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I write about books I read, being a writer and a teacher of writing. Mostly my posts focus on the craft of writing, with comments on the world of publishing, and the writer's life in general.
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Despite gloomy forecasts and sliding graphs recently, e-book sales are not nosediving. But here in Australia, I think the global effects of e-books are only just starting to sink in, especially with writers. This is not a whine or a rant, by the way, this post is a business discussion. What is the rock? Australian publishers who, when you sign a contract with them, demand ALL rights, which means world rights and e-rights. You need to have a lot of clout to get this amended or changed.
What is the hard place? Very few Australian books are sold to overseas publishers. We hear a lot about books like The Rosie Project, Burial Rites and Diary of a Wombat (not to mention The Book Thief and Jellicoe Road) and how many overseas territories they have sold to, especially the USA. But they are the exception, not the rule.
For most Australian writers, especially children’s writers, it’s unlikely the overseas rights on their books will be sold, especially if the book is deemed “too Australian”. That means the market is Australia (and sometimes NZ). It’s a small market, and getting smaller. If someone from the USA wants to buy an Australian book via an online bookseller here, they will very likely pay $25-30 for a small paperback, because of the horrendous postage charge.
Aha, you say, but now we have e-books. We sure do. But even if your publisher releases your book as an e-book, it’s very likely they will limit availability to Australia. If they do decide to sell it “world wide”, how will anyone know about it unless YOU tell them? (To put this another way, how do readers in other countries hear about Australian books without a marketing campaign of some kind in theircountry?)
If you’re Tim Winton or someone who has an international reputation already, it’s not an issue. But Winton’s books already sell overseas as print books, so a globally available e-book is obviously going to sell.
Aha, you say, what if you sell your book to a US publisher first? You get an agent over there, they sell your book, and Bob’s your auntie. You have two options: you can hold back Australian/NZ rights and sell them separately, or you can let the US publisher keep them and either sell your book to an Australian publisher or import it here. Here’s the other rock and hard place – if you’ve already sold US rights (and e-rights), it’s highly unlikely an Australian publisher is going to want your book, unless it becomes a best seller over there. The prospective rights that might earn them good money are already gone.
If the US publisher is allowed to import your books here after 90 days (if they decide it’s worth it) because nobody here wants to publish it, you’re going to be responsible for most of the marketing. That means a heck of a lot more than some FB and Twitter posts! Same goes for if the US publisher releases your book as an e-book. The big word in publishing and marketing now is “discoverability”. Who else is going to get your book noticed except you? A US or UK publisher is already dealing with that in their own markets.
And there are a number of awards here that require the book to be published in Australia, not published elsewhere and imported.
Why am I writing about this? Because it’s an issue that’s come up for me several times over the past few years, and e-books have actually made it more complicated, not less. I’ve experienced these difficulties in various ways and permutations, and so far, there is no easy answer. I completely understand publishers’ need to stay solvent and do good business, but …
There are lots of aspects to this issue. Print books are not going away, but e-books don’t look like they are going to be the income earner that a lot of writers were hoping for. It’s not even a territorial copyright issue, really. I’d be interested to hear from other Australian writers with similar experiences of the rock and the hard place.
Every time I do a school visit, I inevitably get asked, "How long does it take you to write a book?" It's a fair question, but the answer is, "How long is a piece of string?" It's different for every book, and it can also depend on whether someone is waiting for it (i.e. a commissioned work). People often say, "Gee, you're so prolific", which can feel like a criticism, but I loved to hear about Monet and how he would paint all day and complete 8 or 9 works in that time.
It's all practice. Some practice takes longer. Some things take longer to learn. Some books take longer to "get right". Plus, I write chapter books as well as novels, so a chapter book might only be 2000 words. Ray Bradbury used to write a short story a week - some of his writing advice includes 'Don’t start out writing novels. They take too long. Begin your writing life instead by cranking out “a hell of a lot of short stories,” as many as one per week. Take a year to do it; it simply isn’t possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.'
It's the same with picture books and chapter books. Write a picture book or a chapter book every week for a year and you're sure to come up with a few gems! In order to do that, you'll need a list of ideas. Bradbury is also famous for writing a huge list of words and then writing a story about each one. (Read Zen in the Art of Writing where he describes this.)
What about novels? John Creasey, who wrote 564 books, said, 'How many words a day do I write? Between six and seven thousand. And how many hours does that take? Three on a good day, as high as thirteen on a bad one.' Wow. Georges Simenon wrote 75 novels and 28 short stories about his detective character, Maigret. Simenon also wrote around 300 other novels and novellas, plus pulp fiction (under more than two dozen pseudonyms) and nonfiction. He was apparently able to write a novel in just a few days, but The Guardian has a quote from him that made me wonder what drove him: "Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness." Hmmm.
Right now, I'm back writing my two pages (or 30 minutes) minimum per day. It works. On bad days, I make sure I do the minimum; on good days I write more. Earlier this year, because I was writing a novel for my fourth semester at Hamline's MFAC program, this routine led to me finishing a 66,000 word YA novel. I didn't plot this one out beforehand so it was like writing in the dark - nervewracking. There were many days when I sat with no idea what would come next. But the 30 minutes minimum kept me at it.
Revision is different. I can spend two hours on the same pages it took me 30 minutes to write! But I also think other aspects tie into whether you are prolific or painstaking. (Painstaking to me is four years on one book.) One is simply typing speed. In high school I took typing as a subject instead of biology. I still have no desire to cut up frogs, but I type fast. Another is to do with plotting. I think if you know where you are going you will write faster and write more (feel free to disagree).
Another is to do with style and language. I suspect that literary writers take a lot longer to write - they are painstaking about language and sentences. Or maybe they need more thinking time? I love to be swept along by my characters and the story, but then my second and third and further drafts have to slow down and focus more on filling in the details.
And in answer to the school visit question?
The Littlest Pirate in a Pickle (1600 words) took me a week, mainly because I woke up with the whole story in my head. That was a gift. Whereas
Pirate X took me ten years. It started out as a 120,000 word first draft, by Draft 5 it was down to 85,000 words, and when it was finally published, it was 62,000 words. It was only my passion for the story that kept me at it - around the fourth year, a vicious critique almost killed it for me.
So whether you're prolific or painstaking, the only thing that will get you to The End is perseverance. The pleasure in being prolific is that you get there faster!
Some of you who read this blog know I have spent the past two years studying a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Hamline University in St Paul, Minnesota. Well, this time is about to end. Tomorrow I graduate (no one has raced up to tell me my final thesis was rejected, so I guess it’s true!) It’s both a wonderful celebration and a sad time. A celebration of all the work I have done and the learning, the many, many lectures and workshops, and the massive amounts of writing, all of which have taught me something new.
It’s also sad because I am leaving behind a fabulous community of writers. I hope to see them again, but I live 20 hours flying time away – not counting stopovers – and that is going to make it difficult. Thank goodness for Facebook where my classmates and I have created our own special community, a place for support, encouragement and whining. There is always someone to hear you and say, “Me, too. Keep going.”
I have been asked many times by writers and others in Australia – why go all the way to Minneapolis to do a Masters? Quite simply, it’s because there is nothing like this in Australia. There is no specialisation in children’s and YA writing, there is no amazing faculty of experienced writers/teachers who give their students so much, there is no low residency format that allows you to both work at home, around your job and real life, and come together every six months for an intensive 11 days. We go home after each residency exhausted and exhilarated.
During each residency the students who have just finished their critical thesis (3rd semester) present a lecture on their topic. This time I’ve heard about silence in fiction, keeping 4th and 5thgrade boys reading, ambiguous endings in YA fiction, hopeful endings and why we need them, and what a great beginning requires, among others. I’ve also heard my classmates read from their creative thesis work, which has been astounding in its quality and range. Everything from picture books to young adult novels, as you would expect, but I expect many of the works I’ve heard to be published. They really are that good!
All of us know (and gratefully acknowledge in our final thank-you speeches) that our advisors have helped us take our writing to soaring new heights. Having someone who really cares about your work, your processes, your struggles and your breakthroughs, is invaluable. It’s more than critiquing. It’s exploring, questioning, pushing, suggesting, demanding and, most of all, supporting.
In tangible terms, I graduate with two novels, a critical thesis on verse novels, part of a verse novel and nine picture books. In less tangible, but more important, terms, I leave with a renewed energy and commitment to my writing, a greater depth of knowledge, a much deeper understanding of the craft of writing, and a stronger, profounder approach to effective revision.
I thank Mary Rockcastle (who was the main reason I chose Hamline) and all the terrific staff, and my advisors: Marsha Qualey, Marsha Chall, Ron Koertge and Anne Ursu. Go out and buy their books and then you will want to go to Hamline, too. And I thank my classmates, the MadFACers – let’s all keep writing together. Then soon I’ll be able to go and buy your published books!
There are few things that rile children's writers more than bad celebrity picture books! Think Madonna and Sarah Ferguson, and recent books by basketball and football players (many of which are co-written or ghost-written anyway). Picture books are just about the most difficult kinds of stories to get right, and those writers who are trying to break in and get published know that "competent" isn't going to do it.
Unless you're already famous for something else, in which case the feeling from the "real" picture book writers is that it's just not fair. To some extent, the same sentiment can be heard when it comes to adult writers who decide to pen a YA or children's novel or two. "Like it's not hard enough to get published already," I hear people say. "Why do they have to horn in on our territory?" Then there's the Stephanie Meyers of the world who dream an idea and write vampire books that sell millions of copies, and the writing is not even very good.
Sheesh, what's a writer to do?
Apart from anything else, keep writing. And keep improving. That's really all that is in our control. To work hard and get better. When I do goal setting with students and clients, I have to remind them that "Get my novel published" is not a goal so much as a dream. Write novel, revise novel (many times), research publishers and agents, send novel out. Those are goals. But we end up having little control over whether we'll get published or not when we venture into the world of traditional publishing.
Publishing has changed. Once upon a time (very apt term, if you think about it), a writer wrote - usually many drafts, on a typewriter (which meant re-typing the whole novel each time), with no classes or workshops, no MFAs, no manuscript critique services. Just the writer and their words. Sometimes they had writer friends to bounce off, which is why we have collections of letters - back in the day, they wrote real letters to each other about their processes and ideas and doubts. But mostly they had to slog it out on their own. Publication meant you had taught yourself enough, by simply writing and reading critically, to achieve a certain standard.
It's different now. For a start, everyone wants to be a writer. That's how it seems some days. Everyone thinks they can be a writer. That's why publishers and agents are inundated with manuscripts, especially picture books because they're short and easy, right? Computers mean it's easier to pound out a manuscript, use the spell checker on it, and send it off. If a publisher or agent has the time to wade through all those manuscripts, they might find one gem. It's more likely that they will want a query letter instead to try and weed out the competents, incompetents and just plain weird.
And then there is the marketplace. The marketplace is voracious and endless, always wanting something new, something hot, something that will make everyone lots of money. Or win awards. So the idea of an apprenticeship in writing, and even Malcolm Gladwell's theory of 10,000 hours of practice to become a master, can be flipped in an instant when someone comes along with a great, original idea. Or a pretty good idea that can be wrestled into an immensely sell-able one.
What are all those other writers supposed to do? They're "paying their dues", learning, writing, rewriting - why doesn't that deserve the rewards?
I think there are two things at play - one is most definitely the marketplace. Even publishers can be astounded by a book that just takes off, but they also know to hedge their bets with things like trendy series and books "just like that one selling a million". But the other thing is creativity. It's not something that can be pinned down - it's like a gorgeous butterfly. Marvel at it in the air or perched on a flower, but stick a pin through it onto a board and you've just got a pretty dead thing.
If we keep working and writing and rewriting, we are learning. If we keep reading and dreaming, we are learning and growing. Feed your creativity, do the work. Most of us do have to "pay our dues". How else are we going to become better writers? And then hope that when that amazing idea comes fluttering past, that you can capture it without killing it, and make something out it that is publishable!
Recently, I picked up a poetry collection I've had for a while and dipped into (as you do - one of the pleasures of a collection of poems) - the book was Dear To Me: 100 New Zealanders Write About Their Favourite Poems (Random House NZ, 2007). A lot of the selections were safe - classics by Keats, Byron, Tennyson etc. A few were odd. Some were new to me, and my favourite was Murray Ball's poem about his cat, Horse.
But it did set me thinking about poems that I've remembered for their effect on me at different times in my life. The list would be quite long, but no doubt there are millions of people who couldn't name one poem! Unless it's one they hated from being made to study it at school. Top of my list is the first poem I remember reading at high school - I think this was the first time I realised that poetry didn't have to rhyme, and that it could say things I thought were indescribable!
SYMPTOMS OF LOVE
Love is a universal migraine,A bright stain on the visionBlotting out reason.
Symptoms of true loveAre leanness, jealousy,Laggard dawns;
Are omens and nightmares --Listening for a knock,Waiting for a sign:
For a touch of her fingersIn a darkened room,For a searching look.
Take courage, lover!Could you endure such griefAt any hand but hers?Robert Graves
(from Collected Poems, Cassell 1975)
So what poem would be on your list that you've never forgotten, and why?
Nearly all writers procrastinate. The ones who don't are on some kind of deadline! Either publisher-induced or from some outside requirement. How do I know this? From talking over the years to many, many writers, and observing myself. You're not alone.
Procrastination is a manifestation of different things but the one biggie is fear. Fear that what you write will suck. That what you write will cause some kind of upheaval. That what you write will cause you to be REJECTED. I do think that 95% of the time, there is a very direct line between procrastination about your writing and your fear of it being rejected.
It doesn't matter by who. It is likely to be a publisher, but can also be any or all members of your family, your spouse, your second cousin twice removed that you used as a character because she is just so weird. The thing is - it's in your head. And the only person who can get it out there, lay it on the table and dissect its cause, is you. A lot of writers either don't realise this, or don't want to do it.
But what happens when you stop procrastinating? When you actually shove aside every excuse, reason, fear or "block" and write?
You write. And you often write good stuff. You end your writing day feeling terrific. Feeling like a million dollars. Feeling like "why did I spend half my day avoiding that when it was so GOOD?".
Next time you write, and you have that great feeling, this is what you do. You take a few minutes to describe that feeling to the best of your ability. You use every descriptive word, you explore the feeling, you can even draw pictures of it. Then you put it up above your computer or your writing space so the very next day, there it is. You read it. You remember what it was like to write, how good you felt, how the words flowed out despite your struggling.
You read it several times if you need to. And then you write again. Use that feeling. Over and over, use it to remind yourself that yes, writing is hard, but when you do write, the writing itself is the best reward ever. Make it part of who you are as a writer. Celebrate the writing.
This is the editorial I wrote for No. 40 - I debated writing something different but really, this says it all!
It’s hard to believe we have come to the final issue of Poetrix. It’s not the 40 issues so much as the 20 years! A rough estimate would put us at publishing around 1200 poems in that time, which might not sound like much but it’s been amazing how many people have written and told us that Poetrix published their first poem, or inspired and encouraged them to keep writing and submitting. Many poets who have appeared in our pages have gone on to publish collections; several have appeared in Best Australian Poems anthologies.
In this inaugural year of the Stella Prize, with all the discussion of “do there still need to be awards for women writers”, we stand tall and say “Yes”. We began Poetrix in 1993 because of two things – a survey published in the NSW Poet’s Union newsletter that showed a marked imbalance in male vs female publication and reviewing, and a passed-along story about a male poetry editor who refused to publish poetry by women that he called “domestic suburban vignettes”.
So, as women so often do, we rolled up our sleeves and went to work. Literally. We cooked and catered for book launches and lunches, and earned ourselves enough seed money to start the magazine. We have always put each issue together by hand, around a kitchen table, and kept our production costs low, so we have never needed to go looking for more money. Yes, women are self-sufficient and thrifty, too!
In 2010, an organization called VIDA: Women In Literary Arts undertook a project to count the rates of publication between women and men in many of the writing world’s most respected literary outlets. Sadly, nothing much seems to have changed since we first launched Poetrix20 years ago. You can see their results at http://www.vidaweb.org/the-count. But they believe that by doing this and keeping the conversation going, change will happen. We hope we have been a part of that, however small.
Have we published domestic suburban vignettes? Undoubtedly. After all, doesn’t all the real drama of life happen in the home and in the suburbs? The personal is still political. Women speaking out – about death, grief, longing, dementia, divorce, children, their experiences, what makes them laugh or cry – creates powerful poetry. We don’t much care if that doesn’t speak to men, but we suspect it does, all the same. Why on earth wouldn’t it?
What has kept us going all this time? A sharing of the load, first and foremost. We’ve always had a solid core of 5-6 of us, with others helping. Our editorial process is cumbersome (everyone on the committee for that issue reads everything and votes) but democratic. People get to stand on the table for poems they absolutely love that no one else is keen on. Generally, when the committee numbers 5, it takes 3 definite Yes votes for a poem to get in. It’s the Maybes that cause the most discussion!
It means that a wider range of poems are published than if we just had one person choosing, which is a good thing. Poetry is nothing if not subjective. For the Selected section of Issue 40, each of our current five editors chose five poems from Issues 1-38. That was an enormous amount of reading, with long shortlists, and the proviso that a poet could have only one poem in the Selecteds. Again, you’ll see a wide range of poems here, and sadly not all of our most consistent contributors are represented. But it was an individual choice. Could you choose five from 1200?
In almost every issue, we have published one poem by a Western Women Writer. Poetrix has never been just a showcase for our own work, but we did want to show that we, too, wrote poetry! In Issue 40, we have one from each of us, chosen by the others. And of course we have our usual new poems. We think our Selected section definitely stands the test of time.
You may notice that on our cover are two aeroplanes. One is the Lockheed 5B Vega flown by Amelia Earheart. The other is the de Havilland Gypsy Moth flown by Amy Johnson. Why? Firstly because back in 1993 it seemed logical to us that if a female aviator was an aviatrix, then a female poet must be a poetrix! So for Issues 1 and 2, Adrienne Mazer-Swinton, fellow WWW and artist, drew our planes for the covers. She also drew racing cars, sculptures, spaceships and yachts – all areas in which women had excelled and broken records. We are incredibly sad that Adrienne is no longer with us to share the celebration of 40 issues.
There are many, many people to thank. All of our editors over the years, for a start, and those who helped us earn our seed money. Flashprint (for designing our covers) and the Victoria University Print Room for printing the insides. Tracey Rolfe for doing nearly all of the typesetting over the years, and being our editor-in-charge-of-grammar-and-style (and for the photo on the final issue).
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| WWW demonstrating editorial voting! |
We also thank our many contributors, some of whom have sent poems in for 20 or 30 issues, and kept sending despite rejections (but their persistence and dedication to craft has paid off, too). We also thank our subscribers. Some have subscribed for almost every issue, and Janet Limb has even subscribed for her three daughters, as well! All of this support, along with wonderful letters, has made us feel like Poetrix has been a worthwhile, valuable thing to do. We thank all of you who have sent letters of sad farewell and thanks when you heard that this was our last issue.
Will we start publishing again one day? We’ll never say no. With the advances in technology, you might see a Poetrixe-magazine one day! But for now, we’re hanging up our poetry editorial boots and slipping back into our poetry writing shoes (the red ones with the high heels and sparkly sequins). What do we wish for you all? That you will keep writing poems about subjects important to women, and important to the world, but more than this – we want you to send them out to all those other magazines and keep the voice of women poets alive and resoundingly loud!
Sherryl Clark, Tracey Rolfe, Lorraine Neate-Benson, Margaret Campbell, Lynette Stevens
Western Women Writers Editorial Committee, Issue 40.
Copies are available for $14 incl postage from Box 532, Altona North VIC 3025, Australia.
I freely admit that I travelled up to Sydney for the Writers' Festival so I could go to the sessions with Patrick Ness and Kate Atkinson. Why? Well, yes, they did do sessions in Melbourne, but I wanted to be at a writers' festival where everyone was talking and thinking about writing fiction, for a change. Instead of social issues and politics. And let's face it - great fiction does that anyway, without being pedantic about it. Just ask Mr Ness about the Spackle!
The session on Saturday with Patrick Ness was great. And I am here to tell you that he is funny! If you read his books (especially
A Monster Calls), you might not think so, but he was very witty and dry. I failed to take detailed notes in this session because I just wanted to listen. Later, things came back to me that I jotted down, and he did repeat a few things in the Sunday session with Carlos Ruiz Zafron. But here are the things that stuck with me (a little paraphrased in some cases):
* Writing vernacular is a lot more fun than reading it (we might also call this dialect). He started writing Todd's voice in the Chaos Walking books in deep vernacular, which didn't work, and it was only when he kept simplifying it that the voice finally worked and he found it. Even third person, past tense has a voice.
* "I don't think about whether a book should have a happy or a sad ending. I think about how a book should have a truthful ending."
* He said he needs 3 or 4 or 5 things to start a novel - images, scenes, ideas. He thinks about how they all connect until he gets an "exit feeling" - the last line. He never starts a book until he knows the last line. (If you think this is unusual - the big scenes and ideas - read "Write Away" by Elizabeth George).
* "A book is not a song. It's the performance of a song. So you can take an idea that has been done before but it's the way you perform it."
* He wants to treat his teenage characters as complex beings - people who are complicated make mistakes. He talked about "A Monster Calls" - the moment when a character realises they are capable of believing contradictory things.
* If you are trying to write humour, you have to write stuff that makes you laugh. You can't write stuff that you think will make other people laugh. That has been Hollywood's mistake.
* He often has people tell him that they want to write a novel one day, "when they have time". He says if you want to write, you will be writing now. You will always be writing, working on a project, if you are a writer.
And the thing that Carlos RZ said that stuck with me was: "I have to squeeze out every letter, every word. I have to animate my characters myself. When I write, I am trying to get into your brain and rearrange the furniture." For once, not one writer I heard waxed lyrical about being swept away by story and characters - they were all quite honest about the hard work that writing really is!
I have to say I do enjoy a good, scary picture book, especially one that's a bit weird or different. Two of my favourites are
The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman and
Wolves by Emily Gravett (coincidence that they are both about wolves? Maybe not, given Red Riding Hood etc). I've also used Bruno Bettelheim's book,
The Uses of Enchantment, in myths and symbols classes, where he talks about how original, scary fairy tales can help children overcome fears.
So when I heard about the new picture book called
The Dark, I was keen to read it. I even bought my own copy! So what do I think of it? Well... a bit disappointing. Maybe that's because I'm an adult, not a five-year-old, but there are a couple of things that didn't work for me. However, there were things I did like. I like the first half a lot, and the illustrations. It's a story about a boy called Laszlo who is afraid of the dark. The dark lives in his house, specifically in the basement, and is presented as though it's a living entity.
By nearly halfway through the book, things are getting scary. Laszlo has tried to "manage" the dark and keep it in the basement, but one night it comes to visit him in his room (the picture shows you that his nightlight goes out). At that point, the dark says, "I want to show you something." Laszlo takes his torch and goes all the way down to the basement, and finds an old chest of drawers, and the dark wants him to come "even closer".
Then we get a whole page full of text which is this kind of adult philosophical speech about why the dark is useful. Huh? What happened? All the tension is gone, all the scary stuff goes pfft. And then the story resumes. And the outcome is just kind of nice and tidy, and the last three double-page spreads are pleasant and affirming that the dark is good.
I'm not sure what is going on here. I've seen one review that asked the same question. Did the editors fall in love with the story and let Snickett/Handler get away with the diversion into dullness? Or did they really think it worked? Other reviews are full of praise for the book (it helps that the illustrator, Jon Klassen, has just won the Caldecott Award for
This is Not My Hat), but it gets 2/5 from me. It makes me feel as though there was another story to begin with, somewhere, one that stayed scary all the way and had a really satisfying, victorious ending, and that story ran away or got "nice-ified". But this is a review, and it might just be my dark heart talking!
(There is an audio clip of
Neil Gaiman reading the first bit of the book but it's only 40 seconds)
Those of you who read this blog will know that I have been spending the past 22 months studying at Hamline University in Minneapolis/St Paul, Minnesota (graduating soon). I'm doing an MFA in Writing for Children and YA. Has it been hard? Yes. Especially when I was working. This year I have taken 12 months off work to complete my last semester - this is when I work on my creative thesis, which is a novel. Has it been worthwhile? YES! Before I went off to Hamline, I had around 45 published books out there, and a lot of people asked - why would you want to study? (Subtext: aren't you already "there"?)
Well, no. Like most writers, I suspect, I'm rarely happy with my writing. And when I am, it can turn out that people in publishing are not. That's the reality. Writing is a craft, and as soon as you think you know everything there is to know about it, it tends to leap up and slap you with a wet, cold fish. That fish can be of the species "remainder table", or the species "horrible reviews" or even the species "your story ideas are old fashioned and we want something HOT".
If enough time passes between my writing and re-reading, I am quite capable of declaring everything I write is appallingly bad, and it's time I gave up. Doing the MFA has gone a long way towards saving me, because I went into it determined to write daringly. To have a go at things I might have not dared otherwise. To learn as much as I could about the craft (which is why I loved the critical essays, and even the thesis - sometimes). And to try my hardest to IMPROVE.
Even though I'm not entirely sure what that means. In today's publishing world, it probably doesn't mean what I want it to. Writing better doesn't mean I will come up with the next new hot chapter book series, or the next best-selling trilogy (of something) that will get optioned for a movie. Writing better doesn't seem to necessarily mean every editor will be anxiously waiting for my next book.
Writing better will mean to me that when I get a fantastic idea, I'll be able to create it on the page as a story that readers will love to read. That's the key - being able to grasp what is in my head and move it onto the page and be happy with it, instead of despondent that it's not nearly as terrific as I thought it was. What does give me hope, though, is that most writers feel like this. It's a bit like seeing that beautiful, glowing stone shining up at you through the water, and when you reach down and grab it, once it's in your hand, it turns out to be rather ordinary and dull.
So how do we know when we've improved? One way is to keep all of your old drafts of stories and bring them out and compare. I have horrendous stuff that I keep just for that purpose (no matter how much it makes me cringe). Another way is simply to do it - work hard on your craft, and I think you will know in your heart when you are getting better. Don't take any notice of family (unless they are good critical readers). Test it by sending it out, then rewriting, and trying again. A big part of craft is perseverance. That's what counts in the end - the realisation that work is what it takes, and the real desire to do better every single time.
I've missed posting this month because I've been writing - around 30,000 words of a new SF novel for my Hamline creative thesis, plus a new project for Penguin. But now I'm taking a little time out to celebrate the release of my new verse novel, Runaways.
Jack and Cassie are brother and sister, and when Dad turns up and takes Jack away "on holiday", Cassie is not convinced. But Jack is a difficult kid and Mum doesn't seem bothered that he's gone.
But Jack is a long way away, with a dad who gets a better offer, so Jack takes to the road. He knows where he's going - he's following a story Cassie used to tell him. But is she brave enough to join him?
And can you ever really run away? Or does it just make things worse?
Here's an excerpt:
CASSIE
three years since
we’ve seen Dad
and suddenly he’s back
flashing fifty dollar notes
buying Mum perfume
calling us his little buddies
I’m not so little anymore
I know a fake
when I see one
even if Jack doesn’t
that’s what happens
when you’re younger
you believe anything.
*
Jack wears a grin
from ear to ear
Dad takes him
to the cricket
to the pub
calls him ‘little mate’
Jack soaks it up
but when Dad gives him
fifty dollars
just like that
he gives it to me
worried
that Mum will be angry
she doesn’t say a thing
I hide it anyway
for Jack’s birthday
Jack gets more from Dad
in a day
than Mum gives him
in a year
but it’s totally suss
I know it is
but I stay silent.
JACK
out on the highway
trees and trucks whiz past
zzzooom! zzzooom!
are we there yet?
are we there yet?
no, but
after a while
I feel sick
not car sick but
lonely sick
for Cassie
and I can’t say anything
because Dad’s hands
are really tight on the wheel
like Mum’s.
*
we drive and drive and drive
nights and days
like we’re never gonna stop
I’m too hot to jiggle
I’m a fried zombie
Dad squints behind
his dark stingray glasses
yells at truck drivers
never wants to stop
even when I have to pee
‘hurry up,’ he says
while I freak out
behind a bush
it’s scary
the dark
wants to suck me in
like a black hole.
*
I ask Dad where we’re going
‘you said the beach’
no answer
I ask again
where we’re going
‘what about school?’
no answer
I ask again
‘where are we going?’
I get a whack that
makes my ears ring.
Runaways is available now - $14.95!
I’ve been thinking about this as the result of several comments by different people in the past few days – some on blogs and some in person – and wondering why. After all, getting an agent, we’re told, is the key to being published and successful these days. (If you disagree, great, but that’s not what this is about.) In the US, the standard perception is that if you don’t have an agent, particularly in the area of adult fiction, you have very little hope of getting your book in front of an editor.
How to get an agent is the focus of many articles. I even wrote
one myself after interviewing two agents at a conference. A lot of agents, such as Janet Reid and Kristin Nelson, have blogs where they give a truckload of advice on how to be professional and get an agent, and what an agent will do for you. But lots of writers are saying, behind closed doors where no one can hear them (or out loud when they want to complain to the world), that they are unhappy with their agent.
And all the writers who don’t have an agent yet wish they’d be grateful they’ve got one at all and shut up.
Why the complaints? I suspect it’s for one of the following reasons:
· * The agent was new or starting out when they signed on, and now the agent is really busy and doesn’t have the same amount of time to spend on each writer anymore. Or that early enthusiasm and determination the agent had has been worn away by the ups and downs of the traditional publishing world.
· * The writer thought they’d be getting a combined cheer squad/friend/supporter/partner and their agent believes it’s a business and the writer needs to find that stuff elsewhere.
· * The writer thought their agent, who genuinely loved their book, would sell it in a flash for big dollars, and the agent either hasn’t been able to sell it to anyone, or for a much lower advance than hoped for.
· * The writer didn’t get any of the “dream” agents he/she was hoping for, but they got this agent (who was better than no agent, right?), and now they’re thinking it was a bad move. Why? For any or all of the reasons above. Most agents only take on books and writers whose work they love, but sometimes it doesn’t happen the way either of them hoped.
· * The writer didn’t really investigate well enough how this agent operates. Some agents work on your manuscript with you (often they’ve been editors before), some expect you to give them perfection, more or less, that they can sell. Some agents see it completely as a business, and you make appointments like everyone else if you want to talk, and some agents are much more about career-building with some hand-holding added in. The spectrum of how an agent likes to work with clients is vast. Writers need to know this stuff.
Over the years, I’ve realized that many writers have no real idea of what agents do, or are supposed to do, for the percentage they earn. They also don’t know or accept that a bad agent, or an agent unsuited to the relationship they want or need, is worse than no agent at all. Once you have an agent, you can’t keep sending your own novels out, and the agent probably won’t want you self-publishing willy-nilly either. It is a business relationship. Yes, you make money and then your agent makes money. A good agent will want to make you lots of money, for obvious reasons. They may not want you calling them every week for an encouraging pep talk when you have writer’s block. Or maybe they’ll be OK with that. But you have to know that upfront or you’ll be disappointed.
There are plenty of ways to find this stuff out. All over the net are interviews with agents, to start with, plus the information on agency websites. It’s no longer a guessing game. But like anything, you’ll get out of your research what you put into it. Since getting an agent is an important career move for many writers, it pays to put a LOT into it.
I’d love to have a discussion about this – if you’re one of those unhappy writers, you might like to take advantage of the Anonymous option and comment.
I was lucky enough to win a free copy of The Crane Wife from A&U, and the reason I put my hand up for it was simply - A Monster Calls, Ness's earlier novel (written from the idea of Siobhan Dowd). I had heard of this book but it was when one of our Hamline faculty, Jane Resh Thomas, read out the first pages to us and gave us all the shivers, that made me want to read the whole thing. I think it was my top book for 2012.
So when The Crane Wife arrived in my mail box, I was looking forward to reading it. The first chapter, where George saves the crane, is like the opening to A Monster Calls - the language is so beautiful and the way Ness describes the encounter is so magical and dark, that you just want it to keep on going for the whole book. Of course, it doesn't. There are lots of other eloquent passages but none, I think, that match the opening.
It's a novel, so we need a story and characters. Plain, ordinary George is caught up by Kumiko, who comes into his copy/print business one day and discovers him cutting shapes out of old books - these shapes are what she needs to complete her tile pictures made of feathers and, in the way of instant celebrity now, the tiles are soon much sought after and people pay big money for them. Except ... the tiles are somehow magical, as are many of the other changes in George's life.
Add in George's daughter, who is unreasonably and uncontrollably angry with the whole world, Rachel with evil intent, the funny and long-suffering printer's assistant Mahmet, the mysterious Kumiko herself, and we have a strange mix of characters who swirl around and bounce off each other without really connecting.
I always tend to look at the structure of a story and, in this case, I think Ness is using metaphor, layering the story in the same way feathers are layered and of differing kinds on a bird. The feathers also act as symbols, so you get the impression of a story that grows and overlaps itself, rather than something with an inexorable linear narrative. I wasn't sure that Ness was completely in control of this - at times I felt the story wavered and tottered under its own ambitions, but I'd rather experience this and think about it afterwards than expect a writer to always play safe and produce something less mysterious!
I believe the story is based on a Japanese folk tale, but it wasn't one I was familiar with and I didn't feel any need to go and look it up (but you can if you want to). It certainly does have that mythological air about it, all the same.
A writer friend of mine (who has a live-in partner) said to me the other day, "I'd like to live alone, and just have them come over when I feel like it. That's not too much to ask, is it?" Then she laughed - a lot - as did I, and then we both sighed. Yes, it's too much to ask, especially of a relationship where one person is not a writer and doesn't "get" the constant desire for solitude.
What happens for a writer during those solitary times? I can only tell you what happens for me, when I get them (which is rare these days, but more of that later). I find focus, for a start. When someone else is in the house, even if they are not in the same room, their very presence makes me scattered. The only way I have found to combat this is to have a list of things to do (which includes writing) and try really hard to stick to it. It does help. A bit. When I am alone for one or two whole days, it's all about writing. I think, sit in one place, focus, plan, daydream, and write. It's a flow, like a river I am floating along, with no need to dock anywhere unless I need food or sleep.
In solitude I also find ideas. That line to start a poem, that flash that might be a story, that insight into my main character in my current novel - instead of drifting past before I can stop them, or having someone speak to me and pop the idea bubble, I can grab the nearest notebook, write down what I thought and then add more to it as I sit (in peace and quiet) and ponder.
In solitude I write more poems. May Sarton (in her Journal of a Solitude, which I am about to re-read) says "If I were in solitary confinement for a time and knew that no one would ever read what I wrote, I would still write poetry but not novels ... perhaps because a poem is primarily a dialogue with the self and the novel a dialogue with others." When someone else is around you all the time, there is no mental space to have that dialogue with yourself.
In solitude, I find myself. I go inside and dream and think and my thoughts meander wherever they want to. While to other people this might sound like laziness, or a break from the real world, or a form of meditation, for me it is simply time for my brain to do whatever it feels like. Do you remember what that is like?
Maybe this is mostly why I like Facebook. I choose when to log in, I love seeing what my friends are up to, what makes them laugh (and often me, too), what family are doing, and I get to share what I currently find interesting. Then I log out and it's all gone. Peace. (Yes, kind of like that ideal spouse who only comes around when you want them to!)
But as far as solitude and my writing goes, I have finally, after two years of struggling with this and trying various solutions, come to the conclusion that solitude will not find me in opportune moments. I will have to go out and claim it, one way or another.
Apparently Google Reader (and receiving your most-read blog posts using that feed option) is gone, which a lot of people won't be happy about. The news came to me from Copyblogger, which I receive via email.
So I have taken the RSS feed widget off this blog, and replaced it with the "subscribe by Email" widget - it just means the posts from here will come to you via email rather than you reading them in your (no longer existing) Reader. If you really want to continue with RSS, the hot app for reading blogs now is Feedly. The information I have says you can move everything across from Google Reader to Feedly by using the same log in.
Over to you. Hope you'll stick with me!
The world of book reviewing is changing/has changed. And it's changed faster in the USA than it has in Australia. When my YA novel, Dying to Tell Me
, came out in the US, I was actually surprised at how many bloggers had been given review copies, and how much influence they had, let alone the number of reviews that gradually appeared on GoodReads. It very quickly dawned on me that our system in Australia (which basically consists of a review in Magpies, a review (much later) in Reading Time, and the very occasional review, if you're lucky, in the news media outlets) is slower and generally still very traditional.
Yes, librarians everywhere do still look at reviews, but more and more, with time and money restraints, they're relying on recommendations and requests from library patrons (including kids), awards lists and general "noticeability". Or the current buzzword among publishers - discoverability. Reviews have moved down the list of important places for your book to be seen and talked about. But not entirely.
Still, with the internet the way it is now, and publicists at publishing companies keeping a close eye on who is blogging reviews and how much notice is being taken, it's worth thinking about where you sit, if reviewing is something you take reasonably seriously.
Professional - these are people who are paid to write reviews. Or who write reviews for prestigious outlets simply for the kudos. These are also the avenues that many would consider "traditional". How does an average review go? There's a fair amount of space devoted to summarising the plot (or scope of the book) and associated elements. The rule of thumb is that you don't give away the big moments and twists, or the ending. A lot of reviews of this kind are pretty bland, although some reviewers like to gain a name by being as critical as possible. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times would probably be one of these.
General via Amazon, GoodReads - there are people who are famous for reviewing on Amazon. Their reviews are taken seriously, as are their recommendations. They take their reviewing seriously, too. Some people on GoodReads do the same. But GoodReads tends to be more democratic, I think, and more relaxed. You will get opinions, praise and criticism, but not couched in academic language. On the other hand, Amazon has been in the news for "sock puppet" reviews, where people sometimes review under an alias for scurrilous reasons (such as slamming books by their rivals - who'd have thought?).
Your own blog - there are lots of readers now who have their own review blogs. I'm one of them (occasionally) when a book strikes me in a way that I want to talk about. The difference with me is that I tend to approach a review from a writer's perspective. What did I learn about writing from the book, good or bad? What aspect of the book showed me something new, writing-wise? I think blogs that review books rise or fall based on several things - the reviewer's perspective and approach, whether they bring something new to the discussion, and whether they are truly interested in talking about books. They gain followers in the same way I look at the film reviews in my newspaper - some reviewers I don't even bother with because I know their tastes are nothing like mine, others I will read and take notice of.
Word of mouth - yes, this is the one we have no control over but everyone wants. It doesn't matter if you're a publisher, an editor, a book publicist or an author. You hope that readers out there will go around saying to their friends, "You've got to read this book - it's amazing/really good/will make you cry/ keep you up at night, etc." Really, all you can do as the author is write the best book you can and cross your fingers.
But ultimately, in this day and age, word of mouth has the most power at the moment. Flogging your book with a million tweets and FB posts won't do it. Readers are quick to feel put off by this. A super-duper website won't do it. Readers who love what you write will do it for you. So it comes back to the same thing we always talk about - you have to write what's in your heart,w hat you're passionate about. And if you're a part-time book reviewer? Maybe consider that the way to "pass it forward" is to only talk about and review books you love.
Three weeks ago I wrote here about starting a writing "challenge" - write every day for at least 30 minutes, and then report in to my accountability partners. The 28 days have finished, and I have written more than 20,000 words. It's rough first draft, sure, but I doubt very much that I would have written nearly that much in the same amount of time. More importantly, I'm creating a writing habit.
What has come out of the challenge for me? First of all, a sense of writing as a component of each and every day. An important component. After all, I'm supposed to be a writer so I should be writing - right? But too often life and other things get in the way, and too often we (I) put writing off for another day. It's sadly too easy to discover that "writing day" hasn't arrived in several weeks or more. So I found that every morning I was already working out when I would write. I tried to make it early, but some days it was the afternoon. Still, if I had something on in the morning, I was aware that writing would be happening later on.
I also have been working on something completely new, in a genre I have only written short stories in before, so it's a bit scary. There have been many times when I've hated what I've written and, at any other time, might have tossed it away and given up. The 30 minute commitment has kept me at it. I have to admit it wasn't until around page 55 that I allowed myself to go back and read the first pages! And I didn't hate them quite so much. But now I have pages to revise.
The other part of this is the accountability. When I had done my 30 minutes, I had to email the others in my accountability group and tell them. A simple "30 minutes done" was all that was needed, and they did the same to me. The one thing that many of them have said is that they produced far more this month than they would have otherwise, and like me, became far more aware of making time to write. Some have done double writing to make up for missed days. Not one of us has given up.
I've just started a second lot of 28 days, and some of my accountability partners are joining me again. Some have been talking about what they achieved, and have found new partners to get inspired with. You can start this with just two of you, on any day you like. Give it a go - you might surprise or even amaze yourself!
Last week's post on the pessimistic side of writing these days (The glass half-empty) struck a chord with more than one writer. So all week I was trying to plan out a post that shone with optimism, and fell foul of my own cynical outlook! But luckily, Lucia Nardo came to the rescue over a coffee, and there turned out to be lots of good things promised, once we brainstormed them.
1. You really don't have to write for a market (in fiction, in particular) if you don't want to. Publishers mean it when they say they want "the next hot idea", so if you're experimental and daring, and like writing stuff that no one else in the mainstream does, you could be "hot"! So stop playing it safe and following trends. Create your own.
2. If you have had a lot of great feedback on your writing (from people with experience and objectivity, mind) then you always have the option to self-publish, and to do it inexpensively via Kindle. There are other options out there, too - POD, other e-book formats, all kinds of stuff. Gone are the days when you had to outlay thousands of dollars for books that sat in your garage. Educate yourself on how to make it work, and away you go.
3. Lots of people feel it's PC to condemn social media, but if you are someone who enjoys it and can see how to have fun AND promote your writing and your books, you are ahead of lots of other writers. In the "old days", the only way you met or connected with readers was at festivals and conferences or by mail. Now your readers can connect with you in any way you want - and you get to choose. Don't like Twitter? Have some fun on Facebook. Want to be more professional? Use LinkedIn. All these things are out there for you to use, and they're FREE!
4. Following on from #3, you can now start or contribute to interesting conversations about writing and/or publishing, get a heap of information about publishers that used to be like some kind of weird secret, and enjoy videos and podcasts of writers talking about their processes that once you only got at a writers' festival. Instant inspiration!
5. Following on from #4, there are lots of ways to take writing classes on the internet. There are online university and TAFE classes (paid or free), YouTube videos on all kinds of topics, and free training on all those things you are struggling with, such as Wordpress, Excel or how to make a book trailer.
6. Thanks to the internet (include here the self-published writers who have been discovered making publishers finally aware of what they were missing - as well as submissions via email instead of huge, weighty Post Office bag), many publishers who had closed to unsolicited submissions are now actively looking for them. Here in Australia, Penguin, Allen & Unwin and Pan Macmillan are all taking manuscripts at certain times of the month (this blog summarises). Now that's something I never thought I'd see!
7. Again, thanks to the internet, there are at least two good websites that assist you to query agents in the US, making sure you target the right ones in terms of genre and subject. AgentQuery is one, Querytracker is another. You can (and should) do further research, but that is a million times easier now, too.
8. While the economic crisis (and continuing panic by some bean counters in publishing) has seen a number of very good editors lose their jobs, the bonus for writers is that a lot of them have become agents, which means more agents who are willing and capable of helping you polish your manuscript to that highly professional standard now required.
So, have I cheered you up yet? I think I've even cheered myself up!
Today I sat down to continue reading Writing From the Inside Out by Dennis, but as I read his ideas on psychological blocks and strategies, a few things came together in my mind. And one was: any new writer starting out would be entirely forgiven right now for just throwing in the towel and going off to do something else.
Whoa! I’ve been teaching writing for many years and I love helping people to learn the craft and get published. I had to sit back a moment and ask myself why I was being so pessimistic. Well, it’s coming from a variety of things right now, and here are some of the things I have gleaned from industry newsletters, blogs, sources and online chat.
1. Advances. How low can they go? Some publishers are trying to get writers with debut novels to sign contracts with NO advance. They plead that the market is untried, the budget is strained, the writer is new … Why would you spend several years (at least) working your guts out on a novel and then accept no advance? Because you really want to be published by a “legit” publisher and you figure it’s worth it. The problem is: it’s not. No advance means no real incentive to market your book. You’re on your own with that.
2. Along with lower and lower advances (citing the state of publishing right now) comes the warning to the less-than-best-selling writer. You’re mid-list and you’re not selling millions so we are forced to reduce your advance. There are murmurings in the UK and Australia that some publishers are starting to “shore up” their argument for lower advances by assuming that PLR and ELR will “make up the difference”.
3. A lot of children’s and YA writers in particular are feeling jammed between the rock and the hard place – the dollar-making (but often brain-sapping, inspiration-sucking) series treadmill and the stand-alone quality novel that might get shortlisted for an award. If you want to write what’s in your heart and do your absolute best with it, where is there for you to go? Only a few books each year make important shortlists, and then sell more copies. If that’s what you want to write, you can be forgiven for wondering if you have any hope of getting it published. But with every second writer trying to pitch a series, that’s a torturous road, too.
4. The move to self-publishing, especially in e-books. Yes, 50 Shades of Whatever is making a bomb. So are some others. An awful lot of writers are self-pubbing because they can’t get their books published by traditional publishers, and yes, a lot of those books maybe shouldn’t be published at all. Let’s not get into that. Let’s ask ourselves why writers with really good books (like Hugh Howey with Wool) are self-publishing and then retaining e-rights, or after years of trad publishing, are going it on their own.
Why is this happening?
Because the internet for writers is a combined publishing news service/information update/gossip hub. Savvy writers read and listen and see what is happening, and they don’t like it. They don’t like the low advances and the way they’re expected to do the marketing themselves, so they figure they might as well do it all anyway. If you were an author with a popular blog and a lot of followers on FB and Twitter, wouldn’t you consider it?
You know, I wish I had some answers to all of this. Two years ago, I thought by now that things would have settled down, and to some extent they have. E-book buying has leveled out. Mad-selling books are still with us but we don’t get quite so het up about them. Publishers are still doing great things with great books. But I also wonder (sadly) if trad publishers, in the backs of their minds, are relieved all those writers are self-publishing, and hoping they’ll all just go off and stop submitting unsolicited, and let “real” publishers get on with the job of making money out of “real” books.
Sheesh. I need a glass of wine. While I can still afford it! But I will return - with a post on the glass half-full (metaphorically speaking).
Everybody knows what a deadline is. Lots of writers I know secretly love a deadline because it is the one thing that stops procrastination and gets you writing. But when you are writing "on spec" - writing without anyone in particular waiting on you to complete, polish and submit by a certain date - it can be hard to stay motivated. Especially with novels. The writing of a novel can go on for years (let's not think about decades!). It can help to be in a writers' group, whether you are workshopping chapters with them or not. The support and encouragement of other writers can be magical sometimes.
Some of you will know from my posts that I am a goal-setter. Years of doing this has proven to me over and over that it works, if you find the right way to approach it that works for you. But it's the day-to-day stuff that gets most of us. It's so easy to spend the whole day on busy-work, doing much and achieving little, least of all writing. If you work in a paying job, it's easy to simply feel too tired to write at night, or even think about writing. Get up half an hour early to write? "I really need my sleep," you say.
So when a billion blog posts (OK, I exaggerate a little) came along at the end of the year about goal setting and procrastination and all of that, I remembered a seminar I went to a few years ago with a hard-talking fitness/motivation guy called Craig Harper. Craig talked about changing or aiming for one thing at a time. For 28 days, and only 28 days. If, at the end of it, it worked for you, give it another 28, and then another. By then, you have a habit. I wrote a lot about this on my ebooks blog.
The key is accountability - checking in with someone. So in January, just through talking to some other writers, I ended up with a couple of accountability partners. Then some other writers wanted to do it as a group. I now check in with both groups. It's not up to me to "police" how they are going at all. I'm only doing this for myself. This is the other key. You also become accountable to yourself.
Right now, I'm up to Day 5. Hardly worth writing about just yet, you might think. But I have 15 pages of a brand new novel already. I have confirmed that yes, writing first is much, much better than trying to do it at the end of the day. Yes, all that other stuff will wait. Yes, my brain does work better in the morning! Best of all, writing for this 30 minutes, no matter what, means I have to push away the dread that the novel is going to be a pile of garbage and just keep going.
As for the first time I tried this after listening to Craig - three years later I am still walking every day for 20 minutes, come rain, hail or shine. Now I'm thinking about my novel while I walk!
1) What is the working title of your next book?
Runaways – now the official title! Sometimes the working title sticks, sometimes it doesn’t.
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
I wanted to write a story about a boy who runs away and how he survives – but not as a street kid in a city. I wanted to take him out to the country somewhere. Then I decided to have two narrators so his sister came into the story. It means I can tell it in two different voices, with different things happening.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
It’s a verse novel – so that’s a novel told in poetry.
4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
For Jack, I’d pick Hayley Joel Osment as he was in The Sixth Sense. But he’s now grown up, so I have no idea! For Cassie, his sister, same thing. I tried Googling but that didn’t help either. I just have a picture of them in my own head, and that’s what counts for me.
5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Caught between two parents, neither of whom really want him, Jack runs away and is joined by the one person who truly cares about him, his sister Cassie.
6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
It was represented by my agent and will be published by Penguin Books in 2013.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
About two years. There were many times I nearly gave up, but once I found the place where Jack and Cassie run to in South Australia (turned out to be Hindmarsh Island but I had to go there to realize it), the story finally started to come alive for me.
8)What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Maybe something by Steven Herrick, who also writes verse novels in different voices.
9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Simply the idea of running away, which I did several times as a kid but I never got very far. I lived in the country and you had to walk a really long way just to get onto the main road!
10) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?
I tend to write a lot about kids whose lives are made difficult by adults who either don’t care enough or are too selfish or caught up in their own dramas to realize what is happening to their own children. I love the idea of these kids turning the tables and finding ways to become independent and strong, and make their own lives worth living. I guess independence and self-reliance are big factors for me, and I worry about helicopter parents (or their opposite). So if you want to read about kids who find strength and courage together, this is it.
Here’s my list of writers who will be posting next week:
Now that the end of the world has passed us by (no doubt somewhere out in space a planet did disappear or implode or disintegrate, but it wasn't ours this time), my mind turns to 2013. At the moment I seem to be reading a lot of blog posts about "the next big thing", whether it be in writing, publishing, marketing or gizmos. So here are some predictions from me (who is NOT Nostradamus or even his second cousin's ex-sister-in-law-twice removed).
E-books - the current trends show the move to e-books and e-readers has slowed. I suspect those who were really interested have taken them up with great enthusiasm and are buying heaps of cheap books. One study said a huge percentage of people who bought or were given e-readers have stopped using them, if they even gave them a try. I think things have slowed down with people over 50. I also think anyone who uses computers all day in their job or at school is going to prefer real books. And anyone who loves picture books (of any age) will resist the move to apps. The big prediction "out there" is a huge move to doing things on mobile phones, but I doubt book reading is going to be one of them. Screens are too small.
My current status - I have a tablet with quite a few books on it but mostly I am reading non-fiction that way. Fiction doesn't "feel right"!
Copyright - there are going to be a lot more copyright battles in the coming year. Recent reports on things like territory issues show the ground is shifting all the time, driven by e-books on Amazon (many self-published) that are available world-wide. Once upon a time we'd barely notice if a book was published in the US and it took 3 months to get to Australia, unless it was an instant best-seller.
Now, with the internet, we read reviews and hear about interesting books, and then discover we can't buy the book or e-book instantly (as we have become accustomed to!) because of copyright territory issues. E-books have, if nothing else, highlighted this. Big changes globally are coming. If you're not convinced, check out the "rules" for having a book published with one of the new e-book imprints like Momentum.
My current status - there have been a few times this year when a special deal on an e-book was available through a newsletter, but when I went to buy, I was informed it wasn't available to me in my country. If enough people complain, publishers will soon make every contract for "global rights".
Non-fiction for children and YA - the curriculum changes in Australia and the US mean non-fiction is very much back in the classroom as a resource. But what and how? I've been to plenty of schools where their non-fiction section has either gone or been much-reduced, because they've decided to move non-fiction (i.e. research) to the internet. Any author who uses the net for research (as I do) knows that it's limited and time-consuming. There is so much out there, and so much of it is wrong or conflicting, that I inevitably go back to books.
I use the net as a starting point, and for things like old photos, records, newspapers and sometimes maps. But a good book, especially a large one (which non-fiction often is, in order to reproduce the illustrations and photos well) with a good index, where I can flick back and forth and scan text quickly for what I want, can't be beaten by a screen. So I think a lot of publishers are going to scramble to bring their best non-fiction back into print (updated) and produce new electronic resources. What I really worry about? That in the process they will take history back to the state it was in when I was at school - incredibly boring. I learned all of my history from novels!
My current status - I'm a fiction writer, but I've moved into historical fiction and love it. I'm currently researching for a World War I novel and the books I have found have been invaluable. But I'll be using the net more and more for the newspapers of the era.
Marketing of books - the tide has definitely turned here, towards the writer doing more and more. Not just because publishers have tightened their purse strings either. So many bookstores (including Borders) have gone that relying on traditional things like buying front-of-store space has become almost irrelevant. Readers are finding out about new books in other ways. Reviews in traditional media have shrunk. Bloggers and sites such as Goodreads are all part of the mix now, but the mix is so big, how does an author find their way through it?
We are told to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, our websites - anything we can to get our name and books out there. Yet go to any writers' festival and the biggest complaint is about writers who are only there to plug their books and provide little else of value. Value is the keyword, apparently. I think writers are being expected to do too much now, with little idea of what works and how to manage it all. I suspect publishers will soon have people in their marketing departments who are there specifically to work with writers on all of this, rather than focusing on the traditional media publicity outlets. Somebody has to help writers get a grip on it all! (This is me being logical - maybe publishers will listen?)
My current status - I'll be writing full-time next year and plan to use some of my hours to tackle this stuff in a more organised way. But when I'm working (to pay bills) and can only write part-time, marketing sucks up an awful lot of writing hours. The book has to come first. Without the best book you can write, the marketing is pointless.
There are more predictions I could make but if nothing else, I think 2013 will see further upheaval and change. What are your predictions?
Over the past four months I've been working on my critical thesis for my MFA in Writing for Children and YA (through Hamline University in Minnesota). In earlier semesters I was writing essays, but also doing a lot of creative work, so it balanced out. This semester, after two months, my adviser said, "When you send the next draft of the thesis, how about sending me some creative work, too?" It wasn't until I sat down and wrote some poems for my new verse novel that I realized what was happening - I felt freed up and joyful about writing again!
Don't get me wrong - researching for the thesis, thinking deeply about what I wanted and needed to say, roughing out ideas, diving even deeper into the topic - all of this has been terrific. Challenging, yes, but it's been immensely satisfying to be able to think about what a verse novel really is, and more importantly, what it can be. Other people's ideas and opinions feed into this, but ultimately it's up to me to work it out. However, actually writing poetry is a whole different thing. Like going from overhauling a car engine to actually driving it down a sunny country road at 100 miles an hour! (And I'm not going to count how many adverbs are in this paragraph.)
I've continued with the verse novel, but now the thesis is done, I'm working hard on revising a historical novel I've been writing for 18 months. It can take me 3 hours to rewrite about 8 pages, so this is a major revision, not tinkering around the edges, and it requires a lot of concentration and focus. On the other hand, at night, while my husband watches TV, I've been reading the last 38 issues of Poetrix, the poetry magazine that my writing group publishes. After 20 years, we are closing it down - it's a lot of work and we've decided it's time. But our last issue will be a double and will include our favorites from Issues 1-38.
What I have found is that reading through so many poems, night after night, is inspiring me to write single poems again. Not verse novel poems, where character and story and voice are also important, but poems that just arise from the ether, sparked by an image or a word or an idea. And I'm back driving down that country road again. It's reminded me that not everything has to be perfect, that to simply write for the joy of it, without expecting anything except fun (and often passion or those exciting sparks) is real freedom in writing, and to be savored and encouraged.
Several years ago, I visited Menton, in France, and Kate Banks graciously agreed to meet with me and be interviewed. I had a lovely morning, talking to her and looking at all her beautiful picture books and novels, and went back to my hotel to transcribe and type everything up. Later, at home, I couldn't open the file and then my notebook disappeared! Now, thanks to a new recovery program I discovered, I've finally been able to resurrect the file. Very timely, as it turns out, because Kate's latest picture book, The Bear in the Book, has just been named in Publisher's Weekly's Best Picture Books for 2012. This is a long piece so I will post in two parts - here is Part 1, her answers to my general questions (written into article format).
Kate Banks started her life in books when she spent three years working for Knopf as an assistant editor to Frances Foster, and had three books published by them. She then worked for National Geographic for a year in Washington, and continued writing, then got married and moved to Europe. When Foster moved to Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Kate went with her and from then on all of her US books have been published by FSG. In France Kate’s publisher is Gallimard, who do a lot of her books in French (her picture books). Her first book with Gallimard was with Georg Hallenslaben – Baboon. They do most of their books with both publishers, but the French ones come out faster.
Kate writes for older children and teens, too, but feels she relates more to little kids around three to four years old – she loves the visuals of a picture book and it’s more fun to produce them and be part of the process. The challenge is to write spare text – the poetry in the text is important – she pays a lot of attention to choice of words, even in novels. She loves to read picture books aloud to kids, and always reads her own stories out loud to hear how they sound.
For children, their grasp of language comes as much from listening as from seeing words on the page – sound is important for communication. She believes that reading aloud in school is really important, and that it is not being done so much now is a big reason why kids are less literate.
When writing a story – she gets ideas as they occur – “fall from the sky” – she always stays aware of ideas, wherever they come up. Sometimes an idea might be kicked off by an event, or it could be a phrase or something a child does or says – she writes down the idea and then lets it gel for a while (she takes a notebook everywhere so she doesn’t lose those ideas). She always works on several things at once, then there is no fear that the one thing won’t work. She gives herself lots of room to think about the idea, then knows when it is ready to be written. She might do several drafts or more, but usually the first draft is to get the structure and form working, or to see if something is not working in the structure. Then she fills out the story and adds more to it. The first draft is getting it down.
Her novels take at least 4 drafts – again, she writes the bones in the first draft, then subsequent drafts are about filling it out and developing. The last draft is always copyediting and looking at every word and phrase to see if it can be made better.
For The Cat Who Walked Across France: initially she did hear of a story about a cat – not the specific story that she wrote – and since the book has been published she has heard other stories of cats who have walked a long way to get back to their original homes. The illustrator, Georg Hallensleben, was an artist she discovered in Rome. He is German and she asked him if he was interested in doing picture books. When she lived in Rome he would ride his bicycle across the city to her house to work every day, then he bought a van and outfitted it as a studio, so then he would drive to her house and set up downstairs in her garage. As he worked on illustrations, he’d bring them upstairs and they’d talk about them and then he’d go back down and revise or do more. This was how If The Moon Could Talk was created.
For the Cat book, he drove his van across France, following the path the cat takes in the story so that he could paint what the cat saw, in reality.
Kate collaborates a lot with her illustrators. Because she has worked in the industry, her editor trusts her to know the artist’s work and how to collaborate and get the best book. This also sometimes leads to her writing a story specifically for a particular illustrator.
Her themes are about connection – how people stay connected in life and death. She’s interested in writing about the human experience of the soul and the physical body, how to communicate that connection and understand humanity through stories with resolutions. Children today experience the media all the time where disaster and tragedy have no resolution; it’s just presented to them. She is opposed to irresponsible media that projects sensationalism – children don’t have the tools to deal with the constant bombardment. She feels her contribution is to write about these themes. Death is a part of life but in our society we don’t want to see this. She writes about death a lot but thinks this is because she lost both her parents as a child.
Kate speaks three languages – English, French, Italian – and says her spelling has got worse! She does think her vocabulary has changed since she has been living overseas, and she has more ease in working with words – she plays a lot more with words, but is able to do this because she has had a strong foundation in grammar and punctuation. You can’t use poetic licence unless you have that strong foundation.
With marketing, she has never done much but can see now that things have changed a lot and that publishers cannot do much for you. Being in Europe, she can’t do book tours or school visits in the US. She doesn’t like to think of books as products – her books are more literary, not mass market paperbacks, and picture books are expensive to buy. She has an agent now because contracts are getting more difficult – new clauses and things to negotiate.
Part Two will be posted soon.
I don't think I have ever had a real writing space. For years I wrote at the kitchen table, because it looked out on the back yard, the fence, the pond, and often birds would flit in and entertain me. That only worked as long as I had the house to myself, which is no longer the case. So I bought a new desk. But I put it in the only space there was - in the computer room. Waaaaay too close to the internet connection, and the desk slowly filled with papers and books until I couldn't work there either.
In the back yard we have what is laughingly called "the bungalow". It means an odd building that was once used as extra accommodation and now has no insulation, sagging ceilings and enough junk to stock a recycling store. Give me space and I will fill it, being a long-time hoarder. I can tell you that out there are multiple copies of every publication I've ever been involved in, at least four crates chock-full of class materials, all the books I can't throw away but there's no room in the house for them, and sundry items that need to find themselves a rubbish dump to jump into.
I've tried to write out there. It doesn't feel right. What has, surprisingly, felt very right and very workable for the past couple of years are cafes. I've been the Cafe Poet at Melissa's Cafe in Altona for 6 months, and I applied for this because, let's face it, I was writing there at least twice a week anyway! I have a couple of other cafes I like, too. Why? Somehow I can block out all the noise and just write. Well, to be honest, I am unable to block out screaming kids. But chatting coffee drinkers are a cinch.
Now I know it's time to make a real space in my house. Enough of the excuses about how long it would take me to clean out the back room (laughingly called my "office" - we do a lot of laughing about the junk I store everywhere, with gritted teeth). I have made a substantial start. The photo above? I wasn't going to include it, if only because when I started the clean-out, the room actually looked a lot worse! But I figured if I posted the photo here, it committed me to finishing the job.
It's been three days, two huge bags of rubbish, one huge bag of paper for recycling, two boxes of books to donate, and a lot of discoveries of strange, wonderful, long-forgotten items that have surfaced along the way. No, I haven't finished yet. I know I need to get more ruthless, but some of those things I've saved have a lot of meaning for me, and where else do we writers get ideas from, if not from evocative memories?
So by this time next week, I have promised myself the room will be finished. There will be a writing space that I can use, a clear desk, a new keyboard, some of my favorite things around me, and all my research stuff in neat piles, ready to use. Fingers crossed.
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This is very informative and interesting.
I'm a musician and for us there is a similar perplexment (if there is a correct word please tell me)with the onset of the digital revolution.
My own approach is to think only about the art and learn to live independent of income. I realize this doesn't suit everyone.
Look forward to reading more from you as you develop solutions.
I agree, John, musicians have been down this hard road, too - before writers. Writers are only just starting to see the issues and how perplexing it all is indeed.
Musicians have the option of live performances, I guess (they say that's why so many are going back on the road!). But it's not easy for anyone.