I’m really feeling like 2011 has got off to a great writing start. Is it the daily poetry that’s got my writing juices flowing? Is it the rush of a new year, new goals and new resolutions that hasn’t worn off yet? Or perhaps the fact that I’m super-super-busy, with new consulting work, courses to run all over the place and of course a small boy to take care of, and the old “if you want something done, ask a busy person” adage is kicking in again?

It’s probably a combination of all three, I think, but I’m certainly feeling enthusiastic about writing and squeezing in quite a lot of it. In the last week I managed to enter to short fiction contests. Okay, one was really REALLY short, but still took quite a lot of thought – I mentioned recently that I entered the Tweet Me A Story contest in which I had the chance to write three 140-character stories using the word “searching”. The great news is that one of my stories made the cut to the second round (top 25 out of 150 stories, I think) – my successful story was this:

Old Mr Gibbs was searching the death notices when the maid came up behind him, newly-changed will in one hand, heavy saucepan in the other.

If you like it, you can vote for it, although public voting only accounts for one of the five writers who get to advance to the next round later this week, where the successful tweeters have to put their 140-character thinking caps on all over again.

I also managed to get another entry in to the 24-Hour Short Story Contest that Writers Weekly runs on a quarterly basis. Regular readers will know I’ve often entered this contest, mainly because I love the idea of being “forced” to write a short (short) story (always under 1,000 words) within a 24-hour time period. A friend of mine who blogs at Because I Said So also entered with me this year, so it was great to be able to compare our stories and see what different ideas just the two of us (who have a lot in common) came up with from the same prompt. Of course, I’m never particularly happy with the story (or let’s be fair, the draft of a story) I come up with during the contest, but at least it adds to my collection of “to be edited” fiction and of course, keeps my brain and fingers in the writing mode.

For me, thats the main benefit of entering writing competitions – some pressure to keep writing. Do you often enter writing contests, and why or why not?

As you might guess, this contest insists that you write a story within the limit of 140 characters, the length of a tweet. Until recently I would have probably ignored such a contest, but you may recall I enjoyed reading a collection of hint fiction recently – containing stories in 25 words or less – and this is about the same length as a tweet. Given that experience I felt I both had a better idea of how to form a story in such a short space, as well as seeing that something worthwhile actually could come out of almost no words!

The Tweet Me A Story contest has something like a thousand entrants (it’s free but you have to register and they only take the first thousand) and in the first round, which I’ve just completed, the writers are randomly divided into twenty groups. Each group is given a (different) single word which must be included in their story. I was in Group 1 (I took this as a lucky sign!) and our word was “searching”. Unfortunately I had a quick look at the email then took care of my little boy, eventually put him down for a sleep, went off to have a shower and then remembered to think about the stories I might create, by which time I thought the word I had to use was “spreading”. At the time, I’d also been chatting with a friend about her upcoming ocean swim and the shark attack risk, so I came up with this awful story:

The blood was spreading faster than Alan could swim. Fortunately, the shark was still distracted by his wife’s hands and shiny wedding ring.

When I sat down at my computer and discovered I should be writing about “searching”, I realised scrapping the shark idea was probably a good one! As the contest hasn’t closed yet (you have about five hours to get your stories in – you can submit up to three) I can’t share my entries yet, but I will later on. It’s fun to think about how to write sparsely and how to suggest an entire plot in just 140 characters, but it does make me look forward to getting into some novel-length work again soon!

And I did it – not once, but twice. Back in 2008 I was proud to use the novel I first wrote as a NaNoWriMo draft, Kanako’s Foreigner, to enter my first Vogel contest. I even managed to enter my Bratislava novel this year, despite having a baby in the middle of it all – but only because they delayed the closing date for a month. I felt like they’d done it just for me!

Obviously, I didn’t win the award. But the point is that these kind of awards both give me the incentive to keep working on my novels with a time pressure that submitting to agents doesn’t (as shown by my stumbling with NaNoSuMo) and there is, of course, the possibility that I could one day win and be shortlisted.

It won’t be the Vogel, though. I am now, sad to say, officially too old. Fortunately, just a couple of years ago the Scribe publishing house (who I think publish fantastic Aussie books!) launched a novel contest for those too old to enter the Vogel. I’m not sure if that was the niche they intended to fill, and perhaps the idea came from someone just like me who’d turned 35 (I haven’t yet, I hasten to add!) and wanted to feel they still had options, but I’m glad they did. The CAL Scribe Fiction Prize is now my goal for submitting an entry in 2011. I hope they run it! Interestingly, I got an email recently sharing the statistics for the entrants for this year.

Gender breakdown: 194 women, 158 men
Age breakdown: Oldest is 86, one of 11 in their 80s; 46 in their 70s; 86 in their 60s; 72 in their 50s; 89 in their 40s; 48 in their 30s.
State breakdown: ACT 25, NSW 134, NT 1, Qld 41, SA 23, Tas 8, Vic 108, WA 11, overseas 1.

Non-Aussies won’t be as fascinated by this as me but take a look at the domination of New South Wales and Victoria. Yes, they have larger populations, but just the same they’re extraordinarily over-represented. I’m determined to help Western Australia fly the novelist’s flag next time round! It’s also encouraging to see eleven entrants were in their 80s. Unlike elite sports players or famous rock stars, you really can begin to be a writer at any age, so even if I’m too old for the Vogel, I’m now almost old enough for the Scribe prize and I reckon I’ve got at least another 50 years to keep trying!

Since this contest fell on a day when I had nothing else planned (although all other new mothers will also laugh at the idea of having “nothing else planned” – that doesn’t mean we actually have any time), I decided to take a chance, sign up, and beg my husband for a couple of free hours while he looked after our baby boy.

This worked, but a couple of hours is not much time when I still had a million other things to get done. But the great part about having to look after a baby is that you really have to make the most of your writing time. This meant that while I was “sshh-ing” him to sleep this morning, I was thinking of plot ideas. When we went for our after lunch walk (designed to put him to sleep, although it failed again), I was trying out different plot twists. I managed to get both of us back alive but I did notice myself snapping out of my plotting daydreams a few times to realise that I didn’t quite remember walking from one side of the park to the other – fortunately my pram seems to know the way itself these days.

This evening, baby in bed, husband fed, cats curled up next to me, I sat down and hammered out my 950 word short story as fast as I could. Having spent much more time than usual thinking about it seemed to help. Usually, my habit is to do a lot of brainstorming in front of the computer, recording lots of different ideas as I go. Thinking about it on the go instead seemed to narrow down my ideas as I could only manage to remember the best ones. Whether or not this meant I got a better story is debatable, but I’m happy with the one I’ve got, especially considering it was done in a relatively limited time. Another good lesson for me on how it’s possible to write, even when you don’t have any time.

In the meantime, I’ve actually been getting a little editing and rewriting done. The writing gods really blessed me this year by moving the closing date of the Allen & Unwin Vogel award – it’s a contest for Australian novelists under the age of 35 – from 31 May to 30 June. It’s been the end of May for as long as I can remember, but thank goodness they gave me an extra month or there’s no chance that I would have some small revisions of Bratislava ready.

Having a baby is better than putting your novel in a drawer – rather than just forgetting bits of the novel, the upheaval of a first baby means I have utterly lost any knowledge of my novel and as I re-read it now, it’s truly like somebody else wrote it. I’ve also had my trusted reader-friend go through it and as usual her feedback has been invaluable (thanks, Claire – I owe you!). Over the past few weeks, bit by bit, I’ve been revising a chapter or two at a time and I’ll soon be ready to submit it for the Vogel. Oh, the other piece of luck there is they’re now accepting electronic submissions – last time I entered two years ago you had to send in a printed copy of your manuscript which obviously a) takes me longer to prepare and b) takes longer to arrive at their offices. Since this is the last year I’ll be young enough to enter I’m glad for all these mercies which will mean I (fingers crossed) can get my entry in on time.

So, my big tip for achieving a better rewrite, by getting “fresh eyes”, is to write your novel, put it away and have a baby, then go back to it. Obviously this would limit the number of novels you could rewrite in your lifetime, and probably is a bit tricky for men, but just so you know, that’s my piece of advice for today. Let me know if it works for you!

Snow outside my building in Bratislava

I’ve had a lot of trouble choosing a title for my current work in progress, the one I simply refer to as my Bratislava novel. But I finally have, and I thought I’d share how it came about, although it’s nothing to be particularly proud of and you probably won’t learn any great tips from this story: although you might empathise, perhaps. Here goes:

Choosing a title is both an important and a nonsensical business. As I understand it, publishers change the title of a novel to one of their own choosing extremely frequently … but it’s still important to have a decent, memorable title in the meantime. I was really struggling with this and here is the true, slightly embarrassing story of how I came to pick the current title. For the ABNA contest, I needed to submit a 300-word pitch explaining the novel, and of course, the pitch includes the title several times. I wrote the pitch using my dumb “Bratislava Novel” working title as a place holder. My pitch came out to 303 words. Three too many. I tried to edit other bits of it but I liked it as it was. I realised if the title, mentioned four times, was just a one-word title, I’d be fine.

Yep, that’s one of the reasons this novel is now simply called Bratislava. It was a convenient choice. But I didn’t just settle at that. First, I stopped over at the Lulu Titlescorer and keyed it in – Bratislava scored a 45.6% of becoming a bestseller (according to their algorithm), which is nearly as good as Kanako’s Foreigner and heaps better than lots of actual bestsellers. I mean, it can’t be too bad a title. And finally, when I stopped and thought about it, and re-read my pitch too, the actual place of Bratislava is important, almost like a character in this novel, and so it’s really quite appropriate. That, and nobody else has called their novel Bratislava yet, well not that I can find anyway.

Two weeks ago I told you I was on a roll with my Bratislava novel draft; before that I promised to finish this novel to enter it in the Amazon contest soon. Well, it looks like I’m well on track. It’s been finished for a bit now, and I’ve got into the revisions and editing, and although another month or two would be great, I think I can still make it with a pretty decent version of the way I’ve always imagined this novel turning out.

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while, but better late than never – as part of my revision process I made a checklist of stuff I wanted to do. The list includes these tasks:

• Double-check the timeline. Especially with one of the characters, I got a bit muddled as I wrote as to how long events had taken, and how long he’d been in Bratislava, and whether it all adds up. I have to check this again.
• Do a proper scene listing (sometimes I might have scenes that merge together or should just be cut, etc.) and check that there’s some kind of conflict in each scene. In general, check for sufficient conflict. Maybe between the main characters there should/could be more?
• Make each of the three  voices more consistent. You  might remember I have three main characters, and they each take turns to tell the story, chapter by chapter, all in first person. I’d like the reader to be absolutely clear about who’s “speaking” without having to check the name in the heading of each chapter. One of the characters is distinct and clear, but the other two, I fear, have merged a little. I want to go through and read only all the chapters from one character, and try to fix their “voice” a little, then do the same for the other one.
• Add a bit more poetry. Not in an arrogant way, I hope, but I was sometimes over-focused on getting the plot out, and not doing it so beautifully, and you know I love “beautiful” writing.
• Check the dialogue for redundancies, for dumb tags (“she exclaimed”), for too many tags, for too natural, for not natural enough, for voice, and so on … yes, dialogue concerns me, and there’s a lot in this novel.
• Put some more of the setting into the story. The setting, Bratislava, is an essential part of the story. Way back when, I got a bunch of my photos from Bratislava printed and intended to hang them up where I could see them as I wrote (including the one above – the view from my flat, which actually looks into Austria and Hungary! I always thought that was pretty cool.). I want to dig them out and see what else is important from the setting to add to the novel.
• Check the arcs of the character development for each of the three main characters. I didn’t plot this out beforehand (I’d like to, next time) but I have a hunch that the development is more or less “naturally” there, but I need to take a closer look.

But – there’s always a but – I recently found the information about an interesting novella contest. It’s being run by the online journal Fail Better (love the name!) and it’s their 10th anniversary novella contest. Free to enter, a $500 prize, but most importantly, the incentive to write a novella before the closing date of May 15, 2010. You know how I love a deadline!

I’ve never really contemplated writing a novella before, I must admit. But the idea definitely intrigues me, and with all the different ideas for novels that I have floating around in my head, I’m sure that once I examine them a bit more closely, there’s bound to be one that is better suited to a novella. For the purposes of this contest at least the Fail Better people are defining a novella roughly like this:

Length is obviously the main criterion, i.e. the thing should be longer than a short story, and not so long as a novel … one could argue—as have certain critics, whose names we wish we remembered—that a novella, in order not to be a novel, should focus on one story and one set of characters, not spending appreciable time on others, of either. In order not to be a “mere” short story, it should go into more depth, about both.

Perhaps the definition is what sparked my interest, because going into more depth about characters and story fixes the problem I have with the short story, but the length means that it’s more manageable than a novel. So, my goals are:

1. Sit down and brainstorm all the ideas for novels I’ve had – this is useful just of itself, to prevent me losing a few that I’ve probably never written down anywhere.
2. Figure out which of these ideas is best suited to a novella. That is, I guess, which one is concentrated solely on a relatively small set of characters. The contest guidelines also say it should be a novella that can be readily serialised, so I’ll need to think about the plot lines for that.
3. Make a plan of how much to write and when, so that I have plenty of time to finish it before the deadline and still have a chance to edit it well.
4. WRITE IT!

As usual, I’ll keep you informed. In the meantime, I’m curious to know if any fellow writers out there have written novellas, and how was the experience? Was it significantly less painful than writing a novel, or much the same? Please let me know any experiences you’ve had with novellas in the comments.

]]> http://becomingafictionwriter.com/2010/01/writing-a-novella-the-short-storynovel-compromise/feed/ 4 http://becomingafictionwriter.com/2010/01/im-no-quitter-not-of-writing-not-of-chocolate/ http://becomingafictionwriter.com/2010/01/im-no-quitter-not-of-writing-not-of-chocolate/#comments Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:17:54 +0000 amanda http://becomingafictionwriter.com/?p=436 It’s almost a fortnight since I updated you on the progress I’m making with finishing off the writing of  my Bratislava novel, and I’m proud to say I’m still on track to have it fully written and even pretty well revised and edited in time for the ABNA contest. (Obviously, completed edited with heaps of time to spare would be better, but life just isn’t always like that).

One of my students (thanks, Val!) gave me this mug recently, courtesy of our Margaret River Chocolate Factory – in case you can’t see the graphic, it says:

I’d give up chocolate but I’m no quitter.

Absolutely true for me in the case of chocolate, although in other areas my tendency to procrastinate sometimes means I do end up quitting (or simply not finishing). But this time round my motivation to continue writing every day seems to have no limits. Originally, I set myself the goal of 1,300 words per day to finish off the end of the novel; I’ve been achieving this so easily that I’ve increased it to 1,500 words per day, so I’ll end up with some extra editing time. Many days I’ve done a little more anyway.

Interestingly,  I’ve begun to be tempted to write substantially more each day, because I’m on such a roll, but I’ve deliberately stopped myself. I found that when I did, my writing wasn’t so fresh, and it was harder to start again the next day. The idea of finishing the day’s writing while you’ve still got plenty to say is one that really works for me; I might stop mid-paragraph but leave notes of what I have in mind to write next, and that makes the next day’s beginning very easy. And when I’ve felt like I could just keep on writing, I’ve used that motivation to write other stuff I need to write (you know, like the stuff that pays the mortgage!) so it’s been pretty useful.

So far so good, I’m no quitter when it comes to finishing this novel. Stay tuned to – I’m sure – hear me tell you that I’ve finished it and am loving the editing process!

]]> http://becomingafictionwriter.com/2010/01/im-no-quitter-not-of-writing-not-of-chocolate/feed/ 1 http://becomingafictionwriter.com/2009/12/abna-2010-announced-inspiration-writer/ http://becomingafictionwriter.com/2009/12/abna-2010-announced-inspiration-writer/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:33:29 +0000 amanda http://becomingafictionwriter.com/?p=382 Earlier this year I bookmarked a great guest post on The Urban Muse with the title Reignite Your Passion For Words. At the time, my passion for words and writing as a little below par, but the ideas in the post still seemed to ring true.

Now that my writing fingers seem to be flying over the keyboard a bit more regularly, this post is even more useful. And in fact I’ve been unwittingly following most of the strategies mentioned anyway, including:

• Read more: Lately I’ve been absolutely swallowing books whole. Partly it’s a summer thing – all these daylight hours seem to give me enough energy to read later into the evening, and make me want to sit around outside in the beautiful weather reading during the day. And it’s definitely true for me that reading makes me want to write – either to try to write as well as the author I’ve been reading, or if it’s not a great book, because I think I can write even better.
• Watch TV or DVDs: I’m usually not a huge fan of watching too much TV, but much to my surprise I’ve recently got hooked on watching The West Wing on DVD – I was living abroad when it first screened here, but now that I’m catching up, I find it really well-written and with interesting plots, and some interesting and wide-ranging ideas.
• Exercise: or in the original post, Shovel the Driveway (not too useful in a non-snowy country like mine!) – okay, I haven’t used this strategy too much recently. But I agree that it helps inspire you to write – it gives you mental energy and time and space to come up with great ideas.
• Begin a new project: Well, funny you should say that. The ABNA 2010 contest was recently – ABNA is the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award where last year my novel, Kanako’s Foreigner, made it to the semi-finals – with a submission date of January 25, 2010. Wow, that’s a lot sooner than I expected. But seeing the announcement has definitely got me fired up to, well, not exactly begin a new project, but get back to an old one – I want to try to finish off my “Bratislava novel” (which doesn’t have a cool working title yet, but does have quite a few chapters written) in time for this contest. Go me!
• Write just for you: Hey, I’ve even been doing this – writing semi-journal entries more often that I don’t expect anyone else to ever read.

So, now that I’m hoping my writing career is a little more on track again, and I’m feeling inspired, then I’m off to try and get some semblance of order into my plot ideas for my Bratislava story, and to get back into some serious writing. January 25 is not much more than a month away. Eeek!!

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