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Opinions are like …
February 5, 2013‘This is good coffee.’
I hear this or a similar sentiment, everytime I stop in at a café (be it from someone at my own table, a stranger conversing with friends, or Al Pacino shouting at me through a Vittoria advertisement). I have no problem with the statement itself, but I do take exception to the way it has evolved to carry no real human opinion. It’s said purely out of habit. It has joined the ranks of ‘How are you doing?’ and ‘Good to see you.’
The person making the declaration doesn’t know that said coffee is good. A lot of the time the cappuccino in question is lost beneath a layer of confectionary chocolate and carries the stench of burnt milk. This coffee is not good. But my problem isn’t even that the judgement is underqualified. It’s that the speaker hasn’t truly evaluated the coffee – they haven’t tasted their caramel latte and ranked it against every other caramel latte they’ve had in the last month of regular brunches. They have simply said ‘This is good coffee’ for the sake of saying it. They believe these four words let those in their company know that they 1) drink coffee regularly, and, 2) have some level of expertise in the understanding of coffee.
There’s a similar superficiality about critiquing literature.
Reading is a hobby older than most. We all have favourite authors and favourite books. Some of us may be in workshopping groups, comparing our prose with other writers; others may attend a book club regularly, discussing the pros and cons of published works.
We love books.
We read regularly.
Yet, so often, when discussing a book or short story with someone they pour their sentiments into exclamations such as ‘It was boring’, or ‘Nothing happened.’
That’s not good enough.
If this is one of your main passions in life you need to have more to offer than ‘Nothing happened.’ If you pay a repairman to have a look at your broken dishwasher and all he says is ‘It’s broken’, you’re going to feel a little disappointed, and rightly so.
‘I’m entitled to my opinion.’ It’s well worn, and it’s true. But it needs a qualifier: everyone is entitled to an educated opinion. If you have a strong, aggressive stance on an issue without spending time to understand it you’re not proving you’re intelligent. All you’re proving is that you’re an opinionated arsehole.
Writers are storytellers, and they employ an unfathomable range of tricks to tell their stories. That’s what makes the best writers stand out from the plethora of published authors out there. David Foster Wallace could turn a story about buying milk into the most hilarious anecdote imaginable; the lonely, old woman who runs the milk bar would absolutely butcher To Kill a Mockingbird given the chance.
The only time you can get away with summarising a story by saying ‘Nothing happened’ is if you’re talking about a Nicholson Baker novella or a Samuel Beckett play.
If you really didn’t enjoy a book spend some time thinking about why that is. There are so many reasons a piece of literature might not appeal to you. And not just because ‘It’s boring’; maybe because the pace was too slow to maintain your interest, or that you couldn’t connect with any of the characters’ morals or sympathise with their predicaments. Was there too much telling and not enough showing? (Be careful with this one; it’s a problem that’s all too common, but the statement itself is almost as bad as ‘This is good coffee.’)
If the vocabulary used in a book is beyond you, or if a stream-of-consciousness style proves too confusing to follow, say so. There’s no shame in it. Don’t flag someone’s work as boring because it didn’t cater to you as an individual.
It works the other way as well. If you enjoyed a novel spend some time trying to understand why. Was there a sensibility in the protagonist’s decision making that really appealed to you? Or perhaps it was just the author’s use of language: their error free construction of clauses, conjunctions and semicolons really rocked your boat.
Don’t just read a book to tick it off a list. You can read one hundred books in a year, but if you don’t spend the time to enjoy or understand them, what’s the point? What have you achieved?
We understand coffee; why not prose?
Daniel Kovacevic
Assistant Editor
Why submitting your work is good for you
January 30, 2013
There are many writers out there who are scribbling away at stories that never see the light of day. So does that make them a writer?
A story is actually a two-fold thing. It needs to be written, of course, but it then needs to be read or heard to make it concrete. That means that there is actually a relationship between the writer and the reader. So in my mind, unless a story is shared, the writer of that story isn’t a true writer.
I know it’s a scary thing to share your writing but until you do you can’t improve your craft. This is why submitting your work to magazines, journals and writing competitions is very important to any writing career.
Have a think about your work. If you were to submit a piece for publication, wouldn’t you work harder on it to make it the best it can be? This means reworking and polishing it. That has to be good for your craft, doesn’t it? This makes you look at your work more professionally.
Then there’s the act of submitting it. This means that you own up to being a writer (or artist because this also applies to all art mediums) and you put yourself out into the world. This is hard for many who are either introverted or unsure about their ability. But you won’t know unless you put your work up for sharing. You will face rejection of course but that will help you improve even more. Rejection is a HUGE part of being an artist of any kind. Learn to grow a thick skin.
It’s a catch-22 really, this whole publishing caper. In order to get published you need to have a known name. Submitting your work to places like page seventeen, [untitled], Going Down Swinging, 21D, Sleepers Almanac, is a way for you to get your foot in the door. This is one of the ways to begin your writing career. Enter as many writing competitions, like our [untitled] short story competition, as you can. You may just be lucky enough to win (yes, there is a certain amount of luck involved in competitions) and get published.
That first time that you have your story published, with your name next to it is one of the highlights of any writing career, not to mention that it looks good on your CV and will go a long way to helping you get published a second time.
Blaise
Voice.
January 22, 2013So what is ‘voice’ in writing?
Google it and you’ll find any number of definitions.
This is what Wikipedia has to say:
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The writer’s voice is the individual writing style of an author, a combination of idiotypical usage of syntax, diction, punctuation, character development, dialogue, etc., within a given body of text (or across several works).1
From Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent:
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So what is it? To me, your writer’s voice is the expression of YOU on the page. It’s that simple—and that complicated. Your voice is all about honesty. It’s the unfettered, non-derivative, unique conglomeration of your thoughts, feelings, passions, dreams, beliefs, fears and attitudes, coming through in every word you write.
Voice is all about your originality and having the courage to express it.2
From The Kill Zone:
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In a similar manner, when it comes to defining the writer’s voice, it can be the combination of the author’s attitude, personality and character; the writer’s style that conveys the story. It’s called the writer’s voice. Voice is the persona of the story as interpreted by the reader.3
It’s all correct. And there’s any number of variations on the definition.
Recently, I’ve had discussions with authors who’ve said to me their voice changes depending on what story their writing. I don’t buy that.
For me, (the definition of) voice can be diluted further.
When I’m reading a story, I hear the narration in my head. It’s not my actual voice I hear. Or my standard inner monologue of thoughts. It’s something distinctive to that author. That author might diversify in what they’re writing – go from satire to contemporary drama to historical romance to erotica to sci-fi – but their voice always shines through, a sine wave that is unique to them, just as bands and artists have distinctive sounds.
Turn on the radio, for example, and even if you don’t recognise the song, you can usually identify it either by the sound of the vocals and/or the music. Even when artists try something difficult – e.g. go from rock to something jazzier – the sound is still them at heart.
Think about the song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Listen to the vocal range displayed there by Freddie Mercury and the other members of Queen. But it’s all still Queen, regardless how many highs and lows they hit, how often the song varies from ballad to melody to rock.
Voice is something that I really look for in a story.
Sometimes, when I’m reading, I feel like the author has tried to aggrandise their prose, as if (they feel) that will make them sound impressive. When I was young, I used to try something similar, consulting the Thesaurus for alternatives that might astound the reader and show them how smart I was. Others I read might try to be shocking, as if (they believe) their temerity will titillate and/or awe me. There are any number of ways writing can be untrue to its author.
This doesn’t mean that voice has to be simple. It just has to be you.
It can take a long time to discover your voice. I think it took me twenty years. Usually it comes through lots of writing, lots of experimentations, lots of trial and even more error.
But as you write, think about how you tell your story. Think about how you would tell it, if somebody asked you to speak it to them. Would you dress it up or just be straightforward, be true to yourself as a person?
One final way to think about it: if we both went to the bank and the bank was robbed, we would both relay the experience differently, because we’re unique and our minds, the way we interpret and process events, differs. Even if we tried telling this story a variety of different ways (e.g. humourously, dramatically, experimentally, satirically) or in different styles (e.g. chronologically, in flashback, disjointedly, backwards) our voice would still be the spine of our narrative.
Ultimately, voice is about being true to yourself, regardless of what we write.
LZ.
1. Writer’s Voice – Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer%27s_voice. Accessed 20 January 2013.
2. Rachelle Gardner – http://www.rachellegardner.com/2010/07/what-is-writers-voice/. Accessed 20 January 2013.
3. The Kill Zone – http://killzoneauthors.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/what-is-writers-voice.html#.UPtBCmd5eSo. Accessed 20 January 2013.
Stories everywhere
January 15, 2013
By simply living we are creating our own story. Much of it will be boring to recount when we come to the end of it but there will also be thoughts, feelings, things learned and interesting events that are worth leaving behind. So how can we work out what to tell and what to leave out?
I don’t know about you but I’m not really interested in what you had for breakfast or the fact that you are drinking a coffee at a local cafe as so many people might post on Facebook. But others might be. That’s the thing. It’s all subjective. That whole one man’s trash is another man’s treasure thing.
That means that you shouldn’t tell a story that you think other people will enjoy. You should tell a story that you enjoy because there’s bound to be another person who also likes it. The clue is to make the way you tell it interesting. The devil is in the details (apologies for cliche). So to be a good storyteller, you need to give it a good angle. You need to have your eyes open to the world and suck up every ounce of information. Just be observant. Go people watching. Go smell roses. Write down anything that spikes your interest. See shapes in the clouds.
Outside the Page – Between Giants
January 6, 2013Hi All,
Just a quick one tonight on the latest from our esteemed poetry editor, Ashley Capes.
The latest poetry collection from Ashley, called Between Giants, is currently available from Ginninderra Press. Ashley’s poetry is always a delight – check out the collection on the publisher’s website here, and say hi to Ash at his blog here if you feel so inclined (he’s just put up a review of Between Giants by Mark William Jackson, which you can zip straight to here if you’re interested).
Remember, I want to hear if there’s anything going on that might have slipped under my radar!
Beau Hillier | Editor, pageseventeen