Elizabeth George's THADs

Have you ever been accused of writing dialogue that is just "talking heads"? I must confess my earliest fiction was probably guilty of this a lot of the time -- something an agent told me once before declining my book (and telling me she thought it would be published!). I think she was the first person who had pointed this out -- that my characters were just like disembodied voices chatting away. Sometimes things like this come as a giant wake-up call, and we wonder how it is we never saw this before. Or how it is that we weren't aware of this type of problem. We all have our own types of problems. For one of my friends, it is plotting -- something that has always come naturally to me. But she is brilliant at description and characterisation!

But back to the talking heads: since then I've always been conscious of trying to avoid this scenario, though sometimes a scene does slip past me, which is why it is helpful to have readers going through a manuscript before it gets sent out. We're always blindest to our own errors. I can spot talking heads from a thousand km in a student's manuscript, but sometimes overlook it in my own.

How to address such problems? Research. There are several ways of doing this: talk to other writers and see what they do, read other writers and see what they do (i.e. read as a writer, paying attention to the craft), read books on writing. As a teacher, I read a lot of books on writing. But even before I was a teacher, I always read a lot of books on writing. I love reading books on writing. My friend, Sherryl, and I could start a very decent bookstore with our writing books -- if either of us could bear to part with them, which we can't. (I think being a teacher has just given me justification to buy more and more and more writing books without having to feel too guilty about it -- something my husband hates!)

Often, these books say similar things, but sometimes one comes at something in such a new way that it's almost an earth-shattering moment. Sometimes it's not so much that the insight is new as the way that it's put strikes a chord and gives me a real WOW moment. So it was with Elizabeth George's Write away: one novelist's approach to fiction and the  writing life and her discussion of what she calls THADs -- Talking Head Avoidance Devices.

A THAD is something you get your characters to do in a scene that would otherwise consist solely of dialogue. As well as fleshing out the scene, this can show character, be a metaphor or reveal information. She talks about knowing she has the right THAD when she feels a surge of excitement. I know what she means. I felt it last night.

Last night my students were doing an editing test. Usually, while they're doing a test, I have workshopping to do, but we hadn't yet started workshopping in my novel or poetry classes, and I had forgotten to bring in anything else to do, which is the first time I've done that in eight years! So, I was sitting wondering what I should do, when I started thinking of one scene that my reader had pointed out was talking heads. And as I contemplated a few different things I could do in the scene, I hit upon the perfect THAD. How did I know? That surge of excitement. I wanted to leap from my chair, get to my computer and get working! All around me, my students were sweating their test, and I was so infused with enthusiasm that I felt guilty for not having more empathy with them at that moment. I haven't tackled the scene yet -- am still thinking it through, but still think it feels exactly right for the scene!

Want to know more about THADs? You'll have to buy the book. (It's published by Hodder & Stoughton and is highly recommended! After all, every teacher has to love a book that has a chapter titled "The value of bum glue" -- and, trust me, every writer needs a book with a chapter with that title.) 

Dennis's book launch

Dennis McIntosh launches his book at Readings, Carlton

Sherryl's already blogged about our mate Dennis McIntosh and his booklaunch the other day, so rather than rehash what she had to say (which you can read at the Books and Writing link), I thought I'd put up what I had to say. Dennis asked me to speak at the launch -- just for a few minutes. I was following another friend, Margaret Campbell, so sat down that morning to think about what I wanted to say. (I hate public speaking at the best of times, but teaching has made it a bit easier. But this isn't a post about that. That's for another post.) And so I wrote a speech.

And here it is. It's not what I said verbatim, because I didn't read it. (Mind you, it was very handy that I had it in my pocket, seeing as I went blank about halfway through. Not one of my better moments, but I just sallied on anyway.)

I first met Dennis in 1996 in Sherryl Clark’s TAFE poetry class. Dennis was the only male student with his own harem of girls, following him around, and I guess I was one of the harem. Being the only male might’ve daunted a lot of students, but not Dennis. He revelled in it.

One day he asked me to read something for him – a book he was writing for his daughter’s 21st – Nicole’s Story. I’d just started editing so he thought perhaps I could edit it for him. Even back then two things were immediately clear about Dennis and his writing: the first was that he had a story to tell, a big story and one he was passionate about, and the second was that he had a voice. Now, the non-writers among you won’t necessarily appreciate what a fantastic thing that is, but it’s something that can’t be taught, something that each writer has to find somewhere within themselves, and Dennis’s writing was oozing with it. But the other thing that struck me at the time was his lack of spelling, grammar and punctuation skills – I was left thinking, does this guy even know what a sentence is. And the answer, probably, was no.

Dennis has come a long way since then. Many of you probably know that he used to be a swimming coach and trained elite athletes. In writing, getting a book published is the gold medal at the Olympics. I think all that coaching probably taught Dennis a lot of what he needed to know – and maybe he already knew these things. He knows about persistence, perhaps the most important thing. He knows about wanting to improve, wanting to achieve a “Personal Best” – since our days as students together, he’s studied editing under me at TAFE – even repeated the subject, not because he needed to, because he did pass first time around, but because he thought he had more to learn. He’s gone through university, honours, a masters, finishing with first class honours. Along the way, at different points, he’s been told to give up, he’s not good enough. Many people would have hung up their goggles, but not Dennis. He just squares his shoulders and says, “I’ll show them”. And he has. He’s shown everyone. I’m sure he would’ve gone on and done his PhD and blitzed it, if he felt he still had something to prove, but clearly he doesn’t.

So, if you ask me am I surprised, given his early work, to be here at his book launch, I’d have to say no. I’m not surprised. Dennis always was determined, and that uniquely larrikin voice set him apart from everyone else. But I am proud, immensely proud, of all he’s achieved. I hope his book is a great success, and I’m really pleased to be here helping him celebrate his launch. Mate, you’ve done a great job, and I hope it’ll go on to be an award-winner and a bestseller! You deserve it.

I know I forgot to say the goggles bit, and did say a little more about his memoir: Beaten by a blow: a shearer's story, which for the record is a great read, with a really strong, unique voice. It's honest, brutal, evocative, gripping, often harrowing and uncomfortable -- a total immersion for the reader into the life of a shearer.

Progress: my rant about technology

At the moment, I'm wrestling with my printer, trying to convince it to print out my novel. It's old. A laser printer -- 300 dpi, and it cost me $1100, an awful lot of money at the time, which tells something about how old it is. I'm guessing about 15 years, and it's served me well. Very well. I've never done any maintenance to it, never had any problems -- up till now. (Can't say the same about our inkjet we bought six months ago -- same brand, which is clogged and not working at all.) Now, the paper feeder on the old laser is worn, and every few pages the paper misfeeds, and I have to unjam the printer, ending up with two mangled pages, half a page of wasted toner, and then more and more and more misfeeds. It's enough to make a writer tear her hair out.

My solution would seem easy -- buy a new laser printer, except that I'm using my old computer and Windows 98. This computer's no longer on the internet, and I'm sure it won't have drivers for any new printer that I get, and they won't have drivers compatible with such an old dinosaur.

My problems don't end there. Most of the novel was written using WordPerfect. Can I tell you how much I love this program? Let me say two words: "reveal codes" -- the one thing that gives me so much more control than I seem to be able to get in Word. I love the way WordPerfect looks, I love the little arrows on the toolbar that let me zip backwards and forwards to find the same word, so I can quickly check that I haven't used it too often in too short a space. I love that there's a little window there all the time that acts as a thesaurus, and that I get about four times as many choices as Word's thesaurus ever gives me. And "reveal codes" -- have I mentioned that? Oh, yeah, I did, but it's worth mentioning again. When I'm laying out Poetrix, I can adjust letter space and word space if I need to, I can rotate text ninety degrees to get a shape poem on the page. Trying to do such things in Word would give my brain a meltdown. There would be much yelling in the house. And some swearing.

But, alas, WordPerfect is also starting to meltdown. Now, when I do a table and print it, it comes out in a lovely checkerboard pattern. Nice if that was what I wanted, but it inevitably is not. A waste of ink. And hard to read. Then WP took a disliking to my novel. Whenever it got to a certain page it crashed. In the end, I did what I had to and saved it as a Word file and began working on it in Word, which led to other sorts of problems. I'm using underlining for italics, as all good editors and most good writers do, and, as I've chosen to show my telepathic conversations with itals, I sometimes had successive paras beginning and ending with itals. And what did Word do? Very helpfully underlined all the indents. They were not underlined before. Grrrr. Don't get me started on Word...

Really, it's a sad day for all of us that WordPerfect is not a viable option anymore. I'm using Version 8 -- a beautiful program -- but XP on my laptop doesn't like it at all and now refuses to open it. And you can't get it for Macs at all anymore. If you subscribe to conspiracy theories, there's the suggestion that Bill Gates paid Corel a lot of money not to make a Mac-compatible version anymore. I hope that's false. Lack of competition is not good for anyone, least of all us monkeys at the bottom of the equation. In the past, Word and WordPerfect fed improvements to each other. Competition's good, right?

One of the other great things about WordPerfect (that Word could've learnt about) was compatibility. Ever since one of the really early versions, all the new and old versions have been able tol talk to each other. How neat is that? Just ask my version of Word what it thinks about the new docx format. That could be another rant altogether...

Draft's finished

So this was my plan for the holidays:

2 weeks: working on novel and finishing draft (included going in to work one day for staff meeting)
1 week: stuff for classes
1 week: R&R -- movies, bowling, walking, reading, reading, reading

This is how it's panned out:

3 weeks + : working on novel (and reading one and a half books)
rest: doing the rest of the stuff, which I suspect means very little R&R. Never mind.

This editing pass has taken a lot longer than I expected. The rewrite started at 195 k approx, and finished at 185,663, which was my starting point for this editing pass. It's finished at 178,285. There's something nice about being in the 170s. It's still not quite as low as I'd like, but it's a big story, and I had a horrible thought that I was adding words rather than cutting!

And today it's finished, other than some minor adjustments (I hope) after I get it back from my readers. In the end I cut two-thirds of the words with general tightening -- things like getting rid of prep phrases, cutting repetitions etc. But there were four things I cut at the end that took out a couple of thousand between them:

(i) a scene from the POV from someone whom I'd taken out as a viewpoint character -- so how did this slip through? I think in the end, I'd decided to keep it because it was towards the end of the novel, and he is a viewpoint character in the second, and so it seemed like foreshadowing. The trouble with not using him was that the one viewpoint character in that scene was now dead, and so couldn't convey the scene. In the end though, there was nothing in the scene that was essential to the plot. Wholesale cut. Easy solution.

(ii) cut the guts out of another scene. This was a scene involving a telepathic conversation, where the main character reveals something she's about to do (at the beginning of the next book), which is going to have serious repercussions. I really liked this scene. It seemed like good foreshadowing of the trouble that was to come. The characters she's conversing with used several techniques to get her to change her mind, all to no avail. Heaps of conflict. Snappy dialogue. Fast paced. Working well. Only, when I looked at it again, I thought -- she wouldn't tell them. And she wouldn't. And that was that. It had to go. All of it. All those lovingly crafted words. Gone. A scene has to serve the story, and while the foreshadowing was good, the characters have to be true to themselves. Absolutely. One hundred per cent. And she wasn't being. Really, too, readers are going to get that the consequences for her are going to be dire. They're quite good at picking up the hints -- and we writers have to be good at leaving them room to work!

(iii) and (iv) two nice moments between two of my main characters -- the first from one's point of view, and then a reflection on what had happened from the other character's POV. Neither of these were huge -- a couple of paras each, but this whole idea contained within was no longer relevant after other changes I'd made to them and their relationships with one another. Or not at this point. I may rejig this to reflect something else and use it in the next book. I'm not sure at this point. I do like the idea of what went on, but it just wasn't necessary. Zap. Gone.

On the other hand, there was an earlier scene where I'd cut out a half-page incident between the two of them when I was doing the rewrite, and when I came across it again, I was really sad that I'd done this, so I put it back in the editing pass. Not wholly the way it was. I didn't dig out that earlier draft -- just captured the essence of the exchange in a quarter of the space. It's not essential to the plot, but is a nice character moment for them both, helps define the shifting dynamics of their relationship.

So, as much as I've not had the chance to have that R&R, I have a great sense of satisfaction at having completed this draft. It really is a great feeling!

Making the changes

I'm a bit light on blogging at the moment because I'm fully immersed in my editing pass over my manuscript. The rewriting's finished, and I'm two-thirds (three-quarters?) through the edit, and I'm loving it. The process, that is.

Some days are better than others though. A few days I got to a scene that just wasn't working for me -- too passive, too much telling of things after the event. The fix wasn't too difficult. I moved the scene backwards in time so that I could show the events as they were unravelling. It's not an action scene, but it feels a lot more active now. Of course it meant I added about 400 words, at a time I'm desperate to cut words. That said, I've eliminated nearly 3000 at about the halfway point, so I'm on target. (Well, I would've liked to get rid of 10-15k, but realistically that was never going to happen because I'm also trying to add some characterisation and some non-plot related thinking.)

The day before yesterday, though, I came across a different kind of hurdle. Let me backtrack... When I started the edit pass, I had a brainwave about how to increase one of the main character's motivations so wrote a new scene that I banged in at the start of her story, and have been editing along the way to take this into account. It was all working beautifully until I got to the midway point and realised that I'd undermined one of the basic tenets that I'd based my alien culture's society on. Oh, dear. What to do? In the end such decisions can only be made when taking into account what will most benefit the story. And this time having the stronger motivation is a definite plus, so I've had to rethink that aspect of their society. It took me most of a day to sort that out, so I felt frustrated at the end of the day with how little progress I'd made, but the main thing was that I had made progress, and that I'd ironed out what could've been a problem further down the track. And in fact it still might -- but I'll be looking for it as I continue editing and will be able to fix it as I go. Bring it on!

Unfinished sky

My mother said the other day, "You know, I thought once you were working part-time, we would be able to do things together, but it just hasn't happened. You're always busy."

That's the trouble with teaching -- if I'm not in class, I'm at home doing class prep, or marking, or workshopping. And the trouble with being a writer, because if I'm not doing that, I'm writing. And she doesn't get that at all. "How can you write," she says, "when your house is in a mess?" Or "You should do the dishes before you sit down to write." No. No writer should do the dishes first (unless of course they distract him from writing because he's worrying about them).

Now, as it happens, she levelled her complaint at me just before we went on mid-semester break. So, I said, "You know what: I've got the next two weeks free. I can give you one day each week." I actually thought this was pretty generous, because I still have writing group commitments, and one day of work, and writing to do. Lots of writing. I have to get my novel finished and out to readers, and back to my agent.

So, Mum says great and that we'll go see some movies together. Then she says, "And I can come on another day, and we can sort out your wardrobes and start getting rid of the old clothes." Hmm. Suddenly she was trying to wheedle her way into two days.

So I said no, and then after a brief hesitation (because what she's proposing is my idea of hell) I backed down and said, "Well, fine, we can do that -- if that's how you want to spend the one day that I can give you."

She quickly backed away from that one.

As it transpires, she was busy the first week, but this week we went to see Unfinished sky, with William McInnes and Monic Henrickx. I had no idea what we were going to see, but I like most movies (with the exception of the stupider type of comedies). So I went along with no expectations.

Where did this little gem come from and why hadn't I heard about it before? Unfinished sky is a well acted, gorgeously shot and interestingly written film. My first thought was why wasn't it a mainstream cinema release? Surely it would have mainstream appeal? But perhaps not. To not give too much away: it's the story of an illegal immigrant who is escaping a bad past and happens on the farm of a reclusive farmer who is still coming to grips with the death of his wife. She doesn't speak English -- and this to me is what would probably preclude it from a mainstream cinema release, but it's utterly watchable and compelling. (Perhaps the other stumbling block is the unlikeability of the main character at the beginning, but you soon begin to warm to him.)

If you have an arthouse cinema nearby, chalk this one onto your list of must-sees.

Writer as celebrity

Today I was in a bookshop browsing the aisles while waiting to see a film. Nothing like multitasking -- while browsing, I was listening to the person behind the counter talking to someone else about a writer he had just seen in conversation somewhere. Apparently, the said writer was not a good public speaker, and he was justifying this by saying that of course a lot of writers aren't great public speakers, and in fact often the best writers are the worst speakers.

It is a conundrum for the shyer writers among us. And, yes, I'll put my hand up here -- which is not to say I won't do public speaking engagements because I will. That's part of the territory, part of the professionalism, but it doesn't mean I have to enjoy them. For example, I'm speaking in a few weeks time at a friend's book launch. But I've digressed...

I don't think it's a matter of people who aren't great speakers being drawn to writing, necessarily -- that this is a venue for them to get their message out. Rather, it's just that writing often appeals to shy people. There's the whole romantic notion of the starving writer in her garret -- it appeals in its solitariness. (Of course, these e-days, that solitary writer is just as likely to be checking emails and engaging in online gaming...)

Some of us are more at home in front of an audience than others, but the reality is that it is what's expected of us as writers. One of the books on writing I own talks about this being the age of writer as celebrity. And that's why some writers write. Some come to classes with stars in their eyes and talk about which publishers they would and wouldn't let publish their books, as if the publishing world is going to lie down at their feet in awe of this great, as-yet-undiscovered talent. I try to break the realities of the publishing world to them gently, try to disperse the spectres of seven-figure advances coming their way. Sure, such things can happen, but they don't happen to most of us. Most of us plug away, honing our craft, because we love to write, because we are driven to write, because it's a passion -- even if it's a passion that's going to make us face up to our fear of public speaking! We write our first drafts for ourselves, and then craft with a mind to an audience because we want to be professional writers -- or at least published writers.

It's not just novelists who have to suffer this. Poets are expected to front up to readings, to share their work with an audience that might be judgmental. Some of course revel in it: a great reading can lift a mediocre poem just as a crappy reading can shoot down a great one. Short story writers often read at conventions and other places -- the last con I was at, one of my friends despondently told me that he'd had a really small audience for one of his readings, and I was able to say that that may have been the case, but he'd obviously made a big impression on someone because I'd heard someone discussing his reading as being the highlight of the con, that that reader had found a new favourite writer. It's all about getting the word out, and then of course this flowing on to book sales.

Like it or loathe it, most of us have to face the audience at some time. There are a few reclusive published authors, but this is a strike against them. It makes it harder for the PR wheels to turn, harder for the cash registers to ring, so their books have to be so much better than everyone else's.

For me, the key to public speaking is preparation. I need to plan out in advance what I'm going to talk about, or if it's a reading have several dry runs. I do remember Jack Dann's advice to do schtick, which works for him, but I think I'd founder in a blubbing mess of ums and ahs if I tried to wing it. Maybe that ability will come in time because public speaking is like anything else: it gets easier with practice.

The importance of the right word

The importance of the right word -- poets know about this more than anybody. Le mot juste as the French would say. Not just the right word but the perfect word. We scrabble around for it. Cross out "cross out" and replace it with "strike through". Hmm, not quite. Perhaps "erase"? "Delete"? We think about the word's denotation and then what other words or ideas it connotes. Then there's the rhythm of the word, the sound of it, how it feels in our mouth. Words give our writing flavour and texture. The combination of words gives a writer style.

But what about when words go wrong? When they go wrong at the most basic level there can be a comedic effect. Take, for instance, my son. Yesterday, we were driving him off to an exam, and he was talking about the history assignment he had just submitted, which was to make his own newspaper (or at least the front page). Anyway, he was telling us he called it The daily brothel, and then finished with: "What exactly is a brothel anyway?"

Hmm. Too funny. His face, when we told him, was a study in mixed emotions: amazement, embarrassment (okay, more mortification than embarrassment), disbelief -- various other things, no doubt.

I like his newspaper title. I imagine a gossipy mag, with a mishmash of articles all mixed in together (obviously drawing on the messy house as a brothel simile/metaphor). But of course this is not how he sees it. And the lesson here is that we should all check meanings first. "Body" and "cadaver" are not interchangeable. A cadaver is a body, but a body is only ever a cadaver under certain circumstances. Not sure which -- then don't use it without checking the dictionary. The same with "horse" and "pony". All ponies are horses but not all horses are ponies. (And then there's the "galloway" in between...)

I love my dictionary. I live in it when I'm editing. Less so when I'm writing. But if I am writing and my brain supplies that word that I'm not a hundred per cent sure of, then I'll hit the dictionary. Doesn't mean I won't ever get it wrong -- there may, of course, be that word I am one hundred per cent sure of that doesn't mean exactly what I think it means. There are no guarantees against that. And of course meanings shift. I'm a great believer in preserving the difference between "disinterested" and "uninterested", but it doesn't mean the dictionary supports my view. I sometimes think that dictionaries are too permissive in what they allow, but they do aim to reflect current usage, so perhaps I just need to get over it. In the meantime though, I'll be running my finger down the columns, looking for that word, and only ever using my thesaurus with a dictionary alongside it!

New movies

Well, the marking isn't quite finished, but last weekend I took some much needed R&R time and went off to see a few movies.

The first was Sex and the city. I was a fan of the television series, though it wasn't must-see television for me. Translation: I really enjoyed it and would watch it whenever I was home, but didn't tape it if I were going to be out. I'm not into fashion, but I loved that Carrie was a writer, and I loved that the show was bigger than life in the same way that "Desperate Housewives" is bigger than life. And that I kind of related to these girls. In "DH" I see myself as halfway between Susan the ditzy but loveable nutcase (not that I'm implying I'm loveable!) and Lynette, the harassed housewife, struggling to balance motherhood and career.

In Sex and the city I suppose I'm a blend of Carrie (but really only from the writing viewpoint), Charlotte (whom I feel I'm most like in a lot of ways -- except when she runs and when she's so anal. No scratch that. Anal editor person speaking here!) and Miranda. I'm least of all like Samantha. Not at all like Samantha. Are we even from the same planet?

So I enjoyed watching their characters interact, the ripostes from one to another. Such clever dialogue. (Though, going back to the TV series: why Carrie threw over Aidan for Big was always beyond me!)

I enjoyed the movie very much. And the surprise for me was Charlotte. I thought she had a couple of huge moments with Big -- considering one of the reviews I'd read said she (Kristin Davis) didn't really have to do any acting! I thought she was brilliant! Fans of the TV show will love the movie, because it's stayed true to the show. I've seen other TV shows made into movies and wondered how the writers could get it so wrong. (The first Star Trek movie was an example of this -- not a bad movie in its own right, but not true to the feel of the TV show for me. It was only the later ones that captured this.)

The beauty of Sex was that I went along with my mum and two of her friends, and of the three only one had ever watched the TV show, yet they all enjoyed the movie. That, IMHO, is great writing! It's like a poem where everyone can get something on an initial reading, but that some readers will draw further and deeper meanings from. (And it's why I never minded when actors from one show appeared in another playing their characters from the first -- as long as they "worked" in their own right.)

Movies can be great food for the writer's soul, and the second movie (all right, all right, I admit, I saw it twice in two days!) was one such movie for me. Prince Caspian, which I enjoyed so much more than The lion, the witch and the wardrobe. Perhaps it helps having a character who reminds me physically of the main character of my novel. Yes, I'm always looking for him, even though I've settled on Tom Ward as the most likely candidate. But perhaps it's the grittier battles. I do love a gritty battle. The heavy thwacks of swords on metal. The grimness of stone walls. Ruins. Some beautiful coastal scenery. Horses. (Of course, horses. I'm far less fussed about lions who come along and save the day.) Men in armour.

Interesting to note how much cross-pollination was going on between Tolkien and Lewis, and one of those vagaries of being in a writing group together. I've never read the Narnia books. Probably a bit inexcusable for a fantasy writer, but then I came at Tolkien late (in my mid-twenties, and wondered about how I'd missed such a masterpiece!). The lion, the witch and the wardrobe didn't inspire me to read the book, but this one has. Though I'll probably only read that one unless I love it. If I love it I'll go back and start at the beginning and hope it's as good. That's not always the case.

I've got a book called The last legends of Earth by AA Attanasio, and it was one of the most amazing books I've ever read. If you like SF, and time travel, and disasters, and apocalyptic visions, go out and read it. Trouble was it was fifth in a series of linked books. I wouldn't usually start at number five but someone gave it to me, so then I had to go back and get number one and start from there. I hated number one. It was boring and didn't draw me in. I persisted, and it just never got better for me, and I didn't get that at all. How could that happen? So, yes, assuming all books in a series will be as good as each other can be quite fallacious. But I'm digressing. The blogosphere seems always to encourage me to do that. Friends write coherent posts, and mine ramble. But then I see this as a very different kind of writing (for me) than if I were writing, say, an article or a movie review. I'm perfectly happy to let it ramble!

But back to Prince Caspian... Highly recommended if you like battle scenes. Some violence but nothing to make you too squeamish. Others I'm looking forward to: Indiana Jones. And perhaps one or two of the new horror offerings. And Mongol, I think it's called! Seems like a few good movies coming up!

Into the end of semester

I'm likely not to be posting much over the next few weeks as I move into full-on marking mode. Today, I've been collecting up major assignments, and will get more tomorrow and more next week. As well, I'm currently reading a friend's novel, plus reading an anthology (and proofing) for another friend, and reading short story competition entries. But where does that leave my own work? On hiatus unfortunately. The only writing I'll be doing this week will be an editing test. Not exactly the stuff that feeds the soul. On the other hand, the course I've been writing is almost finished. Soon, I'll be at the end of semester break, and then it will be full-on novel. I'm hoping to get my draft finished in the first week and get it out to a couple of readers. How exciting is that? This is the worst time not to be writing -- so close to the end. So close I can smell it, and there's no better incentive.

What I have been happy with is that I've started implementing some of the changes (ie transferring them from paper onto the computer). I was hoping to cut 15,000 words in the editing pass, but every time I looked at how many words I was adding, I was worried -- really worried -- that I was going to add 15,000 words. Happily, I am actually cutting. Not as many as I'd hoped, but definitely cutting. Oh, let me at it: I long to be finished!

Writing the novel

I had a discussion with a student last week about how many projects a novelist can work on, because our students who are taking multiple classes that involve novel writing are expected to work on different projects. Of course, there's no correct answer to this question, and I've always said that you've got to find what works for you. Only this last year I've found that that's not necessarily the case.

Up until recently, I've always thought I was a one-project-at-a-time person. Even when it comes to short stories.

I get an idea and think about it, and that's where my focus is. It's one of the reasons I don't write many short stories -- because mostly I'm focused on my novel. It's a lovely, indulgent, obsessive thing, writing a novel. I don't get that same pleasure out of short stories or poetry -- but they do offer their own pleasures and satisfactions, especially the satisfaction of finishing something!

Some people have bags of projects on the go -- they swap and change depending on their mood or deadline, even working on several in the same day. My friend, Sherryl, is like this, and it's always made me shake my head in wonder. But writing our group novel this year has taught me that I can work on more than one project at a time, and the longer I've been doing both the easier it's becoming.

At the beginning, it would take me a few weeks to reacclimatise -- I'd have to sink back into the depths of whichever project I was working on. Being in the writing group and doing the plotting or reading out what we'd just written and discussing it made it easier to get back into this. But there was the unfamiliarity of what others had written -- I say unfamiliarity because clearly I had heard their portions and discussed them, but they weren't integrally part of me the way the parts I'd written were. I know the details of my character's background, for example, in far more details than I know of their characters'.

The challenge with my own novel has been different. I've been working on this book a long time, so I'm very well acquainted with it. But it's a complex story with multiple viewpoint characters, and worse than that, multiple drafts. I say worse because the problem is that when I've been out of it awhile I forget which things belong in which draft. I might remember that A does this, but it might be something that I've taken out of the current draft for whatever reason.

Paradoxically, I've found that the thing I thought I needed (time to reimmerse) has been the thing working against me. It's actually easier to work on multiple projects if they're all on the boil at once, if I'm working on both in the same week, rather than having that gap between them. This works really well in that I can do whatever the mood takes me. If I'm in a writing mood, I'll head off to the group novel. If I'm in an editing mood, I'll work on my own -- which also requires some slabs of writing as I make changes that I've decided on. This week's change, for example, is in a background scene that my main character remembers. When he was a small child, he found his sister hanged, and that change has been to make him find her a few minutes earlier, when she was dying and imploring him to help her when things went wrong (knot on the wrong side of her neck so that she was strangled slowly). This secret he has kept. Everyone else thinks he found her dead. It's all about making the worst thing possible happen to your characters. This doesn't have a great effect on the story as a whole, but does strengthen his motivation for doing the things he has to do, and is perhaps something I'm thinking more about because I'm busy writing the other novel, putting my character there through the wringer. Honestly, you have to love writing!

Reading your writing

Today in class, I did something I do most years in my Novel 2 class: I started reading James N Frey's "Seven deadly mistakes" that a writer can make (from his book How to write damn good fiction). The first mistake is timidity, and he talks about the different types of timidity a writer can experience or exhibit. One of the things that often comes up in such sessions is the fear of public speaking -- I mean, writers in their garrets and all of that, right?

Yeah. We wish. (Or I do, at least.)

Like it or not, these days writers are expected to promote their books -- book tours, interviews, readings, writers' festivals, conventions etc. I used to suffer terribly from a fear of public speaking -- so much so that in my first six weeks of teaching, I didn't sleep for three days before each class. By the time I got in there I was so exhausted I needed the adrenalin-kick of the fear to keep me upright! These days I've learnt some modicum of control over it, and enjoy walking into my classes. I don't know that I'll ever be entirely comfortable in front of strangers, but it's not the incapacitating experience it once was. I have teaching to thank for that.

However, I'm always aware of reading aloud and how nerves affect readers. On my twenty-first birthday, I had to give a speech at school on the affects of lead on haem synthesis. I was worked up over it (vomiting beforehand and all), and annoyed that I had to do it on the day of my twenty-first birthday. Afterwards, I sat down and leaned across and said to my best friend, "How did I go?", and she told me that it was probably okay but that I'd spoken so quickly she didn't understand one word. Not one!

So, that's always my first piece of advice to anyone who wants to read their work: read slowly. No matter how slowly you think you're reading, you can probably read it even more effectively by slowing it down more.

My second piece of advice is about diction -- about pronouncing your letters clearly, really biting out the consonants. My daughter sings -- she has a great voice and range, but she sometimes slurs her letters. I see it with some of my poetry students. It's something you have to be constantly thinking about. Pronounce each letter. Practise. Read your story or poem out loud and anticipate any problem words. Write them on the page phonetically. (Don't forget to use double spacing for prose!) Record yourself reading your story and then listen back to it. Was it clear? Did you stumble over any words? Can you replace them with something easier?

Thirdly, run your finger or thumb down the page as you're reading. This helps you keep your place if you look up at your audience -- and you should look up at your audience. The more people you can make eye contact with, the more you'll have in your bag.

Fourthly, warm up beforehand. Some poets like to do vocal exercises first -- just like singers warming up with scales.

Fifthly, time your talk -- especially if you are time-limited. Nothing worse than a five minute talk that runs for fifty. Yes, I've been to some! Have your introductory patter prepared and written out, and include this in your dry runs.

Sixthly, don't just practise alone. If you can, get some friends to listen in. You may feel self-conscious, but it will be worth it for the insights they can give. Listen to any advice they give!

Seventhly, if you're doing an interview, you can ask for a list of questions or, if your interviewer isn't prepared to give you one, at least the likely topics so you can have something prepared. Having said that, bear in mind that some level of spontaneity enlivens a talk. Go ask Jack Dann how to give a great talk, and he'll tell you he just goes out there and gives schtick! It's great if you can do it, but I, personally, like to be prepared! If you can't be, though, just chill out and take the time you need to answer questions. I know plenty of writers who will answer questions with a stock sentence like "That's a really good question" just to give them a bit more time to think.

Having just attended the Beyond Cuisine dinner, with actors reading works of fiction -- see Ellen's blog for a report -- I took great notice of how the actors read. There were a few notable points: the main difference was how much they varied the pace -- mostly reading slowly, even more slowly than I ever have, but with occasional bursts of speed, especially in the dialogue or in direct thoughts. These bits were much faster than I would have ever dared. Of course they all had superb pronunciation, so that the words were clear, and their great clarity meant that the sped-up reading was still easy to understand.

They also were more animated, which of course I'd expected, but the other thing they did was use pauses to a much greater degree, and for a much greater length of time than I ever have. And it worked. It was as if they were reading a story to kids they wanted to engage, but they exaggerated things even more. Well worth going to see some actors do it, just to get a feel for how better to perform your own work. Oh, I'd love to do some acting classes to develop this even more!