Becoming A Fiction Writer
One girl, one dream … and a whole lot of procrastination
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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July 15, 2010 by amanda

My fiction writing sounds like Kurt Vonnegut … really?

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably been directed towards the I Write Like website recently, it seems to be doing the rounds. It’s an interesting gimmick – you take a chunk of your writing, paste it into a box, and the site figures out which famous writer your style is most similar too.

I thought I’d try it out with my Bratislava novel draft. Given that I’ve tried really hard to have three different voices there, with alternating chapters narrated by three different characters (three very different characters, I had hoped), what I wanted to see is that each of the chapters “sounded like” a different writer.

So did they? Yes and no. Being a bit of a research-head, I didn’t just try one extract in the “I Write Like” analysis, but several, from different parts of the book. For each character I sometimes got a different writer: James Joyce, Bram Stoker and Dan Brown (! Oh no! I think I probably have it on public record that I think Dan Brown is a terrible writer!!). But for each of the characters, and then also with the synopsis I wrote, one name kept coming up: Kurt Vonnegut.

Kurt Vonnegut? Really?? Didn’t he write weird science fiction stuff? Um, I actually have to admit I don’t remember reading any of his novels although I have a feeling I was meant to read Slaughterhouse Five at uni. Well, I’m intrigued now and must go away and read some of his stuff and try to figure out why this odd little bit of software would say I write in his style. Eek.

Having said that, I did Wikipedia him (has Wikipedia become a verb yet, like Google? It has for me!) and found something good. Vonnegut has created eight rules for writing a short story that may help me when I head back to that form at some stage:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Sounds like mostly good advice, and I love the idea of cockroaches eating the final pages, even if I’m not sure I agree with that final point. And now I’m off to track down some Vonnegut books at the local library. Once I pay my overdue fines, that is.

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July 5, 2010 by amanda

May and June book of the month and a writing update

Ha ha. Tricked myself. I’ve been hunting around on this site for my May book of the month post, taking quite some time to realise there wasn’t one because I didn’t finish any books in May. Oh, how depressing. I did, however, finish a book in June. So I’m combining those months, and giving you an update on my writing progress during that time, all in one (probably pretty brief) post.

The good news is that my beautiful time-drainer has just hit three months of age and is sleeping a lot more consistently, to the point where in these first couple of days of July I’ve read half a book already! So things are looking up on the fiction front.

Without further ado, the book of the month for May and June is … After the Fallby Kylie Ladd. Granted, there was no competition, but it was nonetheless a great book. Kylie Ladd is an Australian author (remember, I love Aussie writers) and I “met” her on Twitter somehow recently, which inspired me to get her book out of the library (sorry Kylie, I know I should have bought it, but I have post-birth-of-baby budget issues!).

After the Fall was particularly interesting to me because it uses chapters written from the point of view of different characters, much like my Bratislava novel draft but with even more characters and no systematic rotation of them. I have to admit to being a little confused at first, because I couldn’t get the names of the characters straight in my head, but that’s probably because I only had a chance to read just a short chapter or two at a time. By the end, that was no problem. I enjoyed seeing how different characters interpreted the same situation differently, a technique I’ve tried to use in Bratislava as well.

And to complete the monthly update, yes, I did actually do some writing in June. And a tiny bit in May too. I finished up this round of edits on Bratislava and submitted it to the Allen & Unwin/Vogel award. Yay! I was desperate to enter this year as I’ll sadly be too old next year. Oh and you may note I say “this round of edits” because even during that process I had some new ideas of some more tinkering I could do. I really hope some publisher will take pity on me someday and just publish all my draft novels so I’m not continually tempted to “fix” them, as I’m sure not all the changes are for the better!

Stay tuned for the July update which I hope will be more a productive month. Fingers crossed.

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March 3, 2010 by amanda

February’s book of the month and a February goal update

First up, the goal-related news … I actually didn’t get much writing at all done in February. Even the posts you saw were mostly written in January, and I’m afraid that’ll be the case for the next couple of months, as I’ve been struck with pregnancy-carpal-tunnel – basically the same as regular carpal tunnel, but a whole lot better, because after I give birth to this kid in April my wrists and hands should return to normal and I’ll be typing away with the best of ‘em. So I’ve had to shelve most of my writing plans for these couple of months, but luckily for you I was pretty organised and have posted ahead with this blog, so you won’t be left too much in the lurch. And I’ll still be dropping by to read your comments.

However, there is one important piece of goal-related news: the next round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest was announced, and my novel Bratislava has made it to the next round of judging. YAY! This year the contest is divided in half into adult fiction and young adult fiction, so this means that out of 5,000 entries in the adult fiction section, mine is already in the top 1,000. Of course this ABNA deal is always a slow process so it’s another month before I know if I make it to the next round. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Now, while I haven’t been able to write, I have been able to read a fair bit. As you might’ve seen if you’re following my 2010 reading list (there are some blurbs about what I thought of these books on that list, if you’re curious), this is what I’ve sunk my teeth into during February:

  1. Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfallby Kazuo Ishiguro
  2. Absolutionby Olafur Johann Olafsson
  3. The Book Thiefby Markus Zusak
  4. Revolutionary Roadby Richard Yates
  5. The Easter Paradealso by Richard Yates
  6. Like Trees, Walkingby Ravi Howard
  7. Henry’s List of Wrongsby John Scott Shepherd
  8. Friends Like Theseby Danny Wallace
  9. Anna Kareninaby Leo Tolstoy
  10. The Writing Classby Jincy Willett
  11. The Woman from Bratislavaby Leif Davidsen
  12. Dancing Backwardsby Salley Vickers

Ishiguro’s set of stories was, of course, fantastic, but the runaway book of the month winner for me is Zusak’s The Book Thief. READ IT! You might read the blurb and think it’s just another Nazi Germany story but it’s not. It’s one of the best books you’ll ever read. Everything about it is fantastic – the structure, the choice of narrator, the characters and how they grow, the language, the everything! In case you look it up and wonder about the audience – it was billed as adult fiction here in Australia (Zusak is Australian) but for some reason promoted as young adult fiction in the US – whatever your age, you’ll love it. I promise.

On that note, I’ll sign off but will try to get back at the end of March with at least a reading update – probably not much on the goals, although by then I’ll know if my novel survives another Amazon round or not. Happy writing and reading!

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January 27, 2010 by amanda

A summary of my Bratislava novel

Well, the deadline has arrived, and I haven’t even procrastinated too much, because I have already submitted my entry for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for 2010: the novel now titled Bratislava. Three cheers for me! Interestingly, in the process of my revisions I went through a folder I had labelled “Bratislava novel” and found a most interesting file which seemed to be the very first idea I ever had for the novel, and it went like this:

I’m not quite sure what, but I really want to write a novel set in Bratislava. I think it would be one of those slightly chaotic stories with lots of different characters whose stories eventually all intertwine. I guess because Bratislava seems to me a chaotic city with so many stories and different histories.

Now that’s exactly how it ended up, with three characters telling their own stories which eventually intermingle, but to be honest, I had no idea why it was like that: now I know! And I still agree that it’s an appropriate way to tell a story set in Bratislava.

Some of you have been wondering aloud about what the novel’s actually about, and since I have had to write a short summary as a pitch for the ABNA contest, I thought I might share part of it with you here:

Bratislava: A Novel

It’s a decade after the demise of communism and three young people stand in the town square of Bratislava: a Slovak, a Korean and an Australian. Bratislava follows the story of how they met, what this multicultural friendship means to them and how it helps them to find their next steps in life. With fried cheese lunches, art gallery excursions to Vienna and shirtless tram drivers, this mainstream fiction novel reminds us that cultural differences are no barrier to friendship, and that regardless of where you come from, people face the same challenges in life.

Bratislava is set in the Slovak capital of Bratislava while the country is trying to find its Western feet, in the years after the Berlin Wall fell. This unique setting of a city being invaded by Western companies provides the impetus for the arrival of Rebecca, an English teacher helping Slovak employees get up to speed with a language only slowly replacing Russian in their curriculum, and Hyun, a Korean student who is lured to Bratislava by a girl, but stays after falling in love with the Slovak language. Raised in eastern Slovakia, Alenka moved to Bratislava to pursue a teaching career, but abandons this when the salary makes it impossible to pay the rent. With alternating chapters told by Rebecca, Hyun and Alenka, Bratislava follows their journeys as they battle with the usual questions asked by twenty-somethings about settling down, finding the right career and dealing with the ups and downs of love.

Let me know what you think: would you want to read this novel if you read this summary? I really hope so!

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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 20, 2010 by amanda

The novel is drafted, the revisions have begun

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.

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January 4, 2010 by amanda

“I’m no quitter” – not of writing, not of chocolate

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!

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December 23, 2009 by amanda

Making progress on my Bratislava novel

You can see one of Bratislava’s most prominent sights in this picture: the Novy Most, or “New Bridge”, built, as you might be able to guess by its appearance, by the Soviets during the communist era. They’re also responsible for the monstrous collection of bland apartment buildings across the other side of the river (which is the Danube, by the way). You’re seeing a picture of Bratislava because I’m in the middle of writing what I keep calling my “Bratislava novel”, since an actual title hasn’t made itself known to me yet.

I thought I’d give you a bit of an update on how my progress on writing this novel is going. I’ve been mentioning it on and off for a while, mainly because I keep starting and stopping. But with my chance for a second attempt at the ABNA contest drawing near, I’m really keen to get it finished as soon as possible, and hopefully have enough time to give it a good edit before the due date. If you’ve read this blog much at all, you’ll know I’m a great procrastinator and best motivated by deadlines, and that seems to be working again now.

I’ve set myself a goal of writing a minimum of 1,300 words per day, which should give me enough time to get the rest of the novel done and still allow sufficient time for revision and edits. (Well, not quite sufficient, but better than nothing.) And for the past four or five days, I’ve been exceeding this goal. Woo-hoo! I’ve been wondering why I’m on such a roll with this writing, and have come up with a few reasons:

  • I have a chapter-by-chapter plan for this novel. The plan is not very detailed – just a few sentences for each chapter – but when I sit down to write, I know where it’s going. I’m adding and removing quite a lot of the plan as I go, but then adjusting things later on in the plan, and it certainly seems to be making things easier. Being aware that I don’t have much revision time, following a plan like this really seems to be helping.
  • I love the characters. This novel has three equally-shared main characters, and each of them is very different, but I really like them all. Each chapter is told in turn by a different character, so every few days I’m changing perspective, but that’s working well.
  • I’m writing in the first person again (but from the three different perspectives). I struggled over this issue with Kanako’s Foreigner and ended up changing the entire novel from first to third person, but this time it seems to be working out better, perhaps because of the three different personalities.

It’s still a fair way to go before I can say this has been a successful novel completion attempt, but with the holidays ahead (and not much to do during them other than relax) I’m feeling reasonably confident. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

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