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The worst dragon
December 10, 2015
Part II
Although the Lack of Ideas Dragon might seem to be the worst of the worst, it’s not so tough. There are ways to kick this dragon back to the badlands from whence it came.
Mind maps, cluster diagrams or even roughly drawn lists will corral a wayward skein of thought and help to trace its tangles and iterations. And when the scribbles pile up, deep within the heap, I have found thoughts I didn’t even know I had. Combined with free writing, these techniques can send that winged worm packing. Even though there are shelves of books devoted to these concepts in bookstores and libraries, writing workshops are particularly useful as a pathway into this piece of secret writer’s lore.
For me, the nastiest, meanest, worst of the worst is also the most absurd. While some might know it as the Non-sequitur Dragon, I call it the Dragon of Lost Endings. This beast lurks behind every bush, hides behind the couch and nestles under the cushion. It is the tyranny of trying to rephrase and shape my thoughts into full sentences and, then, build those sentences toward a satisfying conclusion. When we speak it is often in fragments and shards that flutter around the main idea. While it might appear conversational, writing is more direct. It is a distilled form of communication that requires sentences where a subject is linked with its predicate to …?
Where was that sentence supposed to go? I have no idea. See, the dragon has struck again! I have a sense of my piece as a whole and I am clear about what I want to say, but I can’t seem to get it said in writing. Is it just a missing verb or has the entire predicate gone west? And, to make things worse, the Dragon of Transitions and the Dragon of Flow are the squirming, puling children of this monster with multiple heads and way too many faces.
In the past I have tried to separate the processes, to distinguish between the writing phase where I pour ideas onto the page, make loose associations and puff up the volume of words and the revision/editing stage where the prose is cut, polished, and styled. Until recently, grammar, sentence construction and word choice were banned from my early drafts. But I often find once I have gathered my content, I am left with a tangled thicket of words that I cannot find a way to articulate, and it is precisely then that the Dragon of Lost Endings swoops in and blasts it all to kingdom come.
So, against the current thinking, I am going to turn around and confront the beast, person to chimera, using wordplay as a warm-up strategy. For me, ideas can be deeply connected to the words in which they are uttered. As a preparation for my encounter, I am going to delve into the dark mysteries of grammar. No more will nominative absolutes, gerunds and complex compound sentences be a foreign language.
Another way I like to foil this beast is to lead it astray. Instead of slaving over my keyboard desperately searching for endings, I leave the dragon to prowl while I take my notebook for a walk, go out for a coffee or enrol in a writing workshop. My theory is that dragons do not like to do their dirty work in public.
The writing warm-up is another tactic with dragon-taming potential. Before I start my real writing, I begin by closely observing the things around me and noting how I feel in a separate journal. I listen to my senses and write about the things that make me want to write. The space outside or around the writing not only reveals the text from different angles and brings its subtle tonalities to light but it also offers another way to sneak up on the writing from a place where few dragons dwell.
A number of writers recommend warm-up strategies, including the mystery writer Sue Grafton and Melbourne poet Kevin Brophy, but I first came across the idea in a flash fiction workshop with Blaise.
[Editor’s note: This almost feels like a fragment, like there was something that’s been chopped.] You know what’s happened don’t you …? I’ve lost my ending.
Lisa Roberts
– Assistant Editor
Why are blogs so hard to write?
December 3, 2015
Part I
As an aspect of our internship at Busybird, we are supposed to write three blogs a year, but I am lucky if I post even one. We have been told that the writing can be less than beautiful, and we are free to write about almost anything related to the process of writing or editing, so what is my problem? Why can’t I write one of these things?
Every now and then, in a fit of enthusiasm I work up an idea (sometimes several) and sketch out a set of notes. And then … Nothing. My idea goes into the folder with all the other fabulous things I have never written. And never will – unless I can find out why I can’t write these things.
Through good writing and bad, light winds and toad stranglers, horrible writing and worse, I post a 500 word tutorial response every single week when I am studying. Heck, I once wrote 500 words on the pleasures of junk mail. Well, it is pleasurable for the snails that hang out in my letterbox. They love to gobble up a bargain. Pizza, soft furnishings, washing powder, they tuck into the lot. Keeps them satiated so they don’t go out and … There I go again!
What is so different about this? Although the difficulty of writing is a part of its messy charm (and I’m sure I do it wrong), I should be able to write a blog. In theory.
But in practice? Well, that’s another thing. Was that the washing machine yodelling? And, some toast might be nice … See what I mean? And toast always wins; especially, if hot peanut butter is involved. But these shameless diversions, when I should be tucked up at my desk writing, are only little dragons.
In her book, Writing Without a Parachute: The Art of Freefall, Barbara Turner-Vesselago describes the fears that skulk around the perimeters of our consciousness as dragons. And she advocates turning around to look at them … to see what these things are that sneak up and whisper bad things, muttering and chattering in voices so subtle that they seep beneath our consciousness. Their sulphurous murmurs wither our ideas and poison our writing before it ever reaches the page. While there are many dragons, as many as there are reasons not to write, when I turn my head I see a legion of the brutes.
The Dragon of Writing Badly is a nasty specimen. Even now I can feel its stumpy legs wrapped around me and its long claws digging in, and I am utterly intimidated (despite knowing that it’s okay to write badly). Everyone does it. Yes, even you over there in the far corner, hunched over your computer screen sneering at every word. I know your first drafts are real stinkers.
One way I’ve found to wriggle out of this dragon’s scaly grip is to try to imagine a less forbidding critic. Instead of the stern-eyed parent, the monstrous teacher with a red pen and a twitchy ruler, the jeering bullies at the back of the classroom or the unattainable role model, perhaps you might write your piece as you would to your best friend. Or, you might write to your dog, your cat (Miss Mittens purrs whenever she delivers a critique), the possum on your windowsill, or the boy next door – even, the one you yearn for in the night when the doona is snugly pulled around you (I’m writing to a cute boy from my misspent past. No, not that one – the boy I used to trade insults with).
Actually, I don’t know if this is just me, but it is so much easier to write when I am supposed to be doing something else. Especially, if that something else is something I know I should do, but don’t want to. Like my taxes, or getting ready for work. Writing, for me, seems to have a tantalisingly perverse element; it so much more blissful if I absolutely, unquestionably and unequivocally should not be doing it. And, those stolen moments are utterly dragon free.
Next time: the most unlikely, sneakiest, worst dragon of them all.
Lisa Roberts
– Assistant Editor
P17 Issue 12 – Release and Competition Shortlists
November 27, 2015
Earlier this week, page seventeen had its Issue 12 celebration as part of Busybird’s Open Mic Night. We had a full house and a lot of fun.
Firstly, thank you to everyone who attended and helped us give a hurrah to the latest issue of our little periodical. You can view the highlights of the presentations and some of the P17 authors reading their work at the Busybird YouTube channel: click here for the P17 content, and have a look around at the other videos while you’re there.
The digital edition is available now at Amazon: click here to check it out.
In the meantime, we have announcements to make: the competition shortlists! For anyone who wasn’t at the launch, you’ll find below the full list of winners and shortlisted entrants. All these entries are features in P17 #12. Let’s join together in congratulating everyone here, and toasting everyone who entered the competitions.
* * *
Short Story
Winner
‘Rooms without doors’ by Willa Hogarth
Runner-Up
‘Louis’ by Edie Mitsuda
Shortlisted
‘Cold currents’ by Susi Fox
‘Ships of the desert’ by Carmel Lillis
‘Macalister’ by Paul Mill
* * *
Poetry
Winner
‘Alice and Edward’ by Janine McGinness-Whyte
Runner-Up
‘The glass reverie’ by Virginia Danahay
Shortlisted
‘Oral sex’ by Judith A Green
‘Ironing’ by Jenny Macaulay
‘In defence of the bodhran’ by Leonie Needham
‘Beginning with a given line’ by Rodney Williams
* * *
Cover Image
‘Natural Connection’ by Martin Nitschke
* * *
Congratulations again to everyone. And as for everyone reading this, what are you waiting for? Issue 12 is out! Check out what made these stories and poems so good!
Beau Hillier | Editor, page seventeen
Chronology
November 5, 2015
Writing memoir presents us with different challenges to writing fiction. Even though the story’s there in its entirety – after all, we’ve lived it – a lot of people ask, Where should I begin?
A common format of biographies is they open at a pivotal point in the subject’s life – either a great success or failure. That pinnacle is then used to slide back to the beginning, as if through a funnel of time. Some might even go further, and explore their parents’ ancestry. This might be useful grounding, e.g. showing parents who are immigrants and fought great odds to come to a new country or, conversely, parents who are everymen, and rooted in the community.
Usually, though, the best place is to start at your birth and, from there, follow the arc of your life. Whilst this would seem logical, it’s amazing how often authors are stumped, or how often they might flit back, forth, sideways, and all over the place. This is fine if there’s a structure to the haphazardness which makes sense to the reader, like the picture that appears as you put together a jigsaw but, otherwise, the best course can be a straight line.
If you are going to observe the chronology of your life, try to refrain from interjecting your present-day self. For example, you might write something like this:
- When I turned 10, Mum and Dad let me run down to the corner store by myself so I could buy an ice cream.
This is fine. We’re inside the narrator’s head as a ten-year old. But then, often in memoir, something like this occurs:
- I remember the old store owner, Mr Georgiou, had a big nose …
The moment you qualify events with ‘I remember’, you’re injecting your present-day self. It’s your present-day self who says, ‘I remember’. The ten-year old has no cause to be saying ‘I remember’. They’re living events as they occur. They should, in fact write something like:
- Mr Georgiou, the old store owner, had a big nose …
It might seem pedantic to avoid writing ‘I remember’ (or alternatives, such as ‘I recall’, ‘I recollect’, etc.) but it jolts the reader from the unfolding narrative and alerts them that they’re not (as occurs in this case) reading a ten-year old’s perspective, but somebody from that ten-year’s old future who’s recounting what occurred. Once you have your reader hooked, you don’t want to lose them – not even for an instant.
Something else to avoid is having your present-day self insert present-day commentary that, again, will jar the reader from the narrative’s suspension of disbelief. For example:
- Mr Georgiou, the old store owner, had a big nose and a scar across his face that made me think he was a pirate. I know now that he’d been the victim of an assault, but back then it used to scare me, and after making my purchase, I’d run straight home.
We really don’t need present-day self’s observations (‘I know now’), and they only hurt us from staying invested in the ten-year old’s wide-eyed perspective of the world.
Stay in the moment of your narrative. E.g.
- Mr Georgiou, the old store owner, had a big nose and a scar across his face that made me think he was a pirate. As soon as I timidly handed over my money, I’d run straight home.
If you’re ten in the story, then only reveal to us what was privy to that ten-year old. Maintain the chronology. At some point in this child’s life, they learn about this scar, and it’s going to be a transformative revelation, so why ruin when that occurs with this premature pronouncement? Let’s see that happen – in due chronology.
Write your story down in a straight line – from beginning to end. It really is that simple. Once you have it all out on the page, then you can mould it as you see fit – flesh it out where required, insert new material that you’ve belatedly recalled, and trim away the excess. Now that you have it all down on the page, you might even see ways you can play with the structure.
But the key is getting it down on the page.
And sometimes, the easiest way – observing chronology – is the best.
LZ
P17 Issue 12 Launch and Mic Night
October 29, 2015
Once again we’re ready to unleash another issue of page seventeen upon the public. Are you excited? You should be excited. It’s another heady mix of prose and poetry from talented new writers alongside established veterans of writing. It’s got mystery, intrigue, alcoholism, teapots. What’s not to get excited about?
So here we have it: an open invitation to the page seventeen launch and mic night, hosted by Busybird Publishing.
Date: Wednesday 18 November
Time: 7.00pm
Place: Busybird Publishing, 2/118 Para Rd, Montmorency VIC 3094
Finger food and drinks will be provided. We’re celebrating the twelfth issue of page seventeen with a mic night featuring both Issue 12 contributors and local authors. We’ll also be announcing the winners of the 2015 competitions, and unveiling our cover image (if you’ll remember, that was a competition as well).
Please consider this an open invitation, to you and anyone you’d like to bring along. Let’s fill the room. Let’s celebrate both the new writers with their first publication and the established writers giving us another great pearl to read.
Beau Hillier | Editor, page seventeen