The story behind the story
There’s always more to a story than meets the eye. A good story calls out to us, holds us to the end, and keeps us thinking about it long afterwards.
The true power of a story? In the landscape of relationships and emotions, it asks and tries to answer the deepest questions of our souls.
A story is a promise. Characters will be tested to their limits. Will they rise to their challenges? Will their hopes and dreams be fulfilled?
Stories can touch on fears and longings buried deep inside us. Through fiction, we may find assurances, validation and hope — that our own needs for security, recognition, respect, safety and love will be met.
Does this explain the popularity of some authors? Readers flocked to the 2,000-seat Sydney Town Hall to see writers such as Ann Patchett and Bonnie Garmus at the recent Sydney Writers’ Festival.
Imagine if those writers had never completed their first drafts, nor caught the eye of agents and publishers?
Bonnie Garmus, first published at 65, said an earlier work was rejected 98 times before she found an agent for Lessons in Chemistry and then a publisher.
Her current global sales are now at seven million and a tv series has sent her story ricocheting around the world.
How did she never give up?
“I can’t give up on myself,” she said. “Other people can reject me. If I choose to give up on me, I made that happen. I say ‘no’ and keep going.”
Bonnie’s father was a moralist and athlete who taught his four daughters about courage, perseverance and endurance.
A former copywriter, Bonnie said she tends to write 15 to 30 drafts of her material.
“I never turn anything in that I don’t feel really good about.”
“Most people have Elizabeth Zott inside of us,” she said of the main character in Lessons. “There are very few people who haven’t been underestimated and overlooked.”
Her advice to other writers?
“Don’t write with somebody on your shoulder. Feel your voice, and write it as carefully as you can. Craft is good.”
Join us!This coming Friday 7 June at Kincumber Library on the NSW Central Coast, from 6pm, enjoy more book talk.
Fellow #beachread author Ella McLaughlin, launching Boomerang Beach, and I, launching Midnight Beach, will be interviewed by fellow journalist and Coast Community News writer and editor Terry Collins. Terry is also a well-known local actor and director who is working on her own mystery novel. Thank you, Terry!
This free event is offered in association with the Words on the Waves Writers’ Festival. If you’re anywhere nearby, we’d love to see you!
Rom-com rundown
Avid romance readers braved a deluge to attend the Rom-com Lovers Unite! panel at the recent Words on the Waves Writers’ Festival at Umina on the NSW Central Coast.
Tilda is Visible author Jane Tara quizzed Rachael Johns about The Other Bridget, Natalie Murray about Love, Just In, and James Colley about The Next Big Thing.
James spoke of his love and respect for the romance genre, Natalie said she wrote three Tudor historical romances before heeding general advice to “write what you know,” lightly touching on health anxiety, illness and death in her fresh contemporary romcom.
Rachael agreed it was a myth that romcoms were all “light and fluffy” and that most good books had a mix of light and dark.
While James’s book features his friends to lovers characters creating a big thing to save their small town, he didn’t want his characters’ gesture of confessing love to be a big one.
Natalie’s book is also a “friends to lovers” romance, a trope she describes as “complicated and terrifying”, as there is such a risk that a friendship will be ruined if the declaration of love is not reciprocated.
Rachael selected “enemies to lovers” for her main trope, sprinkling in a convincing love triangle to muddy the waters.
Meet cutes were discussed, as well as the challenge of writing comedy, particularly in an imperfect world.
“You try and inject joy in your life,” said James.
Both Natalie and Rachael said humour often came from their side characters, as they didn’t necessarily consider themselves to be natural comedians.
Big thanks to the Words on the Waves organisers for including the perennially popular but often overlooked romance genre in the festival.
Free and affordable sweet readsFeature author Fran Thomas is offering a free copy of her sweet romance Where it all Began.
The blurb: Dee Dutton was Calusa’s Homecoming Queen back in the day, but the studious boy she wanted to ask her out never did.
Rob Price hid his crush on Dee behind his glasses all through high school. Now, he’s back home from college, and trying not to cross paths with her.
But when his best friend ropes him into a double date, he discovers everything he thought he knew about her, and about himself, is wrong.
More than friends clean romances
Please use this link to offer a friend a free copy of House of Diamonds.
Happy reading!PS. The story behind the striking image at the top? It was taken by friend Simone during Vivid Sydney.
It captures the colours of an animation projected onto the Sydney Opera House, a retelling of the age-old story of Ovid’s myth of Echo and Narcissus by artist Julia Gutman and technologists Pleasant Company.
So many stories flow between and around us! May they lift your heart!
