Becoming A Fiction Writer
One girl, one dream … and a whole lot of procrastination
July 21, 2008 by amanda

Am I ignoring short stories?

Observant readers will know that I have a category tag especially designated for short stories, yet I rarely mention them. Surely short stories are an important part of becoming a fiction writer? So what’s going wrong?

For a start, I haven’t read a short story for ages. I do go through phases where I rather enjoy one of those “Best Short Stories 2005″ kind of collections, but even then I do only read about half of them – unlike novels, I have no qualms about breaking off reading a short story half way through.

I used to think that writing short stories must be good training for novel writing, and that’s why I read them and tried to write them. But I just don’t seem to get that much pleasure from them. As I reader, for a start, I need the longer engagement that a novel gives you – there’s time to learn to love the characters and to really care about the different things that happen to them in the course of the novel. If I read a novel I also have a vague chance of remembering something about it afterwards, but with a short story this is virtually impossible. And while writing a novel is an absolutely monstrous task compared to writing a short story, it somehow seems easier to me.

However … I could be wrong. Maybe I’m just lazy. You know, like a sportsperson who only likes one aspect of their training – swimming laps, say – but ignores other things, like eating well. So after my trip to Melbourne I will head to the library and get a few more collections of short stories and try to do them justice. I also have the Writers Weekly short story contest coming up next weekend – a chance to write the only short story I’ll write for another three months, until their contest comes round again – so the short stories category will at least see a little action.

Permalink | Posted in Short Stories | 3 Comments »

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July 20, 2008 by amanda

I’m planning to get creatively divergent soon …

About a fortnight ago I wrote about doing some creativity cross-training to help my fiction writing – that is, doing some form of creative activity that I don’t usually do with the idea that it could help expand my creative thinking in general, and therefore, hopefully improve my writing too.

The main feedback I got was from my friend Katrina who told me (less bluntly than this) that there was no place for a word like “cross-training” on this blog. And of course, she’s right, because it sounds dreadfully like some awful aerobics lesson that involves far too much Lycra. She made a much nicer suggestion for a phrase to describe this idea: she says I should be creatively divergent. So that’s what I’ll be calling it from now on!

Anyway, the exciting thing is that, in the usual synchronicity of life, I just came across a tool to help my creative divergence. I was unpacking some more boxes (boxes that I packed up in 2001 before moving overseas, so you can imagine the excitement of seeing what’s in them), and I came across my collection of Fimo modelling clay. You know, that colourful stuff you can shape into whatever you want, throw it in the oven, and whammo, it’s solid and tough and you can do whatever you want with it. I used to make earrings and fridge magnets and goodness knows what else with this stuff and I’m dying to get my fingers back into it.

On my return from my Melbourne trip I hope to have time to get into the Fimo project, and I’m looking forward to it. Then we’ll see if this whole creative divergence makes me more creative or is just a good diversion instead!

Permalink | Posted in Inspiration for Writers | 4 Comments »

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July 19, 2008 by amanda

Do you finish every book you start reading?

I’ve thought about this quite often, but more deeply when I read Aaron’s comment on my overdue library book confessions post. Quite sensibly, he had this to say about his large pile of library books:

If it doesn’t “hook” me in the first 10 pages, it goes in the pile to be returned early. I don’t suffer books any longer, there are too many other good books to push myself to read something that isn’t any good or takes to long to get started.

And in principle, I fully agree. Think of the millions and millions of books out there and how no matter how long you live, you’ll only ever be able to read a tiny portion of them. Why waste valuable reading time on books that are no good?

But in practice, I just don’t do this. I very, very rarely give up on a book. I always think I can learn something from reading it through to the end, even if it is only to learn how not to write. Plus I’m eternally optimistic that the book might turn out better. I would rather get an overdue fine from the library than not finish a book.

The big exception to this – have I complained about this before? – is pretty much any book by Irvine Welsh. I did manage to get to the end of Trainspotting. But I’ve given up on two or three other Welsh books because the dialect is so strong in the dialogue that at times I simply can’t understand, or I have to read it so slowly it’s like reading in a foreign language.

Don’t think for a minute that I have some determined, follow-through kind of nature or something. I’ll willingly turn a video off in the middle and have been known, fairly regularly, to fall asleep in the cinema, watching a movie I’ve actually paid to see. Last week I gave up vacuuming halfway through the living room, and I have no follow-through when it comes to sticking to an exercise plan.

It’s just a book thing.

Am I alone? Do you finish every book you start?

Permalink | Posted in Reading Fiction | 6 Comments »

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July 18, 2008 by amanda

Over halfway through my NaBloPoMo

Did anybody notice that I’ve been posting awfully regularly here recently? I’ve certainly noticed and I’m more than a little proud of myself that we’re well past the halfway point of July, my personal NaBloPoMo month, and so far I have kept my goal of posting every day for a month.

The interesting thing is that posting more regularly at this blog has been an awful lot of fun. I love writing about fiction writing, and I love the fact that writing this blog makes sure I do it more often. I enjoy that keeping this blog going makes sure that I keep up-to-date with events in the books and publishing world, too, because it’s all too easy to slip back into my own little land but if I want to get published some day, I need to know more about what’s going on out there.

And the loveliest thing of all is that in the last few months I’ve been gathering a few more regular readers and even better, some of these lovely readers have been commenting. It’s great to get some feedback and to know that there are real people out there following my attempts to become a fiction writer.

On that note … are there any lurking readers out there who haven’t introduced themselves to me yet? I’d love to hear from readers in the comments here. Please?!

Permalink | Posted in Goals and Motivation | 2 Comments »

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July 17, 2008 by amanda

Novel planning and novel non-planning

I had another decent session of in-class writing last week while my lovely students were doing their weekly test – but I had such a small class that there was no need to write on the prowl, I sat down and wrote and wrote instead. The most exciting thing is that what I was writing was an extension of my outline for my second novel. Although I actually wrote an initial outline about a month ago, a few of my ideas had already changed by the time I’d written the full first chapter, so I thought I’d start again – and the interesting thing about doing it in class was I didn’t have any other notes in front of me, just what I could remember in my head about the characters and the first chapter.

The first chapter that I wrote is set in the present, when all three characters know each other well, and my plan was (and still is) to go back into the past and follow each character’s life for a year or two before the first chapter actually takes place. That’ll show how they ended up in Bratislava, what they’re doing there now and how they all met up.

Outlining these storylines for each of the three characters has proven relatively straightforward. The tricky bit for each character came when their story needs to move forward past the first chapter. I really felt that I both couldn’t and shouldn’t plan that. I know the characters well, but I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen to them towards the end of the story – in fact, I  have almost no idea. I know what I want to talk about and the kinds of ideas I want readers to go away with, but I really don’t know what the characters will actually do.

In great contrast to my first novel, this is the first time I’ve really understood what other writers say about the characters telling you what to do – they’re independent creatures, somehow, living their own lives and they will tell you what they do in their lives when they’re good and ready! I ended up discontinuing the plot planning for each of the characters around the point where it goes into the future (that is, after the first chapter), and I’m just going to wait and see what they end up doing. I have to trust them! And that’s quite exciting.

Permalink | Posted in Writing Novels | No Comments »

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July 16, 2008 by amanda

A change of scenery: Melbourne beckons

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a bit of a holiday, and since I was accustomed to jetting off all over Asia or Europe or even further afield while I was living abroad, my soul’s taken a bit of a battering. Which is why I’m pretty excited to be spending a week in Melbourne – leaving soon!

There are lots of bonuses from a fiction writing point of view about this trip to Melbourne. For a start, I will be free of most of my blogging deadlines and posts for a whole week – this means I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working like a crazy woman to get ahead, but it’s all going to be worth it. Spending a bit more time than usual away from a computer will be very healthy.

Then there’s the inspiration factor. Being in a new place and seeing new things is always super-inspiring for a writer – well it is for me, anyway. I always get so many ideas when I’m on the road. And because I don’t have a tonne of commitments on this trip, I’ll have time to indulge myself with a notebook and my imagination.

I also hope to have time to finish off some reading I’ve been trying to get to. Since it’s almost four hours on the plane to Melbourne, and naturally, around the same coming back the following week, I’m hoping to get a couple of books finished off.

As well as getting all inspired while I’m away, I’m hoping to come back super-refreshed and ready to spend the rest of the winter working hard at my writing before summer arrives and I want to get outside more often.

There’ll still be blog posts coming up while I’m in Melbourne, but don’t be deceived, I’m not working hard on my holiday – I’ve managed to be organised enough to post ahead. I will be checking in on comments and the internet in general, though. And now, I’m off to Melbourne, I think!

Permalink | Posted in Inspiration for Writers | 1 Comment »

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July 15, 2008 by amanda

Still undecided on electronic books

It’s about six months ago that I first wrote about electronic books when I rabbited on about the Kindle, Amazon’s e-reader that really only caught my attention properly because its name is so similar to my surname, Kendle. And while I, in theory, “get” all the advantages of an e-book device, I still have absolutely no desire to throw away my “real” books.

So I was fairly pleased to see that one of my favourite writers, Nick Hornby, agrees with me. Strictly speaking I agree with him, but I did write my Kindle piece long before this article quoting him appeared (last week) at PC Pro. It was a bit of a beat-up (how exciting can a magazine like PC Pro be, really) but they quoted Hornby as saying, “they are so expensive that even multi-millionaire stars don’t want them”. I suspect that multi-millionaire stars don’t actually read that many books, electronic or paper or otherwise, but that’s beside the point.

As Hornby rightly points out, the readers themselves are relatively expensive. Yes, the books you then buy for them are quite cheap, but not that many people read enough books in a year to actually justify the expense. And then the people who do read a lot of books are people like me, real book-lovers, who want the full experience of admiring the cover, turning the pages, smelling a new book, and all those other odd things we love about real, physical books.

About a month ago I saw somebody reading a book using an electronic reader. He was sitting on the train and seemed quite happy, but to be honest, he did have the appearance of a computer geek kind of guy. I would dearly have liked to interrupt him and ask him all the questions I have: does it hurt your eyes? Is it easy to read? Does it really make the experience easier than physically turning the pages? Does the sun really never reflect badly off that screen? And so on. I didn’t, because he seemed rather engrossed. So I’m still severely suspicious of the whole idea and despite the fact that storing books electronically would reduce the storage space needed in my house by a vast proportion, I love, LOVE my physical books, and dearly hope that by the time I have my own books published, most consumers are still also in love with physical books.

Any e-book readers out there? Anyone who agrees with me on the physical book love thing? Do share!

Permalink | Posted in Reading Fiction | 5 Comments »

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July 14, 2008 by amanda

Will writing poetry make my novels more beautiful?

As I was driving along the coast today – inspired, perhaps, by the fantastic view over the Indian Ocean to Rottnest Island – I was listening to some new music on the radio. I’ve got no idea who the band was, and that doesn’t really matter – the point is, as always I was paying the most attention to the lyrics, and in this song they were particularly, well, lyrical!

Somewhere on a long list of lifetime goals I know I’ve got “write some song lyrics” written down. So I got thinking about how I would go about writing song lyrics, and came to the conclusion that my writing brain is not up to the challenge right now – or at least it would need a lot of practice. But that kind of practice could be exactly what I need. I often think that my fiction writing is not lyrical or beautiful enough, and I admire writers who write in a style that I consider “beautiful” (although of course that’s an entirely subjective thing).

From song lyrics my brain wandered to poetry, despite the fact that I’ve recently learnt that poets die young. Poetry is something I like to read to observe beautiful words and phrases, and it sometimes inspires me to write better. But my next challenge to myself is to try and write some of my own poetry. Definitely not for publication, but for practice, and to see if that helps my fiction writing sound better.

Any poets out there? Do you think this will help?

Permalink | Posted in Fiction Writing Tips | 2 Comments »

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July 13, 2008 by amanda

Becoming A Fiction Writer scores a century

Sorry to all non-Commonwealth nations there for using a cricket metaphor … but I’m an Aussie and I grew up on cricket, so my blog can score a century if I want it to!

What I’m trying to say is that this is the 100th post on Becoming A Fiction Writer, which I started back in December 2006 when I boldly proclaimed “I’m gonna be a fiction writer!” Since then I’ve been rattling on about my procrastination and time management dilemmas and trying to learn some more about fiction writing in general. I had a big breakthrough when I decided, on the spur of the moment, to draft my novel in November 2007 as part of National Novel Writing Month, and since then, I’ve been able to get a bit of fiction writing done at fairly regular intervals.

But I definitely haven’t become a fiction writer yet, which is lucky, really, because otherwise I’d probably have to change the name of this blog. I’m not sure when the “becoming a fiction writer” goal is actually reached: is that when I have a novel published and on the shelves in shops near you? I guess that’s a good amount of the way there, although I have a feeling that becoming a writer is a lifelong process.

In any case, thanks for following through the century of posts. I adore getting comments from readers of this blog, especially utterings of sympathy, so keep them coming! It’s nice to know that there are other people out there going through similar fiction writing struggles as I am, or simply people who are interested in following what I’m up to. Thanks and keep reading and commenting!

Permalink | Posted in Goals and Motivation | 4 Comments »

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July 12, 2008 by amanda

Best of the Booker and remembering books

It was announced this week that Salman Rushdie’s book Midnight’s Children has (again) won the Best of the Booker (this time for the 40th anniversary of the prize). I looked at the shortlist a while back – for some reason, just six previous Booker winners were nominated to be potential Best of the Bookers, which seems a bit unfair – but in any case, I couldn’t decide that any of them were better than the others, and didn’t vote.

But apparently 36% of the voters decided on Midnight’s Children, a pretty high proportion. The frustrating thing for me is that I know I’ve read this book, and have a very, very vague impression of it still left in my brain, but if I had to describe anything about it to anyone, I’d be utterly lost. Basically I’d just say “it’s about India”, a dismal summary if I ever heard one.

The thing is, there are hundreds of books that I can’t remember much about at all, even though at the time I found them absolutely fascinating. This problem is dramatically increased if I read a book within a day or two, so for that reason I limit my reading of books that I’m loving, so that they’ll stick better in my brain. But still, come back a few months later and there are so many cases where I could look at the cover of a book, know my opinion about it, but can’t tell you anything about the characters or plot. I find this rather distressing, I have to say, and hate to think that people will do the same to my books in the future!

Am I the only one out there who has this weird kind of book amnesia?

Permalink | Posted in Awards for Writers, Reading Fiction | 4 Comments »

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