Becoming A Fiction Writer
One girl, one dream … and a whole lot of procrastination
January 14, 2011 by amanda

Tweet Me A Story contest got me writing, again

January really is my month for getting some writing done. This writing may not be part of any novel I want to finish or start, or even part of a publishable short story, but it is exercising my writing brain and getting me warmed up and motivated for the year ahead. Today, in addition to my poetry fun, I also took part in the Tweet Me A Story contest for the first time.

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!

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December 20, 2010 by amanda

Almost old enough for the CAL Scribe Fiction Prize

For many years I’d dreamt of submitting an entry to the Vogel award – more correctly titled the Allen & Unwin The Australian/Vogel Literary Award – an Aussie prize for novels (and biographies, I think) which has been the starting ground for some of my favourite Australian novelists. During my late 20s I often thought about it with a maternal-like ticking clock in my head, as you can only enter before you turn 35.

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!

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July 25, 2010 by amanda

How having almost no time helped me write a short story

This weekend was “that time of the season” again: time for the Writers Weekly 24 hour short story contest. I’ve participated in this contest numerous times (although scarily it looks like my most recent attempt was a year and a half ago) – it’s great fun as you have literally just a day to write a short story, less than a thousand words, which is related to a topic you find out about only at the beginning of this 24 hours.

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.

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April 1, 2010 by amanda

March book of the month and ABNA disappointment …

So March is over and it’s time to look back on my reading and writing for the month … as I warned, there hasn’t been much writing. My poor carpal tunnel fingers just won’t take it, and it should be only two or three weeks until they’re back on board so I’m waiting patiently and trying not to stress them too much.

I did, however, hear the bad news that my novel didn’t make it through to the next round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. Boo-hoo! Just this morning I got a copy of the reviewers’ feedback (there were two of them, who read just the first chapter) – the good-ish bits include stuff like this:

technically superior writing … this novel has potential … I like the characters as presented … This author can write and do okay dialogue, but the strongest aspect of this excerpt is, oddly enough, also its weakest. The writer can pile up detail after detail, like layers of icing on a cake. Only a further reading of this book could determine whether the cake is sweet enough …this writer has considerable skill

The problems, according to these reviewers, is that it’s not exciting enough and they’re not sure why they’d keep reading. There’s definitely something to that, although I have had great feedback on this first chapter from other sources and I think that part of the problem in the Amazon contest lies in competing against genre fiction – there are a lot of thrillers and science fiction and mystery novels that the reviewers are also reading, so my “subtle, oblique” (their words) lit fic might not be their cup of tea. In any case, I’ve already started revisions and the next version will be even better!

On to my reading update for March, and here’s a list of the books I finished this month (full info with my opinions on each book at my 2010 reading list):

  1. The Imperfectionistsby Tom Rachman
  2. 10 Short Stories You Must Read This Yearby various Australian authors
  3. Hunting and Gatheringby Anna Gavalda
  4. The Book of Raptureby Nikki Gemmell
  5. The Lovely Bonesby Alice Sebold
  6. Juliet, Nakedby Nick Hornby
  7. Conditions of Faithby Alex Miller
  8. The Death of Bunny Munroby Nick Cave
  9. The Paperbark Shoe by Goldie Goldbloom
  10. My Life on A Plateby India Knight
  11. Washington Squareby Henry James

Picking the best is not so obvious for me this month: The Book of Rapture was beautifully written, but in retrospect didn’t quite reach my (admittedly high) expectations; Juliet, Naked was an excellent read, but still not my star pick. I guess I have to go with Conditions of Faith, both for great writing and an interesting storyline. Stick around for the April list though – I’ve got a truly impressive pile of new novels to read and I’m really excited about finding some gems in there that I’ll be recommending highly.

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January 24, 2010 by amanda

Choosing a novel title: Procrastination or lack of imagination?

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.

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January 15, 2010 by amanda

Writing a novella: The short story/novel compromise?

I’ve mused before about whether writing short stories is really something I want to do. I’m not usually especially thrilled by reading them, and the main reason for this is that, well, they’re short. Just as I’m starting to like (or loathe) a character, and get into the story, then it stops. I think I can safely say that at least as my tastes stand at the moment, I’m really a novel reader.

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!

    5. 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.

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February 14, 2009 by amanda

You’re reading a Top 100 Creative Writing blog

bestcollegesonlinelogoYes, I’m blowing my own trumpet, but I am just a teensy bit pleased that the Best Colleges Online blog decided to list Becoming A Fiction Writer in their list of the Top 100 Creative Writing Blogs. Although I personally would have categorised this blog into the “Aspiring Authors” section, I’m perfectly happy to be in their “Fiction Writing” category too, since this blog clearly is about writing fiction.

The list also has sections on Poetry, Improving Your Craft and Published Authors, and it’s worth taking a look because there are some great blogs listed there – some of my favourites include Inkygirl (I love the cartoons), Write to Done and Men With Pens. There were also a bunch I’m yet to discover, my favourite new one is Apostrophe Abuse because anyone who knows me just a little knows how obsessive I am about correct apostrophes and how much I hate apostrophe errors.

Anyhow, I encourage you all to check out the whole list because you might find some new blogs to love. Just as long as you love mine more I’ll be happy.

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January 25, 2009 by amanda

Will another 24-hour short story get written?

It’s that time again: the Writers Weekly 24-hour short story contest is happening today. Right now, as I type, in fact. Each time I seem to get just a little bit better at turning out a half-decent short story within a day; last time I wrote a story that I still actually like, a few months later.

I’m stuck! My story has no ending!

This time round the contest theme connected to a wedding in a small chapel. After a few paragraphs of brainstorming and free-writing, I found some interesting characters and got them on their way to the chapel. I’m really happy with the first 650 words of my story, considering it all came slithering out on a Sunday morning. Right now, somebody in the story needs to object to the marriage. The word limit for the contest this time is 950, so I’ve got plenty of room to get a great ending in. Because, as everybody knows, there’s no good story without a good ending.

But I’ve got stuck. I’ve tried walking away from the story for a couple of hours. Daydreaming about it while in the shower, which usually provides me with tonnes of ideas. Asking my husband. Googling the topic. (Who would’ve thought that “objecting at a wedding” would have been such a talked about topic on the web?) And so on.

So my only solution now, apart from giving up (I promise I won’t) is to open the file again and just keep typing and typing until something decent comes out. I’ve got my subconscious on the job, even my husband keeps popping into my room with new ideas, and somewhere, somehow, the right ending is waiting for me. I’ll let you know if I find it.

Update: The story has an ending!

Phew! This strategy worked. Random brainstorming and just writing more and more finally led me to an answer and an ending. I tried to follow last contest’s strategy of having some twists followed by more twists, and I hope I succeeded. I think the story ended up okay, although it’s not a topic I would usually write about. I’ve sent it off and that means it’s time to get back to working on my novel after this brief short fiction interlude. The bonus is that this means I’ve now submitted two short stories to markets or contests this year so according to my goals I just have 18 more to go.

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January 19, 2009 by amanda

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award also has a February 2 deadline

I guess I should start getting less surprised that everything in my life seems to happen for a good reason, and often with great timing. It was just yesterday that I made a commitment to have a beautifully-edited version of my Japanese novel ready by February 2, as per the 15 day creation challenge set by Zoe Westhof.

This morning I sat down at my computer with the fresh eyes and stimulated brain of a Monday morning. (Oh, that might sound odd. My Monday morning, the first day of my working-from-home days, is probably different to yours, if you’re hitting the office for the first time for the week, bleary-eyed and unenthusiastic.) Anyway, I checked on my to-do list with the aim of getting this blog a bit more action, and saw that I had an overdue task to blog about the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

Perfect timing: My novel will be ready for Amazon Breakthrough

I’ve had my eye on this contest for ages, but let it drift off the radar recently. It seems that there is no entry fee, and the way it works is they accept only the first 10,000 entries starting from February 2. I have no idea how long it will take them to get 10,000 entries, but I remember reading a tip from Hope Clark at Funds for Writers which said we should have our manuscripts ready to go from the first day to be sure we didn’t miss out.

If you’ve been paying attention, you might have seen the lovely synergy here. According to the 15-day challenge, my novel will be ready on exactly the same day as the contest opens. That’s surely a sign, isn’t it? Now, since this is only the second year that the Amazon Breakthrough award has run, it’s hard to know too much about what they’re looking for – last year’s winner was a fairly thrilling-sounding mystery, but others that did well included quieter storylines that might match mine.

A good pitch gets you into Round 2

The key thing seems to be that the pitch must be fantastic. The first round of culling, from 10,000 down to “up to” 2,000, is based solely on the 300-word pitch that you send in. Three hundred words? To describe my 60,000-word novel? Eeeeek!

Amazon’s explanation of a pitch in their FAQ doesn’t make it sound any less daunting:

The pitch is more than just a summary, it needs to be a well written explanation of what the book is about.  Talk about your novel’s strengths with respect to how it is being evaluated; Think about the elements chosen on which to judge your novel for the purpose of this contest; its overall strength, plot development, character development, originality of idea, and writing style or prose.  Take the time to study your intended market and make sure your pitch demonstrates that you understand how your book fits within this market and how it will identify with your audience …  The Pitch should be a concise explanation of your book and why the reader would want to read your novel.

I’ll have to dig around the site a bit more, as there are two videos to watch about preparing your novel and about writing the pitch, plus a discussion forum to go with it. As you all know, I love working under pressure – or more accurately, I actually get work done under pressure, rather than when life is easy – so I’m hoping this contest and the 15-day challenge actually net me a beautiful, complete novel.

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November 27, 2008 by amanda

My novel’s not an award winner, but here’s useful feedback

Remember how I insanely finished my novel to enter the TAG Hungerford contest? I knew that a last-minute finish was a bad thing for that novel, but the value for me of actually getting something finished to enter the contest far outweighed the inevitability of not getting anywhere with the contest. But now that the award procedure is almost over (there are three shortlisted novels now, although the winner won’t be announced until February 2009), I’ve got even more value out of the process.

I recently received a “thanks but no thanks” letter from the Hungerford crew, but with it came something very interesting – a judges’ report on the process. Not on my manuscript in particular, but a general overview of how the judges felt, and a few of the points they made were especially interesting to me:

  • There were 28 entries. Apparently this is less than the previous couple of years, but not a bad number. I was surprised it was so low. There are some two million people living in Western Australia now, and the only requirement for entry is that you have not previously published a book. But perhaps it’s really not that common to get a full-length novel ready for submission. Anyway, it’s almost encouraging that there might be less competition out there than I thought.
  • Most of the entries were “realist fictions”, a category into which my manuscript would also land. The judges mentioned that many seemed to be written based on personal experience (yes, some of mine falls in this category too). Trying to write further away from my personal experience is something I’ve been trying to do with this NaNoWriMo novel and it’s been quite freeing. But it’s not easy – after all, doesn’t every writing class say, “Write what you know”?
  • Major problems including careless plotting, poorly-constructed characters, badly-handled dialogue and bad spelling and punctuation. My passion for apostrophes and their relatives rules me out of the last one, I’m fairly confident, but the first three problems – well, I probably still need practice with all of these. But apparently so do lots of other writers!

Future novel contests for me

So, practice, practice, and more practice is needed, I think, to improve my writing skills, and a whole lot of editing too. But entering these kinds of contests – respectable ones that could lead to a “big break” for a writing career – is an important goal of my writing, so I’d like to keep the future contests in mind:

  • The TAG Hungerford contest is running every two years at the moment, so presumably my next deadline there is June 2010.
  • The Australian/Vogel award, which is for writers under the age of 35 (a couple more years!), is usually held every year, so I hope to have a novel ready – no, I will have a novel ready – for May 2009. And May 2010. And I think I still scrape in for May 2011, but that’ll be the last one.

Know any more good novel contests? Please let me know in the comments.

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