Last weekend I attended this year's RWNZ conference - the best conference yet, but also the most fraught. Sadly, M&B writer Sandra Hyatt passed away suddenly over the weekend. I didn't know her personally but have met her and heard her speak at Auckland chapter meetings. A warm, friendly and very astute and helpful writer. My thoughts are with her family and her close friends in RWNZ. She will be sadly missed.
Sandra was a good friend to most of the organisers of the conference, and despite it all and with the deepest of respect to their friend, they managed to ensure that the remainder of the conference ran smoothly and as successfully as the first two days. Extraordinary people.
The highlight of the conference for me was the workshop and talks from US thriller/SF writer, ex - green beret and writing tutor Bob Mayer. He put things in simple to understand terms and I learnt heaps. Tess Gerritsen was funny, very clever, and it's so hard to believe that such a nice lady writes truly scarifying thrillers. Haven't read any, but I'm certainly going to.
I had two pitches - with Kate Haworth of Penguin NZ and with Angela James of Carina Press, who had the bad luck to have caught a rotten cold. Both asked me to submit my manuscripts - so that's great.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
Flitting
Flitting - that's the best way I can describe the state of my writing at the moment. I'm flitting between different projects - and getting nowhere fast with any of them. Not a very productive work method.
I'm about 80% done on the final assignment of my screenwriting paper - a SF short film script. A lot of fun, and it's making me look at story writing in a new way. But it's not due till the end of October, so think I should put it aside and get on with editing my historical romance, working title "Gorge Creek". Then there is always the two SF books in their early stages, which are actually where my real interests lie.
I've done about 12,000 words of one, and am toying with whether to keep it as a longish short story/novella or turn it into a full book. And at Catherine Asaro's marvellous workshop before this year's con, I came away with the bare bones of another SF novel. This one really does have enough in it for a full novel, though will need a lot of research beforehand into such things as climate change, meteorology and general world building.
One thing Ms Asaro's workshop did achieve for me was to help me realise what it is I want to write. Or rather what it is I enjoy writing the most. It's SF, with or without a romantic element. Though I may still write in other genre's. I'm in the middle of reading "Doc" by Mary Doria Russell of "The Sparrow" fame. Here is a writer who writes what she wants to write, rather than what the business expects her to write. She could have stayed as a successful author of a stream of literary SF novels. But "Doc" is historical, the story of Doc Holliday, and a great read.
Or maybe all this flitting is just another name for procrastination. I am getting writing done, but it's bits here and there. Well past time to knuckle down and follow the maxims of Somerset Maugham. The only secret to writing is applying one's seat to one's chair and get on with it.
I'm about 80% done on the final assignment of my screenwriting paper - a SF short film script. A lot of fun, and it's making me look at story writing in a new way. But it's not due till the end of October, so think I should put it aside and get on with editing my historical romance, working title "Gorge Creek". Then there is always the two SF books in their early stages, which are actually where my real interests lie.
I've done about 12,000 words of one, and am toying with whether to keep it as a longish short story/novella or turn it into a full book. And at Catherine Asaro's marvellous workshop before this year's con, I came away with the bare bones of another SF novel. This one really does have enough in it for a full novel, though will need a lot of research beforehand into such things as climate change, meteorology and general world building.
One thing Ms Asaro's workshop did achieve for me was to help me realise what it is I want to write. Or rather what it is I enjoy writing the most. It's SF, with or without a romantic element. Though I may still write in other genre's. I'm in the middle of reading "Doc" by Mary Doria Russell of "The Sparrow" fame. Here is a writer who writes what she wants to write, rather than what the business expects her to write. She could have stayed as a successful author of a stream of literary SF novels. But "Doc" is historical, the story of Doc Holliday, and a great read.
Or maybe all this flitting is just another name for procrastination. I am getting writing done, but it's bits here and there. Well past time to knuckle down and follow the maxims of Somerset Maugham. The only secret to writing is applying one's seat to one's chair and get on with it.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Projects
I had the contact course for my Massey screenwriting course a few weeks ago, and am now fully ensconced in writing the short script due for the last assignment. It's an interesting exercise, especially in minimising dialogue and concentrating on the visual details to be described. Gone is the luxury of delving into the narrative character's head to describe how they are feeling, as in prose. If you can't see it, you can't write it. So I have to really think about how to convey details visually.
I started the course after hearing Stephanie Laurens at the 2010 RWNZ conference make the point that the style of storytelling used in entertainment fiction, as she describes genre fiction, is closer to that of modern film and TV than it is literary fiction. So it seemed a very good idea to find out how film makers do tell stories.
So far it's been fascinating. A quite different mindset, and it would be good to have more experience of the physical reality of filming, to see what you can and can't do. But it's also a lot of fun. And 6 pages of script can take longer to write than 6 pages of prose, despite having a whole lot less words on them. Also, 'cut' seems to be the operative word when editing. You have to examine every single word, particularly of dialogue, to see if it is really needed. And that is good for the soul, but hard on the heart.
I started the course after hearing Stephanie Laurens at the 2010 RWNZ conference make the point that the style of storytelling used in entertainment fiction, as she describes genre fiction, is closer to that of modern film and TV than it is literary fiction. So it seemed a very good idea to find out how film makers do tell stories.
So far it's been fascinating. A quite different mindset, and it would be good to have more experience of the physical reality of filming, to see what you can and can't do. But it's also a lot of fun. And 6 pages of script can take longer to write than 6 pages of prose, despite having a whole lot less words on them. Also, 'cut' seems to be the operative word when editing. You have to examine every single word, particularly of dialogue, to see if it is really needed. And that is good for the soul, but hard on the heart.
Friday, June 10, 2011
ConText and writing workshop
Back from an exciting week, and into the doldrums of an annoying cold. But it was worth it. The previous week I had the joy of taking part in a 3 day writing workshop by Catherine Asaro - one of my favourite writers and author of the brilliant Skolian series. The workshop was magic. A whole lot more work than I'd counted on, but after 3 days she had made me invent new characters, a new world and a whole new book. The morning of the third day she asked us to present a draft synopsis for the story we had been working on the previous 2 days. Now if anyone had told me beforehand that I could come up with a complete outline for a book I hadn't even thought about and in 3 days, I would have told them they were dreaming. I'm a pantser. I find out what happens when I write the whole story. But I did it, thanks to Catherine. She was brilliant.
That was followed by NZ's annual con - this year called ConText, at which Catherine Asaro was the guest of honour. And did they make her work! She was involved in so many talks, and she was constantly gracious, warm and so interesting. A marvellous weekend all round. And it finished very nicely - I came runner up in the con short story competition with my story "Exile".
Now I just have to finish off my other works so I can start on the great new book I have the beginnings of.
That was followed by NZ's annual con - this year called ConText, at which Catherine Asaro was the guest of honour. And did they make her work! She was involved in so many talks, and she was constantly gracious, warm and so interesting. A marvellous weekend all round. And it finished very nicely - I came runner up in the con short story competition with my story "Exile".
Now I just have to finish off my other works so I can start on the great new book I have the beginnings of.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Procrastinating
I'm currently in caught-between land. I've just sent off my latest assignment for the screenwriting paper I've done. Hathe, prts 1&2 are finished and waiting for me to get some time off, to spend a day printing them off and post off in submission. No short stories pending. So it's time to get back to my Gorge Creek book and start the 1st edit. Which is why I'm in classic writer phase of 'what else can I do'? Anything, please, anything to put off me opening up and starting the editing. Not that I don't enjoy editing. Just have my head space elsewhere at the moment, still caught up in other stories, and not quite ready to jump into the Gorge Creek space. Maybe I better just dive on in - rather like swimming in Lake Taupo as a kid. There was only one way to do it. Dive in and swim vigorously until the water temperature actually felt enjoyable. So I'm off to dive into Gorge Creek. Honest, really and truly. Maybe.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
ConText 2011 programming conflicts
I've just checked out the programme for this years NZ con - ConText, to be held in Parnell over Queen's Birthday weekend. See con website here http://context.sf.org.nz/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
There's such a lot of good stuff there, and the organisers are really making Catherine Asaro work! But they have scheduled too many great events at the same time. What to go to, what to miss? There are clashes with guest of honour talks and talks from NZ writers such as Grant Stone and Ripley Patton. Not fair.It's all too hard.
I'm also going to the writing workshop that Catherine Asaro has wonderfully agreed to give in the 3 days beforehand. Her Skolian series is my current absolute favourite SciFi series. A brilliant mix of innovative hard sci ideas with real human interest and a touch of romance to make it perfect. It's all about the people, the family at the heart of the stories.
There's such a lot of good stuff there, and the organisers are really making Catherine Asaro work! But they have scheduled too many great events at the same time. What to go to, what to miss? There are clashes with guest of honour talks and talks from NZ writers such as Grant Stone and Ripley Patton. Not fair.It's all too hard.
I'm also going to the writing workshop that Catherine Asaro has wonderfully agreed to give in the 3 days beforehand. Her Skolian series is my current absolute favourite SciFi series. A brilliant mix of innovative hard sci ideas with real human interest and a touch of romance to make it perfect. It's all about the people, the family at the heart of the stories.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Writing in the inbetween
My writing life has been a bit scrappy lately. I had an assignment to finish for the Massey screenwriting course I'm doing, and a story to complete for the ConText con competition. Plus everyday life rearing it's usual mucky head. But the assignment got done and just last night I pushed the send button for the short story contest entry. A straight scifi story, with the dark overtones that have been creeping in to all my short stories the last few years. I seemed to have developed a pattern of light historical NZ romances alternating with dark, even dismal, scifi & contemporary short stories. The SF novels fall somewhere in between. Hathe is a romance but is also pretty dark in places, and the latest one that is still in limbo is definitely darker. It deals with the farming of humans by an alien species. And yes, I know Ann MacCaffrey has done something similar in her Freedom series, as well as the amazing novel The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. But hopefully mine is different enough to still be original. I'm pretty sure neither of them first got the idea of their book by watching lambs watching the stockmen in a freezing works yard one day. So at least I can claim a degree of authenticity.
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