My writing week.

Hi all,

My characters took control of my writing again: this time a character added a new plot idea. I had been getting near the stage where the narration jumps in time to just before, what Christopher Vogler in his book "The Writer's Journey" calls, the "Ordeal". But my main character has devised another "test" for himself before he reaches his "innermost cave".

I have been writing a bit more this week, but no critiquing and little reading.

One thing I did read, in The AGE, is that publishing house Macmillian may be paying its authors 20% royalties on digital rights as compared to 10% for print editions. So electronic publishing might be better than expected for authors.

I watched a repeat of one of the ABC Tuesday Bookclub and it was great to see them whole heartedly disagree about the merits of the books they were reviewing. One was A Farewell to Arms, I can't remember what the other was, but Peter Corris gave up reading it halfway through. He's not like me, I keep reading until the bitter end.

Graham.

Review of Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy

Hi all,

The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Third Annual Volume, Edited by Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquardt was a bit of a disappointment. I couldn’t help thinking at the end: so this is the best that Australia had to offer in 2006.

I must admit I have not been reading a lot of Australian publications lately after being disappointed with the dominance of fantasy that had no meaning for me in the first four editions of Andromeda Inflight Spaceways Magazine, the main outlet for Australian writers of speculative fiction. I have also failed to catch up with the last few editions of Orb and Aurealis. My short-story speculative fiction reading of late has been anthologies and a pile of Asimov and Analog magazines that I picked up at a garage sale.

Perhaps there weren’t any mind-blowing, ideas-laden, totally engrossing, contemporary-messaged stories published by Australians in 2006. Or perhaps the editors of the anthology have far different tastes to mine, in particular a fascination with death. The anthology certainly had enough stories dealing with dying and death and trying to cheat death, like the Dying Light by Deborah Biancotti, Father Muerte and the Flesh by Lee Battersby, andThe Souls of Dead Soldiers are for Blackbirds, not Little Boys by Ben Peek. Another story was set in hell. Interestingly, my favourite story in the previous volume of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy was Margo Lanagan’s Singing my Sister Down, whose plot revolved around an elaborately staged execution.

This collection started off slowly with Kaaron Warren’s Dead Sea Fruit about a dentist with killer breadth. I didn’t find the story particularly horrifying, unlike my usual trips to the dentist. The Cup of Nestor by Simon Brown hooked me in with its ideas and atmosphere and speculation on what would happen and had me expecting a big ending, but it didn’t quite get there. Margo Lanagon’s Hero Vale did not enthral me like Singing my Sister Down, which is one of the most original fantasy stories I have read.

I read the fantasy/horror Father Muerte and the Flesh twice, just in case I missed some hidden meaning, but I don’t think there was one. As a horror story it had the problem of having characters I didn’t care about. I needed to be given a reason to worry about their plight and feel sad when one character, who seemed to be too carefree for her own good, died.

Ben Peeks The Souls of Dead Soldiers are for Blackbirds, Not Little Boys intriguing me, I am still wondering whether it had some underlying meaning that I just failed to grasp. But, after the experience with the previous story, I was not going to re-read it and I was in a hurry to read some science-fiction. At this stage, eight stories into an eleven story collection, I was wondering where all the science-fiction was.

I immediately picked, like I think the author intended, where Chris Lawson’s Hieronymus Boche was set, but the fun was watching the characters figure out where they where. I enjoyed this story.

The best story in the collection was Karen Westwood’s Turning the Weel, a science-fiction story set in a post apocalyptic Canberra. This shouldn’t surprise readers of this blog because of my previously mentioned fascination with apocalyptic and post apocalyptic fiction. The story was written with many phonetic spellings, but very easy to understand.

I do hope the next collection has more science-fiction and a few more stories that resonate with meaning.

My writing week.

Hi all,

I had the perfect excuse over the last couple of weeks to stop writing every day, but I didn't. I've started a new job two weeks ago that has very early starts, so I have had to reschedule my exercise routine and my writing. I haven't critiqued a story for a couple of weeks and my reading has suffered. But I seem to be getting into a new routine.

I am going to have to put more emphasis on my writing or I will have no hope of achieving what I had hoped for this year. I had planned to finish the first draft of the novel I am writing, re-draft another novel, and then redraft the novel I am currently writing. At the moment I will be lucky to finish the first draft of the novel I am working on.

I need to spend less time on facebook, livejournal and myspace.

Graham.

apocalypse all the time

Hi all,

I have been reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It’s a non-fiction book which asks the question: what would happen to planet Earth if humanity suddenly disappeared? I am about halfway through and each chapter of the book begins by explaining how humans have affected some part of the natural environment and then how the environment might change/recover if humans were no longer around.

Recently the 100’s of square kms of plastic floating in the North Pacific Gyre was highlighted in the media, this is examined in the chapter I am currently reading. The author continues with his examination of plastic by detailing how micro fragments of plastic are entering our food chain, swallowed by fish, birds and most importantly krill. It seems we are slowly poisoning the oceans and one of our main sources of food.

I ordered this book after reading a review in The Age. But why did it interest me? Firstly, I am currently writing a novel set on a newly terraformed world, a world where humans may have constructed the environment, but they have not yet began to populate it and degrade it. So I thought The World Without Us, might give me some ideas about what my terraformed world would be like, and it has. Secondly, like a lot of science-fiction fans, I have a fascination with apocalyptic and post apocalyptic worlds.

A quick search of my bookshelves and I find the following books set in an apocalyptic or post apocalyptic world: The Handmaids Tale and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Attwood, Battlefield Earth by L Ron Hubbard, Earth Abides by George R Stewart, Graffiti by Peter Van Greenaway, Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen, Parkland by Victor Kelleher, Salt by Gabrielle Lord, The Sea and the Summer by George Turner and Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch.

I also have also enjoyed films like The Planet of The Apes (original), Mad Max, and Omega Man and I am Legend based on the same novel. I was enjoying both Jericho and Jeremiah (on Fox 8) until they were cancelled.

Why do I we enjoy such stories? Why do science-fiction writers, in particular, destroy worlds and then force their characters to live on them? Many of them are probably convinced that humanity will eventually destroy itself, and some of those want to warn us to stop global warming, genetic engineering, nuclear proliferation. But do some of them, like their readers/viewers, hate the world, and more importantly their place in it, so much they would prefer it destroyed?

I think my enjoyment of apocalyptic stories comes mainly from imagining what I would do to survive if I was in such a world. But I also appreciate the warnings about humanity’s future contained in these stories.

My writing week.

Hi all,

Up until this morning's writing session I was thinking what the hell has happened in my writing this week that would possible be of interest to the readers of this blog. The usual had happened: I had not reached my quota of words, but at least I could say I had written every day. But then it happened, I was writing a seemingly innocuous conversation between the two main characters of my novel when suddenly, like they had both taken acid and were on the same trip, they realised they had a point of reference, some reason for not hating each other. I had reached a crucial point in the novel where two very different characters realised they had something in common. Something they/I could build on to shape the rest of the novel.

I had not plotted this point, it just happened by accident, but it is crucial to the novel. Yaaaaa characters. Now I hope to build on this coming together of two very dysfunctional souls.

I may now start to believe those writers who say that their characters come to life and take over a story.

Unfortunately for my readers, or perhaps fortunately, I was going to blog on writing sex scenes, but that will have to wait until next week.

Graham.

The 2020 Summit and books

Hi all,

The “Creative Nation” group at the 2020 summit seemed dominated by film, with nothing said about the Australian book or fiction writing market. I suppose the ailing film industry needs all the help it can get, but perhaps if they made more genre films, like science fiction, it would be more successful. Big grossing films like the Mad Max Trilogy and Wolf Creek show how successful genre films made in Australia can be. The Matrix series and Dark City were also made here, but not with Australian money. The industry needs to get away from historical dramas, lame-arse comedies and its love affair with druggies.

I am one of the five percent of Australians who pay to see Australian films. The Proposition (western), Mad Max (science fiction), Lantana (thriller/drama), He Died with a Falafel in his Hand (comedy), Bliss (fantasy) and The Cars That Ate Paris (horror) are favourites. The recent 2:37, which did not get a cinema release in Wang, is not a bad film either.

Australian books make more much more money than the Australian film and music industries combined, so where were the high profile fiction writers at the summit? Script writing seemed to be the only writing mentioned at the summit. (Are there really that few decent scripts written in Australia or is it just bad choices from our funding bodies and investors? For example the writers/director of very successful Saw trilogy tried to get the first one made in Australia.) I wonder if the book publishing industry in 2020 even cracked a mention at the summit.

Here are a couple of my own predictions about book publishing in 2020. Novels and especially text books will mostly be electronic (web, ebook). Apart from the obvious interactivity aspect for text books, the main reason I give for this is global warming. The number of trees for paper production will be limited as more land is used for food and bio-fuel production. Fires will also account for a lot of trees. So books will have to fight to use the limited amount of recycled paper. Perhaps the Creative Nation summiteers could have discussed ways the electronic distribution of books could benefit all those involved, especially the authors. I read recently that Amazon was trying to force all electronic books to be “printed” by the one publisher. I can’t see a monopoly benefiting authors.

I see science fiction turning to a darker view of our future as the reality of climate change and all its potential and happening calamities finally start to hit home. The media will change from trying to distract us from the looming disaster we have helped create, to telling us to get off our arses and do something about it, instead of trying to make us feel good by turning our lights off for an hour during Earth Hour. Science fiction writers will reflect this change of attitude. It will take at least a century to turn around global warming – unless the singularity comes up with some technological wonder solution like carbon dioxide eating replicators – so science fiction will be a reflection of our struggle.

I am predicting pessimistic electronic books will dominate science fiction in the decades to come. What are your predictions?

Graham.

PS There are two types of people who don’t believe global warming is happening, man-made and a potential disaster: the ignorant and the selfish.

My writing week.

Hi all,

Things have just gotten in the way of writing this week: the dentist, x-rays, job interviews, clothes buying (which I loath just about as much as going to the dentist).

I've been trying a new way to promote my writing on the web which has been taking up a fair bit of my time. Other people probably have tried it, but I am not aware of their attempts, so I'll try to keep it a secret for a while. The process of setting it up is helping me to get to know the characters in the current novel I am writing.

Now that I am back on critters.com, I have been doing a critique a week. I like to choose stories of around 5,000 words to critique, because I have found that if they are shorter I usually end up asking a lot of questions about the world the story is set in. I think most fantasy and science-fiction stories need to be at least 5,000 words so they have room to create their universe.

One of the stories I critiqued was a fairytale updated to a future setting. I really think that rewriting fairytales in present or future settings has been done so often that a writer has little hope of getting it published.

I took note of the time it takes to critique a story and I spend 4-6 hours on a critque.

I read that Jeffrey Archer is often handed manuscripts from writers, and he reckons just about all of them are a first draft. I was surprised to read that he redrafts his books 17 times. I haven't read any of his novels, but to go to that much effort you would want to be winning Bookers – like Peter Carey who redrafts 15 times per novel.

The above activities, combined with increasing procrastination, meant my writing output has dropped over the past couple of weeks, but I still managed to write everyday. On a superior note, I did manage to swim my fastest time for years this morning. I have adopted a new approach, swimming every fourth lap like a publisher is standing at the end of the pool dangling a contract. If only my subconscious could visualise something similar while I write.

Graham.