Writing tips...

Other half coming soon

I'm no expert, but I have been struggling with this writing caper for many years in many different forms from the pragmatic to the professional, from report writing to academic to creative to the just plain fantastical. Ah well, to be more specific, plays, poetry, short stories, a completed (done and dusted) novel and a few incomplete ones.

I guess we could all come up with a list of writing tips, and I'm not trying to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs (although I suspect my own grandmothers never did such a thing) but in coming up with these I was trying to clarify what it is that works for me, or what it is that I think might work.

So I thought I would do this thing - for the next however long I will put up a writing tip a week, scheduled to come up on the same day. Along with this will be a writing prompt - something to push against to do a bit of writing. The prompt might be a picture, an idea, a quote - I'm not sure yet, but it will be something you might choose to use, or lose.

I get the feeling that this blog is read mainly by other writers, or people interested in the process of writing, along with the Book Length Project Group network, so I'm hoping it will be of interest and of some use.

The first one will go up in the coming week.

Writers' retreat - New Norcia

A small group of BLPG writers went to the New Norcia retreat, and Pat has sent this report. Sounds like they had a great time! Well done to Pat for all her hard work in organising this, and to Trisha for the writing prompts.

Here's Pat's report and a couple of photos from the retreat...

New Norcia

The retreat to New Norcia was a blessing in unexpected ways. True, I was expecting peace, I was expecting quiet – and it was provided in full. I was expecting impressive architecture and interiors filled by paintings and object d art and had the pleasure of viewing it. But I also found the vibe was friendly and on Saturday night the pub was a revelation of steaming life. There were check shirts and cowboy hats dancing to Joe Cocker, truck drivers at their regular stop, and happy young backpackers behind the bar. I wasn’t really expecting the unstrained flow of conversation, not just about writing, but about the life behind writing that informs and shapes it for each one of us in our own time and space. I wasn’t really expecting to learn so much about my fellow writers and their journeys toward writing. If anyone remembers the show on SBS called ‘Front up,’ it was a bit like that. Scratch any ordinary person on the street and find a fascinating story underneath. We read to each other and the feedback was intelligent and informed. It’s true I didn’t do as much writing as I’d planned, but I was probably having too much fun.

 

My take on Margaret Atwood's "In Other Worlds - SF and the Human Imagination"

Over the last few days I've been rearranging my bookshelves - my equivalent to rearranging the underwear drawer. I can't seem to throw out my old books either (I thought) as I rediscovered some torn and yellowed volumes from high school. My handwriting hasn't improved since then, but more disturbingly the quality of the observations in the margins hasn't shifted much either. Seems I am destined to be eternally immature, despite my best efforts to conform to an outwardly changing image.

Anyway, the old and the new are now in authorial alphabetical order under six categories - Novels, Non-fiction stuff about ideas, Plays, Poetry, Short Story Anthologies, and Memoir. A seventh category, Miscellaneous, is miscellaneous.

I mention this along with Margaret Atwood's book because I have been taking breaks in my categorising and cataloguing to read it, and in a funny kind of way, it has probably influenced how I have interpreted it.

I found the reading satisfying in the same way that I now look at my neat bookshelves and find them satisfying. Some interior designers talk about autobiographical décor, and it's good to know that our eclectic taste in household stuff now has a name to legitimise it. If the furniture is autobiographical, I'd say the books we read and keep are even more so.

In Other Worlds might similarly be seen as an autobiographical account of Margaret Atwood's relationship with Science Fiction from the time she was a child to (loosely) current times (the book was published in 2011). I found it to be enjoyably fragmentary. This fragmentary but lightly themed approach is satisfying in the same way as it is to rummage through a box of dress-ups. You can go through the box systematically, or pick and choose, or take a lucky dip in to see what you come up with. For me, given that I was in my sorting out and cataloguing mode, I enjoyed reading it systematically from front to back, and I suppose the various essays, literary critiques, observations, talks and self-disclosures about this whole sci-fi field has been edited or arranged in that particular order to provide a sense of chronology.

There are observations regarding a fairly wide range of speculative novels that have entered the author's orbit over the years - H. Rider Haggard, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Yevgeny Zamyatin, HG Wells, Winthrop, Ursula le Guin, Sherri Tepper , Kazuo Ishiguro, Bryher, and others. Some I had just handled and lingered over in my concurrent reorganising activity. Others, like that of Kazoo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go is one I haven't yet read, but now will.

When Margaret Atwood came to the Perth Writers Festival earlier this year, she sat with China Mieville to debate the finer points of the field. I gather that sometimes people get very upset over apparently competing categories - I wonder if maybe it's a mapping thing, including, but not entirely to do with territoriality, status and an idea of scarcity. Incidentally, mapping is something else that is discussed in one of the essays in the book.

If you're still not sure what Margaret Atwood's thoughts are with regard to Sci Fi, I think this book goes a long way towards giving a more rounded understanding of her perspective on the debate. More importantly it gives a sense of her long-standing love and respect for the whole field, whether it be considered high, middle or low-brow.

Five stars from me!

Other good blog sites provided by writers networked into this group...

louise-allan.com great book reviews and reflections on life

Contemplating life

The Incredible Rambling Elimy elimy.blogspot.com has great book reviews and reflections on writing

burinsmith.com for great reviews and writing reflections and bentown.wordpress.com  for food

Little Blog of Phlegm, (actually to do with phlegm) and vego camper (to do with preparing vegetarian food whilst camping).

Maureen Helen lanches new blog!

What a great, thought provoking read. Well worth visiting this blog with posts on the Western Australian health system.

Maureen Helen has previously given presentations to the Book Length Project Group.

Distraction and reading

In his much lauded book of 1982 Camera Lucida Roland Barthes wrote about a concept called punctum. This related to the art of photography, and it meant the thing in a photo that caught your eye, that the viewer kept returning to think about, even after the photograph has been removed. This was contrasted against the idea of studium, the boring bits, or boring photographs, if you like. The bread and butter that backgrounded the honey.

Punctum provides a little reward each time, I think, and because of this we tend to seek more. I mention this because the idea of it has influenced the way I think about the changes that are taking place in our collective way of being in the world, and particularly what I think might be our increasing distractability. While this might be seen as linked to the ability to multi-task (as a positive thing) I wonder if there is also something in this increasing skill of dividing attention (that is quickly flicking between one thing and another) that reduces our ability to concentrate on one thing, and to follow through with it. I think we are seeking punctum at the expense of studium - in other words we want the icing without the cake, and with much the same result.

What does this have to do with reading? Well, in some ways, it means we are reading more - which is a good thing, although the more we are reading might be a kind of flit, flit, flit as we go from one thing to another like dragonflies over a pond. (Yes, I also read somewhere about the tyranny of we, and when I say we, really what I am saying is me.)

What I had started to find was that my concentration and patience to tolerate studium was reducing, and my seeking out of punctum increasing, which might be all very well, but it meant that I was missing out on finishing some very good books that needed to settle in before they revealed their considerable gifts, often deeper and more valuable than those of the easier to read 'hold your attention' 'gripping' books (not always, but sometimes) and more soul-feeding.

So what did I do? I made a decision to settle my mind, to get out less, stay in more, reduce my screen time, increase my page and notebook time, to be mindful of the things around me, and to sleep and daydream enough to restore and repair. The whole thing has been restorative and anxiety-reducing. My concentration is improving. The novel I am writing, one that had been stuck for a little while, is starting to move again. And I am back to reading more books.

I might have the whole punctum/studium thing wrong, so I am going to pick up Barthes' book again and read it to see. It's been quite a while and I have changed in the interim. But I'm changing back.

Inspiration = a good book

Every now and again I need to remind myself what it is that I really value in books (as opposed to writing). Nothing tells me that more clearly than the books themselves. I love them for their own sake, for what they teach me, and because they inspire me to try to create something of value that will also give someone pleasure and inspiration. Granted, this will be yet another book in a burgeoning living reef of books. Still, within the limitations of my abilities, it will be the best I can write.

I suppose I tend to choose to read books either on the basis of their being of value to me at this particular time in my life, or more frequently it seems that the choice is serendipitous. So although it concerns me sometimes that I have so much admiration for the books that I have reviewed on this blog, because it might seem that the net is spread a little too wide, in fact I have so much admiration for these books because they are (in my opinion) very, very good and seem to have pulled off what must be to any writer who has tried to do likewise, an act verging on magic - the completion of stories (already something to be admired)  that feel real, effortless in their execution, sophisticated in their expression, and emotionally intelligent and courageous in their exploration of character and circumstance. I find that lately I am falling in love (or at least falling in like) with each new book that I read.

I am currently in the middle of reading Joyce Carol Oates incredible (no, really incredible!) book published in 2012 - Mudwoman.  (OMG!!!) If you are looking for a book that incorporates depth of character, political perspicacity, form as function, just plain writing skill at the elite athlete level, then this is a book to read and study. I certainly intend to do so. (For me) it is reminiscent of Susan Johnson's The Broken Book as it disorients the reader along with the disorientation of the protagonist, but in the same way that the poetry of e.e. cummings might do. You have to give in to it, swim with it, if you are to discover the wonders of the underwater world that it reveals. Whether we are to take this as the world of the collective unconscious, the dream world, the imagined life after life world, or more prosaically (possibly) the world of writerly metaphor, it's worth diving in.

Apologies for the purple prose, but I am in the purple prose mood this morning. Hope you find time to get hold of a copy of this remarkable book and read it. Would love to know what you think of it.