Write Now with - Tristan Bancks

Next week is the Beaconsfield Festival of Golden Words. Tristan Bancks is one of Australia’s most active children’s authors, and an advocate of the internet as an essential writers tool. In demand at schools and libraries around the country for his exciting writing workshops for youngsters, Tristan is leading two of his story safaris and his popular Imaginarium session at the Festival.

1. What is your latest published book? Tell us a little about it.

TWO WOLVES, out 1 March. It’s a crime-mystery novel about two kids, Ben and Olive Silver, who are ‘kidnapped’ by their own parents. They are told that they’re going on a holiday but, after a couple of run-ins with the police, they realise that their parents have done something wrong. They need to become detectives within their own family and work out what their folks have done and what they are going to do about it.

2. What research did you have to do for it?

I read lots of articles on abducted kids and criminal parents. I learnt how log rafts are built and what rabbit hunting is like and I learnt about Norfolk Pine trees and police car antennas and I re-read My Side of the Mountain and Hatchet and White Fang and other wilderness novels that I love. Lots of details that I tried to get right. I took five years to write it so I take full responsibility for any discrepancies.

3. What is your best time of day for writing? Why is that?Definitely mornings. I am clear-headed and energised and ready for action. Afternoon is much better for logistical stuff. Then a late-night burst of ideas if I allow it. (Often no sleep afterwards.) 

4. What is the strangest question you've ever been asked by a reader? How did you respond?
‘Do you like pie’? I, of course, responded in the affirmative. 

5. What do you like most about literary festivals?Interacting with kids, meeting other writers and illustrators who invariably have an interesting take on the world. Telling stories verbally is fun and bringing them alive with images, video, anecdotes etc. It’s a nice excuse to stand up occasionally, too. Writers sit for waaaay too long each day / month / year.


Thanks, Tristan! I know what you mean about too many hours at the computer. Two Wolves looks great - can't wait to read it.

Write now! with Nick Earls

To celebrate the Beaconsfield Festival of Gold Words, which is on in Tasmania (near Launceston) next week, I'm running a series of short blog posts featuring Q&As with some of the writers who will be there.

First up is Nick Earls, whose books have long been on my favourites list.

1. What is your latest book? Tell us a bit about it.

 My latest book for children is the final part of the Word Hunters trilogy. It’s called War of the Word Hunters, and we aimed to create the massive finale every trilogy deserves. In this case, it needed an epic-scale reckoning between our heroes and their enemy, and  it needed to be etymologically satisfying as well. Word Hunters is a time-travel adventure trilogy, with the leaps back in time dictated by the evolution of a particular word, so to finish with we needed a word that would take us to the right place at the right time, in an interesting way. A big ask, but I think we got there.

My latest book for adults is Welcome to Normal, a collection of stories and novellas, each of which look at the idea of ‘normal’ in some way, and at what might lie beneath the surface. My next book for adults, a novel called Analogue Men, will come out in July.

2. What research did you have to do for this book?
The research for Word Hunters was huge, and one of the best bits. I had to test out the etymological paths of literally hundreds of words to see which had interesting stories, or stories that could take the characters to interesting places. Then I had to find out what they’d wear in each place, what it looked like how it smelt, etc.

For Welcome to Normal, a few of the stories involve travel or happen a long way from here, so I took to Google Earth and Google Street View and spent days driving the roads to see precisely what my characters would see (or at least what they would have seen, had they been in the Google car that day).

3. What is your best time of day for writing? Why is that?
My best writing time is after I’ve dropped my son at childcare, bought the groceries and despatched any urgent emails. The decks are close to clear then, and they’re not clear often. Lately, my best shot at writing has come on planes and in hotel rooms, with the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door.

To write a first draft of a novel, though, it’s more about best time of year than best time of day. I have to block out a slab of my diary, say no to events and other requests, and write. I only get a few months a year like that, and those few months need to yield a draft of something.

4. What is the strangest question you've been asked by a reader?
Quite a few of the strange questions are about the writing of He Died With a Felafel in his hand, made extra strange because John Birmingham wrote it, not me. But people talk to him about Zigzag Street regularly, so honours are even.

5. What do you like most about literary festivals?
 They make me lift my eyes from this keyboard and screen. They bring me back into face-to-face contact with writers and readers, and into conversations.

Thanks, Nick. You will also see on his website that he gives away some of his stories for free, so if you haven't read his work before, here's your chance!

Beginning life as a hybrid publisher, Part 2

The continuing story …

In every publishing venture, especially in self-publishing where you are juggling everything, something is sure to go wrong. Usually it's somewhere in the printing. Deciding to use a local Melbourne printer (just over the Westgate Bridge from me) was worth it, and I think now that dealing with a printer in China or Singapore to save a few hundred dollars would have been a mistake. I had a pretty trouble-free experience with Trojan Press, and they were really helpful.

Publishers who print overseas have a lot more experience than me, and are able to explain exactly what they want and couch it in printing terminology. Whereas to get the book size, I was there with the ruler and counting millimetres!

Having had books traditionally published, though, there were aspects that I understood were vital – the cover design, for one. The correct front and back matter, the imprint page, the ISBN, the barcode (which the printer organized), and then the book data. I had to redo the book data four times in the end because some of it (like the release date) kept mysteriously changing in the online databases. 

Also, because this book had been published in the USA, with a different ISBN, I had to contact a number of online booksellers and library suppliers to make sure they knew the correct ISBN and had information about the book. This particular advice came from a session at the Independent Publishers’ Conference, which happened in Melbourne in November, at just the right time for me.

Another thing that I heard at the conference was the frustration felt by review magazines and editors over people who send books for review the week they come out. A review can take up to 3 months, by the time the book is sent to someone, they read it, write the review and then it’s published. So I had my books in my hot little hand by the end of October and immediately began sending out review copies.

It’s not a simple process because quite a few blogs and journals require you to contact them first. I guess they are tired of being sent every book in existence! But several places I took the time to email were responsive and agreed to take a copy. That doesn’t guarantee a review, though. (Again, I already had reviews from the US publication that I could use in my marketing.)

So here is a list of all the things I embarked upon as part of my marketing:

• ·        Review copies
• ·        A special book page on my website where I could link to reviews, as well as provide extra materials
• ·        Extra materials – teaching notes, an author interview, first chapter to download, links to reviews, a book trailer
• ·        Facebook page for the book where, instead of just hoping people would buy the book, I wanted to provide images (everyone seems to love images, hence Pinterest) related to the book
• ·        Tweeting about the book (only a little bit – I hate it when people’s tweets are just one endless sales pitch)
• ·        Launches – one at a great children’s bookshop, The Little Bookroom
• ·        The second “launch” is part of me giving a free talk about hybrid publishing at my local library, and I have how-to guides on self-publishing to give away
• ·        Approaching some schools I had been to previously and offering school book launches (my traditional publisher did this a few years ago with a book of mine and I had done it with a keen local school with another book)
• ·        Two guest posts on blogs that are read by teachers and librarians, as well as other writers

I’m sure there are other small things I’ve been doing but those are the main ones.

I have also been incredibly lucky in that the son of a friend of mine offered to make me a book trailer, and it was just fantastic. He did an amazing job and even found a German Shepherd dog to star in it. The trailer is very spooky! You can see it here.

Other things? well, I did think about having a German Shepherd at the book launch but the bookshop is small and I started imagining what might happen if someone stood on the poor dog’s foot and … you get the picture! So scrap that idea.

Now the book launch is just a week away, and I have to start thinking about cooking cakes for the celebration, and how I will keep the wine chilled if it’s a hot day, and where to park so I don’t get a parking fine.

And then I will have school visits and more photos to put on the FB page and reviews to brace myself for, and then I have to decide if I am going to enter the book for any awards where it’s eligible. I think I will be busy for a few more weeks, at the very least. Finally, if I am lucky and all of this effort leads to good sales, I might be in that happy position of having to decide on a reprint.

Beginning life as a hybrid publisher

Writers often self-publish because they can’t find a traditional publisher for their book. I found myself in this position in 2013. It wasn’t that I had never been traditionally published – by then I had nearly 60 books published, several of which had won or been shortlisted for awards. So why was I in this position? Had I written a book so awful that no one wanted it? Or so contentious or weird or unmarketable? No. But the book I wanted to see published in Australia had already been published in the USA, and so overseas and e-rights were not available. While a few Australian publishers might have said no because they didn’t like the book, finally one was able to tell me it was the rights issue that led them to turn it down.

Now, with some of my books I might have thought – I had it published in the US so I’ll be happy with that. But this book was different. It wouldn’t leave me alone. I just felt in my heart that it was worth pursuing here, hence my constant nudging of my agent to try another publisher. But when I finally realised it wasn’t going to happen, I woke up one morning and decided to try it alone. My first option was to import a large number of copies from the US publisher, but the discount wasn’t enough to allow me to distribute it here without incurring big losses. Also I would have to pay high freight costs. The other option was to self-publish the book. Which, I discovered, would make me a hybrid publisher - one who is both traditionally and self-published.

I think the crucial difference at this point for me was my track record. If I’d only had a few books out, and wasn’t reasonably well known already, I might not have bothered. Or I might have printed 100 copies (as I have done with two of my out-of-print titles) and just sold them during school visits. This “reputation” turned out to be crucial indeed. It meant the distributor, Dennis Jones, immediately agreed to take at least 1200 copies with a team of sales reps to back this up. I had been considering using Lightning Source as a printer, having heard someone from there talk at a small press conference, but Dennis recommended a printer not far from where I live. A quote from Trojan Press showed they could match Lightning Source, and their proximity would make things easier for communication. Trojan also were happy to amend the cover for me. I negotiated with the US publisher, KaneMiller, to buy the cover files as Dennis Jones thought the original cover was excellent and worth using.

From my earlier reprints I already had a block of ISBNs and could immediately allocate one to Dying to Tell Me’s Australian edition. It also helped that I have been self-publishing for years. Initially it was a series of community publications, including two oral histories, then a women’s poetry magazine for 20 years. I’d also written a book on self-publishing (1997) and taught classes, and kept up with changes in technology. All the same, I was looking at a 1500-2000 print run, which filled me with fear. That was a lot of money to risk! The turning point was when my agent contacted Australian Standing Orders on my behalf, and after looking at the book and the teacher’s notes I had written, they agreed to take a firm order of 700 copies. Again, my reputation and track record of previous books was a vital element. (Standing Orders companies have schools as “subscribers” and supply a selected box of books every month of the school year.)

Ultimately, distributors and standing orders companies take your books at a high discount. With a distributor I will have to deal with returns, like any publisher, so I wasn’t out of deep water yet! But it was looking hopeful for maybe covering my costs. And that was what I went into this with – the aim of covering my costs, or not making too big a loss.

Then came work on the actual book. Much as it would have been convenient to use the US text, when I read through it again, I realised that there were too many words that had been changed. Strangely, they hadn’t changed Mum to Mom, but most of the spelling was American, and many other words had been altered, e.g. all measurements were in yards, feet and inches instead of our metres and centimetres. So my task then was to go back to the original Word file and change everything. I also made the decision to change the double speech marks to singles. Some things were able to be fixed with global changes, others not. And this is where I almost came undone. Or sent myself and my interior designer/typesetter, Daniel, crazy!

 Because I proofread the novel on screen. In hindsight, I was probably trying to save paper and time, but it was a mistake. I ended up proofreading the text four times, and every time I found more errors. In fact, I found errors that the original US publisher missed (the dad’s name changed between Chapter 2 and Chapter 16!). Each time I found more errors, Daniel had to go back and change them on the Word file, then re-convert into PDF to check pages and formatting. We also had a preferred page limit, and a last-ditch-final page limit (because books print in multiples of pages and if you can stay within a multiple, you save money), and Daniel managed to keep the book under the preferred page limit, even though at the last minute we had to change the font size for readability. Daniel is my hero!

By the end of September, I was waiting on proofs from the printer and a decision from another standing orders supplier before committing to final figures for the print run. Meanwhile I was making lists of places to send the book for review, ways to publicise the book before and after publication date, and working on some new marketing ideas. All of this was going to take time and more money, but this is what a self-publisher has to take on board.

You can see part of my marketing efforts on the Facebook page for Dying to Tell Me. The book trailer is on YouTube here - more about all that in the next post.

And the book is up as a giveaway on GoodReads for the month of February - put in an entry!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Dying to Tell Me

by Sherryl Clark

Giveaway ends February 28, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Listen to your writer's "gut"

This week my new novel took a wrong turn. How did I know? I had to stop writing. I kept resisting writing any more of that chapter. I kept thinking about why it didn't "feel right". And what does "feel right" mean anyway? Was it the novel and the plot, or was I just finding a new way to procrastinate? Finally, during an hour-long car trip, I set myself to thinking about what I'd written and why, and why it wasn't working.

I managed to work out that I'd given a character an action that was wrong on several levels. It didn't fit who he was at that point (and I hadn't done a lot of background work on him, either, but I did know that), and it gave him away too easily as the "villain". I'm writing a MG mystery and red herrings and clues are important. Any awake reader would twig straight away.

So back to the manuscript the next day and two pages got deleted. Luckily I had listened to my gut and stopped before I got too much further along. It can be a lot harder to delete whole chapters, or even half the book. What usually happens is the writer can't bear to waste all that writing, and they hang on like grim death to the mountain of words that they've created, thinking there must be a way to fix it later. It inevitably leads to a flawed story, and sometimes one that can't be fixed.

Here are some other instances of "something's not right" that you should listen to:

• A character doesn't feel real, or you have them do something that doesn't fit with who they are (usually so the plot will work).
  
• You've got so many characters you have to keep a list, and then you start to wonder how a reader is going to keep track (and you hate character lists in the front of books).
  
• Dialogue feels stilted or inconsequential. It might be giving the reader plot information or showing character, but is doing nothing much else. You kinda like it (it's how you talk, or your friends) but you keep reading over it and ...
  
• You can see the setting in your head but you're starting to wonder if a reader will be able to.
  
• It seems like there is a lot of action going on, but the story itself doesn't feel like it's going anywhere.
  
• You think about reading your first chapter aloud to an audience and cringe.
  
• You have finished a revision of your novel and you desperately want to start sending it out and querying, but ... something holds you back.

There are lots more examples of this, but you get the idea, I'm sure. If something in your manuscript is niggling at you, it's a sure sign that you need to rewrite, even if you don't know why. I recommend a long car trip or a long walk!

Poetry doesn't have to be obscure!

I’m currently reading Best Australian Poems 2013. Every night when I get into bed, before I pick up my current novel, I open up BAP and read half a dozen poems. I do this with poetry a lot. I might have a Billy Collins or Ted Kooser collection handy, or Mary Oliver, or Maxine Kumin (some of my favourites). Or I might be trying out someone new. I don’t read poetry all the time – but sometimes I need that different, lyrical input into my heart and brain.

But this year’s BAP is annoying me. Here’s why. A few years ago, a friend went to a session on writing where Australian poet, Peter Rose, said, “A poet's job is to be as obscure as possible.” At the time, she and I discussed this proposition in depth and both of us disagreed with him (her blog post on it is here).

When I think about poetry I enjoy, and which gives me an immense amount of inspiration and food for thought, it is invariably poetry that is mostly understandable on a first reading. A really good poem always offers more, but if someone reads a poem and their response is “Huh?”, and they turn away from it, to me the poem has failed the reader.  Why would you deliberately want to exclude and alienate your readers? Why would you want to write a poem that pushes the reader away and makes them feel stupid?

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone say they hate the poems published in the Saturday Age, I could fund a poetry publishing company! The Weekend Australian also publishes poetry, and it’s always accessible. Not always easy, but accessible. (And yes, the poetry editor is responsible for what is selected.) Once upon a time, Billy Collins was accused of writing poetry that was too “easy” to understand, as if that was some kind of crime. Then he became America’s Poet Laureate and some people had to eat their words.

While he was Poet Laureate, he created Poetry 180, a project whereby 180 poems were collected and put on the LoC website so that every day of high school, a teacher could read a poem to their class. Not all of the poems are readily accessible, but they were all chosen to offer something to their readers – high school students who might never have read a poem (even though they hear them in songs and rap probably every day). This is what a Poet Laureate is about – not making poetry so difficult that even fewer people read it, but giving old and new readers poems that sing to them, that offer them insight and inspiration and ideas.

So back to Best Australian Poems 2013. I am about halfway through, and already impatient. So many poems that feel meaningless, that are a conglomeration of words strung together to look clever but instead act like a wall between me and what the poem is about. I don’t ask for “easy” poems, but I do ask for poems that make sense (there, I said it). So many times I read a poem and thought – I wonder if the poet even knows what that’s about? In fact, I wanted to be able to sit them down and say, “OK, explain this poem to me, line by line.” 

As a writer, I know there are often parts of a poem that I can’t quite explain – a line or phrase here and there that comes in the creating and seems just right, all the same. But a whole poem like that? It just makes me shrug and turn the page. The SMH/Age reviewer, Andrew Reimer (who is a very good poetry reviewer), said this about BAP 2013: “But the purpose of many of these poems - as far as purposes may be discovered - lies elsewhere: in a world of abstraction, of random associations, sometimes merely in a world of typographical conceits. They do not yield sense in conventional discursive or grammatical terms.” He also used the word “impenetrable”. Full review here.

I’m sure for some poetry readers, this is all rubbish and they love BAP 2013, but to me it’s yet another reason for people (especially young people) to keep turning away from poetry and putting it into the “too hard/I don’t get it” basket. And honestly, another collection of “Australian classic poems” is likely to make me throw up. That won’t help either.

This week I tried an experiment on Facebook (borrowed from a piece in Publisher’s Weekly). I put a Billy Collins poem up as a post and said that if anyone clicked Like, I’d provide them with a poem to read. Each poem I then gave was a link to a poem on a website. Already, people are enjoying poems and poets they weren’t aware of, and sharing their own. It’s giving me ideas…

Blog Hop!

My Hamline friend, Debra McArthur, invited me to Blog Hop, so here are my answers.

What are you working on now?

Right now, I'm back writing poems for my verse novel, The Dangerous Kind. After writing a critical thesis last year (for my Hamline MFA) on verse novels, I started to see all the different ways you can write a verse novel, and how adventurous you can be, thanks to reading writers such as Helen Frost and Allan Wolf. I'm being quite experimental - for me - although others might not think so. It's challenging and great fun when I get a poem to work. I'm also writing short personal essays for a blog I haven't opened up for reading yet.

How does it differ from other works in the genre?

I'm not sure the verse novel differs a lot from what Frost does, but it's certainly different from a lot of other verse novels I've read. I dislike vns that are basically truncated prose, and so this almost goes to the other extreme, with form poems and lots of different voices.
The voices are very important to me, as is finding ways to show them through language and line breaks.

Why do you write what you do?

Once I get an idea that really excites me, I can't let it go. Sometimes I think it would be so nice to write the same kind of book all the time and know publishers and readers will be avidly waiting for the next one, but I just can't do it. I have to go where the idea leads me, whether it's into a historical novel, a verse novel or a picture book.
It's that excitement that keeps me going, too. A novel can take a really long time to write, and then there are the rewrites. If I'm not still committed to the story and characters after all that, the revisions are painful and not productive.

What's the hardest part about writing?

For me, it's the revisions. I love the first draft, but I've had to learn to love revision, too, and see what it can add to a book. Mostly, it's about deepening the characters and plot. I have to remind myself that the first draft was just for me, and now I have to work out what the reader wants, and what is still in my head and not yet on the page.
This is where a good reader or workshop group is so valuable (thanks, Big Fish!). When you have a group who will read chapter after chapter for you, and make good comments, it really helps you to see what is missing. I tend to be a bare bones writer, and then have to fill in the "meat" on second and third drafts, and also learn to cut the stuff the reader doesn't need.

What are you working on now?

What are you working on now?

What are you working on now?

Refilling the Creative Well

At this time of year, anyone who writes and also has a job (to pay the bills) is hanging out for the December-January break, because that's the time when you can read and get fully back into writing. That's if you don't have a million family commitments. If you teach, this also tends to be the one time of the year when you can stop filling your head with other people's writing and focus on your own.

BUT. It's not that easy. Nine months of other people's writing has done more than fill your head and sap your energy. It has, in the words of a Hamline faculty member, Jane Resh Thomas, drained the well. Like many writers who teach, Jane has experienced what it means to have a well of creativity that gradually runs dry. After all, you're not doing your teaching job very well if you hold everything at a distance and treat grading and feedback like a multi-choice performance review. But when you put your passion into teaching and other people's writing, you pay.

I'm not complaining about teaching writing. I love it, and always have. So do the other writing teachers I know. But we also know that when it comes to the well, by December it's pretty well at rock bottom. Just a few inches of dry dust down there ...

So how do you re-fill the well? Here are some ideas:

• Reading. I save books for the end of the year, books that I'm too tired to read up till now, books that are pure escapism, books that I know will feed my creative brain. One year it took me all 12 months to work up to The God of Small Things but was it ever worth it! This year I have a stack that includes Junot Diaz, Ron Rash, Amy Espeseth, Ransom Riggs and even a Jonathan Franzen.
  
• Poetry. Every writer should refill their well with some poetry. I'll be re-reading some old favourites, but I've re-signed to receive a Poem a Day, and I have some anthologies saved up, plus I will probably buy Best Australian Poems for this year.
  
• Free writing and journalling. It's great to start a new project or get back to work on a novel or project you've had to keep putting aside all year, but taking time to get in touch with the joy of simply writing, with no outcome other than "oiling the cogs", will benefit all the other writing you do.
  
• Find a couple of writing blogs to inspire you and make you feel less alone and more "in tune" with the writing world again. One of my favourites is Writer Unboxed, simply because every post is different and yet helpful. I also like Kristen Lamb's blog - I like her honesty and sense of inclusion. As she says, We are not alone.
  
• Stay in touch with fellow writers like yourself. If you need to feel re-inspired and get writing again, have a coffee with someone who feels like you - not someone who never writes or who spends all their time complaining and making excuses. You know who the valued writing friends are - get together and talk writing and books!

I haven't been teaching this year but I have been studying and writing full-time, and my well is a bit dusty, too, from finishing two completely different novels. I need some time-out before I start the next one, so I've been doing the one other thing that makes me feel creative and industrious again (goodness only knows why!). I've been spring cleaning my office! Apart from creating large piles of rubbish for the bin, I've also been finding poems and stories that are ready for another draft, notebooks and random pages of ideas, and more books that I'd put away to read later. I'm starting to feel re-inspired already.

Books for Christmas gifts!

It's always good to have extra recommendations for gifts at this time of year, and books are the best of all! I try to buy every child in our family at least one book, and sneak books into other people's parcels, too. And of course if someone asks me what I'd like, I have a handy list of half a dozen titles to give them.

If you have someone who's about to start school next year, you can't go wrong giving them My First Day at School by Meredith Costain. Ari, Amira, Zoe and Zach experience their very first day, with all the trials and tribulations, as well as the fun. First day can be scary (I can still remember the disgust I felt at being made to take a nap after lunch!). The story delves into reading, drawing, pasting, eating and whether they'll make it to the toilet in time. (Ah, it's all coming back to you now, isn't it?) The illustrations are very cute and little kids will love all the faces and actions.

I think the best YA novel I've read this year would be a dead heat between Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell and Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys. I'd heard a lot about Eleanor and Park and it lived up to the goss. A novel that startles and enlightens at the same time, and totally engaging and interesting characters. One of my good Hamline friends lent me Out of the Easy (sorry, I still have it!), which I would never have come across otherwise here in Australia. It's set in 1950, in the French Quarter of New Orleans where Josie works in a bookstore and struggles with having a mother who is a brothel prostitute. Lots of atmosphere, danger, secrets and hope.

I've read lots of crime fiction (probably more than I should!) but I think my No. 1 spot has to go to Michael Robotham's Watching You. Joe O'Loughlin is a clinical psychologist who gets involved with Marnie, a woman who is convinced someone is watching her. Meanwhile, she's also trying to deal with a husband who has been missing for over a year. There are plot twists in every chapter and the book was impossible to put down. Also on my list for "goodies" was Peter James's latest, Dead Man's Time and Just One Evil Act by Elizabeth George.

Finally, since I was just about the only person in the world who didn't like Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, I approached my review copy of The Next Time You See Me by Holly Goddard Jones with wariness (because it spruiked Gone Girl on the cover). There are quite a few characters in this novel but they're easy to remember because they are all so different and well-portrayed. There's a body in the gully that seems to move around, and people who may or may not be missing - in other words, lots to keep you guessing without being tricksy. The creepiest character for me was thirteen year old Emily - the kind of kid you'd expect to find in a Stephen King novel!