Zena Shapter's Blog, page 8

Interviewed by @BeachesCouncil & Getting Yourself Support

Last year, my local council featured me as a ‘Creative of the Month‘ – thank you, Northern Beaches Council! This year, they’ve expanded their coverage with a full interview! Wow, thank you again!!

The hardest question to answer was how COVID-19 has impacted my creative practice and business. Being an optimist, I like to look on the bright side of things and move forward, but the question forced me to admit some negatives. Of course there were plenty of negatives last year! But, as I mentioned in my last post ‘Every Step We Take in 2021‘, it’s not necessarily helpful to focus on negatives when planning the future, which I prefer to fill with ideas about where I’d like my life or career to go and how to achieve that – having my local council support creatives with interviews on their website is a great start!

In fact, if you’re a creative and you’d like your local council to support you in this way, please send your local councillor an email with a link to this page and ask them to set up something similar. Tell them how much a little exposure would make a big difference to you and your craft. It might inspire them to take action and support you too!

Other questions in my interview cover:

my writing practice and connection to the local creative ‘scene’the series of affordable online writing workshops I’ve developed – accessible anytime, from anywhere in the world!how writers have engaged with those workshopsthe challenge of continuing to connect with other writers during the pandemicwhere I see myself in 5 years-time as a creative practitioner / writer

Read my answers over here! Thank you, Northern Beaches Council!

Every Step We Take in 2021

Any new year is a time for reflection. This year more than most. With all the loss, trauma, and stress 2020 has brought us, many people are saying they can’t wait to forget the year and move on. Absolutely! I’d love to smile again as I did pre-2020, engage with others as freely, and be my usual optimistic self.

But while we’re still living with the utter grief and misery caused by the past year, how can we forget or move on? We’re still here, living with a virus that doesn’t care about calendars.

At the same time, there has to be some way to make 2021 better. And since the new year offers an opportunity to reflect, one option is to start with our memories. What do you remember about 2020 and are you sure that’s what you want or need to remember?

Because memory can be a choice. When it comes to recollecting personal experiences, our memories are not designed to be accurate recordings of events. In fact, our brains rarely recall every detail of an experience, and instead focus on central aspects, then use preexisting knowledge such as semantic memory or facts, beliefs or biases, to fill in gaps and piece things together. This process means our memories are unreliable and error-prone, and easily deteriorate.

In a 2000 study called ‘The Altering of Reported Experiences’, researchers interviewed a group 14-year-olds with a list of autobiographical questions, then repeated the same interview when the subjects were aged 48. The accuracy of their memory was generally no better than chance! (Offer, et al., Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2000)

We can, however, improve our recollection of personal experiences by associating those experiences with place, emotion or story.

Place

Do you remember where you were when you realised the 2020 pandemic was going to be a big problem? For me, I was at the supermarket grocery shopping and, wandering around entirely emptied fresh food fridges, I couldn’t in that moment think how I would feed my children that week. Of course I got creative.

According to scientists, there seem to be cells in the brain’s hippocampus (our learning and memory centre) particularly responsive to time and place.

Emotion

The more intense the emotion, the stronger our memory. This is why momentous occasions stand out in our minds and seem to define us. What was your most miserable experience of 2020? What was your most joyous experience? Your emotions will make experiences easier to recall and more vivid.

This is because when we have an emotional experience, the brain’s amygdala (our emotional centre) up-regulates our hippocampus (learning centre) and allows it to form a more detailed memory.

Story

Finally, memory is strengthened by story. Our brains pay closer attention to information when presented in the form of a narrative. The more we can associate things we want to remember with the familiar structure of a story, the easier we’re likely to remember them.

In a 1969 study called ‘Narrative Stories as Mediators for Serial Learning’, researchers asked participants to memorise 12 lists of ten nouns. Half of the participants were instructed to use rehearsal to memorise, and they remembered 13% of the words. The other half were instructed to weave the nouns into stories of their own invention, and remembered 93%. (Bower & Clark, Psychonomic Science 1969)

Imagining 2021

Our memory system is flexible and impressionable in this way because it’s not the accurate recollection of past experiences that matters most – it’s using what we can learn from experiences to benefit our future. Should we return to a situation where something emotionally significant happened? If so, what preparations can we make to overcome any likely obstacles and ensure our survival? Using our past to imagine our future can enable beneficial decision-making, which is why the same brain networks are involved in both memory and imagination. In a brain scanner, participants remembering past experiences and imagining future possibilities trigger the same networks. The past can be a roadmap for the future.

So, moving into 2021, perhaps we can use 2020 to think about what we need to know to survive the year ahead, and how we want to improve our lives. Now might not be the time to forget and heal, but to analyse and reframe. For every 2020 negative we want to avoid, is there a positive we’d like to repeat – if so, how can we make that happen?

Can we put 2020 into perspective by telling ourselves an emotionally balanced narrative that accurately reflects the year’s ups and downs and thereby enables us to make beneficial changes every step we take into 2021?

Hopefully we can, before the few accurate memories we have deteriorate altogether!

Local Author Showcase… Including Me!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited to give an author talk at my local Glen Street Theatre in a ‘showcase’ organised by my local library. Out of the house. An actual audience. Full of book fans! Thank you, Northern Beaches Libraries!!

I was honoured to be on stage with fellow authors, Petronella McGovern and Vanessa McCausland, while branch manager Kathleen Whelan hosted a Q&A style panel discussion. We were asked some fantastic questions!

Kathleen Whelan, Petronella McGovern, Vanessa McCausland and me!

Worldbuilding was a question close to my heart – how do authors build the worlds in which they write. I had some examples of worldbuilding handy and had a lot of fun sharing them:

I was also asked this little beauty:

It has been said that when the science runs out, the fantasy begins. Or does fantasy fuel science? Please comment.

For me, the answer is of course: both happens!

We have to imagine a scientific theory before we test it; we have to imagine ‘what if’ before we know what to develop and explore. In that respect, imagination comes first. For example, did you know Star Trek imagined many scientific developments we now know and love today: Bluetooth technology, voice-activated systems, USB drives, touchscreen, MRI scans, 3D printing? Fantasy fueled science.

But then, I was inspired by science ‘running out’ to write my novel Towards White, which explores where the electrical energy in our bodies might go after we die. The conservation of energy theory states that in a closed system, one form of energy must always become another form of energy, energy cannot simply disappear. Science also says that when we die, our bodies decompose and join the nitrogen cycle. But what about the electrical energy in our brains and nervous system? Electricity is too efficient a form of energy to simply dissipate, or entropy, as heat. So what becomes of it, does it too became another form of energy? Read my novel to find out my imagined thesis, he he!

There were more questions too, about how aspiring writers might tackle a blank page (some ideas over here!!), my passion for inclusive community creativity, the role of libraries in the creation of written content, and how we each used libraries as a children. I think I said I would live in a library if I could – and it’s true! I love libraries!

Any questions from our Covid-safe-spaced audience?

Our Mayor Michael Regan also gave a speech about how proud he was of our community throughout Covid-19, and library executives thanked everyone for their support. Writers and readers have a symbiotic relationship – we rely on and thrive off each other. So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you too – for reading this!

Eleven lucky audience members also won book packs, including books by me! I had to quickly sign them before the showcase started…

Signing Books!

Books are the best presents!

Maybe when you’re thinking about giving your next gift, you could make it a book!! An author out there would surely be very grateful – I know I would!

Covid-19 Author Warriors

It’s a brave time to be publishing books with Covid-19 uncertainties rife all around the world. So I wanted to give a special shout out to some of the amazing Australian authors who I’ve helped published in 2020 – either with a book layout, an edit, mentoring, or all of the above!

Throughout 2020, most of us have faced loss of income and health fears. In addition to this, authors have also had to endure a sense of creative hopelessness, with commercial publishers and literary agents taking the understandably cautious decision to close their doors to new authors, and/or be highly selective which books they publish. Most likely, even once doors are flung wide open again, great selectivity will naturally continue, with few publishers keen on the risk-taking required to publish certain types of books or authors.

Yet the authors whose book covers are in my image have fought through their fears, braced hopelessness against the knowledge that readers are still reading and want new content, and they have taken a chance that their book might fill the gap. I cannot praise them enough! In fact, I believe they’re inspirational – hence this blog post, to inspire others!

Whatever it is you’re trying to do right now to further your career, passions, or hobbies – keep doing it! We’re all in this together, and we all appreciate the challenges these uncertain times have brought to motivation and dedication. But don’t stop! You can do this! If these authors can, you can too! In fact, some of these authors actually used the last few months to write their final sentences, tweak their last edits, and thus flip a downside year upwards. With the pandemic continuing, perhaps there’s time yet for you to do the same?

Congratulations, authors! And thank you for using my Creative Support services to achieve your admirable writing goals!!

How To Control Time!

Time often spontaneously speeds up or slows down depending on what we’re doing and where we are…

Do What?

Last week, I fell over. I’m too old to fall over! But as I was jogging down the street on my morning run, I tripped on a raised section of pavement, fell to my knees and scraped both of them. It was so embarrassing, and painful!

It also happened r-e-a-l-l-y slowly. I was running with my husband and, in the time it took to fall, all of the following happened: I recognised I was tripping, called out to him hoping he’d catch me, stumbled trying to break my fall, realised that nothing was going to stop it, then actually continued to fall. Afterwards I was amazed at the time difference, because while checking me over Hubbie said, “What happened? One second you were there, the next you were just… gone!” For him, the moment was sudden and abrupt.

Our experience of time can’t always be measured by the minutes and seconds on digital clocks.

For example, did you ever lift your head from a book to check the time, only to find it was later than you thought? (Books are the best!)

Conversely, did you ever start an undesirable task and find yourself watching the clock, feeling it was taking ages to complete?

Where How?

Feelings aside, however, time really does move slower or faster for some of us. Astronauts orbiting the planet experience ‘time dilation’. Time for them actually speeds up the faster their spaceship’s acceleration is through space, their ‘relative velocity time dilation’. Time also slows down the closer they are to a gravitational force, such as Earth, their ‘gravitational time dilation’.

The International Space Station experiences both of these phenomena. Its distance from Earth means time ticks faster; but in travelling at nearly eight kilometres per second its speed means time ticks slower. The end result means time goes slower for ISS astronauts than for the rest of us, lagging approximately 0.01 seconds for every 12 earth months passed.

Control Time!

Down on the ground, we can control the slowing down or speeding up of time… as storytellers!

One of the joys of telling and receiving stories is in sharing another’s experiences, walking in another’s authentic shoes. To accurately represent this to readers or listeners, storytellers can pace out characters’ experiences with various techniques, such as the use of detail.

For example, if I want to speed time up in a story I’m writing or telling, I gloss over details and summarise events. If I want to slow time down, I’m meticulous with the details and show events unfolding breath by breath. When writing stories, this means that moments of high tension and drama often involve a higher word count, even though those moments happen relatively quickly compared to other events in the story. It’s all in the detail!

Detail can also affect memory – the stories we tell ourselves about the past. The level of detail we recall from stressful or eventful memories is often plentiful. When we remove the detail from life, such as when relaxing, our recollection of that time has it passing all too quickly. Sometimes we can look back on a year and wonder where all the time went. Other years can feel like a drag.

What do you think about this year! After it’s over, will it seem to have passed quickly or slowly? How much detail will you recollect of it when adding to your stories of the past?

Time is of course relative to experience, so probably only time will tell!

Launching: ‘Portrait’, ‘Oz is Burning’ & ‘Flash 50 Friday’! @beachescouncil @bcubedbob

Launch: ‘Portrait’

Yay! The ‘Portrait’ anthology has been launched! Created from the 2020 ‘Art & Words Project’ – a collaboration between myself, the Northern Beaches Libraries and Manly Art Gallery & Museum – it features 12 writers and poets, and 12 artists, in a themed collaboration devised and edited by me!

Last night, filmed speeches by myself, the Mayor of the Northern Beaches Michael Regan, and the executive manager of library services Melanie Gurney, were combined with footage of the final artworks and extracts from the writings, and premiered on the Northern Beaches Libraries YouTube channel. You can watch it over here.

In my speech, I wanted to voice how 2020 has been a difficult year for creatives. In any ordinary year, it’s hard enough to balance work, life and play, and then to add on extra time for creativity. But mindset is also key to the creative process. Ideas don’t come from nowhere. They take great skill and dedication to conjure from thin air. They need inspiration to form, research to solidify, concentration and deep thought to enrich, and commitment to manifest. Ideas are precious things and their creation is a delicate process, fraught with opportunities to give up, or to not even start.

So in a year like 2020, with all the concerns it’s brought us, creation has inevitably been a challenge. With so much on our minds, how do we foster the space or inclination to even seek inspiration? With fewer opportunities around, it’s also hard to generate the motivation.

However, every collaborator in the 2020 ‘Art & Words Project’ fought to find and embrace their creativity, and I would like to congratulate them all! Watch the launch and view the digital exhibition here:

Launch: ‘Oz is Burning’

I would also like to congratulate everyone who worked on another very special anthology launched earlier this week, this time including me as a writer. ‘Oz is Burning’ is an anthology of speculative fiction published to raise money for the 2019/2020 Australian bushfire disasters, and it features some of Australia’s most prominent speculative fiction writers. It’s an honour to be included with them.

From Suzanne Newnham’s strange look at how a person who hears fire perceives the conflagration, to Jack Dann’s and Ann Poore’s evocative poems, to tales of wonder and outrage, and Silvia Brown’s and Narrelle M. Harris’s poignant hopes for a better future, this anthology demonstrates the agony of a continent, but it also shows bits of dark humor and hope among the devastation. My story is called ‘Beef’ and here’s the blurb:

A parent’s greatest wish is their child’s safety; but this new global enemy is everywhere, and always was.

Both print and ebook copies are available worldwide via online retailers such as Amazon.

Most importantly, for every sale, the publishers B-Cubed Press will donate to WIRES, NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service Inc.

The launch was online via a ‘Meet the Author’ event over here.

Friday 50 Flash

To celebrate all this amazing news, and because I was awarded two amazing grants to support my brand new on-demand writing & book creation courses, and since we’re all in this together, I’m passing on the love with a ‘Flash 50 Friday’ special: all adult courses for under $50, this Friday 18th September only!

Once enrolled you will have up to twelve months to complete your course.

Enrol on Friday 18th over here! http://www.zenashapter.com/courses/

I love sharing my knowledge and experiences with others. Yay!

Congratulations again ‘Portrait’ & ‘Oz is Burning’ authors!

Leap into On-Demand Writing & Book Creation Courses!

It’s the first day of spring in Australia today, so what better time to launch my brand new on-demand writing and book creation courses!

It’s been a long time in the making: inspiring writers and teaching them about their craft since 1991, working in the publishing industry since 1996, leading the award-winning Northern Beaches Writers’ Group since 2009, answering questions monthly from over 250 members (across the years) and reviewing over 3 million of their words, teaching face-to-face writing workshops since 2012, founding and leading multiple community creativity projects, a BA (Hons) in English Literature (with Creative Writing, Psychology and Media/Cultural Studies), over a dozen national writing awards, and work published all over the world…

With so much knowledge to share with everyone, I’ve never had enough time to do so. Blog posts on creating writing (under my ‘Writing Rockface’ tag) hasn’t been enough. Teaching locally hasn’t been enough. Then of course Covid-19 meant no more face-to-face workshops and a massive income drop.

Until the Northern Beaches Council and the NSW government through Create NSW and the Creative Kids Program both came along. They offered grants assisting with business adaptation and they both believed in me, in my skills and knowledge enough to fund me! It was perfect timing!

Over the last few months, I have been working tirelessly and diligently six (sometimes seven) days a week, 6am til 8pm+, to get these courses up and running, because we all agreed they needed to get out there asap! Big thanks to my hubbie for cooking dinners for me and the kids! It took much, much longer than I expected, because as I created the courses I realised just how much knowledge I had to share, which people would otherwise miss out on – I had to include it all!

I also had to learn professional LMS (learning management system) software, which involved lots of research into how it would all work, and then LMS training, as well as training in video production and PayPal payment security.

It’s all done! Yay!

There’s even a Sample Course for you to try before they buy! You can take these on-demand courses at your own convenience, to your own ability and at your own pace, anytime and anywhere!

I’m sincerely grateful to the amazing NSW government through Create NSW and the Creative Kids Program and to the Northern Beaches Council for their support – I could not have done this without you!

There are practical, technical, and inspirational courses, for both adults and young writers, all offering an informative, self-reflective and fun learning experience. Please enjoy OR please share this link (and any of the images in this post) with someone who might enjoy them: zenashapter.com/courses

Winning Tips @mosmanlibrary

Every month I donate time to helping others further behind me in their writing journeys.

Most recently this has involved judging the Mosman Youth Awards in Literature, for which I not only read the entries and selected the winners, but also offered a detailed judge’s report.

This year the award ceremony was via a live Instagram feed!

I’ve summarised past reports here and here, because the writing tips can apply to other writers as well. This year’s report follows for the same reason!

1. Write for Your Reader

Writing for your reader is different to other forms of writing. Whether you’re writing at work or school, there are often various keywords you are asked to use, along with certain techniques and structure that order the information you provide. For example, report-writing is highly structured; journalism has a defined style; and when writing for the English HSC, students need to score marks with adjective use, use of literary techniques, structuring for orientations and use of anecdote.

However, when you’re writing for a reader, keywords and techniques don’t matter. A story told without any of these could be the best story I’ve ever read. More important is enabling the reader to connect with your characters, and effectively communicating what happens to them and where. Your words can be as fancy as you like, but without these essential elements, readers will simply lose interest. Imagine you are the character(s) in your story and share their journey with readers breath-by-breath – keywords and structure aside.

2. Suspension of Disbelief

Also pivotal in keeping readers’ attention is suspension of disbelief. For example, generally speaking:

Newborn babies cannot speak (unless you’re writing speculative fiction!). Fingernails cannot cause impressions in wood laminate.Recently arrived non-English speaking immigrants are unlikely to speak with perfect colloquial dialogue.

Be creative, but also check over your story with common sense before sending it into the world.

Mosman Youth Awards in Literature – Live Feed!



3. Revelation Space

While paragraphs of description can enchant and backstory can enlighten (and score high marks at school), a story that spends half its length (or more!) on description and flashback leaves little space for anything other than a revelation in the plot. This risks disappointing those who want something more to happen. Revelation is an extremely worthy subject matter for story, but always remember: your story is being judged against stories that do more. The revelation has to be good if it’s to carry the whole story.

4. Experimentation

Literary techniques offer writers scope to emphasise important parts of their narrative. Brave and experimental language combinations can be exciting and beautiful. However, it also comes with risk. For example, a ‘calm racket of energetic monkeys’ is a great oxymoron if you intend to use one; otherwise the contradiction only generates confusion.

5. Retellings

Retellings can be creative and fun, as well as insightful. I recently edited an anthology of fairytales retold with an Australian twist, and it was fabulous! However, writers have to offer readers something fresh if they retell a story. For example, retelling an historic event exactly as it happened, even with wonderful writing, cannot compete with (also) wonderfully written retellings with more original storylines. Be creative!

Good luck with your next writing project everyone! I hope these tips help!

And congratulations to the very worthy shortlisted entrants and winners of the Mosman Youth Awards in Literature!

If you’d like more help with your writing, watch this space – as I’ll soon be launching a whole gallery of on-demand writing courses for your writing development delight!

Local Creative Support #creativenorthernbeaches

A big shout out to my local Northern Beaches Council for supporting both my creative practice and business this month! Their Arts & Cultural Development team very kindly featured me in their creative enews, which goes out to lots and lots of people across Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Yay!! Thank you Northern Beaches Council Arts & Cultural Development team!

But wait, there’s more…!

Not only did I get a mention in the enews, I’m also featured as a ‘Creative of the Month’ on their ‘Local Creatives’ page over here. Fingers crossed it generates some interest in my stories or creative support business. Either would be fabulous!

If you’d like support from your local council, why not get in touch with them?

As for the Northern Beaches Council, you can subscribe to their Creative News over here.

Thank you Northern Beaches Council Arts & Culture! You rock!

Listen to My Story “A Witch’s Place” on The @AntipodeanSF Radio Show

I’m on the radio!

Thanks to The AntipodeanSF Radio Show, you can now listen to my short story “A Witch’s Place” by clicking on this link. It’s the first story on the show, so just listen from the beginning and you’ll soon hear Ion Newcombe introducing me – it’s a pretty awesome introduction too, thanks Ion!

Why not read and listen at the same time? The words to “A Witch’s Place” are here. The story was published in AntipodeanSF’s celebratory 250th issue, which boasted over 50 stories from some of the most familiar names in the Australian SF scene!

After my story there’s another great short to enjoy too, ‘Neanderthal’ by Edwina Harvey, and Part 10 of the longer ‘Steampunk Confederation’ by Roger Ley.

Like the show? Then there are a heap of archived shows here. The show is recorded several times a month, usually at the weekend, and includes stories from AntipodeanSF magazine, along with occasional reviews, news, interviews or longer stories. And the best part about it is… it’s free!

So sit back, put your feet up and enjoy!