for everyone who doesn't think proofreading is necessary!

Or that courtesy, a certain amount of modesty, the ability to research and put together a grammatical sentence are attributes that all writers require. Check it out.

The Internet, Self-Censorship and Twittering Twits

There's been some talk recently on the blogsphere about how the internet is creating self-censorship. When people can post rude, vicious and gobsmackingly ignorant comments anonymously on measured and thoughtful commentary, reflections and personal opinion that are authored, then the authors tend to retreat. Why bother opening yourself up to a potential maelstrom of hatred? Why not go back to the private space of your journal where you can write what you like without censorship?

One of the problems with the kind of anonymous vicious commentary I'm talking about is that it does nothing to further intellectual debate or balance arguments. As Ulin says in the The Lost Art of Reading:

This is how we interact now, by mouthing off, steering every conversation back to our agendas, skimming the surface of each subject looking for an opportunity to spew.

David Ulin's books is thought-provoking and well worth reading, by the way.

There is no greater example of this kind of distracted, self-absorbed, ephemeral and self-referential stream of trivia than Twitter. My son, The Biker, put me on to this. Enjoy.

Reality Check

I find it quite disturbing when students complain if I don't have time to look at their extra work, as though I should be prepared as a teacher to work unpaid extra hours. Often the complaints seem to assume that I - and other teachers - have taken on too many committments - personal or other-professional - if we refuse or postpone this extra work. Like anyone else, my personal life and my other professional activities occur outside the finite number of hours I am employed by the TAFE, as you would expect.

Let me put some facts forward. I'm employed by GippsTAFE to work for a set number of hours and I work that set number of hours. My work is divided into a number of different activities, mostly teaching time, but including preparation, marking, professional development, administrative work and meetings.

Now, while in an ideal universe this set of number of hours would include a weekly allocation to look at extra work from students, to read and research further material appropriate to the courses I teach, to undertake a diversity of professional development opportunities and to learn, develop and utilise new technologies that are appropriate to e-learning, the reality is that I am paid to work a finite number of hours each week and the preceding list doesn't get factored into these. Some of these, in particular wide reading and research and professional development opportunities, I undertake for my own personal interest and am happy for my teaching institution to reap the benefits of my recreational time.

I expect to get paid for my teaching work. I simply wouldn't teach if I didn't get paid. I don't expect an electrician to come and fix something for me for the sheer love of fixing it. Nor would I expect to find Vic Roads open after hours just so they could provide unexpectedly good customer service. So, please, when you approach a teacher to commit to extra work - read over a rewritten assignment which, in a previous version, they have already marked and commented on, or look through a short story you want to submit to a competition, or an article you're hoping to submit to a journal, don't take for granted that they can easily fit this work in to their paid teaching hours. Your revised assignment, short story or article may have to wait until there's a spare moment at the end of whatever is their paid teaching week, or even the teaching term. Exercise patience and courtesy and I'm sure we'll find time eventually.

The First - and second - novel - Part Two

I hope you do complete your first long piece of writing. When I first started writing novels as an adult, I couldn’t finish them. They were highly derivative fantasy stories written firmly under the influence of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragons of Pern series.

At the same time, I was writing poetry and getting the odd poem published. The never-ending fantasy stories were an antidote to the brevity and urgency of the very contemporary, laconic poems I was also writing. I loved beginning these stories but couldn’t muster the necessary enthusiasm to finish them.

My poetry apprenticeship had begun years earlier, with active study in one way or another. I’d written them in primary school and memorised, scanned and analysed poems for various Speech and Drama exams. I’d studied them at University with a sense of familiarity because of the years of Speech and Drama but also because of a childhood of hearing poetry around the kitchen table and declaimed over the washing up. It wasn’t hard turning this formal and informal study into a more concentrated writerly examination of poetry when I decided to focus my attention on this form.

By the time I wrote my first complete novel, I'd already had a collection of poetry published. I wrote the novel because I was at home, first pregnant and then with a new baby, and I felt as though I should be doing something more with my time than writing poetry. The best thing about the novel remains the title – My Aunt Sophie, the Clairvoyant. It was, even then, firmly in a young adult voice. It was based on both my imagination and events I had either witnessed or eavesdropped on. The first person character was a feisty but somewhat vulnerable observer. These characteristics haven’t changed much. I now move from young adult to middle or younger reader with a fair amount of ease. I’ve written in both female and male voices but those voices have remained somewhat feisty but vulnerable; observers who don’t always put the information they’re witnessing – the adult world – together in a way that is helpful to them.

That novel has never even been sent to a publisher. And no wonder. The theme was wonky. The plot unbelievable. The dialogue often wooden. The structure was written without any idea of timelines. The characters, while I adored them and their weird foibles, often behaved uncharacteristically. I knew all this. I knew, too, that I’d spent too long on the first two chapters (approximately six months? could that be true?) and rushed the end of it, just to finish the damn thing. The opening of the novel, however long it was polished, nonetheless always took the reader on this rollercoaster ride of backstory and information. A friend said it left her breathless. It was not a compliment!

After my mother (The Editor) read it, she remarked with her usual honesty, 'It's a good thing you're a poet'. That sealed the novel's fate. It was bottom-drawered immediately. But I didn't give up writing novels.

Another novel followed My Aunty Sophie, the Clairvoyant. This was called something like Oliver’s Women. I didn’t even bother finishing it.

Then I started to write yet another, a story I’d been telling myself for years. It was about four teenagers and their intersecting relationships. I wrote it in prose, after all, that’s how you write a novel. I sent five chapters off to a good reader I knew. She sent it back with as much criticism as I’d sent manuscript.

The short version – it was no good.

I was angry with myself for having messed up a story I loved and characters I knew and was fond of. I sat down and wrote it as a verse novel. A Dangerous Girl was published. My first published novel. In verse.

Nonetheless, that novel taught me about prose novels – it taught me about plotting, structure, characterisation and how to hold on to a theme. It taught me about shadowing characters, foreshadowing events and the importance of details. All of these elements I would use in my first published prose novel.

Writing Short Stories

I once heard Thea Astley at a Writer's Festival talk about how she'd started writing poetry, but that was way too hard. Then she'd switched to short stories which were hard enough before finally trying a novel - a piece of cake in comparison. I'd agree that anything depending on brevity is going to be difficult. Coleridge's definitions of writing was 'prose,—words in their best order; poetry,—the best words in their best order.'

Equally every word in a short story should count.

In order for this to happen you need a good reason for writing the short story - it needs to explore an important theme, to communicate a clear message to the reader. Too often I read short stories by new writers which don't actually have an underlying theme. They may a plot and a few characters, but the theme hasn't been teased out sufficiently.

As the theme largely drives the plot and the motivation and transformation of the central character, you can see how the whole story can be shaky if the theme isn't identifiable.

I could begin two stories with identical characters and a common event as a catalyst, but where I take the story will largely depend on the theme I choose. For eg. my central character is a wife who has decided to leave her husband. She packs up and leaves while he's at work, but he comes home unexpectedly, driven by some instinct or intuition. There's a scene. He breaks down. She drives off regardless.

The theme will dictate how I frame this simple story. If I'm exploring infidelity and betrayal, I might begin the story with the wife's discovery of her husband's infidelity. It might be the final piece of the jigsaw of his indifference she's been slowly piecing together. He's been alerted by a call at work - it's not mere intuition on his part (although, in order that this is kept in the third person limited I would want the wife to guess this, rather than the reader know it from a scene at the husband's work). He breaks down and the wife drives off, not promising to return but not resolved to completely separate, either.

On the other hand if the theme is personal growth, I'd frame the story differently. The wife has felt trapped in her marriage. She's decided over a period of some time that change must happen. It hasn't. One morning she decides she has to reinvent herself or stagnate for the rest of her life. The scene when the husband arrives home is quite different. He tries to convince her that they are soulmates - otherwise how would he have guessed her intentions. She's tender with him, but her tenderness is caused through guilt. She agrees to a break. But the map she pulls out of the glovebox as she leaves gives the reader the feeling that she won't be back.

So the first thing you need to consider is the what theme you want your story to explore. Then you need to limit the cast of characters to as few as possible. You don't want the reader overwhelmed by the number of characters they have to remember. You want the story to retain a strong focus on one central character.

You need to think of the time over which the story takes place. Reduce this as much as you can. It's very difficult for a successful short story to take place over a lifetime. You need the discursive nature of the novel to accomplish this.

Do try to avoid the twist at the end of the tale. These worked beautifully at the height of their popularity. They were clever, quite unpredictable and in vogue. These days they are appear forced and predictable.

Don't think you need to explore large, melodramatic events in a short story. Small real things are often the catalysts of change - and easier to write convincingly. Remember, just because it happened, doesn't make your fictional version of an event ring true to the reader. Truth is stranger than fiction and you, the writer, must convince us that your fiction is the truth.

The First Novel - in three parts

Part One - in which we talk about dressmaking.

I remember the first dress I ever made. It was horrible. Actually, it was worse than horrible. It was weird. I had to sew together two contrasting pieces of fabric into a kind of dress, which then tied in such a way as to overlap the blue (for that’s what I chose) with the red (for contrast). I never wore that dress.

However, it taught me numerous elements of sewing. By the time I’d finished it I could cut out a pattern, zigzag my edges to avoid fraying, sew a straight seam, how to gather, turn a sewn piece of fabric inside out neatly (with the help of a pin for the corners) and edge-stitch the top of it. I could read a pattern. I knew what facings and darts were. I could mark fabric to indicate a dart and a tie. In theory, I could also mark up zippers, buttonholes and pleats. I knew a little about fabrics, but not much.
The next dress I made was a shirtwaister. Boarders at school were allowed, if their parents permitted, and paid, to do an after-school dressmaking course.

Under my mother’s guidance, I chose a shirtwaister and blue-grey pinstriped cotton. I should never have gone pattern or fabric shopping with a woman who exclusively wore navy blue and who, if she found something that fitted me as a child, bought two of the item in different colours but she had the money, so we both, reluctantly, went shopping.

In hindsight the shirtwaister – another never-worn sewing project – was a terrific learning experience. I learnt to cut out a vertically patterned fabric. I had to master a collar, more pin turning, buttonholes and buttons and proper, set–in sleeves. I had to attach a bodice to a skirt, add darts to the former and gather the latter. I had to add a side zip – possibly the most difficult challenge.

By examining the projects other students were making, I deduced that shirtwaister frocks were not highly regarded by the rather more hip thirteen year and fourteen year olds doing the course.

I followed this project up with an eight-gored blue velvet skirt which would have been successful had I actually realised that velvet is fabric with a nap. On four of my eight gores the nap ran one way, on the other four it ran the other way. My mother said this was a pattern. When my mother finally bought a forest green frock, my best friend rang me to tell me she thought my mother was having an affair.

She wasn’t – it was just a persuasive sales woman.

I didn’t wear the skirt. My mother wasn’t that persuasive. But I’ve cut out velvet skirts since and never made the same, humiliating mistake.

What does all this have to do with writing?

Welcome to the first novel.

Narratorial Voice

A story is narrative. It is either narrated by a third person narrator or a first person narrator. If the third person narrator can see into the hearts of all the characters, rather like believers in god believe he or she can, then we call that third person omniscient narrator. Omniscient means all-knowing. A third person omniscient narrator knows at all times exactly what is going on in the narrative. This narrator can see the thoughts and feelings of all the characters. It is a voice of authority.

However, narratorial voice, even with the third person omniscient narrator, encompasses more than just omniscience. It's not merely a 'fancy' way of talking about third or first person narration because there are shades of difference in narratorial voice in both of these.

So, for example, how do you talk about the narrator of the Lemony Snicket books? It would simply not be enough to say that these books are narrated in the first person, because Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) has used his narrator as a third person omniscient narrator, despite the fact that this narrator speaks directly to the reader as an 'I' character. In this sense, his use of narratorial voice harks back to nineteenth century novels, where the third person narrator, while chronicling the events of the characters, was happy to intrude opinions and editorial comment and is, therefore, often regarded as the voice of the writer, as well as the story's narrator.

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.

Reading just this page, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a first person story. The narrator says, 'I'm sorry to tell you this,' addressing you, the reader, directly. But, although the narrator does intrude in the story, it's fundamentally a third person omniscient narration. I hope you can see here, that if you were offering an analysis or a reflection on narratorial voice in The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket (pen name of Daniel Handler), you'd have to go beyond saying simply this books is told by a third person omniscient narrator. This captures none of the charm and cleverness of the narratorial voice Daniel Handler uses, nor does it do justice to the playfulness of this voice, the fact that the narrator digresses from the story, begs the reader to stop reading and is unreliable.

In a different way, The Great Gatsby equally defies a mere first person narrator as a description of how that book uses narratorial voice. Who is the central character of The Great Gatsby? Surely the title gives that question away - the central character is the elusive Jay Gatsby himself. But the book is narrated in the first person by Nick Carraway. We see the events that unfold through The Great Gatsby through his eyes. We're not privy to any other character's thoughts and feelings. (Quite different from the omniscient narrator in The Bad Beginning, who can tell you - and does tell you - exactly what all three Baudelaire orphans are thinking or feeling and the thoughts and feelings of the villains as well.)

So what narratorial voice does Fitzgerald use? He uses a first person narrator as a witness or observer of events that take place to the central characters of the book. Nick Carraway doesn't pretend to know what happens inside the other characters heads - he can only be told, by them, of their feelings. But he can - and does - observe them. Nick Carraway is a useful device for Fitzgerald because he can step into the different worlds of the main characters: Tom and Daisy Buchanan's home, Jay Gatsby's party, Tom and Myrtle's love nest and Wilson's garage. If, for example, Daisy was the first person narrator, how would we see Tom and Myrtle playing house together? This reflection of Carraway as a narrator goes beyond merely mentioning that The Great Gatsby is narrated in the first person. It's a reflection of narratorial voice.

A further reflection might add that the reader believes Carraway because he is outside the main action - we trust that he is a reliable witness as he has nothing invested in the story. Carraway himself tells you at the beginning of the book that, his 'interest in the abortive sorrows and shortwinded elations of men' was destroyed by the events he is about to relate. This further strengthens the power of the narratorial voice - Carraway is a witness and a witness who has been transformed by the events he has witnessed.

With both these examples, the narratorial voice is inevitably linked to the characters created by the writers - Lemony Snicket and Nick Carraway. What about the narratorial voice of the third person objective? Even this is coloured by the setting of the piece,and the characters being observed by the largely-invisible narrator. Hemmingway's cool, detached narratorial voice in 'Hills Like White Elephants' is undercut by the tight timeline of the story and the descriptions of the oppressive heat and the deserted station. The dialogue skirts around the conflict between the unnamed American and the woman, Jig. This is narrator as fly-on-the-wall taken about as far as it can go. Interestingly, this is the story that students often have problems with. Times have changed dramatically since Hemmingway wrote and abortion is no longer a taboo subject. In this sense, third person narratorial voice is inseparable to the view of the world it implies - in this case, the world of travelled and educated privilege.

A writer who chooses to create an unreliable narrator, is playing games with the narratorial voice and it's important to ask what the games are serving. In We Need to Talk About Kevin, a book which uses an epistolary narrative voice, Lionel Shriver has created, while not entirely an unreliable narrator, a narrator who reveals and confesses more and more of her story as she writes letters to her absent husband. You can't talk about the narratorial voice in Shriver's book without linking the slow revelatory nature of the letters to Shriver's unpredictable and skilful plotting.

In third person limited, which is close to first person, the narratorial voice is also tied up with the viewpoint character, that is, the character through whose eyes we are witnessing events and learning about the other characters. The narratorial voice of a novel written in the third person limited point of view which has it's central viewpoint character a visual artist, might be enriched with metaphors and motifs from the painterly world. A novel written from the point of view of an aerialist might use an narratorial voice which consistently reflects the bird's eye view of the performer.

If you're interested in writing metafiction - that is fiction that draws attention to the fact that it is, indeed, fiction - you'll choose a narratorial voice which is self-consciously pointing to the artificial construct of the narrator.

The second person point of view - a voice which seems to be either addressing an earlier self, another side of the self or placing the reader in the position of the 'you' addressed is very rarely successfully used. But it is still a choice of narratorial voice you should be aware of. If you want to try it, start with shorter, rather than longer, pieces of fiction. And try to have your narratorial voice clearly indicating either an earlier version of the 'I' behind the narrative, or another side of that 'I' because otherwise the reader will feel as though they are the 'you'.

Narratorial voice is a complex element of the story and writers need to know as much about their choices as possible. Of course, initially, you might just want to settle on a choice between first person or third person limited - and allow the narratorial voice to grow organically from this choice. Never be scared to re-write in a different point of view - this radical revision approach has saved manuscripts!