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Writers: Working with Louise Cusack

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Writers: Working with Louise Cusack

Tag Archives: fantasy

Writers: using a Research Assistant is easier than you think

03 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by louisecusack in The Publishing Industry, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

fantasy, fiction, historical, process of writing, research, research assistant, writers, writing

HeatherGammage

This is me mock-strangling Heather Gammage!

Why do writers create historical or fantasy settings that require research, when they hate researching? I have no clue, but I do it myself. It’s one thing to swan over to Rome and Florence to research the Medici at the time of the Italian Renaissance, but when I get home and realize I’ve forgotten some details, I often resent time spent sourcing those bits and pieces.

If you’re like me, help in the form of an on-call research assistant could be easier than you think. Today I’ve invited Brisbane research assistant Heather Gammage (who I’ve worked with – hence the mock-strangling photo) to describe what she does for authors. Heather has a BA in history with a minor in Classical languages (Latin). Her specific “field” is in the medieval, but she admits to a fair to middling knowledge of other eras and is an expert in tracking down hard-to-find references and facts.

So without further ado, here’s Heather:

Thank you, Louise, for inviting me to write about why I love being a research assistant.

I have written stories since I was a small girl. My original inspiration was Enid Blyton and the Trixie Belden books. My very first book was, essentially, a Trixie Belden rip-off I wrote at seven years old–the names of the teenaged detectives were different, and it was set in Australia, but it was clear where my ideas came from.

At the same age, I used to set myself assignments from the encyclopaedia on various things that piqued my interest. One week, I’d be reading about dogs, the next, I’d be copying lines out about the government of Indonesia. They were not brilliant, by any means (and, again, were mostly plagiarized), but looking back, it’s clear that the “research is my life” moniker I jokingly adopted on an online gaming forum in the early 2000s was based in more fact than I realized. Even more recently, I came to the conclusion that, while I love story-making and writing, what I really love about writing is the busywork leading up to it–the research; the world-building and the diving into dusty libraries for things I do not know. Perhaps that is why Trixie, the girl detective, resonated with me as a child.

I still write (and I have workshopped my fantasy novel with the fabulous Louise), but the practicalities of my current life circumstances and my university studies don’t allow me to seek publication–yet. Meanwhile, as a part of those studies, I applied for the 2012/2013 Summer Research Scholarship with The University of Queensland as a research assistant to Dr Kim Wilkins. I was thrilled when I was accepted! Over that summer, I worked with Kim on the research for her book Ember Island (published under her moniker Kimberly Freeman in 2013) as well as referencing and fact checking for her Year of Ancient Ghosts. Ember Island was set in modern and 1890s Brisbane, a fictional prison island based on St Helena Island, and also the Channel Islands (Jersey/Guernsey). As Kim worked on draft one, she asked me to research the things she needed for her historical setting–which varied from trade routes into Guernsey to how a rich boy would dress in 1890s England and Brisbane to how many inmates were on St Helena’s and what the guards were paid.

It dawned on me that I was doing two of the things I loved most, and being paid for it, and oh-my-god-wouldn’t-it-be-fantastic-to-do-this-forever. I could apply all of my very “bitsy” work and life experience: parenting, horses, painting, writing (in fiction, for games, and for academics), referencing in a range of different styles, research, history, small business ownership, gardening, retail, western martial arts, birth experience, arts admin, teaching, Latin, gaming and beta testing, web writing — I am a jack of all trades from work and experience over the years, but there is nothing that screams “hire me!” for one particular job.

But, surely, don’t all authors love researching? Who would hire me? Kim had always done her own research, and done it very well; the research assistant work was due to her publishing time constraints.

Then, in early 2013, I took Dr Kim’s writing class as an elective for my degree, which was, quite suitably, a “doing research for writing” course. As a part of this course, Kim asked other authors to speak at the lectures about how they approached their research. One author mentioned that she despised the research process.

Despised it? Really?

A whole tonne of pennies dropped on my head.

Since then, I have done work for other clients, as well as Kim, and as my undergrad studies end mid-year I will increase my hours to allow for full-time bookings. I absolutely love working with clients on their research as they write and edit their books, and my current rate is $40 an hour which clients pay in advance, usually buying a block of my time to use as they require it. Quite apart from the vicarious thrill of seeing an author’s writing before it is published, my authors ask me questions, often, about subjects I know very little to nothing about (my specialty is the medieval period and Western Europe, but I have researched as widely as 1890s Queensland, 1990s Victoria and London after WW2). So, I am always learning, always searching. My job is to make the process easier on the author, and they can focus on story, while I focus on accuracy (as far as practicable, and to an author’s requirements). It’s win-win.

Thanks so much for sharing today, Heather. I can hear a whole batch of authors out there on the Interwebs thinking How do I get her to work for me! If that’s you, Heather can be contacted at: heathermgammage AT gmail DOT com, and if you’d like to see what Dr Kim has to say about her beloved research assistant, you can read Kim’s blog On Having a Research Assistant.

If you’d like more info, or want to ask a question, please drop that into a comment below and either Heather or I will respond. Thanks for reading!

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Workshop Wednesday: Worldbuilding with Rowena Cory Daniells

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by louisecusack in Uncategorized, Workshop Wednesday series

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

fantasy, fantasy worldbuilding, flypaper, world building, worldbuilding, writing, writing process

Today’s Workshop Wednesday guest is Rowena Cory Daniells, sharing her top tips on fantasy worldbuilding.

Rowena is the author of the best selling King Rolen’s Kin trilogy. Her new fantasy trilogy The Outcast Chronicles has just been released. And she has a gritty crime-noir also just released, The Price of Fame.

Rowena has an impressive publication list of fantasy titles, and once you begin reading it’s hard to stop. They’re addictive stories!

Readers adore her worldbuilding, and we’re lucky to have her here sharing her insights into the process:

World Building and the Flypaper-mind

Building secondary/created worlds gives you the chance to put your characters through experiences that force them to grow and adapt. Your readers go along with your characters on this journey, but only so long as your world building hangs together. If, at any time, the reader spots an inconsistency, they’ll stop reading to think about it. The moment they do this, you’ve broken the ‘Willing Suspension of Disbelief’. Once you’ve lost them, it’s twice as hard to win the reader back. So world building is important.

World Building requires a broad knowledge of societies throughout history. In fact…

What you need is a mind that works like flypaper. When I was a kid we didn’t have fly screens on our windows and in summer you couldn’t keep the windows shut so flies were a problem. My grandmother would hang a flypaper strip in the kitchen. It was coated with something that flies thought smelled nice so they would land on it and get stuck. (I was going to include picture but it would probably put you off your dinner).

When I say you need a ‘flypaper mind’, you need the kind of mind that remembers interesting/quirky/worrying things. For instance, in some New Guinea tribes it was the custom for female members of the family to mourn for dead relatives by cutting off part of a finger from the joint up. By the time they become old women, their fingers are just knubs.  I don’t remember where I read this, but it stuck with me. I haven’t used it in a story, but when I do, I’ll give it a slight twist. The underlying theme will be the same — the high price of ritualised mourning — but it will be consistent the world and society I create.

To create interesting secondary worlds you need to have a broad general knowledge, packed with all the weird, wonderful and worrying things human beings have done over the years. This means that while you are writing, things will spring from your subconscious contributing towards a richer world.

Your created world must be logical, but not too logical. As a species we aren’t particularly logical. It’s only in the last hundred years that half the population could vote and get an education, only in the last fifty years that equal pay for equal work was made law. (And this is only in first world countries).  It is those little illogical things that remind us ‘we’re not in Kansas anymore’.  Your characters will believe the way they live is normal because they have grown up in their society.

And it is hard for us as writers to step outside our society. If you read science fiction and fantasy books from the 1950s, you’ll find that attitudes of the characters often reflect society’s attitudes. Try reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K Dick. (The movie Bladerunner was based on this book). By researching history and other societies, you can glimpse how people have lived and are living even now.

Research is wonderful and a great place to start. If you are list-minded you can build your world from the ground up. There is no way I could do justice to the breadth of what must be considered to World Build in this short post. I recommend Patricia C. Wrede, who has done a brilliant job over on the SFWA site (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America). Here’s the link and from this page you can go through: The World, Physical and Historical Features, Magic and Magicians, Peoples and Customs, Social Organisation, Commerce, Trade and Public life and Daily life (All with subheadings of their own!).

When a reader comes to a fantasy trilogy, it is like taking an adventure holiday with the characters. They have to care about the characters and the world needs to be interesting, so take the time to work on your world building.  Read about other times and other societies because you never know when you’re going to come across an interesting fact that sticks in your mind.

Louise:  Thanks for fascinating perspective on World Building, Rowena. I’m sure beginner fantasy authors and experienced writers alike will have picked up ideas to help them create realistic fantasy worlds that stick in readers minds. If anyone has questions or insights of their own about World Building, please drop them as comments below and add onto the conversation.  We’d love to hear what you think.

And if you’re interested in other Workshop Wednesday topics, the full list is here.

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My new blog at louisecusack.com

08 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by louisecusack in The Publishing Industry, Writers out in Public

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

blog, books, eBooks, fantasy, lost world, Louise Cusack, publishing, reading, romance, romantic adventures, social networking

I have a new blog with information for my readers at www.louisecusack.com.  My Shadow Through Time fantasy trilogy is being re-released this month as eBooks by Pan Macmillan and I’ve blogged on the amazing journey the series has had in the ten years since it was first print published by Simon & Schuster Australia and selected by the Doubleday Book Club as their Editor’s Choice.

If you’re a lover of “romantic adventures in lost worlds” then I invite you to explore the new website and consider subscribing to my blog there.

Happy reading!

Louise Cusack

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Shiny new book covers

14 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by louisecusack in Ramble, Writers out in Public

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

book covers, books, eBooks, emotion, fantasy, fantasy romance, publishing, writers, writing

Is there anything more exciting for an author than seeing their book covers for the first time?  How about seeing those same books get a second lease on life with brand new covers?

I’m in author-blissland gentle readers because my Shadow Through Time trilogy is about to be re-released as eBooks with shiny new covers which I just adore!  Momentum Books have done a sterling job of capturing the heart of the books: romantic fantasy that’s a cross between Alice in Wonderland for grownups and Excalibur.  Can’t wait for the launch next month!

   

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Writing in the zone

08 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by louisecusack in Understanding Ourselves as Writers

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

creative flow, creativity, emotion, enjoyment, faith, fantasy, memory, music, passion, process of writing, romance of work, sensitivity, writers, writing

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.

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

17 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by louisecusack in Understanding Ourselves as Writers

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

behaviour, creative flow, drama queen, fantasy, passion, psychology, scenarios, sensitivity, writers, writers block, writing

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!

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Filling the creative tank: Why writers need time out

12 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by louisecusack in Understanding Ourselves as Writers

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

books, creativity, emotion, fantasy, kinaesthetic, literature, memory, music, passion, psychology, reading, writing

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’?

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Welcome Writers!

I'm Louise Cusack, an Australian author of fantasy and romance published by Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, and Pan Macmillan. I also mentor and tutor other writers like yourself. Please avail yourself of the resources on this website, and happy writing!

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