Writing in the zone

08 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by in Understanding Ourselves as Writers

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I’m writing in the middle of a thunderstorm.  There’s a coconut palm between me and the thrashing grey ocean, and huge heavy branches are tearing off and crashing to the ground.  Coconut are thudding to earth.  And I’m in my study, tapping on my keyboard, lost in another world.  The wilder the wind gets, the more my characters connect with what’s happening to them, as if my anxiety level about damage is leaking into their reality, affecting their nerves.  And things are happening in the story that might not be happening if I was writing on a tranquil day with a sparkly blue ocean and a Simpson’s blue sky.

What am I to make of that?

I’m a seat of the pants writer so I don’t have a plot to follow.  I have a thread of connection between myself and the characters who’ve chosen me to tell their story.  Some days the connection is so tight I feel as if I am them.  Some days it’s a slippery invisible strand I can only brush against in frustrating glimpses.  But my world is connected to their world.  My emotions are connected to their emotions.  When I listen to Rachmaninoff I “see” their world more clearly.  I have no idea why.  I just do.  So I feel my way through their world, using my intuition and my attention and my emotions to coax their story into my mind and through that into my fingers and onto the screen.

It’s more an act of faith than a carefully crafted technique.  It teaches me to listen and to feel.  And sometimes to remember.  I haven’t always connected to characters through my own stories.  I began connecting with other people’s characters. Frank Herbert’s “Dune” was a landmark book for me.  It had everything I’d ever wanted to read in a novel: action, adventure, characters thrust into a strange new world (a continuing theme in my own writing), a love story, and a young central character whose morality was above question, yet whose circumstances tested that morality at every turn.  Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” was the book that gave the sub-genre a name.  It also taught me that I was selecting books because I wanted to read about a character who saw the world with fresh eyes.  I still do.  And the Twilight series affected me profoundly in ways I’m not yet able to articulate.  Bella was a stranger in a very strange land, seeing her own world anew through Edward’s eyes.  That much is clear, but why I felt so ‘connected’ to her world and her troubled love story is still a mystery to me, as I imagine it is to a lot of readers.  But I enjoyed the books immensely.  In all the novels that have affected me profoundly I’ve connected with the main character and felt their journey.

It’s what I want to do for readers of my own novels, and that can only be achieved if I can connect with them first.  So while they have their storm of emotions to deal with, I have a real-life storm happening, and I’m more grateful than I can say for the synchronicity that brought me turbulence at the time when my characters needed it.

Again with the FAITH, but when you have it rewarded again and again it teaches you to trust in it.

A significant day

28 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by in Ramble

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Had one of those days yesterday you wait a decade for.  I signed a three book contract with Pan MacMillan’s digital publishing arm Momentum Books.  Early next year they’re re-releasing my first fantasy trilogy “Shadow Through Time” into a worldwide market.  My first eBooks.  My first time as an International author.

Back in 2001 when those novels were first released as print books into the Australian territories, eBooks were a novelty and I had no idea that a decade later the world would be awash with eReaders, and that you could walk into BigW and buy a Kindle.  Of course I’d dreamt of an International readership.  I think most authors do.  But the print books hadn’t sold overseas, and after a while they went out of print.

Am I allowed to give myself credit for never giving up on them?  For loving those characters and knowing that readers who’d never met them would love them too?  I’m sure you’ll give me permission for that.  In a way this deal is like being a mother and watching your child fulfil their potential, because it’s painful for a writer (or a mother) to give up on people they’ve created, and it usually only happens when it hurts too much to hang on.  Here I can thank my mother for my perseverance.  From a young age I saw her dealing with our out-there family and I realised she simply would not allow herself to give up on a child, no matter how badly they might behave, how they might disappoint her or not live up to her expectations.  I grew up with the example that you love them still, dammit!  And you hope.

So I loved my characters.  And I hoped.  And I dreamed.  I kept dog-eared printouts of fan emails, and when I felt low I’d read them and think, “These guys loved my characters.  It’s not fair to give up on them.”  I shared my despairs and my moments of inspiration and elation with my writing buddies while I wrote more books and tried to get them published, and I weathered the well meaning inquiries of family and friends wondering “Whatever happened to those books?  And when are new ones coming out?”

Well now I can answer that question.  The trilogy that was so well received in Australia is about to step onto the world stage and within six months I’ll be getting fan emails from readers in countries I’ve never even been to.  Exciting doesn’t begin to describe, and the books I’ve written in between are now lined up ready to slot into various publishing markets.  In a weird way it’s like water behind a dam wall.  It just takes one breach to let everything behind it flow out.

So yesterday was significant for me.  Not just because I signed a contract for the first time in a decade, but because it taught me probably the most valuable lesson in my life so far: faith is rewarded.

Just that.

Never give up.

Writers, happy for no reason

21 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by in Understanding Ourselves as Writers

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I’m having one of those rare Squee! days where the sun is shining, the ocean is sparkling, a cool breeze is caressing my skin, the birds are singing and even the plants seem happy.  Stupid grin.  Singing.  The whole Disney deal.  And instead of leaving it alone and just enjoying the moment (or the day if it lasts that long) I have to know what made it happen, because it’s been a very ordinary morning – just editing draft, liking a particular scene I’d written and thinking there wasn’t much to change.  But 9am when I got up I had a spring in my step, was singing on the way to Marcello (my Italian coffee machine), and feeling happy.

Seemingly for no good reason.  My agent hadn’t rung me to say I had a new contract.  I hadn’t won any awards or even received a fan email (which is one of my favourite things, right behind whiskers on kittens).  So I made a coffee, put a load of washing on and went back upstairs to the computer, and by the time I got there I was singing.  “It’s such a perfect day . . .” (Lou Reed), but really channelling the whole Julie Andrews thing.  Surprisingly, unaccountably happy.

All I’d been doing was the same thing that writers do every day.  Putting words together.  Pulling them apart and changing them around.  Swapping some.  Deleting others.  Reading them aloud and changing them again.  But today it made me feel good.  Like a “real writer”, which is weird when I’ve had three books published.  However I know for a fact that seeing my name on the cover of a book doesn’t give me the same stupid grin that crafting a near-perfect scene does.  In fact, contracts, public appearances, reviews, even fan emails all come packaged with performance expectation and anxiety, no matter how many times I’ve delivered more than was expected of me in the past.  They’re exciting, but they’re also marginally scary.  There’s nothing of the pure happiness I feel today in them.

So now I suspect that it’s doing the work, not getting the accolades, that creates happy, and it reminds me of a blog post I read recently by an author I greatly respect: Kim Wilkins who also writes as Kimberley Freeman.

She called her post “The Romance of Work” and in it she says:  When I was a little girl, I read a book that would affect me profoundly. It was Gladys Malvern’s The Dancing Star, first published in 1944, an account of the life of Anna Pavlova, written for children… But it wasn’t the stuff about ballet that affected me so deeply, it was the stuff about work. According to the book, Anna Pavlova was obsessed with dancing. She practised all the time. She did it until her toes bled and she just. kept. going. This notion, that one could work so hard and push through barriers of extreme discomfort, really took hold of my imagination. From that moment on, I understood the incredible romance of work: diligent hours spent on something that mattered to make an outcome appear in the world.

Not only for me, but for a lot of writers, I think that’s the key to happy: “Diligent hours spent on something that mattered to make an outcome appear in the world.”

Doesn’t sound heroic when you say it like that, but devoting a year of your life to a novel you’re not sure will work is an act of faith, and it’s nice to think that the faith is rewarded with moments of pure joy.

That’s definitely something worth singing about.

Writing: when the creative flow is blocked – look out!

17 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by in Understanding Ourselves as Writers

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Have you ever thought up a perfect put-down, got excited enough about it to rehearse the whole scenario in your mind, then realised you’d never do it?  I’m guessing we all have at some point.  It’s human nature to revise situations you were unhappy with and replay them differently, but if you’re a writer and you get completely excited about the ‘draft scene’, you might be on the road to mischief.  In fact, I’d be suggesting you get back to your manuscript asap, because chances are your creative flow is leaking out into places where it could cause trouble.

Let me give you an example.  This morning I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I suddenly remembered it was Saturday (FYI: for full time writers every day is Monday).  So I’m thinking, “I may get religious people knocking at the door today”.  In actual fact, I’m pretty sure it’s Sunday that they visit, but don’t let that interrupt the story.  I’m brushing away and thinking about how ten years ago (when I had a husband)  I used to listen to their opening spiel and then say,  “My husband doesn’t allow me to discuss our beliefs at the door,” at which point the poor guys practically ran, not wanting to upset my fictitious ‘husband is the head of the household’ arrangement.  Divorce and my conscience got the better of me and I had to stop saying that.  I’m old enough to remember parents and grandparents relationships when husbands really did tell their wives what to say and do, and they got away with it, which irks me no end.  So now I deflect my religious visitors by saying, “I’m really sorry, but I don’t like to discuss my beliefs with people at the door.  It makes me uncomfortable,” and that works a treat.  They’re always respectful of that and they put their leaflets back in their briefcases and we wish each other a great day.  Trouble is, that does nothing to stop them harassing the next person in my street.

So this morning while I’m brushing my teeth I’m thinking my current exit line is not enough.  I’m thinking that these guys don’t get why it upsets people to have someone else’s beliefs brought to their door.  It’s intrusive and . . . what?  I’m searching my feelings, and I suddenly realise that this isn’t just a lie I’m trotting out.  I really do feel uncomfortable discussing my spiritual beliefs with strangers.  I want to keep that private, between me and… well, it’s private!  But these people at the door have no discretion.  They want to blab all about their beliefs, and they need to understand that not everyone does.  Someone needs to tell them, and all of a sudden I’m thinking that someone is me.

Before you can say ‘rinse and spit’ I’ve worked out this whole dialogue where I let them get into the spiel, and right at the point where one of them says, “So do you believe in God?” I turn it back on the poor hapless woman by saying “When was the last time you had sex?”  In my mind she stares at me in horror, and not only that, she can’t speak for shock.  I don’t smile.  I’m too into my own righteousness, so I follow this gem by saying, “How does that question make you feel?  Are you upset with me because I’ve asked you about something that’s private to you, between you and your husband?  You’re uncomfortable now, aren’t you?”  Maybe she nods, maybe she doesn’t.  But I wind up by slapping down my Ace, “And that’s how I feel when you want me to talk about God.”

Back in the real world I’ve just snapped the floss off the container and I’m staring at myself in the bathroom mirror thinking High five!  Nailed them.  But even before I can begin to floss I realise what I’m doing and the bottom drops out of my moment of elation.  I’ve just created an imaginary Louise character, because I would never do that to someone.  Not because I can’t.  Because it’s not me.  I might get feral if my hot buttons are pushed, but it’s just not in me to deliberately upset someone who hasn’t provoked me.

So what’s with the scenario?  Why bother to create it?  Well, as a writing mentor I can tell myself exactly what to do.  Get the hell back upstairs to the study and write.  I’ve got banked up creative energy leaking out that needs to be in a story.  I’m feeling confrontation and conflict, and that’s due to happen in the next scene of my book, so I don’t need to create it in real life.  My characters have broad shoulders.  Instead of drawing it into my own life, I can let them cope with the anger and the upset and the afterburn.

Consequently, as soon as I finish this blog, I’m back to that.  But the question I want to ask you is, do you ever do this?  Do you ever create scenarios in your mind about how you’ll right past wrongs or do things differently in the future, complete with setting, dialogue and action?  If the answer is yes and you’re a writer, my advice is to get back to your characters and let them explore the emotions you’re stirring up in yourself.

I’ve met hundreds of writers through teaching and mentoring, and was able to identify that some were creating real-life dramas around themselves while they weren’t writing.  Miraculously, when I could lure them back to the keyboard to express their passions there, life around them settled down.  Drama queens turned into domestic goddesses, and they were happy!  Can’t stress that enough.  When writers aren’t writing, they’re not fulfilled.  Realistically, though, we don’t expect to be happy all the time because we need to grumble about the struggle to get the words out, or get them right, but while we’re at the keyboard working there’s a satisfaction that I don’t believe we can get in any other way.

Over time I’ve come to see that the more sensitive the writer, the more they need to express themselves because bottling up the flow creates mental, emotional, and even physical symptoms.  You can step away from the keyboard, and we often do when life intervenes or some psychological problem is sabotaging us (and I’ll discuss some of those issues in the future) but unless we return to the catharsis of writing we’re not quite whole, and our partners, lovers and spouses need to know that!

Filling the creative tank: Why writers need time out

12 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by in Understanding Ourselves as Writers

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What I’m about to say might seem like a no-brainer to writers, but I’ve got a hunch that for some readers it’s going to be fresh news:

Writers can’t create in a vacuum.

Time and tools are not enough to create good fiction.   Writers need input if they are to create meaningful output, and let me give you a personal example.  The other day I went to an orchestral concert.  I could have been writing.  I’m currently ‘in the zone’ and story is falling out of me, so it was a wrench to pull myself away from that and be out among people, but now that I’m living in regional Queensland orchestral concerts are few and far between – it’s go now or wait a month.

So I deliberately got there late to miss the milling around at the beginning, but I still had to suffer intermission, and that was jarring.  When you’ve dragged yourself away from a fantasy world, a roomful of ‘normal’ people feels like being in an aviary of chattering lorikeets, and none of the conversation you overhear seems pertinent.  I’ve got an entire empire hanging by a thread and the people next to me in the coffee line are complaining about the price of fuel.  My fault, not theirs.  So I try to focus on being an observer (always a good fallback for writers who are still half in their own world) and resume my seat as soon as I can, because I know it’s worth it to hear the music.

For those who don’t attend concerts, let me assure you there’s something magical about being in a auditorium of live music where you can actually feel the swell and grumble of it vibrating through your chest.  You experience it kinaesthetically as well as aurally, and I love that.  Then there’s the emotional reaction.  The Bundaberg Symphony Orchestra played Louis Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World” and I welled up.  I love that song, but hearing it played through me triggered tears, and there’s more than a momentary emotional reaction happening here.  When I close my eyes and let the music swirl around me and through me I can feel the creative tank I draw from filling up.  Exactly the same thing happens, to a more limited degree, every afternoon when I walk along the esplanade and hear the waves crashing onto volcanic rocks and smell the salt spray.  It fills me up somehow.

Jennifer Cruisie calls it “feeding the girls in the basement”.  Anything that creates an emotional reaction fills that tank, and not just happy things.  Some of my strongest emotional moments have come from pain, the tragic death of a parent or holding your friend’s hand while they cry.  It’s all emotion, and writers need that input, they need to fill the tank because if they don’t they’ve only got dust to draw on when they’re trying to animate their characters.  I’m completely convinced that when writers get impossible deadlines and they have to put their lives on hold to concentrate solely on output, their work suffers.  In fact, I wish I had a dollar for every time I’d heard a reader complaining that an author they loved is just “churning books out” and the quality is suffering.  There will always be exceptions to every rule: writers like Nora Roberts are prolific, satisfy readers and seem to do nothing but write!  The rest of us, however, need to take time to ensure our creative tanks are full.  Unfortunately when authors do that, they’re sometimes the brunt of reader dissatisfaction for taking too long to deliver.

Guy Gavriel Kay discusses this in his 2009 article: Restless Readers go Bonkers where he relates fantasy author George R.R. Martin’s problem of readers not wanting him to have a life: George R. R. Martin is the hugely successful purveyor of an ongoing, seven-volume fantasy series called A Song of Ice and Fire. Four books are done. The first three came quickly, then there was a five-year wait for the fourth. The first indicated publication date for the fifth installment, fiercely awaited, was 2006. That has rather obviously been missed: Martin is still writing it. The natives are restless… Seems some of his loyal and devoted readers are savagely attacking him for taking holidays, for watching football in the fall, for attending conventions, doing workshops, editing a volume of short stories, even for being “sixty years old and fat” … the implication being he might drop dead before fulfilling his obligation to do nothing else but finish the damned series.

That fifth novel was recently delivered and readers are more than happy with it, but how long will the satisfaction last if it takes another couple of years to deliver book six?  Will readers again complain the moment George walks away from the desk?  Unfortunately, the days when writers could lead anonymous lives is over.  Publishers push authors to be active across social networking platforms, but even writers who guard their privacy aren’t safe from cyber stalking.  Readers can now search across blogs, tweets and Facebook updates for an author’s name to monitor their movements as reported by others, which is downright scary.  The upside of social media is that writers are more accessible to readers, the downside is that they’re being made accountable.

How will writers manage that in the future, particularly when eBooks can be processed in a matter of months, as opposed to the 12-18 months it takes to release a print novel?  No idea.  But one thing I do know, despite reader expectation: Input is vital for most writers to produce quality.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.  As a reader, do you get frustrated waiting for authors to deliver books?  As a writer, how to do ‘fill the tank’?

Enhanced Features for eBooks, help or hindrance?

02 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in The Publishing Industry

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A recent Publishers Weekly article on enhanced eBooks for children has got me thinking about the whole concept of  eBooks which might feature “original music; the story is read by the author and, much like all of these apps, the illustrations—all based on the artwork in the print titles—on each screen can be manipulated to make sounds or animated with the touch of a finger.”

Now these particular eBooks are designed for children and will likely encourage very young readers to keep at it until they understand how to use their imagination to fill in the blanks.  As well as the added features: “All releases will feature dedicated Web sites, interactive games, read-along functionality, animation and many other in-app activities for the young reader.  Adam Royce, v-p, digital content development at Penguin Young Readers, said the apps offered an “enhanced reading experience and interactive features that are true to the reading experience.”

I take issue with that last phrase, and you’ll see why below, but I’m not so much worried about what’s happening for very young readers, I’m worried that these new developments will bleed into adult fiction where publishers are already looking at “enhanced reading experiences”.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m reading (print book or eBook device) at some point I stop being in this world and I get into “the zone” where I don’t even remember I’m lying on the lounge any more because I am the character and I’m living the story.  Inevitably something happens to plop me out of the story and then I remember it’s ‘just a book’ but prior to that I was somewhere else, in the land of the story, using my imagination to hear wind whispering through trees or see sunlight sparkling off water or smell the salt tang of the ocean.  And in fact, if I’d had to stop reading to experience someone else’s idea of what that sunlight looks like or what that ocean smells like, I’d immediately plop out of the story and remember that  it wasn’t real.

Now I don’t know about you, but I never wanted that to happen when I was a kid.  I was desperate to stay in the story (Alice in Wonderland, Magic Faraway Tree, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie), for the characters to be real, and for the magical settings to be somewhere I could inhabit for as long as possible.  I’m sure the same thing happened to kids reading Harry Potter, and I know for sure (because I interviewed a heap of them) that teenager girls reading Twilight lived so thoroughly inside that created world that they’d often get mildly depressed when they returned to ‘real life’ because it couldn’t compare with the sparkle of Edward’s attention.  For the period that they were reading, they were Bella, and he loved them.  I seriously doubt that would have happened if Twilight had come packaged with werewolf howls and assorted interactive buttons.  Maybe as an audiobook, but even then I doubt it would work as well as simply reading the text and letting your own vivid imagination create the sensory experience, with nothing to jerk you out of the story and back to reality.

To me, there’s nothing “true to the reading experience” about adding anything that distracts the reader from being inside the story, because I believe the reader’s imagination is the greatest factor in bringing a story to life – not clever graphics or sounds or even smells and tactile experiences when they work out how to deliver that.  And I’m not a Luddite.  I’m more than happy for eBooks to overtake print if people want to read on a device.  Whatever the reader wants, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of them dropping into the world I’ve created.  And I believe “added features” get in the way, so I’m hoping they stay at the very youngest end of the market where they may entice a bored toddler to keep with a story.  But once a reader grows up, I really just want them to have text on the first run through.

I do love the idea of the dedicated websites with extra features on them, but only to be used after the reader has finished creating the story inside their own mind.  Otherwise we might end up with a generation of children not being able to use their imaginations to fully create the world a writer has sketched out for them.  I’m worried about what that means to their enjoyment of story, and also what that means to the creative development of their brains.

As always, I’m really happy to kick start the discussion with my opinions and see what everyone else has to say!

Pantsers vs Plotters: New scientific evidence?

28 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by in Understanding Ourselves as Writers

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A recent study by Shawn Nielsen of the University of California has revealed that the contraceptive pill alters the way women recall an emotional narrative.  I hear you saying “What’s that got to do with writing?” but bear with me.

Female participants watched two slide shows: one emotionally charged, the other similar but less emotional, and the first thing they discovered was that all the women studied recalled more slides from the emotional story.  No surprises there.  But what did trigger interest was the fact that women on the pill remembered the central plot better (big picture of the story), whereas those not on the pill were better at recalling the peripheral details.

That’s interesting.

And this might seem like a leap, but straight off the bat I started to wonder if female writers who were instinctive plotters were more likely to be on the pill, through menopause, or have less fertility hormones running through their system for some other reason.  Is that why they have more of a ‘big picture’ focus on their stories?

If the study’s revelations on hormones affecting story recall could be extrapolated across genders, it would explain why a predominant number of men (readers and writers) and a certain number of women are more interested in thrillers, courtroom dramas and cleverly plotted who-done-it novels.  Men do tend to be attracted to plot driven stories, or at least to those where the goal and conflict is more important than the emotions of the characters.  And at the risk of making a sweeping generalisation, a fair proportion of women are attracted to stories where the character’s emotions play a vital part in the decisions made and the actions taken.

So are hormonally fertile women writers are more likely to be drawn to the types of genres and stories that are ‘character driven’, writing them via the seat-of-the-pants method (as opposed to plotting)?

Should we stop thinking guys are insensitive and women are soppy and just accept that our current hormone balance is likely to dictate what resonates with us and (importantly) what we’ll remember of the story we’re either writing or reading?

There’s grist for a hundred blogs on this and I just wanted to kick-start the conversation, controversial thought it might be.

Feel free to comment!

Are all writers stationery sluts?

24 Wednesday Aug 2011

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Or is it just me?

Apologies for the opening crudity, but is there another word that describes so comprehensively the lascivious way writers behave in a stationery shop, let alone if there’s a sale on?  Forget Christmas, we want the Back to School sales.  Fondling journals, cooing over different coloured copying paper and insisting on trying out all the pens for the right feel.  It would be downright obscene if it wasn’t such a guilty pleasure.

The level of excitement it generates is almost sexual, and in fact one writer admitted to me that she’s told her boyfriend a trip to Officeworks counts as foreplay.  I kid you not.

These are the tools of our trade, sure, but is that any reason to get so excited you buy post it notes in bulk packs more suited to a corporate office?  Notepads.  Dear lord.  When they have sales of Spirax I get dizzy. There are so many sizes, thicknesses, and some have pockets at the back.  How can I possibly know which ones I’ll need for which project?  There’s no option but to buy a couple of each type.

Envelopes.  Ahhhhh.  Is there anything more beautiful than those pearlised baby-pink envelopes with the matching A4 paper?  Perfect for composing love letters on.  Assuming you have a love.  One day.  And so here’s a thought, maybe it’s more about the anticipation of using this stationery that makes writers stock so much of it.  Pens!  Every time a new type hits the market I want to try it.  The pens I already have are fine, and really, an ordinary Bic will do when you’ve got a brilliant idea and the need to scratch it down.  But is there anything nicer than curling up in the corner of the airport bar with your Moleskin notepad and a sparkling Swarovski crystal pen to document your journey?  I think not.

Then there are Padawans learners who come to us seeking the arcane knowledge of how to write a stationery list, a highly advanced discipline only used by those writers with the greatest self control.  A dying art to be honest.  A dead art in fact.

So is this is a girl thing, or are male writers equally afflicted?  And do readers have stationery fetishes?  Why do we do it?  Is it all about the writing?  Or is there some couch we should be lying on to talk about our troubled childhood…?

Feedback definitely required.

Paperbacks vs eBooks – dawn of the Slow Book movement?

21 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by in The Publishing Industry

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Yesterday was National Bookstore Day in Australia, and like a lot of authors around the country I turned up at my local bookstore to say “Thanks for selling our books.”  My Dymocks here in Bundaberg were particularly pleased because I came bearing chocolate mud cake, but the more important message was that authors care.  With the demise of bookstore chains and the pressure from eBook sales (which continue to soar) there’s a lot of gloom and doom surrounding the future of bookstores.  There’s also a lot of talk among writers about how that affects us, and to be honest, from what I’ve heard recently at the Romance Writers of Australia conference from #NYT best selling authors, print publishers and eBook publishers, they all say the same thing: authors who write a good story will be fine.  The format for delivery of our stories is changing, but the demand for good stories remains strong, and whether the format is print books or eBooks, we’ll still make money.

So that’s the writers side of the equation, but from a readers perspective things have a different slant, and as we writers need to understand our audience (and most writers are readers too), this bears looking at.  You’d have to be deep in first draft to have missed the wave of grief (and outrage in some quarters) at the idea that print books may soon become as challenging to buy as an LP record.  I doubt that will happen, but if it does, those readers who perceive the world in a tactile/kinaesthetic way – myself included – will be the hardest hit.

The loss of a container for story which I can hold and caress (a book) will upset many of the rituals I have around reading that give me such pleasure.  I do understand that eReaders are super efficient and freely admit I use one myself on occasion.  Their publicity was true in my experience – as soon as I drop into the story I completely forget that I’m holding a machine in my hands instead of a book.  I’m “in” the story and the format for delivery is no longer important.    I even have Kindle for mobile on my smartphone so if I get stuck waiting somewhere I’ve got something to read.  They do have their place and I’m not denying that.

But being “in” the story isn’t the only pleasure I get out of reading.  Anticipation of the reading experience is important to me too, the same way anticipating catching up with an old friend for coffee (or a new man for dinner) can create excitement and pleasure long before the actual meeting takes place.  I’m also not ashamed to admit I feel happy just standing in front of my bookcase looking at all the multicoloured spines, remembering the thrill each book has given me.  Plus, I adore covers!  There’s nothing nicer than revisiting a great cover and remembering the characters and the world that author created.  Even reading a back cover blurb can evoke a spurt of happy memories.

Then there’s the coffee table beside my lounge where I sit when I’m on a writing break.  I always have a couple of books on the go, and they sit there with their enticing covers, waiting for me to come back, feeding that delicious anticipation every time I glance their way.

And don’t get me started on the smell!  There is nothing more fabulous than the scent that drifts up as you open a new book for the first time.  And as the paper ages the scent changes, the same way a baby’s milky-sweet scent gives way to the school-lunchbox smells of ‘children’ and the musky hormones of a teenager.  Books grow.  For those of us who adore books, they can be even more potent a thrill-trigger than the smell of the first-picked strawberry of the season, or that first sniff of the ocean when your car reaches the esplanade.  The pleasure pathways in my brain that are triggered by the scent of books lie dormant when I use an eReader, and to say that’s disappointing would be an understatement.

Reading should be an experience that’s rich with the texture and tradition of pleasure.  And I ‘get’ that we’re living in a fast paced world, but when the pendulum swings too far towards rat-on-a-wheel, you end up with rebellions like the Slow Food Movement that send you back to savouring the process of what comes before you eat the meal.  I’m sure there will always be a market for printed books, but I’m less certain that I’ll be able to drive down the road and walk into a book store if Amazon and the Book Depository keep snagging all the trade.

So if you’re a reader like me who loves the sensual experience of a printed book “to have and to hold”, act now before it’s too late.  Go into your local bookstore, introduce yourself (particularly if you’re a writer) and buy your books there.  I’m sure they’d be happy to order in anything they don’t currently stock.  I’ve recently become hooked into the completely addictive YA series by Kelly Armstrong that starts with Bitten, and was delighted to find book two on their shelves when I went in with my mudcake.  So I bought it!  Easy, and now it’s sitting on the coffee table saying “Read me!  Read me!” every time I walk past.

And I love that too.  More than I can say.

Writers Conferences

17 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by in Writers out in Public

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I’ve just spent five days at the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Melbourne, and thought it was worthwhile blogging about that.  I’m sure a lot of folk came away enthused and inspired, but a proportion were also overwhelmed and jangled.

The difference seems to be related to personality, as International guest speaker Bob Mayer pointed out.  Introverts tend to become overwhelmed and go home exhausted, whereas we extroverts soak up energy from others and go home tired but also elated and buzzing to get back to work.

The lesson seems to be, if you’re an introvert you need to plan for that.  Make sure you have blocks of time to be alone and regroup, even if that means pretending you’re going on a tour and then sneaking off to a coffee shop or park bench to get some peace.  You’d need a thick overcoat in Melbourne in August, but luckily for me I’m an extrovert (despite the fact that the MCG was across the road and I was desperate to see the spiritual home of cricket in Australia).

So that settled, what are some of the things all writers should be doing at a conference?  Bronwyn Stuart has some great tips here, but these are some of mine:

Learning from the workshops and plenary sessions is a no brainer – and I’m assuming you carefully selected your sessions prior to the day to suit your current needs for industry info or craft.  Take a notepad or recording device to keep gems from slipping out of your overstuffed brain.  I heard so many great things in the very first session that I was sure I’d never forget – life-changing pearls of wisdom – and luckily I wrote them down because two sessions later I’d forgotten them completely.  And add to this, don’t be afraid to change sessions if you learn something that makes you think “Jeez, I need to hear more about that.”  I’d imagined one session on digital publishing would be enough to fill me in on developments, but the question of territories in publishing was confusing enough for me to realise I really needed to know more about that before I sold my next book, so I asked and was allowed to change to sessions that suited my changing interests.

Networking.  I hear you groaning from here.  But it’s part of the deal.  You’re wearing a name badge and so is everyone else.  You’re in the middle of the common area waiting in the line-up for coffee and someone strikes up a conversation (or if they don’t, you should).  Unless you really need ten minutes to clear your brain – in which case you’re better to sneak back up to your room – you should be chatting, and with anyone.  Prior to the conference you might decide there are key people you want to introduce yourself to – a published author in your genre, a publisher, an agent, a NYT# best selling author, and by all means do that.  But those conversations will be brief because everyone wants to talk to them.  In between the “important” conversations you need to make connections with other writers, because you never know who you can help, or who can help you, and if you don’t ask, you don’t get/give.  Put faces to names, have a laugh and share the camaraderie.  Romance writers are renowned for their generosity and Melbourne didn’t disappoint.  It was funny, and heart-warming and hard to leave.  I do fantasy now, but I started with romance and I miss those guys.  They know how to work hard and how to let their hair down.  And so should you.

A note of caution however, you don’t want to be the person who gets so drunk other people discover you on your arse in the lift unable to find your room.  I’m not mentioning names, but it happens.  Don’t let it be you.  A conference is WORK.  Don’t confuse ‘relaxation’ with ‘recreation’.  It might be called a cocktail party but you’re there to work: to meet people, to exchange information and yeah, to have some good, clean (one glass of wine, not six) fun.  And to prove that I did have fun, here’s a photo of me looking like a complete doofus in my Roaring Twenties outfit.  Thanks be for dim lights in the ballroom, that’s all I can say!

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