Writing

Randwick Writers’ Group: Sharing Writing Skills

A book about writing groups

Joining a writing group is very popular these days, at least in Anglo speaking countries. There are many different types of writing groups, just as there are various types of writers. Some writers simply wish to record memories for their family, children and friends to read. Writing correctly and clearly will be a main push for them. Others want to hone their skills towards the goal of writing a short story, or a longer genre, such as a novel or a modern memoir. They will need different skills, for example, knowledge of how to structure a particular genre.

I have been a member of three writing groups over the years, and most participants, when asked, expressed a wish to be published. One of the groups I was a part of was Randwick Writers Group, which has recently published a book that showcases work from six members in search of writing excellence. Each of the six participants found that being part of this group brought their writing up to a new level.

This book is unique in that it has followed members from the initial phase of setting up the group, until this point, five years later, when three members have published novels, and the rest are on the point of doing so.

If you would like to find out more about the workings of writing groups, this book is what you are looking for. As well as informational content, it also showcases the writings of the authors. It can be purchased through the publisher, Ginninderra Press or through online book stores, such as Amazon and other online bookstores. Enjoy!

Click on this link to have a peep inside the online digital version of the book.

https://www.book2look.com/book/TPULpSvFiE&bibletformat=epub

Purchase the digital book at Amazon Australia

May 7, 2020 0 comment

Book Reviews Writing

Discovering Karrana

Writing a Novel

Writing a novel has been one of the most exciting and difficult activities I have ever undertaken. It’s something akin to giving birth and bringing up a child; not quite…. You have never done this before, and there is no foolproof manual on how to be successful at it. I don’t believe anyone just knows how to write a novel. Much of it is trial and error. There’s a degree of theory involved, which might include studying the masters, and, it goes without saying, reading modern writers, too. That is, if you want to be a modern author.

Karrana: An Interview

Following is a Q and A interview carried out at the Book Launch of Karrana by a friend, G, and answered by myself, that reflects much about the structure of the novel.

G 1: In reading your book I was struck by the lusciousness of the novel, both the physical and the emotional aspects of life on the north coast after WW2.

If I start with the physical, the Australian bush with its lilting birds and the fiery orange boldness of the trumpet vines is an integral part of the story.

As a writer what did you draw from to create such vivid bush scenes?

A: As a little girl I was free to roam in nature, where I became a part of it — its rhythms, its colours. That vine covered an old barn on Grandma Walker’s farm, opposite our rented house on the Gwydir Highway, drawing sightseers in vehicles to stop and gawk from their car windows in winter and in spring. I felt lucky to be part of this environment.

It was even brighter to a child’s eye; magical, like the multicoloured iridescent feathers of rosellas; and I rolled, competing with hovering bees, in pure white-and-green clover, so abundant and fragrant on the farm; and then riding our horses surrounded by gum trees out in Dad’s bush paddock, a nutty, gorse-like perfume in the air; the silence, broken only by the sound of a kookaburra or water gurgling in pristine creeks, or a wallaby scuttling away.

Much of the flora and fauna on the farm was non-native, like the vine, but well-suited to our sub-tropical climate.

G2: Bridie the young woman “with tossing dark hair that cascaded around her shoulders like Vivien Leigh or one of the other Hollywood stars” as one of the main characters has big dreams and they don’t always coincide with reality. This story is her chance to shine.

How did you get Bridie to take her place in the world?

A: I showed her through the prism of the post-War years, with Australia on the brink of huge changes. As a butterfly-like creature cocooned in a narrow universe, Bridie’s narcissism is put to good use in attracting a mate. She is getting ready, like the nation, to break out and demand more from life than the one her family has allowed her. The question the novel sets up is: Will she be victorious in finding fulfilment, in re-gaining a missed education, or will it be a question of ‘fools rush in’? (ii) If Bridie really existed, I think she’d be a composite of several women from my childhood, both in flesh and on the big screen or in magazines.

G3: In the novel there is a delicious sense of dramatic irony between the two main characters, Bridie and Will.

What characteristics did you set up to test and re-energise their relationship?

A: I’m glad you recognised that. I think a note of irony runs throughout the novel, from the beginning with the sexual symbols of frogs and spiders on the path to the lavatory, to the forced wedding and sexual fulfilment.

Fiery passion causes both to act impulsively in the beginning. However, Bridie learns too late what Will’s plans are. They don’t discuss their differences, assuming that love will win out in the end. It is inevitable that conflict ensues.

G4: There is an interplay of mystery throughout the novel, the unknown lights in the bush; Richard, their son’s accident; the other man Bridie reached out to.

What were you trying to achieve with this interplay of mystery?

A: Well, I’ve always been interested in the interplay of light and dark motifs in fiction, as well as in life. Seasons play a large part in the structure of the novel: Starting out in the spring of rebirth and renewal, and continuing through seasonal fluctuations to a return. Bad things are sometimes presaged by dark imagery, such as blackbirds; awakenings and positives by light motifs. I’ve for long empathised with the underdogs in history, the Jewish people during the War, as well as the Aboriginal Bundjalung tribes of the north coastal region before the English settlers arrived. They are linked to the light motifs in nature.

What was I trying to achieve? Just that, the mystery of Nature, and the mystery within nature. A sense of light and of darker forces at work, beneath the surface of things. Within people, too, of ignorance versus enlightenment that comes through education and progress.

G5: The historical placement of this novel is just after WW2 and Bridie and Will, the two main characters, meet at a Victory dance. In developing the story, you had to go back in time and undertake a certain amount of research.

What did you uncover in your research that helped to drive the novel forward?

A: I researched war songs such as Bless Em All, and Don’t Sit under the Apple and the foxtrots and pride of Erins and waltzes, played at country dances of the time; other songs and movies expressed the blossoming love between Bridie and Will, such as the one my Dad sang to Mum ‘I’ll Take You Home again, Kathleen”.

Great changes were taking place, especially in the cities after the War. I Imagined Bridie hearing American accents and seeing soldiers with war injuries in Sydney. Learning about the new role of women in the War effort is also touched on. I discovered that ignorance and stigma existed at the time. Can you imagine how she must have felt when she heard from a Jewish refugee about the truth of the Holocaust? I made this part of Bridie’s experiential education, learning about it from the doctor. And then I tried to imagine the horror of a mother receiving a telegram announcing the death of a loved one; often delivered on bicycle or on horseback in the country.

G6: In conclusion what were the highlights of writing this novel?

A: It was great being able to draw on childhood and my own life experiences, and to utilise my early outpourings of emotion, a healing component in writing memoir pieces, and then this novel.

I was part of a small, tight-knit writers’ group, Randwick Writers, during which I was able to develop the first draft of the novel; meeting once a fortnight over more than a year. Encouragement from colleagues in the larger group, Waverley Writers, at the Library in Bondi Junction, also played a huge part in giving me the confidence to move forward with the novel and to finish it. Learning how to upload documents to Amazon and Ingram Spark (print-on-demand facility) have also been part of the journey towards publication and distribution. And now, educating myself on the notion of discoverability, which I am still working on.

January 2, 2020 0 comment

Writing

What I learnt from writing a novel…

Before You Start…

I don’t believe anyone just knows how to write a modern novel. There are theoretical questions before you even put pen to paper that a wannabe author needs to consider. Otherwise, you may end up with a hodgepodge of outpourings that no-one is tempted to spend the time reading. Perhaps, as they practise the skill, writers begin to be able to repeat the novel writing activity more and more easily. The following are some of the questions that you will need to answer to begin with.

What Genre is it?

One of the first things you need to know before you start to write a longer work is what genre you’re writing in. Otherwise, it’s likely you’ll never finish it, never feel satisfied with it, nor ever get it published. I’d begun my writing journey by pouring my heart out, about my life, about everything. This was a therapeutic exercise, if nothing else. Then I discovered that I didn’t really know what genre, if any, I was writing in.

Memoir or Autobiography?

Was it fiction, memoir or autobiography—or aspects of each? I’d come to realise that autobiography was usually written by famous people about their whole lives. Mine was closer to memoir, as it dealt with real events and real characters from my family, but with a restricted focus.

How to Write a Memoir

Through research I discovered that a memoir is a more modern genre than an autobiography. Furthermore…

(1 ) A memoir is only part of a life and has a certain focus. (2) It is written utilising creative writing devices, such as characterisation, scenes and events, dialogue, emotive language, and metaphor etc. (3) It has a structure and a dynamism that invite the reader to continue reading it. (4) A memoir is on average 50-60,000 words, that is, shorter than an average novel, (70,000 words) but usually longer than a novella (20-30,000 words). Autobiographies are often much longer, since they involve a lot of ‘telling’, that is, detailing of events in a logical sequence, and may contain photos as well.

Problems with Memoir Writing

There’s an innate problem with writing about your life, and that is that your relatives might not want to be shown up, warts and all, in a publication. Clive James got around that issue by using humour to recreate his childhood narrative, which is part of an autobiography, Unreliable Memoirshttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/398913.Unreliable_Memoirs

Benefits of Writing Fiction

When I turned to fiction, I found I could draw on family events and characters, while transforming them into something ‘other’, yet still ‘true’. To distance myself slightly from the events, I employed a subtly ironic tone, and a narrator who is inside, yet outside, at the same time.

After writing up the first draft of my story, and gaining insight from members of a small writing group made up of writers working on novels, I found myself on my own. No one was able to tell me, even experienced authors and editors, how to shape my work into this most enigmatic of objects—a novel.

Constraints of Writers’ Groups

Writers in groups tend to share short segments of their novels with colleagues. The best feedback one can offer in such a situation is grammatical corrections, or, perhaps, comments on the style of the writing. Positive or negative feedback rarely touches on ‘the big picture’ (of structure, voice, timing, and overall viewpoint), which is the most important and difficult domain of the novelist.

Short Story Writing

Creating a novel proved different from writing a short story, which I’d practised and blogged about here. Being a lot longer, at least eighty thousand words, a novel is more difficult to structure than a shorter genre. After researching novel writing, online and in books, I went back to the drawing board and tried different methods for transforming content (chapters, scenes, segments) into something readable by others.

Looking at the Whole

How do you hold an overview of the whole novel in your mind? This is essential, before you can tie ends together, deleting boring parts, or adding in the motifs, imagery and metaphors that act as signposts for the reader to enjoy the flow of the narrative. This is part of the question of narrative drive. Each chapter and part of the novel must lead logically or thematically on to the next part, for the reader to remain interested—driven!—to read until the end. As a writer, you will have to find your own method for holding the work ‘in the hand of your mind’, so to speak.

The method that I chose was, towards the second half of the process, to lay the chapters out on the kitchen table, from chapter one through to chapter forty, considering themes, arcs and overall ‘meaning’, after having discussed the latter with an narrative expert during a question-and-answer session.

December 27, 2019 0 comment

Writing

At the Swimming Pool

A Short Story

Jeanie is one of these inch worm types. One toe in; one toe back. The cold has always been alien. From birth, really. Even today, with the water temperature around twenty degrees. Babies are gurgling in mothers’ and fathers’ arms in the pool, for God’s sake.

Cassius with the lean and hungry look is descending the stairs. Italian background, perhaps? You can’t help but notice him. He’s wearing long black tights. Nothing else. She sees the bulge as he mounts the cement block. Has he come from the yoga centre up the top? The Breathing Space? That would explain the tights.

A shallow dive from his perch on high. Shallow depth at this end, mind. Heart-stopping … gasp…! The thin man’s head emerges intact, midway down the pool. No problem. She breathes out, a sigh of relief.

Breaking the ice is the problem for Jeanie. Rubbing water on her legs, her arms. It doesn’t help much. She flinches. Retreats, as a small child jumps in, splashing her.

Immersing the neck and the head is the worst. Actual pain. What a waste, if you’ve just washed and primped your hair. Still, it’s over once your hair is wet.

She knows … knows it all…. Enlightenment, even, doesn’t help.

Cassius is doing laps. Such style. Such graceful ease, the arms arced at the elbows, breathing in and out on either side.

She’s immersed now in delicious liquid. The whole body baptised. Is the water getting warmer? Or has her body adjusted to the cold? There are warm spots in the water. Do adults urinate in the pool? Babies and children, perhaps? She thinks of the French word for swimming pool: “piscine”.

Jeanie notices people. The matriarch with the white cotton hat. Standing in the water up to her neck. Watching. Greek background? German, perhaps? The middle-aged man with white hairs on his shoulders, like a bear. A new baby makes swimming motions, safe in its father’s grasp. Little arms and legs moving back and forth like a turtle. The French family, doing perfect Australian crawl.

Cassius is heading for the block again. Another shallow dive. Effortless. She breathes through it this time, knowing now that he knows how to avoid smashing his head on the rocky bottom. Crimson blood rising to the surface.

The white-hatted woman stares at him. Frozen. He meets her gaze. She points to the signage at the steps of the pool. Dozens of small icons. Jeanie follows the direction of the sharp finger. Hard to see from here. A dog with a slash across it? A diver with a red cross through it? Is there one for urinating? She thinks not.

‘Diving is not allowed in here,’ the woman scolds, ‘it says so on the sign.’

‘I know how to do it,’ he says, ‘without hurting myself. From years and years of practice.’

He’d chosen a space when it was clear of bodies too. No children in the way.

‘It is to protect others,’ she says. ‘Children … from getting hurt.’

Jeanie can see both sides, now. She’s seen teenagers jumping and skylarking from the high cliffs at the Surf Club side of the rock pool here. No one’s ever said anything to them. Not even the lifesavers.

As she treads water, half-wading, towards the end of the pool, she meets his gaze. Dark eyes. Intelligent. Brooding?

‘It’s just a case of fear,’ she murmurs, ‘about people hitting their heads…’

‘I don’t care,’ he says, ‘about other peoples’ fear.’ She flinches inwardly, desiring to know more. Perhaps he’s read that recent book she’s seen somewhere: The Subtle Art of Not giving a F*ck”. Four-and-a-half stars on Amazon. She might download the kindle version. Much cheaper, really.

‘I’ve recovered twice from brain damage,’ he lets slip out, ‘anyway.’

She wants to ask questions, find out more about him, but he’s off, probably sorry that the words have escaped his secret mouth. Smoothly tanned, his hair a little longer than the norm, but neat.

She watches as he springs out of the pool at the deep end. Lithe. Self possessed.

On the rocks that lead down to the water’s edge, Cassius sits in a lotus position, facing out to sea. The Pacific Ocean, not always, though, she thinks. Sometimes even antagonistic.

But today it is tranquil. Calm as its namesake.

In profile, like a sphinx, Cassius is lost in meditation. Upright, lean and spare, solar plexus taut, his body merged into head and bust. Toes sticking out at the end of legs that have disappeared.

What is going on inside of him? Inside his belly? Inside his brain? His mind?

She has read about the kundalini, a dormant energy inside all of us. When she googled it, she found the word ‘dharma’, ancient Buddhist teachings, and the expression:

‘The figure of a coiled serpent—a serpent goddess not of gross but subtle substance’.

Lovely words that have stuck in her mind. Words of poetry. Not to be confused with reality, of course.

Looking at the sphinx man, she imagines the snake uncoiling secretly within, tries to see the movement on the outside of the belly. Nothing. Not a move. Not a flicker. The surface hard and still.

Other words come to her now, slipping like small blue sea creatures out of the slumbering unconscious of her mind. Something about the thousand-petalled lotus at the crown of the head. Waves of light and energy coming from the lowest point in the body, to the seventh at the top.

‘And with each awakening, the psyche of the person will be transformed.’

She moves away to the other end of the pool. To the shallows. When she looks back to the rocks at the deep end of the pool, the sphinx-like man has gone.

~~~

The next day is Friday. There is nothing in the flat to eat. She hasn’t eaten breakfast, so by lunch time, Jeanie is ravenous. She dresses to go to lunch and then have a swim in the pool. She walks to the end of the beachfront and orders a late lunch at the restaurant on the esplanade above the pool. Expensive, but it can’t be helped. She will take half back for her flatmate.

She’d planned to go for a swim straight after lunch. But something leads her to look at the program for the Yoga classes in The Breathing Space, nextdoor to the restaurant.

The world is the great gymnasium, where we come to make ourselves strong, Swami Vivekenanda it reads out the front.

She walks into the yoga room. A lovely warmth engulfs her body. She finds a spot in the corner at the back of the class, places her beach towel on the floor. The sun is streaming in through glass windows. She takes off the tee shirt she’s worn over her swimsuit. She sits cross-legged, her palms facing up on her thighs.

Straight-backed and peaceful, she thinks of the sphinx-man at the pool.

The meditation teacher is a plump, motherly type in soft cotton harem pantaloons and a flowing jacket. Belly fat oozes over her waist. She exudes love, her voice soft and maternal.

It isn’t necessary to close your eyes, the matriarch is saying. Better to remain open, so as not to fall asleep. She feels spirit arise from deep in her belly.

A lit candle glows in front of Jeanie. There’s a strip of paper at her feet with a wisdom mantra on it: OM A RAPA TSA NA DHIH: ‘May the wisdom mind find you’ or something like that.

Her heart swells within her breast. She closes her eyes. She notes the video at her forehead, flickering on and off in tune with the woman’s voice. The colours are those of the rainbow, pink, green, orange, that flood the shapes in her head.

The serpent goddess of subtle substance slides into her mind.

The lulling voice of the teacher is telling them they can lie down now.

Ah, great! Horizontal.

She is talking about love now. About sending loving rays out towards friends, acquaintances, nemeses. Transmitting love direct from the heart.

Would the objects of her love receive the message? It doesn’t matter.

Will the sphinx-like man be the object of her transmitted love? Why not? If she saw him again, would she recognise him from the brief encounter at the pool? It matters not. The love is all that matters.

Perhaps it was he who had brought her here. She never would have thought of coming, otherwise.

Was he real, or was he an illusion, like so much about life and love?

One foot in front of the other; no need to hurry; try to live in the present time, brings her back to the swimming pool and to her inch-worm approach to life. And to the Sphynx-like mystery man who seemed to ratify her way.

This story was first published on Denise Baer’s blog: (http://baerbookspress.com/), along with other song theme-based stories.

November 5, 2019 0 comment

Memoir Writing

Candidly Yours…

In search of a voice…

My writing started out as therapy for a polarised—to be explained later on—childhood. My own background had been stamped indelibly by my not having had a voice within the extended family I was born into. En famille, others had gorged themselves on yackety-yak, thereby filling the void left by my poor little mute tongue….

I wasn’t born without a tongue, so why couldn’t I waggle it?

She’s just shy, they said. There was no ear to lambaste in retort; clever rhetoric evaded my still larynx.

As soon as adolescence got off to its self-loathing, sex obsessed start, I naturally turned to psychology for answers. My elder brother had claimed for himself the super intelligence niche; the second brother was our cowboy clown; my little sisters were clever and pretty. I continued to hide my light under a bushel, which I thought had something to do with native flora; I shared a love of nature with my funny brother Donny.

I’d begun to read Gothic novels about spooks and mysteries, like Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and others. Mum chided me for terrorising myself at night, but I persisted. My scorpionic temperament was pulling me into dark places. But it was the elder James brother, William, one of the early brand of modern psychologists, whom I would ultimately emulate in my search for a raison d’être. Freud, Carl Jung and Fritz Perle also became friendly mentors.

There were many circumferences, I learned, but only one centre. I needed to explore the netherlands of the psyche in my search for self.

Psychology calling…

Out of the blue, having escaped my family home, a miracle occurred: I started to talk. But friends in the outside world blocked their ears to the tales of woe that poured forth. They couldn’t empathise with my “Experiences of an Empath in an Uncanny Urban Jungle“. In any case, they all came from diametrically opposed, maybe just as difficult, perhaps even more so, backgrounds.

I was on my own, like a snail carrying a tightly curled shell of horrors on its back.

Eventually, I would seek professional help, find someone who would listen to me. At a price. The obvious answer was, for now, to write about it.

Writing about self…

Starting out from this point of view, my writing naturally lent itself to autobiographical-type genres. I did courses on Life Story Writing, on Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction, all of which helped me a little with grammar, style and structure, if nothing else.

Another problem with writing about the past, is that it can turn out to be as boring as possum piss on a picnic. All those I’s, me’s and my’s can sound a tad narcissistic. Okay, I own up to possessing, like all around me, a dash of self-loving, but it boils down to a question of aesthetics and degree.

Like Sisyphus, I found myself on my own, once again. Researching creative non-fiction and memoir; practising writing it.

Life gets in the way…

Full-time studies, teaching, getting married and having children, these put writing on the back-burner. Of course, all of that is excuses. If I’d really wanted to, and had faced my fears of failure early on, who knows….

I had been trying to get my novel ready for publication, on and off, for quite a while. The writing had improved greatly over time, but the goal of finding an agent or a publisher had remained elusive. Recently, I had come to the realisation that what I needed was a good editor. This was what my writers group buddies were doing. Another failed move on my part. In retrospect, how do you find that peculiar beast—a good editor?

Fear of exposure…

My first attempts to create a readable structure that fitted in with the needs of publishing houses were a dismal failure. Later on I completed a degree in Professional Writing at university and I learnt about narrative structure and creative features, point of view, dialogue and voice. Through feedback sessions in student groups, my writing improved bit by bit. Some of my teachers and tutors were well established writers, and gave me invaluable insights into the craft.

However, I came to realise one day, just as I was about to send in my memoir to an agent, that I might not want my family and self exposed in this way.

So I set about turning the memoir into fiction. There were already some fictional elements, but I wanted to fictionalise the work even more. And to include, in line with creative non-fiction dictums, credible dialogue; this, I found, difficult to do within a memoir.

Turning the memoir into fiction meant that it became a different beast: a hybrid structure, retaining parts of the memoir, with more fictional pieces; these did not always fit in, unfortunately, with the events and actions of the storyline. I was on my own, once again.

A novel in search of a plot…

According to one editor, the writing was good, but it lacked a consistent point of view and a solid plot line. So this is where I was at: going back to the drawing board to re-fashion the whole mess, and to recreate an authentic narrative out of the ashes. This meant changing setting, disguising characters, omitting the more obvious and sometimes boring ‘real bits’ behind the story, and creating natural sounding dialogue.

And finding an authentic voice.

What I discovered was that, in writing a fictional work based on my background, the story had been transformed into a very different narrative. In my case, it became a similar, yet polarised version of the real story. In psychological terms, this would have been viewed by, say Freud or by Carl Jung, as a sort of ‘sublimation’ of the author’s narrative.

Finding a new word for what I needed…

What I didn’t know at the time, was that a ‘manuscript assessor’, who just looks at a few pages and a synopsis, and chats with you, would be much more valuable and less costly for me, than a full-blown editor. I was only just up to the second draft and still had no idea where I was going with this work. I was lucky enough to find a good one. I was on my way….

Now I’m back to exploring memoir writing once again.

October 23, 2019 9 comments