keep writing and sending out, and helped her to take her writing more seriously. This was a fairly interesting session, and her new book, Naming the Bones, sounds interesting, so I might give it a go!

Bryce Courtenay in conversation

Melbourne Writers' Festival - Session 3

I had a gap between two sessions and decided to go and listen to Bryce Courtenay. I haven't read one of his books for years, but I admire his hard work and tenacity, and he usually has something entertaining or thought-provoking to say. This session was certainly both, and included Bryce lying and crouching on the floor, and acting out some of his stories. He is a great storyteller, and believes that without stories we have nothing - stories of the past are what we're all about.

But he also feels we have become self-indulgent - that too many authors turn inward and write about themselves instead of going out and writing about the world around them. He believes there are many stories still to be told about Australia and who we are. When asked about the children of today, he said "everything I was taught at school has proven to be wrong". Yes, there is too much information around - for adults. Kids are the new generation and are able to take it all in. This generation is the brightest there's ever been. A further question on reading, and he said he thought kids shouldn't be given reading lists, but needed to be guided to lost treasures and special books they might otherwise miss.

He takes research for his books very seriously, and spends $100,000 a year on it (last I heard, he had four researchers working for him). He believes in writing stories that stick to the facts, and never changes history to suit his story. There is always someone who knows, and will tell you if you have even the smallest fact wrong. He loves language, and had read all of Dickens by the age of eleven, and loved the words he used.

He feels descriptive narrative is dead because of the visual world we live in. You don't need to spend pages on description because readers now imagine so much. You should only describe the things in your setting or story that are unique. The writer writes two thirds of the book, the other third is written by the reader when they pick it up and read it. He has never written for money (after being in advertising, he didn't need to) - he writes because he wants to know for himself. He likes to write chapters of about 28-30 pages, just long enough for someone to read one in half an hour before they go to sleep!

Two pieces of advice he had to offer:
1. Never leave the spoon in the sink when you're going to turn on the tap (in other words, think ahead).
2. Listen with your eyes.
I didn't leave this session wanting to read any more of Bryce's books, but I did take away a strong sense of a man who is passionate still about his writing, and cares very much about stories and language and readers.

Nicholas Shakespeare

Melbourne Writers' Festival - Session 2

Usually I choose sessions at the festival with writers whose books I have read. This year, I went for a few writers I didn't know, and tried to read at least one of their books beforehand. With Nicholas Shakespeare, I read Secrets of the Sea and around 60 pages of In Tasmania. At first I thought Tasmania was all he wrote about! But he began by talking about his latest book, Inheritance, and how the story was given to him by Murray Bail who read about it in a lawyer's office. In a nutshell, a young man accidentally attends the wrong funeral and, by signing the condolence book, ends up inheriting a large amount of money from the dead man.

I can imagine any writer leaping on an idea like that - it appealed to me, too. (Yes, I bought the book!) He said that he thought that this gift of a story meant it would be fast and easy to write, but it took him three years. Whatever the idea is, you have to find your own story in it, and that is what takes the time and effort.

He said he thought this book was about a man trying to learn how to be authentic, and that just to learn how to be yourself is a big enough job for any life. Celebrity can create a crack in a person so that the devil or other people can get in and contaminate you. An interesting viewpoint. He also said any novel is an exercise in failure - you know it's not going to be as good as you want it to be, but you put your best into it and acknowledge its flaws, just like you do for your children.

His father was a diplomat so they lived in some pretty dangerous places when he was growing up, including Cambodia and various countries in South America. Inheritance is his first novel set in England, where he was born. He moved to Tasmania to get away from Bruce Chatwin, as he'd spent 7 years writing his life story and wanted to go somewhere Chatwin had never been. And then found a village of Chatwins in Northern Tasmania. He said another reason he moved there was so he'd have time and headspace to read all the books he'd always wanted to. He tries hard not to let his writing time be eroded by technology and all its distractions.

Secrets of the Sea has many beautiful and arresting images in it, but the one that stuck with me (whether I wanted it to or not) was of the child, Zac, "who had been discovered by Tildy at the age of eighteen months with a large spider sticking out of his mouth." The spider was a huntsman. In question time, I just had to ask if that had actually happened, and he said yes! At his local childcare centre, a boy had eaten a huntsman. A later metaphorical reference to legs dangling from the child's mouth only served to make the image stay even more firmly in my head. Such is the power of words.

Michael Robotham: Ghostwriting

Melbourne Writers' Festival - Session 1
The first session I attended was on ghostwriting, and one of the speakers (Tom Noble, who wrote Mick Gatto's life story) was unable to be there, so Michael Robotham went it alone. As always, he was a very entertaining speaker with plenty of stories to tell! He worked as a ghostwriter for many years, after being a journalist, and has written the life stories of Geri Halliwell, Rolf Harris, Tony Bullimore, Lulu and a couple of SAS soldiers, among others. He actually got his first job after the original writer had a falling-out with the subject, and went on to write 15 in all. He now writes great crime fiction.

It was fascinating to hear what goes into ghostwriting someone's life. I've done a couple of oral history collections, and many of the skills are similar - interviewing, drawing the person out, getting them to remember things they thought they'd forgotten, and then endless hours of transcribing the tapes. Michael said he can do up to 60 hours of tapes and transcribe more than a million words before he gets to the point of choosing what to include and how to put it all together so it flows.

As with oral history, it's also vital to find the right "voice". You can't use a child's voice at the beginning and then change it later - it has to recreate the person's way of speaking so that, for the reader, it's as if they can hear the story being told. You get very close to the person, and as well as drawing out those forgotten memories, you're also drawing out old pains and regrets. He said you can end up being like the person's therapist, and sometimes they don't want to let you go! Whereas others forget you after a week and convince themselves they wrote the book.

The ghostwriter should bring two things to the project - ignorance (a blank canvas, ready to take it all in with no preconceived ideas or bias) and a knowledge of what readers will find interesting. Often subjects will think their childhood is irrelevant or boring, for example, but for many readers, this is the most interesting period. We love to see how people are formed or influenced in their early years, and how that affected them later. It's also about showing the growing wisdom and experience of the person, and how they came to it.

When asked about the movie out at the moment - The Ghostwriter - Michael laughed as in this story the writer is expected to write the book in three weeks. To do a really good job takes 12 months, and you could maybe manage it in 3 at the least. Before a ghostwriter gets the job, they need to meet the subject. It sounded like an audition process! You need to get on together to make it work. And is an autobiography, ghostwritten or not, all true? He says what comes out is "their truth", and no two people see or experience the same event the same way anyway. All in all, a really interesting session!

It's All Hard Work!

On Wednesday I attended a seminar on ebook publishing - it was a full house, about 30 people who all, for various reasons, wanted to know more about ebooks and their potential. Note I say 'potential' - this wasn't a doom-and-gloom session about how ebooks will be the death knell of authors. Instead the speaker, Madisen Harper, spent six hours telling us everything we needed to know about how to research, write, publish and sell an ebook.

Of course, the marketing part took up a large amount of the afternoon. There's no point producing a great book of any kind unless you can sell it to lots of people. It's the same problem that traditional publishers face. But the internet, being another electronic resource, is on our side! Madisen is a very energetic speaker and I doubt anyone there could possibly have nodded off, even if they'd wanted to. I came home with a head full of ideas. But more importantly, a huge amount of information that I kind of knew or had read about suddenly had all been organised and presented in a way that I "got".

I think some people went home overwhelmed. Epublishing isn't going to make most things any easier. The book still has to be a good or great book. The cover still counts. But you don't have to pay for printing (with boxes of books in the garage). However, the marketing side of things tends to take centre stage. Nearly half of all books sold on Amazon now are ebooks, so you are competing with a fast-growing market. Yes, a lot of the dross will fall away, just like it does in self-publishing. There are opportunities and cost savings that will tempt many writers to try it out. But overnight fame is the exception, not the rule.

I loved this quote from a Guardian article about David Almond. "I used to look at my output before Skellig and sigh," he says. "People say to me, you're so prolific, and I think, now I am! It's the payoff for all the time I spent getting sentences to work properly. Like anything, you develop a skill through hard work."
Same with self-publishing fiction. You shouldn't do it until your writing can stand up against what's selling in the marketplace!

What Do ebooks Mean to Me?

Tomorrow I'm off to a one-day seminar (put on by the Australian Society of Authors) about ebooks and epublishing. While I've been reading a lot of blogs and commentaries and opinions about ebooks, and listened to publishers talk about where they're at and what's coming, and read news items about things like agents setting themselves up as epublishers for their clients ... what does it mean for me?

I'm not an author who's been around since the 60s and has contracts that don't even mention epublishing, or electronic anything. If I have anything still in print, the eclause in my contract usually specifies something vague like "all electronic mediums not yet thought of". That kind of covers everything, doesn't it?

My interest in epublishing comes from two things - one of which is books of mine that are out of print and may benefit from being available in an electronic format. For instance, I have the rights back for my verse novel, Farm Kid, and several teachers have already asked me for an electronic version that includes classroom materials. Note that additional request - not just the book, but lots of added extras that will give them a range of stuff to use with their students. My other interest is a novel or two that I personally have faith in but that publishers have said No to.

I suspect that the move to ebooks in children's publishing might lag behind adult novels and nonfiction, simply because of the way kids view computers and anything that looks like "work". I know a few who have laptops for school. These laptops are not for fun (you get that on the internet by hogging the family computer) - they're for school work. Thus reading on screen equals school work. Would that make you want to launch into ereaders?

I also suspect that if there is a move into picture books on the iPad, it will come from parents. Guess what - little kids like parents to read to them, from books they can touch and grab and flick pages over and then sit on, or take to bed. While parents are madly grabbing their iPad back and wiping off the grubby fingerprints! Parents will be the ones who gasp over the little app that shows the illustrator colouring in the dog or talking about ideas. Little kids will want the story - again and again, and then they'll want to take it to bed, while Dad wants the iPad so he can read the newspaper...

But I'm going along tomorrow, hoping the person running the seminar will be able to ask all those thorny questions about formats and marketing and covers and Kindle and different ISBNs. If I epublish one of my novels that no one in traditional publishing wants, can I get it out there? How? I'll report back!

What Other People Think Writers Do

With the online class I teach in writing for children, the topic came up this week about family expectations. Several students commented on how, since they'd started the course, their families seemed to expect that any minute they'd be churning out a best seller. As our focus this semester is chapter books, that's not very likely! But then again, I doubt any writer's family (apart from the kids, perhaps) would even know what a chapter book was, and how it was different from a picture book or a novel!

My very first published children's book was The Too-Tight Tutu (Aussie Bites). It's a chapter book in the Puffin series and came out in 1997. Thirteen years later, it's still in print, and has been published in the US and the UK, and about to be published in China. In Australia it's sold around 46,000 copies, which sounds like a best seller! But when you spread that over 13 years ... hmmm, not so much. And the illustrator gets a good part of the royalties, too.

My own family often hints at the idea of a best seller, possibly imagining us all swanning off to a tropical island somewhere where I'll continue writing while they lie around in the sun, drinking tropical-type drinks. Or maybe that's my version of it! After many years of writing and publishing, and a great deal of reading, plus a lot of market research and industry knowledge, I doubt anyone knows in advance what might become a best seller. Certainly Stephanie Meyer's publisher didn't, nor did JK Rowling's. It's an educated guess, at best, and a lot of hope.

That's what keeps a lot of us writers going. Hope. Hope we'll get that story published, the one we've reworked ten times. Hope we'll get good reviews. Hope that it sells well enough that it earns out its advance and the publisher won't frown at us. And faint hopes/dreams that the book might even win an award. Families and spouses don't understand the importance of hope. They want to see a book in print, and a cheque in your hand. That's what writing means to them.

And until you come up with both, your writing has no substance or meaning to them. They usually don't "get" why you persevere, why you keep secreting yourself away, turning down social events, hiding a stash of chocolate for the depressing days. They think publishing happens overnight, and are astonished when you tell them a book might take up to two years to arrive in the bookshop. They also wonder why you have a website and a blog and do all that marketing stuff - "isn't the publisher supposed to do all that?"

The Rowlings and Meyers of the world don't help! In the end, we all have to find a way to deflect the family expectations, either with some doses of "the cold, hard truth of publishing" or by simply keeping it all to yourself and being adamant about why your writing time cannot be subsumed by whatever frippery they're into right now. It's not easy. But sometimes building those walls around yourself, the ones that keep out the expectations, the tantrums, the sulks and the stupid, uninformed questions and criticisms, is what is going to get your writing done.

Two Good Books

Over the past three weeks, I've been reading A Writer's Space: Make Room to Dream, to Work, to Write by Eric Maisel. I've mentioned another book of his on this blog - The Van Gogh Blues - but this one had been sitting on my shelf for months, and I'd kind of forgotten I owned it.

Until the time arrived when suddenly I no longer had the house to myself every day for writing (retired husband syndrome), and found I was really struggling. One day, I walked past my bookshelf, put out my hand and grabbed this book and thought - How come I've never got around to reading this? Well, because I wasn't in a place where I needed it. Now I am. And I've been reading and thinking and reading some more, and answering some of the questions Maisel poses at the end of each chapter. It's been incredibly useful, and given me plenty to consider, along with some hope!

A Writer's Space is not just physical. It's not just about having someone in the house every day. It's also about needing to be silent, alone, and to have constant headspace in which to stay in the world of the story you are writing. Having another person constantly talking, or being around, when you aren't used to it, is very hard to come to terms with. Maisel talks about other kinds of space too - reflective, emotional, imaginative and existential! I particularly liked his chapters on mindfulness, something that relates to more than just your writing life.

These days I am, shall I say, judicious about where I spend my book dollars. Quite a few writers who I would once have gaily bought without a second thought are now on my library borrowing list. When trade paperbacks are $32-38 full price, you think twice about what you buy! But some writers still remain on my "Yes, buy" list and Peter Robinson is one of them. Bad Boy starts without the usual hero, Alan Banks, front and centre, leaving the first half of the story to Annie Cabot, his sergeant.

This new story is satisfyingly multi-layered, and it was interesting to see Banks return to the fray without being an instant hero. He has more problems to solve than just his daughter being in trouble. One of the layers in the story deals with what our children do when they believe we aren't looking or don't care - the mistakes they make, and the long-reaching consequences. Like many well-written crime novels, I enjoy the setting of Robinson's books: the East Dales in northern England that, unlike Stuart MacBride's dismal Aberdeen, actually makes me want to visit there one day!

10 Things I Learned About Writing from Tenpin Bowling

Years ago, I used to be a tenpin bowler. Hard to believe, I know. Harder still if you'd seen my pathetic sporting efforts at high school. I hated hockey, loathed netball, despised running, and although I could play tennis, I found it boring after a while. Basically, I disliked sports because I was no good at any of them. And I was no good at sport because I didn't like it. Didn't even like watching it.

But when I gave tenpin bowling a go (because I was living in a remote town where there was nothing to do except play a variety of sports, and women's touch rugby and soccer weren't going to see me turn up for training!), I finally discovered a sport that I liked, and that I was good at. Don't ask me why - I suspect liking and being good were connected. Sound familiar?

I don't bowl anymore. For a variety of reasons, but partly because it got too expensive, and I had to choose where I was going to put my time and energy - so I chose writing. But over the years, I've thought about the solitariness of being a writer, and how similar it is to those sports where, in the end, you're really playing against yourself. Bowling, golf, marathon running ... So here are my thoughts on how they connect.

1. It takes practice. Lots of it, if you want to improve and win. I used to have coaching once a week, play four times a week and try to add at least one more practice session on my own. That's a total of about 7 hours - do I spend that much time on my writing? The theory is that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of something. I never got close with bowling, but I am pretty sure I've passed that with writing.

2. Most of it is inside your head. You can be technically brilliant, have perfect technique and style, and know all the 'rules', but that's still only 5% of being good at it. The other 95% is about what's going on inside your head - a strange combination of being totally in control which then allows you to enter the zone and do amazing things, on a regular basis. Not once a year.

3. It takes focus. It means you don't take any notice of what anyone else is doing, whether they're winning or doing badly. If you take time to feel envious or gloat, you're taking time and energy away from your own practice and work. You ignore their tantrums (boy, I saw plenty of those on the bowling lanes, especially the guys!) and you ignore their amazing scores. Your own are all that matter.

4. In the end, your score doesn't matter. It can't. Everything that comes before your score - practice, training, focus, commitment, engagement, determination, technique - will make your score better (or get your books published), but you have to work at all those things first. A great score doesn't happen like magic, even if other people make it look that way.

5. Some people (a very, very few) are naturally brilliant. You can't do anything about that. Jealousy is a waste of time. Being mad at them for achieving something easily that you have to work really hard at is a waste of energy.

6. Perseverance, despite everything, is what counts. Even those naturally brilliant bowlers/writers might not last (being great at something can turn out to be boring). When you work hard, for a long time, improving your skills and growing in your practice, you will appreciate the success more, value it more. And feel really proud that you achieved it.

7. There's always more to learn. More training. More skills. New tricks. New ideas. New equipment, even! A new coach can give you a lift into a whole new level of achievement and technique. You can't ever stay in one place. It's not good for you, and in fact you will slide backwards. The challenge of constantly learning and improving is exciting, the prospect of getting better is exciting. And one day you might score the perfect 300 (the million-seller), but the next day you'll want to do it again, and this time, do it better.

8. What it comes down to is you. You alone. Alone inside your head. Shutting everyone else out so you can focus and do your absolute best every time you set foot on the lane/sit at the computer. Of course Tiger Woods (I'm onto golf for a moment) has a bad day now and then on the golf course. But if he went home and thought about how everyone must have been laughing at him, or criticising him, he'd never get out of bed the next morning. I bet he goes home and thinks about how he can improve his swing, or what little adjustment he can make to his putting, or, more likely, how he can stay inside his own head and focus totally on his craft.

9. It's great at the end of the season when you take home a trophy, or win an award, or get a lovely big royalty cheque. Or simply get that phone call that says 'We're going to publish your book.' But after the celebration, are you back on the lanes, bowling ball in hand, ready to train again? Are you back at your desk, writing?

10. When someone says, 'You play tenpin bowling? Isn't that kind of ... (insert insult of choice)?', what do you say? When someone says, 'You write novels? Yeah, I'm going to write a novel one day', what do you say? I've learned to be more polite these days, and have some handy answers ready. But for some people, unless you're JK Rowling, whatever you say will never be enough. So you have to know inside yourself that what you do, you do because you love it and you can't imagine doing anything else. You only have to answer to yourself.

Our Australian Girl (TM)

Over the past few months, a few people have asked me what I've been working on - and probably regretted the question! Because my answer was to launch into a description of the series I have been writing - four books in Penguin Australia's Our Australian Girl (TM).* It's quite a job taking on a series - there are lots of things that you might not think about in the beginning, or if you do, might assume it would be a breeze. Like keeping a book under a certain word limit. If you're a big blabbermouth writer like me, that can be a problem!

I didn't used to be. I used to think a word limit was an excuse to stretch a bit. Not any more. But writing this series has been more than just word limits. It's been an incredible amount of research. When the series was first proposed, and I was given the opportunity to throw my hat in the ring, I thought about the various periods in Australian history that I knew something about. What I didn't know anything about was Federation - and wouldn't you know, that's what I was given! Good grief, I thought. So the states all got together and became one country. So?

But along the way, I've discovered many fascinating things - that's the nature of research. The deeper you delve, the more you see and the more stories you read and the more snippets and anecdotes you discover. For instance, before Federation every state in Australia "did its own thing". Which meant if you wanted to travel by train from one city to another, odds were you'd have to change trains at the state border because most states had built rail lines of different gauges (widths). And there were referendums to see if everyone thought Federation was a good idea, and NSW didn't because they thought Victoria would demand that the capital city be Melbourne (the insults flying around at the time are hilarious).

In the end, of course, the compromise was that an entirely new capital city would be built, which became Canberra. Despite finding out all of these interesting facts, I was writing a series that was historical fiction, so my job went a lot further than research. I created a character, Rose, who features in the four books, along with her family and friends. Rose turns eleven as the first book opens, and her birthday on 9th May 1901, closes the fourth book as this is the date of the first sitting of Federal parliament. There were amazing celebrations in Melbourne, with huge ornate arches in the city streets and light shows (for a city that had just started moving from gas to electricity, the lights were fabulous to the people there).

My main question as I planned out the books was: how on earth could I make Federation an interesting background? The answer came from more research. This was also the time of the suffragette movement in Australia, with Vida Goldstein leading the charge in Melbourne. How perfect! Rose has a 'spinster' aunt, Alice, who is a suffragette and goes to protest meetings and debates, and shows Rose what having a say in her country's future is all about. What would I do without a feisty aunt who causes trouble in the family?

But really the story is about Rose, who has her own battles against a corset (yes, at her age!), a horrible governess, and her overbearing, social-climbing mother. It all feeds her keen desire to learn and go to school and, eventually one day, to university. I'm still working away on these four books - they are all in different stages. It's exciting to see what the Penguin team are doing with covers, extra materials, page illustrations and the iconic charm bracelets. I'm devastated that I cannot find the silver charm bracelet I had as a child, but on the other hand, now I get to create a new one with the charms that are most meaningful to Rose.

There are several things that are significant in Rose's story - cricket, for a start. At that time, women's cricket was laughed at by most men, which is not surprising considering most games were played in long skirts and hats! Bicycles were ridden mostly by men, and women who did ride them often wore pantaloons (scandalous!). Rose gets to ride on her first cable tram and watch the grip man operate it, and she also has a hankering to ride in an automobile. A visit to St Kilda beach means a paddle with skirts held up - no full-length swimsuit just yet. And Rose also visits Coles Arcade in the city, with books, monkeys, parrots and toy machines.

I have a fascination with the food of the time. There was plenty of game on the table (Rose's family is well-off) but like most kids, Rose has food hates, especially sardines and tongue. You can probably see why I'm having trouble with the word limits - there's so much I want to include! But I spend a lot of time with the hatchet out, trimming and hacking as needed. If I can get young readers to enjoy the era as much as I do, I'll be happy.
* That's a trademark sign, because it's the way series go these days. You might be interested to look at the American Girl books and website as a comparison.

How Do You Create Tension?

Last night, I watched two TV shows. One was brand new in Australia (Hot in Cleveland) and the other was just into its second series (Rescue Special Ops). I have to admit that I don't watch much TV these days. I suspect that five fantastic series of The Wire has kind of killed commercial TV for me! Although The Street (written by Jimmy McGovern and currently on ABC2) is so wonderful that it restores my faith in what is possible in television land. But after I watched the afore-mentioned shows last night, I got to wondering, as you do when you're a writer, why they didn't work.

And for me, it came down to tension. I think a lot about tension. I teach it in Story Structure, but I'm not sure the students really grasp how important it is yet - they're grappling with climaxes and outlines, but I think it does take a while to put all the elements together. Kristi Holl, who has written a lot of middle grade mysteries, has an ebook on Tension Techniques, and I've picked up lots of ideas from it. But really - what is tension? How do you create it?

Firstly, in Rescue Special Ops, I felt little tension at all. Very early on, there was a conflict between two of the rescue cops, and straight away I thought: One of them will save the other one's life to resolve this. Yes, I was right. And not happy to be right. It was way too predictable. Two episodes into Series 2, it feels like all the situational tension (rescues, death, survival) has been sidelined and the show has moved into competing with Packed to the Rafters (for readers outside Australia, this is like a slightly more grown-up version of the Brady Bunch or Full House!). Which is fine if you're writing a show about relationships.

I thought Rescue Special Ops was a police drama show, not a thing about romance and having kids and thwarted love, with a few explosions as a sideline. I am astounded that the writers and producers of this show have gone down this road! Do they think the only viewers in Australia are those who want soppy stuff? Hey guys, take a look at NYPD Blue sometime. And how they managed twelve series in which crime (hello?) was the key, and characters provided depth and colour.

So where do the writers of RSO seem to think tension will now come from? Yep, a cast of hot young actors who apparently all want to jump into bed with each other (just add sexy firies and more cops). The biggest moment of surprise came at the end of the episode where one of the rescue guys steps onto the street and gets run down by a speeding driver. Bang. No set up. No sense of anticipation. Just a dummy (we presume) smacked into the air and an actor lying on the ground. To me, this is fundamental stuff. Something like that in a story only achieves maximum impact when you set it up properly. The rest of that episode was not a decent, well-crafted set up.

As for Hot in Cleveland, the writers don't seem to understand that even in sitcom, we still want tension. We still want to be surprised. No surprises here, apart from how awful the writing was. I think I heard every tired old joke recycled. Tension can come from several things - firstly, from the reader/audience either knowing more or less than the character/s. It's especially effective when you think you know more and you're waiting to see if the main character works it out. Kind of like kids in a stage show shouting, "He's behind you!"

But it can also work the other way - you know less, and the narrator is keeping stuff from you. A good unreliable narrator, for instance, can create tension. If the situation is that you know what the main character knows, tension then must come from anticipation and surprise. You have to build up the tension, be aware of how it's working and have a good idea of what the reader's experience is going to be. Too often, a writer forgets the reader in this situation. The writer might forget to provide information, or not make things clear, or try to deliberately confuse. Or go for the quick pay-off, which is death these days in sitcoms. After shows like Frasier, some of us hope for more (but sadly, rarely get it).

I suspect this is why reality TV appeals, because even when a show is "scripted", you can't totally rely on the participants to "behave". I like a UK show called Relocation, Relocation, because even though people start out saying what kind of house they want, often they're wrong, or misguided, or have to face reality about finances, so you can criticise or be engaged, or imagine what you'd do if it was you. There's no plot, sure, but there is anticipation and the ongoing possibility of surprise. Like the Masterchef contestant whose dessert crashes and burns (hey, most of us have been there!).

Over the past few years, there has been a fair amount of comment about Australian scriptwriters, about the 'dumbing down' of TV drama, about the way in which only the ABC and the cable channels are prepared to take a risk on new writers and new ideas, while the commercial channels churn out the same old boring rubbish. But Packed to the Rafters rates, so what does that say about our TV viewing? That we get rubbish because we're happy to watch rubbish? Not me! I'm off to watch the next episode of The Street. You can catch two episodes on ABC iView if you like. Yeah!

What Do You Expect from a Writer's Event?

Last night I went to my first writer's event at the Wheeler Centre (for those who live outside Melbourne, it's a new writers' centre/venue where they have lots of talks, readings and meet the writer things). I went along with a friend to hear Kate Jennings. She is an author of several novels, including Snake and Moral Hazard, as well as collections of essays. She also has been a speechwriter on Wall Street, and has lived in New York for about 30 years. I've always liked her novels, and also her earlier essays, but hadn't read any recent ones. Nevertheless, I went along expecting to hear her talk about her writing.

It's always an interesting question - what is the role of the interviewer? I spent about eight years doing radio interviews with a wide range of both local and international writers, and I occasionally now do interviews as part of our Writers in Conversation events at Vic Uni. So I think it's the interviewer's job to ask questions that inform the audience about the writer's books but, more importantly, about their writing life. And their writing. Not that awful question: Where do you get your ideas from? But more about the writer's passions and what drives each novel, what their themes are, how they write, how their books affect readers, what their experiences of publication have been.

To focus on the plot of a novel, or too much on the most recent book which many people may not have read, is not a good tactic - it leaves the audience floundering. There is no context for this kind of discussion. But we came away from the Kate Jennings session with a pervading sense of dissatisfaction, and I couldn't help but think the reason for that was the interviewer. Hilary McPhee certainly has the credentials as far as publishing and book experience goes, but it seemed that she went for the "let's chat by the fireside" kind of interview, which meant a lot of skimming, a lot of meandering across politics and history and very few questions that actually led Kate Jennings into deeper discussion about her writing.

Maybe it was just me (and my friend). We're both writers - we go to those things to hear writers, whose work we love to read, talk about the creation of those works, and how the writer engages in that creation. Every writer is different, every writer works differently, they form ideas differently, they have a voice and a unique perspective on the world that informs what they do. I love to hear about those aspects, not a whole heap of stuff about the world in general. I can hear that any day on the radio or even on the train!

I remember at last year's Writers' Festival I went to a session where M.J. Hyland was being interviewed, and it was an excellent session indeed. The interviewer asked great questions that allowed Hyland to relax and simply respond and talk openly - about her writing and her novels. What do you expect from a writer's event? Are you happy with a little chat? Or do you want to come away feeling inspired and intrigued?

Big Book and Writing Day

Organising a book launch is both exciting and stressful, especially if you are trying something new or different. A couple of weeks ago, I had this brilliant idea that I would ask my friend, Kristi Holl, to launch my novel, One Perfect Pirouette. Kristi is a great writer with lots of experience, and we've been Skyping and critiquing each other's work for quite a few years now.

However, Kristi lives in the USA and the launch was in Melbourne, Australia, so my idea was to do the launch via Skype! Even two years ago, this would have been too much of a challenge, but now, with Skype and mobile broadband on my laptop, I was able to take everything to the launch at the Sun Bookshop, in Yarraville, set it up, and away we went.

Of course, anything to do with computers and connections can go wrong at any moment, so we had planned it and experimented and tried out everything we could, but we still knew it could all go pear-shaped! In the end, it went smoothly, everyone could hear Kristi clearly (even if she couldn't see us properly a lot of the time) and my first international book launch happened. We ate lots of cake (including the ones above - the blue one is chocolate, which was the favourite, of course) and everyone took lots of photos.

Then it was on to the next event of the day - the Write Out! We weren't sure how many people would come, but I think there were about 80 people, all together in the cafeteria at Werribee campus of Vic Uni, writing all kinds of things. Down my end, we all worked on our own projects, and with music playing in my ears, I managed around 1500 words in the two hours. I actually didn't ask anyone around me what they were writing! We all just revved up our laptops and got stuck into it.

The rest of the writers got to write all kinds of things - every 20 minutes someone gave a writing exercise and they all wrote madly. There were competitions, lots of laughter (most of which I didn't hear with my headphones in) and I think some people didn't want to go home! I'll be surprised if there aren't more Write Outs organised in the near future, so stay tuned.

Some of the 80+ writers, busily working, thinking, typing, dreaming, pondering, writing....

How Do You Sign Your Books?

This seems to be a question that plagues many authors. How do you sign copies of your books? No doubt someone like Bryce Courtenay or Michael Connelly simply signs with a signature - when two or three hundred people are in the line, you don't have time to chat and do personal notes. Although I have seen Shaun Tan sign (he's a great illustrator) and he draws people little pictures. I've been at signings where the publicist runs along the queue and gives everyone little Post-it notes for you to write your name on so the author doesn't have to check your spelling.

But when you aren't signing for hundreds, the question does arise. A lot of the time, with my kid's books, I sign To... and then write Happy reading. Because I do hope reading my book will make them happy - for a while, at least. Sometimes I put something different, just for a change. But I always sign (unless asked just for my name) with a Best wishes. When it comes to signing for friends, what then? Do they want your signature - your writer's one? (Full name.) Or do they just want your first name that they call you by, because they're your mate? It gets tricky. You have to ask, and often they aren't sure!

My family sometimes scold me for not signing the books I give them, but it feels weird. Don't ask why, it just does! When it comes to friends who want more than a signature, I try to write something personal or funny, but it doesn't always work. On an early children's book of mine, I wrote something about gumboots. I'd talked to my friend about where the story idea came from, but a while later, she didn't remember what I'd said and asked me, "What does this thing about gumboots mean? Why did you write that?"

Today I was tidying up one of my bookshelves, the one that has my collection of signed books on it. It was funny to read some of the things authors had written. Markus Zusak, on his first ever YA novel, had written something about "dirty boys inside" - which refers to the story. At the time, I hadn't read the book and wondered why on earth he had written that! Martha Brooks, on "Bone Dance", has written "Dance to the beat of your own wolf song!" Melvin Burgess has written "Hi Sherryl - well met!"

Have you got any books that have been signed with something different or special?