Publishing and Donkeys

Last weekend I went to a publishing seminar run by Jill Marshall of Pear Jam Books.  The day was chocka-block full of information about mainstream publishing, eBook publishing, audio books, printing and illustration.  Jill was honest about the ups and downs of the process she'd gone through with mainstream publishers and her personal experience of eBook publishing. 

The right gang will smooth the road
 to publishing success

Publishing a book is no easy journey, no matter what method you choose.  It's a bumpy ride on a stubborn donkey, round corners and up hills and sometimes you just have to get off and throw a wobbly or two.

But if you surround yourself with other travellers, who've taken the road before, who will cheer you on and give the donkey a good whack on the backside every now and again, maybe you won't fall off.

At the end of the course someone asked Jill what she thought about writing groups.  She said, if you choose the right one, they can be a great.

Definitely!  I belong to three!  I'm not even that much of a social butterfly and relish a good six hour stretch of writing all by myself as much as the next aspiring author, but these groups offer a sanity check.  There's personal experience, expert knowledge and industry know how to be had over a cuppa and bickies.  Get amongst it!

Creative Beat Magazine: Joyce Tarlton West

Read October 2011's Tauranga Creative Beat Magazine to check out an article (pg. 18) I wrote about the wonderful NZ children's book author Joyce West (1908-1985).

Although there's very little information to be found about Ms West, the files in the New Zealand room of the Tauranga Library made fascinating reading.  Especially those in her own hand writing explaining her writing process, her thoughts about the children she wrote for and her comments on the publishing community in her day. 

I particularly liked the anecdotes she included about her famous book 'The Sea Islanders' which appeared as a television series in England and for which Disney bought the rights. 

She writes 'The Sea Islanders is about four children who, by an odd combination of circumstances, are left alone to spend the six weeks of their school holidays on a lonely beach near the Cavallis. It has been my most successful book, and it's funny, I once read that all children have an unconscious desire to be left parentless, if only for a short time, as a sort of complete escape from authority.  Just as everybody at some time in their lives longs to be cast upon a desert island.'

At the time, many young children had a strong reaction to the story.  The illustrator for the Japanese edition of the book told her the following story:

'There was a call out for two lost children, and a police car picked up a boy and a girl laden with two little packs and trudging along a busy road toward the sea coast.  They asked them what they were doing, and the children said they were running away to live on an island, and showed the policeman their Japanese copy of the Sea Islanders.'  "So you never know what you may be responsible for, do you?" writes Joyce West.

Her comment about children and in fact everyone, having a desire to be 'left parentless, if only for a short time' had a profound effect on how I managed the storyline of the children's novel I'm writing 'Brave and True.'  Originally I had Brave and True travelling a good deal of the time with adults guiding them, as this seemed only reasonable. 

It wasn't until I read Joyce West's quote that I realised that being reasonable was completely boring and wasn't going to work.  Every decent children's story I've ever read kicked the parents out the door as soon as possible - e.g. Narnia!  It seems so obvious now.

So thanks Ms West. Appreciate the great advice.

Getting Started: Part One

Getting started on a writing project of any kind is often the hardest part.

Sometimes it’s because you can’t come up with any ideas, despite really wanting to write.


At other times you have a zillion great ideas but after a page, a paragraph or even one sentence, they fizzle out in to nothing and you lose interest.

For me, it was about self-doubt in my ability not just to write fiction but to finish fiction. I kept thinking about the huge, monstrous, time-consuming enormity of a novel. How on earth was I going to manage it?

Sometimes a check list of questions can be just the thing to give you a creativity kickstart.

1) Where is my story set? Setting can be central to a story or lurking in the background. Will your setting impact on your characters in some way? What time of the year is it? Will your story be set in present, the past or the future?

2) Who are my characters? Give your characters one of those quirky job interviews – ‘if you were an animal, what would you be? What’s your strongest trait? What is your weakness? What’s your star sign? Are you a team player?

3) Now combine what you've learned about setting and characters...What’s happening around your characters? Breathe in; use your senses – what are the smells, sights, sounds and tastes of your scene or story. How do your characters reaact to the setting you've created?

Wrap your head around these three for a starter and see where it takes you...