Ghost of Christmas (story) past

Today I did a year's worth of filing. It was about as inspiring as it sounds. But...

My filing unearthed a 'Christmas story' that was rejected by the English Women's Weekly about five years ago (Lord only knows why it was still hanging around the 'to be filed' file). The title was terrible - Icing on the Christmas Cookie - dear God.

Surely it got better?

I read it with great interest for, by now, it reads as though it were written by someone else entirely. Why did they reject it, I wondered, as I perused the opening lines?

It was all okay. Which was probably the problem. Okay, as in, not terrible but not outstanding in any way.


Until I got to this bit.

"Wrapping paper littered the room like confetti, the Christmas tree had given up its load of presents like Papa Penguin sending off his eggs to hatch, and Amanda had taken another 50 photographs to add to the 1000 unprinted images on her computer's hard drive."

Papa Penguin? Methinks someone had been watching too much David Attenborough at the time of writing.

That's the thing with writing. So much of it is impacted by what's going on in your life at the time.

Just another reason to put manuscripts away in a drawer for a while before going back to edit them.

Are you sometimes surprised by things you've written in the past?

Why I don't like book clubs - and yet I'm starting one (allegedly)

Sometimes it doesn't pay to be on Twitter. There I was, minding my own business, sending out pithy (to me) tweets about this and that, when suddenly I found myself inveigled in a conversation about book clubs.

I don't like book clubs. I get that people love them, and I must say that I did have an enjoyable time in one a few years ago - but that had nothing to do with books. Mostly we got together, drank beers and talked about men. Even so, because I am a nerdy wordgirl, I had to endure reading many, many books that I did not like at all. Because they had been set as the text for that month and I am nothing if not diligent when it comes to doing my homework.

So I'd wade through someone else's choice of literature, feeling physically itchy about it at times, and then turn up on the night to find that I was the only one who had. Even the person who had set the book hadn't read it. Or, if they had, they wanted to tell us that they 'liked it' or 'didn't like it' and then move on to beers and men.

Leaving me there, alone, with my carefully prepared thoughts on theme and narrative devices.

Hmmmph.

Anyhoo, back to that fateful Twitter conversation. Somehow, thanks to @ClaireyHewitt, I have found myself head prefect of a newly formed online book club. Only I'm not going to call it a book club, I'm going old school, with Reading Club. Much more refined.

Despite my best efforts to delegate the whole exercise to @HelloMaxabella (you can't say that without hearing Seinfeld sneer "hello Newman", now can you?), here I am. With my Fibro Reading Club. Membership of one.

The Rules of Fibro Club:

1. You do NOT talk about Fibro Club (okay, not really, but how could I resist?)

2. The book for each month will be announced in my newsletter on the 15th of each month. The Fibro Club post regarding that book will go up on the first day of the following month. That gives us about two weeks to read the book. Long enough?

3. If you want to participate in the discussion, it would be great if you read the book. But if you don't like the look of the book, feel free to simply bypass that month and pop back another time. Or read something else and tell us what you think of that instead.

4. No shirts, no shoes. Pyjamas and beers are, however, perfectly acceptable.

At this stage, I'm still deciding the best place to hold our discussion. We can just do it in the comments here. Or we can shift to Twitter. Or I could even get all excited and start a Facebook page. All suggestions welcome. 

There you have it. My prefect badge is all shined up and ready for the announcement of the first book in next week's newsletter. Feel free to sign up if you'd like to join in!

Have you ever been in a book club? Tell me what you love and/or hate about them so that we can avoid the same mistakes?

image: a small portion of my current to-be-read pile

Fibro Q&A: Kylie Ladd on why the writing shouldn't get any easier

Kylie Ladd, one of my very favourite 'acclaimed Australian authors', launched her third book Into My Arms this week. I met Kylie on Twitter in my very earliest weeks, and she was and is all of the good things: smart, funny, engaging, friendly. I read her first book After The Fall soon after, and was hooked.

Last time she visited the Fibro, we talked about characters and voice and lots of other good writing stuff. This time, well ... read on.

Now that you have your third book, do you think that the writing gets easier or more difficult as you go along?
Kylie Ladd: "It should be easier, and in some ways it is, because I have the psychological crutch of knowing that I have done this before, a number of times now, and thus there’s no reason I can’t do it again. But really, every book is different, and every book should be harder if you’re also pushing for it to be better than your last (and if you aren’t, why not?), so the short answer is no, not at all. They’re all their own individual forms of hell."

Do you finish each book with an idea of what the next one might be about?
Kylie Ladd: "Thankfully I do. It’s never a clear, fully-formed idea, but usually as I come into the final 20 or 30,000 words of whatever I’m working on I can sense something glimmering out of the corner of my eye. The trick is not to look at it directly - for one, I might scare it away. More importantly, though, it’s not a time for playing with new ideas - I need to keep my eyes on the horizon so I can steer the story I’m telling into shore.

"It is a comfort to have it there though. I’m not one of those writers who has a thousand ideas before bed each day - usually I only have one every few years, and then I have to make sure I can make it last the length of a book. I’m at the 75,000 word mark of my next (hopefully, fourth) novel now, and I can just feel something beginning to take shape at the edges of my brain. I really hope it’s a new novel, and not a migraine."

Relationships of one form or another are at the heart of all your books – what's the most difficult thing about writing about relationships?
Kylie Ladd: "Keeping them real. Having my characters do and say things that real people do, and not what I want them do to move the plot along or work in a nice piece of exposition or what have you. I also get a bit nervous about writing male characters, in case I get the voice wrong, but hopefully I’m getting over that. At the end of the day we’re all people first and foremost."

You're an author who doesn't blog, FB, pin or all the rest – though you do Tweet. Do you agree with Charlotte Wood that 'branding is junk'? Or is there another reason you don't get too involved?
Kylie Ladd: "Oooh, I didn’t know Charlotte said that. I like her even more now! I can definitely see the importance of branding to some extent, but I’m not sure it would be worth it for me. I don’t really think I’m all that interesting… but hopefully my novels are, so that’s what I’d rather work on and put my effort into.

"The other reason I don’t get too involved, as you say, is time (see next question!) and, to be honest, that thing I mentioned above about my general dearth of ideas. I have blogged in the past in a paid position (I know! But not paid much) and while I enjoyed it and am proud of what I produced in that year I found that it didn’t leave much in my tank for my fiction; that I was using insights and ideas and quandaries that I normally would’ve explored or addressed in a novel in my weekly column instead, and then I wasn’t much interested in them anymore or felt I couldn’t go over them again. Also, the pressure to always have something fresh and new and well-punctuated coming along did my head in. (NB. I do actually Facebook. Clearly not that well though!)"

How in the world do you fit being a successful author around being a parent AND a part-time job as a neuropsychologist?
Kylie Ladd: "By not blogging. Seriously though, it’s about discipline- it’s about setting aside time to write and refusing to let myself be talked into going out to lunch or seeing a private patient or even meeting for coffee on those days. It’s about keeping them so sacrosanct that one of my kids would have to be in the ER before I got up from the desk. It’s about allowing myself a bit of time to muck around on Twitter but then unplugging my computer and going to work in the kitchen or backyard if necessary so I can get something done without being lured astray by the siren song of the internet. (We don’t have wireless so I can accomplish this. My children believe we are living in the stone age.)

"Reading back, this all sounds a bit obsessive, but something I always say to my creative writing students is that the first rule of being a  writer is to write. They all look at me like I’m nuts (Write. I paid money for this?), but it’s true. When you can write - and for most of us, that time is limited - the writing must come first."


Visit Kylie at her website, or say hello on Twitter (or, apparently, on Facebook!). You can buy Into My Arms here or - wait for it - you can enter the Fibro competition to WIN a signed copy! 

All you have to do is to leave a comment below, by 5pm Sunday May 12, answering this question: Have you ever fallen in love at first sight? Winner will be most creative answer, as judged by me, and announced on Monday May 13.

Tips for writing features #12: A question of good questions

I was talking to an editor friend of mine today who was gnashing her teeth over a story that had been submitted to her. It was a Q&A piece and it just wasn't working.

"The answers are just not quite right," she said to me.

"No," I said to her. "The questions aren't quite right."

Whatever style of article you're working on, be it general feature or Q&A, the key to getting the information you want, the great quotes you need, and the right angle for the piece is to ask the right questions. I have written before about interviews (specifically, one that went wrong).

About the importance of asking dumb questions.

About how to interview 'real people' for case studies.

And the importance of asking one final question when you find someone you think is a 'good interview'.

So now I'm just going to lay out my four top tips for asking the right questions to get the great quotes you need.

1. Be prepared, but not too prepared
Some of the worst interviews I've ever conducted have been with a) people about whom I'd read everything ever written or b) experts in a subject that I'd researched to the point where I felt I knew as much as the experts. It makes for a boring interview and a boring interview will always bring boring quotes.

When I feel as though I'm learning something as I ask my questions, my interest is piqued, my questions are more spontaneous, and my eyes are bright and shiny. People respond to that. They want to tell me more. We get to cover areas of a subject that we might never have touched on if I'd left no room for them.

2. Listen for the little bell
Having said that, I always go into an interview with a prepared list of questions. I think long and hard about the brief, what I want to know about a subject and what the readers of the particular publication for which I'm writing the story will want to know. I ask those questions and I listen for the little bell that goes off in my head every single time I hear a quote I know I will use in the story. Sometimes it's the quote on which I will build the story. When I hear that bell, I take that particular line of questioning just a bit further if I can.

3. Ask open-ended questions
Unless you're after a definitive answer on whether Kevin Rudd will run for PM again (just as an example), don't ask questions that are easily answered with a 'yes' or 'no'. These leave you with nightmares when it comes to writing your story. What you want are nice, juicy sentences. A bit of waffle, even. Waffle can be edited. Boring answers can be dealt with by writing interesting words around them. But turning a 'yes' into a paragraph in your 1500 word story is not easy. Give yourself something to work with.

4. Actually, listen in general
It's easy as a journalist to go into automatic mode when it comes to interviews, particularly phone interviews. You can be so busy trying to get the words down (if you type them) or so confident in the ability of your recording device to catch every word that you can forget to listen to what the interviewee is saying, zoning out into la-la land, planning the story in your head. Later, you'll read over your notes and think 'damn, why didn't I ask that?' because you will, without a doubt, have missed something.

When you really listen to the interview, you won't miss the opportunity to ask the right questions.

As an interviewer, nothing gives me a bigger thrill than when someone says to me 'those were great questions'. It means I've asked them something that's made them think, and that will hopefully give me the material to make readers think. Win/win.

Tell me about the best (or worst) interview situation you've ever been in - either asking the questions or answering them.

image: Eleaf via photopin cc

Does my brain look big in these?

I am wearing my new reading glasses as I write this.

They feel strange.

The world is both clearer and more blurry. Depending on where I look.

I take them off. My eyes cross with the effort of trying to focus.

I put them back on. The first few seconds are worse.

I still feel that perhaps I should just make the font size bigger. Or look over the top of them, like a red-haired Miss Marple.

I am wearing my new reading glasses as I write this.

They have strong, dark, tortoise-shell frames. Very definite glasses. I am convinced they make my brain look bigger. It's easy to decide on a dark, nerdy frame when you only wear them at home. Would I be so brave if I had to have them on my face all the time? Perhaps not.

The optometrist told me that I would never not need glasses for reading again. And yet, right now, I still feel more comfortable reading without them. Squinting a little, perhaps; adding new depth to the furrows around my eyes.

She didn't say that I could never again write without them.

Do you wear reading glasses?

Riding in cars with (little) boys

I am supposed to be cleaning my office, so now seems like an excellent time to write a blog post...

This morning I was lucky enough to be close enough to eavesdrop overhear one of those delightful conversations that take place between six-year-old boys when they're just, you know, chatting about stuff. Mr6's friend M had been visiting and we were all in the car, on our way to drop him off to a family function.

"I'm a little bit scared," he confided to Mr6.

"Why would you be scared?" asked Mr6. "It's just your family."

"There'll be people there I don't know."

Pause. "You need to just find a friend," said Mr6, knowledgeably. "You only need one friend and then it'll be fine."

[insert arty shot of driving Mum smiling to herself]

"You're right," said M. Pause. "Do you ever worry about things?"

Pause. "Nope," said Mr6, sunnily.

[insert arty shot of relieved driving Mum, smiling to herself]

"I do," said M. "I have a worry doll."

"What's that?" asked Mr6, intrigued at prospect of a toy.

"I keep it under my pillow and if I have worries I tell the doll and it takes them away."

"That's cool!" said Mr6. Pause. "Maybe if I get some worries Mum will get me one."

[insert arty shot of driving Mum struggling to contain suppressed laughter]

Do you sometimes listen in on your kids' conversations?