The Waiting

The Waiting

A lot is said in writers’ circles about ‘The Call’ and ‘The Rejection’. I am in the stage before that, which is ‘The Waiting’.

I finally bit the bullet on the weekend (excuse the cliché) and sent my first three chapters of my manuscript to the publisher who requested it. The Waiting can be quite a marvellous time. You can dream about what could be, you can hope, you can believe that anything is possible.

It can also be a terrible time. What if she replies within a week and says thanks but no thanks? If she does that, my writing must be pretty bad. What if she replies within several weeks and stills says no thanks? That’s even worse, because the realisation of anything’s possible has planted alfalfa sprouts in your brain and and then she’s thrown a cement block on it.

I’ve decided to be positive about The Waiting for as long as I can and keep my fingers and toes crossed.

Wish me luck,
Donna

The golden rules of dialogue

I have been working away at my writing and having a lot of fun with it. But as a writer I can’t stay away from working on my craft. I am attracted by the many on-line courses that are advertised, conferences, seminars etc. Attending them is a matter of time and money. It’s also a matter of being sure that you are going to learn something new.

Last weekend I went to a fantastic one day seminar organised by the Australian Writers’ Guild. http://www.awg.com.au/artman/publish/index.shtml The speaker was the Duncan Thompson, Head of the International Film School in Sydney. http://www.ifss.edu.au/ I spent a fascinating and fun day listening to Duncan speak about screenwriting demonstrating his points with excerpts from movies. While targeted at screenwriters there was a lot there for novelists as well. As my fellow writers know I am a big McKee Fan and this seminar took me into new territory.

Here are Duncan’s golden rules of dialogue:
· The characters cannot speak narratorially; they cannot tell your story;
· No commentorial dialogue;
· No declarative dialogue;
· No question and answer dialogue; and
· The characters cannot discuss the scenes that they are in.

If your characters break these rules then Duncan says you are probably writing soap, which is fine if that is what you are aiming for.

So what can your characters say to each other?

Your characters speak to respond to the events and actions that you create. What they say comes from each character’s unique ‘drama of being human’.

The only exception to this rule is to create conflict between the characters.

I don’t think that novelists can follow these rules to the letter or our books would be very densely written with a lot of description. These rules give some sound advice for when your characters start to sound a bit ‘soapy’.

Lesley Ann Smith

When you sabotage your own life dreams

I love creating new characters, developing the plot, watching the characters change and capturing it on paper. I love writing. I love being around other writers.

So why is it that I do so little writing.

Late in 2008 my employer offered a program in overcoming procrastination and I enrolled. I was keen to discover why I always put my writing last. The program was conducted by trained counsellors over three weekly sessions. Twelve of us commenced and four of us made it to all three sessions. Here is what I learned.

I procrastinate because of my own unhelpful thinking. How I think and feel about my writing affects how I behave. When I procrastinate I sabotage my long term aim of becoming a published writer. This is me preventing myself from achieving something that is very important to me.

This has to change.

So the important lesson for me was that I needed to change my own thinking about my writing. Unpleasant and unhelpful emotions, as well as dysfunctional and unhelpful behaviours are the result of irrational thinking. The process can be thought of as activating event (critique meeting is coming up) triggers belief (my chapter won't be good enough in time to put out) which leads to consequences (I do something other than write).

The most important counter to an irrational belief is to dispute it and replace it with an alternative belief - one that is more helpful to my long term goals (e.g. it's a long hard job to write an entire novel at publication standard but I can make some progress by putting out at least a scene to the people who are most supportive of my writing). When you continually dispute the belief the effect is to develop new feelings and behaviours (proud of incremental progress and more accepting of level of work instead of expecting everything the early draft to be publication standard.).

It's as simple as ABCDE.

After putting out almost nothing to Wink during 2008, after doing the course I put out chapter 1 of my current WIP to the December meeting. It was great to have people engaged in and discussing my work and good to have their feedback much earlier in the development of the work than I would usually have sought it. For the January meeting I have the long synopsis out for comment and a short story that I want to enter into a competition.

Through the course I discovered that I was procrastinating because I believed that my writing wasn't good enough to be critiqued. I am trying to overcome my procrastination by putting out earlier drafts of work, shorter pieces of work and different types of work.

Overcoming procrastination is also about becoming a better time manager. I had to keep a diary for a week and every 15 minutes write down what I was doing. This exercise exposed all the time that I had when I really could have been writing - when I could have been putting what is very important to me - my writing - first.

What often happens is that we put other people's goals ahead of our writing. I decided to be brave about this. I didn't have to offer the dozen people that I celebrated NYE with at the local yacht club to sleep the night at my place to avoid being on the roads but given that I did, what makes that more important than my writing? Nothing! So there I was at 4:30pm on NYE completing my long synopsis to send out to Wink and only then did I start getting the house ready for the visitors. The synopsis was done and we all had a great NYE. It's given me confidence to move my writing up the priority list again.

I am looking forward to a great 2009 where I stop sabotaging my writing dream. Hope 2009 is a wonderful writing year for you as well.

Lesley Ann Smith

New Year - New directions?

It's that time of the year again, the fresh shiny new part when the world is full of hope that you can be a better you. A brighter you. A published you.

Unlike the rest of the wink girls I managed to spend last year achieving nothing.

I started some short stories, vampire erotica of all things, not really me. Started a romantic suspense that I'm really very happy with except I'm pretty sure it has no publishing home. Started a contemporary romance where no one grows fur or feathers or wings or fangs, no one gets blown up, kidnapped, shot at or sent on an impossible mission - just because I think it would be good for me as a writer - except at the moment the hero of the piece is sitting on the beach looking at me and saying "Dude, you have sooo got to be kidding. I'm not gonna marry that uptight chick." Which might promise good things for the internal conflict but suggests that the hero is in bad need of an extreme makeover and the plot in bad need of some external conflict.

I finished off a manuscript, but haven't edited it so it's not really finished.

That's a lot of starts and not much of a finish.

I think I'm in need of not just a New Year's Resolution to get my A into G and do some writing and finishing of work but a new direction. I rarely even read the books from the lines I was originally targeting. I don't like the ways in which they've changed. I've changed too. Between the changes those books no longer offer me anything. How could I possibly write one? So, deep breath, I think my whole direction needs to change.

That's really scary. How much work do I have to scrap completely? How much has to be rewritten? Where will I be going now? I don't think I know. So what will my resolutions be?

After much consideration, (at least as long as the hot water lasts in the shower) here they are:

- I will not isolate myself, this only leads to less writing, not more


- I will be a better citizen of the writing community, post more and do more for writing organisations (again, not posting etc seems to lead to less writing, not more. Weird huh?)

- I will write at least 5 days a week except for planned time off, just like a real job.


- I will experiment with my writing and figure out what my new direction is.

So, I've been brave and put it out here for the world to see. That last one is a biggie, I'll be needing lots of very honest help from my fellow winkettes.

How about you? Do you have any writing resolutions for the new year to share with us? Go on, be brave and tell us what they are.

H Maree Davis. :)