Currently watching

Over the last few weeks, my husband and I have been watching a series of motivational talks on TED.com. We've watched all kinds of things, including a fascinating talk on statistics. Yeah, I know. Go figure.

The TED site has heaps of great content and is well worth a browse. A lot more than a browse, actually. This is a site you could lose yourself in for days if you have time!

Here's today's (for us) by James Cameron, good not just for the Avatar-mad lot (like me), but all those of us who are creative, artistic or imaginative in our endeavours. It's called James Cameron: Before Avatar . . . a curious boy.

I'm going to pin his parting quote near my computer, so I can look at it when I'm wrestling with my novel: "Failure is an option, but fear is not." Go listen to the talk for the context. It's well worth the seventeen minutes that it takes.

Chris Baty and NaNoWriMo

Last week we had Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, come in and speak to our students. As someone who entered (and won!) NaNoWriMo the year before last, I was keen to hear his insights.

NaNo was hard for me. I started well by going on a writing retreat to Phillip Island with my good friend Ellen for several days. Although Ellen wasn't doing NaNo, we both wrote furiously, and it was wonderful having time away from family and its constraints and interruptions, and emails. It made me realise just how distracting emails can be -- you're writing away and that ping sounds to tell you something has landed in your inbox, and you have to go see what it is in case it's something important. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Anyway, after a brilliant start, things dribbled off. I returned home to a series of crises (which seems to be an ongoing feature of my family life, but then I have teenagers...) and the writing dried up. But I was determined not to fail, and so, slowly, I picked up the writing again, but it was a bit sporadic. By the end of week two I was way behind schedule, but things weren't looking impossible. By the end of week three I was chasing about 20,000 words, till finally I had several days where I had to pump out in excess of 5,000 words. And I did it. It was daunting and scary and hard and fun, and it felt good to finally scramble those words and send them in for verification. And to see the confirmatory message that I'd won.

Chris Baty talked about tackling NaNo as a series of different weeks. He called weeks one and four the champagne weeks: week one, you're on fire and the words are pouring out, weeks two and three are the slogs, and by week four you're near the end and can see the finish line. Hmm. I'm not sure that quite describes my experience of week four, but I concede it's probably like this for most people who have paced themselves better than I did. I'm sure I couldn't see the finish line because of the burning of all that sweat from my forehead, dripping in my eyes. Never mind.

The great thing about guest speakers such as Chris is that they're usually so inspiring. Chris was no exception: filled with enthusiasm for a concept that's pretty exciting when you think about it. All around the world, all these novelists set aside a month where writing becomes their number one priority. And it did -- with 1660 words per day, every day (or 5000+ towards the end), there's not a lot of time left for frivolous socialising. NaNo is growing -- and I could see the infectiousness of that enthusiasm in our students. Few had heard of NaNo before, but most were keen to try it afterwards and were lamenting the fact that November was so far away.

Chris originally started NaNo with a group of friends, who would take their laptops to cafes and write together. I must say that, having been on several writing retreats where we've all sat around writing, I know that writing socially like this works really well for me. There's something about being there with others that keeps my bum glued to that seat. I can't sit and distract myself with a few games of Spider Solitaire because I'm stuck. I can't get up and wander around the house, pick up a book and start reading. I can't take my dogs for a walk or ring a friend or anything. There's me and the public conscience: I have to write. We all have to write.

The NaNo site was great too. I loved the word tracker and the fact that I could watch how my friends were progressing. There were great bulletin boards where I could go to discuss problems (plot problems, ideas, characterisation) if I had any -- but for me these proved to be a really interesting source of distraction, so I tended not to spend too much time there.

Last year I didn't attempt NaNo. I was still teaching in November (whereas the year before I had finished), and had too much marking to do. This year I'll be finished again (apart from late assignments), so will probably give it another go. The trick will be to get a more regular work pattern than last time. I must confess I haven't gone back and read what I've written, but will have to do that at some point. And after hearing Chris talk, I have to say that like my students I can't wait!

In the zone

Is there anything as wonderful as writing in the zone. You sit down to your computer -- you may or may not feel inspired, and you stare at the blank page, bring up the novel that you've been working on, read over the last few pages, make a few changes, fix a comma, take out that apostrophe in "it's" that shouldn't be there, add a bit more setting, and then suddenly your fingers are alive and trying to keep up with that zinging going on in your brain. You're in the zone. In your character's head. The ideas are coming thick and fast, and you're struggling to keep up. You go, go, go. And keep going. An hour later there are 1500 words on the page, and you know what? They're not too damned bad. You know, though, that in the morning, when the heat has passed, you may look back on them and think they're crap. There's a high probability that this may happen. You expect it. But you know what else? You get up in the morning and look at those words and think, hey, they're not too damned bad!

Inspiration's like that. It can hit at any time. And when it hits writing is magical. At times like that you know that writing is the best thing in the whole world. That's not how you feel when a rejection comes in. Or when you realise you still haven't been paid for that award-winning story that was published twelve months ago, and that the reality is you're not going to be paid for it. Contract or not. Not unless you go and do some serious chasing.

Sometimes writing as a profession sucks! The endless waiting. The heart-dropping parcel on your doorstep. The no, thank yous -- great story, but we've recently accepted one just like it. Or the no, thank yous -- I just didn't fall in love with your story. How could they not, with a hero like yours?

But you plug away at it because you have to.

You plug away at it because you're driven.

You plug away at it because you've got no choice.

Sometimes it's the hardest profession in the world. You have a deadline, and no time. After all, you have a real job -- one that pays you money. You have to make work deadlines because they're your bread and butter. And you're not feeling inspired to write.

The gut-wrenching truth is that professional writers write whether they feel inspired or not. They sit on their chairs and sweat blood, trying to distill words from thin air. This is their alchemy. And they do it: that's the real magic of writing. They do it. Day after day after day.

Sometimes, lightning hits, frazzles the locks on their brains and unleashes their creativity. Not very often, but sometimes it does. Then they're in the zone. They take those days and they know that such days are gifts. The stories that come out of such writing are gifts.

Many newcomers to the craft are out searching for the great secret of how to write. Books tell them there are no secrets. Published writers tell them there are not secrets. No secrets, only words on the page, long hours of practise, practise, practise.

But there is one great secret. Shh, don't tell anyone, because I'm going to share it with you. The great secret is that professional writers look at the writing they've done and they can't tell whether they wrote it while in the zone or not. Those hardwon words are just as precious, just as polished, as those rarer ones that come as gifts.

It's something you need to remember when you're not feeling inspired. Something I need to remember too. Something we all do, because, really, lack of inspiration is no excuse not to write. You know it. I know it.

We just have to keep at it.

Deadlines are great. NaNoWriMo is great. Writing contracts are great.

This is your passion so take it seriously. Professionally. Back yourself in. And when those gifts arrive, celebrate them, for no doubt if you're plugging away daily, you've earnt those gifts, and they are rightfully yours.

Where do writers get their ideas?

This does seem to be the question that gets asked more often than any other at writers' conferences and conventions, and the one that the guest writers always roll their eyes at. Ideas are around us -- they mark boundaries limited only by our imaginations.

Last weekend I was away, staying in a small country town. Now, as it happens, a friend of mine used to live in this town and told me that the people in it were rather strange. This weekend I saw evidence for myself. We decided to have fish and chips on the Friday night, and walked down to the local fish and chip shop, which had signs up to say it was under new management. On the door was a sign that said they had closed that day (and presumably forever) because of small-minded people who'd spread rumours, and then thanked those who had "given them a go". Ah, the old management, I thought. Only there was a second sign that said something like: "Watch out ya dogs, youll get your own", and it was signed by one of the "new management" people.

Right. Nice.

The next day I was going into the supermarket when I heard the following conversation:

Woman: "He says I'm a really nasty person."

Man: "You know what you should do? You should abuse him. In public. In front of everyone."

Now, normally, I wouldn't think too much about such a conversation. A wife having had an argument with her husband and confiding in her brother? A woman who's just dumped a boyfriend? (And already that's the writer at work -- speculating on what the story is, what the motivations are.) But in light of the previous day's discovery, this conversation took on more gravitas. Nice town, that. And not just in a sarcastic sense, but in the sense that this will feed my fiction. My stories are set in a fantastical setting, and there are no fish and chip shops per se, but that doesn't mean I won't use this event, change it, shape it to fit the story I'm writing. Here are some pictures of the nearby environs: a waterfall, and scenery on a bushwalk we did on a day that was too hot for walking. Lovely translucent leaves on trees. And all of that is grist for the story crucible too. Such detail can enrich our settings.




And don't forget to look for character moments -- the time your friend looked like she was sucking a lemon when you told her some good news. And why, exactly, did she look like that? Ask yourself -- constantly ask yourself about why people act the way they do. Why did your mother hang up on you the other day? Why did your girlfriend stand you up?

Some years ago I was in a class run by a reasonably well-known writer, and I happened to mention that a friend of mine lived in a front flat, and in the flat behind lived two ex-prison guards, and that these ex-guards were so worried about being recognised that they jumped in their car and drove down their driveway to collect their letters from their letterbox. They wouldn't get out of the car for this, but would lean out, and then reverse back up the driveway and go inside. The teacher said straightaway, "Oh, that's fantastic. I'm going to use that in my next novel." I was a bit miffed, because I thought it was my story, but of course you can't copyright ideas, and I had shared it with her. I don't know whether or not she used it, and I wouldn't feel right about doing this without asking whether the other person intended to use the idea, but legally she did nothing wrong. You can't copyright ideas, and in any case I could always modify it and use it in a different way if I wanted to. But of course my characters don't have cars or letterboxes either.

There's more in the annoying moments of life. Today, at work, I was trying to chase down some forms I needed, and got the ring around -- literally. First, the switchboard sent me somewhere with a press-button menu, and when I selected the most suitable option, I got the switchboard again; then they directed me somewhere else that still wasn't right, and when these new people said they'd put me through to the right department, they put me through to myself. Only I got the answering machine, of course, because I was already using the phone. Moments like that, trimmed back or expanded, can provide comic relief in an otherwise too-serious story. Think about what your story needs, and what you can use to flesh it out. Look for interesting snippets in newspapers -- quite often the Odd Spot can spark ideas, as can strange (and even mundane) article titles.

Keep notes. Use a voice recorder if you don't like to scribble. Keep a dream journal -- something I keep meaning to try except that I hardly ever remember my dreams.

One thing that many writers do is conflate disparate ideas -- it's a great way to come up with something original; after all, we've all heard the chestnut that there's no such thing as a new story. But pulling together two or three ideas and weaving something new out of them can be immensely rewarding and exciting. So don't despair that you don't have any ideas -- they're all around you. You just need to learn to look for them!

Putting in the time

Tonight, I had several things I could be doing: writing, marking late Novel 2 assignments, marking Editing assignments, correcting student writing from Editing, workshopping Novel 2 chapters, reading and making selections from a Poetrix folder, rewriting my last section from the group novel, doing submissions (which I'm atrociously bad at making time to do, but seeing as I had a poem accepted today, I might feel inspired for a couple of days -- so must grab this time while I can), writing material for my online unit, writing material for my website, and catching up with blogs and emails. Instead, I found myself doing homework -- and while I have been at a training course for three days with work, this was homework for my piano teacher.

I've always wanted to play piano. When I was small, friends of ours had a piano, and I always thought it the most lovely of instruments. Our friend, Neville (really Mum and Dad's friend), still lived at home, and the piano was his mother's, and she would let me play with it. As a teenager, I learnt how to play a simple tune that involved rolling my knuckles back and forward along the black keys, and if people asked if I could play I would jokingly say yes and then perform this. It usually left them flabbergasted, though at the time I don't think I realised this wasn't necessarily a good thing.

Throughout my childhood, teen years and early adulthood, the piano remained this exotic, almost mystical instrument -- one we couldn't afford to own. I dreamed of playing, but knew it was futile to ask for lessons. When my friend Julie had guitar lessons, I secretly envied her parents' investing in her musical education. But we had no piano to practise on in any case.

My husband had an electronic keyboard -- and while his father is a great proponent of the electronic keyboard over the piano, I loathe it for its inferior sound. When we had kids, we sent our oldest off to have lessons. My husband raced off and bought a piano for her to practise on, unaware that halfway through her first lesson Princess Sleepyhead's teacher would halt her and tell her that was it, and to have a good life. Fortunately, two years later we found her another teacher, one who was wonderfully patient. In the meantime, I started to teach myself to play, and although I was enthusiastic, I was trying to write so spare time went into writing, not practising.

Years later, frustrated at children who were obviously musical, but unwilling to practise, I took up lessons too, which first of all meant unlearning all the bad habits I'd taught myself (but, on the other hand, left me with a strong propensity for sight reading). Soon, I was playing far more difficult songs than the children were -- but I might add with far less fluency than they were capable of -- something two years later I still struggle with, because I'm so busy thinking about where my fingers should be going next.

At first, wanting to inspire the children, and perhaps frustrated by my burn-out after Clarion, I practised often. Maybe playing offered me the creative outlet that writing had refused me; maybe it salved the creative frustration I was feeling. Others might call it the perfect procrastination tool. I don't know. I never saw it as this. But I know as my writing drive has grown strong again, I'm practising less and less. It's not that I don't want to practise, or that I'm lazy (and I quite like the challenge of scales, which I see more as pattern recognition), just that I don't have time.

To be a concert pianist (not that I'm aspiring towards this) we all know you have to spend hours and hours practising. I'd settle for something far less ambitious: just to play songs I like, fluently and without mistakes. Most writers, though, are aiming for concert pianist level with their writing -- that is that they want to be published, want people to pay to read their work, want the acknowledgment of their peers. Yet many writers aren't prepared to do those long hours of practise. I can see this is what I've been doing in the rewrites of my book: spending the time, learning and honing the craft. I don't mind this -- I've enjoyed putting in the long hours. I'm serious about my writing in a way that I'm not serious about my piano. I have done and continue to do the long hours -- and I derive a lot of enjoyment from these hours. I cannot see why other writers do not -- but I see this in my students all the time. Perhaps it is laziness, perhaps fear, perhaps it's just not the obsession for them that it is for me. To achieve exalted level status, you have to be prepared to work. Bum on seat. All of that. All those hoary old chestnuts: it's 10% inspiration and...

We know how it goes. We know how easily it can go wrong. We know sometimes it can go right. What we need to decide is how much we're willing to put in to make the dream happen. I don't know if I'll ever achieve even the level of proficiency I want in piano -- because I'm not driven enough. That's okay. That's my choice. But I do know with writing, I'm going to continue to give it all I've got.

Why I write

Every now and then I'll be talking to another writer -- someone from a writer's group, or a student or at a conference and convention -- and they'll say something that really floors me: "Oh, yes, I write because I want to become rich and famous."

Hello? Those who've been around the tracks awhile know this scenario is possible but not very likely, especially in Aus. No matter how literate our population, the fact is that our numbers are much lower than say the reading audience in the US. Still, even in Aus, there are a few who make the kind of figures that most people salivate about -- those few success stories who sustain the dreamers among us. But the last figure I heard bandied around for how much the average "professional" writer in Australia makes was $6,000/year. Hardly enough to retire on.

I say to my students that you have to love writing. You have to be driven. You have to want to write. This is a hard journey with a lot of knocks along the way, and if you don't have the passion -- if you're not getting something out of it irrespective of whether you're getting rejection slips or acceptances in the mail, then it's going to be even harder. Some of them look at me as if my skin has suddenly turned green and smoke is belching from my nose. "But I want to make money," they'll say. I have to admit that at the moment I have made far more from my editing than I ever have from my writing. That may change one day -- or it may not. Acceptance is beyond my control. What is in my control is writing the best book that I can. Crafting. Keeping an audience in mind -- all of that.

I'm not sure I always love the writing process itself, but I love having written. That's the aphrodisiac for me -- the euphoria of having created. Having something on the page that is my vision (even if not quite the way I hoped it would turn out). I know others love the first draft, but to me the redrafting is where the juice is.

There are times when life does get in the way, and I can't make time to write. Boy, don't I know about it. I get increasingly frustrated and grumpy. Mostly, though, it's a matter of planning. Of putting my own writing high on the list of priorities -- if not first. After all, if I'm going to call myself a writer, one thing I have to do is to write!