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Stretch yourself
March 26, 2013As an artist of any kind, you should stretch yourself often to improve your skills. By doing this you learn new techniques and sometimes come up with great solutions to something that you’re already working on.
But how can you do this?
Trying out different writing techniques is well worth trying. This was brought back to me this week after teaching year 8 students flash fiction at Warrandyte High. To try to make it a little more interesting, I decided to make the students write in the Steampunk genre. For some this was well out of their comfort zone while others dived right in. This was quite difficult because the word limit was 100 words.
By giving yourself a challenge (this works equally in photography, art or music) you are looking at your craft from a different angle. It also really puts you into a creative space.
So, if you write prose, why not try your hand at some poetry. Or if you are a non-fiction writer, try to write a fantasy. Any time you play with words you are adding to your creative well and you may surprise yourself by coming up with an idea that you can use in your normal arena.
Go and listen to some poetry or music, attend a workshop or visit a gallery. These are all great ways to inform your craft.
Blaise
Life Happens No Matter What
March 19, 2013
You might wonder why you’re looking at a goat … Meet Ernest. There’s only one reason why Ernest is in this post, and that’s because the picture makes me smile. We’ve been a bit sad here at Busybird over the past few weeks. We’ve had to farewell two special ladies who had their lives cut much too short.
Tracy was a contributing author to our [untitled] anthology, as well as partner to Mal who is one of our early team members. We are saddened by this loss because Tracy leaves so much behind and many more pages to write.
And then there was Christine (sister-in-law to our chief editor) who was a HUGE supporter of everything we did and one of the two people who inspired us to publish Journey: Experiences with Breast Cancer. Both these ladies will be greatly missed.
So why the gloomy post?
It’s times like these that allow us to reflect on our own lives, how we live with others, what we are doing with the short time we have on earth in this life. It’s also a chance to look at how grief and reflection can shape our own selves and find some way to make sense of things. This is where writing, art, music can help to heal our soul.
As my sister-in-law says, ‘Savagely make it count.’
Blaise
Courtesy Costs Nothing.
March 5, 2013As a writer myself, I’ve always tried to be courteous with the markets to whom I’ve submitted. If they’ve rejected me with a personal rejection, I thank them for their time and wish them a great day, week, or weekend. I’m not after anything. But, for me, it’s a goodwill method of completing our transaction.
Of course, there’s been occasions some markets haven’t deserved courtesy.
Once, it took a prospective market eighteen months to get back to me. I couldn’t even remember having submitted to them in the first place. Another time, a publisher rejected my manuscript and then, three months later, sent me another rejection for the same submission. I joked to them (in email) I must be travelling well if I was getting rejected without submitting. They apologised and said the re-rejection was a mistake due to an administrative turnover. I told them it was okay and wished them a great day. Another time, I got a glowing rejection. Unfortunately, it was somebody else’s glowing rejection. They apologised and I told them it was okay, but I’m unsure they understood how deflating it was to read somebody else’s glowing rejection when I’d gotten the form rejection.
I’m really not a tolerant person, and there’s been a few times I was probably entitled to snipe in response, to – simply – tell these people to get their shit together. I didn’t. What good does it do me? I understand that errors or delays happen. I mightn’t like it, but how’s griping going to change anything? It’ll just engender ill-will, and who knows how it may affect my chances should I ever submit to these same markets again? Moreover, who knows how many people running these markets talk and compare notes? The last thing I – or anybody – wants is a reputation for being difficult.
We started [untitled] to give writers an avenue for their stories – one also open to mainstream writing (as opposed to exclusively literary fiction) and which isn’t cliquey. We might solicit the occasional piece from writers we know are capable of producing good stories (although that still doesn’t necessarily mean an automatic acceptance), but we don’t pore through submission lists looking for people we know. We read blind (meaning names and details are taken from submissions). Stories stand and fail on their own merits.
Here’s a basic rundown of how things work: an intern will log submissions. Two interns will read a story and rate it. Stories that don’t reach a certain rating are rejected. Stories that do will be passed through to the second round, where they’ll be read by the remaining interns, Blaise, and myself. We’ll then get together at a content meeting (every two or three months) and discuss which stories to accept or reject, and discuss robustly why those decisions are justified.
We’ve produced five issues of [untitled] and were only paid a meagre wage (thanks to a grant from Arts Victoria; the bulk of the money went to production costs and authors) on one issue.
Otherwise, the production of [untitled] is both a labour of love, as well as an education for us, and – more importantly – for the interns performing their practical placement with us. It’s also something we can only attend in the little spaces our everyday lives afford us. We have full-time jobs, households to run, kids; interns are in full-time study, some have children and/or work, and obviously they have school assignments.
When submitting to [untitled] we will try to get back to you within 12–16 weeks. Three months is about an average time for most journals and publishers. Yes, there are journals who respond quicker. There are also some who take longer. Some don’t respond at all, leaving you with the inference that after a certain timeframe, you’re rejected.
Lately, our response times have lapsed due to circumstances beyond our control – we’ve had a turnover of interns, one had a baby, I (the chief editor) was in rehab for twenty months after being struck by a car, Blaise and Kev (the publishers) have been setting up the Busybird studio (on top of their full-time jobs, household, and kids) … the list goes on.
I’m not trying to martyr ourselves. Nor am I making excuses. We don’t like lapsing either.
But if we take a little while longer to response than we usually would, or than you’d like, be patient. We don’t request exclusive consideration of your submission, meaning you’re free to submit it elsewhere when it’s with us, (just as long as you let us know if it is accepted elsewhere). This means you don’t have to put your submission’s market chances on hold waiting for us. If you’re really curious as you’ve been waiting a while (e.g. three months) just drop us a line, and we’ll let you know what’s happening. Sometimes, the delay is simply because a piece arrived at the beginning of a submission rotation and has been pushed through to the second round.
I am unsure about the need for sarcasm or condescension or condemnation, as has occasionally occurred (from, admittedly, only a handful) following belated responses. We are doing our best. And such assaults really just make us question why we put the effort in we do if the job’s not only going to be thankless, but attacked and ridiculed.
Anyway, just something to ponder.
Courtesy costs nothing.
LZ.
The Importance of Being Edited.
February 26, 2013Ernest Hemingway once said, ‘The first draft of anything is shit.’
Having spent the last two years studying writing and editing, I’ve come to understand how true this is. Still, I am shocked by how often authors think their work is beyond improvement. Whatever the issue, many writers have a big problem with editing, an essential part of the writing process.
Maybe it’s the word ‘edit’; perhaps it conjures the image of some failed writer hacking at your manuscript with an axe. (I don’t think all editors are failed writers, I just needed a relevant stereotype to make my point.) If only we could use a different, friendlier word to make this bitter pill easier to swallow.
I just typed the word ‘edit’ into a Word document and right-clicked on it. Among others, these synonyms popped up:
- amend
- modify
- adjust
- alter
- improve
- rework
As far as myself and the good folks at Microsoft Office are concerned, these are all acceptable synonyms. My point is, if it helps, call it something else, whatever helps to make editing seem less scary. We should all approach it with the right attitude, though – that is to say, an attitude akin to Mr Hemingway’s.
I’m not scared of being edited. The last short story I wrote was read, dissected, deconstructed, reassembled and finalised by no less than six people, including myself. I haven’t always approached writing this way. I was once naive enough to believe that stories were either written or they weren’t. I stopped writing countless pieces simply because they never spilled out of my pen already filled with brilliant prose and memorable characters.
It never occurred to me that storytelling requires work.
If you’ve ever been excited by a story idea, you owe it to yourself to wring as much potential out of it as you can. And as much as you want it to be true, a story is not finished the moment you write your closing line. It will only happen after many hours of labouring over it, getting a second, third – sometimes twelfth – opinion, and pressing on, in spite of how frustrated or disheartened the process makes you.
Just finalising a story is a huge achievement. (I use the term ‘finalise’ because I wholeheartedly believe I can tinker with the same story until death do us part.) But the next step is not to send it to every suitable competition with an open submission window. The next step is to send it to someone you trust, to ask for feedback and know that constructive criticism is invaluable.
Praise alone is nice, but not necessarily helpful. (Do not ask someone to edit your work who feels obligated to say, ‘IT’S AMAZING!’, even if you’ve just presented them with a shopping list scrawled on a used napkin.) If you can, have a discussion about the piece with your editor. Have several discussions. Buy your editor a cup of tea, (editors really like tea). The more you understand about what works and what doesn’t, the easier it will be to proceed.
Next is the harrowing task of determining what will stay and what will go, what needs subtle adjustment and what needs a complete overhaul. Draft Two should take a long time. Accept this from the beginning and you will find the process becomes distinctly less painful. Remind yourself that hard work is character-building … or something.
At this point you are either ready to collapse from exhaustion or encouraged by the progress you’ve made. You’ve realised you don’t need nearly as many adverbs as you thought. You’ve managed to include a semicolon somewhere; it’s exciting, right? This draft reads more smoothly, and that pesky sentence on page three has been eliminated.
Is it finished now, you ask? If you’ve only had to move a few commas around, then sure! (Having said that, you should still send it to someone to proofread; as much as Word is good for some things, spellcheck is not one of them.)
If you’ve done some serious overhauling, though, there is more work ahead. Think about it: you’ve incorporated a lot of ideas, made minimal to drastic changes and the story is much better – but it’s also different. It needs to be edited again. This time you send it to someone else. Fresh eyes for a freshened story.
After countless man-hours, you are convinced this is as good as your writing is going to get. Now you’re ready to unleash your story upon the world. Not because it’s so stupendously great you’ve gone ahead and spent the prize money – before you’ve earned it – on that pair of shoes you’ve been eyeballing. You’re ready because you’ve done everything you possibly can to present the version of your idea you deem the best.
Time to get to work before the next submission window opens …
Helen Krionas
Assistant Editor
Stories needs good composition
February 12, 2013
No matter how you tell a story, the structure is very important. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rules but for the most part you will engage a person if you can give them great details that draws them in.
Even the simplest story, like the one here of the sugar bowl, can create interest. You need to create a sensory feeling with your light and angles so that the viewer is drawn into the picture and is tempted to linger on it for more than a fleeting second.
So what helps create good structure in imagery? Two most important elements are lighting and angle. Have a think about what this might look at if it was taken straight on. Because of the 45 degree angle on the board, the eye is drawn in from the bottom and up to the sugar bowl. The angled light shows texture in the grains of the sugar, allowing the viewer to almost feel the texture.
Like any good story, whether written or illustrated, light and shade make for interesting imagery. Try to think of all the senses and incorporate more than one of them into your work.