Writing How-To Books

The other day, a student told me how much she was enjoying Ray Bradbury's Zen and the Art of Writing, and I had to admit I'd never read it! It's a bit of a classic, and I know a few writers who love it but I just hadn't got around to it. I plan to rectify that soon. But there are a lot of writing books out there. I often take some of mine into class. When I teach Story Structure, I use Vogler's The Writer's Journey, as well as Jordan Rosenfeld's Make a Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time

And I often talk about Write Away by Elizabeth George. She does a great job of showing you how to use setting and description, but mostly what I got from her book was my own method - finally - of how to plot and outline. She talks about thinking through her story until she comes up with at least 15 major dramatic scenes. Somehow, that caused one of those weird connections for me, and I came up with a plotting grid that works. But it might only work for me. I show it to the students and some nod, but most look mystified. I can see them thinking: how could you plot with that? I just do. It works for me.

It's the same with writing books. There are some I would happily give away because they don't "speak" to me at all, and I disagree with their methodology. Writing books are not cheap. You can often pick them up secondhand, but if it's not the book for you, you've wasted your money. If you look at all the books on plotting, you'll see there are plenty. Same with characters, dialogue, structure, and just general writing stuff. So many to choose from that you hardly know where to start. Our library at VU where I teach has a good range of titles, and even more as ebooks. I tell students - use the library. Read a few. See which ones work for you.

It's a funny thing - you can go to several classes about fiction writing, or poetry, or writing picture books, and they will all tell you similar things. But one day you will go to a class and somehow the teacher will say those things in a way that zaps you, that makes you understand the theory in a whole new way. It's the same with writing books. When you find one you love, buy it and add it to your shelf. You'll find you come back to it every now and then, just for that "shot in the arm" that gets you writing again.

Now, where can I get a copy of Bradbury's book?

Learning the Craft of Writing

How do people learn to write fiction and poetry? The obvious answer is - by writing. But it's not that easy. Gifted storytellers are few and far between. Most of us take years to learn the craft. I believe I will keep on learning as long as I keep writing. That's why I'm doing an MFA in writing for children and YA at Hamline University. So if you're someone who doesn't think writing can be taught, I guess you can stop reading!

But most people I have met over the years have benefitted greatly from the classes, workshops and courses they have attended, including me. I'm talking about everything from a seminar to a short course to a full Diploma or even a degree. The course I teach in at Victoria University TAFE has been around for about 20 years or more. I've had many students go on to be published, to get jobs as journalists, copywriters, nonfiction freelancers, picture book writers, editors ... we once brainstormed all the jobs our students could get and came up with more than 30. That was before all the web writing jobs came along.

The days of writing alone in a garret are gone. Yes, you can still write alone, but the support networks now are tremendous - writing groups, mentors, writing coaches - even just to get together regularly with a bunch of fellow writers is a great boost. And if you are in a network where your writing can get critiqued so you can improve and grow as a writer, even better. These valuable networks often start in writing courses.

So the news filtering in over the past few weeks has been incredibly depressing. Our esteemed Diploma (and Certificate IV) in Professional Writing & Editing here in Victoria is in real danger of disappearing. For those of you who don't know, TAFE is funded by the state government (higher ed is funded federally). Massive changes in TAFE funding started a few years ago. First was the move to full fees for anyone who had a prior qualification. This meant that many of our keen mature age students were forced out of our course because they couldn't afford $6000 for a Diploma. Then the criteria changed again, and now for the Cert IV and Diploma it will cost you around $10,000-12,000 if you have a Cert IV or higher qual in anything. And I mean anything, including horticulture, sports training, cookery - anything.

For those still able to access a "government funded" place, the fees have been steadily creeping up. Now the Victorian state government has brought in a new categorisation of courses. Professional Writing sits in the middle to lower bands, so for TAFEs to continue to offer these courses, fees will rise. In the Diploma, they will come very close to full fees. A few TAFEs are throwing in the towel. They already anticipate that no one will be able to afford those big fees, or will want to pay them. After all, why pay $12,000 for a two year diploma when you can do an Arts degree for a similar amount? (And don't forget that degrees are federally funded and there are no more caps on HE places so unis can take as many as they want.)

The fact that our Diploma is industry-based and teaches a huge range of job-related writing skills seems to be beside the point these days. It's all about the state government saving money.
Well, you might say, isn't that the reality? Money is tight. Sure. But only because we now have a gazillion private training providers in Victoria who are so lightly regulated that it's laughable. If you want some evidence of this, look at the two damning reports on the ABC's 7.30 Report (most recent broadcast 5th Sept 2012).

As a TAFE teacher I am sinking under the amount of paperwork required now by the government to "prove" I'm teaching what I say I am. Like many other TAFE teachers, I am at a loss to see how this helps me or my students. I'm teaching better now than I ever have. I pay for my own professional development a lot of the time, I read, I write, I am published and I take my PD seriously. And then I pass on what I know to my students.

To see our course strangled by what is happening with government funding and pathetic policies is so sad and depressing, well, I don't know what to do anymore. Except keep on fighting to keep our course going. I know how good it is, and I hear it from present and past students all the time (thanks to all of you who posted on FB). And to answer what I asked at the beginning - people learn to write better in courses like ours, and what they learn contributes to our literary culture more and more every day. But what would a bean-counting politician know about that?

What do you love about bookshops?

Over the past few weeks, I've bought a lot of books online. (I will duck now as a few people think that's akin to drinking wine with a devil.) But many of the books I've bought are either not available in bookshops here, or are so old that I've had to source them secondhand. I've needed them for my thesis, so it's not like I can wait 6 weeks or more for a shop here to find them. But it did get me thinking about what I do love about bookshops, and as someone said, it's the serendipity.

Many years ago, I discovered Barbara Kingsolver because The Bean Trees was sitting face-up on a row of recommended books at the Grubb Street Bookstore. I went on to buy and read nearly all of her books. Recently I found a book by a guy called John Hart on a display and am now hooked on his books. Similar thing with John Dunning who wrote the Bookman novels (sadly there were only five). For me, that's the first thing a bookshop offers - the exciting possibility of finding a book I wasn't aware of and diving into a terrific story. It's not that I want a page-turner - I want a book that I can sink into and want to keep reading long past lights-out, just like when I was a kid.

Online buying can't match this. I can't pick up the book, read the blurb and then the first two or three pages. All right, sometimes I can, but it's just not the same as holding it in your hand and flicking through and recognising from the "feel" of it that you're going to enjoy it. Sometimes I'm wrong. There have been a couple of hefty Swedish crime novels that ended up being relegated to the donation box. But books here in Australia are expensive - even YA paperbacks are $20+, others are $30. I try to make a solid judgement before buying, and a bookshop lets me do this.

What else do I love? Often being able to have a coffee while I peruse a small pile and make final choices. Seeing what is new, what is popular, what everyone else is buying, just because I'm curious. I don't like sales people asking me every two minutes if I need help. But I like having someone to ask if I get stuck or can't find something. One thing I do hate about very small bookshops - I know they need my money but if I really can't find anything that appeals, I feel terribly guilty slinking out without buying anything!

I used to love Borders (and still like B&N when I am in the US) just because they are so big and I could spend the whole day in there, and a week's wages. But even small shops can have me slapping my own hand to stop way too many impulse purchases. I guess I buy books like some people buy shoes. But all of that love for bookshops still won't stop me buying online as well. It's not so much the cheaper prices (sometimes), it's being able to get books that a couple of years ago I wouldn't have bothered even ordering, because I can, and because someone out there is selling them when I need them.
And my favourite bookshop? The Sun Bookshop in Yarraville. Especially now they have a children's one across the road!

What Objects Inspire Your Writing?

August is the month where children's writers spend an awful lot of days in schools, because during this time is Children's Book Week. If you are lucky enough to have a book shortlisted for the CBCA awards, you are likely to be even more in demand. Nevertheless, schools go all out to celebrate books. I've been to a few dress-up parades with kids in every kind of costume from Dorothy (Wizard of Oz) and Harry Potter to Angelina Ballerina and a teacher dressed as a cow, udder and all. This is primary school, of course. I can't imagine any high school kid being so uncool as to dress up as a book character!

Some authors take to school visits like a duck to water (cliche warning) but most have to "feel" their way into it. A few years ago, the Centre for Youth Literature ran some training sessions to help authors work out how to do a successful school visit, which were very useful. We learned about "show and tell" items, being genuine, telling stories, and being enthusiastic. I remember once hearing Andy Griffith, the king of school visits (and of kid's books here), talking about doing a course in stand-up comedy in order to learn how to create a "script" and present to kids effectively.

There are dangers here, of course. Your script can become too familiar, so that you are sick to death of hearing yourself spout it! You can certainly do too many school visits and lose that important enthusiasm. I still enjoy them, I think because I mostly go to primary schools where the kids love reading and are not afraid to ask questions (including "how old are you?"). I quail at a class of Year 9s who lean back in their chairs and pretend they couldn't care less about books, even if they're dying to ask you something.

With the "show and tell" element, I often take with me objects that have inspired stories, or helped to create the story for me. On my desk is a very small toy wombat. Five years ago, I bought him on my way to the USA, and wrote a story about him while sitting in San Antonio airport, waiting for my flight. I'd just spent four days with my writer friend, Kristi Holl, talking about writing, so maybe it's hardly surprising that a story popped out, but it was the toy attached to my bag that started it.

Of course, I have a lot of pirate "objects" - everything from a flag and some replica doubloons to photos and eye patches. I show them to the kids, but I think the things that helped me the most with writing Pirate X were the images - old pictures of Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard, and photos I took myself of settings. I also have an amazing cross-section of a Spanish galleon by the artist, Stephen Beisty. It helped me imagine myself on an old sailing ship with a bunch of pirates.

When I look at other things I've written, often I've found the objects after working on the story idea, but every so often there's either an object or an image that has inspired some writing, usually a poem. My latest poem is about Little Saigon, a market in Footscray. I volunteered to write a poem for a project about Footscray, and I couldn't write it without going back to the market again and looking, smelling, tasting and listening. 

What objects have led to you writing something recently?

MFAC - July residency at Hamline

Hot on the heels of the SCBWI conference in Sydney (end of June), I flew out to the US for the next residency in the Master of Fine Arts (Writing for Children and YA) I'm studying at Hamline University. Every six months I go to Hamline in St Paul (Minnesota) for a 12 day intensive residency, and the rest of the semester I work at home with an advisor online. I can now say I am officially past the halfway mark!

It continues to be just about the best thing I have ever done, for my writing and for myself. As I hoped, the faculty at Hamline are amazing and each semester the advisor I have had has pushed me to explore further and deeper into writing than I imagined I could go. This past semester I focused on picture books, and as well as four essays, I wrote and revised eight picture books. Some were notes and rough drafts from my notebooks, but some were completely new and sprang from the reading and thinking and writing I was doing.

The July residency focused on setting - this is something I have struggled with for a long time. A strange thing to admit, you might say, given that I've been writing a good amount of historical fiction in the past few years. Yet it's in historical fiction that skills in writing setting are most sorely tested! How to make setting relevant and meaningful, rather than just a factual background, and how to relate it to both plot and character without overdoing it. I learned plenty about all of these aspects.

We also had an immensely useful workshop with Swati Avasthi (Split ) on managing time in fiction, two great lectures from Anita Silvey about classic and contemporary fiction in middle grade and YA (what books do you think will be classics in 20 years time?) and I heard Gary Schmidt lecture for the first time - he talked about the importance of strong minor characters. As always, our workshop groups were dedicated and thoughtful, providing wide-ranging and useful feedback on everyone's work.

One of the highlights for me was a double workshop/lecture by Marilyn Nelson on poetry - she has actually convinced me to give writing poetry in rhyme a serious try (don't faint, those of you who know my abhorrence of rhyme!). Then Ron Koertge taught everyone how to write a pantoum, which led to me writing one sitting in a cafe in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a few days later. And what could be better than having Chris Crutcher as special guest on the last day (and at the graduation)? This semester I will be working on my critical thesis - that means 40-50 pages of critical writing on a topic of my choice. I'm going to be investigating verse novels, so it's a great reason to sit down and read a few dozen of them, including re-reading some of my favorites. Can't wait! (Below are some of our faculty)

Procrastination is like a virus

If I've learned one thing about writing over the years, it's this - the more you avoid it, the harder it is to get going. We avoid it for lots of reasons. The blank page is scary, not because it's blank, but because we place so many expectations upon what it should hold when we have written. We want our writing to shine right from the first draft. Heck, we want the first draft to be so darned good that we hardly have to touch it!

But understanding that first drafts can and usually do range from a bit rough right down to absolutely atrocious is the key. If you haven't written something, you have nothing to rewrite. If you haven't at least had a go at getting down that great idea, even if it looks like it curled up and died right in front of you, you'll never know if it's workable.

Today I went to my favorite cafe to write. It's a habit for me now, due to a retired husband in the house. First draft writing - I have to be alone, in my own headspace. The cafe is where I tackle first drafts. Some days the words come easily, especially if I'm working on my novel and can take up where I left off. What happens next has been bubbling away in the back of my head somewhere and it doesn't take much to get it out onto the page.

Today it was like trying to get a hundred splinters out of my brain. Painful, slow, tedious. I wanted to give up. I was working on a new chapter book, I had my character and a brief plot outline. It refused to come to life. It felt stodgy, forced, and incredibly boring. I kept thinking: what kid will ever want to read this rubbish?

But I kept going. I wrote two chapters. I came home feeling depressed. Why was I bothering? (Does this sound familiar?) But then I gave myself a mental slap. I have the beginning of a first draft, I have about 800 words I didn't have this morning, and I have hurdled that first barrier of "how to start". Nothing to complain about. Just 800 words ready for revision. The cure for the procrastination virus? Determination and perseverance. Oh, and good coffee!

New books

  Recently two friends of mine have had their books published, and I doubt they could be more different! But both are great reads. Gina Perry has been working on her book about Stanley Milgram and the shock machine experiments for quite a few years. It first appeared as a radio documentary, as she had found several people in the US who had taken part in the experiments and agreed to now be interviewed by her. Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments is a very confronting book, but a fascinating one.

Many people have heard of The Wave, which was the classroom experiment where blue-eyed and brown-eyed people were segregated and basically set against each other. There have been other similar social psychology experiments - most of which took place in the 50s and 60s - and it's only now that questions are being seriously asked about the long-term effects on the subjects. I've listened to Gina's documentary, which uses excerpts of the taped interviews, but somehow reading the book has a much greater effect. Perhaps it's the power of the imagination, but I've had a couple of nightmares about it! She also tracks her own journey through the research. As a former psychologist, she constantly questions the ethics of the experiments, the effects on the people she interviews, and whether Milgram told the whole truth about what he was doing. Certainly his journals indicate he had other motives, and he also kept information to himself that might have distorted or changed his findings. A very interesting book, even if you don't read much nonfiction. The other book by a writer friend is a novel - The Fine Colour of Rust. I spent a lot of time laughing as I read Paddy (P.A.) O'Reilly's story. I loved the main character and her attitude to the world. How could you not love a mother who constantly imagines hilarious ways of getting rid of her kids, and yet clearly loves them and tries her best? Gunapin is an Australian country town where everything and everyone seems hopeless, and yet they're not. Loretta is a fighter and a realist - one of her many battles is to save the primary school, and it was a joy to see the local politician smothered in local "let's impress him" events which result in him being literally coated with meat and blood from the abattoir. You keep wanting Loretta to high-tail it out of the place and make a new life back in the city, and yet even she knows she is trapped there by lack of money. In the end, it's the people of Gunapin who make it a tolerable place to live, as it is with anywhere. The dry, almost black humour of this story is, you could say, very Australian, but I hope we're well past condemning "Australian novels" to the dusty back corner of the bookshop. This one deserves front and centre.

What to write about

There are a number of myths about writing, and I'm sure you've heard many of them. Writer's block is one - some insist there is no such thing, others say they have been blocked for years. Working writers who have deadlines can't afford the time to even think about blocks! Another is that writing can't be taught. I happen to think it can - if an artist can go to art school and learn craft and techniques and skills, so can a writer. I often say to students that one of the best things about being in a writing course is meeting other writers, sometimes making lifelong connections. I found one of mine through the Chatauqua Workshop.

But a danger of a course is relying too much on the teachers to guide you or, more to the point, guide what you will write about. Class exercises are great - they oil the cogs, give you much-needed regular practise, and can sometimes spark off a bigger idea. But they are definitely not all there is to writing. Over on my ebook4writers site I've been running a whole month of writing prompts. But if someone relied on my prompts to keep them writing, they'd fall into a hole, because what interests me as a prompt may not suit you at all.

"Write what you know" is another myth. It's one that fantasy writers scoff at, and merrily go off to create another world. We can start with what we know, but if we can't then leap forward through our imaginations, why are we writing? How do we expect to still be writing in five or ten years time, if we don't learn to use the greatest tool we have? Our youngest students, those straight from high school, are both blessed and cursed. They often have the free-est imaginations, but the least life experience and the narrowest views on what life is about. I hope one of the things they learn is how to generate their own ideas, ones they feel excited and passionate about, ones that will sustain them through thousands of words.

Years ago, I heard a writer talk about hunting ideas. They don't just come and knock on your door - you have to go out and hunt them down. To this end, I, like many writers I know, carry a notebook with me, but my favorite hunting ground for ideas is the daily newspaper. Sometimes I cut things out (usually images rather than articles) and sometimes I read an item that sticks with me and later I make my own notes about its possibilities. One thing I have learned is never let an idea get away. If I don't write it down, even just one line, an hour or two later it's often gone.

Where do you go for ideas? How do you know when you've "hooked a big one"?

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.