Becoming A Fiction Writer
One girl, one dream … and a whole lot of procrastination
April 8, 2011 by amanda

March reading list and a Becoming A Fiction Writer update

“Hisashiburi,” as they say in Japan, “long time no see!” Let’s start with my reading list for the month just gone … during March I managed to read just four books:

  1. Blueeyedboy by Joanne Harris of Chocolat fame, though it’s best not to think about that, because the two books couldn’t be more different – yet are both excellent. Blueeyedboy is kind of a mystery/thriller told through online fan-fiction and blog-style entries. Bizarre but excellent.
  2. Wonders of a Godless Worldby Andrew McGahan, one of my favourite Aussie writers. Every book he writes seems totally different, and this was no exception; a vaguely fantasy-style story that’s hard to explain yet a beautiful read. Perhaps my favourite of his?
  3. Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, a re-read of this YA book I read at least a decade ago, after seeing Melina Marchetta speak at the Perth Writers Festival (ooh, just Wikipedia-ed her and discovered we share the same birthday!). Excellent novel. Vivid and honest about the life of an Aussie-born teenage daughter of immigrants in Sydney, and it says a lot about Australia and our way of life here, both good and bad. With a suitable dose of teenage angst!
  4. Baby Steps: A Bloke’s-Eye View of IVF by Jason Davis – creative non-fiction, which you may recall I decided to put on this list; a fluffy account of a slightly more important subject, but interesting to see a man’s perspective.

It’s pretty close but I think I have to say that Looking for Alibrandi wins my book of the month title – as a piece of Young Adult fiction it’s pretty much perfect, I think, and the different (highly relevant) themes it raises about growing up in Australia are not only interesting but also pretty important. I’m going back now to read the rest of Melina Marchetta’s novels, because everything she said at the Perth Writers Festival just made me want to run out of the room to get her books to read (fortunately I stayed put and heard more interesting stuff!).

So, what about your fiction writing, Amanda, I hear you ask? After such a procrastination-free start to the year, my little tagline up there (One girl, one dream … and a whole lot of procrastination) has come true again. Hmm, probably I should change it! I haven’t even been happy with the Becoming A Fiction Writer website and if you’re reading this via RSS you should know that I’ve gone back to a really basic WordPress template while I think about how to redesign it (no need to click through to look!).

Without wanting to sound like a broken record, there are a few issues, the most significant one of which is time – although I met Natasha Lester at the Perth Writers Festival who is now a published author and wrote her novel (and the next one) with small children. She did say, though, that she was a real stickler for routine and wrote whenever the kids were asleep, something I also tend to do but I then write stuff that I “have to” write to pay the mortgage. Procrastination, minor illness, disorganisation, distraction, and so on and so forth, these are the other things that are stopping me. I’ll get there, I’m sure, I just need to work myself round to a smart routine and some super-high motivation and then I’ll be writing again. Stay tuned!

Oh, and if anyone has a fantastic idea for the kind of template that would just fit my blog perfectly, do tell me.

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February 20, 2011 by amanda

A big novel writing decision for February

Regular Becoming A Fiction Writer readers will no doubt have been wondering (after my vocal, successful January) how I’m going with my month-by-month fiction writing goals for February. Well, to cut to the chase, as they say, I’ve been going rather badly! My goal was to finish the revisions to my first novel draft, Kanako’s Foreigner, but apart from glancing at the folder on my shelf which I know contains a print-out of the most recent version and the beginnings of some amendments, I’ve done nothing.

Let me correct that. I have moved the folder off my shelf, I now remember doing this, and it is cluttering up the dining table instead. However, this is certainly not great progress, and the end of February is fast approaching. However, I have had a good think about this and, with the help of some other outside input, have made a big decision.

At first I thought the reason I hadn’t got to these revisions was simply because I’d had a busy writing January, a busy working start to February and with it being such a short month, I was just pushed for time. But then I received some very useful feedback – the general feedback to all entrants for the TAG Hungerford award, a contest for Western Australian novelists which I entered with my Bratislava novel. They sent all entrants some general impressions from the judges which included some very relevant points to my case, I’m sure, including the fact that realist narratives formed by far the majority of the manuscripts submitted, usually relating to what appeared to be real life experiences (mine doesn’t fit this category quite as strictly as my first novel might, but still perhaps a little “too much” in some sense); there was also a particularly salient comment:

In general, there was a disappointing lack of interest in exploring and extending the
possibilities of form or language, with stylistic experiment kept to a minimum and a strong
reliance on simple, unadorned prose.

This has long bothered me about my fiction writing – for the novels I’ve written in particular – and especially after my month of poem writing in January, I’ve realised I can definitely do better. This line of thought also led me to think about the novels and career trajectories of two of my favourite Australian writers, Nikki Gemmell and Andrew McGahan. As much as I have enjoyed all of their writing, in both cases their first two novels (Shiver and Cleave for Gemmell, and 1988 and Praise for McGahan) would probably have got this kind of comment from the judges (not to say they’re not great novels – but they certainly seemed to be based on their experiences, whereas their later work seems much more, I don’t know, “imagined” somehow. Better, more literary. More “proper” writing, in a way!

What I’m leading up to is this big decision: for the time being, I’m going to put aside my first two novel manuscripts, and work on the third novel idea I have, but doing it really, really “properly”. I’ve been reluctant to get going with the agent thing because I’m not convinced they’re my best work. And I figure you really, really want to try these things out with your absolute best, rather than “poison the waters” with something you’re not 100% sure about.

So, my task for the remainder of February is relatively simple, to reschedule my month-by-month goals to take this into account. At the same time I’m going to work in some downtime and breaks because switching from month to month takes a little time – for example, just in the first day or two of each month I have to use my spare time to send out invoices and finish up other work that is simply essential, so I can’t always jump straight into the next fiction writing project, and my schedule should reflect that. And then I’m going to really get going on producing the absolute best novel I’m capable of, at least at this stage of my writing life. I’ll keep you all informed, of course!

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January 31, 2011 by amanda

January 2011 retrospective: Poems galore and a book of the month

So, January’s about to finish and it’s time to look back on my writing and reading experience and see if I got off to a good start in my quest to become a fiction writer … a published one, that is! First up, I managed to read a few good and a couple of not so good books this month – you can always check my full 2011 reading list for details, but in summary this month I read the following:

  1. Twenty-Somewhereby Kristan Hoffman
  2. Dexter Is Deliciousby Jeff Lindsay
  3. The Still Pointby Amy Sackville
  4. Dancing In The Moonlightby Raeanne Thayne
  5. Indelible Inkby Fiona McGregor
  6. In the Wakeby Per Petersen

And the clear winner for January’s book of the month for me is Fiona McGregor’s Indelible Ink – not just because I’m being patriotic about Australian literature but because it was the most interesting novel for me, one where I enjoyed every character and wasn’t quite sure where things were headed.

As for writing, my January focus was on writing a Poem A Day as part of a community of writers undertaking the challenge together. Today is January 31, and although I haven’t yet posted my final poem in the community forum, I have drafted it, and I have 30 other poems all finished as well, so I’d say I’ve successfully completed January’s goal. Not only that, but I think my writing will have all kinds of benefits from this month of poetry writing, so many in fact that I’ll tell you about them in another post (where I’ll be brave enough to share a poem or two from my new collection of them! – most of them are very average though so don’t get your hopes up).

This month-by-month focus is definitely going to work better for me I think – my goals are in a manageable size and shape, so to speak. I’m already itching to get going on my February task of revising Kanako’s Foreigner.

How are your goals or tasks going so far in 2011? Do let me know, a problem shared is a problem halved – and we can celebrate any success together.

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January 17, 2011 by amanda

Halfway through Poem a Day and I’m (nearly) on track!

A poem a day is certainly continuing to keep the writing wolf at bay, and here we are, halfway through January and I’m still writing a poem a day. (Okay, I’m a day or two behind most of the time, but what’s a poem or two between friends? As of this moment I have written 15 poems this year. That’s a lot of words and a lot of writing. Well done me.)

I’m more than satisfied with how this month’s writing resolution is going. Having a daily task which is both interesting – Sage Cohen’s daily prompts are incredibly varied – and not too arduous – a poem isn’t a novel, and it’s just a draft, really, nobody’s expecting me to come up with a properly publishable poem each day – is proving to be a very successful strategy. It’s giving me routine, rhythm and motivation, and the rest of my writing life is benefiting. And there’s the hoped-for bonus of me paying more attention to writing beautiful words, because writing poems certainly has me searching and thinking for just the right word, and that’s a skill I’d like to transfer to my fiction writing.

One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that my poetry is extremely personal. I looked through my 15 poems for one to share with you, but discarded all of them, either because I don’t think they’re really good enough to share, but mostly because they’re about really personal topics, and I don’t feel comfortable putting them out there for the whole wide world to see. (Interestingly I have got used to posting them on the online forum used by my Poem A Day classmates, whereas the first couple of days I had to pretty much close my eyes and click “post” to be able to put them up there). I’m curious about what I should learn from this use of the personal. Is it a poet’s thing? Do poets suffer from the “oh did that really happen to you?” questions even worse than novelists? Does poetry lend itself to me wanting to express really sensitive things? Or should I be using these same themes in my fiction (I guess I do, in some cases, but in a more disguised form, using invented characters and scenarios to get the same point across). I’m still thinking about all of this.

But I do hope that by month’s end I have a poem or two I feel willing to share with you all – not least to just prove that I actually have been writing all this poetry!

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January 8, 2011 by amanda

2010 retrospective on Becoming A Fiction Writer

Although I’ve well and truly got 2011 away with a great plan of attack and some poetry, I have just found time to take a proper look back on what I achieved (and didn’t achieve) during 2010. I’m not going to make excuses for not spending as much time on fiction writing as I usually would – it’s not every year you have a baby, and no matter how much I want to be a published novelist, being a mother is – at least at this stage of his little life – a whole lot more important. Although I’m planning on combining the two a lot more effectively in 2011.

Just the same, I didn’t do all to badly on my 2010 goals, mainly because I was smart enough to realise it was never going to be the year of huge amounts of writing. I had four goals, the first of which I completely achieved (submitting my Bratislava novel to a contest); the second and third (submitting Kanako’s Foreigner to agents and increasing this blog’s readership) got a little attention though not much progress; the fourth, to plot and complete my third novel didn’t really do so well, but at least I have a solid idea and a reasonable plot outline.

Looking back on reading – all important for a fiction writer! … first of all, there’s my 2010 reading list. Basically, I read a huge number of books pre-baby, and nearly none after, but this averaged out to “not too bad” in the book-reading department. Take a look at the list if you like and see if we’ve shared any reads this past year.

And now to my “Book of the Year” for 2010 – Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. I cannot tell you how many reasons there are to love this book. A bonus is that it’s even by an Australian – you know how I can’t go past Aussie literature! I had planned to make more effort to read outside my preferred modern literary fiction genre during 2010 and I did “okay” – there is some crime/spy stuff on the list, a couple of classics and even a romance and a chick-lit – but I’m still hoping to read a little more widely in the future (I’ve got a gory thriller on the go at the moment so you can see I’m starting 2011 pretty well!).

All in all, 2010 was certainly the year of a new baby and not much of a fiction writing year, but at least I didn’t completely drop the bundle (or the baby!). And I’m on track to get a lot more writing done in 2011. Go me!

PS: Speaking of 2010 reads, I’d love to hear your favourite reads of last year – let me know in the comments.

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January 4, 2011 by amanda

A poem a day keeps the writing wolf at bay?

I’m four days in to my Poem A Day challenge, and so far I have figured out four important things:

  1. Writing poetry does indeed, as I’d hoped, really make me focus on word choice and considering how to make my writing sound “beautiful”.
  2. Writing poetry has the extra (somewhat related) bonus of making me edit and revise a lot more than I do with straight fiction writing, and the act of editing and revision is something I feel I need to improve.
  3. Having the impetus to write every day because other people are expecting you to is highly motivating for me (something I’d learnt from my NaNoWriMo experience, but forgotten recently).
  4. I’m pretty certain I have no talent as a poet.

At the end of my month of poeming I may just let some of my better works out into the wild, but for now I’m not sending them too far beyond the electronic classroom I’m sharing over at the Path of Possibility. Even that is daunting enough as I’m amongst a dozen other writers, all of whom are considerably better at writing poetry than I am. Some of them are even published poets! Yes, this is freaking me out but I’m quietly adding my poems and secretly hoping nobody will read them. It’s like being a completely newbie writer all over again.

Despite these anxieties I’m having a heap of fun getting into my “beautiful words” with this poetry thing and it’s certainly making sure my 2011 writing year gets off to a positive start.

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January 2, 2011 by amanda

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

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.]

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December 3, 2010 by amanda

Busy with Bookshop Tours and blogging courses

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.

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November 30, 2010 by amanda

Daydreaming about book covers

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!

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October 10, 2010 by amanda

Agents, ready or not, here comes my novel!

Enough of this procrastinating business. It doesn’t pay well. It’s not even particularly satisfying. (Oh, if only there was some great kudos to saying, look, how clever am I, I put off finishing that novel for ten whole years.) I am giving up on waiting for either of my novel manuscripts to become perfect. They are probably reasonably okay already, or at least me sitting around fiddling with them won’t make them a whole lot better.

Dedicated readers (all two of you) will know that I have two manuscript drafts sitting on my hard drive. Sitting in my metaphorical bottom drawer, so to speak.

The first, Kanako’s Foreigner, made it into the top 100 of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award the year before last, out of nearly 10,000 entries, and got some nice comments from a Publisher’s Weekly reviewer who had actually read the whole manuscript, and even got an agent asking to see the whole thing (she politely, kindly passed). Therefore, my logical brain is trying to convince me, it can’t be complete rubbish.

The second, Bratislava, only made it into the top 1000 of the Amazon contest the following year, although I actually think it’s considerably better than the first one.

So, if I am going to submit to an agent … strike that. So, now that I AM GOING TO submit to an agent, I have to decide which one to try with. It’s clear to me that it’s unprofessional to say “here are two kind of okay novels I’ve written, I don’t know which ones better so what do you think?”. Obviously I need to go with one and tell them it’s the best thing ever. The problem (and cause for procrastination) today is: which one will I use??? Yes, that warrants three question marks, even though I hate multiple punctuation.

Heart says #2, head says #1. Or get a long enough list of potential agents that I can split the difference and send them both out to a few different agents. Eek. I hate this sort of stuff. But I have finally appreciated that nobody is going to walk into my study (if they could find their way through the mess to get in) and fire up my hard drive and get a copy of said novels off there and publish them.

Anyway, my optimistic title for this post includes “here comes my novel”. This is action. I’m going to do it. Some mini-steps or goals to put in my favourite to-do list:

  1. Create a list of potential agents. I’ve got plenty of ideas on how to do this, and consider this the easy part. In the process I’ll check their individual requirements for a first contact (query only, synopsis, sample chapter(s) and so on).
  2. Write query letter/synopsis/anything else that seems to be required.
  3. Start sending queries off to agents.

I’m guessing that like the rest of the business world, literary agents don’t do too much new business in December, and since we’ve already got part way into October that means I need to get wriggling! Potential agent list by the end of the week and then start getting queries out before the end of the month. I promise. Please hold me to that and revoke my chocolate supply if I don’t do it. Thanks. Oh and wish me luck. I’m quite sure I’ll send stuff off to an agent and they’ll laugh so hard at my poor attempt at writing I’ll be able to hear them from here.

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