Happy New Year!

A quick scan of the Internet tells me that 2013 is the Year of the Water Snake (lucky for some, especially the Canadians, it seems!), the Year of the Stem Cell (some great things on the horizon there, with scientists cautiously optimistic), and, for Hollywood, the Year of the Film Sequel (producers also cautiously optimistic).

For me it will be yet another year of finding my feet (right down below my knees) and for surviving the weather.

I'm hoping for great things for the Book Length Project Group - yes, the name is a bit of a mouthful but in its defence, was only ever meant to be temporary until someone could come up with something better.  Nothing yet.

What's in a name anyway? We're lucky to have some excellent writers in the group, and a goodly amount of collective wisdom that will guide us through the joys of hard work ahead, as we spit-polish the manuscripts currently in development.

My predictions for 2013, channelled directly through my crystal ball:

• There will be exciting news regarding members' publications, accompanied by critical acclaim and popular success, spreading across the group like wildflowers after a good rain
• New friendships will be formed and transformative insights gained
• Some of us will become irritating groupies of famous writers travelling to the Perth Writers Festival from far-off lands
• I see inspirational overseas travel for some, resulting in renewed vigour, energy and creativity
• There will be pleasant dinners, morning teas, semi-boozy lunches for those who wish to indulge
• Someone may think about contemplating the possibility of an alternative name for the group, maybe
• Someone will get a radical new hairdo
• On the down side, as in 2012, housework will tend to suffer

Have a happy and safe New Year and I hope to see you in 2013.

Iris

Advice: The Problem with Advice

Gateway to the partially known

Fictional work is not for offering advice. It is to tell a story or explore something, or I'm not quite sure what. My advice to myself is to use it as a diving board. Don't think too much. Jump right in. Swan dive or belly flop. The experience can be transcendent, unpleasant, indifferent, but the exercise is still good for my health.

Writing to offer advice in a work of fiction? I don't think so. There is too much searching in the dark, too much contrivance, and too much intentional ambiguity, too much playing Devil's advocate. Too much uncertainty about the nature of social expectations and individual sensibilities. In any act of explorative communication, meaning slips around. It changes all the time.

In fiction, this slippage of meaning between writer and reader is a good thing. It creates the space for a story to develop beyond the page. Readers bring unique understanding, assumptions, and emotional profile to a story so that certain aspects of a story loom large, while others recede. The story adjusts itself to the reader, for better or worse.  At its best the work stimulates debate. At its worst, silence. Writer and reader are partners in the process of meaning-making.

Where does advice belong? If it belongs anywhere in writing, it seems that it belongs in the realm of Self Help. The contract between writer and reader is clear - the writer wants to give advice and the book-buyer is seeking advice (although possibly for somebody else - we don't often feel that we are in need of instruction on how to live our own lives. I wonder how many self-help books are bought as presents? I might be wrong.) And when it comes to instructing others on the how-tos or the rights and wrongs of something or other, how a person should help themself, flexibility of meaning is usually unintentional.

Giving advice carries with it an assumption regarding certain beliefs that the other person might have, and also carries the assumption that the advisor knows more than the advisee. Sometimes this is justified. Sometimes not. Regardless, a status discrepancy is established. The advisor assumes superior knowledge on a particular matter, and this circumscribes the relationship.  Advice can be respectful, as provided by the advisor to an American President (Sorry, I can't think of a stereotypical English, or Australian, Prime Minister, without thinking Yes Minister). Commonly, advice is proffered within a symbolic adult to child relationship, teacher to student, parent to offspring. To be an advisor is to assume a temporary position of power. The upside for the receiver of wisdom in this relationship is that, if the advice is wrong, he or she is not entirely responsible.

Some of us have an automatic aversion to advice. I know I do. I have an aversion to both giving and receiving. At this point I can't help thinking of Shaun Micallef's 'Wisdom of the Elders.' I'm the elder, in case you're wondering.

So in the spirit of 'playing opposites,' I have proffered some rambling advice here. For the uninitiated, playing opposites is a technique employed in performance rehearsals to help an actor discover hidden things about the character he or she is playing. An angry monologue is delivered with great self control and gentleness, for example; a loving speech with underlying irritability, or disdain. Something there for all of us, I think.

A final word of advice: It's worth remembering when reading or writing a work of fiction - you don't always get what you expect. And a good thing too!

Merry Christmas

Love, peace and happiness this Christmas

So these are ours; faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is Love.
-Corinthians 13:13

"If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace."
Thich Nhat Hanh

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities. ~Jean Houston

“Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind. Buddha

“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” Mother Teresa

First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.

Thomas a Kempis (1380 - 1471)

 

 

The Prophet Muhammad (s) said: “Do not turn away a poor man…even if all you can give is half a date. If you love the poor and bring them near you…God will bring you near Him on the Day of Resurrection.”
——— Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1376.

Peace is not in money, estate, bungalows and possessions. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul. Swami Sivananda

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller

“Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are.”
—Hafsat Abiola

 

Peace

With the many sad events reported in the News, and coming up to the Christmas season, it's good to be reminded of the value of peace, and to take heart.

A book on my Christmas list is Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.  The publication was released in 2011, but is likely to have a long shelf-life. In this book Pinker traces the the history of humans and apparently brings considerable evidence to bear on his main thesis that we are living in the most peaceful time in human history. It appears that, overall, the trend for violence is down, down, down! Things are not perfect, but we are heading in the right direction.

The implication is that now, more than ever before, we should be able to cooperate and use our collective wisdom to address the challenges ahead.

Lisa Appignanesi provides a short, but good, review of the book on the link provided.

Good blog site for writers

In a comment on one of my earlier posts, Glen Hunting mentioned a site called This Itch of Writing.  The site is kept up by Emma Darwin, a novelist and short story writer. It is a good looking site that offers great suggestions for improving writing. Over done, over written and over here is one of the blogs worth checking out on the site.  Thanks Glen!

Review - Trisha Kotai-Ewers "Listen to the talk of Us: People with Dementia Speak Out"

I wrote the following review of Trisha Kotai-Ewers' book Listen to the Talk of Us: People with Dementia Speak Out in 2009 for the FAWWA Newsletter. As I mentioned this beautiful book in an earlier blog, I have included a copy of the review here for those who might be interested in purchasing the book.


Published by Alzheimer’s Australia WA Ltd

$19.95 plus $5.00 postage.

Available Alzheimer’s Assn  (+61 8 9388 2800); or FAWWA.

For anyone the gradual decline of a loved-one’s capacity to communicate is confronting, to say the least. But for a writer and self-confessed wordsmith, witnessing such changes in the vibrant persona of a much-loved mother, must be doubly charged.

Writer and Acting President of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (W.A.), Trisha Kotai-Ewers saw her own mother gradually lose expressive language along with other changes that occur with dementia. In such circumstances a person might be forgiven for minimising contact with the places and situations likely to remind her of her mother’s illness. But Ms Kotai-Ewers takes another path, embracing the insights that the experience has given her as she works as Writer in Residence with people who have dementia, talking with them and recording their words.

She does this, not over the period of six months or a year as might be expected, but over many years. And she undertakes the work in such a respectful and ethical manner that the process of forming often profound relationships with the people who tell their stories, figures as a compelling underlying theme in itself. The author has been very careful to gain permission to record the words, from the people with dementia as well as their families, has done the recording in an overt manner, and has checked back with them once the words have been written down.

As might be expected from a person who has spent her life writing, the book is beautifully expressed, something that is not always evident in the non-fiction genre. This makes it ‘a good read’ even for those for whom the subject matter might not initially hold interest. But beyond this, it raises some of the big questions that concern us all – what it is to be a person, what is left when our words and understanding of conventional reality desert us and the place that meaning holds in our life.

The text does not pretend to provide definitive answers, but invites engagement in the questions themselves through reading and re-reading the words of those who are confronting them on a daily basis. The words are accurately recorded and set out in poetic form to encourage the reader to interpret them as one might do with poetry, understanding that much of the meaning lies beneath the surface of the words, in the subtext, and through metaphor.

Beyond the words themselves, Ms Kotai-Ewers contextualizes what has been spoken with her subjective impressions of the emotional intention of the speaker, shown to her through those critical non-verbal aspects of communication that cannot be conveyed through words alone. This depth of communication is made possible because of the close connections that the author has formed with the speakers. Underlying these close connections is time, mutual love and respect between the author and storyteller, and above all a willingness to listen.

This book is a must-read for anyone working with people affected by dementia, or for those directly impacted. It is accessible, carefully written and well-researched. But above all, it is written with genuine empathy in the deepest sense of that word, for its subjects.

 Reviewed by Iris Lavell

First published Fellowship News Feb 2009List

Brainpickings - a good website



One of our members has sent me a link on the brainpickings website. The site has a lot of good information for writers. And not just for writers. Regular folks too!

I've looked at it a couple of times and found something worth reading both times. The other day there was a comprehensive article on book illustration. There is another blog that summarises some of the research around optimism, and a letter from Amelia Earhart  to her fiance on the eve of their marriage, laying down the conditions of the union (posted on December 11).

Worth checking out. I'd be interested to know what you think.

http://www.brainpickings.org/

A little bit of silliness about left brain, right brain, and the editing problem

At the risk of squandering any tenuous credibility established thus far as a blogger/serious-minded person... here's a little dance I do when nobody's watching:



I put my left brain in

I put my left brain out

 Put my left brain in



And I shake it all about

Shaa...ke it!

What am I trying to say here? What deep message?
Left brain, linear logic. Right brain, holistic creativity. That seems to be the consensus.



And that's what it's all about!

Right brain: honeymoon, romantic love, euphoria, mind blowing, climactic, euphoria. Creativity flows through, as if it is coming from somewhere else. I can't get it down fast enough. When I read it back I am amazed at the lucidity and sheer beauty of what I have. The next day I sit down and realise that this particular word here doesn't quite make sense.  I'll just change that . Everything shifts to the right. Counterbalance. I stumble to the left.

It's like training the almost perfect lover that just needs to remember to pick up his discarded toenails and put them in the wash. If I could just change that bit, he'd be amazing! And then I notice that funny snorting sound he makes when he thinks nobody's listening. Just that and the nails. The toothpicks he leaves in the sink. The obsession with lemons. I work away patiently, making these little corrections. He's responsive, a fast learner, only occasionally backsliding. At the micro level each correction makes perfect sense, but when I step back something seems to be missing. I try harder. My creation is transforming somehow. Me too. I am becoming robotic. Too much left brain?  Hmm... The more I struggle with the detail, the more I Robot. Desperate times. Desperate measures. If at first you don't succeed, try more of the same.

I become quietly obsessive, exploring every corner of the bed I have made for myself, my hermetically sealed, enclosed bed. I rat-like, work over and over on the same little bit, trying to find a way out. I uber-work each paragraph, the same few words, the same word.  One of my brains starts to hurt. I think it's the primitive fish brain part. The last full stop in place. The last dash, dot dot dot eliminated.

Finally I have perfection. My lover sits in the corner like a shiny statue. There's something wrong, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I shouldn't have swapped his left elbow with the right knee. Change it back. Done. Oh yes, and he's not as lively as he used to be. He's not moving.

The next week I stare. He sits.

Chapter one, chapter one, chapter one. Pefect. I hate it. I am heartily sick of chapter one. I decide I need to get something happening. Plus the whole thing just doesn't hang together like it used to. I vascillate.

One day (yet again) I think, I know what I'll do! I'll do a bit of a story board. I'll use the view function  - the one that looks like a little book on my screen and reassures me that I am writing one - and I'll get  an overview of what I have (no editing allowed!), and then I'll get a piece of paper and draw a series of little pictures in boxes with the main points of the scenes, and get my head around the whole thing, draw up a skeleton of the book (should only take the rest of the day at most) and then all I need to do is to fill in the details, and I'll have my first draft. 

Except I just noticed that sentence doesn't scan. That word is just not right. (I'll just pop out of this view function, and change that one). Now that one is not quite right. And that's shifted all of that, so that will need redoing...  I could always borrow back that How to Write a Novel CD I regifted to my mother one Christmas.

Time for a glass of wine.

Somewhere else, in a galaxy far away, or maybe a parallel universe, a writer falls in love with a new idea and can't get the words down fast enough...

Oh yes, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Do you, dear reader, have any tips for silencing the inner critic?  Leave a comment and it will, more likely than not, appear on the blog within a relatively short period of time.

The Fall of a Sparrow by D.A. Wildsmith - A post from DW

The Fall of a Sparrow – by D.A. Wildsmith

It’s apocalypse season and to get in to the lurch of this, I wrote a similarly themed short story.  That may throw 98% of you off the, “interested readers list” however, I have tried to keep my characters in the foreground.  The darker elements are just those things that go bump in the night.  It’s how we react to them that is, hopefully, more interesting.  So why not, come for a drive…

For the full blog on it go here: http://www.shunnedhouse.net/earth/?s=The+Fall+of+a+Sparrow (Here I mention Hamlet, Javier Marias and Spiderman of all people.)

For the short story go here: http://www.shunnedhouse.net/tfoas.html

Please register and comment on the site, if so inclined.

 

The picture/cover for the story was done by a graphic designer friend of mine, DUST.

Scrivener as mentioned at our last meeting

For those who are interested in the Scrivener program mentioned by Lynn at our last meeting I have included a link here to a website that seems to provide quite a good explanation of what the program does. For those who were unable to attend the meeting, Lynn Allen recommended this program as something that she finds to be quite useful in managing larger writing projects. It looks good.

Book length project group end of year and timetable for meetings in 2013

Stairway to the moon without a tripod

Well folks, we've come to the end of our first year and the group is still here and as vigorous and enthusiastic as ever. At least three of our members have completed manuscripts to the point of submission and many are embarking on new projects. We've had some great discussions over the past year about writing process, and have been privileged to hear presentations by our members and by guests who kindly agreed to come along to share their thoughts. We were able to host critically acclaimed authors Nicholas Hasluck and Amanda Curtin who generously gave up their Sunday morning to speak with us.  Nicholas has written numerous novels, the most recent being Dismissal, so having the opportunity to hear about his writing process was a great gift. Amanda's debut novel The Sinkings has been critically acclaimed and an absorbing read. One of our members and FAWWA president Trisha Kotai-Ewers spoke with us about her beautiful book Listen to the talk of Us: People with Dementia Speak Out. I love this book, which is filled with the poetry of words spoken by people with dementia, and, I think, should be required reading for anyone working in this field. Required, highly enjoyable reading. Today, another of our members, Lynn Allen  author of Illusion gave a wonderful presentation in which she shared her knowlege with regard to the e-publishing field, and a lively discussion ensued. FAWWA Writer in Residence Campbell Jeffreys joined the discussion, and was extremely gracious given that we barged in on him without warning this morning. (Sorry Campbell!)

We have some promises of presentations next year from Maureen-Helen (January) and also Chris McLeod (TBA). It is going to be a  very good year. Yes!

So next year we will meet once a month, as usual on the third Sunday of each month (this month being the exception that proves the rule - we thought we'd go a little wild and have it a week early!)

We start at 10am(ish) and finish at 12.30(ish) and the cost per meeting is $5 for FAWWA members, and $10 for non-members.  We meet at Mattie's House at the FAWWA premises in Swanbourne. There is no expectation that people attend every meeting - the group is for meeting with like minded individualists, and people come along when they can make it. Sometimes the groups are large, and sometimes not so large.  If you are interested in attending contact FAWWA.

To be more specific, dates for 2013 are as follows, all being well (any unexpected changes will be notified by email and on this blog site, so it might be worth checking the day before)

20 January 2013

17 February 2013

17 March 2013

21 April 2013

19 May 2013

16 June 2013

21 July 2013

18 August 2013

15 September 2013

20 October 2013

17 November 2013

15 December 2013

The War of the Worlds and The Handmaid's Tale

I've finally got round to reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It's wonderful!

Having recently finished "The War of the Worlds", I ask myself what it is about Atwood's novel that pulls me along while I had the feeling of having to work quite hard to finish Wells', despite it being quite thin. It's not the complexity of the writing. If anything, Atwood's writing is more complex - certainly more psychologically complex (although Wells shows some lovely flashes of insight) - and Wells created a good story, which should be motivating for the reader.

Both stories are written in the first person. This feels very natural and, in Atwood's book, creates, for me, a real sense of  identification with the central character, but I found Wells' to be more distant, despite the first person point of view and the desperate circumstances in which he finds himself. This sense of identification is not the result of one having been written closer to my time than the other, either. For instance, I almost always found Jane Austen's books as 'compulsively readable' as this one by Atwood.  I was reminded of this when I read a blog this morning by Scott D. Southard (Check it out if you are a Jane Austen fan).

Wells' book was serialised, of course, and this appears to have affected the narrative structure. There was an economic imperative here, and I think this works against the art. Is each chapter intended to be read with an interval between? There's a sense of 'the story so far..' about it. Atwood's feels more like a single sitting narrative, with forced breaks when (my) domestic life intrudes. 

Both stories engage the intellect, although Atwood's does this more smoothly, without distancing the reader from the narrative. Wells' writing feels more cerebral. Atwood's is able to create a real sense of being trapped in a society that is structured for restraint, self-sustaining, dispersed, and where the enemy seems amorphous, embedded, even carried within, causing paths to escape to dissolve, even as they open up. Wells' enemy is more discrete and there is always the possibility of defeat and a return to 'normality' of a kind, albeit with an altered sense of the possible. Plus Wells' central character is a man of education and privilege, and restoration of his position is ultimately restoration of the status quo of English society at that time. I suppose women - and Atwell's book might be labelled a feminist novel - have never really been able to relax into their tenuous emancipation. It seems to be constantly under challenge. This can be exhausting. The alternative of giving up the ongoing work to  simply maintain a level of social and economic equality can occasionally seem quite attractive. The imaginative journey to the end result of this temptation, is undertaken in the book. I found it interesting that the book was copyrighted 1985, with the historical period in gender politics and economics providing another level of meaning to the text. So the novel pre-empts the return to a fundamentalist religious conservatism as a political force that is, even now, working from the top down to change society through lobbied legislative changes. Perhaps all this is what provides the high stakes, for this reader at least.

Ultimately the pulling power of the novel is the engine that drives the narrative. The engine is fueled by what is at stake for the reader, and not just for the novel's protagonists. The stakes are high in "The War of the Worlds." Those in "The Handmaid's Tale" are both high and credible in our contemporary world. This, I believe, makes it compulsive, if not compulsory reading.

Take it All at the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre

I find that one of the best things I can do to nourish my own writing creativity is to place myself in a position to enjoy other art forms. This is my rationale for mentioning theatre in this particular blog.

A friend recently received an email from a performance duo known as Red the Nosepaper. They appear to be operating on a shoestring, needing the word to get out there, so I thought I'd give them a plug. They are bringing a show to Perth called Take it All. It looks like this could be a show worth seeing if you are in Western Australia at the moment.

The spokesperson for the group wrote that "Red the Nosepaper is a Catalan/Swedish not for profit  that does playful silent, poetic and chaplinesque clown, using innovative and magical technology."  Take it All won the best show award at the Festival Pro-contra (Poland).

It is suitable for all ages.

Red the Nosepaper will be performing at the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, 1 Short Street, Fremantle on Sunday December 9th 2012. There are two shows: 1pm and 5pm. Tickets are available at the door at a cost of $20/$15 or the special concession price for a family group (2 adults and 2 children) of $50.

The Martians are Coming!

I've been putting my toe into the water of speculative and science fiction lately (I think Margaret Atwood describes a distinction between these two quite well). I'm in the middle of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, first published in 1898. When  a radio play based on this little book was broadcast in 1938 (on Halloween) produced by Orson Welles as if it were a News broadcast, the word was that people were convinced that the Martians really were coming, and a panic occurred.

Not so in the book itself, which describes a world in denial, slow to come to its senses, a world confident in its own ability to continue as usual,  and trust that everything will be all right in the end. In the process the Martians are wiping out everything in their path and people are dropping left, right and centre.

The book is spooky in its ability to describe scenes that might have been borrowed from descriptions of what was to occur just sixteen years after its publication - the horror of the First World War. And he makes some astute observations about the almost desperate desire to remain apathetic in the face of a force that seems too big to comprehend, and this could hold a mirror not only to the future back then (think the rise of the Nazis, and the sluggish response of the world to that) but also to our imminent future. The book made me think of our current response (our apparent inability to respond) to global climate change, or a desire to respond only to those events as they begin to directly impact our personal lives.

The other thing that occurred to me is that reading this book at the end of 2012 provides the present-day reader with an opportunity that the first readers didn't have - a Martian view of the Earth and its inhabitants. How strange time and space on Earth was back then. You don't really get the sense of it in a contemporary period piece movie. 

It's worth reading old books, if only for this - as a kind of amateur anthropologist. Such are the benefits of the temporary psychological displacement that reading an old novel can provide. While we're at it, if we were to project ourselves forward to 2112, I wonder how current technology, actions, lives, beliefs, will be experienced? Someone should write about it.

Books are great, aren't they!  Old and new.  Let's keep them coming.

Happy writing.

Confessions of a first-time novelist - how I used manuscript assessment and mentoring services

A writer at a workshop I attended once, said that the twenty thousand word mark is the place where a lot of people give up. She said that it was here that the inspiration runs out for her, and the really hard work begins. I'm sure it is not the same for everyone, but there have been a couple of ideas for novels that I've run with for about twenty thousand words, and then given up.  One or two would-be novels have found their way to the recycling bin, not because they were necessarily bad ideas (they might have been) but because I didn't persist. My own particular mix of bald arrogance in thinking that I could do this novelist thing, a pathetic shrinking insecurity in feeling that I was not worthy, and an unswerving egalitarian belief in the right of all to be heard drove me to think about this another way.

I wanted to finish a novel. After all, regardless of whether I did or didn't finish, I would continue writing. It is what people who have this particular affliction do. 

At the 11,000 word mark of the first draft of my (now) debut novel I stopped writing forward, and started obsessing. At this stage I  normally plough on womanfully, for about another 9,000 words, give or take a few, and then give up. It takes a while to understand that if something doesn't work the first, second, or fiftieth time, it won't work the fifty-first. In previous attempts it had never occurred to me to talk to someone who understood, and could help.

This novel was different. I started it in a hard-headed way, not really knowing where it was heading, but deciding that I would keep going regardless. I had decided at the outset that when I got to the point of wavering in this decision, I would find a good manuscript assessor, and have them take a look at the work.  11,000 words doesn't seem like much, but I felt the need for some advice at this point.  Not just any advice. I set my sights high.

I searched the Internet, found a list of manuscript assessors on a reputable site, checked out their websites, and was amazed to see that there were some really good, published novelists with great credentials, who had set themselves up as manuscript assessors, and read work for a relatively modest fee.  I found Chris McLeod that way (check out his credentials on the link!) emailed him, and sent off the first few cell divisions of my embryonic novel.  Of the assessors that I found, I thought he would be the best for me, and I really lucked out here. Chris's advice fell in the Goldilocks zone - not too much, not too little - for each stage of my process.I was encouraged and empowered to continue. When that first bit of manuscript came back, I went on with the work, probably wrote another twenty thousand or so words this time, sent it for another assessment, and at this point Chris offered to mentor me, which I gratefully accepted.

After the first few drafts of the novel, I felt that it would be helpful to get a fresh pair of eyes to do a manuscript assessment, and in a second stroke of luck found Tom Flood who was able to provide a different, highly professional perspective, and detailed feedback which helped to lift the work further.

I guess the take-away message for me was that while my personality type might default to introversion, and while I might have a stubborn tendency to do everything for myself, and  even a concern that if I obtain advice, I am somehow not quite doing it right, the reality is that we live in a writing community and this is a good thing. Accepting the community certainly helped my work and my skills to develop and grow. Besides asking professional, highly skilled assessors to look at my work, many of my friends also generously read and commented on early versions of the work. Sometimes I took the advice and sometimes I didn't, but it was always, always of the greatest value.

Of course, once a manuscript is accepted for publication, there is another process of fine-tuning, which I will discuss at another time in this forum. 

Invitation for this coming Saturday 4pm

Invitation: Book Launch 

Horst Kornberger Sat 1 December

Global Hive  - Bee crisis and compassionate ecology

This was a book that needed to be written and because no author took it up, it chose me. Global Hive reveals the bee crisis as a master metaphor for the world-crisis. This book is about paradigm change and imagination. It is about the possibility of a new science that knows through relatedness, and a new civilisation built on compassion and care.

You are all invited to the launch of Global Hive at 4pm on Saturday 1 December at FAWWA (Fellowship of Australian Writers WA), Mattie Furphy House, Allen Park, Swanbourne. Australian writer John Stubley, founder of the Centre for Social Poetry and co-director of Macroscope Solutions will officially launch the book. Refreshments provided.  

If you can’t come to the launch, the book can be purchased at The Honeyclock, St. Paul's Shopping Centre, La Fayette Blvd, Bibra Lake. Ph: (08) 9434 1944 or ordered through Amazon in hardcopy or Kindle format. Details below. 

http://www.amazon.com/Global-Hive-Crisis-Compassionate-Ecology/dp/0980293138

http://www.amazon.com/Global-Hive-ebook/dp/B008ZUG3WQ

--
Horst Kornberger

PO Box 456, Hamilton Hill, 

WA - 6963, Australia
++61 (0)8 93311880

horstkornberger@gmail.com
www.thewritingconnection.com.au
www.horstkornberger.com

www.creativityconsultantsworldwide.com
www.thewriterspassage.com

In conversation with Campbell Jefferys, Writer in Residence at FAWWA

If you were to choose an object that could best tell the story of your life, what would it be? A box of matches? A toy car? A house that is falling apart? A glass of good red wine? 

What is in your refrigerator, your wallet, or your handbag?

Such was the nature of the conversation I had with FAWWA Writer in Residence, Campbell Jefferys this morning. Campbell is the author of True Blue Tucker (winner of the bronze in the Australian/New Zealand fiction category of the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards); Hunter (Winner of the general fiction category of the 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and runner-up in the overall fiction category); The Bicycle Teacher (New edition due for release 2013); and Die Rache des Lords (A Lord's Revenge) A novella for English language learners.

Objects, and combinations of objects, their arrangement or lack of arrangement, what happens to them, what they do, are used for, their history, all provide layers of information about character, relationship, and story.

In tackling a lengthy writing project, the manuscript might contain an object which acts as a unifying motif. Think James Bond and his sports car, Batman and the Batmobile, Mr Bean's Teddy Bear, or a work that celebrates the importance of an object perhaps, placing it at the centre: The Hare with Amber Eyes. 

Campbell's novel, Hunter, employs a leather bound notebook to connect two ultimately converging stories. The object is incorporated into the book's cover design.

So, in practical terms, what are some of the things to try at home? One exercise is to take an everyday object as the starting point for an automatic writing exercise. When you stop writing, you stop. Within what you have written could be the idea for a story, a chapter, an article, or a poem. Another is to imagine finding a wallet. What do you find inside. List the things. Write a description of the person to whom the wallet belongs. Or try the exercise the other way around. Think about one of your characters. What is in his or her refrigerator? Write a list.

For the sake of this exercise, reading as a writer can involve looking for the way in which objects are used in stories, becoming aware of the purpose they serve. (I like to also read for pure pleasure, so the distinction for the sake of this exercise helps me to draw a line around reading for instruction versus reading for fun, although probably this is a false dichotomy.)

Campbell told me that he does writing exercises most days to limber up. We got up on our individual soap boxes and discussed how writing takes practice. It involves skill, something that we learn. The more skilled we want to become, the more we practice. Writing exercises are a bit like a musician practicing scales. Sometimes they are simply about developing proficiency. The exercise itself doesn't need to be any more than that. Other times, the exercise can lead to something more. It can grow into a beautiful, finished work.

Don't miss Campbell's next workshop at FAWWA next Saturday. Contact FAWWA for details.

A blog from David directing you to his site of creativity

I feel like a terrorist.  I’ve scrapped my way to the cockpit of Iris’s blog, and now run the risk of bringing the whole thing to a crashing halt.  I don’t have any demands, but if anybody does follow the link below, it may be advisable to fasten your seatbelts.  The link will drag the intrepid passenger down into the depths of my cheery site…with no other parachute other than the ‘back’ button.

There, one will find a bizarre collection of pages displaying my abandoned jaunt into digital art, some rubbish short stories, preceding all the fabulous writing advice I’ve received this year, and the journal that I have kept at each stage of my novel writing.

The journal section is the bit I hope will be of interest to other writers.  Despite feeling a bit exposed by opening this up to everyone, so far I’ve carefully hidden it in the most secretive place on the web, I think it may be a worthwhile read.  If, for no other reason, I think we have a shared experience.  Seeing that someone else is having the same emotional voyage of :

a)      Being creative,

b)      Hearing you are a genius,

c)       Submitting work prematurely,

d)      Learning that you are not a genius,

e)      Digging deeper, searching for  ‘the bar’,

f)       Returning to point (a) again

…may hopefully be reassuring.

I’ve never proof read my blog, it’s written as a stream of thought.  Bad grammar and ill thought out ideas will be everywhere.  I apologise if anyone finds anything offensive – I never mean to offend - except for when I do, and then I’ll probably swear a bit and bring your mother’s social reputation into question…but no offence.

Please feel free to register and comment. 

Now, I hand the blog back to your captain, Iris.  I think she knows how to drive this page better than I do.

Website:             http://www.shunnedhouse.net

Facebook:           David Wildsmith

Twitter:                @DavidWildsmith

Westerly launch invitation

The Westerly Centre invites you to join us to celebrate the launch of Westerly 57:2, ‘Writing and Ethics’ issue.   5.00pm for 5.30pm on Friday November 23, 2012   To be launched by Emeritus Professor Andrew Taylor.   UWA Club, Ground Floor Hackett Drive, Car Park No 1 (Check notice in Foyer)   RSVP by Wednesday November 21 to westerly@uwa.edu.au

 

A note from Glen about places to send your stories!

Allrighty then,

First of all, Thursday night at UWA Press begins with a tour from 5:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., before the actual 'open night' from 6:00 to 8:30. RSVP for the tour was supposed to be by 19 November but they still might let you in if you're quick. Email marketing-uwap@uwa.edu.au or call 6488 6827.
 

Other people who might be worth sending short fiction or poetry to:

http://dotdotdash.org/ which is run by creative writing students at Curtin Uni.

http://www.regimebooks.com.au/; another local outfit which put out their first journal volume earlier this year. Submissions for Vol. 2 are open until Fri 9th December 2012.

http://www.westerlycentre.uwa.edu.au/magazine Westerly is (probably) WA's premier literary journal; their two submission deadlines per annum are 31 March and 31 July.

http://www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com/ comes out every quarter.

http://www.theliftedbrow.com/ comes out every two months (or so)

The other heavy hitters from over east are Meanjin, Island, Southerly, Overland, Griffith Review, Going Down Swinging and Quadrant. A quick Google search will get you to their site. Don't forget to look at the kind of stuff they publish (and particularly what they've published recently) as well as checking their submission guidelines i.e. word lengths, line lengths, font, page layout etc.

Happy browsing,

Glen.

A new book by Horst Kornberger - Global Hive

Horst has given me permission to let you know about his new book. Read his words below, if you want to know a little about the world's bee crisis: This was a book that needed to be written and because no author took it up, it chose me. I’m not an expert on bees and yet have written on their collapse. Perhaps it was this lack of expertise that allowed me as an artist to see the obvious in the maze of facts. In this book I have plotted the link between the history of science and modern bee keeping. The facts I encountered tell a riveting story and this story resolves the mystery behind colony collapse. But this book is not just about bees. The bee-crisis is a master metaphor for the world-crisis in which we are all involved. Ultimately, Global Hive is about paradigm-change and imagination. It is about the possibility of a new science that knows through relatedness, and a new civilisation built on compassion and care. The book is self-published and available in hardcopy through Amazon and as an e-book through Kindle. I trust in the global hive of friends and like-minded people who find this book useful. If you are one of them please help the book to find its way into the world through your social media networks. Paperback available at http://www.amazon.com/Global-Hive Kindle available at http://www.amazon.com/Global-Hive-ebook . I am available for talks on the content of the book. You can contact me through www.creativityconsultantsworldwide.com or www.thewritingconnection.com.au The book will be launched In Perth at the Fellowship of Australian Writers, Allen Park, Swanbourne, at 4 pm on Saturday 01 December 2012. Horst Kornberger

Creativity workshop

19 November 2012

Some were privileged to be able to attend a creativity workshop with renowned Writer and Poet, Kirpal Singh yesterday at the Fellowship of Australian Writers WA premises in Swanbourne.

I took away three useful things that I had forgotten, and which might also help with your quest for greater creativity:

Say Yes
Have Courage
Trust.

(Please excuse my extravagent use of Capital Letters!)

'Yes' is something that enables kids to play. When children play make-believe, it always goes best when they get lost in the imaginative world that is being created by avoiding the critical (or fearful) stance, or the tendency to default to the 'No' position.

Yes, there is a big giant, and Yes it is a girl, and Yes she lives in a castle made of edible flowers and Yes she can fly and arrive on the other side of the world in half an hour etc etc. The same applies to the world of improvisation (or adults called actors playing). To say 'Yes' is to allow the improvisation to develop, extend and take flight. To say 'No' is to block off the possibilities, to frustrate, to give the message that your idea is not as good as mine, or my idea is not good. One is called improvisation and the other is called competition or politics.

In writing, a largely solitary occupation, how often do I say 'No' to myself. 'No, that's not going to work.' Again this position blocks the path to something as yet unknown. 'Yes' allows me to follow the path to discover something that would have otherwise remained hidden.

I say, play with the text. Have fun with it. Write silly stuff. Be a clown. Allow yourself the freedom to use cliches and banalities, or the wierd and the wonderful. Soon, something will emerge. The business of writing is too important to take seriously. Be courageous and trust yourself.

Being courageous and trusting accompany the  Yes that allows creativity to flow, that allows the words to flow, and ultimately that finds something new.  Caution at the initial stage is an anathema to creativity.

Of course once something is down on the page, it can be shaped and honed, but the raw material must come from a kind of anarchic energy (albeit, I believe, with an underlying intention of love, goodwill towards others, and a deep desire for the well-being of us all).

My debut novel: Elsewhere in Success

This hyperlink will take you directly to my novel on the Fremantle Press Website.

 

http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/1340

It was released in February 2013. You can preview the first three chapters here.

It is available as a paperback or as an ebook.

Blooming in the desert

The question is this:  how does a writer continue working on a large project in the absence of external feedback? How do we know we are not simply wasting our scent on the desert air? The question comes down to why we write at all.  For me, the answer is likely to change with my feelings, and with how well the writing is flowing.  I really don't know why I do this thing - get up in the morning and write something, or play around with something I have already written. Or why hours can go by in a flash, especially if I have somewhere else to go.   Writing feels like a luxury that I indulge in when I am not engaging in the business of real life. Or perhaps it really is a waste of time. I could spend a week on something that is ultimately discarded. Or six months. Years.

Some self talk now: Enough of the self-defeating thoughts! The idea of wasted time comes from an idea of scarcity. Forget about scarcity and dwell in the idea of an abundance of time. Long live abundant time because it is there that new discoveries are made. For me, these weeks, months, years build the scaffolding around the fragile building that will ultimately become a novel. Without the scaffolding, the building would collapse. When the building is strong enough, the scaffolding will no longer be required.

So, today, this morning, the answer to the question as to why I continue working on something that nobody asked for, and maybe on something for which I have no real authority, is that I am building something. It is a kind of Arc in a vast fleet of Arcs. A folly, perhaps. I am endeavouring to harvest the raw materials from the electrical signals that scoot around in my brain in response to my interactions with the world, and bring something into existence. A new story. In the spirit of genuine meglomania, I want to do more than this. I want it to be beautiful. As I work on this grand project, I change myself a little. The story is brought into existence. Maybe it changes the world a little. Like the beat of a wing. It's a bit like life itself.

What is this Blog site about?

The Book Length Project Group was started in Western Australia in 2012 and it is held on the third Sunday of each month at Mattie Furphy House at the Fellowship of Australian Writers, Western Australian Division in Swanbourne Western Australia.

The aim of the group is to provide the opportunity for people working on larger writing projects to meet, network and share their thoughts about the writing process, to read and discuss their work, and to discuss the practicalities of all that goes with writing something of 'book length,' and publication.

To date we have been fortunate in having  critically acclaimed Western Australian fiction writers Amanda Curtin (latest novel - The Sinkings) and Nicholas Hasluck (latest novel - Dismissal) generously give their time to speak to the group.  Group members, too, have been willing to share their considerable writing and publishing experience. I feel that the  great strength of this group is this collective experience, generosity, and willingness to share. We've also had one social event.

My role in the group is as Coordinator rather than Facilitator, in any formal sense. The meetings have a loose structure, but the flexibility enables them to respond to whatever is needed from month to month. I have made a commitment to attend each of the groups, to send out information, and to bring the morning tea.

A little about myself to help contextualise the above: My debut novel Elsewhere in Success is on the verge of being released by Fremantle Press. (For 'on the verge' read 'February 2013'. There are a couple of sample chapters on their website under 'Coming Soon'. I also have a PhD thesis online under Murdoch University digital theses. It is called Caryl Churchill: Representational Negotiations and Provisional Truths! There have been scattered attempts at poetry, some published, and short stories, and I have written some one-act plays, which have been performed in a Fringe context.

So that's an idea of the group. And me.

Contact FAWWA  (Fellowship of Australian Writers Western Australia website) if you want to learn more, or if you'd like to come along to any of the meetings.