Saturday, November 19

FRIENDS IN FICTION


Am I in it?

I have a friend who asks this every time I finish a story. Is she in it?

One day I finally said, yes, you are.

After years of wanting and asking to be part of the busy, made-up fictional life in my head, there she was.

Wednesday Lunch is a short story. And she is in it.

Like most of what I write, the story is based on a truth. In this case a real event - a lunch - with said friend and another girlfriend where we discussed some taboo topics in the way good friends do.

Now, while the lunch and the conversation happened, the story in its writing and wresting from real-life into fiction has become, in the process, something else altogether.

Suddenly she wasn't sure if she wanted to be in a story.
What if someone recognised  her?

They won't I said, it's fiction.

What was her fictional name?
Gemma, I told her.
I don't like Gemma, she said, why am I Gemma?

It isn't you, not really, I reassure her.
It's fiction I keep saying but I know this word isn't making sense to her.

The lunch was a spark for the story but the characters are made up, I tell her.  She nods.

I'm not surprised she's confused. I manage to confuse real-life with my imagination and the sorting process in my head. Maybe that is why I love to write fiction.

So when you read Wednesday Lunch when it is published one day, you won't recognise anyone you or I know because it is fiction.

Right. Got it?



Lunch anyone? Pic taken at Sculpture by the Sea in 2010.



Sunday, October 2

OH THE SHAME.



Shame, as an emotion, can take on biblical proportions but in writing, shame can be the compass to a story.

At Short Story Fiction Writing at uni, my lecturer, Tegan Bennett Daylight, encouraged us to write about a point in our lives where we felt shame.

I chose two moments. One where I had pretended to be something I wasn't and another where I told a big, fat lie.

Oh, such juicy stuff for a writer. But writing the words and re-living the secret moments in a fictional setting was exposing.

The first moment was one, where for two years, I hid my divorce from my parents.
I justified my decision because my father was ill — dying in fact.

What better excuse could I have?

The truth was — I was too scared to tell them.

I was caught up in their potential disapproval and the tut-tutting of my mother.
Whenever she mentioned someone who was divorced she would lower her voice — softer than a whisper and say the word very slow. D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
She would brag about how in our family we'd had never had a D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

My pretence extended to cleaning my ex's house and having family meals with my parents when they visited. It was an elaborate facade, I'd even bring objects from my house so it looked like I still lived there.

This shameful lie has been turned into a short story called The Visit.
It was raw to write, even though the shame of that lie was at least four years ago.

My Dad died without ever knowing his youngest daughter was divorced and when I told my mother she assumed my ex had been terrible to me.
He hadn't, we had simply come to an end of a 20-year marriage but remain friends and keep our family unit as tight as we can despite our separation.

My big lie — I'm not ready to write about that one. It is a lie of the heart. It is about love and those are the hardest stories to write.

More shame, more stories.


Pic taken at Sydney's Luna Park. Now, who are they laughing at?



Saturday, September 3

READING ON A JET PLANE


Come on, Mr Joyce, give me a hand.
(pic of things on my desk- Sept '11)
I am on the search for a short story for a looming uni assignment. So I asked for recommendations on FaceBook and ended up with this must-read list.

Hills Like White Elephants - Hemingway
Kiss Kiss - Roald Dahl
The Labyrinth - Jorge Luis Borger
Twelve Red Herrings - Jeffrey Archer
Cowboy - Thomas McGuane
Fat Man in History - Peter Carey
A Perfect Day for Bananafish - JD Salinger
Anything written by Steinbeck
The Dying Gentleman - Tim Winton
The Persimmon Tree - Margaret Barnard
A&P - John Updike
If I loved you I would tell you this - Robin Black

I need to select one — just one — and write a critical essay on it.

I was taken with Robin Black's book about love. The mystery of what might be revealed drew me in just by the title.
But I couldn't find the book in my local bookshop  and with a five-hour return flight to Adelaide next week I wanted to use the time on the plane to read, read, read.

So I checked out my own bookshelves.
There was Tim Winton, David Malouf, Helen Garner, Frank Moorhouse, Alice Munro, AS Byatt and Annie Proulx, Karen Hitchcock and my favourite deafult author, Raymond Carver. All deserving of a second read and critical analysis.

I was drawn to Malouf — and Garner. Malouf 's seductive story style always holds me but I spend too much of my reading time marvelling at the poetry of his prose. And Garner's At the Morgue is a detailed and hard-hitting piece of literary non-fiction that gives me shivers every time I read it.

So how to decide.

Oh look there is another book on my shelf - Best Australian Stories 2006.
More choices.
More reading.
Oh goody.

(Thank you to Mark x 2, Meredith, Melissa, Jane, Lisa, Zena, Nadine, Victoria, Linda and Northern Rivers for your story suggestions.)

Sunday, July 24

5 names NOT to use in a novel


The names you choose when writing a story have to fit the character perfectly. Until I have the name right, the character I am writing doesn't quite gel. 

Five names to never use — for obvious reasons — Hitler, Jesus, Bruce, Davo and Lady Gaga. 

The list goes on . . .  a famous name, a name that reminds me of someone I taught years ago, a name that is old fashioned or a name that has become trendy like Harper - this affects how workable a name is for a character.

Until I get the name right — the character cannot be fully formed.

In my current work-in-progress I use initials until I can find the 'right one.'

With my manuscript Losing February I wait for the characters to form their own names. 
But when will DB find his name? I know him, I know what he does, how he feels, but his name . . . it hasn't come yet.

Names, like titles can be changed but I can get too attached to a title. 

In my first novel writing attempt I was so stuck on the title The Perils of Wearing a Tutu that it took me a long time to respond to advice to change it. The whole tutu thing sounded like chick-lit, not there's anything wrong with that but the story clearly wasn't chick-lit. 

I changed it to — Drowning on the Way Home. And it altered the whole way I saw the story. All references to tutus were dropped and I focused on what the story was really about - belonging and finding a home.

Nothing is set in stone. Not names, not words, not me. 

Monday, June 13

TOO MANY WORDS


Does anyone else have the problem of too many story ideas?

Is this concept as annoying as a skinny person complaining that they can't put on weight no matter how many Kitchener buns they eat?

The problem is not having the ideas, it is writing them all down.

And when I have written the first - or second - or seventeenth draft of a story -  I like to carry a hard copy in my bag.

Like a pregnancy, for months, I carry the story with me and take it out on the bus, at the cafe — anywhere I'm waiting.

I need time for the story to grow. I change things, move scenes around, take out lots of stuff I thought was important and generally tighten the story.

Sometimes this tightening process takes a whole year.

There is always a queue of stories waiting to be told. They're just waiting for me to listen, a writer friend once told me.

It's one of the reasons I love writing so much. 

Friday, May 6

THE THRILL OF WORDS

Launch on May 20 at 4.30pm at
Wharf 2 at the Sydney Theatre Company 
It will be a thrill to see my story 'out there.'
And to see my name in print.

And it will be such a thrill to be at the book launch at the Sydney Writers Festival.

The UTS Anthology The Life You chose and that chose you is out (soon).

I am - of course - biased and think the book looks great.

I believe I may burn the letters of each word of my story Middle Brother by reading it so many times.

Woo-hoo!

Celebrations aside, the fact that a university is prepared to put time and money to produce such a professional publication is heartening.

There are limited avenues for writers and to be included in something so smart and worth reading is - well, it is a thrill.

But I 've said that already - many times.

See for yourself - check out http://www.figment.com.au/uts-writers-anthology-2011.html#tp

I know, I know. But I can't help cheering - and clapping.





Thursday, March 24

TOPLESS PINEAPPLES - words as labels

When words make you laugh
- a sign outside Foodland in Bangalow.
Modernism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism and posthumanism . . . and don't let me forget neorealism and narratology.

Yes, I'm doing Theory of Writing at uni.

The upside of all these isms is that I have to understand the texts on the subject reading list.

Virgina Woolf, James Joyce (never got him, maybe this time I will), Helen Garner (my hot favourite), Flaubert's Madame Bovary (someone strangle Emma please), Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Kurt Vonnegut (weird, weird but wonderful) and Eva Homung with her strangely poignant Dog Boy, about a boy living with wild dogs.

As long as the theory doesn't get in the way of a good story.

I know at uni, at least, we need to understand where the literature fits in the grand scheme of things. We learn to label stories and see how they are a reflection of the times in which they were written.

A good story is a good story - whether it was written yesterday or in another century.

Words travel through time and while we study the influence of literature at universities the reason these words of the authors I mentioned have survived is because they mean something to us even now- despite what ism they fall under.






Sunday, February 27

FIXING WORDS


I spent the last two weekends editing  Middle Brother for this year's UTS anthology.

I didn't do this alone. An editor was assigned to work with me to get my story in shape before it went to a copy editor.


Every word was analysed. Should it be this, should it be that? Should it be deleted?
I'd edit, read the story aloud, edit some more. Each change made something else 'stick out.'

Kate, my editor suggested changes and most of them were spot-on. Her ideas about changing a word or fixing a bit of dialogue made a world of difference.

When I sat down a week later and looked at the story with 'fresh eyes' it was much better.

It read better because of the fixing, cutting, sawing a sentence in half - making it more punchy, making it flow.

And because the story was written from a young boy's point of view, every word had to be what a boy would say and think. His fart, his fight with his brother, begging his dad for lollies – the words had to be as real as the ten-year-old boy.

What a process. Intense, wearing, frustrating but so, so worth it.

When I see it in print, I'm sure I'll see more words to fix.

I reckon though, I will be so thrilled about my little story being in a book, that I will be literally jumping for joy.

Pic taken at 2010 Sculpture by the Sea of Giant Pencil Shaving

Monday, January 24

BEAUTIFUL WORDS

One of the Sydney skyscapes I love.

Reading Delia Falconer's Sydney – well not actually reading it myself – my partner, with some gentle coercion reads it aloud every night while I lie back on the duck down pillows and listen to the way the words fall into the space between us.

Sometimes, not always, but with enough regularity to keep me hooked, Ms Falconer's words are like chords.

The way she has constructed sentences, her exclamations about Sydney's streets and her reflections on its history.

There are passages where the words weave a sort of mysterious sensibility,  I know the words, almost as if I have heard them before.

But I haven't. They are new words, her words and she has written them with such beautiful rhythm, I can imagine re-reading the book again when we are finished.

Falconer doesn't avoid the sleaze and murkiness of the place and is equally comfortable revealing her love of the city she grew up in.

I lie in my comfortable bed with my toes tucked under the crisp sheets and marvel at her writing.

How did she learn to write like that?  Did it just flow out of her or has she worked hard, with her red editing pen to find the exact words and perfect sentences to make us fall in love with her city?

Here's a passage – see if it affects you in the same way.

Sydney is not so much full of ghosts, as absences, It echoes.
In fact its physical presence is so strong, and so moody, that it is often hard for the human side to get a look-in. When it does, it has to compete with all this natural life – with mighty storms and great orange dusks that turn a velvety dark blue – without ancient legends to help. For the language of the Eora that made sense of the place are largely gone, and were ignored from the colony's beginnings. There is a sense in which Sydney is dogged by hauntedness itself, haunted philosophically; its ghostliness is almost depthless, as if – so quick and thorough has this forgetting been – there is a tremor in the bedrock of reality itself.

Beautiful, beautiful words.