Tag Archives: Writing

On NaNoWriMo, withdrawing, and returning to old projects

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I’ve had a bit pretty good relationship with National Novel Writing Month and been pretty committed to it over the years. I’ve at least started every year since 2004, even though I’ve only completed it twice. I think I will always make an attempt or throw my hat in the ring in some form every year, because it’s always been the camaraderie, excitement and motivation that draws me too it rather than the format, the duration or the word count. I like writing consistently with lots of people over the month.

San Diego Comic-Con 2011 - Impact Wrestling ringNaNoWriMo is always a bit contentious amongst writers and there are many debates often had about how useful it is, but I feel like it may work for some and not for others and there’s no single path for writers and their methods, so in some sense the debates are often redundant.

But NaNo was a bit different for me this year. Perhaps it’s studying Creative Writing at uni, being on break, or a number of other factors, but writing was not the problem for the first time. It wasn’t time or my ability to get down a lot of words, but the story kind of fell flat, so despite being well ahead of my word count, I pulled the plug on day 4, the same day I decided to withdraw from the City2Sea due to a knee injury and focus on other things.

Both training for a long-distance running race and attempting NaNoWriMo require intensive input so perhaps it was not the best thing to do after completing my first year of uni, so now my attention is turning to the other things on my list and another writing project that keeps grabbing my attention.

It was Jodi Cleghorn, my editor for a number of short stories included in the eMergent anthologies, that led me in that direction over a late breakfast. NaNoWriMo is not a waste of time for me because it’s been the 2010 NaNoWriMo novel that keeps coming back to me.

I keep trying new formats for it, new mediums etc. but despite still being unsure if it’s a serial, a series of short stories, a novella, a novel or a script, or whatever it ends up being, the characters, and the story keeps holding my attention.

So I’m going to try some new things, some less structured writing, and just dabble with scenes, with plotting, and play with the characters for the next few months and see how that goes, especially in November and see if I can still make use of the month.

Launch of the Geek Mook

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I’m very excited for the upcoming launch of Vignette Press’ latest mook (magazine-book), the Geek Mook. It features writing to do with all things geeky from writers unveiling their inner geeks, and geeks finding their writing voice. My piece ‘Make the rich tap out: the class politics of professional wrestling’ is my (not so serious) attempt to justify my geeky obsession with wrestling. It’s a piece I’m pretty proud of.

I’m also very excited because I will doing a reading from my piece on the night – in costume! I’ll be donning my bolshi wrestling persona, red tights and all. Other contributors will be wearing dressing in the theme of their pieces and others are encouraging to dress as geeky as possible.

It’s on Friday the 13th from 6pm at the Bella Union Bar in Trades Hall on the corner of Lygon and Victoria Streets in Melbourne. It would be great to see some familiar faces there.

Does slam in Australia have a disinclination to anger and the critical?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about writing process lately and how to transfer ideas, images, feelings into words and finding the right medium. The point of blogging about this is to help deconstruct some of it in the hope of breaking out of old habits and writing what is right in the right medium.

Sam Cooney’s piece in The Emerging Writer goes into this struggle a bit, when writing about the real world and how hard it is to do it justice in words, and I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit.

A few days ago I was asking people to leave comments on how they approach the process. Please keep telling your own creative stories. I love to read them. Process is a boring word. It makes it sound like a mechanical automatic kind of thing, but it really is something you have to allow to be organic, like transcribing a dance in your head. I have multiple ideas and a few mediums I’m working in. I am no longer just a prose writer, but a poet, spoken word artist, blogger and non-fiction writer. This opens me up to using a variety of ways to tell a story, get across a thought or image, but sometimes it can be restricting, like thinking I need to write a spoken word piece and finding an idea to shove into that container when it might not fit. Or an idea that could very well fit, but assumptions and tropes of that mode of writing holds me back

Which brings me to another thought I’ve been having about slam poetry, and spoken word. One of the first things that I loved about being able to perform poetry and then writing it for performance was that I could express anger. Some people cringe at anger, look down upon it as an unhealthy emotion, but I actually love it. I love the rant also. And although I may have missed the mark, made a few mistakes etc, when I first started playing with it, it’s an area I want to explore further. In the space of open mic and the more traditional poetry nights, the content is fine. You can be dark and it can feel like you don’t have to ‘please’ people in the same way that slam does.

Does slam in Australia have a predisposition the positive and inspirational? I know that’s not the worst thing in the world until you consider it’s opposite. Does slam in Australia have a disinclination to the angry or critical? I know it is not really meant to be a competition but often that pressure and appealing to the audience gets the better of you. People are looking for the funny, the uplifting, positive, inspiration, that beautiful inspiration line, simile or metaphor that gets the audience clicking fingers. I say Slam in Australia because American poets like Ken Arkind seem to be articulating anger so beautifully and get the right reaction. Maybe I just haven’t hit the mark yet.

Anger isn’t meant to be negative. It’s about working out what you want to get rid of in order to build something new. It’s cathartic. And I have something I want to write, so I could do it, and see what comes up.

It’s fine to focus on the audience, to write for them, for it not to be self-indulgent, but sometimes it can be a barrier to reaching some of the people in the audience. My favourite moment from a slam was after performing ‘Unless You’re Free’ at Slamalamadingdong one night and a stranger came up to me and thanked me because he’d just quit his ‘shitty job’ and he related to the poem. Sometimes things like that matter much more than the score.

The Emerging Writers’ Festival as an interstitial space

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The Emerging Writers’ Festival is an immersive experience. It fits a concept one of my creative writing tutors talked about in first semester – interstitial spaces; physical or mental spaces between your usual routine. Other festivals in the city you live in, such as the Melbourne Writers Festival, for me, seem like casual disparate tastes of separate events, where as EWF feels more like a festival you’d travel away for, like the Byron Bay Writers Festival. EWF seduces you into allowing your normal routine to recede into the background for the eleven or so days it rises out of the ground and asserts itself into Melbourne’s cultural life and cultural lives.

It’s hard to explain, but I feel like EWF occupies your mind whilst you occupy the events physically. It changes your mindset, focuses you on writing with all your senses until you forget about the real world, just for a little bit. Sometimes I think writers need to do that. There’s all this pressure not to take writing so seriously, especially if you’re not being paid for it, to treat it as an added extra if there’s more time, but the conversations and thoughts thrown up in the air for the last two weeks have cut against all of that.

I’m not usually a social person and it takes a lot of effort to push out of that, but EWF makes that easy too. I have pushed myself to really experience the whole thing this year, to recalibrate my creative bearings, and stick my hand up for as much as possible. And it’s heartening to get the sense that these efforts do not go unnoticed and I’ve felt very welcome over the last few years. Outgoing Director, Lisa Dempster and others have mentioned a few times that regular fixtures of the festival earn greater opportunities, and that’s true even if you are not on staff or an artist. That barrier between those on the stage and those in the audience is so blurred that it can be hard to tell. And people like me often feel like they have a role in creating the experience as much as consuming it themselves.

Aside from the ecstatic joy of seeing my name in print in The Emerging Writer, some of the more informal conversations have been the most rewarding and clarifying.

Oh and the reading I have collected!

The question now becomes what to do with it all. How do you emerge from The Emerging Writers’ Festival? There can be a bit of fatigue and a feeling of disorientation akin to emerging out of a movie theatre into the sun. And all of the creative energy can be so full on that it’s hard to focus on the next few steps to use it all.

One idea is to embrace our inner geek as Meg Mundell did, and write a list and create a bit of a plan, but also I’d like to see that there’s less of a distinction between the short time in the festival and the time outside of it. A lot of people I chatted to over the festival, I hadn’t seen since the year before and I’d like to keep connected over the next year. The online writing website set-up by the festival is a good step in that direction where we are seeing EWF becoming less of this annual festival and more of a full-time writers hub and organisation that rivals a lot of the established organisations. I would totally like to become a ‘member’ of EWF like people might become members of Victorian Writers or Australian Poetry.

But first, I have a fucking philosophy essay to after a nice sleep in tomorrow morning…

Writers Reborn: EWF, writers’ festivals, and the benefits of being around other writers

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After a hectic weekend at the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s Town Hall Conference, it is now the business end of writing, in the time I have between other amazing sessions and events yet to follow. Assignments standing in my way aside, the end of Semester and the festival gives me a great launching pad to actually do this, to put it all into practice. That’s what the festival is about.

It’s not about teaching you to write or writing for you, it’s for giving you some tools, submerging you in the amniotic fluid of writerly nourishment and being reborn each year as a recharged writer. I’m working on the metaphor, but it goes something like that.

People have asked – about writing courses as well – what you get out of writing festivals, and I suppose for a lot of people, specific questions, concerns are clarified about the industry, publishing, dealing with editors and agents, and technology etc. but for me and probably for others, the benefits I got out of particular sessions cannot be pin-pointed. It was hearing other writers talk about the paths they came from (even if I might go down that same path) and talking about process, and weighty floaty things like inspiration.

I discovered writers similar to my interests in terms of politics and creatively, like Ali Alizadeh. I’m much more interested in page poetry this year, am getting the hang of it from uni, and so was curious to hear more about that. I also got to meet and chat to Emily Maguire, Amy Espeseth, who is publishing a piece of mine about professional wrestling in the upcoming Geek Mook, and her mentor Tony Birch, who I came across at uni this year as well. Their mentoring relationship was discussed in a fascinating one on one session that had me thinking about my own organic mentors that don’t go by that name.

The festival for me has always been about fulfilling a kind of emotional need of being around writers and being around people who don’t think what I do is useless or crazy. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m studying Creative Writing now, to get that all year round. And now being around writers that align, at least broadly, with my ideas of politics, craft, and publishing aims is another level added onto that.

It was also incredibly reassuring to see The Emerging Writer, the book out of the festival, plugged and sold and referred back to throughout the weekend, not least because I have a piece in it. One of the cool moments was being at the bookstore and seeing a complete stranger thumb through it and buy it, knowing I had something in it. That’s the kind of ego highlight, I suppose.

But there is still more to go! I’ve got a whole lot of sessions including the Blogging Masterclass, the launch of The Emerging Writer and the EWF Open Mic and Page Parlour where I will be hosting a table of Melbourne Spoken Word books and CDs from the scene as MelbourneSpokenWord.com. Somewhere between essays about post-modernism, creative process and cinema studies, I will be sure to have more things to reflect on and blog about.

Grand Literary Goals for 2012

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Dart It UpThe start of 2012, as with the start of any new year, is a time for fresh starts, resolutions, goals, plans and all that. Despite the arbitrary nature of changing year, there seems to be a psychological impact which spurs on a change in our motivation. For me, it was most welcome, trying to pull myself out of a rut and a crisis in confidence, especially toward writing, but life in general.

So it’s exciting to see so many literary bloggers embracing the new year, setting goals, plans for 2012, and setting in stone writing projects. And for some of us, the main goal is change our everyday habits, the way we spend our time, and if we can change that, it seems possible to fit in everything.

2012 brings some big changes for me in my life, and some are scary, undecided and unpredictable. And there’s a good chance it could all fail. I hope not. I try not to think about it. But it could. I am definitely going to university to study writing in 2012. That is definite. What isn’t definite is where I’m going. I’m enrolled into Creative Arts at La Trobe, but there’s a good chance I could get into two other courses at RMIT, which I would much prefer.

With this, comes changes in work and income, that I have no idea about. Whether I can get AusStudy, will have to find casual work, is all up in the air, and puts into question time and the ability to dedicate to the more important things, like writing, reading and revolutionary socialism. So with this in mind, and not knowing quite what uni will throw at me yet, my goals may be vague in sections and subject to change.

Writing

  • Write creatively, usually fiction or poetry, at least weekly, if not more
  • Complete kind-of-secret major long fiction project for release in first half of 2012 (more details soon)
  • Pitch more non-fiction op-ed type pieces, articles etc.
  • Submit at least one short story every two months

Spoken word

  • Organise and host two special spoken word gigs in 2012. I’ve got the ideas. Just need to put them in motion
  • Organise my own solo show even if I don’t get features in 2012
  • Memorise more poems
  • More spoken word videos, of other poets as well
  • Possible release of text, audio and/or visual book, ebook, DVD and/or CD

Reading

  • Finish reading at least one book a month
  • Read every issue of Overland
  • Read a short story a week
  • Reading group on Literature and Revolution by Leon Trotsky
  • Read in preparation for socialist meetings, educationals and conferences

The Blog

  • More book reviews (to fit into the focus on reading more)
  • A few more interviews with other writers
  • Continue posting poetry, videos, photos and other types of content
  • Blog about the Emerging Writers’ Festival
  • Experiment with video interviews more. Would people watch these?
  • Cultivate discussion and feedback, even if it’s not in the comments section

There’s a kind of focus on education and reading, with my writing type projects remaining modest for the most part, focussing on one major writing project, outside of the poetry and short fiction.

These goals are of course subject to change, and possible suspension, especially if some kind of political event demands my attention. I hope by putting these goals online and in the public eye, that I’m held to some account to continue reading and writing regularly, to complete my projects, aim for publication and continue to publish stuff on this blog.

Photo By Hidinhumiliation

Questioning the state of literary blogging in Australia

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Book bloggingLike my own humble blog, the life and noise the literary blogging scene in Australia makes varies from times of excitement to relative silence. There are some periods where there are scores of bloggers offering their thoughts on the publishing industry, festivals, their writing process, things like NaNoWriMo – and other times, we seem to have little to say about anything. And it can heap on itself, because one blogger can inspire others, but also a quiet blogosphere leaves us with nothing to respond to. It’s a collaborative effort.

I feel like we’re in one of those periods now. Perhaps it’s post-NaNo funk, but a lot of writer-bloggers I know didn’t even do NaNoWriMo. It could be the end of the year. Or it could be there’s nothing to really talk about. Some of the spurts in lit blogging were inspired by debates and thoughts around digital publishing, events like the Emerging Writers’ Festival and the swathe of issues and questions arising out of that. More diligent bloggers or group blogs seem to produce things all year round, including reviews and interviews, seeking out content rather than just responding.

The launch of the new Crikey lit-blog, Liticism by Bethanie Blanchard gives me hope. With the new blog on the scene, and Angela Meyer reinvigorating her blog, LiteraryMinded at her own address, I’m hoping for discussion to spur me on to think and discuss my own writing and the issues I’m grappling with like the role of an editor especially when self-publishing. Don’t get me wrong, reviews and interviews have their place, but I can’t help but want more. I don’t read all reviews in my RSS feed. I often skip over them. I think I’m looking for questions or debate.

Perhaps this is just my perception, the blogs I’m reading etc. but I’m looking for a re-invigoration, probably because talking about writing usually leads me to actually do some writing (primarily fiction), because I’m thinking about it, and I’m in the right mode of thought, I guess. Whether this be through an issue, an event or whatever, I’m not sure. Perhaps this could be the start of a discussion.

What are the issues, questions, debates, concerns, etc. of the literary world at the moment?

New priorities, upcoming blog posts and book winners

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As the dust of NaNoWriMo settles, and I finally get a chance to breathe after the protests outside the Labor Party’s national conference, I thought I’d pay some attention again to the blog in a hope to hone my renewed enthusiasm for writing as well as political activity and education.

Every once and a while, I find enough energy to drag myself out of ruts of laziness with a desire to organise myself better, write and submit more as well as dedicate myself to the cause of building a revolutionary movement and fighting to overthrow capitalism. As one of my recent posts points out, sometimes these two priorities are in conflict with each other and I need to put writing aside in order to focus on activism, but now I feel like there’s a bit of room to breathe.

So this month, I hope to do the writing projects on the table, such as preparing the suite of poems for 3CR’s spoken word radio show with Santo Cazatti, my article for EWF’s The Reader, as well as work on my web serial, Robbin’ Toorak, and some poems and short stories.

Coming up on the blog is a bit about why I’m writing Robbin’ Toorak as a web serial, a post on the protests outside the ALP conference with a video, and another book giveaway.

Finally, I’d like to announce the winners of the Ocean of Blood giveaway. The runner-up, and the winner of a copy of Ocean of Blood by Darren Shan is Toni Rakestraw. And the winner, who will receive a copy of Ocean of Blood as well as a copy of the first book, Birth of a Killer is Michaela Sanderson. I’ll be in contact with the winners regarding postal details in the next day or so.

Can't writing be fun? Wet blankets and NaNoWriMo

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Night time during Day Eight of NaNoWriMo and I’ve got no words. Enthusiasm is waning. I should be ploughing ahead. I like my story, I’ve got a nice lead, yet the doubts are beginning to set in. Some of it is the usual doubts that come every year with Week Two, when the dust of excitement settles and you realize you still have a fuck load to write.

But then there’s the serious voice of reason in my ear, sewing doubts. I feel like the whole world is telling me: “Stop! Writing isn’t meant to be fun! You’re not taking it seriously.” Not exactly like that. I’m kind of overreacting but in an effort to get out all my doubts, I’m going to go with it.

There was a lot of talk on blogs since it started, which I responded to kind of last week, countering the claim that NaNoWriMo is silly and if you really want to be a writer you need to realise it’s a long and boring process, and you have to edit a thousand million times, and it’s not meant to be fun. It’s a job. No fun!

Again, overreacting, and I do know that there is work beyond November. But then a friend tells me that creative writing teachers apparently hate NaNoWriMo because it teaches bad habits (like having fun) and that you end up not finishing your projects, which looking back at my last few novels, is kind of true…but I’m intending to get to it…one day (oh fuck).

There’s truth to what they’re saying, which is why the doubts are setting in, but I can’t help but feel resentful, because I’m having fun writing, like I do each November. And sure I like the competitiveness, writing in ridiculous scenes that probably won’t make it any serious rewrite. And now people are telling me I have to have a life, that I need to take writing seriously and that it’s a long hard slog.

Wet blankets, I say! It seems that all this doubt is only getting in the way of writing, but it does have me thinking how to get the rest of it done beyond November, if I’m going to work on it beyond and how I’m going to make the time. Probably not the things I need to be thinking about now.

Enlighten me dear writers and bloggerati.

Lessons from NaNoWriMo Day Four: Prioritizing writing and focusing on one project

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Into Day Four of NaNoWriMo and I’m continuing to maintain the buffer I created on Day One by hitting the daily quota of 1,667 words or a little bit more. I passed 12,000 words this morning which is exciting but this post isn’t just a report of my mammoth word count, which would make for a boring and self-centred post.

What I was surprised by was my change to my routine over the past three days. With work in the afternoon, in order to reach my daily goals, I have had to get up early to write. Doing this on the first day surprised me enough but I didn’t expect it to continue. Today was a bit slower than the previous days but it is a reminder about what it takes to get writing done.

It’s a timeless lesson and hardly original, but writers often need a reminder. And NaNo is that annual reminder for me. If I prioritise writing, make time for writing, I am more productive. I didn’t fuck around on Facebook or Twitter as much. I haven’t even played PlayStation at all in November. Go me! I’m not saying don’t play video games, just do it after writing, if you so wish. But for me, actually waking up at a decent time and not sleeping in or putting off writing is a major improvement.

And I’m not sure it’s just the camaraderie and deadline with NaNoWriMo that makes me get up to write each morning. I think waking up with one project in mind is seriously motivating and it makes it harder to not get confused about what I have to work on today. The novel is already begun and I just need to add to it. I need more of this one-project focus.

See my bio on the left side? I procrastinate by changing it too much but for the last year or so it’s included: “He is currently working on a collection of short stories entitled Capital Comes Dripping.” It’s Bullshit with a capital B. Aside from working on a short story or two here or there for other anthologies (*ahem* on your right), that may end up in a future collection, working on new stories, editing old ones, submitting and all that has kind of fallen by the way side.

The point of putting it under the banner of collection was to focus on it as one project, but I just don’t do that. It’s just meant I’ve woken up in the morning with no clear idea what to do next, what story in that imaginary collection I’m supposed to be working on. It’s confusing, really, and just meant that there’s a heap of stories doing nothing that need editing or submitting.

In this light, longer projects have a distinct advantage. But that shouldn’t let short stories off the hook. It’s something to work after NaNoWriMo then and a lesson for today!