Debbie Robson's Blog, page 6

Doing a TV Interview

This post was put up on wordpress on 14th September.

It was fantastic. I’m not quite sure how Channel Ten Sydney came to approach the Adelaide BC group but bookcrosser Newk put up the information at BCAUS, the yahoo BookCrossing group, that the station was looking for bookcrossers. Yours truly, never backward in coming forward, put up her hand and also contacted the station.

Eve Neylon the segment producer was wonderful and the online intro the station put together to explain BookCrossing to the general public was one of the best examples I’ve seen. BookCrossing really is a parallel universe. It is a tricky thing to explain in a few minutes but the bottom line is that www.bookcrossing.com is about sharing books. If you love books and want to share books with others, read reviews of your favourite books, meetup with people to discuss books and even receive books in the mail from faraway places then BookCrossing is definitely for you.

For me discovering the site has literally changed my life. I have not only been to 4 conventions: Adelaide, SA in 2006, London in 2008, Greece in 2008 and the Sydney Unconvention in 2010 but it has also inspired me to write my second published novel Crossing Paths: the BookCrossing Novel.

One of the questions my interviewer Paul Henry was going to ask me was how did I get into BookCrossing. Well, a week before Christmas in 2003 I saw an ad in an Australian Publications mag about the site and immediately I was intrigued. I couldn't wait to get home and sus it all out!

After an hour or two going over the site (it is a very comprehensive with a lot to take in) I immediately realised "This is so me." I love books and I love synchronicity and BookCrossing is about both. After a little while I also realised that BookCrossing was also a book - a book that I could write. I remember working out that amazingly people can be tracked through BookCrossing. And you could also anticipate where people might be travelling to next, by the books on their "virtual" bookshelf.

I also remember, within a day of discovering BookCrossing, studying my "real" bookshelf to try and work out what books my character would take with her and how many. I initially decided on 10 but then lowered it to eight to allow for books she might pick up on the way. Also important was where she was going to release the books and so began my journey of writing a book inspired by an online bookclub, the doorstopper that I managed to hold up in my TV interview, as you can see for yourself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PAqoC...

Doing the interview was a wonderful insight into how segments are produced. Eve was very thorough. First interviewing me by phone, keeping in touch by email, phoning me again to confirm the appointment, asking more questions and a day or so before emailing me with background information that the interviewer would be reading to prepare themselves (Paul Henry as it turned out) for the segment and questions they would be asking to give me a chance to put together my best answers.

We only had three minutes and because the station decided on producing a small online intro to BookCrossing, that freed Paul up to ask different questions. He asked one or two on the list but the rest were dictated by his curiousity and the way the conversation went. Although he did interrupt a bit I'm glad he did because that's how we managed to cover quite a lot in in such a short timespan.

I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to do the interview. It was such an enjoyable experience. I was lucky to have my friend Gina drive down with me from Newcastle and she was allowed to sit offscreen and watch the segment. Everyone was so friendly - the makeup girls, Lana, Eve, Paul and Kath. Thank you Channel 10! It was fun!

How Many Drafts of Your Novel Should You Do

This post was put up on wordpress on 2nd September.

My answer is six and that is probably my average. If the book proves problematic then I’ve reached eight but that’s generally my maximum. I’ve heard other writers speak of astronomical numbers such as 18, 27, 34 and even fifty odd. I immediately think how do they do that many drafts? But me being a suspicious person, when I hear such amazing figures I often wonder what they consider constitutes a draft. Say, maybe a quick adjustment of a few words here and there, a scan and then start again? Is that what they call a draft? Put the thing away for a week or so, pick it up again, flick through, change another paragraph and that’s draft 25 for you? I don’t know of course. I can only tell you what my methods are so here goes...

Draft 1 is obvious of course. That’s where you get the main storyline down including what scenes to put in, what to leave out and from whose point of view. Last Tuesday I completed the first draft of my work in progress The Grey Silk Purse. Strictly speaking it is not a complete first draft. It is missing one final chapter and the epilogue which is a letter. Both I can’t do at this point until I’ve done heaps more research.

And this is where the 2nd draft comes. I will now go back, look up and check 95 # points of research such as the uniform of staff working in a stationery shop in Newcastle in 1920. In my novel Tomaree. In Crossing Paths I actually don't remember that I had as as many things to check. I managed to do most of my fact-checking as I went along.

Before I generally start writing a novel I have already done a fair amount of research. Whilst writing the first draft I’ll check as many points as I can but when fact checking starts to really slow me down that’s when I put a # in and move on. With the second round of research I will often have to change the narrative slightly to accommodate facts I have recently discovered. I will also tidy up my prose and check overall length of chapters. Is that scene really necessary kind of thing. With The Grey Silk Purse I have a massive construction problem two thirds of the way through. I will tackle that and will also have to keep a good eye on it in the next draft.

In the 3rd draft I will usually start drilling down, checking my word usage (okay for that particular character or time etc) my paragraphs (are they too long?) I also check how the writing flows. This is a good time to actually really look at any scenes or chapters that still trouble you. Can I do without it altogether or do I need to rewrite? Any extensive rewrites at this stage will have to be checked closely because they will not have been read anywhere near the amount of times of the rest of the work. This is where I often check odd things like the colours of the diaries in The Grey Silk Purse. There are four different diaries that feature in the manuscript and they are all different colours. I will probably check the word count of each diary and that I’ve got the colour correct for each one (particularly as these are referenced later in the novel).

It is usually around the 4th draft that I like to print the whole manuscript out and work at it on paper, pretending I’m a ruthless editor working through page after page, slowly but very carefully. It’s where you really get to see how the manuscript will look in hard copy.

It’s funny how many things you can pick up and fix in this different format. You’ll find it is very handy when looking at dialogue. I also generally write my edits on the page and then do another draft putting them in to my word document. This will then be the 5th draft.

In this draft I will not only put in my changes but do a global search for a particular word that I think I might have used too much. (This is why it is a good thing to keep your manuscript all in one document!) I’ve done this with all my novels and it is never the same words that keep cropping up. It is generally different words for different books. When you realise you’ve got 162 “wondered”s you can then push yourself to find alternatives. (In this 900 word essay I have 13 “check/ed/ing”s. Maybe too many but hey this us what this piece is about.)

The 6th draft (if all is going well) is the final read through. It’s a chance to read the manuscript for the umpteenth time. (Because if you are like me you will often re-read it a lot of times before you even start the second draft). You can check every word for typing errors and watch out for those slippery little suckers the closing quotation marks which (for me anyway) have a habit of disappearing at a great rate. Are there any missing? Can you find any more typos? Realistically you will not find them all so that’s where a friend can come in handy and do a read through for you. Another pair of eyes will always pick up things you’ve missed. That’s my experience anyway.

And now your baby is ready for an amazing journey. Kiss it goodbye and wish it luck.

The Bottom Line: Our characters are what they focus on.

This post was originally put up on wordpress on 12th August.

It sounds simple of course but I really didn’t discover this until recently. To be more precise after I finished writing Crossing Paths: the BookCrossing Novel. I decided (unwisely I now know) to use eight different points of view to tell the story. This was a challenge of course and one I think I met for the most part, except for one thing – two of my male characters were often confused with each other by my readers. I thought it was enough to differentiate them - one was gay, lived in Cornwall and was a new age writer; the other was in love with the main female character Jane, lived in Boston and was an antiquarian bookdealer. But ultimately they often appeared the same because their thoughts were both focused on Jane, worrying about her and trying to anticipate her next move. It also didn’t help that both men’s name started with J...

We learn of course by our mistakes and I am much more aware now, how important focus is. It doesn’t just dictate our character’s thoughts (and ours for that matter) but also how a character dresses, acts and treats others and ultimately dictates the course of the whole novel.

In Fifty Shades of Grey the main character's focus is of course on the sexy but rather twisted Christian Grey. In the novel James labels her character Ana's thoughts as sometimes "my inner goddess" or "my subconcious". These "other" voices occasionally clash with her general thoughts but for the most part Ana's focus collectively remains on Grey's delectable hips.

In Bernard Schlink’s The Weekend: A Novel it is hard to keep track of the characters at times but when we do move closer to them I noticed that Schlink had given them all different concerns; if they were focusing on the same thing ie their friend, a former terrorist released from prison after serving a long sentence – then they were depicted with varying viewpoints. Reading this novel was a real eye-opener for me in regards to differentiating characters.

I realise now too, how brilliant one of my long time favourite writers is at this. I remember in Rosamund Pilcher’s The Shellseekers, when we are introduced to Noel all he’s thinking about (I’m writing this from memory) is his clothes and the heating in his flat. And that's all that is really important to this character because he’s totally self-absorbed. Never mind that his mother is ill, material things are more important and this is all just in the first paragraph introducing him – a brilliant example of determining a character’s focus quickly. Pilcher can do this very artfully in her short stories in just a few lines and that’s why I love her!

I used to think that as long as you managed to get in a character's physical description and emotional makeup, were careful how they spoke and dressed, then they would all appear different from each other. But of course that’s not necessarily true. I’ve learnt this lesson after years of hard work. It’s all so obvious now but the knowledge has come to me at a time when I actually can’t put it into practice! In my current novel I am unable to go into the mind of my character. We can only judge her by what she says and does. Her diaries tell us some things but the reader has to guess her focus.

As you can guess by this, I love to set myself challenges and I will report on my blog with what I’ve learnt from this exercise in the near future. In the meantime back to The Grey Silk Purse.

Collaborating on a Writing Project

It’s an interesting concept and until last month one I found quite mysterious. How did people collaborate – actually write something together, something fairly substantial like an historical document or a novel? Was there always one person who did the majority of the writing?

I have previously worked on a short play with someone but it was fairly painless. They provided the initial idea and I ran with it. A few suggestions were made and that was it. It has needless to say never seen the light of day. But what about a much larger project? Collaborative fiction for instance? In that partnership, who did the thinking and who did the writing?

Australia has a number of famous writing teams. In 1944 James McAuley and Harold Stewart collaborating as Ern Malley wrote seventeen poems in one day as a hoax against Max Harris and his magazine Angry Penguins. From the late 1920s to the late 1940s Flora Eldershaw and Marjorie Barnard (see picture above) wrote under the name of M. Barnard Eldershaw. During that time they published an impressive body of work that included 5 novels. Evidently Barnard did more of the actual writing whilst Eldershaw concentrated on development and structure of the works. Louise E Rorabacher who wrote about the collaboration stated: "that in their early collaborative novels it is impossible to distinguish their separate contributions." The partnership worked because according to Nettie Palmer, a leading literary critic of the time: "Any difference in the characters of the two women doesn't make for a difference in their point of view or values."

In any fictional collaboration it is surely necessary for both authors to understand the characters they are writing about, especially their weaknesses and their passions - in essence to fully comprehend the character’s point of view and for the collaborators to agree on this fictional point of view.

And just as importantly, also, is what each collaborator wants from the project. In some instances they would be working towards a common goal – publication. In the instance of Dymphna Cusack collaborating with Florence James on Come in Spinner, the completed book was submitted and won the 1948 Daily Telegraph novel competition. Cusack also collaborated with another writer - Miles Franklin on the 1939 novel Pioneers on Parade.

In other instances one person might be commissioning another to do the writing for them, something they are unable to do themselves but have the money to finance the project. In many of these collaborations one party will pay to have writing done but the “writer” will not be acknowledged. They will remain a ghost that has collaborated silently. In arrangements of this sort the needs of both parties have to be looked at very carefully - preferably a contract drawn up with the collaboration clearly outlined. Very cut and dried of course but necessary.

Just as in good fiction a character’s point of view must be fully understood and imaginatively rendered, I have found through a painful experience last month that each collaborator’s point of view and needs must be understood. In my recent experience it happened that the other party didn’t realise that I needed to be paid on time. They also didn’t feel it necessary for communication to be both ways. With all this miscommunication and misunderstanding on such a basic level occurring – there was no hope in hell that we could collaborate on a unified point of view for our character and for the project overall. It was never going to fly.

It is now my belief that collaboration is like many forms of relationship, each person’s point of view must be understood and above all respected. Without this basic tenet, forget collaborations and relationships of any kind. They will never get off the ground!

To Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw...my sincerest admiration!

Reading John Berger at Brisbane Airport or the importance of place in fiction

Yes, that’s what I was doing in April and I think the author would have approved of the strange juxtaposition. After all in his novel Here is Where We Meet: a story of Crossing Paths, John Berger did just that. He chose fascinating or unusual places, sometimes associated with the people he was writing about or sometimes not, to place those people in context. And it works. His mother has never been to Lisbon yet her ghost is wandering around the city as if she was born there. And because of this juxtaposition his mother seems more real than perhaps she otherwise would have been placed in her historical and geographical location of 1930s East London.

Place is obviously very important to Berger and he actually has his namesake John say:

“So time doesn’t count and place does?”

For me reading that line was a charged moment. Place is what I hang all my novels on. I simply cannot write without a landscape to put my people in. I generally write about the first half of the last century and if I manage to chose a landscape that no longer exists – then more the better!

I can still recall coming across a place called Burragorang Valley. Pictures from the 20s and 30s showed a rather beautiful place with guest houses, rolling countryside, creeks and valleys. It was obviously very popular and I wondered why the hell I hadn’t heard about it before. A little more research uncovered the fact that well...it had been flooded! Completely flooded to build Warragamba Dam, the new big water supply for Sydney. I was almost jumping up and down with excitement. This loss suited the novel completely and I think Berger would have approved.

In Here is Where We Meet, Berger places Audrey a young woman he once had an affair with - in not just London of the 1940s but a particular place within that world – Coram Fields. They see the trees of the place as they gaze out the window after making love. Luckily it is still a green area today.

Elsewhere in the novel there is the wonderful setting of Krakow. Against the landscape of the old Jewish quarter in this Polish city, Berger brings the character of Ken, another ghost, alive. I’m not sure if his youthful friend Ken ever went to that part of Europe but the location adds a strong dimension to his portrayal. As John the narrator says simply: "Ken was born in New Zealand and died there. I sit on the bench opposite him."

Airports by comparison are like a grey canvas that - for the most part - do not echo with associations. But we can add things to them. Like what we are reading at a cafe before flying home. We can add with deft strokes where we are going or where we came from. Or at least try to be as successful as Berger is in depicting the atmosphere of a particular place.

Below are the three books I bought back in March and wrote about in my blog of the 18th. They have been reviewed and are on my goodreads shelf. All three are imbued with a powerful sense of place.

The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
Waiting for Leah by Arnost Lustig
The Quartet by Francois Emmanuel.

Reading Out Loud - uploaded to wordpress 22/5/12

Yesterday afternoon I read out loud to, well.... no-one in particular, really. I am participating in Newcastle Library's program Out Loud as part of the National Year of Reading 2012. I even had a fancy chair to sit on. My timeslot was the last of the day, so with Crossing Paths marked with post-it notes I climbed up on the swish chair and began to read.

This was only my third reading of Crossing Paths, my first was last year at Sunset Books and ABC http://www.facebook.com/#!/sunsetbooks and immediately I realised what an easy book it is to read from, mainly because of the Bookcrossing www.bookcrossing.com journal entries at the end of each chapter. Like mini reviews - these are perfect to dip into and were what I mainly read from at Sunset Books, Raymond Terrace.

My second reading, at Wangi Library's Books and Biccies in January this year was really more of a booktalk. I spent most of the half hour or so explaining bookcrossing itself and how I used it as the framework of the book. The whole world of bookcrossing forms the structure linking the eight main characters together.

Today was quite different in many ways. It wasn't so much about discussing the book as about reading out loud. At first I found it a little odd that most people were just walking past - choosing books and borrowing books and looking a little askance at me on the white chair but after a while I just forgot about everything but the words on the page. My timeslot was from 4.30pm to 5.00pm. After about ten minutes I began to read as a reader rather than an author and the experience was comforting somehow.

At some point I heard the Newcastle Town Hall clock strike but decided it must be the quarter hour. A little later one of the librarians came over to me and said: 'You can stop now, you know.'
I said, 'Oh, can I?'
She said, 'It's a quarter past five.'
I asked, 'Really?' and she told me that a lot of the authors reading out loud during the day had been surprised how quickly the time passed. She also commented on the wonderful atmosphere the readings created in the library. It was the first time I think I've read aloud without fear of judgement. There was instead the rhythm of my words and the joy of reading.

The Power of Language and using the right words - uploaded to wordpress 16/4/12

I can be a ditz sometimes and very vague as my family and friends will tell you. I recently ordered a coffee whilst in the middle of writing a crucial scene. Fifteen minutes later no coffee. I went up to ask if it was coming and they told me it had been put on my table (behind my laptop) around ten minutes ago. Never noticed a thing! And then today two incidents - both hanging on single words - made me stop and really consider how much we actually take in even when we think we aren't paying attention.

This morning working on a new chapter I ordered a coffee (1/2 strength latte) and a bottle of water. The young waitress was standing by my table holding a bottle of water and she asked me did I want one cup or two. I answered: 'Oh, I've already ordered my latte." She said: "No, the water." I replied. "One glass please (as I was by myself). She put one glass down and I thought: Yep, I am a ditz and went back to my writing.

A moment later she moved to the table nearby holding another bottle of water and several glasses and said: "Did you want two cups." And I realised what had happened. She's obviously been brought up (although she sounded like a regular Aussie) calling glasses cups for some strange reason. For me a glass is what you put wine, water, soft drinks and liquor in. A cup is what you put tea, coffee and hot chocolate in but that was definitely what she called the glasses.

Move ahead to this evening at Brisbane airport. I have arrived and arrangements have been made for me to catch a connecting bus. On my itinerary is the instruction that when arriving at the airport I must report to the service desk of that company to be booked on the bus. Well I spent fifteen minutes looking for the service desk. There were the usual suspects of hire cars and transport companies but not the company I was looking for. I asked two Virgin employees and they had no idea where it was. I showed them my intinerary - no luck. Finally someone directed me outside and what I thought was a bus shelter for the regular buses was a booth with that company's name under the roof.

Yes, I know. If I had put my glasses on I might have seen the name from a distance and walked down there but I didn't because I was actually looking for a service desk which I think to most people's minds is found inside whereas a booth is often outside. Hence my confusion. That's language for you!

A lot of the time of course everything goes smoothly and we don't stop and wonder about such things but when they don't it's amazing how the wrong use of language - in both these instances single words - can lead us astray.

As a writer I am very particular about word usage, especially those particular words that signify and are redolent of an era. In Tomaree I spent quite some time checking up "okay", among other words. (My main character was Amercian.) In researching word usage of WWI for The Grey Silk Purse it is surprising to find that it was common when writing letters and diaries to use "&" for "and". I'm not sure when that stopped. I mean we still do it occasionally but not as consistently as some diary writers from that time.

All this has brought me back to my writing and the question: Am I chosing the right words - the most effective words - to convey my story and weave a convincing web around my readers? I hope so! What I can safely say is that after today I'll be extra careful!

In praise of secondhand bookshops and/or the search for the perfect book

Yesterday I was feeling out of sorts and terribly restless after a miserable Friday night so Saturday morning I was on a mission. I had to find the perfect book to keep me company. I wanted John Berger and I wanted him now, namely Here is Where We Meet: a story of Crossing Paths. I love the title. Obviously. (If this isn't obvious see About Me).

Did my two local libraries have it? No! So off I went to Rice's Bookshop, an institution in Newcastle, now in its 43rd year of trading. They didn't have any of Berger's books but I did find Rupert Brooke: Life, Death & Myth by Nigel Jones. God knows when I will get to read it as it is 461 pages long but it looks much more approachable than another biography I have of the famous poet, the man who many people considered to be the most beautiful in England.

Brooke has fascinated me for a long time and in 1997, after I read a collection of his poems, in particular his last entitled Fragment, he began to haunt my thoughts for weeks. Eventually I exorcised him by writing a long poem entitled Conversation with a Dead Poet.

Anyway, no Berger but a good book to read. Undeterred I headed off to Indigo Books further up Hunter Street. There I found a number of Berger's but not the one I wanted. The excellent To the Wedding was there but I have read that and there were two others that didn't interest me and were not the perfect book for a grey Autumn Day.

I did find three possible contenders though, all short books and two authors unknown to me. The three books I bought from Indigo were another Ian McEwan,The Comfort of Strangers, one of his early ones; Waiting for Leah by Arnost Lustig, a Czech author writing about a Nazi prison camp in northern Bohemia in 1944; and The Quartet by Francois Emmanuel, a writer and psychiatrist from Belgium. One of his novels won the Prix Victor Rossel. This novel is about a sinister dossier and the links between big business and the darkest hour of Europe. Thank God for secondhand bookshops.

You will - eventually - find my reviews of all four on goodreads, the three short ones in the not too distant future.

I Hate Microfilm Readers

Firstly, I can never feed the film on and get it started. It takes me forever. I am not very co-ordinated and as I struggle with the stupid reel I feel like I'm back at school. Secondly I need the print quite large so I spend my time going up and down each page so I don't miss anything. And guess what? After half an hour of winding and bobbing up and down I'm suffering from motion sickness. So, not surprisingly, I only lasted an hour reading the October and November issues of the Newcastle Sun, 1917 yesterday morning but found a lot to giggle over.

One of my favourite things is something called Men and Women Personal Paragraphs with snippets of information such as: "Mr and Mrs Penny returned to Newcastle from Inverell today." Or try this one: "Mr and Mrs P Gordon Campbell of Mayfield are spending a short holiday in Inverell." Good to know!

And then there are strange ads for weird things like Fishers Phospherine, the Misses Tidey and Tinsley selling hats, Parisian Designed Frocks. Yes please. (Actually they didn't look bad). There was a Mme Petrona in the movie The Panther Woman which sounds like it might give Sex and the City a run for its money and a news item entitled "Twice married woman thought husband dead." I suppose she thought it was worth a try!

By this time I'm totally over the dreaded microfilm readers and haven't found any ads for two cafes I know existed in Newcastle in 1922 - Tyrrells and Mitchisons. No more torturing myself on the reader. Instead next Saturday I'm going to do some research old style. I'm going to be flipping through newspaper clipping books, turning the pages leisurely and not listening to the crank of a microfilm reader.

Thank God for the snippers club at the Newcastle Family History Society at Lambton. They are a group of enterprising women who meet, chat and patiently snip out domestic and miscellaneous newspaper articles from the Newcastle Morning Herald and other local papers. Yes, I'm going there next Saturday morning and you might not hear from me again for weeks. After all I went there two years ago looking for the New Moon Dance Club who hosted the 1930 New Year's Eve Dance Party at the Trades Hall in Newcastle and instead stumbled upon an article about a lost silver purse that inspired my current work in progress!

Lost in Time

People don’t change over the years but the environment they live in does. When Ishobel Ross, a cook from the Isle of Skye, arrives in London in July 1916 it is amazing how much she gets up to in the city without a car! She is sightseeing - taking in the theatre, a trip to Aldershot, shopping at Selfridges, visits to St Pauls, Marble Arch, and tea at Fullers. The list goes on and I’m exhausted reading it. Finally on the 29th she writes “God word today (from the Scottish Women’s Hospitals) to report at Victoria Station on Tuesday morning.”

Got word? How? Obviously not by SMS or mobile call but I’m left pondering the alternative. Did the SWH ring Ishobel at her hotel? Send a telegram? From my research into the Twenties in Sydney it is amazing to someone from the 21st century how often they got mail in the early part of the last century: twice in the metropolitan area and for a time a delivery on Saturday which beggars belief. Telegrams too seem to arrive very quickly, including the dreaded ones from the War Office – “We regret to inform you...”

Did the SWH send a boy running through the streets of London with a message? Who knows? There is, of course no way of knowing now. As they say “you had to be there.” And taking that line of thought I can imagine a 22nd century historian possibly stumbling over emails, letters, the odd diary, containing such lines as: “Met this great guy last night. Too good to be true so I googled him.”

Google may be around for another 100 years. Or it may be lost in time in the way of “got word” and “shanks pony” – a term my Mine Manager/diarist great-great grandfather Richard Pope frequently used in the 1880s. “Took ‘shanks pony’ into Silverton from Broken Hill." A special breed of horse you are wondering? No, it means to walk. So there you are, you were way off course just as I maybe off course when I speculate on Ishobel’s “got word”.

The past is another country. They definitely do things differently there.