The write stuff

Most aspiring novelists are advised to write about what they know. Which isn’t all that helpful when your protagonist is spread-eagled on an inter-stellar operating table about to be dissected by a laser-driven hive mind.

So in the interests of being helpful, let me offer this small piece of advice.

Write about what you love.

This is not based on sentiment. The only thing that keeps most of us going in the knock-down, drawn-out, occasionally exhilirating, often frustrating, seemingly endless roller-coaster ride that is novel writing is a passion for what we do. Without it, this torturous exercise in delayed gratification would defeat us.

Whether it’s sci fi, literary, high fantasy, blockbuster, childrens’ or bodice-ripper, it’s got to be what you love reading and writing.  Novel writing is an ultra-marathon. You are in it for the long haul and if you don’t love it, you just ain’t going to make the distance.

You have to love the training, the thousands of hours spent reading till your eyes bleed, the daily ritual of writing, something, anything, even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it.

Those who wait for inspiration are waiting for Godot.  Inspiration comes after you start writing. Trust me, there is no writing problem that cannot be solved by writing your way through it.

Writing about what you love isn’t confined to genre. The characters must speak to you. How else could you bear to spend months, if not years, in their company? They must have hidden depths that fascinate, intrigue, madden and delight. You have to feel their pain, laugh with them, cry for them, even want to slap them, or worse. But you have to feel them moving and talking inside you.

If your characters are not real to you, they won’t be real to your readers.  If your story doesn’t keep you up at nights, it won’t keep anyone else up either.

It takes courage to commit to what you love.  So, if you think you can give up writing, then maybe you should, because clearly you don’t love it enough.

“The chief commodity a writer has to sell is his courage. And if he has none, he is more than a coward. He is a sellout and a fink and a heretic, because writing is a holy chore.” Harlan Ellison

It’s only words …

When I took my first baby steps as a writer of fiction, it was the good folk at the Qld Writers Centre who held my hand and picked me up when I stumbled and fell.

They encouraged me to walk unassisted, and then to run. They clapped when I did cartwheels over my first book contract, and my second.

So what do you say to an organisation that has been with you every step of your writing journey?

You say, thanks. Publicly. You urge anyone with an interest in writing to do themselves a favour and join the QWC. And when that organisation asks if you’d like to be part of their blog tour, you say Hell, yeah.

QWC: Where do your words come from?

I’m tempted to say out of my fingertips, because no matter how much I plan my writing, what sprouts from the ends of my fingers when I settle at the keyboard always manages to surprise me.

For me, writing is a numinous blend of art (evoking the subconscious) and craft (using conscious intent derived from a lifetime in skills training).  As a kid, I would have read brown paper if there was nothing else to read. I could have read for Australia if they ever made it an Olympic sport.  I wrote for a living for twenty years before I turned to writing fiction.

For me, American poet Hart Crane nails it: “One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.”

QWC: Where did you grow up and where do you live now?

I grew up on an farm outside a railway siding called Jambin, just up the road from Biloela, Central Queensland. I left there to go to Uni and have lived in Brisbane pretty much ever since.

But that’s just geography. I really grew up in a marriage that brought with it two pre-schoolers as part of an excellent package deal. Seven years later, I still had two preschoolers underfoot – my life was ground hog day – and it taught me everything I needed to know to start writing fiction.

QWC: What’s the first sentence/line of your latest work?

I’ve just finished writing a children’s novel about a kid called Henry Hoey Hobson who is the only boy in Year Seven.  It starts like this:

‘She was waiting with a gaggle of mates, blocking the steps leading back down from our classroom. Golden in the sunlight, with that curious blend of stealth and grace that marked out the queens of the jungle. I lumbered towards the all-female pride, a wildebeest, hellbent on his own destruction.‘

QWC: What piece of writing do you wish you had written?

I actually said ‘I wish I’d written that’ when I read Karen Foxlee’s The Anatomy of Wings. A wonderful novel, beautifully written, that resonated with my own experience of growing up on the fringes of a mining town.

But the one passage that gives me goose bumps every time I read it is Shakespeare’s St Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V. It is everything I aspire to in my writing.

QWC: What are you currently working towards?

My dream is to publish a novel a year, and so far, with exactly one published novel under my belt (Dust 2009), I am right on target.

However I am keeping the dream alive with Henry Hoey Hobson due out in July 2010, and a work-in-progress, The Lonely Dead (an adult crime novel), my big hope for 2011 .

QWC: Complete this sentence: The future of the book is…

…in good stories, well told. The packaging is not my central concern. E-books will have their way with the willing. There will always be people, like me, who are seduced by the crack of a virgin spine, the scent wafting up from the riffle of pages, the shiver of anticipation on reading the dedication and turning to Chapter 1…

This post is part of the Queensland Writers Centre blog tour, happening October to December 2009. To follow the tour, visit Queensland Writers Centre’s blog The Empty Page.

Hyperlink: http://www.qwc.asn.au/Resources/TheEmptyPageBlog.aspx

False starts

I am not going to bang on about this, but it needs to be said.

Do not start your story in the wrong place.

Do not start with background, preamble, and densely-packed description.

Do not do as I did, and tell your publisher (who quite likes your opening chapter) that ‘It gets really good in Chapter Two’ (because eventually one of you will realise that perhaps that’s where your story should have started).

Do not ever type the words The End until you have perfected the beginning.

So please, go back and focus on that first sentence, that irresistable invitation to the reader, that threshold that people must cross to enter your world.  Then write the words that will draw them in like a breath, swallow them whole and make them yours for the duration.

Remember this: readers may forgive a bad ending, but no-one forgives a bad beginning.

That is all.

Pinning back those ears

As a newbie in the world of publishing, I enjoy hanging on the words of the wise, and spending time with older hands who are happy to roll back their sleeves and show me their scars.

I have learned much at the knee of Veny Armanno (QWC’s Year of the Novel), Kim Wilkins (Year of the Edit) and Nick Earls, whose generosity in inducting Brisbane’s debut authors into the world of publishing was stretched to capacity this year.

My education continues, online, following writer’s websites (a few of my  favourites are on the lower right of the screen), and in real life, at festivals, writer’s get-togethers, and through reading till my eyes bleed.

But almost everything I have learned as a writer, I have learned by writing and putting it out there.

I now have a discerning first reader who is capable of pinpointing what hasn’t made it onto the page (but needs to be there), and what clunks in the otherwise smooth action of my story.

Feedback may not be the hallelujah chorus of my dreams, but neither is it a direct thrust to the heart. It is certainly an opportunity to see my work through trusted, more objective, eyes.

When I scanned the initial response to my latest work, I had to admire my first reader’s ability to season praise with constructive criticism. She hit on a couple of niggling issues that I had pushed away during the writing process (things I probably hoped to get away with and didn’t.)

It reminded me of James Roy on the adverse comment in an otherwise favourable review: ‘That’s like saying you’ve got a beautiful baby, but it’s got big ears. Big deal. You’ve still got a beautiful baby.’

I’ll hang on to that thought while I’m doing my revisions.

I’ve got a beautiful baby … (but that’s not going to stop me pinning back those ears.)

Deadlines – making an honest woman of me

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams

I love deadlines too.  Knowing what I must do, and by when, focuses and calms me. Meeting the deadline becomes a point of honour.

I become more productive. I tell my kids, friends and family how many words I have to write – each day, each week, each month. I commit. Publicly.

A deadline keeps me honest. Without one, writing can too easily be squeezed out by work and personal commitments. A big intimidating deadline muscles writing to the head of the queue and keeps competing pressures at bay for long enough to get the work out.

Nearly seven months ago, a story idea sank its teeth into me and wouldn’t let go.

I wrote about it in One-dog Woman back in March, saying “I’ll be keeping the door closed on this one for a while…The new work-in-progress. One for the kids.”

Two months later I had written about twelve thousand words of Henry Hoey Hobson. No deadline pressure, so I shelved it for a couple of months while I launched and promoted my first novel, Dust.

I came back to the manuscript in August when I sold the story to my publisher on the basis of the first four chapters and a synopsis.

She wanted to publish Henry Hoey Hobson in August 2010; could I deliver the complete manuscript by 5 October?

Hell, yeah. In just over eight weeks, I wrote another forty thousand words, edited the manuscript and met my deadline.

Would I have finished Henry Hoey Hobson on the last day of the September school holidays without the pressure of a deadline?

Hell, no. I would have read that pile of books next to my bed at the beach.

But that’s OK, because I’m going to read them now. Soon as I get this publishing contract out of the way.

Twenty things you don’t need to know about me

1. I rolled two cars before I got my licence. The first was a mini-moke that teetered on its side before falling back onto its wheels. I was 12 years old. The second was a Toyota HiLux. I was 16 and driving with my furniture to Brisbane to start university. Both times I drove away unscathed.

2. I have six brothers who I have always loved fiercely and will until the day that I die.

3. I discovered motherhood is guilt, the day I gave birth to my first child. I couldn’t rest until I’d phoned my mother and apologised for my appalling behaviour as a teenager.

4. I am not religious at all, but every day I thank God for my gorgeous husband, kids, family and friends (and I will always be grateful to my stepchildren’s mother for her generosity in sharing her wonderful children with me).

5. My step-daughter once accused me of marrying her father just to get her. Given how I feel about her that is a reasonable presumption. However, while I am devious, I am not that devious.

6. I’m a big believer in kissing people you love every day. However, given that we expect our families to put up with behaviour that we’d never dream of inflicting on others, I reserve that belief for the inner sanctum.

7. My son is the only person I know who rubs my tummy when he puts his arm around me. He’s nine. I like it.

6.I smoked from the age of twelve until I was thirty. I actively hated it for the ten years it took me to give up, and when I finally did, I never felt the slightest urge to light up ever again. Yet sometimes I still feel the dirty heat of it as I suck it down deep into my lungs and I get so damn angry at myself that it takes minutes sometimes to wake up and realise it was only a dream.

7. I rode a motorbike, a Suzuki 250, for my first few years in Brisbane. I came off in the rain in front of Toowong Village, swapped it for a bomby Cortina and tried to convince myself it was worth it to say goodbye to helmet hair forever.

8. I can take most things in life on the chin, but kindness does me in. Every time.

9. I like to let people in when driving. There’s something about a smile from a stranger that puts air in my tyres.

10. I like animals to have daggy names. My cat is called Allan Hallam. My dog is called Huggy.  My brother’s cat is called Shirley and his dog, Trevor. He wins.

11. The first night I spent away from my daughter was the night I had my son.

12. I find my husband’s hairyness and male-pattern baldness reassuringly masculine. But I don’t want our kids to go bald. Not even the boys.

13. Facebook can make me more anxious than face-to-face communication – which makes me definitely old school.

14. I feel my father’s presence more deeply since he died.

15. When I was 20 I knocked back a job as media manager for the Department of Social Security in Queensland. My old boss was furious: “You, young lady, will never amount to anything.” Four years later he rang me at the ABC where I was working as a television reporter and stand-in newsreader. “I was right,” he said. “You never did amount to anything.” I hope he’s still alive and hears my latest news.

16. When I was 14 my father cursed me: “I hope you have a daughter and I hope she’s just like you.” I have. She’s 12 and all that a parent could wish for. She’s going to go off. I just know it.

17. My husband is grounded in the surf and has a repertoire of water-based activities for every possible swell/wind condition. He swims, he surfs, he wind-surfs, he stand-up-paddles. I am scared of any degree of swell that precludes a stately breast-stroke in a flowered bathing cap.

18. I have performed a perfect hand-stand only once in my life. On a crowded beach at Mooloolabah in front of thousands of witnesses. Unfortunately I was drowning at the time.

19. I need to listen to music more often but can’t write with lyrics playing in the background.

20. I love silence. With chocolate. Or coffee. Or even on its own.

Crime Pays @ BWF

‘She’s nervous,’ whispered the former army interrogator into my ear. ‘Look at her body language:  scanning the room; seeking the reassurance of eye contact with people she knows; the nervous chatter… I guarantee that afterwards she won’t remember a single thing she has said.’

Talk about getting my money’s worth out of the Crime Pays session at the  Brisbane Writers Festival.

Like everyone else in the State Library auditorium, I was there for crime writing tips from international best-sellers Lisa Unger and Gregg Hurwitz. But I also had the added bonus of Brisbane-based thriller writer JJ Cooper in my right ear.

JJ spent seven  of his seventeen years with the Australian Army working in the Intelligence Corps, and has just released his first novel, aptly titled THE INTERROGATOR. It’s fiction, of course. It had to be, what with the Official Secrets Act and all… I’d like to say more, but if I do, I’ll have to kill you.

It would have been clever programming to have JJ up on the stage with Lisa Unger and Gregg Hurwitz. After all, Lisa did blurb JJ’s debut novel and even made a point of introducing him to the audience during Q&A.

I would have loved to have seen the panel Chair, Inga Simpson, short-listed for this year’s Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Emerging Author, bounce questions off a local thriller writer as well as the visiting big-guns.

Interrogating the Interrogator – now wouldn’t that have been something?

Ten Things I Love About You

1. Honesty – The look on your face at the altar when I asked if you’d washed your hair.  ‘But it’s clean,’ you protested. ‘I just got out of the pool.’

2. Romance – Telling your mates that the secret for a good sex life is to cook and wash up afterwards.

3. Persistence – Fifteen years of trying to keep the kids out of our bedroom by yelling out ‘We’re naked!’ is finally starting to work. Big-time.

4. Thoughtfulness – Checking from the other end of the supermarket aisle whether I need any feminine hygiene products.

5. Consideration – Tucking me in and telling me to go back to sleep when you have to leave early.

6. Gilding the lily – For talking about me when I’m not there so that all  your workmates think that I’m really nice.

7. Realism – For being the designated driver 99 times out a hundred.

8. Non-materialism – For not wanting anything for Father’s Day except your family around (and that new wind-surfing harness that you had to buy for yourself).

9. Sense of humour – for being the sort of bloke who laughs at farts (my sort of bloke); and for laughing when the dog ate your new thongs on Father’s Day.

10. For thinking that you’re lucky to have us, when we all think we’re lucky to have you.

Happy Father’s Day xx

Weaving the strands of a tale

I come from a long line of braiders, the need to gather together glistening strands, travelling via DNA and fingertips, down through the generations.

Great-grandmothers of sturdy Dutch, stolid German and delicate Danish stock, stare down from our hallway walls, variations on a theme.  Thick plaits crown the head of a Heidi grown old. Hair, swept away from the Hepburn-like cheekbones of another, disappears into what can only be a loose plait, twisted and coiled into a bun at the back.

My own mother used to plait my hair so tightly that my eyebrows would migrate to higher ground.  The exquisite torture of her fingers pulling each strand of hair taut, is as fresh in my memory as the squeals from my own daughter when my fingers followed the same path.

When I married, I plaited my step-daughter’s white-blonde hair before bed, just for the thrill of seeing those ruler-straight locks puff out into a dandelion cloud the next day.

She grew up with nimbler fingers and a fashion sensibility more up-to-date than my own and took over braiding her little sister’s hair into styles I had never thought to entertain.

Stressful times still find them together, fishboned on the couch, the fingers of one hooked into the hair of the other, finding comfort in the weaving, the touching, the connection.

I leave them to it, my fingers busy elsewhere. Pulling together the strands of my latest  tale, working out which bits to work in and when, which bits to leave hanging. Trying to weave it tight enough to hold together, loose enough to retain a softness that flatters and frames.

Sometimes my fingers stumble, clutching at the wrong strand, pulling the wrong way, creating a snarl in an otherwise smooth section. I move on, concentrating on structure and form, knowing that  I will come back later, to look at it from all angles, and redo the bits that didn’t quite work.

It’s the final moments that I love best, teasing out the tiny graceful strand that must be left hanging.

A glistening tendril that I leave as a gift. To entice. To hold on to. To carry with you, clasped in a locket close to your heart.

Bringing books to the communities

It’s a good day when you learn something new. Tonight at Riverbend Books in Brisbane, I learned what the good people in Australia’s book industry are doing to address the crisis in indigenous literacy.

Through the Indigenous Literacy Project,  they are raising money to put books in the hands of Aboriginal children in 140 communities around Australia.

If you would like to help, put this date in your calendar, Wednesday 2 September, Indigenous Literacy Day.  Then click on this link Indigenous Literacy Project : How Individuals Can Get Involved. You’ll see how easy it is to help books change people’s lives.