Lynda A. Calder's Blog: Consider This, page 3

Write what you know and how you like to write

At almost every conference and workshop I have been to, as an "emerging writer" they say "write what you know". "Write the story you need to tell."

And then, in the next breath they tell you what they want to see in a manuscript and how they want you to write it.

Confusing? You bet.

I always reckon that everyone has at least one story they want to tell and NEED to tell. So why not tell it? AB Facey wrote "A Fortunate Life" for his family. It was his memoir and he had a small print run done. And now it's an Australian Classic.

But, one of the biggest traps for young writers is they try and take every good idea they ever had and try to jam it into their first book/manuscript.

Recently I have been led to read a few "experimental" type books and short stories that found publication. I have also had the opportunity to research the number of different authors who had multiple rejections for books that are now considered ground-breaking or classic eg. Dune, Catch-22 (rejected 22 times, hence the name), The Hobbit, Harry Potter just to name a few.

So, the moral is, write what you know, write the way you want to write (develop your own "voice") BUT write it well. Someone will like it. Not everyone will like it.

Keep writing!

Consider This - "Punctuation...!!!"

HAHAHAHA!!!! When I first started writing I put exclamation marks after everything. In fact, sometimes I used two or even three!!!

I soon learnt (after one manuscript assessment) this was bad. The exclamation mark is just for the most extreme of cases (ie those times you want to put three exclamation marks). It reminds me of that moment in Seinfeld where Elaine Bennis is pulled up for putting too many exclamation marks in a final edit of a manuscript - Elaine Bennis, Mr Lippman & the exclamation point (if you want to see it - HILARIOUS!).

But, gee, there are so many punctuation marks and so many are used incorrectly. Lynn Truss has a lot to say about them in her fantastic and very funny book "Eats Shoots and Leaves", so I won't go over them. I refer back to that book so often and she makes everything so very clear - especially the use of the colon (:) and semi-colon (;) - but this quote (thanks to Wikipedia) certainly sums up the nature of punctuation:

"On the page, punctuation performs its grammatical function, but in the mind of the reader it does more than that. It tells the reader how to hum the tune."
Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

Another area I needed someone to point out was:
- The use of the ellipsis (...) = to indicate trailing off.
- The use of the Em-Dash (-) - the longer dash = used to indicate a change of abrupt through where a full-stop is too much and comma too little OR in speech to indicate that someone has been interrupted.

It can be easy to mix these up; using the ellipsis when someone has been interrupted or vice versa.

In fact, good punctuation around direct speech can make it disappear and allow the reader to just read the speech and not get caught up on the commas and inverted commas and full stops and capital letters. (As Lynn Truss says, "hum the tune".) The rules are quite straight forward but, sometimes, difficult to apply. There are quite a few good sites on the interweb that go over these but one that none cover is this:
- Only speech tags are put next to quotes with a comma. If a direction of activity is placed before or during speech, a full stop is used.
e.g.
Jenny placed her brush on the table. "What do you mean I'm not coming," she said.
OR
"Go through that door and take a left turn." John swiped a hand across his forehead. "And don't stop until you reach the red dog."

Good punctuating. By the way, I have to confess, I'm useless when it comes to using commas correctly in English. German is easy (they separate clauses). English rules are more like guidelines (in my humble opinion).

Consider This - Adverbs

The first Blog Post - they are supposed to be special and insightful, I'll probably disappoint.

Why "Consider This"? I'm glad you asked. In Year 6 I had an awful teacher who disempowered her students by having them as her pet for one week and then spent the rest of the year picking on them (big bully!). I was unfortunate enough to be her pet in Week 1 of the school year because my parents sent me to school on a Teacher's Strike Day.

If only there had been FaceBook or Blogger or Twitter back then. But there wasn't. Only my wardrobe door. And so, I would write my own little "blog" (not that we knew they would be called that, eventually) and blutac it to my wardrobe door. The only people who read it were me and my best friend, Janelle, who loved to see what I had written up there each week. (Maybe my Mum read it, if she ever ventured into my pigsty of a room.)

Anyway, it was my way of getting my frustration out and venting about what was going on at school.

But, this Blog will not be about Venting, just sharing stuff I've learnt as a writer and author.

So, Day 1 thing I've learnt - Stephen King has a great book called "On Writing" and it's on writing (funnily enough). A great friend, Bruce, lent the book to me and I've always kept with me one very important tip:
- Adverbs are lazy writing. Yep! That all important "adjective to the verb" is lazy writing. If you can avoid using them, do, at all costs. Don't say "She crept slowly." Can someone creep any other way? What about building a picture ("Show, don't tell") like "She crept like a crouched tiger, sneaking up on its prey." Ooh, nice picture (maybe not, but you get the idea).