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Tips on getting published from the Perth Writers Festival

amanda — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:08:32 +0000

As part of the glorious Perth Writers Festival (always the literary highlight of my year!), I was very lucky this year to be able to take part in a day-long workshop: the A-Z of Getting Published. (Lucky because I had two willing babysitters!). It was chaired by Angela Meyer from the great Literary Minded blog and came in three parts – basically put, it started out with publishers, went to agents and then ended on publicity. The chance to actually hear from real-life publishers and agents was pretty special, and I took copious notes, laughed and cried, and went home both inspired and a little depressed. More inspired though, I’d have to say.

Now, I could give you a blow-by-blow account of what happened, but that’s already been done beautifully by a couple of other people who were there – so head over to Cristy Burne’s write-up (the quotes in the second half of the post from the various presenters are gold!) or All the World’s Our Page for some good summaries of what went on. All I want to talk about are the key messages I took home from the day. So, without further ado:

VOICE. VOICE. VOICE. Nearly every member of every panel at this workshop mentioned that the most important thing they’re looking for in a novel (or other stuff, but especially novels) is a unique, original, enticing, beautifully-written VOICE. You have to sound like nobody else. You can tell the same story as everyone else, but you have to tell it in a way that only you can. Voice is something I’m often worried is lacking from my novels. I think it’s also very hard to “notice” your own voice. The question was raised of whether voice can be learnt and Mandy Brett (Text Publishing) said (to summarise) – sometimes. You can improve your voice with practice, and by reading (and reading, and reading), and some writers will “get it” and
some won’t. Well I really hope I’m one of those writers who can develop a good voice. I’m sure going to try! It was also mentioned that if you are absolutely passionate about your story, you have a better chance of having a great voice.
Your manuscript has one chance to impress. Therefore, it really truly really truly REALLY has to be its absolute best. John Harman, who (among other things) does manuscript assessment, gave me food for thought – getting a manuscript assessment done doesn’t seem as silly as I once thought – and the publishers and agent there certainly made it clear both through anecdotes and statistics that the chance of anyone noticing your novel manuscript is small enough without presenting the most perfect version you can. Which makes my decision not to send out my current manuscripts even firmer in my mind.
Having an agent is basically essential these days. The publishers present (Random House, Text, Fremantle, UWA) gave some slush pile statistics (although, it must be said, they at least do read their slush piles, on a regular basis and with open minds and a sense of fairness, which I suspect may be more than other houses) and they are frightening. Text Publishing said they get between 300 and 400 unsolicited manuscripts per year and often won’t publish any of them. Fremantle Press said they had 654 unsolicited manuscripts sent in during 2010 and I’m not sure they published any of them – the entire output of the house for the year was only around 25 books, so it’s very unlikely. And so on. Needless to say, this has now utterly confirmed that there is no point in searching for a publisher myself, only an agent.

I learnt a whole lot more, but I’ll tell them in conjunction with my tales of some of the other great discussions and presentations I saw at the Perth Writers Festival. Sometimes, it seems like an utterly ridiculous idea to try and become a published writer – the odds are definitely stacked against me (and everyone else), but you know, I just can’t not. Crazy but true.

Today’s for loving libraries (easy for me)

amanda — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:59:09 +0000

While many of you might know today as Valentine’s Day, my husband doesn’t usually recognise this event and luckily for him, I have also discovered that it is also Library Lovers’ Day here in Australia. Since I do sincerely love libraries, that seems a reasonable substitute and instead of a big bunch of flowers I’ll be happy to have an extra half hour or so to delve into one of the numerous exciting novels I currently have on loan from my local library.

Whichever way you’re celebrating, have a terrific day, and keep an eye out this week for news on my success (or otherwise …?) with my February goal of revising my novel. As a teaser, let’s just say it’s not going quite as well as the January month of poetry did – but more later. I’m off to enjoy a good book. Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Library Lovers’ Day!

[Thanks to Andrew Stawarz for the pic]

Two fiction writing contests in a week

amanda — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:34:45 +0000

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?

What writers should know about storytelling, which I sometimes forget

amanda — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 07:01:39 +0000

While I’m really all about beautiful words and poetry this month, I couldn’t help but realise that a post from The Blood-Red Pencil (great blog title!) was screaming at me. The post is from half-way through last year but came to my attention through Twitter this week and it’s called, simply and accurately, 10 Steps to a Better Story. Feel free to go away and read it now (as long as you promise to come back).

It is not a bang-you-over-the-head lecture, nor is it something unique and new that will amaze the socks off a writer, but it’s a list of things that I, for one, need reminding of pretty much constantly when I’m writing either a novel or short story. That your main character should want something AND do something – obvious, yes, but I sometimes don’t let the reader know what these wants are and then there’s not much motivation to keep reading, is there?! Also, the importance of introducing conflict early on is something I’ve often missed in my meandering opening chapters. I’m always at risk of spending too much time getting the characters and setting in there without giving the reader a reason to turn to the next page. And I excuse all that by saying perhaps I’m writing literary fiction, but surely there’s no real difference.

The final point on the list is for me, the most important, so I’m going to reproduce it entirely in case you didn’t go over and read it yourself:

The components of a novel that readers (and publishers) care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, setting. If you have to sacrifice something, start at the end of list. Never sacrifice the story for anything else.

So, story is everything. I so often forget that. But I will keep trying to remember!

What’s your writing weakness from this list? And how do you remember to get around it?

(Thanks to kodomut for the great storytelling picture!)

2011 month-by-month goals for Becoming A Fiction Writer

amanda — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 03:09:16 +0000

Happy 2011, everybody! As you’ll recall, I’ve decided to tackle 2011 a little differently in terms of my goals and ambitions on the fiction writing side. I’m going to set myself a particular task month by month, rather than trying to get some global tasks done “sometime” during the year. I think that focusing on something for just a month at a time, intensively, might be more productive for me. And so, subject to adjustment of course, here is my plan for my month-by-month goals for 2011:

January: Already in progress, I’m writing a poem a day this month to focus on writing what I like to call “beautiful words”. More on that soon, but it’s really going well for me.
February: Revisions month for Kanako’s Foreigner following ideas I’ve got from Sol Stein’s books on writing – this is something I started a while back but would like to finish. And I promise after those revisions I really will be sending this novel out.
March: Planning and outlining for my proposed Trans-Siberian novel. I’d like to do this one from a relatively detailed outline, and I already have a decent broad outline. I’m itching to get on with this but will have to wait until March!
April: Novel submissions to agents including synopsis and cover letter and so on for Kanako’s Foreigner – yes, just what I said I’d do back in NaNoSuMo but didn’t quite make much progress with.
May: Review various critique/writing community websites and look for critique partners. This is something I think will help both for motivation and quality purposes.
June: Revisions month for Bratislava, hopefully with some of my new critique partners!
July: Similarly to January’s poetry month, I’d like to find another way to focus on writing style and technique, although I’m not quite sure what form this will take yet – perhaps something to do with short stories? Any ideas are welcome.
August: Major writing month for the first draft of my Trans-Siberian novel.
September: Administration month: submissions for Bratislava and re-submissions for Kanako’s Foreigner (wouldn’t it be nice if that didn’t turn out to be necessary?!).
October: Listen, read and learn with podcasts, blogs, websites and resources from other writers. I’ll be collecting these throughout the year ready for a real read-a-thon!
November: This month is of course NaNoWriMo, but you’ll see I didn’t save the actual novel writing until this month. But I would somehow like to tap into that NaNo community feel again. Another month I’m not quite sure about yet.
December: My catch-up month – time to finish any incomplete tasks from the year and do my planning for 2011.

So that’s my 2011 in a nutshell. I’m pretty enthusiastic about making some real writing progress this year with some month-sized chunks to work on specific tasks, plus I’m hoping this will mean I won’t feel guilty about not getting on with all the other writing tasks on my list – this way I can just take them one at a time.

Now I’m off to do some more work on my poetry – I’ll post about that soon but let’s just say it’s having an even better influence than I thought on thinking about the words I use and an unexpected influence on my editing skills.

I wish all my writing friends and readers a fantastic 2011 and if you’ve got any special plans for 2011, let me know in the comments – as well as any feedback on my month-by-month idea (and suggestions for the months where I’m not quite sure what to do!).

[Thanks to cory schmitz for the pic.]

January writing kick-start: Poetry to get beautiful words flowing

amanda — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 03:37:18 +0000

It’s all about synchronicity. Let me explain the chain of events:

I gave the world a Christmas present then decided I should also give myself something. Yep, I’m greedy!
It’s nearly the end of the year, the time when I always go all contemplative and dream up some new goals for the new year, especially when it comes to my writing, which by this time of the year has usually become a little neglected.
Kristan Hoffman, my loyal commenter and a writer who inspires and motivates me, blogged about writing with beautiful words versus telling a compelling story, and I was reminded that I really want to work on my ability to use beautiful words.
Sage Cohen – you might remember I reviewed her new book The Productive Writer recently – launched her new site, The Path of Possibility (in Writing and Life), and I felt like it could have been put together just for me and my needs!
I decided that in 2011 I will focus on one thing each month (for example, submitting my existing novels; rewriting one of them; plotting my third novel which I’m itching to get going with, etc), because I’m normally reasonably successful at focusing on a task for a few weeks at a time, if I know it’s an intensive time to do just that one thing and not all the other writing kind of things at once.

And therefore … yes all this is leading somewhere … I’m going to start with working on “beautiful words” and to that end, I have signed up for Sage Cohen’s Poem-A-Day Challenge, which runs from January 1st to 31st, 2011. I definitely do not aim to be a poet. But poetry is where I have often been inspired by “beautiful” writing, and I have dabbled in writing poems before, and having some guidance and encouragement to write them regularly for a month will, I hope, give my writing a bit of a literary boost.

I’m also busily brainstorming what the other months of the year will focus on, but that’s a story for another day.

(Just for the record, I’ve even published my poetry before. Look! Here on my Not A Ballerina blog, I published this poem which I wrote when I was ten years old. I hope I have improved since …)

Busy with Bookshop Tours and blogging courses

amanda — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 02:10:21 +0000

I’ve reached the end of NaNoSuMo without making much progress on my novel submitting plans. I’m not going to lie about it. I am going to make excuses, however. And at the same time as making these excuses, I’m going to do some not-so-subtle self-promotion. And if you don’t want to hear me go on about my writing-related income earners then you’d probably better click away now!

If you’re still here, then let me tell you two of my reasons for not having made more progress on getting my novels published. The first is this: Bookshop Tours. My friend Jen and I have started up a small business running fun and eventful tours around a selection of Perth’s best independent bookshops. Our first tour is ready to go on 7 January 2011 and it’s pretty exciting! Our website even has a funny profile video so it might be worth stopping by so you can laugh at us (and with us). And if you’re in Perth, spread the word that we exist, and get your friends to find the Bookshop Tours Facebook page or follow us on Twitter (@bookshoptours).

The other thing that’s keeping me busy is various bits of work for UWA Extension, the community course and event arm of the University of Western Australia. As well as handling their Tweeting and Facebooking, I’m soon to run another blogging course for them. Again, you have to be in or near Perth to get involved – sorry interstate and overseas readers! (Maybe a reason to plan a holiday in Perth?!) Last term the course sold out so if you’re thinking of signing up or know somebody who might be interested in learning how to blog, check the Becoming a blogger for fun or profit information and enrol fast! We had heaps of fun last time and some really creative and interesting blogs are up and running as a result.

So those are my excuses for failing NaNoSuMo in November. I still really, really want to get on with submitting my books to agents (although there is still that niggly little editor sitting on my shoulder saying I have to do even more to the manuscripts first. They’ll be tinkered to death! Or have I not tinkered enough … the argument goes on.) I promise I will. Watch this space.

Daydreaming about book covers

amanda — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:34:43 +0000

What will the cover of your book like when you get it published? For as long as I can remember now, I’ve had the understanding that whatever I might imagine the cover should be, it’s absolutely out of my hands. This was confirmed when I read a recent post on Meanjin’s blog about What goes in to making a cover. Authors don’t get a say, and they sometimes even hate their book’s cover.

However, in the spirit of visualising success, it probably doesn’t hurt to daydream about the cover of your published novel, does it? I’ve often imagined how fun it would be to go into my favourite bookshops, find my novel in the K section (near Thomas Kenneally, I’ve always thought – an Aussie novelist whose surname would come just after mine) and shuffle it around into a more prominent position. The only thing missing in this scenario is I’ve never actually thought about what my book would look like, until now.

There’s one good reason why I should have nothing to do with the design of my book cover (and I suspect that this may be true in the case of many writers – it’s not always the case that the blessing of being good with words is accompanied by the talent of being good with pictures, too!). It would look awful. It would not sell, I suspect. But I still want to dream. So I decided to spend a few minutes drafting up my book covers, just so I’ve got something to look at. Please indulge me, and if you’ve got your own books in the pipeline (or even just ideas for them), go ahead and create your own book cover too, and let me know. We can create a whole library of virtual books that don’t really exist – yet!

Saturday night fun: Watching other people buy books

amanda — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 13:06:17 +0000

Warning: very book geeky post ahead. But at the same time, don’t judge me until you’ve tried this yourself.

Here’s the thing. I love The Book Depository. I first blogged about them a couple of years back when I discovered, much to my disgust, that the only way I could buy a relatively rare Australian novel for a price I could afford was to get it shipped (for free!) from The Book Depository, a UK-based company. Since then, I admit to using them almost exclusively as my source for books – not that I buy many (I’m a library freak and besides, my bookshelves are pretty jam-packed full), but when I do, that website usually gets the gig. Wide range, good service, very reasonable prices, quick delivery. No complaints.

And now while wandering around their website on a Saturday night, I discovered something super-cool. You can watch people all around the world buying books. In real time. On a Saturday night (or any time, really, but Saturday night seems to be a moment when I get a few spare seconds to do something geeky like this). Have a look what I saw:

Honestly, it’s incredibly fun: you watch the map of the world with new pop-up boxes appearing every few seconds showing what book has just been bought by customers in various countries. It’s like standing at the cashier looking over everybody’s shoulder, only heaps geekier, and heaps better. Go to The Book Depository Live to see it for yourself. My only complaint? They pin the pop-up box down in the middle of each country so it looks like all the Aussie customers are from somewhere right in the middle of Oz, pretty much exactly where nobody at all lives.

(Disclosure: Unnecessary. These guys (unfortunately) have not paid me a cent to rave about them, they have just been good to me over the years and, well, I couldn’t resist passing on some book geekiness to my fellow book lovers.)

The cat-owning and fiction writing correlation

amanda — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:50:50 +0000

A discussion at Amazon on the ABNA contest forum, back when I was wondering if my novel would make its way in that competition, asked about how many authors have cats. This discussion (to date) runs for SEVEN pages. Yes, apparently there ARE a lot of writers who have cats. And lo and behold, I’m one of them. Well, I’m two of them. That is to say, I have two cats. Does that make me a better writer?

Despite the seemingly frivolous topic, there were some interesting insights in the discussion on what I call the cat-owning and fiction writing correlation. Someone pointed out that writers tend to be a little on the solitary side, and use their cats for company; preferring cats, of course, because cats also tend to be loners and don’t get too offended if you don’t pay attention to them 24 hours a day (the way people or dogs might!). But even the solitary thing is something of a stereotype, right? I mean, I’m very happy with just my own company and never get bored or necessarily crave company, but when other people are around, then I’m just as much in my element and of course, I’m curious (nosey?) enough to be thoroughly interested in all kinds of people, something which is surely essential for a writer.

However, I must say that my cats do more to hinder my writing than help it. One of them in particular loves to walk around on my desk and has a nasty habit of hitting the “back” key, which, if she did it right now, would have the effect of erasing this entire post. Lucy (pictured above) thinks that the best seat in the house is the chair at my desk, and it has happened more than once that I’ve turned away from a plan to sit down and write because I can’t bear to kick her off my chair when she looks so peaceful and comfortable. And around three o’clock in the afternoon the two of them start nibbling at my toes because they’re hungry, and it’s very difficult to write serious or good fiction when your toes are being tickled by feline teeth.

Do your pets help you with your writing? Or are they just the hindrance that mine are?