Ellie Marney's Blog, page 23

#LoveOzYAbookclub: Title Suggestions Masterlist and How This All Works

[Yes, this is the very first post for #LoveOzYAbookclub – I’ve added it here as info for new members and to keep everything in one place.  If you have suggestions for bookclub – titles, features, whatever – add it in the comments here or on the FB page!]

 

Hi all, this is the introductory post for the #LoveOzYAbookclub – welcome!  If you enjoy reading YA books, and specifically Australian YA, then this is the club for you.  I’m not going to make stupid references to Fight Club, cos that is passe, and the only rule of #LoveOzYAbookclub is talk all you want about bookclub.  Oh, and invite whoever you want – young readers, older readers, readers of all shapes and sizes and persuasions.  The more the merrier.

I’ll be updating with posts here on the blog, but running the discussion threads on the #LoveOzYAbookclub Facebook group page – feel free to run on over there and join to stay current.

This post is just to say hi, and thanks for coming along, and to show off the list of books from which we’ll likely select the books we’ll be reading.  We’ll read a book a month – makes it nice and easy, huh?  I’ve made a big OzYA master list below, which will be added to from time to time, as new titles get suggested and old ones get crossed off.

If we’ve left out your fave, or you’d like to suggest a particular title to be read for #LoveOzYAbookclub, add a comment here or at the FB page, or you can always tweet me (just remember to tag me and #LoveOzYAbookclub).

 

This will be the process for #LoveOzYAbookclub (title selection and general procedure):

I’ll select the first book (because I’m bossy like that), which I’ll announce in early November.  Then I’ll ask the author of that book to choose the next title from the list (for December), and so on down the line (Janurary, February, etc…).  If the author of the current book doesn’t want to choose or is unavailable to do so, I’ll ask someone else to do it or do it myself.  I’ll ask someone who enjoyed the book to review it for the first discussion post, which I’ll put up here/on FB in the last half of each month.  Then folks who’d like to comment about how they liked the book of the month can take it from there.  And so on, ad infinitum, until we run out of books, or the internet collapses, or the zombie apocalypse arrives, or whatever.

So, you got that?

*I’ll pick the first book, then it will domino from there

*I’ll make a Title post at the start of each month, letting you know which book we’re reading

*I’ll make a second Discussion post near the end of the month, after we’ve all had a chance to read

*Discussion and comments will be here, and on the relevant thread over at the#LoveOzYAbookclub FB group page.

*If the author of the book is amenable, I’ll try to arrange an interview, or a Facebook author chat, during the relevant month.

*I’m also in the process of organising a way for those buying the book to get free shipping for online orders.

 

Masterlist of OzYA Books Suggested So Far (feel free to suggest more!):

InBetweenDays – Vikki Wakefield

TheFlywheel – Erin Gough

Risk – Fleur Ferris

Talk Under Water – Kathryn Lomer

Sidekicks – Will Kostakis

Razorhurst– Justine Larbalestier

GoodOil – Laura Buzo

Zeroes– Margo Lanagan, Scott Westerfeld, Deborah Biancotti

The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl – Melissa Keil

The Book of Days – KA Barker

GreenValentine – Lili Wilkinson

A Little Wanting Song – Cath Crowley

The Intern – Gabrielle Tozer

Notes from the Teenage Underground – Simmone Howell

Burn Bright – Marianne dePierres

My Life as an Alphabet – Barry Jonsberg

Head of the River – Pip Harry

Atmospheric– Carole Wilkinson

Deucalion – Brian Caswell

Grace Beside Me – Sue McPherson

Steal My Sunshine – Emily Gale

Hate is Such A Strong Word – Sarah Ayoub

How to be Happy – Dave Burton

Undine– Penni Russon

The Last Girl – Michael Adams

90 Packets of Instant Noodles – Deb Fitzpatrick

Finding Grace – Alyssa Brugman

Clara in Washington – Penni Tangey

Living Hell – Catherine Jinks

Killing Darcy – Melissa Lucashenko

Jasper Jones – Craig Silvey

Into the River – Ted Dawe

The Extinction Gambit – Michael Pryor

Girl Saves Boy – Steph Bowe

First Person Shooter – Cameron Raynes

ThingsYou Either Hate or Love – Brigid Lowry

Laurinda _ Alice Pung

Cooper Bartholomew is Dead – Rebecca James

Spark – Rachael Craw

Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club – Alison Goodman

Thrive– Mary Borsellino

The Dead I Know – Scot Gardner

The Protected – Claire Zorn

Hating Alison Ashley – Robin Klein

Between The Lives – Jessica Shirvington

One True Thing – Nicole Hayes

Clancy of the Undertow – Chris Currie

48 Shades of Brown – Nick Earls

Twinmaker: Jump – Sean Williams

Whisper– Christine Keighery

Illuminae– Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff 

Finnikin of the Rock – Melina Marchetta

How to Make A Bird – Martine Murray

Rise of the Fallen – Teagan Chilcott

A Small Madness _ Dianne Touchell

Facing Up – Carolyn Gilpin

Fire in the Sea – Myke Bartlett

Little Paradise – Gabrielle Wang

Intruder– Christine Bongers

Black Glass – Meg Mundell

Crashing Down – Kate McCaffrey

Zac & Mia – AJ Betts

Cloudwish – Fiona Wood

The Gathering – Isobelle Carmody

Frankie– Shivaun Plozza

Nona and Me – Clare Atkins

Deadly,Unna? – Phillip Gwynne

Pieces of Sky – Trinity Doyle

The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex – Gabrielle Williams

Does My Head Look Big in this? – Randa Abdel-Fattah

A Single Stone – Meg McKinley

So Much To Tell You – John Marsden

Summer Skin – Kirsty Eagar

The Cracks in the Kingdom – Jaclyn Moriarty

Sabriel – Garth Nix

You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About – Daniel Herborn

Stay With Me – Maureen McCarthy

Shadows– Paula Weston

The Vanishing Moment – Margaret Wild

Footy Dreaming – Michael Hyde

This is Shyness – Leanne Hall

I Am the Messenger – Markus Zusak

Frankie and Joely – Nova Weetman

Preloved – Shirley Marr

Cry Blue Murder – Kim Kane, Marion Roberts

Calypso Summer – Jared Thomas

Freedom Ride – Sue Lawson

The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf – Ambelin Kwaymullina

The Pause – John Larkin

The Astrologer’s Daughter – Rebecca Lim

Five Parts Dead – Tim Pegler

Sky Legs – Irini Savvides

Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean – Kirsty Murray, ed.

Losing It – Julia Lawrinson

Fairytales for Wilde Girls – Allyse Near

The Big Dry – Tony Davis

The Tricksters – Margaret Mahy

Cracked – Clare Strahan

Oracle – Jackie French

Run – Tim Sinclair

Kill The Music – Nansi Kunze

The Minnow – Diane Sweeney

Snow White: This is No Fairy Tale – Keith Austin

 

*Many of the authors have multiple books, so I’ve only put up one book per author.  The decision on which book to include was either suggested, or made by me (because I wanted to read a certain book.  Soz.).  If you’d like to suggest a different book for the same author, that’s fine, but let’s make sure we spread the love around.

*Some books have collaborative authors – once their joint book is read and crossed out, I’m happy to include works they’ve penned as individuals.

*Yes, I’ve included some NZ authors (mainly because I want to read Into the Riverand Spark, and why not).

*No, I haven’t put my own books on the list, cos I didn’t want to feel like a der.  I’m getting plenty of love by facilitating this bookclub, which is good enough for me (and if you want to go read the Every series, thank you, and the link to Booktopia is on the sidebar at right! #officialplug).

* If you’re a blogger/reviewer and you’d like to have your reviews included in the bookclub, please get in touch.

 

And that’s it!  Hope you like the list and please feel welcome to join in the reading and discussion by joining the #LoveOzYA bookclub on Facebook.  Keep an eye out for the first book, coming up soon (first week of November) – I’ll post it here and cross-post to the group plus everywhere else.  I can’t wait to start reading!

 

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub – May 2016 Discussion Post: Clancy of the Undertow (Chris Currie)

Hi bookclubbers!

How did you all go with CLANCY OF THE UNDERTOW?  I found the directness of the prose wove its own magic, and although it took me a few pages to sink into Clancy’s scratchy, raw personality, I was truly converted within a few chapters.

It’s kind of fascinating to see where writers leap off, from an original idea into a full-blown novel.  Chris Currie has offered this link to Stop and Go Man, the story he wrote (that was later featured in Kill Your Darlings journal) that provided the jumping-off point for his development of CLANCY – and you can see the tone is already set, even though some of the details may have changed.

Danielle Binks, in her review of CLANCY on Alphareader, suggested that, ‘There’s a sense when reading Clancy’s turbulent year, that we’re witnessing a young woman being forged in flames here’, and applauds Chris Currie for venturing into ‘morally-complex YA’ territory – you can read the rest of that review here.

So what did you think of this month’s book?  Were you as caught up in the magic as I was?  Share your comments down below, or on the Facebook thread…and I’ll drop by again soon, to announce the new title for the coming month!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub – Five Messy Questions with Chris Currie (Clancy of the Undertow)

Chris is our special guest in the hot seat for this month’s bookclub grilling – and not only did he rise to the challenge, concocting an amazing-sounding cocktail in honour of Clancy, but he dug through his archives to find (in draft form) some of the earliest words he wrote that made the book happen (ahh, writing in the Myer Centre…as a former Brisbane native, I remember it well).  So keep reading beyond the questions to find out where Chris wrote a big chunk of the novel, and for a window into the thoughts that went into the development of the characters.  Thanks for being our May 2016 guest, Chris, and double thanks for the insight on your creative process with this amazing book!

* Your book makes No#1 with a bullet on the NYT Bestseller List, and a famous bartender at the Ritz-Carlton makes a cocktail in its honour.  What’s in the cocktail and what is it called:

Some reviews of my book have accused my book of being “too Aussie”, which is a strange thing to say about an Australian book set in Australia and written by at Australian writer. So, the cocktail called The Clancy consists of cold XXXX poured over layered pineapple and beetroot slices, shaken, poured into a martini glass, sprinkled with crumbled Tim-Tam and then a thin layer of Vegemite is smeared over the rim. Crikey!

* Rec us a book on writing craft, would ya?:

For pure inspiration: Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. For actual nuts and bolts instruction, you can’t go past Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.

* One of your favourite words and why:

I think one of them, from a purely useful writing perspective, is said. One of the simplest pieces of writing advice you can receive is “show, don’t tell”, and this is best expressed when you’re attributing speech.

I remember clearly in school being asked to think of as many verbs as I could to replace said, as this was the better to tell people how your character was feeling. I find it a far better exercise, however, to only use said (or, as Clancy is in present tense, says), and express how the character is feeling through what they actually say, not just to use a verb to do the work for you. This is a good habit to get into, in my opinion, as it allows your dialogue to be clearer, more expressive and hopefully more interesting to read. But it this advice doesn’t work for you, at least kill all adverbs. Kill them murderously.

Now of course you’ll be scanning through Clancy to see where I haven’t followed my own advice…

* Tell us some interesting tidbits you gleaned while researching your book:

I’m pretty much allergic to research, so there wasn’t a lot done, outside of the normal YA things like looking at school holiday dates etc.

Barwen, the fictional town Clancy is set in, is very much based on the small country town I grew up in, which I found to be so useful when trying to spatially imagine the locations of the book. It makes it so much easier when you know exactly how long it takes to cycle from your house to the weird observatory or where a makeup counter should be in relation to a food court: strange little things that I would have stressed over in the past when creating a fictional world.

At one stage the book was set in the late 80s (and doesn’t every YA author yearn to set a book in the time they grew up in?) so I ended up looking a lot at a particular famous cricket match (the Tied Test between Australian and India), which was going to feature much more heavily and tie into other themes in the book (as it ends up, there is just a generic cricket match going on that Clancy’s dad is listening to).

* The zombie apocalypse strikes, but it’s okay, cos you have your choice of weapons, and you choose…:

To be honest, I’m terrible under pressure and not at all resourceful so I get anxiety thinking about a zombie apocalypse not because of the zombies, but rather the minutiae of what an apocalypse entails. The end of the world means, to me, no coffee, no WiFi, no high-quality television, which is, frankly, chilling. I’d be so worried about something like the lack of available toilet paper that I think I would let the zombies take me straight away. At least zombies have a simple life.

 

Now, more Clancy tidbits await…

Chris:   I found this in an exercise book when I was clearing out some bookshelves recently. It’s the very earliest writing I did that became Clancy of the Undertow. I thought it might be interesting to have a look at it. I’ve kept everything exactly as I wrote it, terrible grammar, punctuation and all. I’ll comment as I go after each paragraph, because some of this stuff is so different to what the book turned out to be!

Whereas me, I lose change down the front of my shirt. Am described as “willowy” by people who do not know what this word means. Have a constant, quizzical mouth-full-of-toothpaste look about me which has been present since birth and seems to be here to stay. Red hair, blonde, brown—wavy like a fucking crumpled car door. Awkward, titless, something approaching hopeless.

Chris:   Some familiar lines in here. Can’t believe they made it to the final version, and—in one instance—the back cover blurb!

I work three days a week in a makeup shop in the middle of a shopping centre. As in, right in the middle where you walk. I sell nothing all day, give directions to about 400 people and spend a lot of time doodling. There’s one security guard, Reeve, who’s young like me, and we talk from time to time. Reeve’s role is mostly ceremonial. He has a bruise on his brain.

Chris:   As you may have guessed, I was doing a lot of writing in the Myer Centre in Brisbane city, which is a multi-tiered shopping mall. I would sit at this horrific chain cafe on the second to-top level, which would allow you to look down at people on the lower levels. One level down was a remarkably unsuccessful cosmetics kiosk, manned on this day by a girl who would become the character of Clancy. She did chat to one of the security staff at one point, but he was a lot older than Reeve.

I stay in this town because of school, because its quiet enough that I won’t get bothered. My dad works for the council—on the road mostly, flipping STOP and GO signs. Had a lot of work when the council decided to “beautify” the city, landscaping the main street, planting bizarre tropical plants, turning everything into ‘levels’ and ‘slopes’. While dad spends time outside vocationally, my mum is, voluntarily, an outdoor type. She used to run tourist tours in national parks, ones where they abseiled whole companies down cliffs, threw CEOs into rapids, etc. Now she’s involved with primary schools, getting our clinically obese kids into shape, takes a cheque from the government for doing so. Which is to say, my parents are active, out and about a lot, not at home a heck of a lot.

Chris:   So Clancy’s dad didn’t change much from this original sketch, but her mum certainly did! I had completely forgotten I’d given her this background as an outdoor type. I would like to say this was the seed of Nature Club, but that idea didn’t come about until my second draft. I would argue Clancy’s mum is a much more interesting character here!

Boys at my school inevitably walk with that bow-legged, vulture-necked, arms out body-builder style. Why? I don’t know. There were all gangly, too angled, even the ones who had somehow matured earlier that others. We were all just slaves to our hormone glands, our perceptions of who we should be shimmering like heat haze. My brother, my so-called twin, was a surly, angry version of me. Never grateful for anything, but always wanting something. My dad’s dad, my grandfather, was a near-helpless bag of bones. He lived in assisted care in a retirement village on the outskirts of town. Dad and me were the only ones who visited him. Mum, I think, couldn’t properly fathom a human form in such bad decay.

Chris:   This section I’m sure just came from people-watching. The grandfather character certainly shuffled off the mortal coil between here and the first draft. I think I only mention him in the final version to make a joke about crossword puzzles (and as a source of an inheritance). Also, Angus is Clancy’s twin???!!!

Julia, the lady I work for is a human form in perfect preservation. Somehow, she survives in this country town. Silk blouses, all the colour and consistency of cream. Reeve, who as I mentioned, chats with me a lot, adores Julia. Reeve wonders how she ended up here. He also wonders where all the clothes go after a fashion show. How those florid, artistic, answerable creations filter down to the strip-lit chain shops that spring up every summer in the shopping centre.

Chris:   Julia is a complete fiction, but her mannerisms and affectations (which aren’t present yet) are based on someone I knew growing up. The weird fashion sidenote I’m sure is just because I was writing in a shopping centre.

Anyway, Julia is thirty, bluebird tiny, made of porcelain, or some other such cliche. She joined mum’s short-lived home gym (Julia, as it turned out, was the gym’s only customer) and offered me my job, which I still have and tolerate, because it makes me seem normal and give me some pocket money for the very few things that I buy.

Chris:   Home gym? At least it’s an explanation for why Clancy works somewhere as unlikely as a ‘Beauty Station’, something I don’t think I actually explain in the book!

 

Coool bananas!  Join us at #LoveOzYAbookclub again soon to jump into the discussion of this month’s book, CLANCY OF THE UNDERTOW.

 

XxEllie

 

The Dreaded Love Triangle – Part II

 

Helloo again!  We’ve returned today to continue our discussion of the DLT – Dreaded Love Triangle.  Welcome back!

Last post, I examined what a DLT actually comprises, and had a brief look at their history in literature (or at least, looked at a few examples of DLTs in literature from multiple genres and eras).

 

I also brought up a number of reasons why DLTs frustrate the hell out of readers.  In fact, some of those reasons were cited in this recent article (‘Shit I’m Sick of Reading’ by Kat Kennedy over at Cuddlebuggery – Kat, we feel your pain!) – so yes, DLTs still annoy the crap out of people.

But the fact remains that writers continue to employ DLTs in their work.  In the immortal words of Julius Sumner Miller, Why is it so?

I thought it was worth giving a few reasons for why, exactly, writers still seem to be so enamoured (ha! See what I did there?) with this particular trope.

So here’s why!

* it SELLS: You want to know how I know it sells?  Let me give you a round-up of recent top-selling YA titles, for a bit of perspective: The Selection…A Court of Thorns and Roses…Red Queen…The Iron King…Throne of Glass…Shadow and Bone…An Ember in the Ashes…Dumplin’…The Sin Eater’s Daughter…The Wrath and the Dawn…The Conspiracy of Us…The 100…  And they all feature DLTs.

So yes, stories with DLTs still fly off the shelves.  That’s a powerful incentive for publishers, who are (let’s face it) running a business, and it may impact on writers who want to get their books out there.  It also makes me wonder who’s actually complaining about DLTs – is it just the reviewers who are sick of them?  Because the reading audience doesn’t seem to be.  Or are they ubiquitous in fiction, so the reader has no choice?  Hmm – bit of a chicken-or-egg theory there…

* it makes the story work good: Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands & Teeth) made a fantastic point in her own post about DLTs:  “To me, a love triangle done right isn’t about a female character’s affections bouncing back and forth between two men, it’s about her internal struggle within herself as she figures out who she wants to be and what’s important to her.  This internal struggle then gets reflected externally as she wars within herself and grows.  And that’s the heart of any book — a character’s growth from first page to the last.”

Also, characters in stories of all stripes are often best motivated by conflict.  So if the character’s arc seems to demand a DLT, then far be it from me to suggest otherwise.  Writers should write what’s good, what works, what makes the story move forward.  Sometimes a DLT is what works best.

* it’s a fair representation of teenaged emotional angst: Growing up is hard.  Being a teenager is hard.  And one of the hardest things about it is figuring out the social and emotional mechanics of life and relationships.  DLTs sometimes work well as good shorthand for this figuring-out process.  As Kimberli in The Hub writes: “Portraying love triangles in YA novels is a good way to show how hard it is for teens to stay neutral and how they might have to make a list of pros and cons in order to make a decision”.  Sounds legit.

 

* it’s realistic: sorry to break this to you, but people don’t often meet their OTP in high school, The End.  In fact, it’s pretty normal now for people to have more than a few relationships – even long-term relationships – before settling down with one person (or not settling down with anybody).  They might even (*gasp*) choose one person, then change their mind and choose another.  I have an issue with the idea that love should only ever be written as an exclusive two-person relationship, mainly because it’s not always true.  People can find themselves in situations where they’re attracted to more than one person at a time – it’s sticky, but it happens.  It’s real life, and real life (like real love) is often complicated.

* it’s fantasy: this is the opposite side of the coin to the point just discussed.  Okay, fiction is entertainment and y’know, not real, but you all knew that.  Fiction is a place where things that don’t always happen in real life (like two incredibly hot suitors fighting over you) get to happen.  And the readers of the story get to fantasize, just for a while, about what it might be like to be involved in that, what it might feel like emotionally, and the consequences of that.  Sometimes people get caught up in the cliché-hate, because disparaging the tropes is considered a sign of good taste or something (romance literature suffers from this all the time).  But fiction is a safe space for fantasy, and teenagers need that as much as anybody.

* it’s supposed to be about busting stereotypes: this is one of my biggest issues with DLTs.  Many of the complaints about DLTs focus on a female MC’s wishy-washiness.  Psychologist Eric Berne claimed that the conflictual aspects of the DLT – which he termed “Let’s You & Him Fight” – are “essentially feminine psychology” (on what basis?  WHO THE HELL KNOWS).  But I actually like the idea of female characters who get to choose – because it suggests that women’s choices and emotions are valid.  For too long, this wasn’t the case, and I think it’s one of the reasons why Twilight’s romantic angst was so successful – putting aside the issue of creepy-stalker-Edward and hormonal-ragey-Jacob, Twilight was an opportunity for Bella to choose.  For the first time, a girl got to choose, instead of waiting helplessly for some guy to choose her.

I’m still torn about this one, though, cos I think it’s been a bit hijacked.  Another thing that Foz Meadows explained in her short but excellent post on DLTs is that “to boil entire narratives down to a binary equation” severely undermines any potentially feminist underpinnings of a book’s romantic storyline.  She points out that championing a woman’s right to choose her partner is great, but when so much YA trumpets the same message (“And Lo! There shall be Two Hot Boys, one of them your Heart’s Intended, the other a vain Pretender who is also hot and with whom you shall have guilty makeouts before settling down with your One True Love”) what’s lost is alternative rights – the right to choose someone NOT a boy, for instance, or the right to not have a partner at all, to choose knowledge or art or travel or some other kind of personal vocation.

So I still think we could do more – a lot more – to reclaim this side of DLTs.  And hey, you people who’ve suggested that we should see more of the ‘one guy/two girls’ version of the DLT – I find that irksome.  Do we really need to revert to the portrayal of girls spatting over a big hunk of man-meat to make the trope ‘more interesting’?  The idea of women fighting each other over a guy seems very 1950s, if you ask me (but then, maybe the ‘guys fighting over a girl’ model is equally Neanderthal – I think I know which I’d prefer, though).

In addition: for a very long time, women in literature were portrayed as simplistic creatures, with simple desires.  But guess what?  Women aren’t like that.  Women can love as deeply and broadly and messily as they like.  As Pam and Pearson explain: “Men and women love with equal passion as well as folly”.  Women don’t always make ‘correct’ choices – and the focus of their passion may not always be narrow and clear-cut.  We don’t always buy into the more socially acceptable idea that women are monogamous, and cleave to a single partner for life, whereas men are virile, and have license to ‘spread their seed’ (or whatever) more widely.  Is it more ‘unnatural’ for a woman to have more than one soulmate/lover, or for a woman to find her OTP in high school and avoid any other interactions forever thereafter?  To me, that latter idea could be just a version of the old ‘perfect virgin’ trope – and I think we might have moved beyond that now.

* love is complicated: love is so simple – and so freaking complicated that artists of every category have dealt with it in their work since time immemorial.  Love is diverse.  It may not always take the shape and form that we as a society try to squeeze it into.  Love and sex are messy.  People are always asking for a more accurate portrayal of ‘reality’ in YA – well, DLTs often fit with that.  There isn’t always a clear decision, there isn’t always a mess-free way to resolve the situation – sometimes, there’s gonna be heartbreak and loss.  It’s tough, but ‘reality’ can be tough.  I’m gonna go with Pam/Pearson again here: “While love triangles can be accused of being clichéd, if done well, they provide insight into the complexity of love”.

 

Thus, the question remains – should writers use DLTs in their work?

 

Let me tell you a personal story.  You know I wrote Every Move, right?  In the finale of the Every series, we see Rachel Watts return to her hometown to figure out her personal traumatic shit and battle the Big Evil.  Along the way she meets an old friend, Harris Derwent.  Rachel isn’t attracted to Harris – I mean, she notices that he’s an attractive guy, because she’s not, y’know, blind – but Harris is compassionate and generous towards her when she’s at her lowest, and her opinion of him improves steadily during the course of the book (at first she thinks he’s a dirtbag).  Harris, unfortunately, fancies Rachel – it kinda sucks to be Harris.  He does try making a move on Rachel, but (spoiler alert – as if you needed one) she rebuffs him.

Now when I wrote Harris into the story, I wasn’t thinking ‘DLT’.  I was thinking that Rachel was at a crossroads moment in her life – nearly eighteen, preparing to enter adulthood – and she was in a state of confusion about everything: her ability to cope with stress and pain, her relationship with her parents and friends, her relationship with her boyfriend, Mycroft (who was having some personal crises of his own).  I wrote Harris in because he was a concrete representation of Rachel as she might have been if she’d stayed in Five Mile.  Harris and Rachel share history: the same jokes and memories, the same local vernacular, the same understandings of life (Harris is basically Guy!Rachel).  And Rachel has to confront that part of herself – the alternative path, the road not travelled, in all its attractiveness and nostalgia – before she can make a decision about which path she wants to choose.

Carrie Ryan summed it up best (again): “each man is a viable choice for the heroine but each speaks to a different part of who she is.  The heroine isn’t choosing between two men, she’s choosing who SHE wants to be and that will dictate who the right match is.”

So Harris seemed like a fine fine idea at the time I was writing Every Move.  But wow, people took umbrage.  Like, serious umbrage.  Some readers said they couldn’t finish the book because the thought of Rachel even considering Harris over Mycroft made their poor hearts squirm.  Some people warned readers away from the series, because they felt the ‘DLT’ ruined a perfectly good story.

I was shocked, I have to say.  Because I didn’t think I’d written a DLT (and Wikipedia seems to agree with me – see the definition of “a former lover or friend returns…usually not considered a love triangle…in the end the [original] relationship remains intact with the long-term partner having learned some valuable lessons”).  But omg the fury!  Ouch.  It also made me sad, that people might have been put off reading the books because of the ire of some reviewers.

 

To wit – I will think very carefully about using the DLT trope (even a whiff of it!) in any future books that I’d like to see succeed.  Which is kinda crazy, if authors are self-censoring – and maybe throwing out a perfectly logical plot arc – because they fear the backlash over DLTs.  I’m not the only author who’s acknowledged this – another author friend recently said she’s battening down the hatches because she wrote a DLT into her next book.

I’m sure some people are cheering – they’d be happy to never see another DLT in YA fiction again.  But…well, I’ve already noted the points for and against.  Sometimes you use DLTs for a reason.  Only then you have to stand back and see your Ickle Baby Book get strafed in reviews, which hurts.

 

I think, sometimes, clichés work because people identify with them (for whatever reason).  And if you read Joseph Campbell, then hell – everything has already been written, there’s no combination of plot elements that hasn’t been used up and turned into a cliché.  But DLTs seem to be a special case.  The rash of DLTs in YA fiction over the last few years seems to have poisoned the well for writers who would like to use it in their work.  If you want to use a DLT in your book, think carefully and consider your options.  Just sayin’.

Having said that, if you can find a compelling and original angle on it, and it makes the story work good, more power to you.

xxEllie

 

Want to read more about the issue?  Try:

Malinda Lo

Diana Peterfreund

Carrie Ryan

#LoveOzYAbookclub: May 2016 book selection

Another exciting month ahead, and we have another fantastic title on our list.  This is one that I read a while back, but it was just so damn good, that I can’t wait to share it…

It’s always an honour to announce new titles, and this month’s book was selected by Dave Burton, the author of HOW TO BE HAPPY, which we read in April.  To keep us bushy-tailed in May, Dave has chosen CLANCY OF THE UNDERTOW by Chris Currie.

CLANCY OF THE UNDERTOW is the second novel from Chris Currie, a Queensland author. Chris’s previous book, The Ottoman Motel, was an adult book also released by Text.  How sixteen-year-old Clancy, loner from the dead-end town of Barwen, finds a way of juggling growing up, her weird brother, a potential new friend, her attraction to hot chick Sasha, and her father’s involvement in a town tragedy, is all tackled in this amazing book. Kids’ Book Review called CLANCY ‘a thoughtful coming of age story narrated by a strong, authentic Australian teen voice’, and I would have to agree.

And it would be remiss of me not to mention that this was the book that started a kerfuffle online a little while back, when Melbourne Review of Books published their review. While the review itself was glowing about CLANCY, the reviewer contrasted the book against his own negative perceptions of YA as a category…and then the fun and games started, with every YA writer and reader I know chipping in to comment in defence. As a direct consequence of that furor, Melbourne Review of Books published an online apology.

An interesting situation, and a win for YA as a category – no category or genre of literature should be dismissed out of hand, but it still happens. It was bad luck that CLANCY was caught in the crossfire, but the book itself is very special, and didn’t suffer from a little extra attention. I loved it when I read it a few months ago – I pored through it in one sitting. Now you know the strange history of it all, I’m curious to find out your reactions…

I hope you enjoy CLANCY just as much as I did, and remember that if you’d like to order the book through Boomerang Books, you can use the code ‘loveoz’ at the ‘use promotional code’ section of the order form to get free shipping.

Hope you’re getting a bit of rain, like we are here, and I can’t wait to hear what you all think of our May title!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub – April 2016 Discussion Post: How to be Happy (Dave Burton)

For those of you who didn’t get the note I sent out last weekend, boundless apologies for not getting this discussion post up in time.  I have been plagued by some kind of malicious internet god this week…let’s just call it the Telstra God…which has made it impossible for me to a) load Google Homepage in under 5 minutes, b) trust that my internet connection won’t just suddenly drop out FOR NO REASON while I’m in the middle of doing whatever thing I’m doing, c) reliably receive phone calls or texts or email or…well, do anything much at all on my mobile.  Apparently there have been local ‘works’ going on.  JOY.  But to tell you the truth, the internet out here in the country is always kinda crappy.  Blame the government (I sure as hell do).

I’ve also been called up to work a lot lately (I’m a casual relief teacher), and I’ve been on deadline – but it’s primarily the internet issues that have been holding me up.  And usually, each month I find an independent reviewer, and ask if they wouldn’t mind allowing us to use their review of whatever book we’re reading, so we can have a jumping off point for discussion.  I usually contact them by email etc…  Well, obviously, this time I couldn’t do that – argh!  Holy galloping galoshes, Batman!  What to do?

 

So I’ve written the review myself.  Ahem.

Just to clarify – I don’t usually do this.  My typical practise is to stay out of the reviewing aspect of hosting bookclub, because I don’t want to cast judgement on a colleague’s work (not that I cast down lightning bolts or anything, but I generally prefer to stay out of it).  But desperate times call for desperate measure.  And I’m kind of glad I got the chance to write a bit about How To Be Happy, because it intrigued me as a reader and a writer, and I believe it’s been one of the most thought-provoking titles we’ve had so far.

So – on with the show!

‘I can’t tell you how to be happy’

Spoiler: I can’t tell you how to be happy either.  I can tell you all the things that make me happy – hugs from my kids, hanging out on the couch with my partner watching TV, being in the garden on a day of really lovely weather, finding the perfect words for a story, teaching something and having the students ‘get it’…  All those things (and more) provide a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment and joy that can lift me out of a dour mood, if that’s the way I’m trending.

But what if you’re in high school and you’re frequently trending down?  What if your identity is still forming, and your ability to rebound emotionally is depleted because you’re already coping with hard times at home?  How do you cope then?

I found How To Be Happy by Dave Burton confronting, deeply moving, and hugely satisfying to read.  My usual response to great YA is delight – how fantastic to read writing like this! How insightful and perfect! – and while HTBH is delightful and insightful, my strongest response to it was curiosity and questioning.  How did the author remember all this stuff from high school?  Were his family okay with him sharing?  What about his friends and exes?

I guess some of these questions are ones I always have when reading memoir.  To me, memoir is a uniquely vulnerable approach to writing.  With fiction, you can fudge it: colour a certain scene a different way so nobody recognises you were ever in it, change a character name to hide a resemblance, cannibalise bits and pieces from your own life to create a thinly disguised version of the truth.  Most writers I know use real-life experiences to flesh out their stories.  But memoirists are totally out there – everything you see here is real, folks.  That takes an extraordinary and nail-biting courage.

It also makes reviewing their work quite hard.  Is it possible to critique the story without critiquing the teller of it, if the story is taken directly from an author’s own experience?  Thankfully, HTBH was a story that kept me hooked.  I could see lots of parallels with my own life, my own thought patterns as a teenager.  It captured the essence of a certain type of high school experience that so many of us are familiar with, and the writing was clever and witty.  I laughed a lot, reading this book.  I was also moved to tears.  Sometimes high school, and life in general, can be really shit.  I think Dave Burton captured the spectrum of that.

But some questions I had about HTBH were about the nature of the YA memoir form itself.  I was hugely interested to find out what the teen response to this book has been like.  It’s been pitched to teenagers, through schools and libraries – is a book like this appealing to a teenage audience?  Would it be too much, reading about someone else’s shitty high school experiences while you were in the middle of living your own?  This is the part of the book I was curious about.  I read a few online reviews of the book (when my mobile was cooperating) while thinking about my own response.  I noticed that most of the adult reviewers of HTBH really loved it, and felt it was an important resource for teenagers struggling with issues of anxiety, sexual identity and depression, and I’d certainly agree with that assessment.  But the teenage response…was not as present, or as positive.

Admittedly, I only took a small sample, but the teens who did review didn’t seem to get it.  I don’t think it’s because of the language.  I’m just not sure if the memoir form strikes a chord with teenagers.  I’m going to take a wild stab and say that teenagers generally read for entertainment, and want to be taken out of their own world and into another – a world where they can sink into the character of someone who is them but slightly (or maybe a lot) better, someone who will win the day at the end of the book.  The end of HTBH is ‘happily ever after’, but it’s a bittersweet ending.  I wasn’t sure if teenagers would find it uplifting – to know that yes, recovery and happiness are possible and can happen – or a downer – because in real life, there are no perfect happy endings.

Anyway, that’s my review.  I’m going to claim HTBH as one of my favourite books of bookclub so far, and I hope you enjoyed it just as much.  So write me some comments, here or on the FB page!  I’m really really keen to find out what people thought about this one.

Have a good week, and if the internet gods are smiling upon me, I’ll put up the new title selection post for May sometime this week.

xxEllie

The Dreaded Love Triangle – Part I

 

Hello!   Today, as you might’ve noticed from the title, I’m looking at a little thing that’s bugging me: I’m writing an in-depth examination of the Dreaded Love Triangle! (*cue scary music, the howls of the damned etc*)

But Whyyy? you ask.  Don’t we get enough of that crap in the YA we read?  And there’s the rub – love triangles have become so ubiquitous in YA literature that they’re really not fun anymore.  Time and again, I’ve been told that people are over love triangles, that they were never into them to start with, or that they’re too clichéd for words – theweirdworder in Teen Ink speaks for many by saying “Nothing makes me want to chuck a book against the wall like reading a love triangle”.

Which is why, when you search for articles about the topic, you see a lot of phrases like ‘Curse of the Love Triangle’, or even blogs called ‘Love Is Not a Triangle’.   I’ve actually gone for the same approach here, with ‘The Dreaded Love Triangle’ – like the Dread Pirate Roberts, only less handsome – and for ease of use (and my own amusement) I’m going to continue to refer to love triangles as DLTs for the duration of this post.

*

First of all, let’s establish a couple of things about DLTs.  It’s obvious that they’re a staple of the YA category – and more broadly, a staple of romance literature.  And there’s a reason for that: DLTs sell books.  No matter how often readers complain about them, books with DLTs continue to fly off the shelves, in both YA and adult romance.  That DLTs divide opinion, in spite of high sales, is also obvious.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the DLT trope is something authors often employ: because readers may either love it or hate it, but at least they’ll have an emotional response to the book?  I don’t know, actually, but it’s a theory.

But what is a DLT?  Does it take more than one form?  What makes a love triangle (for want of a better word) triangle-y?  Well, I won’t pretend to be scholarly about this – I got my definition from Wikipedia.  According to the Love Triangle page (yes, there’s really a DLT page on Wikipedia), a love triangle constitutes “a romantic relationship involving three people”.  It can “refer to two people independently romantically linked with a third person”, or a situation where “each of the three people involved has some kind of relationship with the other two”.

Okay…  But Wiki goes on to categorise DLTs into different types:

The Rivalrous Triangle: where two lovers are competing for the attention of a third

The Split-Object Triangle: where one lover has to split their attention between two objects of affection

And even:

The Triad: which is more like polyamory, where all three people involved have romantic involvement with each other

DLTs are considered quite different from ménage a trois; what distinguishes DLTs is the competitive element.  Apparently, DLTs tend to share common themes of (you guessed it) unrequited love, confused emotions, and jealousy.  Although you can have a DLT featuring three people of the same gender, usually the trope involves one woman and two men.  Quite often, a woman is torn between two suitors of contrasting personality (Good Boy vs Bad Boy – sound familiar?), or a Perfect Beloved versus an Imperfect But Endearing person (where the Perfect Beloved is frequently found to have Hidden Flaws).

More rarely, a DLT may take the form of two men who share an intense relationship (romantic, fraternal etc) permitting a woman to join them (Vampire Diaries, Infernal Devices – I’m looking at you).  A less permanent DLT is when “a former lover or friend of the main character returns to ‘win back’ the main character’s heart”, although Wikipedia points out that this is “usually not considered a love triangle since there is little possibility of the main character breaking up with a long-time partner to pursue a just-introduced character”, thus this situation is “often used only as a test of the true depth of the main character’s devotion”.

*

So that’s it for DLT definitions.  But why are they so goshdarn popular as a trope in YA?  The finger of blame has been pointed primarily at Twilight, as the series/franchise that kicked off what some people have referred to as the “Twilight curse” of DLTs.  Apparently, when Bella arrived in Forks, she started more than just a brawl between a vampire and a werewolf – Twilight was the single most-often-referenced work that people utilised for examples when discussing DLTs.  It’s been suggested that because Twilight was such a huge success, publishers decided to cash in on the trend.  Abby in Acculturated says that “the business of selling YA books is driving much of the repetitiveness in plot devices…Authors can do better than revisiting this tired old trope”.

But hold it right there – was it really Twilight that did all this damage?  How long have DLTs been around?  Well actually (*cough*), they’ve been on the literature scene for a very long time indeed.  If you want to do an exhaustive search, be my guest, but even my cursory examination of the issue uncovered DLTs in everything from Shakespeare to Ishiguro.  Let’s have a look at some examples:

 Jane Eyre – Jane and Mr Rochester (the secret bigamist) are having a lovely time, until Mrs Rochester burns the whole thing down

Pride & Prejudice – Wickham and Lizzie, or Darcy and Lizzie?  Well, that was easy…

A Tale of Two Cities – Lucie Manette will never love Bad Boy Sydney Carton (who is teh hawt, btw, and I would totes have chosen Sydney), so he sacrifices himself in place of her about-to-be-guillotined husband, Charles Darnay (sob!)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – more of a ‘love rectangle’ between Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia and Helena

Romeo & Juliet – Juliet is affianced to Paris, but she falls for sweet-talking Romeo instead

Little Women – Jo and Laurie and Professor Bear…oh, this one is sooo difficult!

Anna Karenina – Anna and Alexei and Vronsky and to be quite honest, I wanted to kill all three of them

The Great Gatsby – Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan and Tom Buchanan – not a very good time had at all

Wuthering Heights – Heathcliff!  It’s me, your Cathy, I’ve come home…with Edgar in tow

And if that’s not enough for you…

Gone With the Wind – Scarlett!  Rhett!  Ashley!

The Age of Innocence – Newland Archer is about to marry May Welland, but finds himself drawn to Countess Ellen Olenska, and who wouldn’t be, with that gorgeous name

Love in the Time of Cholera – Florentino and Fermina and Juvenal…ah me

Never Let Me Go – Ruth and Tommy and Kathy and goodness, this book broke me into little pieces

The Girl with the Pearl Earring – is the triangle Vermeer, Griet and Vermeer’s wife?  Or Vermeer, Griet and the painting?

The Dressmaker – Tess on the Titanic, and two very different guys…have we heard this one before somewhere?

Or how about in the movies?  Casablanca, Titanic, Bull Durham…  Or on television? Sookie and Bill and Alexander Skarsgard, or Angel and Spike and Buffy…  And so on and so on, ad nauseam.

*

Speaking of nausea, that brings us back to the reasons why people often find DLTs so unbearable in the YA books they read.  Here’s a few reasons why – as far as DLTs go – haters are gonna hate:

* it’s overused: see Abby’s quote above.  A lot of readers want to see YA move on from a Twilight-induced DLT stupor because since Meyer’s books were published, DLTs seem to have sprouted in every YA book released thereafter.  In fact, in some reviewer’s eyes, the trope has become almost synonymous with the category.

* it’s clichéd: see above. This is often about whether the author has written the DLT arc in an original or interesting way (which is very hard to do btw), and also the perception that the close association of the trope with YA makes the whole category ‘look bad’.  I definitely agree with this – I think we could do better with DLTs in terms of representation.  We could see more diverse sexualities and gender identifications, and more culturally, racially and ability diverse lovers – that would make a nice start.

* it’s predictable: more about how the DLT is handled, and the manner in which the arc of the DLT plays out, but presumably there’s only so many ways this can go, and we’ve seen them all.  Boooring.

* It’s a market ploy: nobody likes to feel as if publishers are dictating their reading choices (although they are, of course, by the sheer fact that they select all the titles being traditionally published, but let’s overlook that for the moment), or forcing a hackneyed plot device down their throats to make money.

* it’s unrealistic: some people have said that by implying to suggestible teenaged readers that, any day now, they might have two equally hot suitors vying for their affections, authors are setting teens up for a lifetime of pain and disappointment.  I’m not sure I buy the idea that teenagers are this gullible, but okay.

* it’s unhealthy: see the point above, but this also goes to the idea that True Love should only ever be portrayed as an exclusive bond between two people.

* it’s immature: again, related to previous two points, but this complaint has more to do with the idea that while teenagers might find the idea of two suitors fighting over them exciting, it’s an immature understanding of how real relationships work.  It’s also been suggested that YA employs the trope so often because it might appeal directly to teenagers at an ‘immature’ stage of emotional development.

* it distracts from the basic premise of the book: this is one I was clued into by Foz Meadows, when she wrote that teenagers reading YA fiction with a DLT as a background arc often get caught up in the romance aspects of the book and ignore the primary themes of the story.  She cited The Hunger Games as the perfect example, and noted that “anyone who thought romance and love triangles were the main event in that series…utterly missed the point”.  Good and fair call.  It makes me question whether the DLT aspect was really what the author intended readers to focus on in the story, or whether that was the aspect the publisher chose to promote (spoiler: I think I know the answer).  So that goes to the ‘market ploy’ issue raised above, and it’s reasonable to call it out, I reckon.

* it brings the MC down: this is an interesting one, and it is often specifically linked to female MCs – basically it suggests that a female MC who is constantly shuffling between two prospective suitors, seemingly unable to make up her mind, will lose the sympathy of the reader (‘You’ve got two hot lovers! What’s your problem, sister?’).  It’s also linked to the idea that a female MC loses credibility because she can’t decide – that she becomes, in essence, the stereotypical ‘flighty female’, thus confirming all the horrible sexist ideas about women and how emotionally fraught/undeveloped/confused they are.

 

Okay, I admit it, these are all points worth making about DLTs.  But no matter how much people whinge, there have been oodles of recent YA books with DLTs in them, and they’ve all become mega-successful.  Throne of Glass – The Mortal Instruments – The Hunger Games – Matched – The Selection – Hush Hush – Splintered – The Raven Boys – Shatter Me – Delirium – Fallen…  I could go on and on.  Obviously the formula still works, cos people buy the books.

So in my next post, I’m going to look at the flip side – why YA writers continue to employ DLTs in their work…

See you then!

 

xxEllie

State of the Union – April 2016

So I’ve decided I’m going to start writing a regular thing each month, where I give a brief update of what I’m working on and what I’m doing and events and so on.  Sound all right to you?  Yeah, it sounds all right to me, too.  It’s actually kind of nice to be figuring out my priorities and stuff for the month.  I’ve talked about my love of list-making here, so I guess this is more on the theme.  And please excuse the title, I’ve been watching a lot of The West Wing lately…

What I’m writing:

I’m on deadline this month – April 30th, to be exact, and it’s already been pushed back a month, so this time I can’t fake it.  I’m finishing the final 100 pages of a new book, which will be announced in more detail once the contracts have been approved (yes, it’s sold, but no, I can’t tell you about it yet).

It’s a standalone, and it’s NOT a YA crime book…but that’s all I can tell you.  I’m sorry I can’t tell you more!  Please don’t throw things at me!  I promise I’ll give you all the gory details as soon as I’m allowed.

What I’m up to:

Well, I got a haircut – nice, huh?  It was just perfect the next day, too, when I had to dig up the broken septic pipe in our driveway…hahahaha *clunk*

On Wednesday, April 6th, I visited RMIT’s Creative Writing class, run by Simmone Howell, and chatted to students there about YA crime, and writing a series, and generally let the students pick my brain.  The last time I went to one of these classes, I was about a week from deadline with Every Move, and I was a mess – bird’s nest hair, haggard face, wearing my winter writing clothes (daggy corduroy trousers, huge holey woollen jumper) cos all my normal clothes were dirty…  I promised Simmone I’d try to look more professional this time, and I think I pulled it off!  Anyway, it was great fun.

That’s it for events at this stage – I’m having a gloriously event-free April, which is good, because see: deadline, above, and also it’s my third son’s birthday, plus Term Two and junior footy season have both started, which means I have morphed into a taxi who bakes birthday cakes and nags you about your  homework.

 

What’s bugging me:

Meh, I’m kinda bug-free right now.  I had a bit of a niggle on about Love Triangles the other day, so I wrote a blog post about it, and that’s coming soon.

#LoveOzYAbookclub:

April’s title is HOW TO BE HAPPY by Dave Burton – you can check out the title selection post here, and an interview with Dave was posted here.  The discussion post is going up later in the month, so check back if you’re interested.  Feel free to sign up to bookclub, if you want – we’re reading a book a month, and it’s all OzYA, so if that floats your boat, come aboard on the FB page.

 

 

On My TBR:

Well, I’ve actually just read HOW TO BE HAPPY, and it was genuinely amazing – teen memoir is a new genre for me.  I’ll be detailing my reaction more in the bookclub discussion post.

I’ve also just bought an e-copy of THE MIDNIGHT DRESS by Karen Foxlee, and I’m looking forward to getting into it.  I borrowed MAN-MADE BOY by Jon Skovron from the library, and loved it – I thought it was quite original and inventive, and managed to convey a lot of insight into relationships and growing up in a story ostensibly about monsters.

I also borrowed BROWN-EYED GIRL by Lisa Kleypas, because she is the bad-arse queen of romance.  But (apart from HAPPY) I might very well avoid all reading until I’ve gotten this manuscript finished – I am extremely hopeless with reading (think: hours lost), and I just can’t waste time this month.

That’s all I can think of for now.  Is there anything you’d like to know in these updates?  I mean, I could put out a weekly newsletter, but I just thought that might be a bit boring…(more spam! Ugh!) But if there’s something you’d like to know, drop me a line in the comments here and I’ll see if I can squeeze it in next month!

xxEllie

 

#LoveOzYAbookclub: April 2016 – Five Messy Questions with Dave Burton

 

Well, we’re at it again, picking the brains of our favourite authors.  This month’s author in the hot seat is Dave Burton, the author of How to Be Happy, and he’s answered five slightly offbeat questions to give us some insight into his writing process (or at least, what his Writing Must-Haves consist of).

 Dave is a Queenslander, and he blogs here, at his website.  He has taught theatre and literature at USQ, and created award-winning theatrical work, including the community musical Boomtown and April Fool’s, about illicit teenage drug use.  He has directed Shakespeare, and was Associate Producer of the Brisbane Writers Festival.  His podcasts with Carley Commens were some of the most popular Arts podcasts in Australia on iTunes, and he still runs Pew!Pew! on Youtube.

So, he’s a pretty talented guy.  But what would he do in a zombie apocalypse?

 

* The zombie apocalypse strikes, but it ’s okay, cos you have your choice of weapons, and you choose…:

Sneakers. Cos Imma gonna run. Seriously, they’re not that quick. And I’m nimble. Years in the teenage school yard taught me that I’m a better sprinter than I am a boxer. Cowards unite. The meek shall inherit the Earth, after all.

 

* Your book makes No#1 with a bullet on the NYT Bestseller List, and a famous bartender at the Ritz-Carlton makes a cocktail in its honour.  What ’s in the cocktail and what is it called:

I’m so glad you asked. It’s a magic concoction named after the book ‘How to Be Happy’ – but it’s an accurate representation of the book, so it aims to capture the awkwardness and confusion of your teenage years. So you scoff it down (it’s a bizarre combination of LYNX deodorant, sugary energy drink and vodka mixers), and you suffer through a night of bewildered horniness, existential dilemmas, and you grow a lot of hair in random places. You’re welcome, Ritz-Carlton.

 

* Writing Must-Haves – snacks, drinks, music…whatever:

Coffee. Always. Or tea, preferably green. I don’t eat when I write, but on particularly intensive days I will need to take a break, and rustle up something quick, usually egg on toast. Music is also really important. Sometimes I use silence, but more often I tap into movie soundtracks. So I think a lot of ‘How to Be Happy’ was written to the music of Thomas Newmann. Right now, I’m playing Fleet Foxes.

 

* If your book was a ride at SeaWorld, it would be…:

God, I don’t know. But it would be wet. And not in a pleasant way. Lots of twists and turns, with an unexpectedly pleasant ending. But yeah, along the way there would be quite a few big splashes right in the face.

 

* We ’re at a dance party right now, and the DJ wants to know which song gets you out on the floor for major boogies and you say…:

Ray Charles. Nina Simone. Anything big and brassy. It’s a phase I’m going through. I want soul so intense you can feel it in your chest. Listen to Ray singin’ ‘Hallelujah I Just Love Her So’, or Nina Simone’s ‘I Got Life’ (particularly the Groovefinder remix) and just try not to smile. Instant happy-making.

 

Thank you all for reading!  I hope you’re enjoying the book.  And thanks Dave, for getting your sillies on with #LoveOzYAbookclub ☺

 

xxEllie

Living with the dreary tenants

The thing I find hard about being a writer is that, in between all the busy-ness of daily life, and day jobs, and parenting, and running a small business (which is effectively the kind of approach you have to take, if you want to have any kind of creative career), you just can’t stop thinking about it.

The story, I mean.

So much of writing is in the thinking and day-dreaming, and when you’re busy, quite a lot of that has to happen in the margins.  This is why writing, as a career, has traditionally been done by the upper classes.  Their margins tend to be considerably larger.

Anyway, the dreamy part: it’s like when you were in school, and you’d lose concentration in class and happily day-dream about something…  Writing is about giving those day-dreams license.  Giving your brain a chance to roam.

The problem is, you need to spend a good long stretch of time on it.  You have to think about a story for a long while to arrive at backstory, and characters who are real people with interiorities, and an interesting sequence of events for their journey. You have to spend hours on it.  Weeks and months of hours.  Years of hours, sometimes.

And you just can’t fit all that thinking and dreaming into a writing session schedule.  It spills out the sides.  You end up dreaming about dialogue on the morning commute, in the gaps during conversations with friends, while you’re making dinner.  It’s especially complex with work and family, because you find your mind is almost split in two.  One part is forced to stay dormant during some parts of the day, when your focus has to be on other people or tasks.  Then at different moments, you can let that secret part of you pop out to play.

And it’s always the most appealing part, that playful part!  You often feel stifled when you’re in situations where you have to limit or repress that side of yourself.  You start to resent other people – including, awful as it sounds, family members – for taking up your time, for making you push that dreamy, creative side of you away from centre stage, where it wants to be.

The dreamy, creative side wants precedence over everything.  Which is tricky, because while that side is great for your writing, it’s not that great for other things.  It’s actually pretty shitty for things like doing your taxes, or staying organised, or keeping up with professional responsibilities, or with which kid needs to get to which extra-curricular event.  It’s not that great for being a friend, or maintaining a relationship – other people like to be listened to, not just nodded at and ‘uh’ed.  It’s also kind of shitty for parenting – being dreamy means your brain is far away, free-floating, so you’re not really present in the moment, and children need you to be present.

What’s the solution?  I don’t really know.  All I can say is that I often feel like my brain is subdivided.  On any given day, all the subdivisions squabble amongst themselves like dreary tenants.  I have to compartmentalise constantly, switching my focus and switching on the appropriate part, sometimes from moment to moment.  It makes me tired, and forgetful, and sometimes cranky.  It makes it hard to enjoy socialising.  I often find it difficult to switch off and relax.

Every writer I know employs different strategies for dealing with this peculiar ‘split focus’ feeling.  Some of them have strict rules about down time – after such-and-such time in the evening, they absolutely do not think about writing work.  They watch TV, or go out and do something else.  I’m not very good at this.  I find that my attention strays – this is probably poor mental discipline on my part.  Some people find meditation helps with this.

Other strategies, I find more useful.  Sleep is a good one.  I’m more capable of switching focus from one subdivision to another when I’ve had enough rest.  When I’m tired, it’s hard to switch.  It’s mentally taxing – I get really cranky then.  I also can’t write – my words get mouldery and dry.  So I try to make sure I get enough sleep.

I also find regular exercise helps a lot.  Doing something that makes you sweat, whatever you prefer – running, walking, swimming laps, weightlifting…  Exercise helps return your mind back to your body, helps ground you.  Sex is good for this also.  Bodywork allows you to be present in the moment, centred in your physical self.  It’s a great leveller.  And of course, it makes you physically tired and ready for sleep.

I find it very hard to maintain mental boundaries when I’m in poor health.  Being ill just makes it hard to concentrate.  Good self-care is important.  If you are living with a chronic condition or a disability, you mind this rule especially.

The camaraderie of other writers is important – to me, at least.  It reminds me that I’m not an isolated case, that other people understand this peculiar state of mind and cope with it themselves.  Sometimes they have useful strategies to share.

I’m a lifelong list-maker.  If I didn’t have my lists, I wouldn’t remember all the stuff I need to be switching back and forth between.  I can’t rely on my brain to remember anything essential – it’s usually too occupied with what one character is saying to another character, or what is happening to my protagonist at any given moment.  List-making is actually for the benefit of other people, all the people in my life who expect me to stay on top of day-to-day events.  My family, and my employer, for example.

Of course, I downsize as much as possible.  I try not to take on too much.  Oh, I know it’s hard to say no – you feel like you’re missing an opportunity.  But the world is full of opportunities.  There’s only one you.  You can’t do everything.  Think of your priorities – you have friends, family, and you want to keep them, right?  Would any of this be worth it without the other people in your life?

And that’s last thing worth remembering, when I’m struggling with anchoring my state of mind.  I have to remind myself to stop.  To look around.  There’s a world out there, beyond the world in my own mind, and I am a part of it.  It informs who I am, it informs my writing, it feeds my creative energy, it provides inspiration and sustenance.

It’s my life.

King said ‘Life is not a support system for Art – it’s the other way ‘round.’  I need to remind myself of that sometimes.

xxEllie