Reading Jane Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

and so I thought I'd quote some passages over the next few blog posts for you to ponder.

As every novelist has a style, so every novelist has conviction, which is a type of emotion, not an act of reason. It may take draft after draft to achieve a perfectly natural style. It also may take draft after draft to write with sufficient conviction. This conviction can be about anything - a specific theory of human nature, a particular analysis of a single incident, a simple certainty that the writer knows what is true and has to tell it....

The most basic conviction of every novelist from Lady Murasaki on, though, is that things are not as they appear; this conviction can be added to or modified in accordance with the novelist's particular perceptions. Of course, poets and dramatists frequently express the same conviction, but novelists must express it, because narrative point of view inherently delineates the contrast between what one person thinks and what others around him think. Literary artists who are driven by the feeling that appearances are deceiving and that they know what the truth really is are drawn to the novel for this very reason.

To think about: what is your conviction in the novel you are currently writing?

Mid-year blues

I think everyone in my household is suffering from mid-year blues. I feel as though I haven't yet got a handle on balancing my life-with-teenagers, teaching life and writing life. Guess which is suffering? Yes, you got it. The writing - because that has the quietest voice. Well, the quietest voice on a daily basis.

Teenagers are loud and pretty insistent in their demands - drive me here, please. Feed me now, please. Teach me to knit now, please. Come and see this. You'll love it. Let's have a dvd night together. Let's go out. Let's make a chocolate cake. Take me for a driving lesson, please.

These are all good things - and fun things (apart from the driving lessons which are exercises in facing death calmly). Teenagers should be heard - they won't stay teenagers.

My teaching life is equally demanding and loud - mark these assignments, answer the discussion boards, write these emails, participate in this meeting. There are good reasons for teaching which must be respected - and it's not all about the money.

My writing life whispers. You haven't been good to us. You have neglected us. We are sulking. It's easier to ignore this whisper. It's easy to say, well, never mind, you don't make much money, anyway. You didn't get shortlisted this year. You can wait.

But the whisper and the sulk are insistent. If they are ignored for too long, depression sets in. It's like a poison which spreads to everything - the teenagers, the teaching, the cooking - even the dogs. I become snappy and impatient. I become overwhelmed and lost. I lose focus, a sense of who I am, a sense of who I can be, a sense of purpose and most of all, a sense of joy.

So, this week I'm returning to the kind of schedule I used to keep when the kids were young and it was seemingly impossible to do anything that didn't involve strict routines. I'm returning to carving out an hour or an hour and a half, or even half an hour from my working day in which to honour writing self.

I'll begin by doing my morning pages a la Julia Cameron.

I suggest, if you have the mid-year blues, or are feeling overwhelmed by life and work, or underwhelmed by joy, you think about honouring your writing self.

Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way is an okay place to start. Or pick up a copy of Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. Set aside your writing time as strictly as you'd set aside eating or exercising time. Think of it as food for your soul or exercise for your writing muscles. Honour yourself as an artist. It's quite possibly less time that you'd spend watching television, or ironing, or checking out Facebook. You can do it. You're worth it.

Holiday exercies! - better late than never?

A standard plot introduces an outsider to a community - each shakes up the other. The community can be as small as a family or as large as a small town. Introduce a stranger to your community. What impact will they have, who will they influence - and will it be beneficial or detrimental?

This is as true for life writing, of course, as it is for fiction. What has happened in your own family when strangers have come into it. The strangers could be birth parents, in-laws, spouses, adopted children or foster children. For some people the stranger could even be a new baby.

Go on an artist's day - or do something new this holiday. Something you have never done. This could be as simple as eating a food you've never eaten, or learning a new skill. Even going to a new place can be refreshing and energising. Make a firm decision to refresh your writing self!

This holidays I made glass beads with my son - he bought a beginner's lampworking kit after watching people use them on YouTube. We went to my mother's place - she has the largest shed in the world - and learnt how to melt the glass around a thin steel rod coated with bead release. We learnt how to roll the glass in fritt (spelling?) and roll the bead on a graphite pad to shape it. It was so much fun doing something completely different. And, of course, it's a skill I can pass on to a character!

When you've done your new thing - write it up. If it's something new you've eaten, write about what it tasted like, what it smelt like and the texture. Think about the colour. How did you eat it and who, if anyone, was with you? Describe the setting. If you go somewhere new, do the same thing.

If you learnt a new skill, write it up twice - first notes on the skill - technical notes, so that if you ever do give it to a character, you're speaking with authority. Then write it up imaginatively - again, using all your senses. You might choose to do this by passing it on to a character.

Happy holidays. Oh, and check this out!

Isabel Allende

Has just published a new book - Island Beneath the Sea. 'With the violence, the mad wife and the torrid sex, the ingredients are all in place for a bosom-heaving blockbuster, but Isabel Allende brings to her storytelling another dimension altogether.' Dianne Dempsey, The Age.

Note if for your holiday reading if you enjoyed The Sum of Our Days!

new book

I've just read Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream: the Process of Writing Fiction. He's got great chapters on writing from the cinema of the mind and sensory detail, one of which I'll photocopy for next semester's resource book. Terrific book if you happen to see it on your local library system. I'd particularly recommend it to anyone contemplating novel writing or the advanced writing project.

Limited Third Person explained (hopefully!)

A lot of students managed to establish their limited third person viewpoint without taking advantage of that. Once you’ve established a viewpoint character, even if you’re going to alternate viewpoint character from chapter to chapter, you can give your reader direct access to their thoughts and feelings. This avoids unnecessary repetition of pronouns or your character’s name. It also leads you to less telling and more showing.

Here’s an extract from Christos Tsiolkas’ Slap. It’s told from the viewpoint of Rosie, the mother of the child who has been slapped. See how Tsiolkas establishes the viewpoint character and then speaks directly from her voice. Can you also please notice that this is told in the simple past but we it read as the fictional present. The immediacy is created in the writing, not by the tense.

…Hugo had already watched it [Finding Nemo] right through earlier in the day. It had become his favourite over the last few weeks and now she too almost knew it by heart. Sometimes she would pretend to be Dory to his Nemo. She wished he could be in the bath with her (except it would be too hot for him, the little fella). They could pretend to be Dory and Nemo, under the water, in the pretty sapphire world underneath the sea. She’d pretend to be Dory, forgetting everything he told her, trying not to giggle as Hugo got more and ore excited and frustrated.

Her eyes flung open. Damn. It was around lunchtime that she received the letter, just after she had come back from the park with Hugo. Rosie had gone pale as she read the dry words stating the date and time for the hearing to be held at the Magistrates Court in Heidelberg.

Submitting work

I am amazed at the number of students who don't actually read the assignment submission information and are still submitting work as .docx rather than .doc. If this was a magazine requesting submissions, you do realise that no matter how good your work was, it would simply not be opened by the editor and therefore not looked at, let alone considered, for publication.

I can't begin to emphasise how important it is for new, emerging and established writers to be able to read simple instructions. If you were applying for grants, for example, you would need to read the submission information very carefully - maybe twice. If you were unsure of any detail in that information, you would have to go to the grant website and see if it was available in a more comprehensible form. As a last resort, you might decide to phone the grants officer - but only as a last resort because you wouldn't want to look unprofessional.

If you are still unsure of how to submit .doc, rather than a .docx do what you would have to do as a professional writer - read the instructions and then, if all else fails, use an internet search engine so you can solve your problem!