Inkfever

Guest Post: Late-Night Creativity

2012-01-30T09:58:00.000+11:00

Followers,

Tonight I interrupt your usual inkfever update to bring you trivial musings of a more sinister nature. Well actually, I have just been permitted to guest blog whilst Amy is hatching her young. That may not sound too sinister, but who knows? If followers are lost as a result of this blog, it may be. For me.

I dabble at song-writing. And silver-smithing, saxophone, hiking, staying up past 10pm, cooking edible food... the list goes on. Song-writing is the most unintentional activity on that list. I suffer from late-night creativity. Whilst there appears to be no cure for this, mitigating therapy includes keeping pens, paper, torches and my mobile phone (for voice recording) next to my bed just in case. So far, I think writing in my sleep can be categorised as follows:
- Music I have clearly stolen from something heard earlier that day
- Music that sounded great when I was tired
- Music that makes no sense whatsoever (or is illegible)
- Music that I actually like the next morning
The first category is what I dread most. Luckily for me, I am now usually writing in the fourth category.

My other most productive places for writing are in the shower or driving long distance in the car. Neither are what I would call convenient.

I have tried making myself write when I feel like it. This has not been successful. It usually sounds forced or loses its voice within a couple of lines. I just don't have life-experience to draw inspiration from. I live a happily sheltered life. I still get ideas from bad moods, and especially from emotive books, but somehow being distracted is the key to letting it all play out.

My favourite song (at the moment) is 'Moth to the Flame' - featuring themes from 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall', nonsense talk from my cousin about Leonardo DiCaprio's character and the general story of a girl's infatuation with a man who is no good.

I hope you like it.

'Moth to the Flame'
Copyright Rebecca Stohr 2011

A tragic star dawns on the horizon, captivating the heart of a girl. An altogether, beautiful disaster.
A charming man is always forgiven, blinding better judgement again.
You say it like you mean it, but girl I'm pretty sure
Moth to the flame
Moth to the flame

Little moth, what are you trying to do?
Give it up, it's been far too long
You say it like you mean it, but girl I'm pretty sure
You cannot save that soul who needs redemption.

Perhaps it's true, you've lost all your senses. Crawling back when he calls for you.
He's not repentant, just a lonely people user.
Only a fool is jealous of God, for all the time you spend praying for him.
You say it like you mean it, but girl I'm pretty sure
Moth to the flame
Moth to the flame

Little moth, what are you trying to do?
Give it up, it's been far too long
You say it like you mean it, but girl I'm pretty sure
You cannot save that soul who needs redemption.

I think I'm talking reason to you honey. Wo-oe. And still, you always say
"O-o-oh let me away from here - I will be his cure.
I will fall to the arms of love so I may be there when he stumbles"

You say it like you mean it, but girl I'm pretty sure
Moth to the flame
Moth to the flame...

No idea where my musical journey is headed from here. An amazing friend bought me some studio time for my birthday. That should be enough to produce a couple of demo tracks. Alternatively, I will have to plan for many long showers, road-trips and late nights =D

Bec

Guest Post: Creativity

2012-01-23T09:52:00.006+11:00

Today I'd like to introduce you all to my friend Clare! Clare is an Australian graphic designer and illustrator with a passion for making puppets (and they are awesome puppets, too). Samples of her work can be found at www.clarebarnes.com.

First off, let me say that I am not a writer.

Well that is not entirely true. I mean, obviously I can write, but writing in and of itself is not the core of what I do.

So you might well be wondering how I came to be following and writing a guest post on an authors blog…

Well let me explain.

In the last few years as I have been studying graphic design, I have come to recognise that as a creative professional, it is incredibly important that I not only explore my own creative field, but that I also develop a habit of exploring the creative fields outside of my own.

Whilst this can be a time consuming exercise (and a wonderful tool for procrastination) I have found that exploring other fields enriches my understanding of the world around me and inspires me in ways that I would miss out on if I restricted my field of vision solely to that of graphic design.

The main reason for this is that most people are just plain inspiring. I am continually amazed by the countless ideas, techniques, stories, experience etc that people all over the world develop and share on a regular basis.

Another reason for exploring outside my own area of expertise is that I am constantly reminded of how many different ways people can view the same sorts of topics, and that problems can be solved from more then one angle. If I am able to remember this, then I become more understanding of other peoples perspectives, and if my own solution for something isn’t working I can try solving it from an angle I may not have thought of if I had not been exploring.

For example, I have discovered that some of the world and character building techniques that are used when writing, can also be used to generate ideas for illustrations.

By giving my mind access to all this information I am allowing my imagination to be sparked by concepts that it may not normally come across. And whilst not all of the information that I find will be immediately useful, I know my brain is able to store bits away in boxes and on shelves, in readiness for when I need it.

Here is one simple way to think about it:

As creative people we are like the little box. As we explore new or different areas, we collect information and inspiring ideas and store it away. Then, the next time that we need some of it, our brain is able to pull bits from here and there and somehow combines information in ways we might never have thought of otherwise to create an Awesome Idea.

Pretty cool huh?

So next time you are stumped for ideas, how about going exploring? You never know exactly what you’ll find….

Prizes! Contests! BOOKS!

2012-01-20T08:14:00.000+11:00

Hurrah! I love announcements like this :o)

So I know I just had a couple of contests, but I found some awesome books recently and needed a good excuse to give them away, and you guys provided me with the perfect opportunity: the blog has hit 100 followers :o) You guys are awesome. I'm really not sure why most of you follow me; I'm rarely coherent, frequently random, and I'm not entirely convinced that anything I say here is of the slightest use, but nonetheless, there are a whole CENTURY of you that approve well enough to let your little avatar be displayed in the box over there --->

THANK YOU.

Thank you, also, to the exact-number-indeterminate of you that follow through other methods, like feedreaders, or who click through from CC, twitter, or facebook. Seriously: you guys rock. I quite literally would not be here on this blog without you, because really, what would be the point? I talk to myself enough in my own head, I don't need a blog to acheive that :D

SO. Contest #1.

To say thank you for being awesome and tolerating my weirdness, I will be giving away to one lucky winner their choice of the following:

Danyelle Leafty's debut Catspell (ebook pdf version)

Kiersten White's debut Paranormalcy (trade paperback)

Brenna Yovanoff's debut The Replacement (trade paperback)

Michelle Davidson Argyle's short story anthology True Colors: And Other Short Stories (e-version, multiple formats available)

And randomly, John Steinbeck's The Pearl (mass market paperback - Popular Penguins series)

To enter, you must be following me somewhere (either the blog via the sidebar gadget, me on twitter, or my facebook page) and leave a comment in the, er, comments. Just say you want to enter and which prize you'd like; I'll extricate the private details from the winner privately ;) :D

And now, Contest #2!

I recently review Divergent and raved about the awesomeness that it is. It is, in fact, SO awesome, that I bought a second copy ESPECIALLY so I could share the awesomeness with someone else. Because truly, it is awesome. So, to enter for your chance to win Divergent, all you have to do is sign up for my newsletter. It's delivered right to your inbox's door once every second month (or so) by the carrier bats, and has an article, a book or blog review, a contest (yes, THAT'S RIGHT, you could WIN A BOOK EVERY SECOND MONTH! *dies of the squee*) and more of the fun and random stuff you'd expect from me. Because, you know, I live to bring the random into your life. #mottos #likegrottos #onlylesswet

So! Contests! Hurrah! Spread the word (or, you know, not, if you want to increase your chances of winning??) and join the love! HURRAH.

Remember, for Contest #1, leave a comment below saying where/how you follow my crazy ramblings.

For Contest #2, sign up for the newsletter. If you're already subscribed to the newsletter, you're entered by default ;)

BOTH CONTESTS will close on February 2 when I will draw the winners at random. I'll announce the winners asap - I'm planning to announce on Feb 2, but I reserve the right to extend that a little should the minion not have appeared by then (which he jolly well better have OR ELSE).

Yay! Contests!

Time to Stand

2012-01-18T15:18:00.003+11:00

Literally, first of all, because the minion has decided that I ought to be banned from sitting, and makes a fuss in my ribcage whenever I do. But I also mean the figurative stand, as in 'taking a...'. Against what?

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) (that link is to Wikipedia, which will, in about 2 hours, be going dark for the duration of its January 18 as a mark of protest). Those of you that trawl the interwebs might have come across this already, and a large percentage of my readership will have dismissed it as 'a US law that doesn't apply to us'. Unfortunately, because a lot of the large companies that own major internet sites (think Google, Facebook, etc) are based in the US, this DOES affect us. All of us.

Here is a good summary of what the fuss is all about. It's already nearly the end of the 18th here in Aus, so I am, as usual, late to the party; hence, I'm not blacking out the blog. A lot of you read via feed readers anyway, so probably wouldn't even notice that the blog had gone dark for a day (especially with my REALLY REGULAR posting schedule). So I'm doing what I consider to be more important: spreading the word.

ETA: Something us international peeps CAN do: Petitions here and here. Look for the 'Not in the US' links.

I Has Moon Book!

2012-01-18T09:25:00.000+11:00

Yup, as random as the title sounds.

So, I meant to post this back when it actually, y'know, HAPPENED, but it was literally Christmas, and then things have been crazy since then, and, well, here we are. But! I am SO EXCITED! I wish I had the brain power to think of an awesome way to announce this, but alack, tis not to be, so I shall just say:

I AM BEING IN A BOOK! A REAL, LIVE, PRINTED OUT ONE! SQUEE!!!

I told you this was news that warranted capital letters and exclamation marks :o) So, details:

Tyche Publishing, a new Canadian publisher, are releasing an anthology, Ride the Moon. Out of sheer luck and knowing the right people, I got a last minute opportunity to submit to the anthology - and I do mean last minute. I had 6 days to conceive of an idea, write it, edit it, and submit it. It was a terrifying but absolutely AWESOME experience, and I was SO stoked when the publishers accepted my story - and what makes it even better is that there are a whole bunch of writer friends in the anthology with me :) It was also exciting to discover that apparently, if one is Canadian, one would recognise some of the other contributors to the anthology as Well Known Authors. SQUEE. You can view the list of contributors here.

So, Ride the Moon will be out on February 29 and contains my short story Cherry Blossoms, about a man who is rescued from an immortality of loneliness by the girl-in-the-moon. One last time, with feeling:

SQUEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, about the last two months...

2012-01-17T15:40:00.002+11:00

I've not posted in two months. I have not died, I have not fallen off the edge of an inter-planetary rift, and I have not (alack) moved to somewhere warm and secluded wherein I can live out my days as a happyhappy hermit. I have merely, boringly, mundanely, been Busy. And pregnant, but *wavey hands of dismissal* to that O:)

I know, I KNOW I keep saying that I'll be better, that I'll recommit, that I'll try harder this time and this time, I REALLY WILL blog more often and BE A BETTER PERSON... And I hope you know that I do mean it. Just as I hope you all know by now that I'll probably fail dismally :P That said, however, with the Impending Doom of the Parasitical Minion (aka I'm due Tuesday next week), I have actually been somewhat organised, and I has guest posts for you! Guest! Posts! People to say interesting and coherent things, JUST FOR YOU! Which is EXCITING! And warrants the totally ABUSE of CAPITAL LETTERS and EXCLAMATION MARKS!!

I also have two exciting announcements which really and truly DO justify the use of excessive exclamation marks (not that my lovely guests don't), but I'll get to those later. For now, here's what you need to know:

Today, Jan 17: Blog comes out of hibernation. It is sleepy and it's skin is a little saggy, like an under-nourished grizzly, but we loves it anyway.

Tomorrow, Jan 18: Exciting announcement number 1: I has book.

Jan 19: Exciting announcement number 2: You can has book.

Jan 23: The wonderful graphic artist Clare visits to share her thoughts on creativity.

Jan 30: We are joined by the awesome aspiring-songstress Rebecca to discuss what to do when random inspiration hits you on the nose in the middle of the night.

Feb 6: Author Emily Casey will be dropping by to discuss fairytales, and why they are awesome. In fact, they are so awesome that she wrote a fracture fairytale of her own, and The Fairytale Trap is a) now available and b) lots of fun and c) you'll have the chance to win a copy during her visit.

Feb 13: Author Krista Ball is going to join in the 'creativity' theme and share with us how on earth she's able to actually be creative when in her non-writing life, she claims she can't even match colours.

After that, hopefully I'll have enough *brain* to return. And no doubt I'll pop in and out in between guests - I want to show off the chair that Boyo & I have reupholstered (nearly) and of course, I'm sure there will be an obligatory minion picture in there somewhere too O:) :) (hopefully sooner rather than later, *hint hint* minion).

Happy 2012! May it be a fulfilling year for all of you :o)

The AWESOME That Is Divergent

2011-11-08T10:26:00.002+11:00

Ie, how Divergent is awesome. Not divergent awesomeness, although that could be also fun.

May 2011, HarperCollins

487 pages, Paperback
Personal copy

YA Dystopian
Some violence, discussion about not-having-sex-yet

Summary from HarperCollins:

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the literary scene with the first book in the Divergent series—dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

Amy's thoughts:
OH. THE. SQUEE. I know, I know, I keep going on about the books I've read recently, but SERIOUSLY. YOU GUYS. There has been a whole spate of REALLY AWESOME YA debuts recently. REALLY. AWESOME. Divergent is definitely one of them, and if you're at all curious/unconvinced, note that you can read the first 100 pages free online.

I'm warning you, though: you'll knife anyone who gets in the way of you and the rest of the book once you have. (Though at least the book is out now; I read the first 100 pages 6 months before the book was released, oh the horror).

Ahem. Okay. Actually reviewey stuff. Divergent is YA dystopian fiction premised on the idea that society has been divided into five factors, each of which live life according to a particular value because they believe that that is the best way to restore peace to society. Tris's (Beatrice) story begins when she has to decide whether to stay in her family's faction, or defect to another. It's a pretty standard YA coming-of-age set-up, in an original-yet-familiar social/conceptual setting; it's good, sure, but this is not what makes Roth's book astounding. What makes it astounding is the amazing voice and the characterisation.

Roth absolutely nails Tris's voice; Tris is innocent and naive, yet determined and brave all at the same time, and the conflict that she feels between her old way of life and her (self-) imposed new way of life is treated with subtlety and delicacy and is just... *melts* *pats the pretty*

Topped off with a twist I didn't really expect (hurrah!) and your obligatory hot guy (though please note, his characterisation is equally as subtle as Triss's), this really is an amazing, amazing book. Go on: read the first pages already.

Final Conclusion:
I am speechless, and Ms Roth is on my auto-buy list. Read the first 100 pages of Divergent here, stalk Ms Roth on twitter and on her blog, and watch out for an announcement later this week about how you can win your very own copy of Divergent-shiny that I bought especially for you :o)

We Has Progress!

2011-11-06T23:05:00.003+11:00

In all areas, not just writing! Which is good, because writing progress has been, ahem, sparse lately. Is a lil difficult to write much when your schedule consists of being out at work or travelling from/to from 8am - 6pm, then 6-8pm nap, 8-930pm cook and eat dinner, 10pm bedtime.

BUT! PROGRESS! Largely, today, the progress has been baby-related. We spent 5 hours trawling through baby stores making decisions about cots and prams and strollers and monitors and chairs and bedding and and and and *explodes*. The decisions, oi. Intense.

Also, we have made progress on the baby room. See, I had this horrible moment a few months ago when I realised that being preg would actually kind of involve having a child, and that this would necessitate storage facilities and, well, a bedroom. Which is fine; our house has three plus a study. Except... Yeah. About that storage. I'm not sure if I'm embarrassed by this or not (:P), but I was, in actual fact, making full use of BOTH spare built-in-wardrobes, as well as 2/3rds of the walk-in in the master bedroom. Um, oops?

So in a fit of attempted-organisation, I pulled all my stuff out of 'spare' wardrobe number 2, and dumped it all on the floor of 'spare' room number 1, which is to be the baby room, in the hopes that I would be able to sort it out, condense it down, and fit it all BACK into the now-empty spare wardrobe #2.

That was about four months ago. Again, oops. But today - TODAY! - we has progress. The Most Wonderful Boyo spent four hours this evening with me closetted in the back room, sorting through stuff, and while there are still some boxes on the floor that need to be moved/chucked, the wardrobe is actually now empty but for Actual Baby Stuff.

So. I have done exactly zero writing this weekend, which given I'm notionally aiming for 30k for November so as to finish the dog book and the SFR short is not especially helpful, but at least Other Stuff was Done.

And sometimes, life just has to come first.

Monarch Winners!

2011-10-28T20:16:00.003+11:00

Thanks to everyone who entered the Monarch contest. Sorry I'm a little late drawing the winners, but I hope that those who won a prize enjoy it. There will be plenty of opportunities for everyone else to win more prizes soon* (hurrah).

So, without further ado, the winners!

First winner, who will get their choice of either the final Monarch ebook, or the ARC Monarch ebook:

Chrystalla Thoma!

Second winner, who will receive the other ebook:

Cee Martinez!

And the final winner, who will receive a signed mini-poster and bookmark:

Emily W!

Congratulations, winners (I'll be in touch shortly) and thanks once again to everyone who entered.

*Hint: Sign up to my newsletter for a chance to win Veronica Roth's Divergent in November.

24 Hours Left!

2011-10-26T18:00:00.000+11:00

Just a reminder that you have 24 hours left to enter the contest to win a copy of Michelle Davidson Argyle's awesome debut, Monarch. :)

My Shameful Secret

2011-10-24T08:43:00.001+11:00

Don't forget to enter the contest to win a copy of Michelle Davidson Argyle's awesome debut, Monarch.

My name is Amy, and I’m an English teacher, and I have not read To Kill A Mockingbird. Or One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Or All Quiet On The Western Front. Or anything by Dickens, or Tolstoy, or any Russian authors full stop actually.

I’ve only read two Austen novels. I’ve read one Hemmingway story – a short one. I hate The Turn of the Screw. I loathe Heart of Darkness with an undying passion. Wuthering Heights bored me so stupid I never finished it.

I threw Gone With The Wind at the wall with two chapters to go and never picked it up again.
I am a Bad Person.

What books haven’t you read that you really feel like you should have? What books would you kill me for not reading before I die? And what books have you read because people told you you had to, only to mourn the fact that you’ll never regain those hours of your life again?

Five Things To Do To Inspire Creativity

2011-10-20T09:11:00.001+11:00

Don't forget to enter the contest to win a copy of Michelle Davidson Argyle's awesome debut, Monarch.

Image from Stock Xchange

For me, anyway, because people are all inspired by different things :)

1) Have other stuff that absolutely MUST be done in order for life to keep functioning. The more boring the better. Marking is perfect. (Writing as procrastination, #ftw!)

2) Read. Read lots. Read good books (so you can weep over how great you’ll never be). Read bad books (so you can gain confidence in knowing you can do better).

3) Collect random trivia (because you never know when the knowledge that a particular species of fungus turns ants into mind-controlled zombies might be useful).

4) Collect random images (because turning pretty I-wish-I’d-made-that images into words doesn’t count as plagiarism).

5) Play (because your muse, or imagination, or whatever term you like to use, is really just the grown-up term for your inner five-year-old).

Incidentally, my inner five-year-old is actually very determined that she’s an inner-six-but-NEARLY-SEVEN-year-old, and her name is Sarah, and she has brown pigtails and likes to wear white and pink, and lives in a bedroom with a white-painted cast-iron bed (the kind with rails down one side so it can pretend to be a chair, and gold caps on the four corner posts), a white bookcase and desk, pinky-red carpet and a large primary-coloured rug somewhere deep down in my right brain.

The sad thing is, I’m not even kidding, and I could draw you a picture of her, and then move on to draw pictures of my left brain (twenty-year-old university newspaper editor) and my hind brain (who bizarrely insists on being thirty-five and wearing an emerald-green satin formal gown) also.

I always knew I had issues. O.0 :P :D

Litlinks Speech

2011-10-17T08:48:00.001+11:00

Don't forget to enter the contest to win a copy of Michelle Davidson Argyle's awesome debut, Monarch.

Have finally managed to get my hands on the recording of the speech I gave earlier in the year at the Litlinks 2010 Awards Ceremony. Hurrah! The Litlinks contest is an annual contest in the ACT whereby schools submit a handful of their students' best stories for the year. The top x stories in the state are then selected and published in an anthology, and winners in both the junior and senior categories receive prizes. It's a lovely initiative that makes the whole concept of writing and publishing more accessible to students, and I was tickled pink to be invited to speak.

I was invited in my capacity as both an English teacher and a short story author, and I gave the below after reading out my flash fic Forget. Enjoy ;)

Monarch - Review & Giveaway!

2011-10-13T09:03:00.004+11:00

September 2011, Rhemalda

341 pages, Paperback
Personal copy

Romantic Thriller
Some violence, closed-curtain sex

Summary from Rhemalda:

Nick’s life as a CIA spy should be fulfilling, but it has only given him unhappiness — a wife who committed suicide and two daughters who resent everything he has become. Now, stuck in the Amazon on the last mission of his career, he must track down Matheus Ferreira, a drug lord and terrorist the U.S. has tried to bring down for years. If he succeeds, he’ll have the chance to start his life over again.

Just when he’s on the brink of catching Ferreira, he’s framed for a murder that turns his world upside down. His only chance of survival lies in West Virginia where Lilian Love, a woman from his past, owns the secluded Monarch Inn. He’s safe, but not for long …

Amy's thoughts:
Despite the dead body on the opening page (;)), Monarch was one of those books that took me a couple of chapters to really get into. However, like Blood Song that I read recently and also took time getting into, I'm really, REALLY glad I did. (And look, seriously? Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels series is one of my all-time favourites, and it took me three goes to make it through the first chapter of the first book! This is a me-issue, clearly.)

Monarch is pegged as a thriller, and certainly has all the thriller paraphernalia - spies, betrayals, guns and cover stories, murders, threats, and time running out - but somehow, it's quieter than your average thriller, more thoughtful. Michelle utilises beautiful symbolism throughout and various different points of view to make this story about so much more than just a man on the run; I like to call Ender's Game, one of my all-time favourite novels, the science fiction novel for people who don't read science fiction - Monarch is the thriller for people who don't read thrillers. It's equal parts thriller and romance, contemporary and literary, and really embodies Michelle's cross-genre style. It's quiet and understated in a way that reminds you that life is not so much about what happens, as who it happens with - something worth remembering, I think.

Monarch utilises three points of view (Nick, Lilian of Monarch Inn, and Lilian's adult son Devan) and within Nick's point of view, two timelines, past and present. Occasionally the segues between Nick's timelines feel a little stiff, but overall the complex structure enhances the story and deepens our understanding of the characters and plot, and I really enjoyed seeing the story from different perspectives, especially since Michelle has done so well at giving them unique, original voices.

Overall, this is a very pleasing debut, and I can't wait for The Breakaway, Michelle's next novel (also a standalone), to be released next year. Yay!

Final Conclusion:
This is a great example of what you can do when you're not afraid to cross the genre boundaries. Congratulations on an awesome debut, Michelle!

Find out more about Michelle Davidson Argyle here including her highly awesome blog which you should all go follow right away! Sign up for her newsletter, too, because she does awesome giveaways for her subscribers. :)

Giveaway!

This is Michelle's debut novel, and as Michelle is a friend of mine, I'm understandably excited :D I was privileged enough to read a very early draft of this story, and I even helped a little with the opening paragraph of the novel! So I'm even MORE excited to be able to offer you the chance to win a copy of this fantastic story.

I have not one but TWO e-copies of Monarch to give away. One is an ARC, and the other is the final version (and yes, they are fractionally different). I also have a swag-bag, with a signed poster and bookmarks.

All you have to do to enter is tell someone else about this contest (anyone, anywhere, I trust you), then enter your details in the safe-and-secret online form. Contest is OPEN INTERNATIONALLY, and will close on October 27. Yay!

New Stuff, Free Stuff, Pretty Stuff

2011-10-12T19:52:00.000+11:00

So! This is an admin-y sort of post, but be not alarmed! It contains all sorts of fun, good stuff for the most wonderful readers on the planet! (That's you.) So make sure you read to the end, or, you know, skip down to the end and read the last sentence so at least if I quiz you, it'll LOOK like you read the whole thing. O:)

First of all, new stuff. The astute among you will notice that there is a 'Readers' link in the link bar at the top of the blog. The ones among you that have generally decent memories will also recall that I mentioned a little while ago that I was in the process of populating that link. Well! The link! She is populated! For now she is just a small, back county town, population 57, with a single street called Main Street and a butcher and a grocer and not much else, but she LIVES! Hurrahs!

If you click on the link you'll be taken to the readers' section of the site, which contains extras for stories and the like. At the moment, population 57 means that the extras for some of the short stories are up; you can find photos, fairytales, the sound of my voice, not-especially-brillant drawings and even special offers, all related to shorts I've had published. Squee!

But because I am lovely (and now on to the free stuff), I have also made MORE special offers available for you. Certified, Forget, Sculpting and Shoe are all free downloads all the time. However, until October 31, the following coupons also apply:

Download Sea Foam and Blood for free using this coupon: LG27M
Download Leaving (new story - somewhat of a prequel to Jesscapades) for free using this coupon: DK33L
Download What You Wish For, a new collection of three short stories, for free using this coupon: UY83D

But wait! That's not all! Your free set of steak knives... Er, okay, so posting steak knives to you all may be grounds for governmental investigations into my doings, and none of us want that. (You don't. Trust me). So I can't offer you steak knives.

I CAN, however, offer you the opportunity to win a super-shiny, highly awesome, brand new BOOK (and other stuff) every second month. How? As of November 1, I will be sending out a bi-monthly (as in once every two months, not twice a month; stupid confusing English) newsletter*, complete with competitions for subscribers only. Sign up now so you're all prepared for the first competition, which will be for a copy of the highly, HIGHLY awesome Divergent, by Veronica Roth. And yes, that's the pretty stuff. I mean seriously; have you SEEN the cover?? *dies of the shiny* So yes. Sign up to newsletter! O:)

And to finish, cookies. Because you are awesome just for reading this, and deserve a cookie. Or three. <3!
*Newsletter will be delivered by carrier bat to the email inbox of your choice. Carrier bats are of limited intelligence and prone to confusion, hence you can be absolutely sure that they will never spam you. This is why I use carrier bats. >:)

6SS: With This Ring

2011-10-09T11:42:00.000+11:00

Once again, I am way late putting this up, but better late than never, right? :) With This Ring is a short story about... Well, let me just give you the official blurb, shall I?

Changeling Orkney wakes in the arms of a beautiful woman with distant memories of rivers and burrows. He shrugs it all aside with the glorious discovery that he has proposed the woman, Lia - only he doesn't remember proposing at all, and the strange key in her study matches the ring on his finger.

Will Orkney remember who he is before it's too late?

With This Ring

The sun rose further and golden rays fell across her face, caramelising her skin and revealing copper highlights in her hair. Who was this beauty?

She opened her eyes.

Orkney gasped, shocked by their intense blueness. And he remembered.

A dimple sprang to life in Lia’s cheek. “Morning, sexy.”

Check out the rest of today's Six Sentence Sunday entries here, and once again, a million thanks to the organisers.

Alot of Power

2011-10-07T08:56:00.000+11:00

Okay, so the marking may be driving me just a TAD loopy. But when you see the same mistakes over and over and over and over and over and over again, you really do have to develop coping mechanisms. I love Hyperbole and a Half's coping mechanism for the abuse of 'alot' so much, I use it myself. It really does make everything much more hilarious, and a lot less frustrating.

Hence, this was my productive use of time last week, in the midst of marking mayhem. And no, my Alot doesn't look like Hyperbole and a Half's. Yes, hers is prettier. But I was totally working from memory and trying not to waste - er, invest too much time, so you know. I'm still pretty proud :P :D

Excerptification: Not a Word

2011-10-04T09:10:00.001+11:00

I’m never quite sure how interested people are in excerpts, as they don’t tend to attract many comments, but of course are not the kind of thing that really elicit comments. So, if you do happen to feel like clicking through and commenting today, I’d love to know your opinion: to excerpt, or not to excerpt? Interesting or skim-worthy?

Personally, it depends on my mood at the time and how many unread items are in my feedreader O:) :D

Anyway, I’m really excited about the story I’m working on at the moment. I have several Big projects I’m ‘supposed’ to be working on (a rewrite of the 33 Mistakes About Dogs book for rerelease in November, revising Marked for tentative December release, editing Jesscapades and Sanctuary for submission to publishers, etc), but it’s hard to fit those in around the brain and time requirements of The Snowdrift of Marking Doom. The couple of shorts that have pounced on me? Much easier to squeak in, especially since they’ve arrived with Voice, which always, ALWAYS make things easier to write for me.

The one that I’ve excerpted (ha, Word accepts that as a word!) from today is tentatively titled To Dust, and is about the MC’s quest to find out first what the mysterious box does, and then how it can save their society from the [insertnamehere]s. It’s a quirky sort of blend of post-apocalypse and fantasy, and includes zombies and fae and technology and magic, and most of all dust, because dust is important. I’m loving this story, and can’t wait to see what it turns into.

Enjoy :)

[rough draft, unedited, blah blah blah]

Sometimes, walking away is the hardest thing you can do. That day, in Oseena, I swore I’d never do it again – and yet here I am, backpack slung over one shoulder, sunglasses perched on my nose, staring down the infinite road to nowhere, everywhere, anywhere but here. I don’t want to run away. In fact, I rather hate myself for it. It’s so much easier to stay, to fight, to be one of the people who get to die in a glorious blaze of meaning and feeling and then feel… nothing.

But it’s not my day to die. Today, I have to live, because today, I have to get the box away. The perfect cube that can sit on my two outstretched palms, sharp edged and shined to perfection – the only hope we have of stopping the [name] forever.

And that, I want to do. I want to stop them more than anything else in the world; more, even, than I want to stay. Which is the only reason why I set off against the sunset, heading north in a town that runs south, away from the battlefields of the fallen to where the rumours are born – the north, from whence our salvation comes.

That’s what they say, anyway, and as I step past the protection of the last building in town – a tiny drugstore, good for toothpaste and tobacco and not much else – I can only hope that they are right, whoever they are.

The road before me is straight and broad, dust whipping off it in the erratic wind into spirals and billows that whip across the fields like spirits. Dust spirits, earth spirits; spirits of those returned to dust. From dust born, to dust returned. Only that’s exactly it: with the [name] on our doorsteps at last, there will be no return. It might indeed be easier to join the battle, the onslaught, to rush at the invaders headlong and fight – but death at the hands of a [name] is not death at all.

I’ve seen bodies the [name] left behind, twisted, gruesome things with flesh squeezed until the insides popped out, left in the sun to ferment, a rictus of pain on their face – and the eyes. It makes me shudder. The eyes are the worst.

No. Walking away is hard, to be sure, but it’s right. I’ll succeed; I have to.

The Worst Timing In The World

2011-10-02T09:08:00.001+11:00

It’s always when you’re ridiculously busy doing other stuff that the brain cylinders start firing. End of last term, winter holidays, and beginning of this term, I had time, but no motivation or inspiration. Cue Deathly Assessment Flurry #2, that last from about the beginning of September through to mid-November (as opposed to #1, which is April-May), and nearly every single freaking floodgate in my mind has opened, because I have no time to write.

Photo from Stock Xchange

I’m not even kidding; nearly every SINGLE story I’ve EVER written and actually want to fix has been unblocked in the last four weeks, from Jesscapades, the editing nightmare that it is, to Sanctuary, with its excellent plot but iffy worldbuilding, and from Dragon Tuesday (short story) with its lack of solid plot and character arc, to the untitled noir story with its multitudinous red herrings and lack of actual solution.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Seriously, brain. This is Very Poor Planning, and I do not approve.

I mean, don’t get me wrong; I approve very highly of the solutions to all the muck. I just wish you’d hand them to me when I could actually, you know, DO SOMETHING ABOUT THEM.

On the other hand, it’s REALLY nice to be having ideas again (contrast my imagination drought from Easter 2010 to, well, recently), and I guess it’s proof that when you get really blocked, you just have to walk away and bore your brain into submission.

Brain says, Officially bored! Have ideas!

I say, Yay! And sigh. And Oh, My, Gosh. >.< :)

Back When I Was REALLY Bad

2011-09-28T17:05:00.003+10:00

Image from Stock Xchange
I learned to play piano so long ago that I don’t really remember struggling to match black dots on lines to white keys on the instrument. Same with riding a bicycle – although I DO remember a particular wattle tree at the turn of the street I got a little too friendly with on one of my very first expeditions.

I don’t remember being an only child, even though I was four and a half when the next sibling was born. I don’t remember learning to read, and I DO clearly remember correcting the reading of students in the year above me when I was in year three (and yes, I was a miniature Hermione in primary school, which in Australia is Kindy to year six).

I don’t remember learning to hold a pencil and form letters.

I DO, however, remember very clearly learning how to write. Mostly because I’m still learning :P but also because in comparison to these other things, it’s more recent. And while on the one hand it’s frustrating to look at authors who are REALLY good and go – oh my gosh, I’ll never be that good, why am I even bothering? – on the other hand, it’s also kind of cool to be able to look back on how far I’ve travelled in the last few years.

And believe me, I have TRAVELLED, and thank goodness. Cause you know, some of that early stuff was really, genuinely terrible.

I have a subfolder in my writing folder called ‘The Graveyard’, where ideas go to die. I actually tend to use it as more of a flexible dead zone, though, because things can always be resurrected as zombies >:) So in actual fact, it’s all the stories I’m not working on right now (because if I have all the folders out and visible, the Brain panics because OH NOES, ALL THE OPTIONS!!! *dies of indecision*).

BUT. In The Graveyard, I have another subfolder: Beyond Resurrection. And this, my friendlies, is where the true horrors of the graveyard lie. Sure, in other graves there are part-bodies and bodies with heads where their legs should be and bodies that never made it off the operating table and bodies that have been in train wrecks and bodies that lack hearts and all manner of other gruesome story stuff, but they’re not the horrors. The horrors are the one that are so truly DREADFUL that you don’t ever actually WANT them to come back to life.

Like the story I wrote as part of my masters degree for an archaeology course, which made it blatantly clear that I ought never, ever, EVER try to write historical fiction again. Or the story that was essentially just me in character form, angsting that I didn’t know what to write. Or the flash fic that was just a bad excuse to tell a joke that’s funny in real life, but from which I learned that stories and jokes are actually (shock!) different genres.

Look, honestly? Some of them are so bad that I don’t even have them on my USB stick which is my LIFE when it comes to writing when I’m not on my home laptop (as now), so I can’t even post excerpts for you to be amused at.

But the funny thing is, even if I wanted to, there isn’t a good excerpt to post, because the problem wasn’t that I didn’t know how to write sentences. I could write sentences, and pretty good ones at that; I did have university training in both law and English, after all. No, it was the STORY I had problems with – creating conflict without melodrama, allowing room for the reader and not overwriting, avoiding forced-march plotting (something I still lapse into sometimes), creating a satisfying story arc.

Which makes it all the sweeter when stories come to me now, like two have in the last ten days, complete with beautiful story arcs and pacing and character motivation. And it helps me to have patience through the drudgery of marking – because I used to be that awful too ;)

Just Write Already

2011-09-16T09:02:00.002+10:00

In music we admire musicians who practice ten or more hours a day. Painters and other forms of art are the same. Only in writing does the myth of not practicing to get better come roaring in. We teach new writers to slow down, to not work to get better, to spend fewer and fewer hours at writing, to not practice, and then wonder why so many writers don’t make it to a professional level. ~ Dean Wesley Smith

You know, that’s a really, really good point. I mean, everyone knows on some sort of instinctive level that you have to practice something to get good at it, but I know that I for one get majorly sucked into the 'perfect pot' trap.

I really need to learn to let go of that and just applying the BIC method – i.e., Butt In Chair. Sit, write, and quit worrying over the quality of the derned stuff. Research and logic are both quite clear that the more you do something, the better you’ll get. Abstractivising, as I am so fond of doing, will only get you so far; I want more than 'grandiose theories and pile of dead clay'.

So excuse me – I’m off to write :)

[Addendum: After writing this, I did in fact go off to write, and wrote nearly 1200 words of a new short in about 40 minutes. SQUEE.)

And The Winner Is...

2011-09-14T09:49:00.003+10:00

The winner of an ARC of Maggie Stiefvater's incredible The Scorpio Races is...

Crys Hodgens!

Congratulations :o) We'll be in touch soon.

The Scorpio Races Contest Closed!

2011-09-13T21:07:00.002+10:00

Hi all! Just a quick note to let you know the contest is closed. Thank you all so much for entering :o) We'll be announcing a winner soon, both here and on Nayuleska's blog!

24 Hours Left To Win The Scorpio Races

2011-09-12T17:02:00.003+10:00

Also, as you can read in the title, you have but 24 hours remaining to enter for your chance to win an ARC of The Scorpio Races. It's dead easy - just tell someone (anyone!) about the contest/book, fill out this form, and you're in with a chance to win, as they say! :o)

Good luck, and thanks to everyone who's entered so far!

The More You Know...

2011-09-12T12:07:00.004+10:00

So, I was catching up on my blog reading the other day and came across this post by Natalie Whipple - Have You Seen My Confidence Lately? It Ran Off. I read it, and went - wow, have I been there. The last year-and-a-bit has been one big long episode of I-have-no-confidence. Other than the fact that I was sick for at least 3/4 of last year, which seriously screwed with my mental abilities, for some reason, finishing Sanctuary was like holding up a metal rod to the Electrical Storm of Doubt.

Which is stupid, because Sanctuary was the easiest book I've ever written - less than 3 months, start to finish, which for me is pretty jolly awesome. Especially since I had a sisterous wedding and started working full time in the middle of that.

But for some bizarre reason, that's kind of WHY I started freaking out over writing. After writing a book that was so easy, all of a sudden everything else I tried to write seemed hard. Yeah, okay, I was spiralling into health-induced depression too, but it was more than that. It was like I developed this fear that if something was hard to write, it must be awful - and since everything was hard to write, clearly everything I was writing was awful.

So I didn't. And then what with dealing with the health issues and whatnot, by the time I had *brain* again to start writing, I felt like I was back at the very beginning again, trying to convince myself that I really truly could write a first draft, and that no, it didn't matter if it was terrible (only it did, because by now, I'd totally failed at my first attempt to revise Jesscapades too, which added to everything else the lingering suspicion that I'd never actually be able to fix any of my drafts).

Slowly, slooooooowly, I got back into the swing of things, and started rewriting Jesscapades. And then I went and decided to grow a parasitical minion inside my own body, which sapped all my available brainpower :P

But the other day, I came across this awesome wiki article. I can't remember how I stumbled on it, but it really hit the spot, and although it's an appeal to the logic circuits rather than the emotional centre, I found it really quite comforting. It's about the Dunning-Kruger effect, which in essence boils down to that lovely pithy truism, "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." I.e., the more proficient you become at something, the more likely you are to think you suck, because you assume EVERYONE has that base level of proficiency, and you can see full well just how far you fall short of perfect.

How is that comforting? Well, it means that if I'm doubting my ability, I'm objectively speaking more likely to actually be competent in that area. If I'm sailing along thinking everything is fantastic and that I am amazing, it's most likely that I simply don't realise just how crap I am. So doubt is awesome, because it means we're on the right track. As long as we don't let it overcome us, of course.

And you know what? I think I actually have improved. I picked up Jesscapades again last night, because I'm determined to fix the thing by hook or by crook... And, yes, there's stuff that still doesn't work - but there are things that do. I haven't fixed all the problems - but I've fixed some.

So next time you start feeling dismal about your own work - remember to take a break, and read about the Dunning-Kruger effect *grin*

Pictures and Linkies and Fun Stuff, Oh My!

2011-09-06T22:04:00.004+10:00

If there were a prize for writing-blog-posts-in-your-head-then-never-posting-them, I can pretty much guarantee I'd be a winner. In the past week, I have written blog posts on looking for happiness, learning stuff from marking, why exercise is like writing, and of course, the two posts I've been writing and rewriting in my head for over a month, investigating self publishing and Holly Lisle's courses. Oi. *facepalm*

It's now like an hour and a quarter past my ridiculously early bedtime (hi, bump-who-drains-my-energy *significant look*), but I was DETERMINED to say SOMETHING today, so here I am, saying... something.

Actually, I have something I think is exciting to say :o) I've been messing around with the blog and the website trying to actually make the website look something like something I like. What that looks like, I'm still not 100% sure, which is part of the problem. I know what I want ON the site, just not how to prettify it, and it's driving me nuts o.0 Anyone know a cheap web designer out there? Apparently I'm in the market *eye roll*

ANYway, as part of this, you'll notice (if you click through) that the linkage across to the top of the blog has been updated, and there's this handy-dandy section called 'readers' now. Long time readers may remember that some time ago, I had a companion site that had projects I was working on, excerpts, totally illegally pilfered images, etc :P

Well, it's back! Only this time, it's legal! Ah ha.

Seriously, though, I have about 8 shorts up on Smashwords now and another couple to pop up there soonish, and the Dog Book (33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Dogs) is undergoing a major and gruelling revision in preparation for being re-released, and I thought it was about time I threw up some of the extra stuff I have for all these things. I have images, inspiration-trivia and deleted scenes/excerpts for the shorts, and the Dog Book will have a MASS of extra stuff: photos, appendices, linkage, video clips... All sorts of Really Awesome Stuff.

None of this is up yet, but I'll start putting it up in the next week (around marking, my favourite!) and sit back and let you all devour gleefully. Or maybe just devour. Or, you know, nibble around the edges. Either way.

And on that note, I'm really, truly, honestly, I-promisely, off to bed. *snore*

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

2011-08-31T09:30:00.001+10:00

October 2011, Scholastic
404 pages, Paperback
Review copy

Literary fantasy
Some brutal, horrible deaths

Summary from Scholastic:

It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. Some riders live. Others die.

At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.

Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn’t given her much of a chance. So she enters the competition — the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen.

Amy's Thoughts:

This is not a book to squee over; this is a book to quietly die for. I really, really don't know how to do this book justice in a review, so bear with me while I try.

The Scorpio Races is set on a small island in the UK, and the ocean permeates the story. More. This story IS the ocean. The ocean is vast and deep and dangerous and compelling, moody and tempestuous and utterly, utterly charming while at the same time pervaded by a dangerous undercurrent. Ocean, water, blue-brown-grey, gull crying in loneliness from the craggy cliffs and the wind whipping in your face - this is Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races.

It's quiet, and compelling, and oh, so utterly, utterly true. No, it's not a factual story, but what it says about people and life and grief and love - it's real. It's true.

I've never in my life hated an author before, not even when J.K. killed off beloved characters in her Harry Potter series. I cried, sure, just like I bawled my eyes out for the last three chapters of Marley and Me; but I've never hated an author for something they made happen in a book.

I hated Ms Stiefvater. At a certain point in the last quarter of The Scorpio Races, I wanted to throw it against a wall and scream in outrage and horror at the unfairness of it all. But I couldn't, because what she'd written was right; it was true. And I couldn't bring myself to not read the end, not see how it finished. And I'm so, so, so glad I did finish it, because the ending was worth waiting for, and is so bittersweetly beautiful that I'm literally crying again now remembering it.

I love this book. If you love human-animal connections, real romantic relationships that are more about mutual respect and understanding than mushiness, difficult decisions, wild places, bittersweet endings and of course, killer water horses, please: love this book too.

Final Conclusion:
This is the most heart-wrenching book I can ever remember reading. I want to carry it around with me forever to remind me of all that is beautiful and important in life - and what exactly love is.

Find Maggie Stiefvater on her website, and view the trailer for The scorpio Races here.

EXCITING CONTEST NEWS: I'm doing a joint giveaway with Nayuleska of Nayu's corner. To enter for your chance to win an ARC of The Scorpio Races, tell someone about this contest (FB, Twitter, your blog, in person, whatevs) and fill in this form. And no, we don't require proof that you told someone; we trust you. Although if you came up with a way to show us that you told someone in person, that would be kind of awesome. *imagines photos, videos, audios* *cackles*

The contest will close on SEPTEMBER 13 and is open INTERNATIONALLY. Oh, and the cover is not as pictured since it's an uncorrected proof ;)

Discrimination: Is It Really Funny?

2011-08-28T21:38:00.003+10:00

I was poking around on the harddrive looking for a particular file last night when I stumbled across the below: a post I wrote nearly TWO YEARS ago that somehow never made it to the blog. It was a direct response to something that happened on a live TV show, but it's still just as relevant and thought-provoking. So this week, you get a long, thinky post :) It's a little vague in places, but nonetheless asks some interesting questions. Enjoy.

Australians will poke fun at anything and everything, and claim it is their right to do so. There are very few icons of our own that one could mock and be slandered for it; we value our sense of laid-back humour and our ability to mock one and all. But are we guilty, because of this, of perpetuating negative stereotypes when we laugh at jokes that are fundamentally based on discrimination and said stereotyping?

Where, for example, does one draw the line? Is a blonde telling a blonde joke less discriminatory than a brunette telling it? Are we allowed to laugh? Are we allowed to laugh if a brunette tells it, but the blondes in the room laugh? And given that casual mockery is such an essential part of Australian culture, do we have to ask questions like, to what extent is a culture allowed their own character, insomuch as that character may hurt and offend others? And ultimately, is mocking based on racial or sexist discrimination any less harmful in the long run than, for example, the oppression of women in some eastern nations?

And most importantly: does this mean we’re not allowed a sense of humour? I dispute that: I believe that humour is an essential quality of being human, of life. But on the other hand, I refuse to find things such as Australia’s Funniest Home Videos funny; I find nothing amusing about people hurting themselves over and over in obvious, predictable and painful ways. Is it a matter then of choosing what we find funny?

It’s no wonder we live in a post-post modern age; moral relativity and globalisation are utterly incompatible. We simply cannot argue that what is right for me is right for me, and what is right for you is right for you, in an age where even the very concept of nationalism is up for grabs. Western nations will permit non-western nations to have power and influence only to the degree that they conform to our ideals and values; there is an absolute, and it’s ours. Granted, nationalism (global recognition that a country conforms to certain standards and thus has the right to autonomy) has always been a case of good for the goose but not for the gander, but in an increasingly global society there can be little doubt that nations are no longer truly free to choose their own identity; if they are to have any sway in the political community they must conform to certain standards of “justice”, “equality” and “democracy”.

But in the end, who’s to say that our judgement stick is the best? By no means am I suggesting that I am anti-democratic, or anti-anti-discrimination; but the point remains: we are guilty of forcing our will upon the rest of the world, whether they want it or not. It is for the good of the majority – on the whole.

So what are we going to do about it? It starts with being able to admit that we are part of the problem; with being able to admit that we are part of a society that perpetuates stereotypes; with being able to re-examine our own habits and beliefs, and being willing to accept that we were wrong – and that we can change.

I acknowledge that I have been naive. And I resolve to monitor more closely what I find amusing, and why, and to think about the broader implications that that may have not only in my own life, but in the life of others, even be they far, far away from me.

The world will change one person at a time. What will you do to change it?

Spring Reading Challenge

2011-08-25T09:56:00.008+10:00

So, I've decided that, as I appear unable to write at the moment, I can at the very least READ lots. To that end, I've signed up for the Spring Reading Challenge on Good Reads. Note that's Australian spring ;)

Here are the rules, along with my choice of book for each category:

"With spring at our doorstep the temperature is starting to warm up, so shed those woolly blankets and grab a book that warms the heart instead..."

1. Spring clean your bookcases by reading a much loved, but yet unread book - either novel or biography.

We all know I have a bazillion unread books on my shelves, but for this category I've chosen To Kill A Mockingbird, because I need to read it for school anyway ;)

2. Choose a book that features a new life - a baby (animal or human) on the cover/in the story.

Zombies vs Unicorns. What? Zombies are 'new life', right? O:)

3. Choose a book for it's cover - a spring image with all it's colour.

You know, I have a really lack of springy, flowery kind of covers on my shelves. I found, in fact, only three. The most springish is the non-fiction, I'm Not Good Enough, and given I'm in the mood for a happy-cheery pick-me-up kind of book, this the one.

4. The Royal Adelaide show is on 2nd - 10th September, so a book about a show/carnival rides/handicrafts/cookery/livestock - anything to tie into the event.

Also lacking books on this sort of topic, and without close scrutiny I couldn't determine if any of the novels might have a show or a fair or something in them. Hence, I picked How Dogs Learn, which is livestock-related, right? Plus, Royal shows totally have a dog showing component, so you know. I say it fits.

5. The Brisbane Writers Festival is on 7th - 11th September, so choose a book written by an Aussie author, released somewhere in the 3 months of Spring.

Look, really? I've just spent over half an hour searching the internet for somewhere that will tell me what Aussie authors have coming out in the next few months, and I got NOTHING. I hit the Spring Reading Challenge list to see what others had posted, and I'm fairly uninspired, PLUS I don't really want to shell out money for a book just so I can fill this space on my list. SO, I'm going to cheat, but only a little. I just finished reading Blood Song, which is coming out Sept 1, by Rhiannon Hart, who is an Aussie author - so this book fits this section, I just happened to accidentally read it two weeks early. Right? Right.

6. Seeing as Spring colours are predominantly red and yellow, pick a book with either a red or yellow cover, and post the book cover as well, so everyone can see (and get colourful suggestions).

I also lack red and yellow books o.O I have about 5 options, but Seven Little Australians is the shortest, and conveniently fits the theme ;) Plus, you know, flowers on the cover and all... O:)

7. Sydney Eisteddfod is running until 20th September and they are searching for the best young Australian talent, so pick a Young Adult book, not necessarily by an Aussie author, for this event.

I found If I Stay in a remainders bin the other day and snaffled it up, so this is my YA book for spring.

8. The Spring Racing Carnival culminating with the Melbourne Cup is in November, so a book about horses/horse racing/betting/money won and lost.

Dark Horse - I've had this one for a while and am curious.

9. How about a book with the title beginning with the first letter of your name, e.g. I could choose Black Wave: A Family's Adventure at Sea and the Disaster That Saved Them.

A Zest for Herbs, because I was going to use this for #10, but realised it fits here too and is shorter than the other options O:) Plus it gets rid of another non-fic on my TBR list, and the non-fics take FOREVER to move.

10. For the last one, you have a choice: a book with a garden connection for spring or a non-fiction/biography, again with a spring connection!

As I do actually really want to reread Backyard Self-Sufficiency, this is the perfect excuse.

Not a bad list: 1 reread, 1 cheat, and 4 non-fiction. And I'm sure I'll squeeze another book in there in place of the 'cheat', so you know. All in all, I'm looking forward to this :o) What do you plan on reading over the next few months? Anyone care to join me in the Spring Challenge (even if it's not spring for you)?

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

2011-08-22T14:15:00.000+10:00

January 2011, Penguin/Razorbill
408 pages, Paperback
Library copy

YA science fiction
Some graphic pain, murder, sex (not MC)

Summary from Penguin:

Amy has left the life she loves for a world 300 years away

Trapped in space and frozen in time, Amy is bound for a new planet. But fifty years before she's due to arrive, she is violently woken, the victim of an attempted murder. Now Amy's lost on board and nothing makes sense - she's never felt so alone.

Yet someone is waiting for her. He wants to protect her; and more if she'll let him.

But who can she trust amidst the secrets and lies? A killer is out there – and Amy has nowhere to hide . . .

Amy's thoughts:
Oh, my gosh! I LOVED this book! I read it in a single sitting, past my bedtime, and adored every minute of it. This book is full of twists and turns and surprising reveals, and although I guess one or two I didn't actually guess how they would work, and made exclamations of delight often enough that my husband kept giving me strange looks.

The characters are interesting and well-rounded and, most importantly, smart and active. Although they're in a very difficult situation (stuck on a gen-ship several centuries away from Earth) with mysterious murders of an odd variety happening all around them, they Get Stuff Done.

The worldbuilding is just gorgeous - rich and layered and entirely logical - sometimes scarily so. But most importantly, this book does EXACTLY what science fiction is, in my opinion, supposed to do: it asks important ethical and moral questions. What is the truth? Does everyone actually deserve - or need - to know it? What constitutes good leadership? Does the end ever justify the means? And just exactly how much can love overcome?

A very, very awesome book.

Final Conclusion:
This is one of my favourite books all year. Well done, Ms Revis!

Find out more about Across the Universe at its website, or more about Beth Revis at her website :)

The Most Awesome Writer Resources Disappearing

2011-08-19T16:44:00.006+10:00

Just a quick adminy kind of note to say that, as some of you may know, Holly Lisle is, after 30+ years of traditional publishing and 30+ novels published, going indie. What this means for you guys is that very soon, her products will be available through all the standard indie channels - Smashwords, Amazon, B&N, Apple iStore, etc - BUT NOT through the HollyShop on her own website. Why should you care?

Because I will no longer be able to offer you the No-Questions-Asked 20% Rebate on her products.

So if there were any resources of hers that you were thinking of snaffling, I'd really recommend doing so asap so you can email me your receipt and I can refund you your 20% of the total cost. I really, really, REALLY highly recommend her Create-a-Plot Clinic and her How To Write Page Turning Scenes in particular (review of HTWPTS here). The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Horses is pretty good, too.

PS: note that this DOESN'T include her two big courses, How To Think Sideways and How To Revise Your Novel (links in sidebar). I can still offer the 20% discount on those :)

Written in My Mind: When to Edit

2011-08-17T12:39:00.004+10:00

Question:

"I want my first lines to be perfect. I've written 20k, and I've planned out the whole story in my mind. I know the tone I want to set and what my key themes will be. Will you help me?"

Answer:

Um, no. Because a) I'm too lazy to waste time and effort on b) something that will invariably be re-fixed later on.

It's easy to think my response is mean until you stop and think about it. Personally, critiquing someone else's work, even just a handful of sentences, takes a lot of time and effort. I'm a high school English teacher, so I do A LOT of critiquing - only it's called marking, and I mostly get paid for it. I also have very little time to devote to writing of any kind right now, all of which means, if I'm going to critique something non-school-related, I want to think that it's the ABSOLUTELY BESTEREST BEST the person can do themselves before I have at it - otherwise it feels like a total waste of time, or else that THEY are being lazy.

So what's wrong with the above situation? Why couldn't these first sentences be as perfect as the author can possibly make them before they finish writing the book? Because of one thing:

Plans change.

Have you heard the phrase, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy"? Substitute 'first draft' for enemy (although, let's face it, the resemblance is striking :P) and you'll have the motto that every writer needs tattooed on... well, the back of their hand would be more practical that their forehead, because hands are visible while writing, whereas faces, not so much. Unless, I don't know, you write with a mirror next to you, or your webcam open on your computer ;)

Because here's the thing: For most people, most of the time, it doesn't matter how much you pre-plan a story, something will always crop up as you're drafting that will surprise you. That's an awesome thing, and it's the whole reason for me why first drafts are fun - but it also means that you'll never really know what your beginning needs to encompass until you're done with the rest of your book.

Sure, you might think you know the plot, because you've written it out in your head, and you might think you know the precise tone that you want to convey - but what if you have a brilliant spark of inspiration halfway through writing that will work with what you planned, but subtlely shift the emphasis so the story is even deeper, even brighter, even better?

There's a really good reason the pros don't do more that a light polish on drafted chapters before they type 'The End'. Actually, reasons. 1) It means you haven't wasted time polishing something that you won't actually end up using (same reason why you should always do your structural edits before your line edits), and 2) it means you can avoid being caught in the mire of 'If I Can Just Get This Perfect, Then I Can Move On'.

I'm not saying editing before 'The End' is always terrible. In fact, as I pull out my old half-written draft of The Project, I'm planning on doing some edits. There's a subplot that I really need to weave into the early chapters so I can figure out how it impacts the later chapters, so I'm rereading my draft, doing light polish-line edits and inserting the three or four (I hope!) scenes that I need to build my subplot - and then I'll write the last third of the draft.

But the difference here is that 1) I've had this book shelved for over a year, and 2) wow, look at that, my plan didn't survive first contact. The story changed. And now I need to figure out how to change my plan to match.

Sure, people are going to disagree with my assessment, and I know people happy to swear that their plan won't change, they promise, because they've been imagining the story for years and they know it so well. Each to their own. Just don't expect a lot of people to be clamouring to help you line edit when you haven't finished the book ;)

(Incidentally, this is part of the reason why agents and publishers aren't interested in incomplete manuscripts from unknowns - they have no guarantee whatsoever that what they read will actually make it to the final draft, or that it will even be RELEVANT.)

Blood Song by Rhiannon Hart

2011-08-13T13:30:00.005+10:00

Sept 2011, Random House
290, Paperback
Review copy

YA fantasy
Occasional mild violence, a kiss or two

Summary from Random House Australia:

When her sister becomes betrothed to a prince in a northern nation, Zeraphina's only consolations are that her loyal animal companions are by her side - and that her burning hunger to travel north is finally being sated.

Already her black hair and pale eyes mark her out as different, but now Zeraphina must be even more careful to keep her secret safe. Craving blood is not considered normal behaviour for anyone, let alone a princess. So when the king's advisor, Rodden, seems to know more about her condition than she does, Zeraphina is determined to find out more.

Zeraphina must be willing to sacrifice everything if she's to uncover the truth - but what if the truth is beyond her worst nightmares?

Amy's Thoughts:
I must confess, my thoughts as I waded through the first three chapters of this book were - oh no, not another 'Just Another Vampire Story' (J.A.V.S.). Somehow, I'd missed the (totally obvious) references in the back cover copy and HELLO, THE TITLE, and I was worried I wouldn't enjoy the book after all. But I DID like the back cover copy, and that kept me going.

I'm so, SO glad I did. As soon as the MMC is introduced somewhere around chapter 4 or 5, this book morphed from being my few-pages-every-few-days bathroom book to an un-put-down-able story that I HAD to finish RIGHT THEN. Rodden, the MMC? SO. MUCH. AWESOME. He and the FMC Zeraphina play off each other perfectly, and there's snark, and attraction, and it's just all so shiny.

Plus, the books is definitely NOT a J.A.V.S. Hart's take on 'vampires' is refreshing (more in line with historical perspectives of vampirism, not the new-fangled vampires-are-sparkly-and-sexy) and fits well into her original world building. Plus, hello, telepathic connections with animals. I'm in. (That's part of what attracted me to the story in the first place).

Final Conclusion:
I'll be looking out for the next book in the series, for sure. This was a fun read :)

Find out more about Blood Song and Rhiannon Hart at her blog, Dangers Untold and Hardships Unnumbered.

In Which I Say Stuff!!

2011-08-08T15:46:00.001+10:00

Somehow, over the last few months I have acquired a couple of new followers. I've NO IDEA how this has happened, since apparently I am incapable of blogging and pretty much am only on twitter during school hols, but anyway, however you found your way here - hi! And thanks :o) And sorry. :D

Anyway, below is most of a post I started like two weeks ago, and then didn't finish. This is Me And Blogging at the moment - it's not that I don't think of things to say, it's just I never get around to saying them (although for a long time it WAS because I had nothing to say, mostly because I wasn't writing). So, without further ado, post:

So, it's been a long time since I actually had stuff to say on here. [no kidding; delaying this post by like 3 weeks made that even longer, woman!] I blame term 2 (I loathe term 2 with a passion; it's the busiest and most dismal term of all, not helped by ever-encroaching winter-lack of daylight) and the fact that my body has been preoccupied with other stuff. This, for example:

Rah. Crazy how much that thing messes with your brain.

But anyway, it's FINALLY holidays, and my brain is FINALLY kinda-sorta working again, and I Have Stuff To Say! Rawr.

First up, I just want to note that I've gone through and tidied all the meta pages; TBR Pile of Doom, Books Read, WIPs and Published Works are all now uptodate. Hurrahs! I just started Like Clockwork today, [being like 3 weeks ago] and I am LOVING it SO much. I honestly haven't been this enthused about writing since I wrote the first book in the series over a year ago. It's a really nice feeling. [but apparently not nice enough to get me past chapter one :P]

The fact that I have evil brain-washing clockwork fairies, plus friendship and learning to trust and broken promises and betrayals and assumptions-that-turn-people-evil, to look forward to helps. A lot.

[It does. Very much. But what DOESN'T help is realising that a few things need to be sorted out in the first book first. So drafting is on hold and I've just yesterday (like really yesterday) drawn myself up a revision timetable for Sanctuary, which has me finishing right on December, which is rather full of happiness. But more on that in another post.

For now, suffice to say that I am going to endeavour to post about once a week, now that I no longer feel like the living dead (just the living exhausted ;)), and if I don't, you're free and welcome to come after me with pitchforks, knives, and other uncomfortably pointy objects.

Thus concludeth perhaps the most pointless and rambly post I believe I've ever written. Oi.]

6SS: Sea Foam and Blood

2011-07-18T09:43:00.002+10:00

Okay, I am way late getting this up this week, but better late than never, right? Right.

So, today's 6SS is from a short story of mine, Sea Foam and Blood. This was the first story I ever had published, and it won best in issue, which I was pretty excited about :o) It's a strange, sad little story about a terminally ill girl and the Pegasus myth (Pegasus was born of Medusa's blood spilled on the foam of the sea) come to life, and although it really is a sad story, it has an uplifting, bittersweet sort of ending. I'm really excited, too, that it's once more available, this time up on Smashwords. Huzzah!

Right. Onwards.

Image by ontzy

Sea Foam and Blood

Adelaide tried to sit up, but her mother’s insistent hands held her down. “Mum, honest, I’m fine.”
“How many fingers?”
“Two hundred.”
“Funny. Any blurriness of vision? Head pain? Dizziness? Blacking out?”
“No, no, no and no. I’m fine.”

Ah, but is she? That is the question, of course...

ARGH-SQUEEEEE!!!

2011-06-22T19:35:00.003+10:00

ALSO! I got a parcel in the mail today. It pretty much made my entire week.

My wonderful, amazing, insert-more-fantabulous-adjectives-here friend Nayuleska from Nayu's Reading Corner sent me a BOOK, in my capacity as a sometimes-reviewer on her blog! And not just any book: an ARC of Maggie Stiefvater's brand new book, The Scorpio Races.

I've read the first chapter, despite the fact that I really NEED to be writing reports, and let me tell you - it's amazing. I can't WAIT until reports are done and I can snuggle down and read it for reals.

So. Much. Squee :o)

It's All Okay In The End

2011-06-22T19:29:00.004+10:00

I haven't blogged in a looooong time. I know. I'd like to apologise, except I'm not really sorry; I've really enjoyed the break. And the main problem is that I feel like I've run of things to say. *shrug* It happens. All good.

But anyway, I just - like literally less than one minute ago - had a Moment. You know what I mean. One of those moments when you're reading along, and something connects with a problem you've been having, or a thought you'd been thinking, and then you look up, and something else connects, and lights come on in your brain.

Image from Stock Xchange

I read this sentence by Davin Malasarn over on Glam's blog:

I challenge you not to see those decisions as right or wrong, but as just another span in an ever-flowing path that is your writing career. It will ebb and flow but it will never freeze unless you let it.

That alone is wonderful enough. But just as I was considering this in relation to writing, which I have done practically none of since April holidays due to a severe lack of time and brain, an ad came up on TV. Superficially, it's unrelated - an ad about stopping at train tracks on the red signal, instead of running the red. It's a pretty good ad, actually, as warning-ads go - and it finished with this line, in big letters on the screen:

Some things are worth waiting for.

*bazaam*. Lights sparkling.

It might not mean much to you guys, but it means a lot to me. Writing is worth waiting for, and none of my decisions regarding it are wrong unless I let myself stagnate. I haven't been writing, but I'm not stagnant - ideas are firing in my head and I have at least two new stories I'm 'working' on, plus some old half-finished shorts I'm itching to play with.

I'm going slowly, but I'm not stagnant - so everything is okay.

And I like it when everything's okay :)

6SS: Aaaaawkward!

2011-06-05T11:17:00.001+10:00

Six Sentence Sunday. In which John didn't know Jess would be there. In which Tara told Jess John expected her. Let's say it together: awkward turtle! Especially since he just volunteered to kiss her again and all.

Photo by National Geographic on Super Stock.

John’s lips quirked. “That’s a very noncommittal response, girl-without-a-name who keeps appearing conveniently in my path.”
Jess’s heart hammered, but this time it wasn’t a pleasant sensation. Conveniently? “What do you mean?”
John glanced back towards the shop. “I was meeting Tara here.”

And now I think we'll leave Jess & John for a bit. Tune in next week for something different... And as always, check out the other sixes here :)

6SS: Open Mouth, Insert Foot

2011-05-29T11:17:00.001+10:00

Welcome back to Six Sentence Sunday, Episode: Jess Needs To Learn To Think Before She Opens Her Mouth. Continuing on from last week...

Photo by National Geographic on Super Stock.

“And how are you going to do that?” she asked. “Accost me again?” She said it without thinking and immediately flushed.

“Would you like me to?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Um.”

Um? The guy volunteers to kiss you again and you say 'Um?' Jess! Seriously. We need to talk. And speaking of talking, make sure you check out the other sixes here and talk about them in the comments! :)

6SS: Make My Day

2011-05-22T11:17:00.001+10:00

Welcome to another week of Six Sentence Sunday. This one continues on from two weeks ago - Jess & John's second meeting.

Photo by National Geographic on Super Stock.

Jess shrugged again. “What are you going to do about it?” It was a nonchalant, rhetorical sort of phrase, but John answered anyway.

He leaned over and bumped her with his shoulder. “Make sure it stays good?”

Jess glanced up and saw that his face had turned serious, and her pulse skipped.

Ah yes, but how? Tune in next time to find out ;) And as always, check out the other sixes here :)

6SS: The Kiss

2011-05-15T11:30:00.000+10:00

Welcome to another week of Six Sentence Sunday!

So, last week I promised to show you what happened that first time Jess & John met that made things so... interesting between them. Well, I promise, and I deliver. Here it is :)

Photo by Tracy Nors from 123rf.com.

“Sorry for this.” He leaned in, holding her waist. Jess just had time to see the owner of the footsteps – a tall, burly man – appear around the next corner, and then her stomach flip-flopped and her skin tingled as John drew her in and kissed her, hard. For a second she stiffened in surprise, still trying to keep her attention on the approaching stranger. But only for a second. After that, her knees got a little wobbly, and it was quite pleasant to have to cling to John’s shoulders to stay upright.

As always, check out the other sixes here :)

Dear Life: In Five Movements

2011-05-10T09:03:00.003+10:00

Yes. I am thieverising Kiersten White's letters format. Thank you, Kiersten, for giving me the perfect format for my woes. Also, you should read her book. It's amazing. Image from Stock Xchange.

Dear Life,

You know I love you. Really, I do. I just wish some days there wasn't quite so much of you. I'd be very happy if, say, you could cut down on the amount of stuff you need me to do by about half. Or give me twice as many hours in the day. That would also work nicely.

Yours exhaustedly,

Inky.

Dear Mice, Location: Roof,

I really hate being complicit in the murder of cute furry mammals. I'd love it if you could take your party elsewhere. If, however, you really can't, I'll make you an exchange: you can stay trap-free if you'll perform your tapdance on the laptop keyboard and write the novel for me. Either way, quit dancing at night when my husband can hear you; he's the one with the traps.

Deal? Deal.

Yours hopefully,

Inky.

Dear Last Year's Writing,

Do you really have to suck that much? I mean, don't get me wrong: it's okay to suck. But seriously. That much? Really. That's just disappointing.

Yours disappointedly,

Inky.

Dear WIP,

If you ever, EVER even THINK of being as sucktitudinous as Last Year's Writing, I will disown you. Then I'll delete you from my harddrive, shred my paper copies, and send out clockwork spiders to hunt down any other copies in existence (on the internets, in the emails, on the beta reader's harddrives - NOWHERE IS SAFE), which they will promptly poison, wrap in silk, and bring back to me so I can hold a bonfire party. After which, I shall dance on the ashes, gather them up and stick them in a lead containment box, and let them fall into the abyss.

Capisce?

Yours menacingly,

Inky.

Dear Winter,

You and I both know we hate each other, so let's just get this over with: I'm not happy you're here. Frankly, I'm disgusted in you for coming so early. But seeing as you are here, let's call a truce. I won't insult you publically any more, and in return you will not claim any more of my fingers and toes, and neither shall you attack my nose. I WILL NOT BE FROZEN. *brandishes Heater of Doom and puts on the Breastplate of Pure Merino Wool, topped by the Helmet of Cashmere and the Gloves of 40% Possum Fur No For Reals It's True*

Yours determined-not-to-freezingly,

Inky. (<-- NOT Icey.)

6SS: We Meet Again

2011-05-08T20:28:00.001+10:00

Welcome to another week of Six Sentence Sunday. Here we have Jess running into John for the first time since she saw John last. Jess goes to meet her sister at the local ice creamery, and while said sister is inside, John conveniently shows up...

Also, it occurs to me that I'm yet to actually show you what happened during that last meeting. Maybe I'll be nice and show you next week O:)

Photo by National Geographic on Super Stock.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” John said and came to join her.
Jess scooted over to make room for him. “Sure,” she said, pretending that he hadn’t just laughed at her for kicking her legs like a five-year-old. “Maybe.” Jess wrinkled her nose. What had made her say that?

As always, check out the other sixes here :)

6SS: Jesscapades

2011-05-01T10:39:00.001+10:00

So, I have cunningly employed a friend to sign me up for 6SS each week, because I am hopeless and keep forgetting to do it. This means that even while I am in the throes of busyness and falling to pieces (not literally), you will still be guaranteed of at least one post per week!!

Also, the sky just opened up. Literally. One second it was sunshine, and now it's pelting down. Bizarre.

ANYway, 6SS. Today we find Jess in a spot of trouble after being knocked out in the Shards' territory. Rah :o) For the other 6SS entries, see here :)

Jess's sense of hearing tuned in first, slowly filtering through to her the sounds of traffic and a dog barking. Shortly after that, she realised her head was pounding. Shortly after that, Jess came to enough to realise that she was lying somewhere she never thought she'd find herself: in a back-alley gutter. She squeezed her eyes against the pain, and when it didn't full, she sighed and opened them, blinking bat-like at the evening sunlight that stabbed her retinas.

"Ow." She glared up at the sky with eyelids slitted, cursing it for dancing above her with bright colours that flashed in and out of vision like darting insects.

6SS: More Jesscapades

2011-03-27T10:15:00.000+11:00

Today's entry continues on from last week. Have fun! :o)

“So, girl-without-a-name,” John said, catching her arm. “Will I see you again?”

“Maybe,” Jess said, quirking an eyebrow to hide the fact that a million fireworks had just been released in her stomach.

John sighed and released her so he could put one hand over his heart and the other against his brow. “Ah, so cool, and enigmatic; you wound me, fair lady.”

“You'll heal,” she said, fighting off a giggle.

Don't forget to check out the rest of the amazing authors who have posted this week, over at the official Six Sunday website! :)

Forget Available

2011-03-21T23:28:00.004+11:00

Just a super quick note to say that Forget is now up on the website for download :o) Yay!

Sculpting should join it by the end of the week.

Six Sentence Sunday: Jesscapades

2011-03-20T10:00:00.002+11:00

Those of you that follow me on Twitter will have heard an awful lot over the last month or two about Jesscapades, my current wip. Well, it's finally time for you to read some! Yay! *confetti*

For the next undefined period of time, I shall be participating in Six Sentence Sunday. You should too! Tis much fun. My first contribution is from ch4, at the end of the scene where MC Jess first meets John, the to-be love interest. The 'she' John refers to is Jess's sister.

Have fun! :o)

“Yeah,” said John. “But she’s an assassin. She’d scratch your face right back. And it’s far too pretty for scratching.”

“That,” said Jess, rolling her eyes, “is the worst line I’ve heard in my entire life.” She went to leave.

Tune in next time to find out what happens when she goes to leave (bwa ha), and be sure to check out the rest of the amazing authors who have posted this week, over at the official Six Sunday website! :)

Story Dandruff: How Outlines Can Kill Creativity

2011-03-15T10:02:00.000+11:00

I'm going to spend the next few posts discussing outlines; appropriate since I'm in the throes thereof. Tune in later for parts two and three.

Hands up who out there is a pantser, who trembles at the very hint of an outline, who cries at being asked to structure their first draft, and who would rather die than write a story that's already been written (in outline form)?

Yes? Well, you'll sympathise with my topic today.

There are, of course, as many ways to write as there are people who write (and probably more, since all my novels so far have demanded that they be written differently), and outlines are one of the more fraught topics of conversation. To love them, or hate them? To use them or abuse them? To write them all out and then conveniently ignore them while you write, making you wonder why you bothered in the first place?

I've had experiences at all ends of the spectrum (yes, all; this is more than a linear scale!), and today I'm going to talk about my worst outlining experience ever. It was a play, not a novel, but the essential principles remain the same. This play was written for a specific purpose, to be performed at a specific time to a specific audience - and things just keep getting more specific. Initially, I was told the topic of the play. Then I was told the basic story line it would follow (a retelling of a well-known (in those circles) story).

All good, all fine thus far. I could work with a general plot, and still interpret and embellish and dramatise, and all would be well.

Except. Specific. The commissioner of the play is a very specific fellow, and soon I not only had a rough plotline I had to follow, but a schedule that involved certain events happening on certain nights, bits of dialogue that needed to be included, set ideas that had to be worked in, and a particular number of characters.

I reeled. I floundered. I wrote the play, and every single person who worked in it (who have all performed plays of mine in similar contexts before) unanimously agreed it was the worst play I'd ever written. I pretty much refused to put my name to it.

Now, I firmly believe that outlining is a Good Thing, that it's *le gasp* necessary and can save a whole bunch of headaches (see forthcoming post!). So what went wrong here?

Easy: too much outlining, and from an externally imposed source. Now, it might be really tempting for you to sit back and say - well, that's fine! I'm never going to write on request like that, and I'll decide what I want to write, and everthing will be great! So I'm sorry about your problems, but they don't apply to me.

Except, they do.

Externally imposed outlining doesn't just happen when other people impose things on you; on the whole, we're pretty good at doing it to ourselves. Fantasy and sci fi writers are particularly notorious for this, mostly because we're the ones who tend to go overboard on the whole worldbuilding thing. We spend days/weeks/months/years building our world before we ever put pen to paper for the actual story, which means that by the time we come to write, there are a whole bunch of 'external' factors dictating how the story should go.

Forced-march plotting, I believe it's called. It's where the plot happens for no reason other than that it must, and I'm guilty as heck of it even in writing that I do for myself. I've decided how I want the story to end up, what the steps ought to be to get the characters from A to Z, and by hook or by crook, those are the steps they'll take, character veracity be hanged.

It leads to a story that's dry and often illogical - and it's all to easy to fall into the forced-march trap. I did, in January, with the first version of the rewritten Act One of Jesscapades. Characters come across as stupid and unmotivated, plot events happen by coincedence and seem too convenient, and the whole story feels dry and flaky. Story dandruff? Don't let it happen to you!

Combat FMP (forced-march plotting) by taking a long hard look at your characters. Is x plot point something they would really do in that situation? If not, can you switch out the plot point for something else? Can you give them a plausible excuse for doing something out of character? Or even better, can you build up to this and motivate them so Plot Point X comes across not as an anomaly, but as a new and exciting facet of the character, making them a deeper, rounder, more real character?

So, Planners beware: outlines are tricksy little beasts that will turn on you as soon as look at you. Don't let them take control.

Pansters of the world unite!

Anyone else have outlining horror stories to share? O:) :D

The Unravelling

2011-03-09T21:37:00.008+11:00

Three reasons why writing is like sewing:

1) You create something from nothing, building and shaping raw material into something beautiful and useable.

2) You have to have experience working from the pattern before you can create your own patterns. You need to know how a pattern is actually supposed to go together before you can branch out and make a different, new one.

3) You can be creating along, thinking everything is going swimmingly, and all of a sudden realise: Things Aren't Right.

There are four key types of 'As in Sewing, So In Writing' mistakes.

A. The Birdsnest Bobbin. This is where you are sewing along and it looksl ike everying is going fine, but then everything comes to a crashing halt. The machine seizes up, and if you try to go any further you'll snap the thread. Everything looks okay on top, but when you look underneath, there's a whole birdsnest of thread. This usually happens because you didn't thread the machine properly (or because it unthreaded itself when you weren't looking; sewing machines are pains in the butt for that).

How is this like writing? Because if your story is not threaded properly, if it's not set up right to begin with, things can very rapidly come to a crashing halt, and if you try to write any further, you'll just break something and make it worse.

B. Running Out of Thread. I don't know if any of you out there are sewers (! seamstresses? O:)), but if you are, I'm quite sure you'll have had the experience at some point of sewing along, probably down a very long seam, thinking everything is going well, only to find at the end that you only actually sewed the first third of the seam because the bobbin ran out of thread. o.O All the stitches you've done that look neat on top have nothing to hold them in, and they unravel almost straight away.

In writing, this is when things are going along swimmingly and think it's all fantastic, until you get to an endpoint and you stop and reassess, and realise that you've just written 30 pages of fluff. None of it's actually relevant to your story, to your plot or direction - it's all tangentenal, and there's nothing to anchor down those threads that look pretty, but will never be able to hold any weight.

C. Catching the Fabric in the Seam. This often happens when you have a tricky seam to sew (like the circular seam on those jolly hats). Things are going fine, you finish the seam off, it holds together nicely, but then you take it off the machine and have a close look and realise that the wrong part of the fabric has gotten caught up in the seam. The only solution here is to unpick that part of the seam and sew it again.

In a story, maybe you put a scene in the wrong place. Maybe some dialogue got caught up somewhere and actually needs to come later. Maybe a subplot was introduced at the wrong point, or a key plot point happens too early or too late.

D. Sewing the Wrong Seam. This is probably the most frustrating mistake. Maybe you read the pattern wrong - or maybe you read it right, but you just picked up the wrong piece of fabric at the last minute. You sew the seam and it looks fantastic; it's the neatest seam you've ever sewn in your entire life! And then you realise: you just stitched the left sleeve with perfect precision into the neck hole. o.O Not so helpful.

This is when you have perhaps stitched the wrong back half onto the front half of a novel. Or maybe a character has had a personality transplant and become someone you loathe. Or when you realise the entire point of your novel as it stands is, just by way of example and not at all stealing examples from my own experience *coughcough*, Revenge Is Good, Please Take It. Urgh.

In Jesscapades at the moment I haven't been progressing terribly quickly. It occurred to me recently that I have managed to make most of these mistakes. The writing came to a crashing halt and I knew if I continued I'd break more things than I fixed. So I went back to the last place the seams were holding together, and had a good look around. I realised that the steps I had the characters taking from that point onwards were not logical at all; they were stupid and plot-serving and not all all in character.

So this week, I'm unravelling. I'm unpicking the seams of my story to uncatch all that fabric that got caught up where it shouldn't be; unstitching things that were stitched together in the wrong place, and rethreading the story so it has a stronger foundation to build on - because once I get these first few chapters right, I know the middle is going to be so much stronger :o)

And yes, as those of you following the insanity on twitter know, I made ten of those witches hats over two nights. And I mean nights: 11pm - 3am on puppy watching duty o.O They were, believe it or not, for the school swimming carnival O:) :D

Monarch by Michelle Davidson Argyle

2011-02-24T00:00:00.008+11:00

This week's bonus post: a fantastic book trailer for a fantastic debut book :o) I had the privilege of reading this novel in its early draft stages, and even then it was beautiful - yes, a beautiful thriller! Michelle is a very talented author :o)

Monarch will be released September 15th, 2011 and is available for pre-order RIGHT NOW. I've ordered my copy - a signed one, of course! :D

* Amazon (pre-order)
* Barnes & Noble (pre-order)
* Signed Copies from the author (pre-order)

Congratulations to Michelle. May this be the start of a long and wonderful career for you :o)

Anyone else have some happy successes to share?

Somewhat Distracted, With Stats

2011-02-22T01:25:00.004+11:00

There is a small part of me that delights in the nonsensical that now wants to compile statistics for how distract I am/have been. Bwa ha, the amusement! However, despite the title of the post, quantifying my distraction is not today's aim. Today's aim, rather, is to concoct a post requiring as little *brain* as possible, because I've been distracted. With these:

I think that's a pretty cute excuse. Don't you? :o)

So, in order to have something actually sensible to say today (tonight; it's 1:30am and I'm up on puppy watch o.O :)), I'm totally stealing Liana's Brooks's post, and tweaking to fit. Thanks, Li B-)

Number of Unread Books in My House: *cringes* When Liana says 3, I kind of want to hate her. I OWN 176 unread books; I have a whole drawer more of books people have loaned me. ACK.

Number of Started but Unfinished Novels: Hmm, this one's a little more encouraging. Actual novels that have actual writing, as in are beyond the idea stage: 26. In addition to that, ideas that may someday get off the ground: 24. That makes 50. I like 50. No more new ideas, brain! O:) :D hehe.

Number of Finished Novels: Define 'finished'... I have 4 with complete drafts, not counted above.

Number of Words Cut this Week: About 1300. Not as bad as it feels o.O

Number of Scenes Cut this Week: 1. And its replacement is at least twice as long.

Number of Words Written this Week: Only this week? Hmm, I'm not keeping daily stats at the moment. I could figure it out if I really wanted to, but - oh, who am I kidding? I want to. *goes to figure it out* There, 4,152 since the 13th. Bwa ha.

Number of New Scenes Added to WIP this Week: Only the one to replace the cut scene. I've been going through polishing what I have, rather than working on fresh/new material.

This Weeks Favorite Discussion on FB or Twitter: Finding someone had quoted a sentence from my WIP and a whole bunch of people had 'like'd it :o) ...That may have been more than a week ago. Never mind. Let's Play Pretend B-)
Favorite Character of the Week: Finally, FINALLY have hit my stride with Jess from Jesscapades, after reading a great article by Janice Hardy. Hence, have been going back through the first 8 chapters and revising to get them more tightly into Jess's POV. Rah!

Number of Puppies Born: 8, on Saturday at the vet's. 5 girls, 3 boys, all healthy and wriggling and squiggling. Yay!!

Number of Hours of Sleep Lost: Several, though less for me than the dear-sweet-wonderful-husband, and also the fantabulous mother & her husband, who helped with the night shifts over the weekend :o)

And last, but DEFINITELY not least (trust me on that!!),

Number of Minutes Until I Can Go Back To Bed? Priceless. Ah ha, sorry, bad reference to the Mastercard tv ads. In seriousness, without jesting (something I never lower myself to O:)), twenty-three. Yay :D

Tell me tell me, what's your random statistic for the week?

Story Elements #8: Conflict (Again)

2011-02-16T10:33:00.006+11:00

So, way back in Story Elements #1, I talked briefly about conflict and why it's necessary. But because of a few things that have been going on in my writing life lately, I decided it's time for a more in-depth redux.

First up, I'm teaching a creative writing class at the moment and having a blast. It's scary, but also exhilarating, and since I'm doing most of the writing exercises at the same time the class does, it's a lot of fun. I even got some useable stuff :o) Woot. One of the things we're concentrating on this week is conflict, and the different flavours thereof.

Maybe because I was teaching it, the idea of conflict was on my radar moreso than usual. Maybe it was because last night I was reading through some really EXCELLENT articles on Janice Hardy's blog. Stuck in the mire of rewrites, I clicked on a random link from twitter and found what I needed - someone who'd been through the process before and not only survived, but who had documented the process and mapped out a path for other people to follow. Really, really excellent articles. Go forth and devour her site.

But anyway, instead of going to chapter 9 and doing more rewriting-from-scratch (which feels suspiciously like drafting, only worse, because you know it's supposed to be better this time), I ended up rereading what I'd written so far - and adding quota for the day just in fleshing out chapters 1 and 2. Oi. Then I hit chapter 3, and chapter 3 hit me back with the realisation that it's not working because it's seriously lacking in meaningful conflict.

So today, conflict, both because I'm working on it with my school class, and because apparently I could use the refresher.

When asked to define conflict, the first thing most people say is some variant on arguing, fighting, etc. But most writers know - explicitly or implicitly - that there's more to it than that. Not every scene in every book has someone fighting, and yet we have this maxim of 'conflict on every page'. So either the maxim's wrong - or our definition of conflict is. Personally, I think it's the definition of conflict. So let's broaden our definition today.

(The following terminology is my own, but the ideas are heavily influenced by Holly Lisle's How To Write Page-Turning Scenes).

1) First of all, we have implied conflict. This is one of the sneakiest and most fun tools a writer can use. It is, essentially, foreshadowing; the reader sees something happen without knowing why it's important, but because of the way it's presented, knows that it is. There are two sorts of implied conflict: agented and unagented.

A. In agented implied conflict, we see something happening that the participants in the story don't recognise as important, but that we as readers do; for example, a cat knocking an important letter off a table, a mother cleaning their child's room and throwing out a bit of 'junk', someone stooping to pick up The One Ring.

B. In unagented implied conflict, there are no actors, but simply a change that we recognise as important. This is the most basic form of conflict, and the most subtle; we're not seeing the stone being thrown into the pond, but the ripples the stone makes. An example would be a red light flashing, blood spilling out from under a door, or a sudden cessation of noise. All of these promise that something important has just changed, and while they create conflict even if you have a character observe this, they can be even more powerful when done in omniscient POV such that the reader is the only one who gets to see the light, or the blood, or hear the sudden silence.

2) Overt conflict. This one is pretty obvious: it's conflict that happens directly on-stage, that we can see and recognise as conflict and that the participants in the story would probably recognise as conflict as well. Like implied conflict, it comes in various flavours: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and external. Overt conflict is where the handy rule of thumb of conflict comes in most useful: that is, conflict is anything that stands in the way of what the character wants. With that in mind, let's examine each in turn.

A. Intrapersonal conflict is when there is something internal to the character preventing them from getting what they want. Perhaps they've been brought up with a deep-seated conviction that no one should eat grass, only now, to get what they want (or perhaps to save their life), they must eat grass. It sounds a bit contrived, I know, but if you played it right, this exact situation could come across as genuine, immediate conflict, because it's something inherent in the character preventing them from getting what they want. Think fears and phobias, habits and beliefs; anything the character does that sabotages, deliberately or accidentally, their own wellbeing and dreams.

B. Interpersonal conflict is the type of conflict everyone reaches for when asked to define conflict. It's two people shouting at each other, two children fighting, bickering, threatening, attacking, and so on. But it's also two people refusing to speak, a child deliberately ruining another's project, cold shoulders and icy glares, bragging, back-stabbing, lying, evading, denial, and misdirecting. It is, in short, anything that one person can do to prevent someone else getting what they want or need. (And I hope it's obvious to you that not all conflict is bad; preventing a toddler from touching the hot stove may be thwarting their deepest desires of the moment and be enough to induce a tantrum, but it's better than the alternative. Sometimes what we want is the worst thing for us.)

C. Finally, external conflict. External conflict can either be personal, or impersonal. Personal external conflict is the larger result of some other kind of conflict. It's where conflict that has nothing directly to do with your character has grown so big that it can't help but affect them; a war, for example, or, in the right story, parents constantly arguing. These are interpersonal conflicts for other people, but for your character, they're not the effect of anything your character has done; your character is just in the wrong place at the wrong time and falls afoul of other peoples' issues. Impersonal external conflict is similar in effect but differs in its source; instead of coming from other peoples' issues, impersonal external conflict is external to everyone. Natural disasters, aliens invading - those are probably the only examples.

And that's conflict in a nutshell, or on a pinhead, or in some other small, easy-to-devour package. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to figure out how the heck I'm going to inject some or all of this into chaper three.

:)

That We May Ever Strive

2011-02-13T20:44:00.004+11:00

I should probably point out that I've switched the blog schedule around. At this point, I'm planning to post Tuesdays and Fridays. As we can see, I totally rock at keeping this schedule already. *insert Look here* So, let's all pretend it's Friday. After all, Friday evening is much more exciting than Sunday evening - hello, weekend!! O:) To aid you in this endeavour, I shall send you all imagination cookies via carrier bat. Rah.

Anyway, in wading through my feedreader today, I came across this gem from Nathan Bransford:

Writing is an act of getting down on your hands and knees and pushing on the ground and hoping the world spins on a slightly different axis. It's the art of not taking life for granted and trying to make something, anything change.

Go read the post; it's well worth it :) Essentially, what Nathan posits is that writers are, by definition, strivers; if one were happy with the world, one wouldn't write a book, after all. The act of writing is the act of petitioning for change. Even the books that are written off as 'fluff' are all trying to elicit change, all acknowledging that there is something in the world that needs improving on, even if that's only that people are sad and need to be cheered up. Escapist fiction, by its very definition, posits that the world needs escaping from.

I've talked about striving before to say that sometimes, even when we don't hit our goals, it's the very act of striving that counts. I think writing is part of that 'sometimes'. It's all too easy to lose sight of why we write when faced with rules and guidelines and agents and publishers and thoughts about the 'end goal' of writing as publishing. But really, I'm not here, presenting myself to you as a writer, because I want to be published. Okay, sure, that's part of it, but publishing is not my end; it's a means to my end.

My end is change. I write because I'm a writer, and writers strive. They strive for change, and usually to improve the world in some way, if even only by highlighting the bad and providing no solution beyond 'humans must die'.

In the throes of my first ever total from-scratch rewrite, I'm really glad I stumbled on this piece of advice today. Because during the rewrite, it's so tempting to concentrate on the fact that I'm rewriting it to make it better for people to read - which is to say, publication, in whatever form. But really, that's not why I'm rewriting. I'm rewriting because the original story, while fun, and while it had its shining moments, was not the story I wanted to tell. It wasn't the change I wanted to address; it wasn't what I wanted to strive towards. And the words flow much more easily when I concentrate on the heart of my story.

I'm going to end this the same way Nathan Bransford did: with some words from the great F. Scott Fitzgerald, reminding us once more that it is the very act of striving that's important - not so much the thing one strives towards (although that has importance too, in determining our direction):

"that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning — So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Seasons In Writing

2011-02-08T21:47:00.000+11:00

I'm not sure if seasons are something you think about when you write, but lately, I have been. In fact, at one point - probably in the car - I went through all my stories and, in my head, categorised them by season. Some of them I'm not sure of still - but for others, the season is an absolutely integral part of the story.

Magician's Thunder, for example, is a story I 'started' about four years ago during one particular summer where it thunderstormed every single evening for two weeks straight. It was amazing. I love storms, especially storms with beautiful electrical shows, and those two weeks were pure magic. There's this one scene where the elder of the two MCs is lying in the bath with her feet propped up at one end, steam misting on the windows, the only light a flickering candle and the flashes of lightning outside that light the bathroom in stark charcoal and white - that scene is straight out of real life, one of those perfect moments where everything is just Right.

I love that scene, and part of me desperately wants to whip that story into shape just so I can write the scene, even though the book is nowhere NEAR the top of my to-write pile at the moment. But the point is, the story couldn't happen any time other than in summer. The season is an integral part of the story.

Jesscapades is a little different. The season doesn't influence the story directly the way it does in Magician's Thunder, but it's still there. Jesscapades is an autumn (fall :P) story, with the sharp chill of winter hanging in the night air but the lazy heat of summer still present in the afternoon. It's a season of slowing down, of heading to rest, of tying up loose ends before the hibernation of winter; winding down, wrapping up, and some things falling apart in decay, like the leaves. And, coincedentally enough, that reflects the themes and ideas and plot of the story. The story closes with ends that have been loose for hundreds of years tied off, with grand structures falling once more into ruin and decay, and with a sense of laying things to rest.

Now that I've thought about this so overtly, I can actually see a lot of places where I can play this association up, letting the story revel in things winding down, gathering in, preparing to hibernate - which is pretty cool. And why not? Settings, done well, can be so much more than just a backdrop for things to happen on. Done right, the setting of the story is alive. It interacts with the characters and plot, changes the way things happen, melds with the life of the story so that the two become one and the story couldn't happen anywhere else. Good stories are like that; their setting is like another indispensible character.

My random thoughts for the day. Have you ever consciously selected a season for your story to take place in, for symbolic or practical or any other reasons? Do you have a setting that you're particularly proud of, that really does function almost like a character to set the mood and tone?

As I'm preparing for teaching creative writing this semester, ideas like this are on my mind, and I'm bouncing on my toes at the thought of participating in all the activities I"ll get the class to do. And somewhere in there will, I suspect, be an activity revolving around seasons :o)

Five Things You'd Never Guess

2011-02-03T10:13:00.000+11:00

Totally schlepping off Liana's post from last week, here, but hey. Bear with me.

I had this awesome plan at one point that I'd send a welcome dm to each new follower on Twitter, so say hi and thanks for the follow. Ditto new followers on the blog. Only, right after I had implemented this idea, my net started having issues, and so did my laptop. I couldn't run TweetDeck; I couldn't even use the Twitter website after the first refresh. Urgh.

But anyway, I would very much like to say hi to you all, and thank you very much for following me in whatever guise you choose! Really, I'm not quite sure why people who don't know me follow me*, since I frequently make little sense, often spam Twitter with insanity, am totally sporadic in my appearances, and am rarely sensible (yes, that was worth mentioning twice) - but HEY! THANK YOU!! You guys rock. Knowing you're all out there reading (you are reading, right? This isn't just a conspiracy to make me feel all happy about having followers while never realising that they're all fake, is it?) makes the whole talking-to-the-internet thing so much less weird. Because we all know sharing personal details with total strangers who live halfway around the world is way less weird than talking to yourself, right? RIGHT?? O:) :D hehe.

* People who know me follow me because otherwise a) I'd hunt them down, and b) they'd never know anything about me otherwise. I am the world's biggest failure** at gossip, including and especially my own.

** Well, maybe the second worst. My husband is totally worse than me at passing on Important Familial News.

So! A point! I can has one! *waits for you to revive from the shock* Five things. Specifically, five things that hopefully none of you (unless you're directly related to me, because that a) is totally cheating and b) makes it challenging for me) know about me, or could guess.

... Gosh. I'm so glad I have two days to write this post, because this is harder than I thought.

1) I hate the idea of shooting at living things, it takes 8+ months to get a gun licence in most of Australia and you have to belong to and regularly attend a police-sanctioned gun club in order to qualify for one (ie, guns are really, really uncommon and I know like two people who own one) AND YET I have, in fact, fired an illegal weapon O:) At cans, not a live thing ;)
2) I rescue spiders from the house and the husband, who is a reflexive squasher.
3) My brain DOES NOT function before 8am, I hate mornings, I am a total night owl - and yet given the option, I do my best writing in the morning.
4) I once (reasonably) seriously considered applying to the airforce to be a fighter pilot. Why didn't I? Yeah, see number 1: shooting at live things. ;)
5) Although I live and breathe all variants of the fantasy genre in my writing, I never read a fantasy novel (other than the Narnia series) until I was fourteen. Thanks, Ashtah, for introducing me to Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures, for the record). My life has never been the same :D

There you go! Five things. Your turn, please! Give us some random facts about your life :D

For the Love of Critique Partners

2011-02-01T23:01:00.004+11:00

On Friday last week, I hammered out 1667 words. It might not sound like a lot, but for me, these days, that’s a huge accomplishment. Plus it’s double quota, which goes some way towards making up for my week of not writing at camp ;) I finished off chapter 3 and wrote all of chapter 4 – albeit a short chapter four, slightly over half the length of chapters 2 and 3.

How was this magnificent feat accomplished, I hear you all asking breathlessly? (Work with me, here) Two words: Critique Partner. This time, it was the lovely Liana Brooks, but at various times and places it’s been a whole range of people. Li very kindly decided that she needed to read the next chapter of Jesscapades, and spent much of my afternoon bashing me over the head via gtalk to Get It Written.

So I did. Accountability, ftw! I wrote it, added in an almost-kiss that she gave me the idea for right as she was saying goodbye, and dutifully emailed the chapter off to her so she could read it while I slept. (yay time zones!)

Saturday morning I awoke to feedback. The chapter was okay - but tame. Lifeless. The MC was smarter than I was letting her be, as she'd already demonstrated in the previous three chapters.

I sighed.

And then I settled down to redo the chapter, better this time. In the end, I did; I showed Jess's examining of her new room-of-imprisonment, rather than skimming over it in a couple of sentences, I made her smarter, more active, let her plan a little - and then threw the MMC at her and watched her flounder. It was fun, and this time, there was a real kiss involved. And Liana gave it the seal of approval.

Why am I telling you all this? Because sometimes, even when publication is our eventual goal, we get lazy with ourselves. We rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, and get sick of rewriting, so we accept 'good enough' instead of pushing ourselves to write better, write harder. It's so easy, so tempting, to settle for good enough. But you know what? The reader can always tell.

So today - tonight - I'd like to give a shout out to Liana, for pushing me to write to my abilities, when all I really wanted to do was be lazy. I didn't want to hear that my chapter wasn't perfect, but she pushed me to write better, to write harder, and to write more honestly. Thanks, Li. I needed it.

This is the point at which you all have to now scurry off and say thanks to someone who's pushed you in your writing. *hint hint* But before you go, I'll leave you with two pictures of possibly the world's most comfortable footstool. And yes, the footstool put itself there with no input from me whatsoever. Best. Footstool. Ever.

Closing the Gap

2011-01-27T09:42:00.000+11:00

I was thinking the other day about middle grade books, because according to some really good definitions that I pretty much agree with, I've written one. I won't go into the details of the difference between MG and YA, because that link does it perfectly and comprehensively well, but suffice to say that the whole 'saving the world' motif is usually more characteristic of MG than YA. YA is more about saving yourself, as a very general rule.

Where am I going with all this? Here: I was pondering the other day about how in Sanctuary (my MG novel), Edge has to save her magical fairy world by reaffirming the boundary between it and the 'evil' land beyond. And althought this isn't strictly the idea in Sanctuary, it struck me that a lot of time, MG fantasy is about reaffirming boundaries.

Now, I'm sure there are perfectly adequate reasons for this, and I'm sure it could be interpreted in many cases as keeping good separate from evil, etc etc, blah blah. But it ALSO struck me that, really, it's kind of xenophobic of us. To me, it's strongly remniscent of the days when countries' boundaries were virtually tangible, when the oceans and airs were all but impassable, where we didn't know how the rest of the world lived and were terrified of anything different. To me, it's imperialism at it's best: anything different than our current way of life is a threat, is therefore evil, must therefore be kept away. People different to us are a threat, are scary, are out to kill us all and must be killed before they get us first.

The magic world that's colliding with Earth? The paranormals that are threatening to become common knowledge? The rift that's opened up, allowing passage between worlds? These are all threats to our way of life, and they must be shoved away, silenced, closed up. Isn't that usually the aim of quests, after all? To reseal the gap?

Surely, surely, we can understand at least intellectually that this doesn't have to be the case any more. Surely, by now, we can comprehend the vast benefits that other cultures have to offer, appreciate the mystery of other ways of life, form relationships based on our commonalities rather than our differences.

So that's what I would love to see: MG fantasy (or any fantasy, really) where the object isn't to push the Other away, but to learn to live with them, to learn from them, to struggle with the difficulty of meshing different worlds together rather than the fight to keep them apart.

And maybe, just maybe, if we can do that in our fiction, people might learn to do it in real life. Because occasionally, fiction is powerful.

Wake Up

2011-01-25T18:36:00.003+11:00

I started this year determined to turn over a new leaf; to remember what I'm capable of achieving, to go after my dreams, and to trust. So far, actually, it's been pretty good :o) As sort of a tie in to this, over on Holly Lisle's blog she talked recently about these 'intention coins' that her daughter is making - essentially just a coin-sized disc with a few words stamped on them, a focus or a talisman for your year.

Holly asked what words we would stamp on an intention coin for 2011. Originally, I thought I might go for something like ‘just write’ (pretty self explanatory) or even ‘good enough’ to remind myself that I am. Other people suggested things like persevere, embrace, accept change, get moving, and persist.

But thinking deeper on it, I decided finally that I would write ‘Wake Up’. Last year was a horrible year full of brain fog and some depression and a lot of self doubt, and I feel like the creative, vibrant part of me slept through a lot of it. And a camp I’ve just been at for the last week had an amazing speaker who used the catch cry ‘wake up’ as a reminder to open your eyes and see what’s really around you, to remember what’s really important in life, to keep your priorities straight and to live each day with gratitude and grace - and trust.

So, wake up it is. What would your catch cry for 2011 be?

How To Transcend the Rules

2011-01-12T10:05:00.000+11:00

The other day, Query Shark posted a query that she said broke all the rules, and still worked. It's short, and you really should read it. It's here. I'll wait a moment while you go read.

Done? Cool.

So, Query Shark reckons this breaks the rules. With all due respect, I disagree with her. Query Shark says this query works despite the fact that it breaks all the rules; I think it works because it transcends the rules. The query is perfect not because it lacks the necessary elements and makes up for it in voice, but because every single one of the elements is there, and the query still manages to avoid being formulaic. It’s such a perfect example of rising above the rules, rather than breaking them.

So what are the rules? Show your main character. Show your main conflict. Show the choice they have to make, and what's at stake. Show who or what opposes the main character in their quest to fulfil their goal. (Note that in every instance here I've said 'show', not 'tell'? Important. Take note.)

This query does exactly that. Main character? Claire. Conflict? Her cousin committed suicide and she wants to know why. Choice? Hunt down the boy responsible. Stakes? Life and death. Opposition? Claire ditches her entire persona, becomes someone obviously not her usual self, to hunt down a boy responsible for her cousin's suicide - and the query hints at death, both in the actual text and in the title of the novel.

Looks to me like this is a gorgeous-in-its-simplicity example not of breaking the rules, but how to follow them. Rules don't have to be formulaic, or constraining, or anti-creativity. Yes, queries are hard - but put some steel in your spine and dare to transcend the rules, rather than dismissing them.

I wish I knew the author of the query's name, so I could shout 'Go [name]!!' properly. I don't, but still: go you, author. Thanks for showing us how it's done :)

Revelations

2011-01-10T09:28:00.000+11:00

I had a revelation the other day - January the first, in fact, which is a Very Good Day for revelations.

For too many months, now, I've struggled to find drive and motivation in my writing. Why, really, did I need to write? My job was more fun than I expected it to be, and although it's often hard work, it is, really, quite cushy: great students, great colleagues, great hours, decent pay. Not a single person I know would fault me if I decided I wanted to walk away from writing and throw my energies into teaching.

Ultimately, no one cares if I write or not. Not really. And writing is hard, and all kinds of scary in ways that non-writers will never comprehend.

But here's the revelation:

If no one cares whether I write or not, then no one cares if I write badly. If no one cares, then I am free to write the worst verbal suckage in existence, even in 'edits', as long as I am having fun.

And that, my friends, is insanely, delightfully, liberatingly, uncomplicatedly good.

Yay.

Reasoning With Vampires - Edited With An Intro

2011-01-07T10:00:00.002+11:00

Edited: So, I actually had second thoughts about putting up this post. As Danyelle succintly puts it in the comments, bashing of any kind isn't ever okay. I had prescheduled this post a while ago, and had been planning to log in and change it, only didn't, and woke up this morning intending to do it - and karma decided to teach me a lesson, because the internet broke. It's still broken. I'm only here right now by magic.

I'm going to leave the post be for now, though, for a few reasons. Partly, because anyone who reads this blog regularly will have already seen the post. But mostly, because I stand by the reason I first posted this link: it IS a great way to learn grammar. I'm a high school English teacher AND a writer, and I'm pretty darned good at English. But there's two things I know for sure: one, my grammar is far from flawless; and two, kids as a general rule find grammar either really hard or really boring to learn about - or both. And there's nothing like seeing real life examples from texts that kids will actually find engaging to help the grammar sink in.

I don't think author or book bashing is particularly cool. I have nothing against Meyer or really, even the Twilight series. Look, it gets people reading, okay? Like some important people related to me, who didn't really Do the whole 'reading thing' until Twilight happened upon them. Yay! Reading! Reading is awesome.

With a caveat: saying that it doesn't matter what we read, so long as we're reading, is like saying it doesn't matter what we're eating, as long as we're eating. It's pretty obvious that that's not true. I don't think Twilight sets a fantastic example for young people, and this is a pretty touchy issue for me, personally. But if other people want to read it, I'm not going to try to stop them.

Heck, even I will read it one day - I'm not adverse to the idea, I just need to get my own TBR pile down to a more manageable level first o.O

And finally, in defence of the author of the site, I think it's worth pointing out that while she starting the site as Twilight-bashing, the reason she's continued it (going through the entire series) is because of the letters she gets from people telling her essentially what I've said above: it's made grammar palatable for them, they've learned something from it, etc etc.

I stand by what I said below: abusive relationships are not cool, regardless of how they are framed. I apologise for any offence caused; that was not my intent, nor was it my intent to participate in 'author-bashing'. I hope you'll all take the post in the spirit it was originally intended - or, as always, feel free to totally ignore me - or, you know, pick up on all my grammatical errors and thematic inconsistencies and point them out for people to laugh at. Either way. O:)

*****

Because we all need something else to procrastinate with, and really, why not learn all about grammar while you do? Note that there is a LANGUAGE WARNING for this site.

I give you Reasoning with Vampires, wherein site author Dana dissects the grammar of the Twilight Saga. Bwa ha.*

* No, haven't read them. Yes, still dislike them. No, not really for the mechanics; if you want to write like that, meh, go for it. Some of my favourite authors EVER, in fact, use terrible grammar/punctuation/general writing techniques. I dislike the premise more for the fact that Edward is not, in fact, a romantic boyfriend but is rather and instead a creepy stalker-pire. Srsly. Their relationship? NOT. COOL.**

** And if anyone EVER tries to convince me it's okay because "they love each other so much they can't help it", I will commit homicide. We are humans, not guineapigs***. By definition, therefore, we have control over our emotions.****

*** Who go at it more than rabbits, incidentally, and have none of that pesky incest-taboo to worry about like humans o.O

**** Yes, even strong ones. Really.

Habitually, Really

2011-01-05T09:49:00.000+11:00

Can I just whinge for a moment about how hard it is to get back into a habit? I can? Oh. Great. Thanks. O:)

There’s this piece of folk wisdom I remember learning sometime in highschool about habits. It takes three months to make one, and only three days to break one, so the wisdom goes. Personally, I don’t know about that. Sometimes it only takes a day or two to break a habit – and some habits take far longer than three months to form.

Eating, for example. The diet I have to be on right now is complex and extremely limited, but can be broken down essentially to two things: 1) no added sugar in any form and nothing with more than about 10% natural sugars, and 2) no moulds of any kind, which includes fungi like mushrooms, ‘safe’ moulds found on cheeses and bruised fruit, anything brewed/fermented like vinegar or soy products, and anything with yeast. Like I said; pretty limiting.

I can’t really remember what I expected when I first started on it, how long I thought it might take until I got used to it, but now, six months in, I can tell you it still isn’t a habit. My first instinct is still to reach for the chocolate-coated sultanas on the bench leftover from Christmas for a snack, or to ponder a quick sandwich for lunch. I can feed myself now without stressing too much about what to eat, but it’s certainly not a habit.

Checking my email? That’s a habit. My first instinct when I switch on the computer is to open firefox and click on my gmail shortcut. Literally. I have to stop and think about it if I want to do something else. (Email addict? Me? Never...)

So, after not really writing for several months now, how do I go about getting back in the habit? I used to have a process that told my brain it was time to write, a way or a place I’d sit in, things I’d have open on the computer, a mindset. All of that is gone, faded into distant memory with disuse. And when I sit at the computer, I’m more likely to spend an hour or so thinking, “I should write”, than actually writing anything. (Besides, there are EMAILS to read! O:))

I googled ‘characteristics of a habit’, wondering if anything would useful would appear to solve my problem for me (which is either terribly lazy, or terribly postmodern – or perhaps both) and the only article that wasn’t about smoking or chemicals was this one. It suggests that there are three characteristics of a habit: 1) You feel weird not doing it. 2) It’s second nature. 3) Other people notice you doing it.

Well, 1) I already feel weird for not writing, and 2) I doubt I can magically make it second nature without just doing it already. Not much help there. But 3) might have something: other people notice.

Okay, so I’m not necessarily going to hang a big sign over my head to say “I’m writing!!1!!”, but what if I approach it the other way? What if I enlist someone to watch for me writing, so they can tell me when they notice I’m not doing it?

Really, all I’m talking about it accountability. Once upon a time, I used livejournal for that. And since finding one person committed enough to bug me every single day about whether I’ve written or not is a bit of an ask for that person, maybe the blog’s the way to do it.

So I’m going to revive the livejournal again. Feel free to cheer me on or just laugh at my pathetic attempts (either works), and if you’d like to join me in reforming a habit – or even just forming a new one – let us all know in the comments here, or you can comment along with me every day on the livejournal blog :)

Any other handy tips for forming habits?

It's Time

2011-01-03T10:19:00.000+11:00

Wow. Hi everyone! It's been so long, it feels kind of crazy to be back. It feels even crazier to like being back, if that makes sense. (It does. Honest.)

See, there was a time a couple of months ago where I actually thought about shutting this blog down. Life had gotten too much, writing wasn't happening, and I felt like a total phony blogging about writing when I wasn't actually writing. It's like the cliche of those people who wander around wearing tweed jackets with patched elbows moaning about their writers' block; we all know they're not really writers.

And for quite a while, I didn't really feel like one.

So. What's changed? To be honest, nothing much - except my perspective. Last year was full of crazy; new job, new house, new addition to the family (the four-footed variety), new having-to-deal-with-long-term-illness (not serious, but annoying). Lots of new, lots of crazy. And in the midst of all that, writing became just one more thing I had to do, one more thing that had to be checked off a very long and exhausting list.

Long-time reader will know that I've been keeping monthly writing statistics for a while now. For ages, this really worked for me. I could count off the days by the words, and see that I was making progress, and prove to myself that I could write as much in a year as a pro author could.

But last year, I fell prey to the numbers. I had a few months in a row that were very nearly my lowest months ever, well below half what I usually expect as my minimum. The numbers started going down, and so did my writerly self esteem. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this, I'd think. Maybe I'm just a hobby writer. Maybe I'm not tough enough to be pro; maybe I'm just not supposed to do it all.

Throughout all this, I was getting some excellent advice from friends and you guys, my awesome readers. The one thing that remained consistent about all the advice was that I needed to take a break, have some fun - only I kept protesting to everyone, I AM taking a break! What do you think three months straight below HALF my minimum is if it isn't a break?!

Yeah. It was me protesting and complaining and beating myself up about having a break, which, as any of you who have done this will know, isn't really a break. So in December, I had a real break. I still wrote when I felt like it, but I did something really, really scary. I put away the spreadsheet.

Eeep!!

Yes, it's true. I have NO IDEA how much I wrote in December. I have no record of what I worked on, or even when I worked, or how much. So! Terrifying!! In years to come my descendants will have no way to see that on the ninety-second of Thentember I wrote sixty-two words on "The Most Brilliant Story"! *swoon*

But (of course), it worked. I feel less stressed about the whole writing thing than I have in a long time, and although I'm still not talking to myself about going pro (even though I'm secretly plotting it where my head can't hear me O:) :D), I'm enjoying writing. And for the first time in a long time, I have The Itch.

It's a great feeling. And to celebrate, I'm going to dig out the edits I've been avoiding for the last three months and kick some draft.

How are YOU going to start your new year? :D

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T19:28:00.003+11:00

Hi, everyone!

I hope your holiday period has been wonderful. The blog will be returning to its regular (and somewhat theoretical) Mon-Wed-Fri schedule on Monday. In the meantime, if you're interested in more progress-reporty word-county kind of stuff, updates are ongoing over at the livejournal :)

Have fun, stay safe, and HAPPY 2011!! :)

Before I Speak

2010-11-30T18:02:00.003+11:00

I have spilled
words onto the page
like sugar granules or
high fructose corn syrup
just because I could

but now
is the hour to be silent.

Very soon
I will speak words
like rain
in torrents
life in a parched throat
each drop sweet and
wholesome and
crystal, crystal clear

but now
is the hour to be silent
to let moisture gather
on my dust
before I speak.

now be silent / gather dust / speak.