Buzzwords

Buzzwords is Noted festival's very own advice column, with five notable writers taking on the agony aunt role.  You provide the questions, they’ll dish the dirt. notedfestival.com 

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Hi there. I have been referring to myself as an 'emerging writer' for the best part of ten years now. But with my former publisher going under, commissions from previously reliable sources drying up, and reluctantly taking on a spirit-draining day job that eats up my time and energy, it feels more like I'm submerging. At what point should I accept I don't deserve to call myself a writer anymore?

Answered by Buzzwords blogger Lynette Noni

Coming to a place where you’re satisfied enough with your WIP (work in progress) to consider it ‘finished’ is somewhat comparable to icing a cake. If there’s not enough icing, the cake won’t live up to the potential of all it could be, but if you keep adding more icing, it can easily become overkill.

The same can be said for writing. Your work needs to be edited (and rested, and edited again, etc.) but there has to be a point where you say enough’s enough. For me personally, I’m a pretty ‘clean’ writer when it comes to first drafts, so my basic rule of thumb is this: draft out the entire MS, go back straight away and edit it, let it rest for a few weeks, then go back and edit it again. If I’m relatively happy by this stage, I’ll send it out to a core group of critique readers—such as avid reader friends and my “shred it to pieces” mother—and I’ll wait to hear their opinions. Once I have their feedback, I’ll go back and edit it again, and by then it’s usually at a place where I know I can’t get it much further without professional input. That’s when, for me, it’s ready to send along to publishers. (Preferably by owl post.)

That’s how I work for my fiction books. (Without the owl post… *sigh*…) But I’m also employed as a content writer for a personal development company, so with that, my work is more journalistic—and more time sensitive, which means way less editing, critiquing and resting time. I pretty much have to write a piece, whiz through it to make sure it flows, and send it off. My aim is pretty much to make sure it tells the story of what it’s meant to tell (if that makes sense) and keep the unnecessary fluff to a minimum.

As crazy as it sounds, for me, it all comes down to a feeling. When I’m nearing the end of a piece of writing, I may know the conclusion is coming, but until I’ve written the ‘perfect last sentence’ I don’t actually know exactly where it’s going to end specifically. But when I reach the ‘ah ha!’ moment, I quickly type in THE END before I can add anything more. No more icing. The cake is finished. And, fingers crossed, it tastes even better than it looks.

This is our last Buzzwords post for Noted 2015. A big thank you to our wonderful Buzzwords bloggers and everyone who submitted questions. Happy writing!

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I have been writing semi-casually mostly for myself for some time now. I have put some of it out there but only after seemingly endless editing and then even after it is out there I feel like I have to make excuses for it. How do you get over the crippling fear of putting it out there? Does it get better the more you push yourself?

Answered by Buzzwords blogger Sam Van Zweden

Yes and no.

The editing process is collaborative, and part and parcel of publishing your work. Editing can be hard work, and it sometimes makes you doubt whether you know what you’re doing. But learning to work with an editor and accept their feedback in the supportive

While the edits might feel endless now, working on your writing with someone else before publication will generally strengthen your writing and self-editing skills. After a while, you’ll find patterns in the feedback, and you’ll internalise it. You’ll start making those changes in your own edits, and the feedback from editors will probably still exist, but it will become higher level, and you’ll be able to challenge yourself again.

As for making excuses, please don’t. It’s hard to take someone seriously when they’re apologising for something they’ve made. You made it, you published it, just own it. Talk about what you’ve done, and talk about it with pride. For a long time, talking about my work made me uncomfortable. In some circumstances, what I do still flies out of my head every time someone asks about it. What do I do again? But by pushing yourself through the discomfort, you’ll get better at it. It’s like that old bear hunt - we’ll have to go through it. (*squish, squish, squish* etc)

In my experience, that moment when you want to take it all back immediately after it goes out into the world never disappears, but you will come up with new ways for coping with the nausea it induces.

There are also ways to promote yourself with some humility - 'promotion' doesn't mean you turn into a spam bot. If you really struggle to talk about your own stuff, talk about the place that has published it, and mention quite casually that you’re excited to be included. Or be overly bombastic to combat the apologetic side of yourself. Never, ever apologise for making something that’s been published. Have faith that the fact that it’s being published is testament to its brilliance. And bask, as loudly as you see fit, in that glory.

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If you’re not at Canberra for the inaugural Noted Festival you can follow some of the digital goings-on here.

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There are so many words already, and so many seem to be neglected or unwanted. Is it right to bring more words into the world under these conditions? (NB. I plan to keep writing and just want reassurance that it's worthwhile please.)

Answered by Buzzwords blogger Kate Iselin

There are indeed a lot of words in the world - a huge amount; in fact there are probably more words than there are people. When we think about all the words in the world, all the libraries that contain them, all the dusty books jam-packed with words that may not have been read for a hundred years, it can feel super intimidating to think about wanting to put even MORE words out there. But I think words are like people in many ways: not only are there billions upon billions of them, but each tome of them is unique and every tome of them can change the world in a way that no other can. Words can delight, comfort, frighten, arouse, and inspire, but they can't do it without you. Just like your words, you are unique: one in seven billion. Keep writing. Never stop using your words.

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How do you decide on the illustrations for your novel covers? How much do you think this affects the readers interest in the book and how much say do get in what is chosen?

Answered by Buzzwords blogger Patrick Lenton

The whole ‘never judge a book by its cover’ saying is not so much a rule as an entreaty. It’s pretty obvious that customers DEFINITELY always judge a book by the cover, and really, it’s easy to see why. Sometimes a bad cover can make a book seem old fashioned or tacky or in a completely different genre than it’s meant for. In both physical and online stores, a cover has to grab your attention - and in a market saturated by more books than ever before in history, you need to grab people’s attention. As a side note, if I was just publishing Bats as an ebook, I wouldn’t have chosen that cover, as with an ebook, clarity is super important - you need to be able to see title, author and eye grabbing image all at thumbnail size. With the print version of Bats we were aiming for a beautiful artefact, something you’d be proud to display or give as a gift. So, yeah, I think covers definitely affect a reader.

For A Man Made Entirely of Bats, my publisher, Bronwyn Mehan from Spineless Wonders, read my manuscript and immediately thought of a young artist named Daniel Lethlean Higson whose work she’d recently seen. He does these amazingly surreal cartoonish hypercolour pictures, which she believed suited the stories in Bats really well. After seeing his art, I absolutely agreed. 

To see more of Daniel Lethlean Higson’s art, check out mountforeverest.tumblr.com

Daniel and I had a meeting early on the process, in which I explained some of my ideas and looked at some other covers that I liked, which is a rare form of collaboration for the writer, which I’m really thankful for. Daniel read the book and sent me some drafts, one of which the current cover came from and which I absolutely loved from the beginning. This kind of collaboration is rare for most writers, but is one of the fantastic benefits of working with a small publisher who is able to think outside the box.

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What is your advice for getting a fiction novel published? What are some pitfalls to avoid / tips and tricks? Thank you

Answered by Buzzwords blogger Lynette Noni

If we’re talking about going down the traditional publishing path, then my best advice is to make sure you’re willing to be in it for the long haul. These things take time. I once compared the pace of the publishing industry to a very old, very sick turtle. Things happen slowly. So you have to have patience while you wait for your dreams to come true. You also have to be dedicated to putting in the hard work. Make sure you actively seek out feedback on your writing—and not just from your mother (because, let’s face it, even if it sucks, she’ll tell you it’s the best thing since sliced bread). Find people who read books similar to yours and who you know will give a ‘no holds barred’ critique of it. If you don’t like what they say, don’t ignore their advice and sullenly think you know better, but also don’t take any negativity to heart. Instead, use it to make your work better.

It’s also important to keep your finger on the pulse of the book market, especially in relation to your genre. Find out what is trending—and where. Actively submit to agents and publishers who are seeking the kind of book you’ve written, and make sure you have a killer pitch/query letter/synopses. And above all, remember that the publishing industry is incredibly subjective. You will probably face a lot of rejection on your path to publishing, so you have to be ready for that and willing to not let it get to you. ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’, as the saying goes. All it takes is a single ‘yes’ from one publisher to make it all worth the effort.

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Hello I would like to address my question to KJ please. I was wondering what advice you might have for a young writer such as myself who is trying to compose her first ever novel series. I have many ideas, but because I want my story to be a quadrilogy I was wondering if you have any advice for how I can organise these ideas to make sure that they are coherent across all the novels. Thank you Kindly :)

Answered by Buzzwords blogger KJ Taylor

Now this is a tough question – and I’d like to sincerely thank you for asking it! I like tough questions, because they’re more interesting to answer.When it comes to writing a series, the first thing you need to know is whether you have enough material. For example, if you have a conflict that can be resolved in a single book, then you probably should just write a standalone – or introduce complications to stop that conflict from being resolved too quickly. But you have to be careful not to resort to making your series longer by padding it with irrelevant or boring extra material – otherwise you run the risk of descending into plotless tedium, which is something plenty of authors before you have done (I’m sure you can think of plenty of examples).

As far as coherency goes, it’s important to have a clear idea of where you’re going before you begin. You don’t necessarily have to write out a plan – some authors do that, but it doesn’t suit everyone. For myself I don’t write plans, but I don’t start a new series until it’s clear in my mind. Before you start writing, make sure you have the basic outline of the plot and a sense of the personalities of the main characters in your head, or on paper if you prefer. Once you have begun writing, be sure to go back periodically and read over what you’ve done, to make sure you don’t introduce ideas and then forget them. You can also keep notes – I create private Wikis full of important information on the world and characters of each of my series so I don’t have to go back and check over previous books all the time. It’s a very handy tool, and it saves a lot of time.The last piece of advice I should give you here is this: don’t force it. Not all ideas are destined to become a series. There are such things as duologies and standalone fantasy/sci fi novels (albeit they’re pretty rare). The most important thing is to give your concept the treatment it deserves. I’ve had more than one of my own die on me because I approached it the wrong way. It’s amazing how fragile an idea can be – like a soap bubble it’s new and shiny and exciting, but if you try to catch it at the wrong moment, it pops.

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Buzzwords #5

I worry that working in writing, especially online, editing and writing short stories and essays and so on all the time, is sapping my creative energies. How should I/do you make time for the work you really want to do? Is it better to to get out, or get further in?

Answered by Buzzwords blogger Sam Van Zweden 

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for this - it really comes down to knowing yourself, articulating your priorities, and being honest. ‘Busy’ and ‘too much’ are relative concepts; they’ll be different for everyone. There are also really important and totally acceptable differences in what we find energising. Some people will find arts work (like editing or events management) energising, but that’s not everyone, and that’s okay.

Prioritise - the answer is in your question. You figure out ‘the work you really want to do’, and you get real about how much time you’ve got, and what you can achieve in that time. Like, really real. It’s easy to take on a lot - too much, even. Some people work best when they’re flat out, so if that’s you, go for it. If it’s not you, that’s fine too. At some point we all have a threshold, and you’ll know - in your guts, with deep disappointment and something that will convince you it’s failure - when you’ve hit yours. And it probably won’t happen once, but over and over throughout your career. Most recently I knew I’d reached that threshold mid-way through Honours, studying full-time and sporting two part-time jobs, when I found myself with a timetable carefully accounting for every waking hour of my life (down to ‘8.30-8.45: Dishes’) in order to get it all done. While I coasted through at an MVP level, I found that my wish to do everything severely impacted my ability to do any one thing properly.

Interrogate your motivation for doing things - fear of missing out often has a big part to play, and by itself it’s not a good enough reason to do anything. Think about this stuff long-term - where you do want to get to? Is this work helping you get there? Personally, I stopped doing the dishes and accepted that I couldn’t hit the recommended reading levels for uni. Eventually, I quit one of the jobs. This was a conscious choice. Saying no was fine, because I'd thought properly about what to say no to.

Being busy isn’t a problem. Being bad at self-care is a problem. Doing significantly less than your best is a problem. So apart from getting next-level with your organisational skills and taking care of yourself while being busy, it’s time to get really real with yourself and figure out what matters to you, and whether it’s paying off. 

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Buzzwords #4

Sometimes when I tell people I write fantasy, they go off about JRR Tolkien and Robin Hobb and all these big name fantasy authors. I don't have the heart to tell these people I don't really read or like them! Does that make me a bad fantasy writer? If it doesn't, how can I turn not reading the genre I write into a positive when people put me on the spot like that?

Answered by Buzzwords blogger KJ Taylor 

Don’t worry, anonymous fellow fantasy author – you’ve asked exactly the right person about this. The short answer to your question is “No”. The long answer is: “Absolutely not, and that’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.”

And now for the even longer answer. To date I’ve commercially published thirteen novels. All of them were fantasy. Dragons, swords, griffins – I’ve written about all them and more. But guess what? I’ve never read Robin Hobb (though I’ve met her). I’ve never read Feist, Bishop, Rothfuss, Sanderson, or any of the “big name fantasy authors”. I have read Tolkien, and I didn’t like him (though I did like The Hobbit as a kid, I found LoTR boring and pretentious).  I had a look at Goodkind, but didn’t get more than a couple of chapters before losing interest. I made two determined efforts to read Jordan, but got bored and gave up. It’s true. In fact, I read pretty much no “epic fantasy” at all. It just plain doesn’t interest me. Most of the time, all I have to do is read the blurb before I decide that, no, I don’t want to read this story.

I think not being particularly into the mainstream stuff is a good thing, because it means you won’t be influenced by it. Too much fantasy is all the same. Every other book seems to be about Saving the World From the Evil Overlord, or the story of how a Humble Nobody Got Mad Powerz. Or the struggle to Save an Ancient Kingdom. Also, randomly capitalised Nouns because that’s how they did it in Old English (and modern German). So the next time someone puts you on the spot like that, tell them “forget that lot – I’m doing my own thing, thanks”.

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Buzzwords #3

I know some writers frown on it, but I draw on my personal experiences a lot when writing fiction. I worry, though, that I'm not representing people fairly, or that it's creatively wrong to steal material from real life. Since I don't think I can stop doing it, are there any practices I can use or things I can keep in mind to be sure in myself that my work is just as valid creatively?

Answered by Buzzwords blogger Kate Iselin.

I'm not a fiction writer but I do write creatively about my own life, and I've never liked the idea that our experiences are 'less valid' as art simply because we've lived them rather than invented them. Sometimes real life is stranger than fiction! Sometimes it's better! Sometimes things happen to us in the real world and the only way to deal with them, be they happy or sad or confusing or hilarious, is to channel them in to our art form and share it with the world it came from. There are a million people who could tell you how to write well about other worlds but only one person who knows how to write about your world - you. Write what you like, whether it's imaginary or real or somewhere in between. Tell your own story. No-one will ever be able to do it better than you.

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Buzzwords #2

I love writing but find myself grappling with writers block regularly. Lately, I’ve been so stuck I haven’t been able to write more than a few lines for months. What are some writing challenges or prompts I can set for myself to encourage the words to flow? And how can I stay motivated?

Answered by Buzzwords blogger Lynette Noni.

I find that if I try to ‘force’ myself to write, that’s usually when I end up with the dreaded writers block. Writing is such a concentrated outlet for creativity that it has to come from deep within us, which means we have to feel it. We can’t just throw out a few words and say “that’ll do!” because that goes against everything we’re trying to promote and produce. We have to be passionate about our words—passionate enough to want them to be as perfect as they can be. But it’s a double-edged sword since our perfectionism can also be to our detriment, especially when whatever we’re producing isn’t up to the standard of what we want to be producing. Our flimsy outcomes mean we lose the motivation—and the passion—to write more since the results aren’t as ‘good’ as we imagined. And thus, writers block!

So, when I hit a wall with my writing, the best thing I can do is to find a way to rekindle my passion. Writing prompts and challenges don’t work for me personally since my mind automatically rebels against them, so I’ve come up with my own methods for re-motivating myself—usually in the form of reading. Sometimes I open a new book and hope to be inspired, but more often than not, what I do is go back and re-read an old favourite. Nine times out of ten I’ll be part way through the awesomeness of whatever I’m reading and I’ll become motivated to want to jump straight back into whatever I’m working on. This is my almost-never-fail technique (shhhh! It’s a secret!)… But on the off chance that it’s one of the annoying one-out-of-ten moments… *awkward shrug*… Those times truly suck, and they leave me with little choice but to go to the beach or watch a Disney movie or do something else that I enjoy until I’m feeling ‘in the mood’ again. It’s truly a difficult life. (Insert cheesy grin here.)

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Buzzwords #1

I struggle massively with self-promotion. I can't seem to say a good word about myself to save my life, let alone online or across three separate mediums, which is where it seems to really count. But I know it's so, so important for writers to have a personal brand. What can/should I do if I don't feel confident creating a brand for myself? Is there a cheat sheet for this "author as brand" thing?

Answered by Buzzwords blogger Patrick Lenton

OK, so this is a great question, because unless you've been hiding under a rock which has no wi-fi, you'll have been on the receiving end of all sorts of conflicting nonsense information about author brand. Luckily, helping authors create their online presence is actually a major part of my job, so I think about this A LOT.

I have one piece of advice that I use for everything to do with writing, and I can't remember who gave it to me or where I read it or if maybe I'm brilliant and came up with it by myself. But that maxim is 'there's no right way to do it'.

All this advice that you see flying all over the place, saying that you need to tweet 43 times during the luna cycle, that your Pinterest needs to be synced with the laughter of a small child, that you need to send famous authors pictures of your freshly bleached asshole - this is all based off looking at what's worked for other people, and taking their experience and saying that you should do the same thing. You can certainly be inspired by the methods other authors use, and even blatantly copy them if you feel it works for you, but it's not a prescriptive method. Find your own thing! Give it your own unique flavour!

Your brand, and I hate even using the term, is about your outward facing persona - it can be as truthful, honest, insincere, funny, gassy, chilly as you feel comfortable with. The only 'must' is that it's something only you can provide the world, and if that's the case, then you'll find the people out there who respond to it.

I get a lot of authors who rail against the idea of sharing personal information - authors are expected to tweet about their lives more and more, and to make their lives accessible to the public. People are often wary about this, which I understand, because the internet is about as trustworthy as a chimpanzee riot and you're a banana person. I personally share a lot of anecdotal experience from my life, stories about things I, or my pets, or my family etc have done. What I don't share is genuine emotion, as it makes me uncomfortable and I'm deeply repressed. That's a line I have.

I know some authors who exist online in almost a pure halo of emotional energy, and that works well for them. But I also know some authors who use their entire online presence to live Tweet TV shows and share pictures of shirtless men, and they have a HUGE and engaged online following. They are each doing the thing they feel comfortable doing, so yeah, that's it. There's no correct way to do it, but do it this way.

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In need of some (writerly) advice? Don't be shy - send us a question!

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Buzzwords is Noted Festival's very own advice column, with five notable writers taking on the agony aunt role. 

Suffering from writer's block? Unsure how to ethically blur the lines between fact and fiction? Struggling with self-promotion? Let the Buzzwords bloggers soothe your writing-related woes - you provide the questions, they'll dish the dirt. Submit your questions here or e-mail us. 

Buzzwords bloggers: Kate Iselin, Patrick Lenton, Lynette Noni, Katie Taylor, Samantha van Zweden