Just keep swimming...

So I'm hanging in there with the whole twitter thing at the moment, although I've not had much success with twitter pitching. In some respects I am sticking with it because I am a little in love with hashtags. If facebook posts can lack nuance, twitter makes up for this in spades with the hashtag concept. And the 140 character limit is excellent mental gymnastics and enormous fun to experiment with. The 'how to say more with less' lesson is almost better than sudoku. Twitter is craft and craftiness all in one, and a chance to meet a whole new tribe of people from around the globe.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, three boxes of books, submitted for the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults (please let there be an acronym), arrived this past week. All sorts of goodness lay therein and I have already been making myself acquainted with the contents and started reading, digesting, and judging.

And I have finally signed off on the content for the next picture book, Fuzzy Doodle, checked out the cover art (HB and PB - be still my beating heart), and received print run info. Every step closer generates another little frisson of excitement and I cannot wait to show you how it looks. It has all taken a bit longer than expected cos reasons so I probably won't be able to give you a peek till 2016. Soz about this.

I also got my first school booking for 2016 which was a bit of a buzz. Next year is slowly taking shape and it's a pretty cool shape so far.

And because it's the end of the year here is a handy dandy list for you to take away and digest

re School Visits and Talks
1) Be someone who is good to work with. It is a pretty awesome compliment to get invited back somewhere because they enjoyed working with you/ having you in their school the first time. Schools and expectations do vary widely, so I have learned to be adaptable
2) Add value - for me it's about thinking what creative writing skill(s) I can demonstrate to the age group in the time available. Sometimes it's revealing a cool aspect about books/reading they might not have considered before. I ALWAYS try and send my audience away with more than they arrived with
3) Value your own expertise, the time you put in to preparation, and the day or so it takes to recover afterwards. Talking and interacting and thinking on my feet with a large group of strangers often gives me a serious people hangover. I've come to respect this and give myself space, when possible, between engagements.
4) Be yourself. Seriously! Being yourself is exhausting enough - being someone else is just insane. And don't try to use whatever schtick someone else uses as part of their talk. Find the things that work in with your own set of skills. But don't be a schtick-free zone either. Over the years I have assembled a set of strategies, a range of talks with exercises that cover different aspects of creative writing, set examples to illustrate my points, and some jokiness. I am always looking at ways to enhance what I already have and ways of identifying what works best with which crowd. I try to use 20 minute chunks where possible to reflect the average attention span...
5) Don't beat yourself up if it doesn't go well. I don't always get it right. Sometimes I misread the crowd or I'm the last session at the end of a long day, or my audience is different to what I expected or it's widely ranging mixed age groups which means it's near impossible to cater to everyone in the group. I can feel the flatness when things aren't working and sometimes I'm able to effect a change that works. Don't give up. Sometimes the audience is quiet and unresponsive and the organiser will turn around at the end of the session and say 'I've never seen them so animated,'  You don't know what their normal is. And sometimes the understanding and digestion of your material is invisible to you. If you have come in with the aim of adding value, chances are high that you have.
6) Take care of yourself. Not too much self-flagellation, and treating yourself to a bit of a reward afterwards is always good. I usually save the wine and the chocolate till I get home though ;)


re Hanging in there
Like the object in your rear view mirror, the realities of the publishing world are often nothing like you anticipated. This becomes interesting when you try to shoe horn all the plans you made based on your expectations, into the real unfolding of events. And like the price of a house for sale, no one really wants to give you a specifics on what your time, skills and efforts are worth least you use this information against them at a later date. Clarity on the subject is like the elusive word on the tip of your tongue. Add to all this the seesawing fortunes of books over the last 7 years, the 2008 financial slump, the rise of e-books, and the retrenchment of various publishers and general undervaluing of arts and culture in this fair country and no one would blame you for feeling a bit glum about it all. So how do you keep body and soul together in the face of all of this?

1) Find your tribe and become a part of it. When 'nothing' is happening for you, your tribal membership will remind you who you are and why you do this. You will appreciate that the difficulties of the industry are not yours alone but are shared by us all. You will have access to information and understanding, knowledge, advice and camaraderie. That is the good oil right there.

2) Be a whale shark and keep going, cos otherwise there will be no fresh water over your gills and you will die. Seriously, you either keep going or you don't. Opportunities lurk in the weirdest places and like to jump out and yell surprise when you are least expecting it. If you stop, then those opportunities will never get their chance. If you would like to keep being a writer, then keep being a writer. Sometimes it will seem like there is no prize for keeping going. Those are the times when you batten down the hatches, wear down the gilt on any previous prizes, provide your own rewards for hanging in there and eat into those carefully stored reserves of hope you laid down in the good times. Make sure you put aside some hope when you have that excess of it.

3) Investigate other people's art - read, go to art galleries, movies, binge watch a well written/crafted tv series. Or try your hand at a different discipline or learn a new skill. Wine making and cooking with chocolate are excellent choices here. You should always keep your creative soul well-stocked, but sometimes it's extra nice to have a good wallow. And exploring something you haven't tried before is especially good in dark times, cos that shiny fresh newness of something completely different can rub off.

4)  Don't fall into the trap of thinking you have to change what you do, or the way you do it because you must have been doing it wrong if nothing is happening. If you feel it's wrong, then change by all means. Or if you have always wanted to branch out or try different styles or genre then this can be the perfect time to do it. But if you feel that what you write and the way you write it says what you want to say, stick with it. When things go awry or just don't go at all, staying true to yourself is more important than ever.

5) Be ambitious - keep pushing at the forward edge of your work. Explore more, dare more, experiment more. Cos, man that stuff can be so exciting, energising and motivating. And chances are you might push through to something brilliant

re A New Year

1) Avoid the same old, same old - plan for something creatively fun, like going to a new show, exhibition, or festival. Or organise a writer's weekend away, or book in for a class or workshop.

2) Give yourself a deadline on one work. Be realistic, plan towards it, and then achieve it. Reward yourself when you make your deadline. Make a plan for what you will do with the finished work (and I mean an edited polished finished work, not the first draft), whether it is entering it in a competition, submitting it to an agent or publisher or getting it professionally edited, booktracking it or making it available yourself as an e-book or printed version.

3) Try entering or applying for something. Whether your application or entry is successful or not, entering and applying is a good thing to practice and a great skill to have under your belt.

And in late breaking news, the publisher has said I can share a pic from teh new book so here is a sneak peek from Fuzzy Doodle with artwork by the most illustrious Donovan Bixley.

Excuse me while I do the limbo...

This year is a year without a book. I have a small project which will be out in print next month and I have been writing, mostly on the novel which I began while at the Pah Homestead, but this has been a fallow year. Sitting on the sideline watching the book world move forward without me. Excuse me while I do the limbo.

After the hurly burly of the last few years this feels strange. But I am no stranger to strange. Much of the first half of the year was spent at the Pah Homestead. Several months ago my focus was on preparation for our big overseas trip and then we embarked on the trip itself, which was awesome and monumental, both literally and figuratively. And then we returned and the remainder of the year fell into a kind of limbo with few fixed dates. The most excellent NZ Book Week (in the last week of October) and the wonderful and full of warm fuzzies NZ Bookshop day (on Halloween!!) was a most welcome departure from this. Huge thanks to the NZSA for rescuing this incredibly important event, and to the two bookshops (Time Out Bookstore in Mt Eden and the Dorothy Butler Children's Bookshop in Ponsonby) who invited me along on the 31st to share in their celebrations. It was a day of mutual love and respect between booksellers, writers and illustrators, and readers, and every one felt very wanted by the end of the day. I have everything crossed and knotted that this becomes an annual arrangement.

But the rest of the time... well ... I'm mostly still in limbo. It feels like being in one of those flotation chambers where you have no choice but to be introspective. I've been navel gazing and reading posts and articles on the social media platforms I'm signed up to which can be a very dangerous occupation. And trying to fathom twitter which is a deep well of weirdness. Whether Essena O'Neill's reasons for quitting social media were honest or not she's right about sites like facebook, twitter and tumblr being a heavily filtered version of reality. Even if photos and comments are raw and genuine, folk still curate their images and words carefully to show the side of themselves they are willing to reveal. And people have agendas. Twitter, while it still feels like learning a foreign language, is a perfect example of an agenda driven medium. All sorts of strangers have started following me and I know it's not because of my phenomenal wit and stunning beauty (ahem - cough) as clearly neither of these are on display on the platform (cough, cough). For some, it's because they hope to sell me something at some point, whether it's their services or their books. I am allergic to direct selling, preferring to find my books by way of good writing and discovering an author is really cool and has interesting things to say, which seems to be a novel way of doing things these days. And I always (where possible) try and buy my required services locally. And yet twitter  is so interesting. Social media has multiple means of luring you in and turning you into an internet zombie ... anyways, as always, I have digressed.  

So, while I wander the labyrinth of social media like a modern day  Ulysses without a ball of string wondering whether I mind being lost or not, 2016 looms... looking mostly like a blank canvas. The thought of a new year is always a mixture of dread and giddy anticipation. So many possibilities, so much free time.

I do have a picture book scheduled for release next June. Yay!! Fuzzy Doodle. Illustrated by the marvelous Donovan Bixley and published by Scholastic. I don't have any pics to share yet and I am feeling a little coy about revealing any part of the story. Soz. But soon folks ... soon you can have a wee peek...

So, one key event for 2016, and the rest has still been feeling like a yawning chasm of nothing. An emptiness...

I booked a few things to give myself the illusion of busy and/ or important. Tickets for my SO and I to see The Tempest at the Pop Up Globe Theatre in March. And a follow up specialist's appointment in October. Woohoo! But after the schedules of the last few years things were still looking a leedle bit barren. Don't worry, my SO said, things will crop up. That's pretty much always been my philosophy too. Stay connected and involved. Keep writing - cos that's what I like to do. And have faith that things will arrive to pepper the calendar with busy and/or important. And fun!

And you know what? It's already started happening...

Stewing in a soup of fear of failure

I joined twitter. If you notice my sentences getting shorter you'll know why. It was all part of the plot to be able to pitch some of my manuscripts to publishers and agents. This opportunity was offered at the Tinderbox conference and it seemed like a relatively easy way to gain the attention of some key players. I'd been thinking about jumping in to the twitterverse anyways and here was some very good motivation. So I jumped.

The astrophysical imagery is apt as Twitter does indeed seem like another planet after hanging around on facebook and blogger for so long. The pace, the brevity, the style and shape of conversations, are like nothing else I know. I guess it's probably good for my brain as I learn a whole new approach to social interaction.

But I digress. I joined twitter partly to satisfy my curiosity, partly cos of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and partly to be able to pitch. And the pitching was easy. Tweet the correct hashtag with a brief tagline for your story and publishers and agents could search the hashtag and check it out. For Tinderbox it was #TBPitMad. If they favourite your tweet you could then query them with the story, referencing the pitching opportunity. And the thing is people that the Tinderbox pitch session was only one of many springing up regularly on twitter (my latest go was with #PBPitch - you can go and search these hashtags to get an idea of how it works). And these are generally international opportunities (although the agents and publishers may not always appreciate that fact?). And in the end most of the publishers and agents are open to general querying even if you don't get favourited. Realistically I don't know what the success rate is like and I suspect it's no greater than other more traditional channels of querying but it's very motivating. I have emailed off a rash of queries in the last few weeks with several different projects. Exciting stuff...

But also, as I know all too well, subsequently terrifying. Weirdly for a published author, I am a very private person when it comes to my writing. I don't share it widely before I send it off to publishers. It seems waaayyy easier to have my work judged by strangers then it is by fellow authors, other friends and relatives. I get my story to a stage that I feel happy with on my ownsome and then I start submitting. Then it's the moment of stark unavoidable truth. Sometimes I show other folk after I've submitted. I am weird that way. By then it's too late.

As an author, if you are following the path of traditional publication, whenever possible you should have some work out there, submitted. If one of your goals is traditional publication, submissions are just a day-to-day part of your job description. Thought being a writer meant you devoted all of your spare waking moments to your craft?? Ha ha. Think again. An appreciable part of your daily grind will be researching who to send your work to, how to send it, polishing queries, worrying about the strength of your query, trying to summarise your work in one or two pithy compelling sentences, wondering if your word length will put them off, trying to locate the name of the editor, sometimes wondering if that's a woman's name or a man's. Sometimes that is all so overwhelming that you think I just can't even... and then you go on facebook for a while. And so the twitter pitch seems inordinately manageable in comparison. Too easy in fact.

I went a little crazy...

It sucks you in and makes you excited about the process and before you know it you've wrangled your query and the synopsis and the biography and cut and pasted some text into the body of an email and pressed send. And then the slow dawning realisation that I am staring down the barrel of  all their responses.The waiting. The wondering. The post posting analysis. Sure, I like my analysis to arrive after it's too late to act (see above). And it leaves me drenched in that heady emotional mix of hope and terror. Like stewing in a soup of fear of failure. The thing they never tell you about pigeons coming home to roost is how much pigeon poop there is. How thick should I be growing my skin? How much loin girding will be required? My mum always asks me if I have anything out on submission. Well mum, at the moment I do. I'll let you know how I get on...