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Keep the Faith

July 8, 2014

As we speak, page seventeen is digesting the submissions that have come its way between April and June. Hundreds of meaty short stories. Scores of spicy poems.

The reading process for the general submissions is still ongoing, but in the coming weeks the content list will be drafted and a lucky few will hear from us to confirm that they will be included in Issue 11 of page seventeen.

This means that many more will not be included. This is the unfortunate truth – we can’t publish everybody. Page seventeen is fortunate in that it has developed as a versatile platform for publishing a wide variety of content, but every ongoing project has to define its limits and not everybody can be lucky all the time.

All I can propose at this moment is to not let the possibility of rejection weigh on your mind. I say this especially to the writers just starting out, and perhaps haven’t built up a veteran’s resistance to emails beginning with cursory politeness followed by the inevitable ‘Unfortunately …’. No one is immune to the feeling of disappointment – of the risk in turning on oneself to draw out a reason why it wasn’t accepted. Was the story not good enough? Was it shot down because I left too many typos in the text? Did I play it too safe/risky for the magazine’s tastes?

Rejections are inevitable. Refining your work to improve its quality will improve your chances of publication, and knowing the tastes of the institutions you’re sending your work to is a must when it comes to sending out the right content – but nothing will eliminate the prospect of rejection completely.

This is the part where scores of examples can be sent your way – about how many times J K Rowling was knocked back by publishers before Bloomsbury finally took a punt on her quaint little book about some kid with a funny-looking scar. About the scathing rejections for titles now considered as classics. About how those writers never gave up hope.

Well, that’s the point right there. In spite of all the for and against for being resilient, what matters more than the evidence is the simple fact that hope is at the crux of it. If you stop hoping – if you stop believing in the possibility that there’s a home for your writing somewhere out there – then it’s all over.

We live in an age of cynicism and discussing ‘hope’ is often downplayed. But it defines those in the creative field – because it is usually little more than hope, and a genuine love for the craft, that keeps them going. Work can be thin and hard to come by. Opportunities can be vaporous. A network of supportive and like-minded friends can be heartening and inspiring, but often well-meaning support can be practically ineffectual. It’s a tough gig and a highly emotional way to spend one’s time.

Established writers need to learn to develop a thick skin. But I also believe that a standard among established writers, more than hard-boiled resilience, is the ability to maintain hope. It is the hope that that there will always be opportunities and there will always be a way to reach out to an audience that will engage with their work.

That’s a lot harder than it sounds. And for emerging writers unprepared for rejection and disappointment, that hope can quickly evaporate.

I want to try something. Some of you reading this may have submitted to page seventeen in 2014. Which means that there is a likelihood that you will receive a rejection notice from page seventeen.

Let’s say that happens. At that point, I want you to post, either in the comments on this post or on one of our social media platforms (Facebook or Twitter) the following message:

I’m not in page seventeen this year. But I’m a (writer/poet/etc) and my work will find its audience.

Making a simple statement like that can have a powerful effect.

And who knows? Maybe in a few months time, you can email us back with a sentiment such as ‘Ha! That piece you rejected is now going to be published in [insert reputable magazine/journal/website here], shows what you know!’

It would be our loss, but it would still be awesome.

Beau Hillier | Editor, page seventeen

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Dialogue

July 3, 2014

Something a lot of us struggle with is writing dialogue, even though talking is a necessity of our everyday lives and we’re subjected to constant chatter from one person or another. When it comes to translating that onto the page, though, we struggle. A lot of us also do things in written dialogue that we don’t do when we speak. For example …

 
Contractions
We all use contractions when we speak, e.g. don’t instead of do not, can’t instead of cannot, aren’t instead of are not . But for some reason, when we write dialogue, a lot of us revert to uncontracted words. It makes our dialogue stilted, or formal.

 
Well …
This is the most overused word in dialogue. People are always prefacing their dialogue with it. E.g.

‘Well, he says he’s going to come tomorrow.’

You’d be amazed how often it’s used. I can only guess that writers feel it helps them segue into what’s going to be said. Nine out of ten times you can chop it without affecting the dialogue.

 
Big words
This goes for prose in general, but a common misconception is if we stuff big words into the mouths of our characters, it’ll make them sound intelligent. No, it makes them sound disingenuous (and does the same for prose).

Listen to people speak. Truly listen to them. We stutter, we ‘um’, we pause, we mispronounce words, sometimes we simply forget the word we’re going to use, and often we begin one sentence … then break-off mid-stream to start a new sentence. On the written page, this would be infuriating. Sure we might use it selectively as an affectation, but the reality is that written dialogue is a dilution of the way we speak.

And yet despite that, we need to be as real as possible. Use those contractions. Listen to the vernacular. If you’re writing teenagers, they’re likelier to say ‘gonna’ rather than ‘going to’. And represent the situation – we’d speak one way to a child, another to a friend, another to our boss, and another to the gas company when we ring them up to query the bill.

Dialogue has cadences. It’s has rhythms and nuances. The best way to test our dialogue is to not only read it aloud, but to act it. Emote it. Feel it. How does it sound? Something that looks scintillating on the page might sound clunky aloud, or might be tongue twisting.

Writing dialogue is a skill in itself. Hollywood brings in screenwriters specialised in dialogue to polish screenplays that are otherwise taut. Yet, as writers of prose, we often let (unconsciously or not) our attention to prose overshadow our dialogue.

A final note relating to dialogue: be simple in your use of attributors – the ‘he said/she said’ that comes after the dialogue. There’s a school of thought that you should only use ‘said’ and ‘asked’. Some writers introduce adverbs. E.g.

he said wearily
she asked angrily

Others believe versatility is the key. E.g.

he postulated
she lambasted

Keep it simple. If your dialogue is written well, people will get the tone. In fact, that’s a good practice for improving your dialogue – keep the attributors simple, and see if your dialogue still communicates the emotions you’re intending. If not, then it needs work.

Write until your characters are speaking for themselves in every way possible.

LZ.

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As One Voyage Ends …

June 30, 2014

Firstly, a selfish moment. But even if you don’t find it interesting, I’ll find a way to make it more universal – and that’s a pinkie-swear promise.

I’ve been connected into the latest blog hop by the always-awesome George Ivanoff, which means I have some questions to answer as a writer.

Follow George’s posts on his Boomerang Books blog here – and he also has his own website here.

So without any more preamble, I’ll jump right in.

 

*             *             *

 

What are you working on at the moment?

I tend to have a couple of short stories in progress at once. At the moment the current projects include an awkward romance that begins in the abandoned Argus Building in Melbourne, and a longer piece that will start with a domestic break-in and go in a completely unexpected direction.

Behind all that I’ve been tinkering with the rough edges of my first complete and marketable manuscript draft. (This is a big deal for me – I’ve usually only pulled off one or the other.)

How do you think your work differs from that of other writers in your genre?

Aside from the fact that a writer’s voice is always going to be a one-of-a-kind fingerprint, I’m not sure if there’s anything specific I could point towards. I keep my writing as varied as possible – I’m terrified of falling into a rut or looking back over the past x stories to find they all sound the same or talk about the same things. I dip my toe into genre, but never long enough to settle into any one medium – which is both a positive and negative quality.

Why do you write what you write?

I bounce around topics with each new story – I move towards what I’m interested in. For the in-progress pieces above, my points of interest are clear for me; in the Argus-based story it’s an interest in modern ruins and abandoned buildings, and in the latter piece it’s going to be an exploration into identity in the modern age. Everything I write contains my own attempt to learn about or understand something – or maybe just explore it for kicks.

What’s your writing process, and how does it work?

My fetish is whiteboards. I have a big one set up above my computer, and an A4-size board I can carry around the house. I bounce the idea around in my head for a little while and then I attack one of the whiteboards to get the bits and pieces down.

After that I normally write the first draft out in fits and starts – surge through one section, let that simmer and then attack the next section.

That’s the process for each short story, at least. With my attempts at longer stories or novel-length pieces it’s a lot more trial and error – not so much a ‘process’ as an ‘oh-dear-god-I-hope-this-works’.

 

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So how am I going to follow on from that exercise?

Well, what I follow on to might have something to do with what today is. It’s a special day, if a somewhat sombre one. If you’re reading this post on the day it’s gone live, then you are witness to the final hours of page seventeen’s 2014 window for submissions. General submissions, competitions, the whole caboodle – it ends as of midnight, 30 June.

If you have submitted, thank you for taking part in page seventeen‘s voyage this year. For those still on the sidelines but caught wondering about the time still left before the ship drifts past the horizon … there’s still a chance to submit, isn’t there? There’s still plenty of breath left in that last hurrah, if you decide to go for it. I’d encourage you to, if only because of how empowering the simple act of submitting can be.

But how do you know that the piece you’re considering submitting is going to make the grade?

Well, that’s just it. You don’t know. I don’t know. Not even Google knows – although it’ll try to give you an answer regardless.

What’s important is that, as a writer, you know yourself and your motivations.

There’s a balancing act here. Never considering the sorts of questions I answered above could lead to a directionless pursuit of consistency and growth. Considering them too much is the kind of paralytic naval-gazing that can get you into trouble as a normally-functioning human being. Neither extreme is fun.

But a writer that decides to share their work with others should know a little bit about themselves. If not the finer details of their own writing process, then at least about what excites them. What draws them in. What made them decide that writing is a worthy hobby, pastime or career. It’s always been the case that the better you know yourself, the more you can get out of your work.

You might feel rushed if you decide to make your latest work submission-ready for page seventeen within the few remaining hours. But if you know your own work inside-out, then it’s possible. You’ll know that it’s ready. You’ll know to take pride in it. You’ll know it’s ready for the voyage.

And if not? Well, there are other opportunities – and you might always look out for page seventeen re-opening its submissions in 2015. One voyage ends, but another is always ready to begin.

 

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Part of the blog hop itinerary is that I connect this to three other blogs as a way of passing it on. But can I deviate from that slightly? Of course I can. Put those handcuffs away, it’s not a crime.

I want to ask every reader of this blog post that is a writer themselves to think about those questions. Do it immediately, so you don’t have too much time to consider the answer. Spend a moment, if you never have before, considering how your writing process works. What motivates you to write about certain subject matter. What sets you apart from other writers – or how you could nudge your style just a little further in a certain direction to give you a striking point of difference.

If you’re a writer and you have a blog, consider this one of those ‘why not?’ moments and have a go at the questions. You might learn something about yourself and your own nature as a writer – and anything that contributes to your own development will immediately flow on to your work.

Beau Hillier | Editor, page seventeen

 

P.S. A big thank you once again to all the contributors to this year’s general and competition opportunities from page seventeen. It’s great to see so much of a variety of work from so many enthusiastic authors, poets and photographers. It gives me more hope than ever for the future – and all the other voyages page seventeen has yet to take.

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INT. JAMIE’S MIND

June 26, 2014

Hello, my name is Jamie Barry and my blog is about my hopes and dreams in the business of writing and why those hopes and dreams exist as a part of my life. To be more specific in where my passion lies, it’s screenwriting.

I’ve had a passion for screenwriting since I became old enough to appreciate the craft for what it was and since I became old enough to actually know what it was. This was when I was 11. It was around this age that I wrote a lot of short stories both for school and in my spare time. As I was writing these short stories I was also watching a lot of movies.

So one day at this 11-year-old, child-like mind, I put two and two together and realised I could write a movie! I could be killing two birds with one stone by being in a profession where I get to write stories but also get to turn them into a film. My two favourite things! From then on the thought of writing a script, and the business in general, have always been in my mind.

It took me a while to actually start my first screenplay – mainly due to interruptions in my life: from homework to going out with friends. But when I found myself in a situation where writing a screenplay was actually needed I was quick on the scene.

My friend – who is a part of a digital media class – came to me knowing of my desires and gave me a task. He was assigned to make a short film. For this short film to be completed, a story structure was needed, and – more excitingly – a script was needed.

Of course I accepted the task and the first time I typed FADE IN, I won’t go as far as to say I shivered, had an epiphany or had my heart start beating faster then ever before, but I was excited. The excitement lasted up until the final FADE TO BLACK.

I handed my friend the script and he was very happy with it – almost as happy as I was doing it, if that was possible.

So that is basically where my passion came from and, there is no question in my mind that screenwriting is what I want to do. But where to go from here is the question. What are my endeavours? What are my goals? What’s next? In fact the reason why I’m writing this blog in the first place is due to ‘What’s next?’

Busybird Publishing is what’s next.

I am here for work experience because I know this is a great opportunity to become even more certain of my career aspiration of becoming a writer. Only being here a few hours and, sure enough, the certainty is stronger.

Even though I might not know the complete ins and outs of what the steps are to becoming a successful screenwriter, where to turn and what practices are needed in order to become better I do, however, know where I want to end up: in a café with a toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwich with a laptop also in front of me with Final Draft open.

After my fantastic sandwich I’ll head home to my fantastic study where I’ll continue on my screenplay. This screenplay that future me is working on may have been assigned to me from a production company or it may have originated from my own imagination. Future me doesn’t mind. I don’t mind.

So that’s that – the origins of my passion, my goals, and the aspirations for my passion.

Jamie Barry.

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The Intimidating Idea

June 24, 2014

There’s a problem I used to have quite regularly as a writer. I still have it every now and then. Maybe you do as well. I think all writers will encounter this hurdle, especially in their emerging years.

Let’s try a role play to illustrate what my topic today will be.

 

INT. WRITER’S HEADSPACE

It’s a messy place. Thank God your mother never told you to clean it up, there’s no telling what you’d find under some of this clutter.

In one corner a bright light comes into being. AWESOME WRITER rushes over in excitement, scribbling on a piece of paper.

AWESOME WRITER

Wow! This is a great idea! It’s so different from my comfort zone. I can’t wait to make this into something!

In response, from the shadows emerges DEVIL’S ADVOCATE.

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

Not so fast there. Are you sure about this?

AWESOME WRITER

Um, why wouldn’t I be?

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

Hoo boy. You haven’t thought about this, have you? Have a look at that idea. You’re not cut out for it. You don’t know anything about Argentina. You haven’t read Foucault in years. How do you expect to string all this together?

AWESOME WRITER

Well, it’ll be pretty easy to do some research …

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

Don’t give me that! It’ll be as plain as day you don’t know what you’re talking about.

AWESOME WRITER

Oh. Yeah, probably.

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

Shelve it for a while. It’s for your own good. Come back to it when you’re good and ready.

AWESOME WRITER

Now that’s a good idea. I know, I have this other idea about domestic instability. I just finished something similar, but ‘write what you know’, right?

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

Right. (Laughs maniacally)

DISSOLVE OUT

I hope your evil maniacal laugh was as good as mine.

But have you had this conversation before? I know I have. Maybe not with Argentina and Foucault rattling around in my headspace, but certainly with other concepts that I’ve put together, before deciding I needed to put the whole thing into hibernation. Why? Because I lacked the knowledge, the experience – and above all, the confidence – to tackle the idea.

If you’re now recognising the pattern, then you know where I’m going with this. Because that idea has now taken on a new identity. You’ve ruled yourself out from being able to work with what might be one of your greatest ideas, because you weren’t able to see yourself as the writer. It was too big for you. It was too intimidating. And now you can barely even look at the original notes for fear of burning your eyes. These are not evolving ideas. These are dormant ideas, and while they don’t develop they are dead weight. And they spend their spare time intimidating you like a mob enforcer gently reminding you that no one likes a snitch.

You might be tempted to sever yourself from the idea utterly to spare yourself the embarrassment. Do not do that. Unless it turns out to be a genuinely unworkable idea, you’re only doing yourself a disservice.

Speaking from experience, at one point I ended up with a folder full of concepts and drafted openings. The problems with many of these pieces wasn’t that I didn’t know what to write – this isn’t a writer’s block issue, and regular readers already know my views on that ogre. The paralysis set in because I didn’t trust myself to write it. The plot points were there, there was an established sense of direction, and I was at least good enough to bridge the remaining gaps – but I froze every time I was confronted with the task at hand.

I’m too green.

I need to develop more as a writer before I can be that ambitious.

I don’t know enough about the background – it’ll be too much research.

I need to work on my dialogue/setting/etc before I can pull this off.

Over and over again. If you’ve been in this quagmire before, then you know how hard it can be to pull yourself out with any real conviction.

Only in the past year, I’ve succeeded in clearing the decks somewhat. I have a long list of ideas that have been sitting around for years. Some of them are finally reaching the page. And it’s because I decided to stop being afraid of the ideas that once seemed too big for me to handle. Maybe they still are too ambitious for my level of development. But I’ll be damned if I don’t put them through some drafting before I accept defeat.

As a result, I’m currently more productive on my fiction than I have been for a long time. All other factors aside, the resolve to journey into the unknown has been a major catalyst towards that improved productivity.

No idea is too big. No prospect is too ambitious. And if you were the one to have this inspiration in the first place, then you’re the one best suited to turn it into a reality; a piece of writing on a page. Maybe one of the best pieces of writing you’ll ever develop. But you’ll never know until you trust yourself.

Beau Hillier | Editor, page seventeen

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