Howl...

This weekend is Spinning Tales. The New Zealand Hui/Conference for Children's Writers and Illustrators. I have been sweating bricks helping to get this organised. And it has been a labour of love because in everything I have done I have thought about what the conference goer will get out of it. A few days ago one of the most amazing writers for children, Diana Wynne Jones, passed away. She was prolific but her fans are bereft, their love for her, and their thirst for her work, not quenched. I read Neil Gaiman's thoughts on her passing and once I got past my jealousy over their collective imaginative brain power and an intense desire to have been privy to their conversations and friendship (I mean come on, Neil Gaiman and Diana Wynne Jones? - OMG) I had my customary epiphany. What an incredible friendship it must have been - Neil Gaiman and Diana Wynne Jones. There are other groups of writery friends that I have been green over - Maureen Johnson, Libba Bray, Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfield and others - jeepers can you imagine the conversations they must have? But I don't need to be green because I have my own super-circle of writery friends and my writer friends mean the world to me - literally - because (in addition to my uber-fab SO and my delicious kids) writing is my world. I love all you guys. I love talking shop. I love moaning and groaning about the injustices, sharing excitement over our triumphs, debating the broken bits and how we might fix them. And at Spinning Tales we can be together and have one big fat permission slip to talk nothing but BOOKS!!! This will be the highlight for me. Whether I learn something new or advance my career in some way or not, the true benefit will be the opportunity to hang out with my peers, my writer friends who understand my dilemmas and who share my interests. These are the people who sustain you when the going gets tough. When you need an ear to bend, a shoulder to cry on, or someone to make you laugh or to say just the right thing - you can rely on a writer to find the right words. I will get to see my writer friends from all around the country and maybe even make a few more. I can't wait :) And here is a juicy link on how you can spruce up your manuscript to make an editor happy.

Bazinga! I learnt something...

Every time I try and explain the mechanics of writing to someone else I learn something. Yesterday I chatted with the writing group at the local intermediate school - bazinga! I learnt something (about the benefits for your plot in knowing your main protagonist). Today I gave a one-on-one workshop with a keen writer and - bazinga! I learnt something (about knowing your main protagonist and achieving the right voice for your story). If you are serious about making writing your career you should be talking about it with other people. You will learn things, make discoveries, have epiphanies quicker and more frequently if you are sharing your experience with others (ideally other writers!!). Sometimes it's merely confirming something you already believed. Sometimes clarity comes when you try and explain something to someone else. Sometimes you see something in a new light when someone else shines their metaphorical torch on it. I have leapt forward with my writing by making writer friends and keeping in touch with them. You can too.

Loved this juicy link courtesy of someone who exemplifies my point above. I love belonging to the children's writers and illustrators community in New Zealand and around the world - they really are a quality brand of folk.

Thats what friends are for...

One of the problems of being a writer is that in my isolation I can drive round the same problem in circles for hours (days, months...) without finding a solution or a way forward. This is why you should not shut yourself away. Yesterday I walked the dog and had a coffee with a writer friend (thanks Elena!!) and as I explained to her the difficulties inherent in a particular plot element of a WIP of mine, I had a lightbulb moment. I had been handling this plot element all wrong. I had spent time taking this plot element out of the manuscript. I then decided its absence showed and started putting it back in...and thats when it all became too hard. I was avoiding work on this story because it was such an effort to make progress. In describing it to someone else I realised that it wasn't the plot element that was necessary, but the change that that plot element was responsible for. There could be other solutions to support the changes in this character. That plot element was like a whole other plot in itself and forcing it back in was inexorably forcing the story in a direction I didn't want it to go. Maybe one day this plot element will become a story of its own but I couldn't let it be a parasite/succubus on my little mid-grade mystery/thriller. Of course its not just the importance of talking writing with other writers here - its also about trusting your intuition. The fix I was working on was soooo hard this should have been a big red flag. It was so hard because it was WRONG. The relief when I realised all this was immense. Having been stuck at about a third of the way through editing this after 3 months of trying, I am now two thirds of the way through after one day. I can't wait to have this baby finished so I can e-mail it off and get stuck in to some other juicy things I have lined up.

Love the post over at Fifi Colston's blog today. Should we tell the whole truth and nothing but in our blogs? I try keeping it as real as possible and i'm sure many of you out there are experts at reading between the lines sometimes but ultimately my right brain usually asserts itself and does a little cost benefit analysis for me before (or sometimes soon after) I publish a post - (or a friend e-mails me and says 'you can't say that'). Sometimes I want to say more - sometimes I think silence can speak volumes. What do you think...

Spongebob breaks the ice...

Lots to talk about today. Just swung across to Janet Reid's blog (http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/) and saw a very smart comment. She advised writers attending conferences that conferences weren't just about meeting agents and editors. Conferences are a great opportunity to meet other writers as well and this should be one of your purposes in attending. Of course there is much value in meeting agents and editors but in the day-to-day wilderness/jungle that is a writer's life one of the best survival tips is to make friends with other writers. No one else can know better the difficulties/agonies/ecstasies /disappointments and minutiae that make up your existence. No matter how generous, kind and understanding an agent or editor are, your writer friends are having the same experiences as you. No other group are as well trained in the art of surviving life as a writer. There is a divine karmic interwoveness to the whole thing too:- Some days i need support and encouragement, other days I give support and encouragement to someone else. We don't have a lot of writing conferences in New Zealand, but writers groups, critique groups, classes and organisations and their meetings are great places to make writer friends. They are an essential part of the writers toolkit.

Now I also came across this interesting piece (via Jenny Rappaport's blog, LIT SOUP at http://litsoup.blogspot.com/) 'about the marketing end of the book business, the rationale behind how buyers pick books, and a nice dose of bookselling history too.' You can read it here:- http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-being-skipped.html. Its written about the American market but the general themes are relevant here too. Just as the health system has a purely financial end that recognizes the most expensive widgit is too much for the budget, at the polar opposite of the emotional end of being sick where you don't care how much the best widgit costs, its the one you need, the book industry takes your beloved book baby and says it needs to sell x copies or it can't break even. No matter how the industry evolves over time we will always be emotionally attached to the books we have slaved over and pored our hearts into and the publisher and booksellers can only sigh and say we have to make enough money to cover our book producing, book selling operation costs. They are not charities and there is no way we would want them to be. It is good to understand how all aspects of the book industry works. And it is always comforting to know that I am not the only writer being rejected or skipped.

The flipside to the financial realities is the fun to be had in meeting your audience. I visited Owairoa Primary School today in Howick, East Auckland. I met with each of the four year-3 classes at the school and talked about ideas, the writing and book making process and reading. It was a lot of fun and the children were wonderful. I'm glad i packed all my books into my Spongebob Squarepants suitcase. The children thought it fitting that books be protected by the King of imagination and it was a great ice breaker. Having my little viking bear along as mascot was also handy. The children were interested and enthusiastic. It got a bit tricky at the end, as having covered the same material with each group i began to wonder if i was repeating myself to the same crowd. As the information came out in different orders for different classes depending on their responses I couldn't follow the same sequence and tick off the list as i went. I will have to figure out a way to avoid this problem. I hope I get to do more school visits in future.