Is writing faster going to mean writing worse?

Today I read a recent article in the New York Times about writers who are being pushed to write two or more books a year instead of one. I have to admit it made me shudder. The publishers in the article pointed to James Patterson, who is apparently putting out 12 books a year, simply because he comes up with plots and people co-write the books with him. Well, good for him, but if all you want as a reader is to churn through book after book of mass-produced words, go for it.

Me? I have two problems with this. One is about quality. Years ago, one of my favorite authors, Sue Grafton, who writes the alphabet series about investigator Kinsey Milhone, published H and then I in the series, and they sucked. I for Innocent was worse than H. Grafton then admitted in an interview that she knew the books were poor, and that her publisher had pushed her into writing faster.

No more, she said. I will write at my pace, and I will make sure every book from now on is the best I can make it. The quality of J went up - noticeably. (Yes, I'm paraphrasing what she said!) This stuck with me, probably because I was lucky enough to interview her on a radio show not much later and it was part of my research. Let's be honest - why would writing faster ever make a book better? If you are a writer, you know that you need time to write and plot and deepen the characters, and then you need more time to revise and improve. I doubt that publishers are paying editors extra to fix up fast/poor novels.

But what bothers me more is the burn-out factor. In the NYT article, it says about writer Lisa Scottoline:

Ms. Scottoline has increased her output from one book a year to two, which she accomplishes with a brutal writing schedule: 2,000 words a day, seven days a week, usually “starting at 9 a.m. and going until Colbert,” she said. 

We can certainly all do that for a month or two, maybe even six. But day after day, week after week, ALL year? And still write something as good in six full-on months as the novel that took a year and went through thoughtful revisions? Maybe Scottoline can do it. Maybe there are lots of dedicated writers (some mentioned in the article) who can work at this pace, for years and years. But why? To keep the panicking publisher off your back?

As a reader, do you want two books a year from your favorite writers, no matter the quality? Or will you soak up whatever you can get? What do you think?

This ol' blog

You're right - I haven't posted here much over the past few months. That's because I have another blog/website that I've been putting a lot of energy into, but I hadn't forgotten this one. Oh no! I'm planning to blog here about a couple of great books I've been reading.

What is this other blog? It's about writing, of course. But it's a project I've been working on now for over a year. I wanted to start putting to use all the stuff I've been teaching over the past 20 years. My approach is tough, I admit that freely. In fact, the ebooks I'm working on are called Tough Guides. My past and present students will probably be nodding - that's how I am in the classroom.

Writing is a tough business. That's before you even get to the publishing part! That part is like a whirlpool at the moment, with everything swirling around and quite a few people thinking some of it might all go down the gurgler. My focus is the writing part. I see lots of people with talent - a little bit, a lot. Doesn't matter, because what matters is what you do with it. Talent without determination and discipline and hard work gives you nothing. But I've seen people with a bit of talent work their butts off and get published, and go on to a good career.

So my new website is ebooks4writers, and if you join my newsletter list (whereupon you will receive my newsletter full of interesting and useful stuff, next issue in a few weeks), you get a free copy of my first Tough Guide - The Tough Guide to Why You're Not Published Yet.
I think that gives you a fair idea of what I'm on about!

Over on that site, I am posting a heap of stuff for writers. My tagline is Resources for committed writers. I recently did a 4-part series on building great characters. At the moment, I'm running a whole month of writing prompts. Madness, but it's fun. If you're interested, pop over and have a look!

May Writing Prompts - get on board!

Some of you might know that I have another blog and website these days (am I crazy? Probably!) I've been working on Ebooks4writers for over a year, and my aim is to publish, in one form or another, all the stuff I've been teaching in my creative writing classes for the past 20 years.

Most recently, I've posted a series on how to create great characters - the first one begins with the outside (then I look at aspects such as personality and psychology). And I'm giving away a free ebook called The Tough Guide to Why You're Not Published Yet.

Right now, I'm setting up a writing challenge for May. Anyone who emails me will get a fiction and a poetry prompt in their email InBox every day in May. That's 31 fiction writing ideas and 31 poetry writing ideas (and I'm throwing in some occasional children's story ideas for good measure).

Hop on over to the site for more information, or if you just want to sign up for your prompts now, email me at sherryl (at) ebooks4writers (dot) com. Looking forward to writing with you!

Why You Should Backup Your Work - 3 times!

How much is your writing worth to you? Some of it, I bet, is priceless. Poems you wrote just for yourself, family stories you'll never hear again, journal writing that got you through a bad time. Photos. And that novel which is not published yet, and is in its fifth draft, but you're getting close. The poetry collection you're going to publish that you've spent two weeks solid putting together. The blog post you're really proud of, ready to post tomorrow.
Phfffft! All gone. Forever. Because you didn't back up recently.

Most writers do back up. It only takes losing things a couple of times before you get to grips with the need to back up copies of your work on a regular basis. But the word regular is the one that gets most of us. For a long time, I had a back-up program on my computer that did it for me every day, to an external hard drive. When my computer hard drive died, I had nearly everything backed up, and was I relieved! But now I have a new computer and guess what - I can't get the program to work on this one. It's my number 1 job for today. Find another program.

But why do I say - back up three times? Because things do fail twice. If, for example, my computer had died because of a huge power surge, the external drive would very likely have died, too, because it's permanently connected. And other backup options do the same. USB drives (flash drives) have a higher failure rate than you realise, plus they are easily lost. And I hope you're not one of those who keeps their USB on their key ring, along with a dozen metal keys.

Another option being promoted everywhere is saving in the cloud, i.e. up there in cyberspace. Now this is useful, as your third option, but be careful. Cloud storage can fail, too. Even paid cloud storage. Just look at what happened to those who had paid storage accounts with Megauploads. Recently, the IT guy in the Age Green Guide had problems with stuff he had stored in the Apple cloud. If you don't have a heap of stuff to store "up there", try opening a special Gmail account and emailing important files to yourself instead.

Another option is to burn your photos and files onto CDs and store them with friends. That way, if your house burns down, that kind of backup is safe. What is not such a good idea is storing your backups at your workplace in your work computer or on their system. What if you leave and forget to retrieve it or delete it first? Or if your work computers (or even your home one) get infected with a nasty virus or trojan?

Now, if you think I'm sounding paranoid here, I have good reasons! I added up all the storage failures in my computers over the past two years and this is what I got:
* two computers at home had hard drive failures - one total, one that made dying sounds so I could back up before its final demise
* one USB that kept overheating and then died
* one computer at my workplace that, three days after a power blackout, died suddenly and included dramatic smoke effects
* one external hard drive (on spouse's computer) that stopped talking to any computer
* one small external hard drive that developed a faulty connection and only works now if you hold the cord a certain way.

Despite what we think, technology is by no means infallible. Hard copy is useful but takes up a lot of room in your office. I have boxes of it. But I still don't want to lose what's on my computer, so I'm going to keep backing up my important stuff - three times!

Book Ideas in the Ether

Trends are one thing - dystopian fiction now, vampires two years ago, in two year's time it might well be historical romance. But ideas that seem to come to unconnected writers at the same time are different. I'm a co-editor of a poetry magazine, Poetrix, that publishes two issues a year of poetry by women. We are regularly amazed at how poets from all over Australia suddenly send us poems on the same topic or theme.

I'm not talking about current events such as the Arab Spring, which often inspire poets to respond via poems. Rather I'm talking about things that just pop up. Half a dozen issues ago, we got a whole range of poems about widowhood. For another issue, it was the sea. An early issue brought a number of poems about death. Another topic later was euthanasia. Most recently it was walls - garden walls, house walls, tumbledown walls. We have no idea why - we don't set themes - it just happens.

There are studies that have shown it's not an omen when you suddenly start seeing red cars everywhere, or reading books in which a camera is lost over a cliff - it's just that once you notice the first one, your brain somehow decides to "take notice" of all the other instances that might normally pass you unnoticed. Or so the studies say!

The other side of this is writers who are working on a novel they believe says something new or has an original story idea that they are sure no one else could have come up with. And within a few months, there's a book published that "pinches" their idea. The truly paranoid believe that somehow their idea was stolen, even if the writer lives on the other side of the world. But there is sometimes credence in this when, for example, a new writer has sent in a spec script to the producers of a TV show, and been rejected, and a few weeks or months later, that concept turns up in an episode.

Wouldn't you feel a bit suspicious?
The only true remedy for all of this is to keep developing ideas - lots of them. Recently, our students listened to a great talk by freelance writer, Sarah Marinos, and she described how she comes up with article ideas. One of her key strategies is to sit down with the newspaper every day and pull out possibilities and then (importantly) look at ways to develop them into several different ideas. She takes the next step - pushing the concept into more original directions.

Fiction and poetry writers can do this, too. Grab today's newspaper and see if you can come up with six new ideas for stories or poems. Do it every day for a week and you'll have more ideas than you could write about in a month, or a year. But don't use the idea of a mother's house being shot up because her son is in trouble with drug dealers. My friend L has already written a novel about that!

Meditation and Writing

One of the hardest things for a writer is to get into the "writing zone" when you first sit down. In fact, the idea of writing can be like a wall, one that's too high and too hard to climb. There are various techniques to help you overcome this: leaving the previous day's writing with a sentence unfinished; making notes as you finish the day before to remind you what comes next; creating an outline that will lead you into the next bit; re-reading the last chapter to get back into the world of the story.

When I was at Hamline in January, one of my workshop leaders, Marilyn Nelson, suggested we start each workshop with a 5 minute meditation. I've been meditating on and off (more off than on, I admit!) for many years, and it suddenly hit me - why hadn't I been using this as a way into the writing zone? It may sound strange to do something that is supposed to empty your mind at a time when you want to fill it with your novel or work-in-progress, but it's actually more about emptying your mind of all the day-to-day trivia, and letting the writing take over.

Also there are many different ways to meditate. You may need to relax and drop the daily trivia, you may need to overcome fear and/or writer's block, you may want to do some focused daydreaming about your writing. Meditation actually needs a bit of practice. The more you do it, the better you get, like most things. You can start with relaxation and move onto to something that leads you into writing.

There are plenty of aids, as well. Guided meditations (someone talking you through it) are popular, although I find someone else's voice distracting. There's a heap of music tracks, as well as sound effects such as waves, birdsong, etc. Meditation Australia has lots of free stuff but you can also join up and get access to more. A friend of mine recommends Glenn Harrold - most of his CDs and DVDs cost money but he also has apps for iPhones and Android, so you can take it with you as an mp3.

All you need to do is Google for free meditation music (or something similar) and have a look at what is available. Try some out, and when you find a resource that you like, keep at it. It might be the very thing you need to glide into writing every day.

The Art of Concentration

Concentration is a big thing for writers - if you can't concentrate on your novel (or whatever you're writing), you either can't write at all or what you write feels slight or forced. There are two types of concentration, as well - one is the total focus on the characters and storyline as you write, and the other is the general thinking/dreaming/imagining you do every day to develop the story and characters and "nut out" what it's all about and where it's going.

Often we think of concentrating on our writing as just the first option - I must find time to write, I must sit down and totally focus, I must write 1000 words, etc. It's a little different for everyone. Some full-time writers spend all day writing, and I always think that inside that day must come both the physical writing and the imagining and dreaming. But for most of us, we have a limited time, maybe an hour or three, and what we struggle with is concentrating 100% for that span.

Some days it will be no problem at all, and the hours will fly. But on many days, it will be a struggle. If we haven't written for a while, we have to read and think our way back into the story. Then we have to have a sense of what might come next (or if we have an outline, we know but still need to make it happen). And then we have to write. If you've ever spent two hours trying to squeeze out one page, you'll know that feeling of frustration and despair.

For me, half-hour bursts work best. Knowing I have 30 minutes, I am able to focus totally and get a lot done. Then in a short break, I can stretch, make coffee, and return for the next 30 minutes ready to go. Part of it is, I think, a mental attitude and you can train yourself into working this way in a very short time.

But the other kind of concentration is harder. This is where I do envy full-time writers, not for the amount of physical writing time, but for the dreaming and imagining. It's as if a part of your brain is always focused on your novel, and as you get more and more ideas and learn more about your characters, you can create a denser, deeper, more intense story. Without the daily grind of a job, your brain is free to concentrate in a different way.

I know some part-time writers who are able to work this way, regardless of their day job. They are so fully immersed in their stories and characters that the outside world always takes second place! But for most of us, we have to juggle the two kinds of writer's concentration and still endeavour to make our novels emerge the way we envisage them.
How do you balance concentration and the outside world?

Reasons to Avoid Writing Rhyming Picture Books

This semester is mostly about picture books for me. Reading them, reading about them, thinking about them, writing essays about them, and attempting to write some new ones of my own. Oh, and rewriting them a million times. It's what I have chosen to focus on for this semester of my MFA. I've written two verse picture books in the past but neither use rhyme. They are both a series of poems that use sound, repetition, language and imagery. I admit it - I avoid rhyme. Why? Because I know how hard it is to do well.

I've been writing poetry for nearly 30 years, and in that time have written sonnets, villanelles, pantoums, sestinas and triolets. All of these use rhyme, except sestinas which have particular rules about how to use end words. These are forms that require a lot of patience and hard work, and they can easily go wrong. But you're dealing with poems that might only be 8 or 14 lines long. Short enough not to send you around the bend.
Unlike a rhyming picture book.

In order to use rhyme and rhythm effectively, I think firstly you need to be able to scan - to work out the stresses and/or beats in a line of poetry, and see or hear which stresses are heavy and which are light. You need to hear the rhythm and, more importantly, hear when it's wrong or clunky or missing something. It's not just about syllables, it's about which syllable in a word has the heavy stress. Important - the stress is on por. Icecream - the stress is on ice. It's easy to fool yourself if you're not practiced at it.

Some people can hear this naturally - they're able to easily and fluently use rhyme and rhythm to great effect. Most people have to work at it over a period of time before they get good at it. Secondly, you need to know lots of words. You can use a rhyming dictionary, but that can lead to some strange word choices, and it's easy to just find a word that fits the required rhyme when you should be choosing the best word you can. It's also easy to fall into the trap of inverting words to make a rhyme work. Walking across the paddock green. We don't talk like this anymore, and so it doesn't work in poetry today.

Rhyming restricts word choice. It's a huge challenge to write a good poem that rhymes and also uses great language in ways that add to the poem instead of detracting from it. Rhythm creates its own problems - again, it can be so easy to end up with a rhyming poem that has a da-da rhythm guaranteed to bore anyone to sleep. Put bad rhyme together with the da-da rhythm and you have doggerel.

When it comes to rhyming picture books, add all of those challenges on top of the crucial demands of writing a great story with engaging characters, a strong plot and less than 600 words ... it can become an impossible feat to achieve. So when I came up with an idea for a picture book story two weeks ago, and the first lines insisted on coming out on the page in rhyme, my heart sank. (See, now I'm using cliches as well!) I persevered, hoping that the rhyme would disappear and the story would emerge shining and new and without the rhythm that kept running through my head. Some hope.

I now have four messy versions of this picture book, four lots of different verses - and in every single version, the verses have a different pattern of beats/stresses. I can't even pick out the best and put them together because none of them match! The only thing that is saving me from running out into the street and screaming at the moment is that despite the rhyming curse that has struck me, I've managed to get a plot worked out - independently of the verses.

Now, this might not be you. You might either be really good at this (like Julia Donaldson of Gruffalo fame, or Lynley Dodd who writes Hairy Maclary stories), or a general rhyming whizz. You might be sitting there thinking what an idiot I am, and what is so hard about rhyme, for goodness sake. But if you, too, have tried to write a rhyming picture book and been driven around the bend, then you know exactly what I mean. Let's stop it right now, shall we? Or maybe I'll go back and have one more go at it...
(P.S. And of course now I discover Julia Donaldson has also written a picture book called The Rhyming Rabbit. But she has always been a song writer. That explains a lot.)

Setting Your Own Deadlines

A writer friend and I were talking today about what we'd like to achieve with our writing this year. She has been working on a trilogy for a long time but has had to put it on the back burner for a while, so she wants to get her head back inside the story and commit to it again. I have a handy deadline of a conference this year, and a new novel - put the two together and presto! I've decided I want to achieve a decent draft of the novel by the time the conference comes around.

But in the past, this kind of incentive hasn't always been there. I've had to simply keep plugging away at whatever I was working on, whether it be the fifteenth draft of a picture book or a novel that may or may not be working. Some people use Nanowrimo to inspire them to write a whole novel, while others are good at goal setting and timelines. Where do you sit?

For many of us, work and family commitments shove their way into our spare time and energy, taking over until there is nothing left. If you work in a job that requires a fair amount of creative energy (teaching is one), you probably struggle to keep some for writing. If you have small children or a demanding home situation (I'll let you imagine what that might mean!) or your health is not good, it can be hard for you to give your writing its fair share of time in your life.

This is where deadlines can be very useful, and there is nothing to stop you setting them for yourself. They can be as simple as 10 pages per week by Sunday 9pm. If you have a big 0 birthday coming up (40 or 50, say) you might start thinking about finishing your novel by that date. You might hunt out some competition opportunities and set their closing dates as deadlines for yourself. Or even find yourself a writing buddy that you can work with to set deadlines and encourage each other to meet them.

Often a good deadline is one with a goal, like a writing competition with its closing date. You can attach a reward to your deadline - If I finish my novel by 31st July, I can book that holiday to the Byron Bay Writers' festival, for example. Sometimes I set a really short deadline and reward - finish 20 pages by the weekend and I'm off to the movies! The thing about attaching a deadline to a reward is the time limit. No putting off those pages forever and a day. You have to have them finished or no reward at all. All of this might sound like the kind of big stick you don't want behind you, but remember the real reward - the more writing you do, the better you get, and the more likely you are to finish that novel.

Put Your Heart Work First

After eleven inspiring days at Hamline, I arrive home and am faced with two things - normal life and due dates for packets of work to my advisor. These two things are, of course, in direct conflict. As much as I would love to settle down with a huge pile of books and my notebooks and focus on reading, study and writing for the next few months, I have a job to go to, necessary things to do like tax returns and bills to pay, and people who need or want my attention (and cats who do as well, but are easily diverted by food, which only works sometimes for humans!).

It was a common topic of discussion at Hamline, especially among the new students who were there for the first time. How on earth do you find the time for study when you get home? Especially if there are things in your life that loom like huge, gaping mouths, ready to suck you in and use up all your time and energy? Despite two terrific lectures about the writer's life during the residency, this is a battle that every writer has to fight, on their own.

But when others asked me, "How did you cope in your first semester?", I had to stop and think for a few moments. How did I cope? And what I realised was it came down to one thing - I put my heart work first. When it came to making a To Do list, study and writing for my Hamline packets went at the top. When it came to my diary, I looked at where I could make time for my heart work. When it came to social stuff, time on Facebook, TV - I chose my heart work first. That didn't mean I became a recluse! But once I made that firm decision and stuck to it, it became easier and easier to focus.

Funnily enough, not much else suffered. OK, I couldn't tell you more than a couple of TV shows I watched (hardly any loss), and probably people didn't get much from me in the way of emails and phone calls (sorry), and I did less unpaid overtime at work (gee, sad about that). But once I put the heart work first, everything else fell into line behind. Where it belonged. So often we think that the curveballs life keeps throwing at us are undodgeable, but I'm learning to simply catch them, deal with them, put them where they belong (a lot less stress that way, too) and get back to my heart work.

Me and the MFA - January 2012

I have just finished my second residency at Hamline University in Minneapolis/St Paul - 12 days of hard work, deep thinking and reflection. A lot of reading as well (I was reading ahead for my next 40 books on the list), six workshop sessions, many readings, lectures and presentations. The theme for this residency was Point of View, and we looked at this in every way, from picture books to YA, poetry to rabbits. Rabbits, you ask? I guess you had to be there!

I loved all of the lectures, and although I know about POV, there are always more ways to think about it. We looked at psychic distance a lot, and had plenty of discussions about things such as "What is the POV in Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus?" We also looked at the 3 act structure, playwriting, and most importantly for me right now, the writing life. It's not about time management so much as committment and being brave enough to go deeper into your writing. Facing fears and "breaking open on the page". That's a scary thought for many writers. We like to write about other people, mostly, especially imaginary ones. Write about ourselves, even through a character? No way!

But I think these challenges are what I'm going to be thinking about all through this semester, as I write picture books and keep working on my novel, as well as tackling the critical essays. What does it mean to be a writer? Really. Does it just mean we write stuff and try to get it published? Or do we need to engage more with what and why we are writing, and what are the themes that are most important to us? Claire Rudolf Murphy asked us two questions.

1. When was the last time you wrote something safe, in order to "get the job done"?
2. When was the last time you wrote something risky, and wrote with freedom?
I'm going to be thinking about these two questions on my long flights home! But after that, I have enough in my notebook to keep me going for six months. And then in July, I'll be back - minus the snow.

Give Yourself a Gift in 2012

Is today the day we all rush around and write down our goals for the year? I doubt it. Some people might have had some resolutions in mind over the past few days, but I'm betting that most of you are either on the beach or in the snow, or just having a good time while the holiday season is still going! But not long before Xmas, I tweeted a blog post that suggested you give any writers in your life the gift of TIME. Do something for them that allows them to take off and write.

Now, if you are a writer and you saw that mentioned somewhere, did you go to your nearest and dearest and suggest it to them? Maybe you should have, because the one thing we all know is that nobody ever rocks up and just gives it to you. Because it never occurs to them that you need it! Writing is easy, is it not? You just have to sit down and scribble some stuff or pound the keyboard for a while and there it is.

If you are a writer, I will bet that you have many stories about those close to you and how they react to your writing. I actually align writing to dieting - the more you try to do it, the more likely you are to be offered a piece of cake, or in the writer's case, a trip to the movies or the zoo or a night out, accompanied by a sniffy mood if you refuse. Let's face it - non-writers don't get it, and family are even worse. They seem to think that your writing takes something away from them.

So in 2012, if you want time to write, you will have to give it to yourself. You will have to wrest it from those others around you and gather it up and keep it for yourself. You will have to suffer words like selfish and self-absorbed (and maybe worse), you might even have to cope with a bit of emotional blackmail. But writing takes time. Good writing takes a lot of time. If you continually give it away to other people, your writing won't get done. See, you gave all those gifts to other people at Xmas, but what about you? Give yourself the gift of time to follow your passion.
And enjoy it. No gift wrapping required.

Me and the MFA - Part 5

To continue my occasional posts about studying an MFA in Writing for Children and YA at Hamline University in Minneapolis/St Paul...

I’ve reached the end of my first semester, and am looking forward to the next residency at Hamline, despite the snow and minus temperatures! When I look back at the work I’ve done this semester, I’m amazed at what I’ve produced, especially when it seemed so daunting at the beginning. Daunting because I still had to go to my teaching job as well as do school visits and write and revise some commissioned work.

But I have survived. Four essays and 130 pages of a novel later, as well as about 35 pages of reflections and many pages of writing exercises and revisions, I feel very happy with it all. The novel was an experiment, something I wanted to write without any thought of publication, something I could write several versions of, just to see what worked and what didn’t. The lack of pressure (will an editor like this?) freed me up to do all kinds of writing of and around the novel in ways I haven’t tried for many years.

The reflections were useful as I wrote them kind of like a diary, one or two entries a week, about what I was reading, writing and puzzling over. Maybe other people don’t do theirs like this but it was interesting to read back and see what had evolved over the four months.

I didn’t expect to enjoy the essay writing, but each topic was something that I wanted to know more about, and wanted to investigate more deeply. How a particular writer creates character on the page, voice in historical fiction, dual narrator novels – all of these led me to new work and re-reading familiar novels, as well as delving into theory. I finished the semester with a personal essay, something I have little experience in, and I delved into Sheila Bender’s book on writing personal essays for some help and writing exercises, which then gave me some more ideas on other things I could write about!

To me, this is the perfect writer’s life – reading, delving, thinking, coming up with new ideas, waking in the morning and laying there thinking about what I will write that day. Then getting up and making a start on the next page of the current work. A pity that many days I had to get up and go to my job instead!

Now I have a big pile of books to read before the January residency, and notebooks, laptop and pens to get ready. I’m also looking forward to seeing everyone again, finding out how their semester went, and celebrating that I’m now a Semester Two girl! But somehow I doubt I'll be counting squirrels this time.

Writing Workshops - For or Against?

I've recently been reading two different (but similar) books about the writing workshop - whether it's an archaic structure or setup that has run its course and does more harm than good, or whether the workshop is still a beneficial thing for writers but perhaps needs to be considered differently these days. I'm going to discuss the books themselves in a week or so, when I've finished reading them, but it did seem a bit strange that both of them have been published in the last year. (They are Does the Writing Workshop Still Work? ed Dianne Donnelly and Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies by Anis Shivani.)

Where I teach, the writing workshop is a staple in our classrooms. Not because we are slavishly following some ideal that was set up in Iowa 60 years ago, but because we think that it has a lot of benefits. And some downsides. The benefits are: students gain a first audience for their work, one that wants to learn as much from commenting on other's work as they do from the feedback they receive; they start to see common weaknesses and through discussion begin to learn how to address these; they build a sense of a writing community; they realise that you can't please all of the people all of the time!

The downsides might include: the writer who becomes defensive and angry and argues with the group; the person who criticizes everyone's work relentlessly and never says anything positive; those who only say what they like or don't like but don't offer anything else; the person who accepts everyone's comments on their own writing but doesn't reciprocate. There are probably more than this! But the downsides for us tend to be limited to individual's problems with the process, and because we're in a classroom it can be easier to work these through. The other thing to be wary of, of course, is creating a situation where you "homogenise" everyone's work, or where writers go for the safe options, especially where a grade at the end is involved. I think we try to avoid that, as much as possible.

I do know of workshop groups where no one ever critiques - they just read out to each, pat each other on the back and then go home. I've also heard of others where one person has managed to destroy the whole group! Outside of a classroom, the writing group has to manage itself and be reasonably democratic. This is harder to achieve than you might think. A willingness to contribute honestly and fairly, to encourage and support as well as critique, and to bring writing for critique regularly, are basic requirements for success.

Some of the issues mentioned so far in the books I'm reading include workshops that discourage experimentation, don't critique critically enough to be useful, and those that operate only as critique groups with no reference to or study of literary texts as a basis for learning. I'm sure there's going to be a lot more! I'll get back to you when I'm done reading and thinking. In the meantime, if you have any comments on workshopping experiences, please do share!

Writers and Rescue Options

A friend today told me how much she loves a show where people move to their country dream house, and tonight I watched an old episode of Country House Rescue. It got me thinking about the analogy between those who call in an "expert" to find them a house, or fix a horrible house, and those who ask for help with their writing.

In a writers' group or a class, there is a sense that everyone is there for the same reason, and you are all focused on the same thing - improving your work. Fixing the story or poem that doesn't engage your reader, or looking at how to rewrite the novel that drags in the middle. We all know the myriad ways a piece of writing can run off the rails. In a class, I think there is a sense of camaraderie, and also an acknowledgement that once you receive some good feedback, you'll go away and work hard on rewriting (and those who clearly don't are somewhat scorned by the others!).

But while watching some of the house rescue shows, my husband and I often become frustrated. Why don't they listen to that good advice? The advice of the expert? Why ask for expert advice if you are not going to follow it? We watch people who are told "Don't sub-divide that room as buyers won't pay for a house with tiny bedrooms". And they still do it. Or more often, they are advised to spend more time and money on making something look top-notch, and they don't, and then they can't sell the house.

OK, that's no doubt got a lot to do with TV producers deliberately choosing obtuse or stubborn people who are guaranteed to provide a more "stimulating" viewing experience! But I couldn't help comparing this to writers who want to write publishable work - usually novels - and pay for critiques, classes and writing "doctors" and still will not or cannot do the work required at a professional level. It's as if they're paying for what they hope will be a person who will say "A totally marvelous novel and you are a brilliant writer". And then they don't need to fix anything.

All the money in the world will not produce a good, publishable novel without a bit of talent and a whole lot of hard work. Just like it won't produce a renovated house you can sell for a profit unless you knuckle down and learn and do a whole lot of hard work. (You can pay someone else to do it but you won't make a profit - you could pay someone else to write your novel for you, but what on earth is the point?)

On the show I watched tonight, a participant was shown the rotting wood and holes in the ceiling and asked, "What are you going to do about it?" And her answer was, "I'm resigned to it." Imagine if an editor pointed out your lack of characterization and poor dialogue and asked you to revise, and you said, "I'm resigned to it." Are you resigned to settling for a first draft? Or are you going to get out your hammer and drill and chisel and renovate your writing?

Writing in Chaos

The other day I read an article about certainty by Sarah Wilson (Sunday Age). She'd been inspired by a book called Uncertainty by Jonathan Fields, and said: "I became aware of how often my anxiety around uncertainty prevents me from creating freely..." Which caught my interest - isn't it uncertainty and doubt that often causes writer's block? Or at least stops us from facing up to the blank page?

In her article she also talked about how she'd discovered many creative people lead "ritualised" lives - eating the same things, getting up at the same time, following the same routines - because that steadiness, that certainty in their everyday lives meant that the uncertainty that comes with creating is much easier to face. This got me thinking about how often I hear people say they haven't been able to write because they've been too busy or life has been too hectic.

What is "too busy" really? Is it that every hour of your day is so totally filled with obligations and chores and duties and work that you don't have time to write? Or is it, as Wilson and Fields suggest, that the chaos of being busy and disorganised and always rushing creates so much uncertainty (or stress or angst or whatever you want to call it) that mentally you cannot find a place where writing will happen?

There's a cliche that if you want to get something done, ask a busy person. What lies beneath this is simply that a busy person who gets a lot done is simply very organised because they have to be. It's logical. Also a busy, organised person is often more able to say No because they are aware of whether they really do have the time and energy or not. Many of us don't say No because of guilt, but also because we often don't understand where our time goes and can't come up with a way of saying No and meaning it!

I like the idea of creativity coming from uncertainty - I feel it every time I sit down to write, and it's a relief to know it's normal. But I also like the idea that ordering the rest of my life with lists and prioritising and a visual diary is what allows me to create more, and create with less anxiety. I know that since I began my MFA studies this year, I have never worked harder or more consistently! But in a weird way, I've been less stressed because I've stuck with my priority job lists, and it's kept me off emails and time-wasting stuff. The one thing that has been stressful was maybe something I should have said No to, but I've learnt from that as well.
So, where do certainty and uncertainty sit in your creative life?

The Computer vs Your Body

I've just spent more than two weeks where I was at the computer or the laptop every day for several hours or more. It takes a toll. I like to think it's just because I'm getting older, and it is, but as we become more and more reliant on computers and technology, and spend more hours in front of any screen, we're going to have to be more pro-active about the ongoing and accumulating effects of this.

Years ago, I worked for a printer as a typesetter. It was an old-style machine with font disks that had to be changed if you wanted to use a different font. One of the main components of the machine was a set of extra keys off to the right-hand side. Now we have a number keyboard there that most of us hardly use. Back then, I used those keys constantly for formatting, so it should have been no surprise to me when I got RSI. In other words, a huge amount of pain and inflammation up my right arm.

Eventually I had to give that job up. Later I also discovered that the rickety chair I sat on, which couldn't be raised or lowered, had undoubtedly made things worse. Aha, you think, it's all different now. We know about ergonomics and RSI and stuff like that. Yep, sure do. But how many writers do anything about it? I no longer have that particular RSI symptom - now I have a ganglion on my right hand from the mouse, and constant neck and shoulder problems. And I'm not the only one, according to writer friends.

So what are the things I am still doing wrong, despite knowing better? I still hunch in my chair instead of sitting up straight. I still struggle to find the best position for using my laptop, even though I now have a separate keyboard for it. I still get engrossed in what I'm working on and forget to get up and stretch. But at least I have a decent chair and it's at the right height.

We get our professional writing students to analyse their work areas to see what needs to be fixed or changed. I sometimes wonder how many of them actually do anything about it. But in the long term, if you don't, you are asking for ongoing, painful physical problems. Today, after several weeks of sustained computer work to meet some deadlines, I went off to have a massage as a reward. But I knew, all the same, that it wasn't just a reward. It was a necessity so that my back and shoulders would stop feeling like pretzels and I could walk straight and upright!

Don't take your time at the computer for granted. Stay aware of what your body is telling you, and do something about it. This is an ongoing problem - it will gradually get worse with time, and the longer you leave it, the harder it is to fix. Just ask my neck!

Book Awards - Precarious and Providential

The news this week came from the US National Book Awards - in the young adult section, the judges chose five books for the shortlist but somehow six were announced. At first it seemed that yes, an error had been made in the announcement but they would stick with it. Now they have taken one book off the list - Shine by Lauren Myracle - or should I say, Myracle apparently "withdrew the book from consideration". Who knows what went on behind the scenes, but Myracle has behaved most professionally in what must be a horrible situation, and no doubt it has earned her many new fans.

There's a saying that all publicity is good publicity, but with the internet these days, that's not always true. An author a few months ago who tried to defend herself against a bad review received a huge backlash. True, she defended with insults! But in this world where hundreds of new books are published every week, where self publishers are using the net and Amazon to get their books out there, for many readers awards remain one of the standard guides for what is a "good book".

This week also there was much outrage about the shortlist for the Man Booker prize. This is an award for a book that is considered to be the best of the best in literary fiction, and the critics are complaining that the books are too "popular". So apparently the criteria for this award includes "too literary to be readable and/or enjoyable", which is a pity. Regardless of that, the uproar will help sales because all those people who thought the Man Booker shortlist was too literary might now go and buy at least one of them and actually read them!

The quandary with awards is this - they attempt to choose the best in a given year. The shortlist they come up with is a mix of opinion and compromise (the more on the judging committee, the more compromise - this is fact borne out by experience!). But for most awards, this shortlist influences book sales to an immense degree. Here in Australia, if you are shortlisted for one of the Children's Book Council awards, your book is guaranteed an immediate reprint and at least 3000 extra sales (a lot here in Oz).

What are the repercussions of this? For a start, if you get shortlisted, you are very, very happy! If your book doesn't get shortlisted, however (and if you aren't Andy Griffiths or writing a current hot series), your book will very likely die within 12 months and probably not earn out its advance. So the argument that book awards unfairly promote some books at the expense of a lot of others is a valid one.

For children's books, the other option is the various children's choice awards. I'm going to put my foot in my mouth here and say I actually think these are worthless to the author and their book. I mean worthless in terms of sales. For a book to win a children's choice award, it needs to have been already bought/borrowed and read by lots and lots of kids, so if you win one, it means you and your book (because often it's the author who is winning on reputation for great books) are already out there in huge numbers. But they are great validations for you personally, because it does show kids read and love your books. How good is that?!

It's interesting to see some state awards here now include a People's Choice award that is voted for by readers. (I do wonder though about the publishers who email you and urge you to vote - oh well, it all counts.) So awards are providential. You never know when you might get shortlisted, and if you win, good gracious! How wonderful, especially if the prize money is nice. But you can't count on them either. You just have to write, and believe in what you write, and keep on writing.

Expanding Writing Horizons

Every now and then it's good to try something new. A while ago, I volunteered to be part of an art "experience". I wasn't quite sure what it would be but I'd done other stuff - writers sports, poem writing at exhibitions, performance writing. This was a bit different. Power to the People is part of the Melbourne Arts Festival and "presents works from over 15 Australian and international artists who have revisited, revised and revitalized these art-making strategies. Works shown by artists including Dora Garcia, Fiona Macdonald, Jonathan Monk and Mario Garcia Torres, demonstrate a move away from the art ‘object’, into more performative, documentative, research and participatory modes of art making."
This is another work in the exhibition. People can try on the animal costumes if they want. Most didn't. But one big group of Asian students had a wonderful time. Nothing quite like a penguin wearing a gorilla's head!
Basically I, and about 20-30 others (we work in shifts), am part of the Dora Garcia artwork (installation?). While people visit the exhibition, we sit at the table with the laptop and write about what we observe - and we are observing the people. The idea is that whatever we write appears above us on the projected image, and that they should at some point realise that we are writing about them.
That's when it gets interesting ... or confronting. For both sides. As the writer, I am not allowed to use my point of view or say I or me. I can only be the "objective witness". As the words appearing on the wall above me are the only things that move in the room, most people notice and then realise what is going on. Then they watch you watching them and writing about them.

It takes the role of the lonely writer in the garret and blows it out of the water, although my understanding of the instructions we are given is that it's the audience who are important. The writer is just part of the installation. I did find it hard to keep a straight face some of the time. I am only doing two shifts - all I have time for - but next time I'm going to have a closer look at some of the other works so I can "interpret" some of the body language I'm seeing in response to what is around me!

"The Taste of River Water" by Cate Kennedy

In my poetry class, we often come back to the question of what we think a poem should or could do. There are lots of answers, but one of my favourites is that a poem can show you something that you thought you knew about in a different and/or surprising way. To me, this is what Cate's poems do. While some might say they are too "prosey" or dwell too much on the ordinary, this is what gives her images such power. She sets the scene and then stuns the reader with imagery that you can see and feel and, at times, smell and touch.

Many of her poems, in fact, feel like narratives. When did we last read good narrative poetry? Some of Les Murray's do this, but many other Australian poets focus more on lyrical imagery and small moments in a landscape. Behind Cate's poems sit whole histories and what we see are not just glimpses but the bones of the stories within. She allows the reader to fill in the gaps, which is also what I think good poems do.

Not all of the poems are like narratives. Any collection benefits from variety, but I think what also underpins this one is a real sense of place. Some of you would be familiar with her poem, "8x10 colour enlargements $16.50" which tells of a farmer's wife, a talented amateur photographer, who enters a competition. The reader is invited into the poem: "Let me lay it out for you". We are in the local town hall with the poet, observing, commenting on the winning photo: "a massive sunset shot, the colours juiced with Photoshop" and the farmer's wife who said so little about the injustice that the poet felt compelled to show us what happened.

The collection is book-ended by two poems about writing poetry, an interesting touch given that I've heard Cate talk about her short stories and how often she tries to begin and end a story with images that mirror or connect in some way. As I said, I think this is where the strength of the poems lies, in the way an image will reach out from the page and hit you, make you pay closer attention to what is being created for you. For example, in "Windburn" after a day at the beach:

this rim of salt on my forearm
like unnoticed, evaporated tears,
as if I've spent today silent, unconsolable,
weeping into the crook of my elbow

My favourite poem in the collection is "Temporality". We don't need to know exactly what building this is, just that it's one with a secret history that the average museum visitor might well miss unless they looked more closely and used their imagination. This history is of ordinary working men, and the details tell us much more than you expect:

This four-inch nail banged in beside them to hold invoices
that they always meant to replace with a decent hook or clip;
see how it's holding fast
long after they have gone,
see how they were wrong
about what was temporary.

I could go on about this book of poetry all day, but I won't. However, I will recommend it very highly as one you should add to your bookshelf.
By the way, The Taste of River Water recently won the Victorian Premier's Award for Poetry.