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!

CLL/NZSA Research grant - another great writing project

2011 CLL/NZSA Research Grants
Together with Jenny Argante from my writing group, I'm now the proud recipient of a Copyright Licensing and NZ Society of Authors research grant.  Jenny applied and won the grant and she is employing me to work with her on the project.
It's the open grant for research into the life of Dame Evelyn Stokes, who was a figure of significance in the Bay of Plenty and nationally as one of the first scholars to take seriously the connections between geography and culture. Throughout her life Stokes worked for recognition of marginalised groups including women and Mâori, and she published extensively on New Zealand historical geography and on Mâori land issues.

Jenny will be doing about two thirds of the work, with me completing the final third.  Not sure when we'll be starting all this research and writing!

Apart from that my writing work on my childrens' fantasy adventure novel with mentor Barbara Murison continues well. In the three or four drafts I've sent to her, I've made huge changes to characters and the structure but the theme and overall story arc has remained the same.  It's an interesting process and I'm learning a lot.  Barbara is a wonderful mentor. (more on that later).

My paid copy writing continues in bursts with a freelancing assignment writing content for web at ReserveGroup, for etcGlobal and now some exciting work for AFS in Wellington, the student exchange people.  All good!  Always looking for more!

Getting Started: Part Two

Stuck for writing ideas? Need some inspiration to reboot the old brain? Try these for size:






Idea bank

Get yourself a notebook and pen or get thee to an iPhone/iPad. Take it with you everywhere and become an eavesdropping, snippet-pinching thief.

I'm not talking about plagiarism. Just record your impressions of the public realm:

-Eavesdrop on people's conversations and write down the weird things they talk about.
-Watch people in cafes and describe their facial expressions.
-Listen to conversations on the bus or in shops and pilfer words and colloquialisms and mannerisms.

If it’s interesting to you now, no doubt it will still be interesting to you when you go to develop a character for your next short story or novel.

Expose yourself...to other forms of art:

-go to an art or photography exhibition. Picture trumps words, or so they say.
-Attend the ballet, opera or a play
-Watch television. I know, what an ordeal! But some television programmes have excellent plot lines, snappy dialogue and really hot guys. What’s not to like?

Read

Sounds so obvious but reading books, especially those outside your comfort zone, will almost always get you through a dry spot. Other people’s ideas kick start yours.

If you don’t like romances, or fantasy or thrillers – read one. There’s a reason why these books sell millions of copies and while you may struggle to get beyond the first chapter, persevere and you might just learn something.

Live

Do yoga, meet and talk to people who are different to you, travel, explore, discover…

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...