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Writers: Working with Louise Cusack

Tag Archives: kinaesthetic

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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Paperbacks vs eBooks – dawn of the Slow Book movement?

21 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by louisecusack in The Publishing Industry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

books, debate, eBooks, kinaesthetic, literature, paperbacks, passion, pleasure, reading, scent, slow book movement, tactile

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.

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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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