WRITERS BLOG

Penguin Books opportunity

2012-01-23T22:28:00.000-11:00

The Monthly Catch

The General Publishing team at Penguin Group (Australia) is keen and excited to read new work from Australian authors, and as such we’ve developed the Monthly Catch. For the first week of every month, we throw our doors open to unsolicited manuscripts. In this time period (the 1^st to the 7^th of every month), please send through submissions based on the guidelines below.

We are only accepting submissions electronically – all hardcopy submissions will be recycled. And we are only accepting submissions in the first week of every month; anything that comes through outside of this time will not be considered.

When you send through your submission, you’ll receive an automatic email acknowledging receipt. All manuscripts are carefully read and assessed, but we can only respond to those who are successful. If we do not contact you within three months of submission, please assume that we have decided not to pursue your manuscript. No further correspondence will be entered into.

We are not currently considering poetry, educational textbooks or plays/scripts. For books for children and young adults, please see the separate submissions instructions below.

Attach your manuscript and a short synopsis (of no more than 300 words) as separate Word documents and send via email tomonthly.catch@au.penguingroup.com.

In the subject line of your email, please state the title of your book, whether your book is fiction or non-fiction, and then genre (eg Heiress in Love: Fiction/Romance or The Address Book: Non-Fiction/Memoir).

Please include in the body of your email the following information:

Title.
Brief summary (two or three sentences).
Brief author bio (two or three sentences).

Any previous publishing history and/or any writing awards you’ve received.
Where would your book sit in the marketplace – i.e. what books would you see as comparison titles to yours, what authors are similar to you, who is the intended audience for your book, etc.
Has this proposal been sent to other publishers?
Have you previously submitted this, or a similar, proposal to Penguin? If so, please give details.

Writing advice from Jennifer Egan (winner 2011 Pulitzer prize for fiction)

2011-10-16T16:45:00.003-11:00

Inspiration:
I don’t really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That’s what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.

Process:
-Start with a time and a place
-Be excited/surprised by the process
-Avoid going backward instead of forward (so simple, and yet, so unyieldingly difficult).
-Start with as little as possible
Fiction-writing I only do by hand. Only.

Output:
I usually try to write five to seven original pages a day.

First drafts:
A first draft takes about 10% of the total writing time, but in terms of importance it’s probably 50%.

Outlining:
I don’t outline initially. I outline everything in revision. Some of my revision outlines are 50 pages long.

Revision:
Usually my books go through three or four big drafts, with each big draft reflecting 20 rewrites of each individual part. When I get to a full new draft, it means I’ve made enough changes to all the parts that I’m willing to look at it as a whole.

Writer’s Block:
I haven’t had trouble with writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn’t have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writer’s block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen.

Advice for young writers:
My advice is so basic. Number one: Read. I feel like it’s amazing how many people I know who want to be writers who don’t really read. I’m not convinced someone wants to be a writer if they don’t read. I don’t think the problem is that they need to read more; I think they might need to readjust their life goals. Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work. To be reading good things. I feel that you should be reading what you want to write. Nothing less.

The second thing is, I feel like getting in the habit of it is huge. I guess that was my one accomplishment of those two years [with the first failed novel]— making it a routine is a gigantic part of it.

One corollary of that—and this is probably the most important thing for me— is being willing to write really badly. It won’t hurt you to do that. I think there is this fear of writing badly, something primal about it, like: “This bad stuff is coming out of me…” Forget it! Let it float away and the good stuff follows. For me, the bad beginning is just something to build on. It’s no big deal. You have to give yourself permission to do that because you can’t expect to write regularly and always write well. That’s when people get into the habit of waiting for the good moments, and that is where I think writer’s block comes from. Like: It’s not happening. Well, maybe good writing isn’t happening, but let some bad writing happen. Let it happen!

I mean, when I was writing The Keep, my writing was so terrible. It was God-awful. My working title for that first draft was, A Short Bad Novel. I thought: “How can I disappoint?”

So, just write and be happy that you did it. You stuck to the routine. You’re kind of holding the place so that you’re present for when something good is ready to come.

And then it’s all about rewriting. Re-visiting, re-visiting and re-writing. I think it’s a mistake to be too precious about one’s words. I feel the same way about the criticism. You’re not going to break! It’s pretty tough to stick it out, to do this. So, get used to it! People are going to not like it. Okay! You’ll live. So, it’s bad. Okay. You’ll live! They said ‘no.’ You know what? Everyone gets said ‘no’ to a thousand times. If that is really something that you can’t tolerate, this may not work.

Read the complete interviews:

Egan on Goon Squad, LA Times brouhaha, and her next novel—Entertainment Weekly
How Do you Write a Great Work of Fiction?—The Wall Street Journal
Jennifer Egan Wins Award; Gives Me Advice—The Rumpus
Jennifer Egan—Days of Yore

Inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award

2011-09-02T12:28:00.001-11:00

Inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award

$10,000 + $2,000 for a mentor of your choice

The Award, to aid in the development of the next stage of an unpublished manuscript, is for a work of adult literary or genre fiction. It will be granted to the work that shows the greatest promise and likely to benefit most from this opportunity.

The winner will receive a cash prize of $10,000 and, in consultation with organisers, will be offered a suitable mentor selected from some of Australia’s best authors.

The Judges

Valerie Parv, international best-selling author, is a successful writer of romance and non-fiction. Valerie’s books have sold more than twenty-six million copies internationally, and been translated into over twenty languages from Russian to Japanese and Icelandic.

Mark Macleod is a Senior Lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University and well known as a Television and Radio Presenter. Mark was Project Manager of ‘My Favourite Book’ for ABCTV. He published books for young readers and for adults under his own name imprint at Hodder Headline.

Peter Bishop is one of Australia’s most effective writing teachers and mentors. Working with Australia’s leading authors he has enjoyed outstanding success as the Creative Director of Varuna -The Writers’ House in the Blue Mountains - from 1994 to 2010.

Applications close: Thursday 13 October 2011

Entry form: http://writingaustralia.org.au/

Isaac Bashevis Singer - on writing

2011-07-29T23:37:00.003-11:00

One of my brother's rules was that while facts never become obsolete or stale, commentaries always do. When a writer tries to explain too much, to psychologize, he's already out of time when he begins. Imagine Homer explaining the deeds of his heroes according to the old Greek philosophy, or the psychology of his time. Why, nobody would read Homer! Fortunately, Homer just gave us the images and the facts, and because of this the Iliad and the Odyssey are fresh in our time. And I think this is true about all writing. Once a writer tries to explain what the hero's motives are from a psychological point of view, he has already lost. This doesn't mean that I am against the psychological novel. There are some masters who have done it well. But I don't think it is a good thing for a writer, especially a young writer, to imitate them. Dostoyevsky, for example. If you can call him a writer of the psychological school; I'm not sure I do. He had his digressions and he tried to explain things in his own way, but even with him his basic power is in giving the facts.

Singer was a writer I wanted to read the minute I learned of his story 'The friend of Kafka'. Here is being interviewed in NY, in 1968.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4242/the-art-of-fiction-no-42-isaac-bashevis-singer

The semicolon

2011-05-10T11:11:00.002-11:00

From Chapter 3: The Semicolon (The Bridge) -A dash of style by Noah Lukeman

“When a writer is taking pains to write for his reader rather than to impress him,
semicolons can seem like the grammarian’s happiest invention.”
—John Trimble, Writing With Style

Between the comma and the period you’ll find the semicolon. Pausing more strongly than the comma, yet dividing more weakly than the period, it is a mediator. The semicolon does not have as many functions as the comma, yet it has more than the period. As Eric Partridge says in You Have a Point There, “By its very form (;) [the semicolon] betrays its dual nature: it is both period and comma.” As such, it is best thought of as a bridge between two worlds.
The primary function of the semicolon is to connect two complete (thematically similar) sentences, thereby making them one. But when and how to do that is open to interpretation. The semicolon has been overused (Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse) and questionably used (Herman Melville’s Moby Dick) throughout its existence , and has been the subject of endless debate. Compounding the debate is the fact that, grammatically, the semicolon is never necessary; two short sentences can always coexist without being connected. Artistically, though, the semicolon opens a world of possibilities, and can lend a huge impact. In this sense, it is the punctuation mark best suited for creative writers.
The semicolon is a powerful tool in the writer’s arsenal. It is probably the most elegant of all forms of punctuation (it has been dubbed “a compliment from the writer to the reader”), and can offer an excellent solution to balancing sentence length and rhythm. Yet, ironically, it is often overlooked and underused by writers today. So in this chapter we’ll focus on how—and why—to use it. We’ll learn what we gain from its presence, and what we lose when we don’t invite it into the symphony of punctuation.

... to read more - http://www.lukeman.com/adashofstyle/read.htm

George Orwell: 6 Questions/6 Rules

2011-04-18T12:43:00.004-11:00

Time for another list or two I think - these are from the great stylist and thinker himself and are on his writing habits, or perhaps self-editing habits might be more accurate:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect
5. Could I have written it more shortly?
6. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

* From Orwell's essay“Politics and the English Language”

ITS or IT'S - here's (or here is) the gen:

2011-03-04T12:51:00.003-11:00

ITS (OR IT'S?): PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1 - by Patricia T. O'Conner

(http://www.writingclasses.com/Products/PubsDetail.php/publicationID/80)

What a difference an apostrophe makes. Every possessive has one, right? Well, not necessarily so. It (like he and she) is a pronoun—a stand-in for a noun—and pronouns don’t have apostrophes when they’re possessives: His coat is too loud because of its color, but hers is too mousy.
Now, as for it’s (the one with the punctuation), the apostrophe stands for something that has been removed. It’s is short for it is, and the apostrophe replaces the missing i in is. The parakeet is screeching because it’s time to feed him.
Here’s how to keep its and it’s straight:

If the word you want could be replaced by it is, use it’s. If not, use its. (There’s more on its and it’s in the chapter on pronouns.)

NOTE: Sometimes it’s is short for it has, as in: It’s been hours since he ate.

*****

This is so simple to understand but apparently so difficult to apply. I think I hate a wrongly used it's even more than their for there.

You've been verbed

2011-01-20T11:15:00.003-11:00

I did love this article on 'verbing' and the elasticity of the English language :

Friending, trending, even evidencing and statementing... plenty of nouns are turning into verbs. Anthony Gardner works out what’s going on ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Winter 2010

Mothers and fathers used to bring up children: now they parent. Critics used to review plays: now they critique them. Athletes podium, executives flipchart, and almost everybody Googles. Watch out—you’ve been verbed.

The English language is in a constant state of flux. New words are formed and old ones fall into disuse. But no trend has been more obtrusive in recent years than the changing of nouns into verbs. “Trend” itself (now used as a verb meaning “change or develop in a general direction”, as in “unemployment has been trending upwards”) is further evidence of—sorry, evidences—this phenomenon.

It is found in all areas of life, though some are more productive than others. Financiers are never lacking in ingenuity: Investec recently forecast that “Better-balanced autumn ranges should allow Marks & Spencer to anniversary tougher comparisons”—whatever that may mean. Politics has come up with “to handbag” (a tribute to Lady Thatcher) and “to doughnut”—that is, to sit in a ring around a colleague making a parliamentary announcement, so that it is not clear to television viewers that the chamber is practically deserted.

To read the rest of this article click this link -

http://moreintelligentlife.com/node/3280

McGregor Writing course - USQ Toowoomba 2011

2011-01-16T13:55:00.005-11:00

The course this year was run by Sue Gough, a highly regarded novelist and journalist who also has an obvious passion for teaching. I thought she was excellent, with an intuitive approach to teaching that suited me really well. I came away from her classes with a fired up sense of what was imaginatively possible and new tools to achieve what I aimed at achieving. If I had to summarise her approach I would say that her focus is upon creating characters and dialogue which really lift off the page, and of course when writing fiction the mastering of these two skills is essential. Anyone considering one of her courses should go right ahead and sign up, in my opinion.

That said our small class ran spectacularly foul of the USQ Administration which left an unpleasant after-taste to the whole course. Trapped in the middle of the Queensland flood crisis, with all roads leading out of Toowoomba closed, we were expected to rely on a morning print out of flood/road information which was probably out of date before it even reached our class room. The digital revolution appeared to have passed our organisers by.

People whose houses were under water in Brisbane requested, with increasing firmness, that internet access be made available to us. It was the only means there was of accessing up to date road and bridge closure information across the whole flood area. But no - internet access was not possible. In fact even asking for it made us trouble-makers.

After a bit of a high noon moment when one of the administrative staff told some of us not to interrupt him while he spoke, and accused others of lying, we were told later in the day that we could have access to one of the secretarial staff's PC. This involved leaving our computer lab (online access not available) and going to another building where we could ask a staff member to stop her work while we checked the areas we needed to look at. As people were leaving for home at different times of the day and needed updates more than once for each individual destination, this seemed highly intrusive and frankly, not feasible.

It seemed shocking to be treated in such a way when we were fee paying customers of the university, and in fact were legitimately worried about the conditions of travel, our own houses, the situation of friends etc. It also smacked of disdain. University staff could easily get home; it seemed they were not interested in the problems of those who could not.

Above all else I found it surprising that internet access had not been automatically included in our student arrangements - it's not that hard to set up temporary access to particular sites, most big business, universities, government departments etc do this routinely on all sorts of levels. And I've never been at a university where I'm paying fees and have no online access.

Sue - you were fantastic - 10 out of 10.

USQ - maybe 3 - and PS that preliminary talk you gave us on drinking out of the right water bottles and dealing with a hostile person - give us a break. Maybe THINK about what your customers/students need and factor in our general age and wisdom.

Barbara

Supercharging the creative process - Robert Fritz

2010-12-11T22:53:00.003-11:00

I found this article tremendously interesting:

Supercharging the Creative Process by Robert Fritz

The legendary film director Alfred Hitchcock had a talent for driving his scriptwriters a little crazy. As the team was closing in on how to structure a particularly thorny plot point or twist and turn of the story, Hichcock would offer a glass of wine, or begin to talk about his experiences traveling through Europe, or recess the session for a lavish meal. One day, after another Hichcock treatment of interrupting the writing session, one of his writers complained. "Alfred, we were just getting to a conclusion." Old Hitch smiled and told the writer that they were getting there too soon. He didn’t want to close in just yet. He wanted to hold the tension so that a more creative possibility could emerge...

To read the rest of it click here

IRINA DUNN WEBSITE — OPEN FOR BUSINESS

2010-11-07T10:59:00.001-11:00

IRINA DUNN WEBSITE — OPEN FOR BUSINESS www.irinadunn.com.au

If you are struggling with a manuscript, needing help to improve it, or wanting advice on finding a publisher, you are invited to visit my website to look at the range of services I offer writers of both fiction and non-fiction, including adult and young adult fiction, scientific writing, biography and history.

“From her first reading of my manuscript, “A History of War Surgery”, Irina Dunn was enthusiastic about its possibilities. Her perception has been proven correct. It has just been accepted by a major international publisher… Irina’s contribution to this thrilling outcome cannot be underestimated. I commend her unconditionally to all those seeking sophisticated guidance towards a similar outcome.” Dr John Wright, A History of War Surgery (Amberley Publishing 2011)

“It was only after I followed your advice to a 'T' that I was offered a contract from a commercial publisher. A big thank you! It was one of the most worthwhile meetings I've ever had.” Louise Austin, Journey to Tobruk (Pier 9 2009)

Red Hill Publishing boot camp

2010-10-01T13:53:00.009-11:00

Boot Camp is designed to deliver the core knowledge writers need to know to kick-start their careers in the business of books. Boot Camp is this year's must-attend event for independent authors, self-published authors and those looking to work in the book publishing industry.

Some of Australia’s leading independent book publishing professionals will walk attendees through an industry standard publishing workflow: editorial, design & typesetting, marketing, printing and yes, ebooks too.

A stellar forum and workshop line-up already includes speakers with more than 50 years combined book publishing and entertainment industry experience:

* Sally Collings, author, publisher @ Red Hill Publishing
* Kate Eltham, author, CEO @ Queensland Writers Centre
* Joanna Penn, author, marketer @ The Creative Penn
* Kim Wilkins, award winning author, lecturer @ UQ
* Robert Collings, director @ Red Hill Publishing
* With more to come …

The event comprises AM panel sessions and PM workshops. The program runs through a traditional publishing workflow, with a couple of short keynote addresses. The program is online here:

http://redhillpublishing.com/events/bootcamp2010

The event will now take place on Saturday 27 November in Brisbane.

We would appreciate you passing these details on to your members. If you need any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards,
Melanie Saward

--
Melanie Saward
Marketing Manager
Publishing Boot Camp 2010
(Red Hill Publishing)

w: http://redhillpublishing.com/events/bootcamp2010

follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/2010BootCamp
--

Red Hill Publishing has a contemporary approach to publishing. It differs from the old-fashioned model whereby writers often earn quite meagre amounts from work that might have taken years to produce. It's worth reading more of their philosophy of publication just because of the more equitable take they have on the way authors can keep better control of their own work (Barbara).

Carindale Writers Group workshop 14th October 2010

2010-09-14T12:04:00.003-11:00

“Morning Tea and more”

Thursday 14th October, 2010
9.30am – 12noon
Carindale Library Meeting Room

We hope you can join us for
- Critical Response Process: a workshop presented by visiting artist and creative director Rebekah West. The workshop demonstrates Liz Lerman’s Critical Response technique as a method for authors to obtain direction and creative response to their written work.

- We will also be launching our latest book:

Allsorts of Allshorts – a collection of short stories
by members of the CWG that will thrill, chill and
tickle your funny bone.

We look forward to welcoming you to our group for the
morning to help us celebrate Brisbane Writers’ Week
through innovation and creation.

If you wish to attend please RSVP by 30th September
to this email address (click to send)

Short story contracts

2010-07-22T15:45:00.004-11:00

This arrested my attention, not because I'm about to sign any contract, but because I thought it might be a useful read for us all:

Dan Perez short story contract advice

... when you sell a short story to a magazine or short story anthology, you will be asked to sign a contract, which is a legally binding written agreement between you and the publisher about how your story will be used, and which outlines the rights and responsibilities of both parties.

Your initial temptation, especially if you're a newer writer, will be to excitedly sign the contract after a quick read and send it back off to the publisher, unchanged. But wait! Take a deep breath and realize that short story contracts, like novel contracts, are often written to the publisher's advantage, and not to the writer's. It's up to you, upon receiving the contract, to balance things out so your interests are provided for. It's vitally important to read the contract carefully, understand what the individual clauses mean, and change any clauses which can be detrimental to you.

There's a lot more, and it all seems useful to keep in mind

2010 Brisbane Writers Festival

2010-07-16T13:36:00.000-11:00

It is almost that time of year again when readers, writers, innovators and provocateurs come from around the world to share, debate and celebrate within the cultural precinct in the heart of the city for the Brisbane Writers Festival. Brisbane Writers Festival (BWF) has been celebrating reading, writing and ideas with the people of Queensland and showcasing our own talent to the world for almost fifty years and this year will be no exception. BWF 2010 will continue to reach beyond the 'traditional' genres incorporating the broader arts; food writing; music and lyric composition; art analysis and other non-fiction studies, making for a truly accessible program. To check out this years program, please click here.

Five books All Writers Should Read and Own

2010-06-10T13:18:00.002-11:00

The following five books have been cited again and again as the top five books all writers should read and own. I already own two of them (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott). Bird by Bird is my particular favourite, having re-read it three times in the last two years, I find it a wealth of practical knowledge.

1. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. While taking his reader on an autobiographical journey through his early years as an unsuccessful writer, King provides practical advice on staying the course, managing failure, establishing a writing “toolbox”, and making writing a part of life. He is both blunt and sympathetic, but, most of all, he is true and passionate. In an interesting note to add to our discussions on creative writing courses, during the years King taught English he wrote very little as by most Friday afternoons he felt as if he ‘spent the week with jumpers cables clamped to his brain” and despaired about his future as a writer. It was his wife however that encouraged him to keep writing.

2. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg. While countless books exist on the stacks of every bookstore that reveal the secrets of how to avoid bad writing, Goldberg bucks the trend and instead crafts a piece that refreshingly discusses how to construct good writing. She works to “uneducated” writers by subtracting rules and freeing the writer’s soul. The experience with the book is both empowering and liberating, for you feel you can actually write with passion and creativity without feeling the weight of constraining rules.

3. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Lamott attempts to take the complexity out of the process and to remove the enormity of the task. With skill and grace, she encourages writers to start small, to care deeply about the characters and not the plot, to engross one’s self in the heart of the piece rather than in just the end product. Admirably, she reminds writers that even if few read the piece, to have complete it with heart is a honourable thing.

4. The Elements of Style by William Strunck, Jr, and E.B. White. Heavy on the proper rules of writing well, Strunk and White provide an endless classic in the world of word craftsmanship. They give the reader a solid and concise look at the practical purposes in composition and usage of the English language. While certainly not an inspirational book, no piece exists that will do more for a writer's understanding of the language he employs than Strunk and White's masterpiece.

5. Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O'Conner. Called "the best thing to happen to grammar since Strunk and White", this book makes the technical and often intimidating language of grammar both tolerable and simple. In ten basic lessons, O'Conner reviews how to take the sting out of common grammar errors that often disrupt a writer's work and, thus, a reader's interpretation. Fun and easy to read, O'Conner's book is a must for any writer's bookshelf.

How to Become a Good Writer by Marvin Olasky

2010-06-04T11:35:00.002-11:00

Evocative images, provocative thoughts, tension without pretension -- that's what makes for good writing. I've seen so much poor writing lately that, as a public service, I'll offer some advice from great authors who also became fed up with pretentious prose.

Let's start with Mark Twain: "When you catch adjectives, kill most of them -- then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together; they give strength when they are wide apart."

Novelist John Gardner: "The abstract is seldom as effective as the concrete. ‘She was distressed' is not as good as, even, ‘She looked away.'"

And Jacques Barzun: "Look for all fancy wordings, and get rid of them."

William Strunk Jr. (co-author of a great little book, "The Elements of Style") writes: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences."

Specific detail is vital, as the other co-author, E.B. White, once advised: "Don't write about Man, write about a man."

Note this from writing teacher William Zinsser: "Look for the clutter in your writing, and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Re-examine each sentence that you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? ... Simplify. Simplify."

Here's good advice from George Orwell: "Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short word will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive where you can use the active."

Essayist Sheridan Baker noted similarly, "Never use a long word when you can find a short one. ... Pick up every sentence in turn, asking ourselves if we can possibly make it shorter."

Overall, it's important to emphasize quality rather than quantity: Better to have one telling bit of specific detail than 12 nothings. (Cervantes' worst nightmare: "Let every man ... not set down at random, higgle-de-piggledy, whatever comes into his noddle.") Content and style need to go together. Look what happens to this romantic image when we couch it in math book prose: "The long -separated lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 7 p.m. traveling at 50 mph, the other from Topeka at 4 p.m. at a speed of 40 mph."

If you're thinking about becoming a professional writer, assess your temperament as well as your talent. Novelist Isaac Asimov, commenting on a classic editor's statement -- "We don't reject writers; we reject pieces of paper with typing on them" -- added: "Don't stay mad and decide you are the victim of incompetence and stupidity. If you do, you'll learn nothing and you'll never become a writer. ... Don't make the opposite mistake and decide the story is worthless. Editors differ, and so do tastes, and so do magazines' needs. Try the story somewhere else."

The way not to learn is to assume that friends who say "you're great" have good judgment. Young writers need true friends, teachers and editors who are willing to make them cry. All are hard to find in this age of emphasizing self-esteem rather than offering tough honesty.

So maybe Mark Twain's way of discerning a calling is best: "Write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon his circumstances with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for."

Finally, for those who persevere, what Ptahotep wrote in ancient Egypt can be true: "Be a scribe! You sit grandly in your house, beer is poured copiously. All who see you rejoice in good cheer." Yes, but you must be prepared to give it up.

Ptahotep noted, "Happy is the heart of him who writes; he is young each day." Yes, but only if he writes from the heart, and not just for copious beer.

_________________________________________________

Marvin Olasky is the editor-in-chief of World and a professor of journalism at The University of Texas at Austin. Learm more about World at: www.Worldmagblog

More '10 things' of writing - this one's from Margaret Attwood

2010-05-07T16:53:00.001-11:00

1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.

2 If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.

3 Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.

4 If you're using a computer, always safeguard new text with a memory stick.

5 Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

6 Hold the reader's attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don't know who the reader is, so it's like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.

7 You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

8 You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

9 Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

10 Prayer might work. Or reading something else. Or a constant visualisation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.

10 GOOD WRITING HABITS Invaluable Advice from Zadie Smith

2010-04-19T13:04:00.003-11:00

I always love a good list - so here's a new one from Zadie Smith to mull over:

1 When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.

2 When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.

3 Don't romanticise your "vocation". You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no "writer's lifestyle". All that matters is what you leave on the page.

4 Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can't do aren't worth doing. Don't mask self-doubt with contempt.

5 Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.

6 Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.

7 Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.

8 Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

9 Don't confuse honours with achievement.

10 Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.

This is part of a series - Rules of Writers - published in The Guardian

Elif Batuman's flight from 'writing school'

2010-03-26T20:12:00.004-11:00

I've been reading Elif Batuman's wonderful book on the study of Russian literature aptly named 'The Possessed'. It is about those afflicted with an unquenchable love for the great Russian literary works, and is of course named after Dostoyevsky's famous novel. As I count myself one of these people her book became a must-read for me the minute I knew it existed. And I'm not alone (of course) - 'The Possessed' has shot into The Times best-seller list, an unsurprising development since it is a work of such humorous intelligence as to be irresistible.

She is a natural writer with a fabulous eye for the telling if incongruous detail. Early in her post-graduate life she was offered a writing fellowship at a well respected writing school. She describes her approach to this course and her later thoughts on turning the fellowship down with words which seem summarize so much of what I think myself about 'creative writing':

" I wanted to be a writer, not an academic. But that afternoon... I reached some conclusive state of disillusionment with the transcendentalist New England culture of 'creative writing.' In this culture ... the academic study of literature was understood to be bad for a writer's formation. By what mechanism, I found myself wondering, was it bad? Conversely why was it automatically good for a writer to live in a barn, reading short stories by short-story writers who didn't seem to be read by anyone other than writing students?
***
For many years I gave little thought to the choice I had made... In 2006, n + 1 magazine asked me to write about the state of the American short story, using the Best American Short Stories anthologies of 2004 and 2005 as data. Only then, as I turned the pages in the name of science, did I find myself remembering the emptiness I had felt on that rainy day on Cape Cod [when she decided against the writing fellowship].

I remembered then the puritanical culture of creative writing, embodied by .. the ideal of 'craft'. I realized that I would greatly prefer to think of literature as a profession, an art, a science, or pretty much anything else, rather than a craft. What did a craft ever try to say about the world, the human condition, or the search for meaning? All it had were its negative dictates: 'Show, don't tell'; 'Murder your darling'; 'Omit needless words.' As if writing were a matter of overcoming bad habits...

I thought it was the dictate of craft that had pared many of the Best American stories to a nearly unreadable core of brisk verbs and vivid nouns - like entries in a contest to identify as many concrete entities as possible, in the fewest possible words. The first sentences were crammed with so many specificities, exceptions, subverted expectations, and minor collision that one half expected to learn they were acrostics, or had been written without using the letter e. They all began in media res. Often, they answered the 'five Ws and one H.'"

She goes on to write a marvelous non-prescriptive work breaking every rule she decides needs to be broken. And her book teems with energy and life.

A reader's advice to writers

2010-02-24T11:13:00.003-11:00

This is part of a much longer article by Laura Miller - http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/02/23/readers_advice_to_writers/index.html
and well worth a read:

1. Make your main character want something. Writers tend to be introverted observers who equate reflection with insight and depth, yet a fictional character who does nothing but witness and contemplate is at best annoying and at worst, dull. There's a reason why Nick Carraway is the narrator of "The Great Gatsby" while Gatsby himself is the protagonist. Desire is the engine that drives both life and narrative.

2. Make your main character do something. For the reasons stated above, many writers gravitate toward characters to whom things happen, as opposed to characters who cause things to happen. It's not impossible to write a compelling novel or story in which the main character is entirely the victim of circumstances and events, but it's really, really hard, and chances are that readers will still find the character irritatingly passive. When you hear someone complain that "nothing happens" in a work of fiction, it's often because the central character doesn't drive the action.

3. The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, atmosphere/setting. Of course all these elements are interlinked, and in the best fiction they all contribute to and enhance each other. But if you were to eliminate these elements, starting at the end of the list and moving toward the beginning, you could still end up with a novel that lots of people wanted to read; the average mass-market thriller is nothing but story. If you sacrifice these elements starting from the beginning of the list, you will instead wind up with a sliver of arty experimentation that, if you're very, very good, a handful of other people might someday read and admire. There's honor in that, but it's daft to write something with the deliberate intention of denying readers what they love and want and then to be heartbroken when they aren't interested. If you want to engage with more than a tiny coterie, take storytelling seriously; if you think that's incompatible with art, you are in the wrong line of work.

2010-01-25T20:11:00.005-11:00

Click the link below to read responses to the survey I conducted late last year:

Survey of Australian tertiary level writing courses

Elmore Leonard's tips for good writing

2010-01-23T18:59:00.004-11:00

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

And just out of interest - here is a dream job if ever there was one -

Elmore Leonard's Legman.

Summer School

2009-11-13T12:02:00.004-11:00

Taking a break from George Eliot’s 'Middlemarch', I picked up Domenica de Rosa’s 'Summer School', poured myself a glass of red and whiled away the afternoon enchanted by the descriptions of the beautiful Tuscan countryside, the thirteenth-century Italian castle and the mouth-watering menu. 'Summer School' is about seven aspiring authors enticed by ads for a writers' retreat Patricia O’Hara runs at her Castello in Tuscany. The writing is warm and witty, and I find myself polishing off a third glass of wine before I forced myself to lay it aside until the next evening. 'Summer School', in my minds eye describes the idyllic writers' retreat and I find myself roaming the internet, dreamily scrolling through the plethora of websites offering writers' workshops in San Gimignano, Siena, Montepulciano, Pienza where through “the ancient history that gathers in every piazza, and in every voice speaking the beautiful Italian language, you will find a well-spring of ideas”, as one website describes it. Having spent a month in Italy a few years ago I need little convincing.

The last month we have been discussing writing courses and whether they do indeed help you become a better writer. I’m eagerly awaiting the results of the survey conducted by Barbara. A lot of these courses are also outrageously priced anywhere between $5000 for a Graduate Certificate to well over $30000 for a Bachelor’s Degree. A fortnight in Tuscany at a writer’s retreat costs about 2000 – 3000 euros. I don’t know, but a writers' retreat is sounding better everyday.

Survey - university writing courses - please take a look

2009-09-11T12:42:00.007-11:00

Please take the Australian University Writing Courses survey - CLICK HERE

I am interested in gaining as great a cross-section of responses to this survey as possible and plan writing an overview and assessment of the different courses available. To this end the more responses I can harvest the better, so please take the survey, it's quite short and won't take much time.

Any suggestions, thoughts etc are welcome - queenslandwriting@gmail.com

regards

Barbara

University writing courses

2009-08-24T11:45:00.008-11:00

I've written to the QWC this morning to ask if the eNewsletter can publish a paragraph for me soliciting views of university writing courses. I'm quite keen to get as complete a picture as I can of the variety of courses available, what they offer, what different writers think of them. At about $1500 per subject (p/g) I think it's fair to ask exactly how useful these courses are if they are not actually teaching writing skills.

Any observations can be made under the cloak of a nom de plume. I understand that an enrolled student at UQ or QUT for example, unhappy with the quality of the teaching and the courses is still going to be unlikely to want these views to be known as theirs. There's no such thing as objectivity in universities or anywhere else, and making an enemy of a powerful writer in Queensland could affect ones prospects in the limited market that Queensland offers.

So anyone who feels they might like to contribute an assessment on this topic to this blog but not an acknowledged one please feel free to email me here - queenslandwriting@gmail.com - and I will post it for you, regards Barbara

2009-08-20T20:23:00.000-11:00

In the last few weeks we have been discussing the various writing courses out there. The Queensland Writers Centre now has online writing courses that may pique your interest and at the fraction of the cost. The ‘Year of the Novel’ has particularly caught my attention. I’ve always wanted to do this course but the idea of commuting into Brisbane every fortnight put me off, especially since I work most weekends. Here is an abstract from the QWC homepage:

Challenge yourself to complete the ultimate writing journey in Year of the Novel Online. Over 26 progressive fortnights you will be inspired and challenged to overcome road blocks and, most importantly, to keep writing. You will receive individual feedback from our expert tutor as your manuscript develops, focusing on the writer's guide to narrative structure, characterisation, developing voice and self-editing. You will participate in a number of group and individual activities and share your developing understanding of writing as you work toward completeing a manuscript draft.

Tutor: Kim Wilkins

When: The course begins on 1 August 2009 and runs through to the end of July 2010. New work is released each fortnight and then participants have that fortnight to complete the activities and submit them to be shared with the tutor and/or the group.

Why? Queensland Writers Centre realises the importance of enabling writers and would be writers to develop their skills and progress their work. So we have created a number of online writing courses which we will be releasing throughout 2009. This is a new endeavour for us and we are in beta-testing mode, which means we are releasing the courses at special prices this year. So get in quick!

Please note: This course involves downloading audio files, so please ensure you have access to fast dial-up internet access as a minimum.What happens after purchase? Once you have purchased this product you will be sent an email with a link to the online learning site and your logon details. Simply logon onto the site and from 1 August 2009 your course materials for the first fortnight's work will be available.

And the cost? Only $400.

Post Note: Cengage Education contacted me after reading my assessment of the 'Fantasy and Science Fiction' Course and have offered me a free three month extension. I have accepted their offer and plan to tackle the remaining module with gusto. I thank them for their generosity.

2009-08-13T19:38:00.003-11:00

A few weeks ago I promised to write about the writing courses I’ve completed over the years and a little about the Masters writing program at the University of New England. A few years after completing a Masters of Justice at the Queensland University of Technology I got the study bug again and thought one of those distance education Tafe courses offered by Thomson Education (now Cengage) would suit my busy schedule. As Barbara mentioned in the post below, these courses are quite amateurish. But I must admit I quite enjoyed it and churned out a few short stories, though it certainly was not taxing. And of course, the marks were rather generous. However, I probably could have learned just as much by picking up a book about creative writing at the local library and saved myself $1200.

Despite this, I went back again two years later and studied Fantasy and Science Fiction Writing. I knew as soon as I received the materials that this was a bad choice. The package came with two thin workbooks and nothing else. I returned the books with a formal letter cancelling the course, well within the prescribed time, or so I thought. Two weeks later I rang up to make sure everything was squared away to find out that they had received the books but not the letter and it was now too late to cancel the course without massive penalties. Trying to make the best of the situation I tackled the course with gusto, which quickly waned after three assignments. A Fantasy writer I found a lot the material bent towards Science Fiction, which, save for a few favourite authors, I have absolutely no interest it. I also found the assignments to be very rigid unlike the previous Creative Writing course where you had much more leeway in what you could write. In the end I gave up on the course, not willing to waste anymore of my precious spare time.

At the beginning of this year I started a Master of Arts, majoring in Writing at UNE. UNE has established itself as an excellent Distance Education University and offers great support to all its Distance Ed. students. And unlike a recent story in the Sunday Mail by a disgruntled Lecturer, this university certainly has not dumb downed its content. It is also not expensive, roughly half, if not less, the cost of the Open Universities (about $650 per unit). I have not decided whether I’m going to complete the whole Masters program or just settle on a Graduate Certificate of Writing (with my daughters’ disability, any number of surprises could be hiding around the corner). You have a large choice of core units to choose from and so can tailor the program around your own particular interests. The core units for the GCW are:

- Critical and Creative Writing Through Literature
- Writing for Work
- Publishing and Editing, and
- Research in Writing

I’ve also elected to do 'Children’s Literature and Fantasy' which I’m really looking forward to. I’ve already read all the prescribed books ($200 worth, but hey my daughter can read them as she grows up), which included 'The Tombs of Atuan' by Ursula K. Le Guin, 'The Change Over' by Margaret Mahy, and several others including a few children’s books such as 'Where the Wild Things Are'. I will also be studying 'Critical and Creative Writing' next semester, which included 'The Princess Bride' in its prescribed text list (a nostalgic favourite of mine).

I hope this quick summary is helpful for those contemplating further study. If you are a beginner writer, the Creative Writing courses offered by Cengage or Lifestyle Direct could be for you. But if you are looking for something more challenging, stick to a reputable University such as UNE, UQ or QUT.

Submitter's Block

2009-08-04T13:49:00.005-11:00

I've discovered I have something wrong with me. Actually I have lots of things wrong with me, but this particular thing is a disorder I didn't know existed until I read these words:

You want to write, but you don't. Or perhaps you start, but can't bring yourself to finish, leaving a dozen promising articles or stories in various stages of incompletion. Or perhaps you finish, but can't quite bring yourself to stuff those pages into an envelope and pop them in the mail. Your family, friends, or critique group say your work is wonderful. So what is holding you back?

This scenario is far from rare. It isn't the same as the dreaded malady we call "writer's block." It's more like "submitter's block," and I've known many excellent writers who suffer from it. They produce quality work -- stories, novels, articles -- and earn well-deserved praise from peers in critique groups, yet balk at the thought of actually sending that work to market.

http://www.writing-world.com/basics/writer.shtml

Now that I know I have submitter's block maybe I'll make an effort to overcome it. Moira Allen in her article flagged above outlines some strategies. I might even take the plunge. But maybe it doesn't matter that much because I actually write a lot and love writing and am constantly making efforts to improve my writing so presumably this fulfills the desire to do it as well as I can. At the moment I don't really care much about going further with it than I have now. I'm interested in what others think - so does publication matter?

Please discuss.

Barbara

Swinburne Report Card - Semester 1 MA (Writing)

2009-08-01T16:27:00.002-11:00

After 12 very intense weeks at Swinburne we had a couple of final tutoral assignments to complete. These were designed by the course convenors to get our student perspective on each of our subjects.

I did all of the first four core subjects, a very big workload: -

Critical Friends
Real life Writing
Journalism
Research to Publication

Completing this gives one a Graduate Certificate in Writing. If I continue through next semester I will earn a Graduate Diploma. And if I follow this up with another semester I'll have an MA.
I'm posting my response to Critical Friends below, but want to add a couple of other things beforehand. The Swinburne MA in Writing is not aimed particularly at creative writing. It also takes in all comers so there is no requirement to have a writing background. Some of my class-mates struggled with the basics of writing English well, a surprise when considering the work required of a postgraduate degree in Writing. I understand that these days even undergraduate courses now have problems with students who are unable to write English clearly.

Of course postgraduate doesn't really mean a higher level tertiary degree any more, it just means that the universities can charge $1500 per subject and make a lot more money out of each student. Sorry to sound so cynical but I've sat in postgraduate law classrooms which were in fact just undergraduate subjects with the normal cohort of undergraduate students. The only difference was the cost of the subject if you were enrolled in a postgraduate qualification. Some postgraduate qualifications don't even require an undergraduate degree.

Although the Swinburne course is not really focused where I want to go with my writing I did find it interesting and a challenge. Here is my tutorial response to the Critical Friends week 12 question. This subject is really about learning how to read with an editorial eye, reading both your own work and that of others. I don't think I'll ever master reading my own work with a critical eye.
*************************************************************************************
Write a brief account of what resources you found most useful in this subject.
Write 400/500 words and post them to the discussion area for this module.

I decided I would address this question by considering its component parts. What are resources? They can and do include the input of our tutor, the input of our colleagues, the work of our colleagues, the readings (both lecture notes and web articles), and the sheer discipline of thinking, reading and writing on a given topic week by week.

The person to person input of both tutor and colleagues has been highly valuable. There's an element of writing which subliminally seeks the approving 'other' whoever that 'other' might be and Catherine you've been an insightful and intelligent receiver of our work (and I'm not trying to curry favour).

I also found the wide range of responses from our group really fascinating. Even when I completely disagreed I would find myself considering what it was I disagreed about. It's my habit to walk every morning and I like having a 'thought' to take with me when trudging through the cold (we can't compete with Melbourne, but minus temperatures are the norm in an Ipswich winter, so yes, it gets cold here in SEQ). Taking a thought for a walk can trigger a whole army of ideas, as well as barking dogs.

The lectures notes and articles we've been guided through have served a similar purpose. Sometimes I agreed, sometimes I found the lecture notes simplistic or repetitive. But I was forced to articulate and write these things, although diplomacy did disguise some of my less than enthusiastic views. I can't point to particular individual writings from this module, but our first week's readings for Real life writing which included the fabulous duologue between Zadie Smith and James Woods were an electrifying kick-start for the whole course.

We've also been led to some really useful web portals on writing and the sites below are ones which will have a long-term usefulness for me (I think like a librarian – a good portal can be hard to find, so I've made a list):

http://www.poewar.com/articles/ [The Writer's Resource Center]
http://www.lit.org/ [Lit.Org]
http://www.writewords.org.uk/ [Write Words]
http://www.theory.org.uk/ [the Theory.org.uk]
http://www.nla.gov.au/events/doclife/ [Documenting a life]http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/biograph/index.htm [Biography writing workshop]http://www.abc.net.au/wordmap/ [Australian Word Map]http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/instruct/guides/PrimarySources.html [Using primary sources]

Binding all of these individual processes together was the relentless discipline of producing the right words week by week. Dr Arnold nicely brings the practical business of writing into our last lecture for the subject : How do writers work? I liked her polite phrase "correction of avoidance procedures" which in my case can encompass cleaning the bath-tub, playing Scrabble on Facebook, watching 30 Rock or deciding to buy a new car (hours of rumination on http://carsales.com.au/ or http://redbook.com.au/).
In the end we should just get started, stay seated and write, managing our work processes as tidily as we would any other form of employment.
*************************************************************************************
Of course when I wrote the words above I was writing from within the subject. From outside it I would probably add that much of the lecture material seemed out of date and highly self-referential to the lecturer who wrote them, not a practice I respond to terribly well. But I hope this summary is a helpful to anyone contemplating the Swinburne MA (Writing). Now that I've started I'll probably keep going with it, but knowing beforehand just how much of it involved reading and thinking about cultural theories, and to the writings of the lecturerl, I would have opted something far more practical and hands-on. Writing is a technical, practical process as much as it is anything. Earlier in this blog I've summarised a couple of other online writing courses I've undertaken - one in New York and one in Sydney. Each of these was too amateurish for my purposes and suffered also because of the contrasting writing experience of the different students. I would consider myself to be a middle to advanced writer, not a beginner.
I'd be very glad to learn of other online courses which are more useful to fiction writers in a nuts and bolts way.

Cricket Poetry Award 2009

2009-05-12T12:05:00.002-11:00

PRESS RELEASE

Cricket Poetry Award 2009 - A new Australasian poetry award has been created.

Poets are invited to submit a poem celebrating an aspect of life in and around the game and sport of cricket, in settings of backyard cricket, beach cricket, club cricket or social cricket. The genre may be narrative, epic, dramatic, satirical, lyrical, elegy or verse fable.

Our history and sense of identity are linked to cricket and our social interactions are often complimented with some form of the game, at the beach, in the park, in the backyard or on the cricket field.

Cricket, in all its forms, has inspired the arts, most of which romanticises and celebrates the game. More importantly, cricket brings people of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities together.

The written & spoken word reflects the emotions, beliefs and prejudices that influence our thoughts, behaviour and personality. Poets will be asked to use a national pastime - cricket, as the vehicle to unsettle preconceptions, generate new ideas and consider our contemporary culture.

The Cricket Poetry Award will be run in conjunction and correlate with the Cricket Art Prize, and the winner will be announced at the inaugural Cricket Art Prize opening event at the Members Pavilion of the SCG on Thursday 8th Oct 2009. The occasion and will not only serve the interests of all Australasians fascinated in art, poetry and cricket, but also feature as a regular event on the SCG calendar

The judges are published poet Adam Gibson, and Walkley Award nominee, sports & feature writer Jessica Halloran.

For further information please hit the website http://www.publisherscup.org.au/cricket-poetry-award

CONTACT

Derek Zilich, Publishers’ Cup Inc. derekz@publisherscup.org.au 0411 572 100

This looks like it could be fun for any cricket tragics amongst us - B

Shipping news - this came with a book ordered online

2009-04-10T22:23:00.000-11:00

Your book asked to write you a personal note - it seemed unusual, but who are we to say no?

Holy canasta! It's me... it's me! I can't believe it is actually me! You could have picked any of over 2 million books but you picked me! I've got to get packed! How is the weather where you live? Will I need a dust jacket? I can't believe I'm leaving Mishawaka, Indiana already - the friendly people, the Hummer plant, the Linebacker Lounge - so many memories. I don't have much time to say goodbye to everyone, but it's time to see the world!

I can't wait to meet you! You sound like such a well read person. Although, I have to say, it sure has taken you a while! I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but how would you like to spend five months sandwiched between Jane Eyre (drama queen)and Fundamentals of Thermodynamics (pyromaniac)? At least Jane was an upgrade from that stupid book on brewing beer. How many times did the ol' brewmaster have one too many and topple off our shelf at 2am?

I know the trip to meet you will be long and fraught with peril, but after the close calls I've had, I'm ready for anything (besides, some of my best friends are suspense novels). Just five months ago, I thought I was a goner. My owner was moving and couldn't take me with her. I was sure I was landfill bait until I ended up in a Better World Books book drive bin. Thanks to your socially conscious book shopping, I've found a new home. Even better, your book buying dollars are helping kids read from Brazil to Botswana.

But hey, enough about me, I've been asked to brief you on a few things:

You chose International shipping. We shipped it via Brokers Worldwide who will then hand it off to your local postal service. Delivery time for shipments is usually 7-14 business days, but some may take a bit longer depending on destination.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email my friends in Customer Care at help@betterworld.com. If you could please include your order number that would be very helpful.

Eagerly awaiting our meeting,

2009-02-25T16:11:00.002-11:00

I was rummaging through the books in a second hand store last week when I found a book called ‘How to be Free’ by Tom Hodgkinson. It is all about living a simpler and freer way of life. In the chapter, ‘Banish Anxiety; Be Carefree’, Hodgkinson writes about the importance of feeding your mind with quality materials. A diet of good writing will produce quality thoughts and a self-sufficient, resourceful person whereas, newspapers and magazines do little to stimulate our mind (WQ, of course is exempted from this category). He goes on to write that feeding your mind with good quality ingredients, books, food and beauty will produce useful and beautiful things.

In the next Chapter, ‘Reject Career and All Its Empty Promises’, Hodgkinson writes that that we need to return self-sufficiency and creativity to our lives. Careers don’t allow us to be fully ourselves; careers take as an index of success money and status rather than pleasure in work and creativity. We have a duty to look into our hearts and discover our vocation, find our gift. Once we have done this, we will find that other parts of life follow quite naturally. So the next time you feel guilty about spending some time to yourself to write or to read a good book, remember these words.

The Scent Trail

2009-02-04T19:52:00.002-11:00

The Scent Trail by Celia Lyttelton.

When Celia Lyttelton visited a bespoke perfumer, she realized a long-held ambition: to have a scent created solely for her. Entering this heady, exotic world of oils and essences, she was transported from a leafy London square to a place of long-forgotten memories and sensory experiences. And once drawn into this world, she felt compelled to trace the origins, history and culture of the many ingredients that made up her unique perfume. Celia paints a mystical, sensual landscape of sights, sounds and aromas as she recalls the extraordinary people and places she encountered on her unique Scent Trail.

Although not a book about writing, The Scent Trail, made me to reflect upon how evocative scents can be, especially when setting a scene in a story. I love to burn sandalwood when I’m writing as it draws me into the spice filled cities and shimmering deserts of my fantasy world. On a day-to-day basis, I prefer lavender as I find it calms my mind and soothes the soul. In my perfumes I prefer fresh, green notes, Green Tea being my favourite. Although the scent Arabie by Serge Luten with its melange of cedar and sandalwood, enriched with dried figs and dates, nutmeg, cumin and clove, as described in Celia’s book, sounds absolutely delicious and is on my hit list. I also love the smell of my daughter’s Avocado and Calendula conditioner. Infused with geranium and clove, I liberally apply it to her long hair after her bath. It seems to have a calming affect on the both of us and I just love breathing in its earthy notes as we cuddle on the lounge together.

Does anyone else burn incense whilst they write? If so, what are your favourite scents?

This writing life

2009-01-19T09:31:00.001-11:00

I'm going to post-date this in the hope that it will pop up magically in about a week's time. This seemed such a fabulous description ot writing and the writer's life it was like looking in a mirror.

Catherine Rey

2009-01-10T20:35:00.002-11:00

For my 31st birthday last week my mother bought me a book called ''Bird by Bird'' by Anne Lamott. I have occasionally read 'how to' books on writing over the years, but none of them have inspired me as this one has. Lamott, using personal ancedotes with a touch of self-depreciating humour, distils what she's learned over the years of trial and error. She reminds us that it's good to write really bad first drafts , invaluable advice for one such as myself who often finds the need for perfectionism the main obstacle between me and that first draft, even a shitty one.

Lamott also writes that we should worry about the characters, not the plot. Plot grows out of character. ''If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you know and are getting to know better day by day, something is bound to happen''. Lamott argues that characters should not, conversely, serve pawns for some plot you've dreamed up.

Though her most invaluable advice for those times when the task before me feels like trying to scale a glacier: just take it paragraph by paragraph, one small scene, one memory, one exchange at a time. She tells the following story that helps her get a grip when the task seems insurmountable.

''Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write [it] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'''

In the end Lamott writes that its okay to feel neurotic, negelected, vengeful or self-doubting, as long as you keep writing.

I would love to hear from others books that have inspired them.

2009-01-06T13:02:00.007-11:00

You'll note I've invited a few interested parties to become authors of this blog... so anchors away

Facebook as well?

2008-11-30T12:00:00.003-11:00

I'm back from Italy and apparently finally at long last rid of the awful cough that went everywhere with me. But I managed to enjoy myself a lot nonetheless. So now we all have to decide what exaftly we want to do with this blog-site. I'm quite inclined to set up a Facebook Group called WRÏTERS BLOG or QUEENSLAND WRITERS in conjunction with this site to see if we can coax one another into a little more interaction. Facebook would be a slightly less exposed way of being online but on the other hand likely to miss some of the random hits that bring people to a blog when just googling away from some remote part of the world. Of course with Facebook we can create interest links which will generate more activity, and with quicker response times too. So .. do we have views on this? And if anyone is interested in meeting up soonish let me know. Xmas is looming of course and already our collective dance cards are jostling with invitations. ciao ciao mes amis, Barbara

National Punctuation Day September 24th

2008-10-30T17:57:00.000-11:00

1. Introduce your friends,
relatives, and colleagues to the
Oxford comma.
Trust me: you don’t need a
college education for this one.
2. Drop hyphens from compound
words that follow a noun.
Take every one of your
well-written essays; then lose the
hyphen if the essay is especially
well written.
3. Join the Campaign to Abolish
the Apostrophe.
Or if that sounds too reckless,
enlist in the Apostrophe
Protection Society instead.
4. Fire off an interrobang ― but
don’t get punked by the pomma
point.
At this special time of the year,
shouldn’t we be thinking about
some of the less fortunate marks
of punctuation?!
5. Repair a comma splice.
You can fix a splice with a
conjunction ― but first make sure
the sentence is really broken.
6. Pause ... for an ellipsis.
Just don’t exceed your limit of
three dots.
7. Recite the punctuation poem.
Of course, the “Dictaphone
Bard” should be a part of every
family’s National Punctuation
Day festivities.
8. Explain to your children why
punctuation matters.
In the end it all comes down to
love and money.
9. Remove quotation marks from
any indirect quotations.
Your friends will say, “Thank you!”
10. But no matter what else you
do, don’t quote me!
Richard Nordquist
Retrieved October 28, 2008,
from http://grammar.about.com

Demise of this blog

2008-10-16T10:39:00.002-11:00

I've all but decided to terminate this blog. At the outset I thought it could be a useful way of running a writing group because of the interactive possibilities of blog technology. But it really hasn't worked out that way. I'm about to leave forItaly and will be away for a month. After that if I haven't heard any shrieks of protest I'll quietly put the whole idea to sleep. Using a blog for reading and critiquing one another's work sounded like an interesting possibility, but was an idea before it's time perhaps. Strangely I've found a similar reluctance to discuss writing or do much reading and critiquing of one anothers work in groups which meet in person. I thought online might be easier because out in the cyberworld reticence is less likely to inhibit ones interactions. In the mean time, ciao ciao everyone.. Barbara

Call for manuscripts

2008-07-26T12:31:00.002-11:00

CAL Cultural Fund

Queensland Editors and Writers Development Project

A partnership initiative between Society of Editors (Queensland) Inc. and Queensland Writers Centre

The Society of Editors (Queensland) Inc. and Queensland Writers Centre are offering writers the opportunity for specialised editorial advice on their manuscripts.

This exciting project is open to QWC members who have already completed a manuscript but have not yet had a book-length work published or self-published.

Editorial feedback will be provided by four teams of editors, each including one very experienced editor (the mentor) and two trainee editors. Each team will provide a report and detailed editing feedback to those QWC members whose manuscripts have been selected. The fee payable by writers for this editorial feedback is $240.

The editors’ areas of expertise include fiction, memoir, biography, history, education, sciences, medicine, and health and lifestyle. If your work falls into one of these areas, please send QWC by 4 August 2008 an electronic file in Microsoft Word of your MS (maximum 75,000 words), a one-page synopsis of the complete work, a contents table, and a double-spaced A4 print-out of your manuscript, as well as a statement on the 10,000 words you would like to be edited more intensively.

You should also enclose a completed application form, which is now available on the QWC website http://www.qwc.asn.au/.

Manuscripts will be chosen by the team leaders, and editorial work will commence in late August.

This program is supported by CAL Cultural Fund

CYA Later, Alligator - Conference 20th September 2008

2008-06-06T12:54:00.001-11:00

CYA Later, Alligator Conference Bookings for the 20th September 2008 are now open.

This conference is aimed as professional development at new and established writers and illustrators of Children’s and Young Adult literature.
Master classes are conducted by John Marsden, Paul Collins, Libby Gleeson, Leigh Hobbs and Gregory Rogers, and John Danalis, workshops by Jackie French, Sofie Laguna with industry professionals Leonie Tyle, Kate Cuthbert and Joy Lawn, and international author Alice Kuipers.
Come on over to our web site, and have a look at the program.
www.cyaconference.com
CYA Later!
Tina, Ally and the CYA Conference TeamPS Reminder that the competition closes 30th June 2008, so start sending your entry/ies in!
CYA Later Alligator
Tina Clark - CYA Conference Coordinator
& The CYA Conference Team.
web site: www.cyaconference.com
email: info@cyaconference.com

Writers Studio Sydney - Unlocking creativity - 4 week course

2008-05-09T16:34:00.010-11:00

This is a four week online course and as I'm departing Brisbane on Tuesday for a while I thought I'd write my assessment of it before I go, although I haven't quite completed the course. I have both negative and positive things to say about it (naturally).

THE THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE

First : for just 4 weeks it's quite expensive (Earlybird - $375 ; Full course - $495). I compared this with a ten week Gotham (NY) fee which came to about $400.00 and I didn't think there was any parity at all when comparing the quality and amount of tuition. Gotham won hands down.

Second: the web interface itself is very poorly put together. I write web materials, inter alia, for a living and I was surprised that an organisation teaching writing did not practise the essence of good web writing, an important element of which of course is presentation. There were different coloured and sizes of font scattered about on the pages. (Here's a typical page -
http://www.writerstudio.com.au/enter.html) This makes for unnecessarily difficult reading and comprehension.

Third: the instructional materials themselves consisted of an enormous amount of quoting from other sources, the sort of thing it isn't hard to pick up from reading a good book on writing, and books don't cost nearly so much. There were also podcasts which I haven't yet had time to listen to, and a really dodgy powerpoint which consisted of a black background overwritten with white texts with other white text overlaid. In other words the slideshow was unreadable in places, and basically a lot of puffery and spin in any case when it could be penetrated.

Fourth: the tutor's feedback is contingent upon the amount of feedback each student posts on the work of others. In other words if you don't critique the work of your colleagues you won't get any feedback from the Writers Studio on your own work. This seemed a nice way for the Writers Studio to make its clients do most of the work, so to speak. I felt that paying about $100 p.w. should guarantee useful feedback from the writing supervisors, irrespective of class participation.

Fifth: the web interface for posting and critiquing suffered from the same problem as the Writers Studio website itself, that is it's muddled, hard to sift through and in the end an infinitely lengthening page of posts and comments (which of course mostly detailed how fabulous everyone's writing was) .

Sixth: expectations in the first two weeks were so very basic as to be all but pointless. As well as that no-one was permitted to write anything but glowing praise for anyone else's work, and that included whatever the tutors wrote on our own submission. This of course immediately downgraded the usefulness of any feedback at all as I, cynical old baby-boomer that I am, consider that parameters like that mean one can write any old rubbish and still expect to be showered with praise. The exercises from these first two weeks were very much to do with self-expression, an aspect of writing I find tiresomely self-absorbed even (or especially) in my own stuff.

THINGS I DID LIKE

Week 3 all but over-rode the negative opinion I had formed of 'Unlocking Creativity'. The whole week's instructions and exercises were extremely useful to me. I suddenly found myself working really hard and in ways I had never known about before. There was also the curious synchronicity (annoying word) of coming across, at the same time, the chapter in Kate
Grenville's book "Searching for the Secret River" where she details her own struggles to arrive at the right voice and the right characters and the right narrative for her wonderful novel "The secret river". In essence she outlines a process she often resorts to when her writing has hit a false note, and which was quite close to the process we were practising in our Writers Studio Week 3 exercises. This impressed me heaps.

Week 4 is to take this even further and we are expected to complete a short short story. Sadly for me I'm going to have to be a bit skimpy in the way I do this as I'll be driving down
the back of New South Wales when normally I would be hunched over my laptop on the kitchen table, listening to my neighbours 'dialogue' while poised to extrude a sentence or two.

The quality of much of the submissions was also generally a pleasure to read, there were a few very skilled writers posting their work.

MY CONCLUSIONS

In summary I'm not sorry I decided on this course, I've found part of it to be extremely helpful. It's also true that the course is called 'Unlocking creativity', not 'Writing fiction' - in other words it's meant to be teaching a process by which one can tap into the imagination more freely, and that of course is always going to be helpful when trying to improve ones writing skills.

espressohead : Monday April 28th

2008-04-24T20:59:00.003-11:00

For those who might be thinking of coming to lunch on Monday the place is espressohead, in Boundary St West End, about 4 or 5 doors down from Caffe Tempo. I know I won't be able to get there until 1:00 but anyone arriving earlier could secure a table for about 5 people if they cared to. The next thing everyone has to consider pronto pronto is whether or not we want to do a bit of critiqueing (spelling?) for one another. If we do we need to email out some writing in the next day or so to give one another time to read and think. I consider it could be useful to do this, although the story I'm currently struggling to get into shape is about 4000 words, which is possibly a little long. But it's the one I would like feedback on if we take this path. Please let me know what you think, I'm really OK with whatever we decide. B

PS I haven't booked a table, not sure if they do that at espressohead (great name) but perhaps I'll try tomorrow. If I do I'll email out the details.

Gotham : 20 weeks of...

2008-04-06T11:54:00.003-11:00

I'm all but finished my second enrolment (subject, tranche?) with Gotham, each one taking 10 weeks. Now after almost 20 weeks of focusing on reading, assessing, writing and critiquing I think I need to consolidate some of the things about effective writing that I've gained, and shed those things I don't want to retain. From the outset I felt that the cultural differences between Australia and the U.S. were going to have quite an impact on the way my writing was received, and I wasn't wrong. My colleagues were quite confronted by complex sentences and ideas, almost none of them aspired to more than a kind of Cormac McCarthy style of writing, and many of them were aiming at the thriller and crime market only. Those things are fine but they're not what I want to achieve with my own style and stories. I was very lucky as my first 'Instructor' (T), a woman with a highly intuitive approach to our writing, had many insightful things to say about all of our work. She also, and unusually in such a North American context, was very open to satire and what I suppose we call here the Australian Gothic approach to story telling. But I think I've been quite unlucky with my second 'Instructor' (R ) who has lacked the imaginative and intuitive qualities that T had so abundantly. He also seems ignorant in a way I regard as an obvious outcome of the narcissistic focus of U.S. broadcasting and education. And for a writer and writing instructor his vocabulary was surprisingly ill-stocked, and not extending much beyond the narrow language pool of popular culture. So that was a disappointment as I like words in all of their subtleties and peculiarities. I felt I had to discount most of the things he's had to say about my work and instead have just focused on our weekly lecture, most of which deals with the techniques for achieving particular effects. Over all Gotham has been intense and I've learned a lot, but I'm glad it's almost over and I can go back to using words that are my own vernacular without having to background a kind of explanation into each of them; that has been tiresome, although instructive. Ciao ciao – we're thinking of getting together again soon.. dejeuner a West End .. any takers? Barbara

Saturday post mortem

2008-02-11T11:44:00.000-11:00

I don't know about everyone else but I really enjoyed our rather ad hoc get together on Saturday. We managed to talk about writing quite a lot, and that's a good thing for me, when amongst 'normal' people such a discussion is usually greeted with horror and alarm. I rarely encounter a love for writing amongst friends, and it's all I can do to eke an intermittent email out of them, so to sit about discussing writing, writing courses, writing preferences etc was a big pleasure. I also enjoyed putting faces to names for the first time, and was sorry that Skye was unable to make it, a victim of last week's flooding, unfortunately for her. I also always enjoy Caf(f?)e Tempo, the food, the ambiance, the 24 hour alcohol, the Manager (a charming sheila, the sort of woman you long to meet when amongst the more straight-laced Europeans and North Americans). Viva l'Australienne!! We're hoping to meet up again at some point, probably on a Monday due to Saturday problems for some of us. If you know of other writers who might like to come along.. invite them in. I will now be embarking on Advanced Fiction Writing II at Gotham in NY, after the very successful and interesting Fiction Writing I which I've all but finished, and then I'm planning to do a small subject called Unlocking Creativity at the Writers Studio in Sydney. The Writers Studio requires this subject to be completed as a pre-requisite for all of its other writing subjects, so by then I'll be good and ready for a bit of the vernacular after months of replacing 'lift' with 'elevator' etc. Ciao, ciao, Barbara

Caffe Tempo, West End, 9th February 2008

2008-01-24T05:23:00.000-11:00

We've settled on a time, a date and a place to meet. I'm going to book, and get there a little early. We've decided on meeting at 11:00 am, the breakfast menu seems to stay live almost all day, so anyone who's hungry.. there's sourdough in all its guises. Hope everyone enjoys it. They do serve alcohol so if you're seized by stage fright or general shyness, just liquor up (that will be me), regards Barbara

PS my hair is currently a bit of a reverse skunk look.. easy to spot in a crowd.
PPS I'm also tall

Online writing courses, Gotham in particular

2008-01-11T19:58:00.001-11:00

I'm now exactly 5 weeks into my 10 week course, Fiction Writing I, at Gotham in NY. At the rate of exchange when I paid for it the cost was about A$410.00, a reasonable amount compared with anything from A$1200.00 upwards as the cost of one subject for a local university course. Gotham co-ordinates its courses from New York but I have classmates in Canada, Switzerland, and at one point Germany, although most of my 12 colleagues are from different parts of the U.S. It's been quite an intense and challenging experience and I'm learning the basic things that anyone wanting to keep control of a story's structure needs to know. And it has definitely helped me understand why sometimes my writing heads off in some unmanageable direction which I can then no longer steer back into shape. The weekly structure is straightforward. There's an online set of notes e.g. Plot, Point of View, Description etc, and a weekly exercise of a few hundred words to practise that particular virtue of good writing. There's also a weekly ongoing discussion which class-mates contribute to on that topic, although we can meander off a bit as we did two weeks ago when our classmate in Germany despatched a Hissy Email announcing he was pulling out of the course as we were not worthy of his attendance there. Who knew a cyberclass could be so melodramatic? He seemed to have come to it with decided views about what was and was not the purpose of the course and had a tendency to lambast everyone's submitted work without mercy. My story he thought was nauseatingly written; he directed the same ferocity to everyone else's submission. That was tremendously bonding for those of us among the maimed and injured. He hadn't had time to rip into everyone's, so those he had, the chosen, felt a special connection. But his presence brooded over everything we expressed online, and one became aware, even in the discussions he declined to participate in, that he was probably there reading and condemning. Of course he departed before we had a chance to assess the quality of his own work. Once he left a lot of issues relating to his style of critiquing came up (naturally)in the following week's chat. The chats take place for about an hour, usually on Monday nights NY time (about lunchtime Tuesday for me, so it's been difficult to take time out when I'm at work.) My only reservation about doing this course has been the lack of the vernacular for me. I find myself thinking I should substitute a word for 'chook', but of course don't want to when for us using a different word would sound artificial. (Shrimps on the barbie anyone?) There are many ways in which Australians use English which we don't share with our American cousins. As a counterpoint I've enrolled in a Sydney-based online writing course starting in March, at the Writers Studio. As a former external law student at QUT I already know I like the online classroom very much. I can get up in the middle of the night and log in to get my work done, or write assessments of other people's work when it suits me to (another interesting and useful part of the Gotham style of teaching) . And I don't have to haul my sorry carcass to yet another falling-apart lecture room. I also think, especially if the criticism is a bit fierce as happened to some of us, it's quite good to be able to escape the scrutiny of others while adjusting to it. For me this exercise is purely a self-managed process, and I'm not aiming to get some kind of qualification, just to be as good a writer as I can be. Frankly I'd recommend the Gotham course I'm doing to anyone similarly interested in getting a bit more guidance with the technical skills of writing a good story, regards Barbara

PS some of us at Queensland Writing are planning to get together soon and actually speak! That will be a novelty for us. If you're interested let me know - email, comment etc

Gotham Writers' Workshops New York

2007-10-01T12:02:00.001-11:00

I've taken the plunge, and enrolled in one fiction writing subject at Gotham. There are many more available if I decide I've gained a lot from this one. Although there are a couple of university writing courses run locally I've always turned away from them, for two reasons. One is that they are horrendously expensive. Two is that I don't want to have to complete certain subjects which don't really interest me in order to gain a qualification (I already have far too many of those), and universities can over-emphasize the theoretical. I also wanted to do an online course where the lack of a physical self might loosen the stereotypes that come with being physically present. We all summarise one another to an extent: young, old; male, female; hip, frumpy; black, white etc. If appearance is irrelevant then the mind and its work becomes more visible. That's my theory anyway.

I'll post an assessment of the course as it progresses for anyone who might be interested, Barbara

http://www.writingclasses.com/

The past..

2007-08-10T19:16:00.000-11:00

I've been in Far North Queensland recently, the writer in me instantly invigorated by the contrast of my now self in a place I once lived years ago as a young child. Some things don't change; the moisture of the air, the cry of certain birds, the colour of the sky, the smell of the vegetation, the sounds of the night. I found myself in a kind of Proustian space for almost the whole time I was away, considering the past and then ones perspective upon the events of the past when a long way further into life. I've also been reading Javier Marias, a novelist whose ruminative style has a similar effect, of forcing the reader to pause and consider the currents of memory and thought as life continues progressing.

Now that my exam is out of the way, I'm again able to 'waste' lots of time thinking and writing, a pleasure I've spent many months without. Returning to writing has been a home-coming. So keep it up everyone still attached to this most noble of enterprise, and please post more for us all to read, Barbara

Infovores of the world unite

2007-03-10T23:19:00.000-11:00

I've been thinking lately it might be fun to self-publish and then release one of these books into the world, on a train or a ferry or a park bench, when the mood strikes. Does anyone really write, or paint, or make music, in order to become rich or famous? Most of us do these things because we gain something immeasurable from the process of making. Well maybe some people want money and fame, but I'm not one of them. I think it would be more interesting to create something and see if anyone else enjoyed it. Suzanne has written something similar on her latest blog post. I 've thought quite a lot about copyright and decided that for most of us it has no meaning. We cheerfully burn CDs, tape movies, pirate software and buy Shanghai ripoffs without a thought for the originators of all this work. So why not contribute our share of creative capital to the swirl. I learned two new words at a Conference in Sydney last month:

the exocortex - all of the material on the Internet, available to our brain, but not of it until we're ready to access it

and

infovores - that is, as well as being carnivores and herbivores, human beings are infovores

Two words just waiting to be put to further use!

Australia Council Grants

2007-02-14T00:17:00.000-11:00

Hello everyone

Has anyone out there in writing land applied for an Australia Council Grant and been successful in achieving funding?

I am attending a seminar put on by the QWC
in conjunction with the Australia Council to provide information on Thursday February 15, at the Metro Arts Building.

I have been looking into applying for a grant for my novel. Has anyone else done this? Is anyone else from the Queensland Writing Group applying?

Anyway, I will let you know what I find out at the session, happy valentines and happy writing.

This is on my latest blog.

Are any of you attending tomorrow night? Have any of you been through the process?

I’d love to know any thoughts.

All the best

Suzanne Strong

FELLOW QUEENSLAND WRITING MEMBER

Children's Writing Competition 2007

2007-02-04T15:53:00.000-11:00

CYA Later Alligator Conference is excited to announce the second writing and illustrating competition.

Deadline: Opens on 1st February 2007 – last mail postmarked by Saturday 11th August 2007.

Publication: The winning entry and short-listed finalist will be considered by a publisher of children’s books, with no guarantee of publication. Author/Illustrator retains copyright.

Entry Fee: $11.00 ($1.00 GST included) for each entry.

Categories:

Picture Book preschool, Picture Book primary, Chapter Book primary, Young Adults, Graphic Novel , Illustration.

For more information & entry form see:

www.cyaconference.com

Australia Day 2007

2007-01-25T23:36:00.000-11:00

I know that at least three of us in this group enjoyed a childhood in regional Queensland - so here's a glimpse of the past, for me anyway.

2007
A new year.. and time to write a new post. New people continue to join us, which is excellent. I'm hoping everyone will overcome their shyness and become more interactive with one another this year. It's always helpful to know someone has read your work and thought about it, and perhaps it's easier to be more direct online, than it would ever be in a traditional writers group. Over the holidays I bought and read the Robert Drewe edited 'Australian Short Stories' for 2006, which contains some fabulous stories, a few of which I've read several times in order to unpick their machinery, as it were. I've also read a collection of short stories by Cate Kennedy, a writer I've come to admire a lot. Another Australian writer I'm planning to read more of this year is Anson Cameron. I'm quite keen on a couple of blogs that I read regularly too. But we don't all look for the same things in what we read. I'd be delighted to have a few other recommendations added here as comments.. maybe we should all be discussing online some of our particular likes, and the reasons we admire those writers. Analysing another writer is a good way of learning I think. Anyway, happy posting everyone - Barbara

Dog days

2006-12-27T13:59:00.000-11:00

Christmas in Queensland - swatting mosquitoes, watching your skin age 100 years in 10 minutes, afternoons spent snoozing under a fan like a hot baby in its crib, reading trash magazines, eating seafood nightly at the local club, drinking.. have I forgotten anything?

Xmas message (from the trenches)

2006-12-02T12:40:00.000-11:00

I'm probably like everyone else in this group, trying to master the skills of good writing while at the same time working too much to put the right amount of energy and thought into it. There are also the additional activities relating to Christmas which consume precious writing 'resources' like time, mental energy etc. And Skye has a very young child (who looks quite beautiful) so has even less possibility of gathering her wits! But I'd like to keep us all focussed, just a little, on our 'other' purpose, which is to aim at becoming better writers. This involves both more attention from ourselves i.e. self-criticism and self-editing, and helpful suggestions from our hapless proof readers i.e. each other. I think we could all be doing more of that within the context of this group, although I understand how busy everyone is. Suzanne has put a notice onto her blog about an online competition she has entered, and is encouraging others to enter. This seems like a really interesting idea to me, something like Australian Idol, in a low-key kind of way. The person with the most clicks, wins! Allison and I both attended, by coincidence, a Business Writing Workshop which I thought tremendously helpful. Being a kind of dinosaur in terms of my approach to grammar, punctuation, and the correct structure for sentences it was interesting to be exposed to a more stream-lined and minimalist style. I'm quite happy to throw away the rules on split infinitives, and even those on prepositions and dangling participles (how I love that phrase); but the misplaced apostrophe remains an assault on my sensibility. I think one or two of us have been trying for the Brisbane Short Story award for this year ($6000 - quite an inducement) so good luck to everyone. I'm so bored with my story now that it seems like a tired old piece of clothing, worn in certain places from over-use. But I'll send it off. My philosophy is that writing imperfectly is still good practice, and better than not writing at all. You read it again years later and wonder how its flaws weren't blindingly obvious. Anyway a bientot mes amis, Bonne Noel and all that - don't forget we're part of a group and are here to both learn and teach, regards Barbara

A poetry launch

2006-11-15T14:15:00.000-11:00

You are invited to join us to celebrate the launch of the PostPressed Spring 2006 poetry list

Friday 24 November 2006

6.30 for 7pm

Red Chamber Parliament House

Cnr George and Alice Streets Brisbane

Tim Collins Along the Lip's Edge

'Collins has considerable descriptive powers and an originality of viewpoint not unlike some of the English Martian poets Š a striking denseness of imagery and ingenuity of observation Š' Geoff Page

Liz Hall-Downs My Arthritic Heart

'A good part of this collection is about the poets' struggle with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis that when coupled with poverty and inhumanity is a hard call.' Coral Hull

John Knight big man catching a small wave

'This is a tender collection of graceful haiku ever hopeful in their sadness and their joy'

Jeff Harpeng

Willie Bach Picking mangoes that are still green'

'Willy 'speaks from the wound' - he writes very angry, passionate lines that he hopes will make us all stop and consider the full implications of war.' Drew Hutton will read a selection of poetry from the book

Wendy Morgan Tiding Us Over

'The intellectual and the physical worlds interleave in a satisfying way: ideas and images ripple across each other and take on new forms.' Susan Hampton

and

Cathouse Creek

roots-blues-mountain music

Kim Downs - guitar & vocals

Liz Hall-Downs - vocals and bush bass

Gary Nunn - piano accordion and vocals

wine, nibbles, tea and coffee RSVP 3254 2056

Australian Writer's Marketplace : advertisement

2006-11-08T16:00:00.000-11:00

Everybody’s favourite resource, The Australian Writer’s Marketplace is finally ONLINE!
www.awmonline.com.au will feature all the information from the 2007/08 print edition as well as live updates to contacts, blogs, forums, templates, tips, news and much much more.
To kick off this landmark treasure trove for writers of all types will be Australia’s BIGGEST Online Writing Festival on 13 Nov from 9am to 10pm, featuring authors like Matthew Reilly, John Marsden and Kate Forsyth as well as top publishers and agents from the US and UK. Look out for specific program details in the coming days on www.awmonline.com.au
The festival will evolve into ongoing live forums with Australian and international guests every month in our endeavour to provide up-to-date, relevant, global information for our members and Australian writers.
Check out our free blog, SPEAKEASY and test the waters – you’ll be glad you did!
The Australian Writer’s Marketplace – Every contact you’ll ever need to succeed in the business of writing.

Our purpose

2006-07-30T11:56:00.000-11:00

Writers usually write to be read. As most writers know finding readers is the difficult part. The market for published Australian works is quite small and hard to break into, in spite of the many accomplished fiction writers there are.

It is also true that writers need practice and encouragement in order to improve their skills. This blog is an experiment in creating an online writing Group. It has been set up to act as a central place from which anyone who wishes to can have a personal writing blog attached. It isn't intended to link to blogs which have been created for other purposes. I have attached a couple to demonstrate what I mean. My plan is that each of us create and maintain our own blog, which we post to, and allow comment on.

I started out with the idea of using this to collect short stories together, but I think there is definitely room for poets or writers of other short pieces.

We can, if we choose, put together a print publication once a year. That might be a matter for discussion later on, if the online group works and enough writing comes into being.

Anyone who needs help creating a blog just email me. It's very simple, it's free, and you can use the same username and password that you create for your blog to add comments to one another's writing. I think comment should be open, and not anonymous.

Last, but not least, it might be fun to get together sometimes to eat and drink and talk.

Barbara