What do you want to know - maybe thats the place to start...

Check out the discussion on Justine larbalestier's Blog today about her take on the advice to 'write what you know'. Being told this when I was a youngster, when I was desperate to be a writer but thought my chances of achieving this were poor, was almost completely dream crushing. Books were full of daring, cunning, wild adventures. Full of intense gripping experiences and unexpected twists. I was a middle class teen prone to book reading, time with my family and study. My wildness was pretty tame. The page would be mostly blank if i wrote what I knew. The write what you know advice crushed my fragile ambition for years. I went to university, then to work, then back to university, got married bought a house and had children; common experiences, the only possible resulting book of which would be a brilliant antidote to insomnia. But of course, with age comes the lovely wisdom of 'sod it' which says advice can be ignored. John Marsden says stories come from imagination and experience, but as Ms Larbalestier reminds us, experience can be borrowed by way of research. If my life is full of everyday chores and the humdrum minutiae of keeping home and family functioning then there is nothing to stop me researching other existences. The viking era interested me and with my sparking idea of how would a 21st century boy cope if thrust into the violent world of the vikings, I found out how the vikings lived through research and wrote 'Jack the Viking'. Ultimately the core of the story is Jack's emotional journey and transformation and these are brought to life by mining my own emotional experience. So yes I write what I know but it's the knowledge that comes from answering questions like 'what would I do if I was in this position' and 'what are the details of this position?' I didn't know I knew these things before I started writing, I worked them out and coloured them in as I went along. I wasn't writing what I knew, I was writing down my discoveries, my answers to questions I thought were interesting. So if you worry about having to 'write what you know' - DON'T. What do you want to know - maybe that's the place to start.

Is today's publishing market a bit like the tv reality show Wipeout?

Happy - people are saying nice things about my book The Were-Nana. Sad - publishing markets seem to be downsizing. I guess its just an economic reality. Sometimes i think wistfully of what it might have been like to be writing twenty or thirty years ago when publishers became more involved with their writer's careers, patiently nurturing them and helping them along. They were probably more willing to take a risk back then too. But then if I was writing back then I have to remember I'd probably be doing it long hand and I wouldn't have some of the excellent technology and groovy accessories that are available to us today. No time is the best time or the worst time. Its just 'how it is' right now and whatever the circumstances, the plain truth is I'm a writer. If I don't find a way to move forward in this environment I may as well give up. But I don't want to give up so I'll be thinking my way through the current setbacks and difficulties and hopefully coming up with some strategies for keeping my sanity and my sense of humour (an essential tool in the writers tool kit) intact. And maybe i'll also find a way to make the most of the way things are now.

And thank you Fifi for your very kind words of encouragement. They made a big difference.

Yes that sentence is like poetry but IT HAS TO GO...

As well as the ability to objectively recognize when part of your story sucks there are some other fairly important weapons in the writers arsenal (I have to say I like that word despite the fact I am a peace loving person). Arsenal (sorry i just had to say it again and once more for good time) arsenal. Okay I'm good for now. So in addition to acknowledging the bad stuff, it is also handy to recognize the really good stuff that just doesn't belong. Sometimes the prettiest, most elegant, brilliant use of words isn't right. You know you love that sentence but everytime you read over it, it sticks out like a broken leg in a cast. Recognizing its a problem is the first skill but the even greater skill rests in being able to rip that sentence right out. What you take out can be as important as what you leave in. At the beginning of my writing career everything stayed in. Editing was a strange act that other people did behind closed doors. Worse still, I didn't need to edit. I'd worked too hard on those words to ditch any of them. Luckily things changed. The story rules. If the words don't tell the story, if they aren't relevant, or don't contribute they shouldn't be there. If they don't tell you something about the setting, or the characters what is their purpose? To successfully use these tools you have to have a clear vision about your story and your characters. Even if you don't have every detail mapped out before you start writing, you should be in control. If you have clarity and control of your story then editing will be fairly straightforward.

I stayed up late Saturday night watching NZ competitiors do their stuff at the Olympics. I felt for Mahe Drysdale getting pipped by two other rowers in the final 500m of his race. He got a bronze medal but deserves a gold medal for giving it his all despite the circumstances and then refusing to blame those circumstances for the outcome. It seems cruel that the product of years of training is decided in a few minutes at a specific point in time. I guess it is the same for all competitors but luck certainly plays a part. Whatever the results i'm proud to be a Kiwi and respect all of NZ's sportsmen and women for their dedication and their efforts. We do pretty well for a small country. Its very motivating.

Jack Sequel and the Writer's Tool-kit...

I'm at that point in my WIP when I am a third of the way through writing the first draft and I can't believe I will ever finish this sucker. I've finished novels before and I know I will most likely finish this one too but its hard to imagine right now. Its like knitting a fancy sweater with three cables across the front where the chance of dropping a stitch is high. Can I bring all the threads of the story together in a satisfying way? That is the plan and I just need to keep at it.

I do not go through a lot of drafts, finishing the story first and then revising again and again. I tend to fix as I go which probably goes part of the way to explaining why I am a little slower at writing compared with some of my peers. So at least when I do make it to the end I will not have a long period of rewriting ahead (unless some prospective publisher demands it). Having said that, my last novel (the sequel to Jack the Viking) took a looooonnngg time to write because twice before i'd even got to the end of the story I ripped out a decent chunk of words and started again from about a quarter of the way in (first 10,000 words, the second time around 20,000). Then when it was complete I did the edit on the first novel which meant more changes to the sequel. This may have cured me of writing series, trilogies or sequels ever again. I would be more inclined to write them if the story came to me as a two- or three-parter in the first place. Still, i would never say never to anything cos thats just silly. I does not like to eat my words, especially that 'never' word - it is not tasty. It was also comforting to know I could look criticly enough at my own work to see when it was going wrong (with a little help from a friend at one point) and to be able to fix it. These are important tools in the tool kit of the writer and I'm thrilled i've been able to add them to mine.