Washing-machine sea

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Today it was blowing a gale and squally. So, of course, I had to walk down to the sea.
Birders  will know what I mean. 
When the ocean is wild, with the wind blowing onshore, you can get all kinds of interesting things along our coasts. Shearwaters, petrels, even the odd albatross.

 No such luck today, although I did think for a time that I might have a Wandering Albatross, but it turned out just to be an Australasian Gannet. It was behaving like an albatross though, gliding in the troughs of the waves so effortlessly.

 I love the wind, and there is something that stirs the soul when you look out over an ocean like this and think to yourself: the next stop is Africa.

 Watch out on Monday for a big announcement from my publisher. I also had some champagne-popping good news yesterday but I intend to sit on that for a while until it is finalised.

Gilfeather … and a walk to the beach

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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 Years ago — actually, not so very many years –- when I was writing the second book of the Isles of Glory trilogy, Gilfeather, all of the copy editing and proofing was done on paper. Huge piles of paper being sent backwards and forwards between me and the publisher.

Wattles out in bloom

Any sensible writer immediately put the alterations from the two edits into her digital copy of the manuscript. And usually I was that sensible author. But alas, I’ve just discovered that with Gilfeather I was an idiot.

So, when I’ve come to issue Gilfeather as an e-book through FableCroft books, what do I find? A digital copy of Gilfeather that lacks the editing. I don’t think there was any single page of the book that didn’t need alterations. But how to do it? The paper copy of the edits has long since vanished.

Eventually I decided that the easiest way was to get my computer to read aloud to me from the digital copy. While the computer was doing this, I followed the text in the paperback. Every time the two texts  did not match up, I highlighted the section in the paperback. Then after each chapter, I inserted or changed the text in my digital copy accordingly.


 

This has been very tedious, not to mention time-consuming process. The interesting thing has been how much of the book I had forgotten! I kept on finding bits and thinking to myself: “I don’t remember writing this. Hey this is actually quite cool!” Anyway, next month Gilfeather will –- for the first time ever anywhere -– be out in e-book.

The book is set on islands and has a lot to do with beaches, seabirds and stuff like that, so I suppose it’s appropriate that yesterday I took a walk to my nearest beach. In half an hour I can be walking on the fringes of the Indian Ocean. Beautiful, largely deserted stretches of sand in both directions. 

A Border Collie charges up and down with typical collie exuberance
And I think to myself how lucky I am.

Spring in winter

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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 One thing I love about this part of Australia is that winter is not terribly wintery. Flowers bloom, birds nest, and I do without double glazing and any heating whatsoever. Oh, ok, I do sling a hot water bottle into the bed.

Friend Donna and I walk to the beach and then go for coffee & cake
The cormorants decorate the trees along the estuary
Wild flowers bloom
Even the butcherbird looks benign (he’s not)


Pea flowers come in all colours

Sunsets are spectacular and so are the rainbows
Winter storms dump seaweed along the estuary foreshore
The blooms are saturated with perfumes
The bees are out in force

Fungi
Buds…


Oh, the perfume!
The male sheoak tree, covered in its brown flowers

The sheoak was buzzing so loudly as I walked by. The bees were so well camouflaged that they were invisible, so it sounded as the tree were singing…

What’s Luck Got to Do With It?

Posted on by March 14, 2021
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We all know that feeling. You start reading a book, even perhaps a best seller, and after a few pages you think to yourself, ‘How on earth did this ever get into print? I could do better!’

When you’re unpublished, it seems unfair that someone who peppers their prose with exclamation marks and clichés, or poor grammar and clunky sentences, can find a publisher. And when you are published, it seems just as unfair that the author of that same shoddy writing gets millions while you worry about whether you’ll earn out the modest advance you got.

So how come a book like that gets published in the first place? And once published, how come it sells millions? Is it luck?

No, of course not, but it sure helps to be in the right place at the right time for the right person. And the only way you ensure that is by getting your book – the best work you can write – out there to as many people as possible. I am an object lesson when it comes to this.

My first novel was accepted by an agent just after I turned forty-five. It should have been earlier – after all, I was only seven or eight when I decided I was going to be a writer. Well, authoress was the word I used, I believe! So what the hell took me so long? I did write. I even finished books. A number of them. But I never got anywhere with them. Why not?

Because the sheer dogged determination was not there. I was too caught up in all the paraphernalia of everyday life, earning a living, raising kids…you know the story. But in this business you make your own luck by stubborn persistence, and without that drive, my books weren’t out there being seen by enough people. In effect, I wasn’t making my own luck.

Then the kids grew older and my husband took a job in Vienna, Austria. We moved into a smaller house where the housework could be done in one tenth the time and there was no wildlife sharing our living space necessitating constant cleaning (people who live in the tropics will know what I mean!). I had no full-time job so I had time to write; we weren’t earning third world salaries any more and so I had the cash to sent out a manuscript repeatedly. I got serious. I changed my luck.

That poorly written work by the now bestselling author I mentioned above? That may not have appealed to 99% of the publisher and agents who saw it originally – but it hit the right person at the right time, someone for whom the story resonated, or who realised it would resonate with the reading public. Just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean other people won’t like it either.

We have to accept that sometimes good writing doesn’t sell, whereas a good story can sometimes survive poor writing. It’s annoying to those who take care to craft good novels, but hey, this is a business as well as a creative art, and we have to live with it. And the best advice remains: make your own luck.

Be a stubborn son-of-a-bitch as well as a good craftsman.

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Thursday, 16 February 2006 (3 Comments).

What’s the hardest part of a novel to write?

Posted on by March 14, 2021
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The action scenes? The dialogues? The beginning? Climax?

Nope, none of the above. It’s those horrible dull bits. Because you’ve got to write them so they aren’t dull.

It’s the bits that, if you leave them out, readers are going to ask: “But how did he get to town when the last scene was back on the farm?” or “But how did she know that the boy was named Martin, when we haven’t read a scene where she was told?”

They are the necessary bits that explain the grounding of your plot, yet are intrinsically dull in their explanation. You don’t really want to have to explain, “Well, first he walked to the main road, then he hitched a ride with the farmer down the road who just happened to be going into town to buy some chicken feed even though it wasn’t market day.” Or, “She went to the dressmaker’s, and while she was there, this woman called Annie came in, and she happened to mention in a passing conversation with the dressmaker that John’s son was her gardener and his name was Martin.”

Leave out the explanation, and you’ll get creamed by your readers; put it in and you’ll bore them the tears. They are the hardest bits to write!

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Friday, 24 February 2006 (5 Comments).

Advice to writers: your first novel

Posted on by March 14, 2021
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Chuck it.

That’s right – throw it away. The odds are ten to one (or worse) that it will ever be published. And yes, I do know that advice is going to hurt…

I admire anyone who actually finishes a book. It’s not a simple undertaking – it requires perseverance and sacrifice. It’s time you could have spent with your family, or watching TV, or reading, or something else just as attractive. You had the required strength of character, and you finished. And now you want the world to know the result and love it the way you do.

Sometimes it even happens. I personally do know people who did have their very first book published and it has turned out to be very successful too, the start of a prosperous career. However, it is a rare occurrence, believe me. When you press most successful authors for the truth, you will find that most of them threw the first effort away, or never showed it to anyone, or never finished it.

The truth is that no tennis player gets to Wimbleton centre court first time out; no golfer wins the Masters first time around. What you don’t see is the years and years of practice that gets them to that point. Remember those hours and hours of piano practice you did as a kid? Or the band practice in the garage, or the guitar practice in your bedroom with the door shut? Your first book is that practice. And possibly so is your second, third and fourth.

Some of you are now muttering, “No one is that stupid. Write four or five books and never get any published? They should have given up! And if they did do that and weren’t published, they are obviously crap writers and idiots to boot…”

Hey, wait a moment. That’s me you’re talking about. I may be an idiot, but I’m not a crap writer. And I have been published – in five countries and three languages. I now have seven books published or on their way to publication. I’ve been shortlisted for awards. Yet my path to success is littered with unpublished manuscripts – and I’ve lost count of how many.

I finished my first novel when I was twelve, my second and third when I was in my twenties, and so on. Some I never showed anyone at all. Others were read by friends. Most I sent off just the once or twice and then gave up when they were rejected – not knowing how precious the words of encouragement I received were. (I truly was an innocent abroad…)

My advice is: don’t put all your hopes in your first effort. In fact, think very carefully about marketing it at all. Writing is a lifetime career, and you have to learn your craft first. When you have finished your first book, start immediately on the second. You can always come back to that first one again later, and either mine it for ideas, or rewrite it with a new outlook in a few years time.

Daunting? Yes. The question is this: just how much do you want to be a published writer? Are you in it for the long haul? If you know you will write no matter what, then an unpublished MS, or two, or three, is nothing. They were fun to write, after all, weren’t they?

Remember Ursula LeGuin? Asked what she would have been if she hadn’t been a writer, she replied: “Dead.” Well, that’s me, too. And most other writers worth their salt. This is not just a job we do for money, it’s a drive we have to create. It’s the journey that counts. Remember van Gogh? The only paintings he ever sold in his lifetime were to his brother. It didn’t stop him from painting.

So my advice is : Write. Keep on writing. Learn your craft, and one day you’ll probably get there. But don’t, don’t, get too hung up on the fate of your first book. After all, you were just practising…

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Friday, 3 March 2006 (7 Comments).

On Being a Writer: Making the Dream Come True – Step One

Posted on by March 14, 2021
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I watched – with appalled fascination – some of the early trials for American Idol. It was eye-opening to see so many thousands of young people with impossible dreams: all wanted to be stars. There were so many of them that, if all succeeded, there would be no one left to listen. No audience for tens of thousands of singers…

And some of them were beyond terrible, yet didn’t seem to know it. Some were devastated when they were weeded out, as if life was now over. It was both pathetic and frightening. Rather like reading about the poll they did of British school kids some time back, asking them what they wanted to be. By far the most common answer was “pop star” or similar; even, with delicious vagueness, “celebrity”.

That was the sum total of their ambition? Do they have any idea of what they are asking for? Any idea that it’s not the fame that’s important, but the love of music? Any idea of the hard work it normally takes to be that successful? Maybe that’s one of the attractions of American Idol or similar shows – it seems like such a shortcut. Add water and stir: instant fame, without the hard stuff. Unhappily, there are also a lot of writers out there with unrealistic expectations too. Who want the fame without the work.

So, if you want to be a writer, should you hold on to that dream? Because here’s the first unpleasant truth: not all of you out there dreaming are going to make it. Not even those of you who work damn hard. Not even those of you who have talent. Not even one in five thousand of you.

There’s nothing wrong with dreaming. But there is something else that is even more important, and you should never forget it: it doesn’t matter if the dream doesn’t come true. Why not? Because you are loving the journey. Because what really matters is the love of writing. If you don’t have that, then you shouldn’t be doing this. You’ll be like one of those young singers, dreaming not of the song, but of the celebrity.

So how can you make the dream come true?

Here’s step one and it’s the simplest one of all, and the most fun, and yet it is also the most important:

Buy New Books. Read. Teach your kids to read. Read to them at bedtime every night. Buy books for your grandkids. Give books as gifts to your friends and family. Ask for books as presents for yourself. Raise generations of readers.

Huh?
Yeah, that’s right. Publishers are in a business. If they don’t make lots of money, they won’t sign up lots of new authors – of which you might be one. So that’s the first step you can take down the road to being an author.

Told you it was simple.

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Monday, 20 March 2006 (9 Comments).

The Perfect Chapter

Posted on by March 14, 2021
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I have just read the perfect chapter, and that made me fall to thinking about what a perfect chapter should have. And here are my ideas:

1. It should advance the plot.
2. As a corollary to point 1, a perfect chapter should also contain something new to the story, something that makes the reader go: Oh, wow. In sff, it should stir that sensawunda.
3. It should advance the development of at least one of the characters. The reader should find out something new about him/her/them.
4. It should contain a mix of dialogue and action and description. (I realise not all chapters can do this – but I am talking about the perfect one, right?)
5. The tension in the dialogue should keep the reader on edge.
6. The action should make the reader read breathlessly, racing to find out what is going to happen.
7. The description should give the reader a picture of the surroundings that they can smell and taste and hear and see – and do all that without boring them.
8. The imagery should make another writer wonder why the hell they didn’t think of that first.
9. No passage in the perfect chapter should tempt the reader to skip a word.
10. The whole package should leave the reader panting for more.

And the perfect chapter I just read? It was in Russell Kirkpatick’s new novel Book 1: “The Path of Revenge” in a new trilogy (not yet published – but what a treat in store). Watch for this book when it hits the shelves. Russell’s name is one you are going to hear a lot of in the future; his first trilogy was just an appetiser – he really gets into his stride with this one.

I’m about to go and commit harikiri because I am not sure I will ever be able to write something as good as this.

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Wednesday, 19 April 2006 (6 Comments).

Words of Writerly Wisdom or the Discouragement of Dastardly Doomsayers

Posted on by March 14, 2021
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There was an interesting discussion recently (10th April) in the Purple Zone (nickname for the Australian Voyageronline Message Board), on whether published authors were mean – or wise – to tell unpublished writers horror tales about how hard it is to get published.

One writer said, and I have compressed his commentary: Sometimes I wonder at the impartiality of writers advising others not to try competing with them. The cumulative effect of all these well-meaning pieces is to discourage writers. Think of the stories we’re losing because we as an industry pride ourselves on the mass of broken bodies outside the front door!

He has no problem with the majority of the advice offered by writers, but is not convinced that the constant flow of discouraging comments to new writers is becoming to us as writers, or to the industry in general. Sick of all the negativity, his advice is: If you’re planning to write a novel, go right ahead! Be aware that the path to publishing is a difficult one, but by all means have a crack!

Another writer said in reply (also compressed): The easily discouraged and defeated may give up, but those who are determined to break through, come hell or high water, are more likely to take on board the info they need with a “forewarned is forearmed” approach.

She thinks the negative approach is really designed to stop people making stupid mistakes and to educate them about the realities of a very tough process. She feels that, for the most part, the writers who do talk publishing turkey are trying to help, not hinder. She says, I guess the nub of the question is: are they discouraging, or are they being honest about a difficult and unpalatable truth? Getting published is like wanting to be an actor, or a dancer, or a singer. The cold reality is that many many many more people want to achieve the goal than will achieve it. Do I think anyone at all should be told give up, don’t bother? No. I do think that those who wish to pursue the goal should do so with their eyes open, fully cognisant of the pitfalls, the drawbacks and the basic tools necessary for the journey. And if other writers don’t make them public, how else are people going to best help themselves?

It was an interesting discussion, quite a bit longer, with other participants, than what I have summarised here.

I must admit that – having had an enormously long and difficult road to publication in spite of having an excellent agent – I am more of the school that thinks unpublished writers need to be told. They need to be realistic.

To be skilled in anything at all usually takes practice. Usually YEARS of practice. It takes experience. Usually YEARS of experience. It usually involves good advice/teachers/role models/mentors/or similar. You rarely win a game of any kind the first time you try. The unpalatable truth is that most who begin, never win. In the Olympic 100m sprint, there is only one gold medal, one silver, one bronze. Think of how many start along that road and never end up on the winning podium.

I would like to think that my kind of “negativity” is designed to make the best writers more determined never to give up – and to be prepared to do the hard work getting published usually entails. I’d like to think that my story is more inspirational than off-putting.

And, as I have said before, if you enjoy the journey, then your time will never be wasted, no matter what happens at the finish line – because how can a feeling of joy or achievement or satisfaction or pleasure in creativity ever be considered a waste?

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Thursday, 20 April 2006 (6 Comments).