Currently reading

Student first chapters and outlines -- a great way to get a feel for what my students are going to be working on this year, though sometimes one will change horses midway through, but that's okay.

Trouble is that most of them have been together for a year already and know each other's novels intimately, whereas this is the first time I've seen them. It's more work for me, of course, but well worth the time and is always interesting to see where they're coming from. I've also had them talking about their novels and filling out a questionnaire, so hopefully I'll have a good handle for where they're coming from.

One of the worries that someone will always have is what if what they're writing isn't my thing. I'm a genre fiction writer, which their first year teacher wasn't, so the genre writers are always happy to discover that. (And it's a great balance to have.) But even so, there can be that persistent niggle. And really it doesn't matter. There will always be books that aren't quite my thing, but it doesn't mean I can't look at them objectively to see whether they're working, how well executed they are. I'm more interested in the craft than whether something rings my particular bells.

One of my pet peeves in workshopping is the workshopper who says they can't comment on something because it's not their genre. What a cop out. I was in a workshop once where someone had written a magic realism story and every workshopper except me and the workshop leader used that line. It was hardly fair to the poor writer who had made detailed comments on everyone else's stories even though they weren't in the same genre as what she was writing. Anyone can comment on craft, and, really, one of the great pleasures of teaching writing is the variety of projects we get to work with, so students shouldn't worry about such things but should rejoice in the fact that they're writing something only they can write.

Online teaching (and face-to-face)

The last two years I've taught a class online, but this year because I was dropping back from 0.5 to 0.4 to get more writing done, I decided to forego my online class. My other two face-to-face classes are two I've been teaching for a while, and still feel passionate about. I've enjoyed teaching online, but have found it seriously impinged on my desire to keep my blog going. I've also joined Facebook, but haven't really got in the swing of it yet, perhaps because my kids are always on, and we have to share the computer with internet access and so I never seem to get on.

Anyway, back to the point of this post: so, there I was dropping back my time fraction, but then found out that my contract was set at 0.5 until December, so decided to run with it. Only I decided to take on another face-to-face class, a repeat of one I'm already teaching, which would free up my home time to write, rather than to teach. But you know what? I'm missing the online class. It was fun. (Which is not to say the face-to-face classes aren't, because they are.) I suppose what I'm really missing is the Discussion Board, where I got to read what my fellow writers thought about all sorts of things writerly. We had some really in-depth discussions on the Discussion Board.

On the other hand, I've had some great discussions in my novel class this year already. But it's different reading it online. More people contribute. (Though I can't complain about that with this year's class: they're a talkative bunch, with lots of interesting stuff to share.) Online, people have time to think about what they want to say, to formulate a response. They often get to a deeper level of engagement, just because they can take the time to think about it. In class, they're on-the-spot more, which doesn't mean they can't come up with some terrific ideas, because they can.

Sometimes, when we teachers get together and think about how much unpaid work we do (and believe me, with all the workshopping and marking of assignments in teaching writing, there's a lot), and think about all the admin stuff that's driving us crazy, we forget just how lucky we are. Some of the class discussions, both online and in class, are energising. I come out thinking, wow, that was a great class, and I remember how I loved being a student.

The other great thing is that every year is different: every class is different. Each year has new challenges and new rewards, and these aren't always easily apparent, especially not at the beginning of the year. But they make the job interesting -- there's never a feeling of same-old, same-old, because it's never the same.

Online teaching

This year, I've taught my first online course, which has been quite a different experience to teaching a face-to-face class. I've been prepared for this by first studying as an online student and doing courses on e-learning and course design etc. I think it's important to begin as a student, so you have a good feel of the types of problems (not just technical) your own students might encounter.

A few years ago, my friend Sherryl and I signed up to do a Diploma of VET (Vocational and Education and Training) online with a number of colleagues from our university. We were the only two who managed to complete all the units. Many never made it online. This astonished me. These were fellow teachers, committed to upgrading their quals. There's a very important lesson about motivation in that for any would-be online facilitator.

Sherryl and I worked on the course design of this course together, and we structured it to reflect as well as we could those things that work well for us in the classroom. This meant there are plenty of writing exercises, analysis, discussions.

I had also been involved in the development of another subject, but my input had been mainly "teching" -- taking the writing and getting it ready for the web. That subject was more self-directed where students could plug away at their own pace -- complete the whole course in a week (a very intensive week) if they wanted. Ours was much more interactive, requiring students to log on each week (at their own time), and interact both with the teacher and with each others. I suppose each way of doing it would have its own fans and detractors, but I must say I think the second method is far more rewarding -- both for the teacher and the students.

The plus-side of online teaching is that there's very little prep (though I did have to read or reread all the set stories for discussion), that I don't have to travel in to the university to teach my class, that I can do it in my own time. I do have to log in most days of the week, so students feel I'm around and available. And it's fun! And you have students from all over the place -- so this year I had one in outback Queensland and one in Hong Kong as well as the local students. Also, you get to know the students in a different way -- as with all things online, people will often reveal more about themselves than they will in the real world, which can be a rewarding and interesting thing.

The minus-side is that I have to log in most days of the week, and that the workshopping seems so much more onerous to do online. I'd much rather be able to scribble on a typed manuscript than use Track Changes (Word's editing feature) and Insert Comments. There's also the inadvertent misunderstandings that happen when one person writes a comment, perhaps in fun, and someone else misinterprets the tone of the message. That's when the facilitator sometimes has to facilitate, and not let things fester. This didn't happen very often, fortunately. For me, the other downside is that I felt much less like attending to my other online "duties", such as emails and blogs.

I'm not sure I'd like to do all my teaching online -- I value my real-life interactions too much -- but it's a great way of adding some variety to your teaching. It's a different experience but a rewarding one. And, although I still thing the face-to-face classroom is better (with its instant feedback), this is a close approximation and offers some things the face-to-face classroom can't -- for example, feedback on in-class writing exercises is written rather than verbal and hence more permanent.

Teaching and learning

A few years ago, I taught for one semester in another course, in an area that was new to me, so it was always a scramble to stay ahead of the class. I took the gig to fill in for someone who was going on long service leave, and she very helpfully sat me down ahead of time and went through how she taught the class. I tried to mimic what she did, and it was a struggle. I was hating the class, and they were hating me. About a third of the way through the semester, I realised this really wasn't working for any of us and sat down to think about why. 

I love teaching in Professional Writing and Editing, so I wondered at first whether it was the fact that I wasn't as familiar with nor as passionate about the subject matter. No, I decided, it wasn't that. I was definitely interested in the subject matter, and was working alongside another teacher, who was driving the course, and she was most helpful and prepared stuff for me, which I then went away and researched so I knew what we were talking about. 

Okay, if it wasn't the subject matter, perhaps it was the students. They were definitely different from the PWE students, being much rowdier, more multicultural, less literate and -- hmm, dare I say "serious"? But they were a vibrant lot -- I didn't really think that was it either. (And, in fact, later I learnt it definitely wasn't that.)

Then it hit me. I was trying to be this other teacher who was on long service leave. I was teaching the course her way, not approaching it the way I approached "my" classes. Sounds silly but that was a momentous discovery to make and a real turning point. That week I threw out my class plans and started again from scratch, and the next week, the students didn't know what had hit them. The first thing I abandoned was the thing they (and I) hated most, so they were very receptive to the change.

Within weeks I was loving the course and loving them, and they were obviously enjoying it a lot more. I found they were a lot more serious about their studies than I had thought -- once they started getting more out of it, they settled in and knuckled down. Or perhaps it was just that I had won their respect. I don't know. I do know the course evaluations were very positive -- something I don't think they would have been if I'd continued on the way I had been going.

It's so much easier, though, teaching something you love. And so it is for me with my writing and editing subjects, and though I sometimes get burned out from workshopping, and find I'll do almost anything to avoid doing it outside work, I love the fact that teaching enriches my own writing, through my research, through my interactions with students and hearing them discuss other people's work. Sometimes I think that to teach writing is to be truly blessed. (But, of course, that's not how I feel right in the middle of those big assessment weeks when my eyes are bugging out,  and I'd do anything to get to my own writing . . .)

Chaotic year

Well, there has been a long silence from my end, I know. And it hasn't been from lack of desire -- just exhaustion and eye strain (I think). Normally, the school year gets underway, and I'm on top of things, especially in the early weeks before the assignments start rolling in. But this year -- this year has been so over-the-top nuts that I don't know whether I'm coming or going or even here in the moment!

I'm trying to sort out what is different:

(i) I've increased my work load from 0.4 to 0.6, which is always going to be a big thing as it's a 50% increase in hours. But it seems like about a 200% increase... On the other hand, it's not like I haven't had a similar teaching load in the past, because I used to be 0.4 in my current job, and teaching one subject off campus as a sessional for another institution. But this still feels like more.

(ii) I'm not teaching a small online unit I've taught the last few years -- this is a good thing as it tended to sop up all my office time, so this should have cut me a lot of slack.

(iii) I'm teaching a new subject so have spent an awful lot of time putting together a new reader. You know, we do get marking and preparation time, but it doesn't come anywhere near the time we spend doing marking and preparation. I'm not complaining, because for all the extra hours I put in, I still think this is a better job with better conditions than my old science job. For a start, I don't get called in at 3 a.m. for a couple of hours, and then be needed back at 9. And then I'm not working with carcinogenic, infectious, corrosive, acidic, smelly, explosive materials. I haven't set my workplace on fire. (Yes, did that in the lab once!) And I don't have the same levels of stress -- I well remember the day the immunohaematology teacher told us that in most subjects if we got 5 out of 10 we passed, but in that subject if we got 9 out of 10 we had just killed one person. And she wasn't joking. And I also remember all the histology teachers with their missing fingers. But that's another story. Suffice to say I now resent giving up whole weekends for marking, but I do like my job.

(iv) I'm teaching a new subject so have a lot more class prep to do. It's always hard teaching something new because you have to assimilate so much more knowledge. If you want to learn about something, teach it. Seriously. So that's a big drain on my time, but on the other hand it's a great learning experience, and I'm really enjoying that class. And it's a great complement to the other two classes I'm teaching. They're all so different.

(v) I'm writing materials for an online subject that another teacher is teaching, so the challenge is for me to stay comfortably ahead of the class. That's been both harder and more rewarding than I thought, so again it's sopping up lots of time -- time I could be writing -- but I am getting something out of it all.

(vi) I've just finished judging one literary competition and started shortlisting judging for another. These have also been big drains on my time. It's always an interesting process, judging, and so much harder than I expect it to be. How does one weigh up apples against oranges? I don't know. But it's also a great experience for any writer to go through to truly understand (yes, split infinitive, I know. Shocking, isn't it?) what the other end of the process looks like.

(vii) I'm tired. Every year I seem to be sleeping fewer hours, and this year I can't remember the last time I had a weekend, or even a full day off. Doesn't mean I'm always using my time effectively, or every day is jam packed with work, but then I am trying to maintain a house and a family outside of all of this. And read. And write. It's not an easy balance, and sometimes the things that go are my online presence. So I'm sorry to all the people I owe emails to!

Part of the problem is that I had a bit of January off, and actually had it off. Didn't do any work for work, but boy am I paying for it now. Anyway, it's all good -- the midsemester break is looming, I've just written next week's test, and am starting -- just starting to think I can see that light at the end of the tunnel. Let's hope it's not just a glowworm, leading me into deep, dark places!

The bum end of the semester

Well, we're coming up on the bum end of the semester -- a rotten time for students who have lots of assignments due, and a rotten time for teachers who have lots of marking to do. My marking looms over me like a spectre. When I want to write, I think about my marking. Marking hangs over everything. Really, I should just sit down to do it, but this week I don't have much. I have a few late assignments, and even a couple of early ones, which is a surprise. Next week, though, I will be eating, breathing, and sleeping marking. I've had years, when I've had big classes, where I finished at 3 am the night before I had to hand it back, and then got up again at 5 just to make sure it was all done. But I try not to manage my week like that. Partly I've managed to reduce my end-of-semester load by pulling some of the word limits down by making some of this work due earlier. It's all a matter of time management.

As a 0.4 teacher, I get paid 3.15 hours of marking and preparation time a week. In all likelihood, next week I'll spend more than 20 to 30 hours marking. So it really is a matter of doing it bit by bit. But to compensate I'll have the long stretch over summer with no marking. If I'm smart, I'll use this prep time to make a big leap into next year's preparation, especially as I look likely to be teaching a new subject: Poetry. (Well, new for me.) Some of my friends teach the same subjects every year. Some teach new subjects every year. I must say I fall more into the first category. I am one of two Editing teachers, and coordinate the subject. And Novel makes a great counterpoint. I've taught a few other subjects along the way (though none put me out of my comfort zone like the one over in Liberal Arts did last year -- but that was a great experience in its own way). I think Poetry will complement the other two nicely and am quite excited about teaching it.

It's always more work teaching a new subject, but offers me a boost in other ways. The extra prep keeps me up-to-date with something I might otherwise have let slip. And makes me get back into the practice of it. For example, I haven't looked at any poetry theory for a few years. Now I'll be digging out my texts, and even better will have an excuse to go out and buy some more books! Yay.

Workshopping

Yesterday, we had a get-together with a lot of other Prof Writing teachers from around the state. Such days are tremendous -- a chance to talk about what we teach and how we teach it, to throw around ideas and glean insights to what goes on in other campuses (and how well off we are or are not sitting in all sorts of areas). We had a couple of guest speakers, one from Lonely Planet, to talk about working there as an editor and one to talk about managing students who are having problems. But perhaps the most useful part of the day was when we got into subject groups to talk about our subjects.

I was astounded in the novel writing group to hear one teacher say she was yet to be convinced that doing workshopping in class was at all useful. At all useful? I think it's vital! Mind you, there are a different number of ways workshopping can be done, and not all of them are as useful as others. Here are some ways I've been part of a workshop:

(i) the writer reads out their work and, after listening, people give comments back. Really, as a means of getting constructive feedback, this is useless. Great if all you want is a pat on the back, but I always find it's difficult to maintain concentration, and to some extent my engagement with the story is determined by the writer's reading-out-loud voice. A bad writer can mangle a great story. I've seen it poems too: a performance poet who makes a dull-on-the-page poem sparkle, and a monotonous reader who makes a thoughtful poem come out flat and boring.

(ii) the writers read each other's work on the day and make comments on the page. Often the writers work in small groups (and in a classroom situation, this usually means that the teacher hasn't read the work). Sorry, but I don't think this works well either. It might work if you have great workshoppers who know what they're doing, but for new students who need guidance... Nope, you're not going to sell me on that one as a method. And as a teacher I like to hear what everyone has to say, which I can't do if I'm moving from group to group. Plus, I like to take part in the workshopping -- it's a great chance to discuss what's working and what isn't and to use this as a further, real-life teaching tool. And I think you get far better comments when people have time to take home a story and let it digest. Doing it on the spot puts some people under too much pressure.

(iii) writer's take copies home (or email it to each other). They write notes on each other's hard copy and then come and discuss it -- either in a whole class (my preferred method because the more voices you have, the more things will get picked up), in small groups (necessary sometimes in big classes) or in small groups in front of the whole class, which can work. I loved the whole-class workshop best as a student, and I love it best as a teacher. Again, I have the control and can monitor how much effort everyone is putting in. And I get to hear everyone's comments, which can be informative for me too!

My classes always use method three. I have variations -- special directions that they can follow for intense workshopping, and use the Clarion variations: the "ditto" and "anti-ditto" rules to stop unnecessary repetition, and also in forbidding the workshopee from speaking until everyone has finished discussing their story. Really, I think this works well.

How we learn to write

In class on Tuesday, one of my writing students who has been wrestling with her memoir had a breakthrough, and it made me ponder how we learn to write. There are the obvious things that we've all heard, of course: first of all we learn through writing, writing, writing. And through reading, reading, reading. I'm a firm believer in the long years of practice.

I know I learnt a lot about writing through workshopping and seeing other people's comments and their line edits. I know some writing teachers don't do line edits because they don't feel that they have the right to cross out somebody else's words, but I think it's an important way of showing how to improve the flow of words/information/narrative. The student is, of course, free to take your advice or not, but to me not line editing is a wasted opportunity to show the students (rather than tell them) how to improve. All very well to just write "awkward" next to a line, but some don't have the craft knowledge yet to know how to deal with that.

I'm a subscriber to the theory that our learning proceeds in a slow gentle curve that eventually plateaus out, until the day when another thing clicks and you jump up a level, up a straight cliff-face, onto another gentle incline curving up. And so we proceed in a series of curves and plateaus with the odd leaps that take us to the next level. And my student jumped one of those levels in class. Most years, at some point, at least one student will make such a leap, and it's a heartening thing for a teacher to see, because it means that all that we're saying and doing has at least had some effect. For me, it's moments like those that make teaching worthwhile. I love my students -- I find it inspiring to be among like-minded people, but these moments when you see such tangible evidence of improvement, teaching becomes something more than a job I enjoy doing.

A few years ago, I had two students who were close friends in my class: one was the most eager student I'd ever seen and so keen to improve her skills. She was always asking me what she could do to improve her work. She and her friend were pretty much on the same level and, as luck would have it, it was her friend that made the leap during class that year. The first girl was glad for her friend, but became increasingly frustrated at her own lack of progress. We can't will these jumps; they happen when we've assimilated some piece of knowledge, deconstructed and reconstructed it and come up with something new -- an insight, an epiphany, a light-bulb moment. I know at times I've experienced that frustration: knowing I've needed something more in my writing, but not quite what that thing is or how to get it. I had to tell my student not to lose heart, but to be patient. Patience does bring us improvements as long as we continue that essential practice. We all learn at different rates. Sometimes these leaps come through trying something different -- a completely different approach. For my student it was trying present tense instead of past. Present tense allowed her to relive the moment and so to capture it as if it were happening right there, right then. It doesn't mean her story necessarily has to stay in present tense, but for now it is helping her unlock the door to her own creativity. She's bubbling with excitement about it, and so am I.

Book launch: The whisper of leaves

Today, I've had the rare and rather satisfying experience of attending a book launch by one of my past students. Karen Simpson Nikakis was one of my Novel 2 students and launched her new fantasy series The whisper of leaves, Book 1 of The Kira Chronicles.


It's always exciting to see a "new" author arrive on the scene, but this isn't Karen's only first. She also spearheads Allen & Unwin's new imprint Arena, and is the first novelist to be accepted through publisher Louise Thurtell's innovative Friday Pitch sessions. (Authors can email a first chapter and synopsis on Fridays for consideration. More information can be found here.)

I had an interesting chat to Louise (who'd come down from Sydney for the launch, and to attend the Melbourne Writers' Festival) about Karen, fantasy writing, teaching writing, and publishing in general. She thought it was great that at least one writing teacher out there loved fantasy, and I spoke about friends who've studied writing and are forced to write only literary fiction. I really can't see the point in this -- for two reasons: (i) literary fiction doesn't sell, and (ii) writers should be writing what they're passionate about. Karen is passionate about fantasy -- she has followed her dream and now it's paying off, and that should be heartening for all writers!

Professor John McLaren (former VU academic and editor of Overland) launched the novel, and made an interesting speech about the importance and value of fantasy in our lives, which was good for me to hear because sometimes in the SF community that I inhabit there is the pervading opinion about how academics perceive speculative fiction, and it's nice to be reminded that not everyone is as polarised in their views. I mean, it always amuses me how magic realism is viewed as respectable, and yet its close kin fantasy is deemed rubbish.

He also spoke about the richness of the world that Karen invokes, richness both in detail and in language, and how love permeates it all -- and it again made me think of the divisions between science fiction writing and fantasy writing: the head versus the heart.

Karen's speech was warm and gracious -- and without being at all longwinded, she managed to thank everyone there (I think!), and gave our course a plug, which was nice. It's great to see a writer whose family is behind them -- hers seemed suitably excited. Here's a photo of Karen and her kids with her new book (I just wish my camera program filtered out the red-eye, the way it says it does!).


I hope Karen's new book (and indeed the trilogy) and Louise's new imprint both do spectacularly well!

Writer or not?

The last few days I've been doing some work at home (inbetween editing my novel), listening to some podcasts we're producing to get an online unit up and running. Yesterday, I was finishing off one I'd started earlier, which was a recording of an editor from an independent publishing house, talking about the publishing process. Among the many things she talked about was a decision she says that every writer must make: whether they want to be a writer and make that the focus of everything, or whether they want to do other things and write books around (or about) these.

It's an interesting topic when you consider the great divide between those who write full-time, and those who support their writing with working full- or part-time. This second group are often not people who want to do other things and write, but writers who want to write full-time but cannot support their basic existence by writing alone. There's a big YET that comes after that sentence. Maybe this is a situation peculiar to those of us living in countries with smaller populations, but I suspect not. After all, every country will have their emerging writers; it's just that here in Australia, most of our established writers cannot live by writing alone. That's the difference.

There are also those who write for the sheer joy of writing and have no intention of getting published. I consider them -- if they are still serious about honing their craft, and many of them are -- every bit as much real writers. (And I know the editor wasn't suggesting that one group was more or less important than the other, just that they have different focuses -- or foci, if you'd rather.) I had an argument with one of my Sydney friends last time I was up there about this. She suggested that every writer wants to be published. I don't support this view at all. And when I was at Buninyong the other day, I was interested to hear Peter Bishop talk about this: how some writers, well on the path to publication, suddenly decide, for whatever reason, that it's a path they don't want to continue on.

In opposition are those who write to be rich or famous. They're usually new to writing. Even as a beginner, I don't think my glasses were ever this rosy. I always wonder how long disillusionment will take to set in, and whether it will stop them from writing. If they're real writers, it won't. And as a counterpoint are those published writers who talk about never having had a rejection, but they are few and far between. Most of us suffer rejection at some time in our writing careers, especially at the beginning.

But the whole idea of a writer being someone whose full-time focus is on writing is disconcerting. I do want to be a writer; I do want to write full-time. But does this mean I have to give up teaching? My students often inspire me. I feel privileged to read their work and take part in their journey.

Teaching writing means my working week is still spent thinking about writing -- looking through writing books for new ways of approaching things, for different answers to the same or different problems, for new ways of inspiring students (and myself in the process). Teaching writing is a paradox -- on the one hand it informs my writing, but on the other it saps my creative strength, as I put a lot into my students. At Clarion, I asked every tutor who had taught writing how they wrote and taught, and they all said that you can't do both. But can't you? Other writing teachers do it. But do they do it as much as they should or could? One of our teachers has just resigned after ten years teaching so she can spend more time writing. It is a conundrum. If I had the kind of advance that meant I could consider leaving teaching, would I do it? Truth is I don't know. In the meantime, I'll just do what most writers do: work and squeeze every moment I can out of my day for my great passion: writing or, more specifically, my current novel.