The Emerging Writer's Festival, part two.

Hi all,

This is my second post on the Emerging Writer’s Festival that I attended in Melbourne on the 30^th and 31^st of May. My first post covered the session, Seven Enviable Lines. After that session I followed the crowd upstairs where about 150 of us crammed into the smaller, but slightly better lit, Yarra Room for the panel discussion Just Write Dammit.

The first speaker was crime novel writer PD Martin. She’s written four novels and been published in a number of countries. In between static clicks from the microphone she suggested that writers who finish a chapter should start the first page of the next chapter before stopping for the day, as this will the words flowing the next day. When I actually finish a chapter, I do tend to do this as I am keen to find out how I will set the scene for the following chapter.

She recommended doing the 10k in a day challenge, which she does once a month. To achieve the 10,000 words she does not re-read during it, and turns off the spellchecker and grammar checker.

She said it helped to have a writing partner to compete against in daily word counts.

Andrew Hutchinson, an award winning novelist spoke next. He tended to mumble a bit, so he was hard to understand on occasions. He mentioned that he felt first person was more personal. This is one reason why I have written the novel I am working on in first person.

He usually left a draft for three months so he could returns to it with fresh eyes.

He said Cormac McCarthy wrote his Pulitzer prize winning novel, The Road (see my review in an earlier post) in three weeks. This made all of us who had spent the best part of two years on the one novel feel terribly inadequate. The Road is a short novel, about 50,000k I would guess. I wonder if he had written it in his head before he started.

Short story writer and magazine editor Tiggy Johnson said “How To” books provided her with plenty of inspiration.

Victoria Carless, a playwright, said her PhD was useful for generating work. I found this also to be the case with my masters as the first draft of the novel I am currently editing is the result of a novella I wrote during it. I have also started extending another short-story I wrote during that course to a novel and I intend to turn another short story into a young adult novel.

She said that in her pitch to publishers she mentions her degree was admission by folio. I might mention my masters was admission by folio in pitches. Interestingly, when I was applying for university writing courses, only two, the University of Canberra, where I studied, and the University of Wollongong wanted to see some of my writing as part of the entry requirements. The others just went on high school marks. Too bad if those they admitted had nothing to write about.

It was then time for lunch that I spent finding my sunnies, left on the seat next to mine at the first session, and then watching Sri Lankans protest about the war in their country.

Liz Argall, one of the festival’s guest writers, is also posting on the festival.

My next festival post will include a debate by interstate writers on what they think their state’s unique writing voice is. I very much enjoyed this debate.

Graham.

Stupid myspace

Hi all,

Remain calm Graham, it is not the end of the world. I just spent about an hour writing a beautiful post about the emerging writer’s festival only to have it disappear into the ether. I haven’t got a clue what I did or even if I did anything. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Because myspace has previously totally stuffed up the formatting of word documents, I have been writing my posts directly onto it and then cutting and pasting them to my mirror blog on blogger. But, unfortunately, myspace does not allow you to save as you go.

While threatening myspace with every evil known to man, a door to door salesman interrupted me. He made a quick retreat.

I am not in the mood to write the post again today.

Stupid myspace. I hope Microsoft assimilates you.

Graham.

My writing week 2(23)

Hi all,

It's amazing how a three day trip to Melbourne for the Emerging Writer's Festival lead to such a huge backlog of things I just had to do before I could spend time writing. A week later and I am still trying to catch up with my pedantic reading of newspapers. I should be thankful that it rained a bit last week so I didn't have to water much - I have no idea where I got the time to water over summer. I did very little editing of Stalking Tigers last week, just enough for me to say that I wrote on every day, which I still have continued to do since the start of 2008.

I didn't critique anything last week. I started on a story for OWWW but then the author put a stop crit on it. I just had a look at the files for OWWW and found no science fiction so the prospects of me critiquing anything in the next week are not looking good. I am supposed to critique two stories a month, but last month did none, so I might be ejected from the group. My critiquing ratio of weeks to critiques is at 70% for Critters but that would have gone down a couple of percent after missing last week. Perhaps I could do two for Critters this week.

Not much reading last week due to no time and feeling really tired at night after failing to catch up on sleep over the previous weekend.

I will write another blog post on the Emerging Writer's Festival this week that will cover at least two of the sessions: my notes are not as extensive for the remaining sessions as they were for the first. Liz Argall, one of my facebook pals, has also been writing posts on the festival too. It will be interesting to see how we differ in our assessments of it and the sessions.

I started a Google Profile account for myself after it was mentioned at the writer's festival as a good way of getting all the web information you want displayed about yourself onto one URL link. My profile is just basic at the moment and I will plug it once I have dressed it up.

Graham.

Emerging Writer's Festival - Part One

Hi all,

Last weekend I went to the Emerging Writer's Festival held at the town hall in Melbourne. Over the weekend I attended nine panel discussions on various subjects. I found all except one of them of interest. At a cost of $37 it was a bargain for any writer living in Melbourne. I had to travel down from Wangaratta and stayed overnight, but still found it well worth the cost.

I arrived early on Saturday and, taking their advice that some sessions could be booked out, took up a seat for the Seven Enviable Lines session. While I waited I looked through the showbag they had given me and find quite a few things that I will read, such as, a book called Perspectives containing non-fiction and fiction pieces on democracy, the future (perfect for a science fiction writer) and meeting the needs of vulnerable people, written by established writers and new writers. The first piece is written by Barry Jones who I have a lot of time for having read his book Sleeper's Awake where he warned of the coming challenges to Australia and the West. Barry Jones also warned the Hawke Government about global warming in 1984. The bag also contained a 2005 edition of the Griffith Review, a magazine which I am curious about because one of my master's lecturers, Jennifer Webb, edited it at one stage. There was also an issue of the Victorian Writer, which might finally get me around to subscribing to it and a magazine called Wet Ink, as well as heaps of bookmarks and other stuff on writing.

As I examined the bag's contents the dingy hall filled rapidly with 200 - 250 people, mostly in their late 20's to late 30's. The title of the panel discussion, the Seven Enviable Lines, referred to seven things the panellists wished they had been told when they started writing. The first to speak was poet Pooja Mittal. The things she wished she had been told were:

1. There are no ivory towers, you need to network to succeed. As mentioned in a previous post, I thought the underlining theme of the weekend's sessions was it's not how well you write or luck that will get you published, it is who you know.

2. All criticism is constructive, even that aimed at cutting you down and hurting you. A writer has to learn how to disengage their ego. I reacted badly to the first critiques I got, but have gradually come to value critiques, especially those where the author has tried to offer helpful criticisms.

3. Conserve your syllables, in other words use the least amount of words to say something. She gave a few examples of how this leads more to showing than telling in writing.

4. Writer's block is just that a road block, dry seasons are very natural, just let them happen. I don't know whether I agree with this as I have never suffered from a lack of ideas to write about, my problem is making the time for writing (which was dealt with in other sessions).

5. Inspiration doesn't strike, so there is no use waiting for it. It surrounds you, so go out and look for it.

6. Change is natural, so as a writer you will probably end up dabbling in various genres of writing. I have written short stories, novels a few newspaper articles, this blog, a website, an interactive story on that website etc.

7. Give no excuses for your writing. Behave like a criminal and have no shame. Explain less (this is one of the problems that frequently creeps into my writing) and don't seek to untangle all the knots (are you listening Professor Webb?).

The next panellist was Luke Devonish who writes historical novels, plays and was the script editor for 1,500 episodes of neighbours. Surprisingly he didn't appear to be brain dead. His seven enviable lines came in the form of wishes.

1. I wish someone would have called me a wanker. He felt that someone should have told him not to believe his own publicity, especially since he wrote most of it.

2. I wish someone had told me the importance of story.

3. I wish I had been told the real deal about agents. They don't get you work, they may get you more money for work you have already found.

4. I wish I had been told to keep my mouth open. You must be able to talk about your work, to defend it, to plug it.

5. It pays to be multi-skilled.

6. I wish someone had told me that you can't make a living out of writing if you can't spell and have lousy grammar skills.

7. I wish I had been told that there is absolutely no shame in aiming for the lowest common denominator. He felt that few writers seemed to be striving for good old fashioned entertainment. Sex and death are the two golden words in selling a story. If your story is dragging kill someone, preferably the character who readers/watchers will say, "no, you can't kill him".

8. (he got to eight) Just do it. Stop listening to others who doubt your abilities.

Freelance writer/editor and non-fiction writer Rachel Hills was next.

1. Media is about who you know, she accumulated contacts and bylines.

2. Start submitting stories now.

3. You need to work hard. She mentioned that when Hunter S. Thompson was learning to write, he pulled out a copy of The Great Gatsby and typed it up on his typewriter. In doing so, he felt he learnt the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I've been thinking about which author I would choose if I was going to do this, it would have to be someone contemporary, whose style I enjoyed, like Peter Carey or Margaret Atwood. Maybe just a chapter or two of each.

4. Write for publications you enjoy reading, and write what you enjoy writing. This cuts out a few speculative fiction magazines for me.

5. Learn the publications you want to write for.

6. Learn to leverage what you have already done. In other words learn how to use what you have written and have had published to sell what you are now trying to sell.

7. Getting to where you want to be will almost always take longer than you hoped.

Theatre director/writer David Milroy (I hope I've got that right) was next.

1. Writers spend more time thinking than writing. Having a lie down is good for writing.

2. Bananas are good for writing.

3. Surround yourself with people you trust to critique your work.

4. The biggest killer for writing is exposition (that's two of the panellists who mentioned this.)

5. Try and visual what you are writing, without the sets and props.

6. Share what you learn

7. Obsess about your writing.

The final speaker was novelist and writing teacher Kathryn Hayman.

1. You will be rejected, so keep on writing.

2. Take risks, you have to allow yourself to get it wrong. Her students found it hard to take risks. In my masters one of the better and more satisfying pieces I wrote was written in a ficto-criticism style, a style I had argued was full of wankery. I took a chance on it for the final project in one of my subjects.

3. If you're entering writing for the money, become an arm's dealer instead. There are a lot easier ways to make money.

4. There are many different methods of undertaking the writing process.

5. Trust your own voice, people will generally be more receptive to your writing if it is truthful.

6. Rewrite.

7. Be brave.

I will post about the other eight sessions in the coming weeks.

Graham.

My Writing Week 2(22)

Hi all,

I spent the weekend at the Emerging Writer's Festival in Melbourne, going to nine panel discussions of varying quality, some were better than I thought they would be while one was a bit disappointing. I learnt a few things, gained some motivation and got some reassurance.

Overall, I got the impression that the quality of your writing and luck are not the most important elements in becoming published, who you know is much more important, although that did not help one of the speakers, Steve Amsterdam. His mother is a literary agent and he spent ten years working at Random House in the US, but he had to wait until he moved to Australia to get published by a small independent. Interestingly, when he got to Australia he did a Master of Creative writing at Melbourne University, which he did not think much of because it concentrated too much on theory. The one good thing about it was that he and some of the other students have continued workshopping each other's work for the past three years. I was not so fortunate with my masters, all the students fled, except for one, after the course.

There where no panels on speculative fiction, with its only mention being from one panelist using the some what out of date compliant that science fiction writers can't write dialogue and their stories are all plot and no characterisation. Perhaps she should read George Turner, China Melville or Neil Gaiman.

I will write more about the individual sessions over the coming weeks. I took heaps of notes in the dingy Melbourne town hall rooms. I hope I can decipher them.

I am half a page off finishing editing chapter four of Stalking Tigers.

I critiqued a story last week, I think it was a good one, but I have no recollection of what it was about. I can usually recall, what I consider to be, great stories years later, although sometimes I remember a story for not so positive reasons, for example, Howard V. Hendrix's wanky verbosity and over referenced writing in Incandescent Bliss.


Graham.

My writing week 2(21)

Hi all,

The editing of Stalking Tigers is going very slowly, even with more time spent editing last week than in previous weeks. I estimate that I cut over 2,000 words from chapter 4, and then added about 2,400 words. I got to the end and decided I had better go back and re-edit a substantially changed chapter. It still heads in the same direction and gets there much the same way, just with different words. One thing I have been trying to do is tweak the main character's attitude, make him a bit more pro-active, a bit more determined. At the moment I am, again, halfway through chapter four. I hope I need to change less in the coming chapters, but then again, most changes should improve it. At least I hope they do.

I critiqued a time travel story that had a lot of plot faults and a huge tension destroying information dump at the start. I recommended the author read K A Beford's Time Machines Repaired While U Wait.

I had a look at the authonomy site run by Harper Collins where authors put up their completed manuscripts for comments and votes. It seemed more of a site for people to try and get their novels noticed by the editors at Harper Collins than a site for serious critiquing. It also had a major drawback of preventing printing of manuscripts. I find it much easier to read and critique off paper.

I had a look at the blurbs for the science-fiction manuscripts that had been voted most popular and the first one was religion versus science - a theme that is totally overdone. It was done in well in Contact by Carl Sagan and Good News From Outer Space by John Kessel, and I enjoyed the religious themes in Damien Broderick's short story collection, The Dark Between the Stars, I also enjoyed it being sent up in Billy Soolee's The Sexuality Theory of Value, but it bored me silly in the Television series Deep Space Nine. I have so far excluded religion from my writing because in the future I think that as science explains more and more there will less of the unexplained for people to say God must have done it. I also think that as human lives get longer and longer, less people will turn to religion out of fear of death. It will still be around though, just not as a theme in anything I write.

I finished reading an Asimov magazine that I hope to review later in the week.

I have booked and paid for my trip the Emerging Writer's Festival this weekend. I hope that it will give me a few insights into writing and increase my motivation. Just deciding to attend seems to have increased my hours spent editing/writing over the past week.

It seems I may have wasted my time buying a membership to Aussiecon 4, in September next year, because according to scientist Kenneth Thomas, civilisation might start to dramatically collapse on the 15th of January 2010 when the alignment of tectonic plates could trigger the Clathrates Gun Hypothesis. Clathrates are huge frozen deposits of methane trapped in pockets under the ocean. Methane is 70 times worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and evidently there is 3,000 trillion tonnes of these clathrates, enough to raise the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the current 380ppm to 70,000 ppm, a bit past the 450ppm the IPCC recommends we keep it below. If you want to learn more about the end of the world you can hear about it on an Ockham's Razor's broadcast.

I hope I haven't ruined your day.

Graham.

My writing week 2(20)

Hi all,

Another week of very slowly editing Stalking Tigers. I haven't started muttering "I hate editing" yet, but it can't be far away. Not that I really hate it, it just takes so bloody long. I wanted to be rewriting another novel by now. Editing does have its pleasures, such as when I read something that I think is particularly good, and also when I read something that I consider woeful, as I can then feel that my writing is improving. In between those highs and pats on the back there is a lot of re-arranging of sentences and changing of words, especially "I" and "was".

I have begun to cut out chunks of paragraphs where I found myself repeating myself, so at least the novel is not getting any longer at the moment. I am near the end of chapter four and, as I have already edited the last three chapters of the novel, I have now revised about 36,000 or its 133,000 words. Slow progress.

I critiqued another story for critters (I can't remember what I felt about it), and I found a science-fiction story on Infinitas to critique. I need to find out where all the science-fiction writers get their novels critiqued.

Aussiecon4 sent me an email and then a receipt in snail mail, so I am now officially a paid up member of Worldcon when it comes to Australia, and I have plenty of time to create a sparkling persona and perhaps even get published before the convention in Sept 2010. I am still deciding whether to go to the Emerging Writer's Festival in Melbourne that begins this weekend. It goes for about ten days and the second weekend looks like it has a better programme, with panels on pitches and motivation (do I need that!!!) and new ways of getting published. You can find out more about it at www.emergingwritiersfestival.org.au.

Now it is time to give my tired eyes a caffeine hit and spark them and my brain into editing mode.


Graham.


I hate editing.