Reading Dickens

 - Hey, this is an article that I wrote a while ago for my local paper, however it's still one of my favourites.

In these past few weeks of university I have had the task of reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Upon learning of this task I was admittedly apprehensive. Some time ago I was kindly advised by a nice lady in the local bookstore of several books by Dickens which would serve as easy introductions to his literature, yet upon beginning The Old Curiosity Shop I was curious as to where this lady had got her information from. Either she had never read the book herself and had seen some entertaining film interpretation of the novel, or she had a sadistic need to see her fellow readers suffer. For though this was several years ago, the beautiful, illustrated, red leather bound copy of the book I had bought to read in appropriate style, remains in my book case, and I remember thinking, if that was one of Dickens’ easier reads, then I hope never to read any of his heavier works for as long as I live. I was further assured of my position when my mother’s book club tried to read A Tale of Two Cities. I had the pleasure of watching my mother suffer a similar torment, where merely trying to understand the sentence she was reading resulted in her forgetting what the prior sentence had been about. She grew quite worried when, two chapters through the book, she had no idea what she was reading, and resolved to give up and face the next book club, book unfinished. She was relieved, therefore, when no one in this quite experienced book club, managed to finish the book. There may have even been some referrals the book that included the phrase ‘wrist slitting.’

So upon learning I would have to read, and finish Great expectations, you can imagine my concern, if half of A Tail of Two Cities stirred suicidal thoughts in a book club, what would reading all of Great Expectations do to me?

If The Old Curiosity Shop was any indicator, than I would have to reread every second paragraph, and loose the will to live a fifth of the way through. However, I have good news for any student who may have to undertake the same challenge. Thus far I have only had to re-read every third or forth paragraph in the book, and am now a quarter of the way through and still floundering along. I don’t know what that lady in the bookstore was trying to achieve by pointing me to The Old Curiosity Shop, but Great Expectations has been, psychiatrically at least, far less damaging.

So rest assured all fellow readers, and remember, if you fail to complete the novel, there are always the movies.

Creative writing group

Hey,

I'm thinking of starting a creative writing group in Gawler for teenagers and young adults. So I'm putting it out there, what sort of things would you like to see in a writers group? What days are best over the summer holidays? And any other ideas you think might work.

Thanks!
Meg

Publishing and Getting Noticed

My new advice for people who want to publish - enter competitions.
I recently won the state selection for the somerset national novella competition, and as a result my love of writing has doubled and my confidence as a writer has been reborn. Thanks to this experience I'll have a contact at penguin who's an editor and can look at my work, and even if I hadn't won, writing that novella was a great experience.
Competitions are a great idea because getting yourself noticed over other authors is really all you want. You want a publishing agency to look at you and see someone who will put in the effort to make the book sell (and that's a fair bit of effort, I assure you). So you do have to prove your persistence and passion for writing for them to want you. Competitions are a great way to show this, practice your skills and try out new ideas, and they provide a reason to write (who doesn't love that?).
Because of this novella competition I got to attend the Somerset Literary festival, and there got so much wonderful advice from many authors, like sending in work to literary magazines, or never selling your copy write and using Twitter and Goodreads to build a platform for yourself and your work - a process I am steadily making headway on.
Just attending literary festivals is a wonderful thing, and you can ask the authors themselves what they did to get themselves published. Even if entering competitions and going to these places don't get you noticed, they will help build your skills and help you become a better writer. That, and honestly, the festivals especially, they're a lot of fun.

Happy Writing!

Reading Warnings

Picture Source

Whenever I'm uncertain about what to post next on this blog I always remember something fantastic I found elsewhere, and presto! 

All writers know that to write you have to read, and the more you pay attention to what you read and the more you absorb and use to cultivate your mind, the better your writing will become. Personally, I love the train, my 55 minute commute is great for reading!

I recently, at the advice of my wonderful teacher, read White Horse, fantastic book, and I most certainly recommend it, for ideas on women, humanity, post apocalyptic ideas and for anyone looking at wring examples that use the flash back, flash forward techniques, analepsis and prolepsis.

Also, no writer could ever be their best without looking at classical writing. By that I primarily mean the Odyssey and its kind. I'm re-reading it now for Classics, and it truly is one of the greatest pieces of story work ever, and imperative to understanding modern work. Remember, JK Rowling studied classics!

Anyway, that aside, reading is fun! Especially when you're lost to reality. 

Happy reading!

My 10 Tips for Writing

1. If you find that you have a story in your mind, and that it you loose all motivation to write it after the first few lines try finding a story or idea in your mind that's still developing, develop it as you write your first draft. This avoids you having a developed story grow boring, like a movie you've already seen twenty times before in your head. You don't want to grow tired of your story before before you reach the second chapter.
2. Allow room for change. Sometimes great ideas will come halfway through writing your story.
3. When you hit a block, try skipping ahead. Remember, you can bridge sections later.
4. Or, in a block, try to develop a new character or add depth to a current character. Add a layer in and write it out properly, integrating it into the draft.
5. Gain a proper, in-depth understanding of all your characters, the more real and believable they are, the more engaging it is for the reader.
6. Make them real, with faults, and don't simply try to live through them, make them different from yourself, but close enough so you can write them truthfully (check with Mary Sue test)
7. You don't have to have solid themes beforehand, it's great if you do but otherwise, once you're part way through check what themes are developing naturally. You can then choose whether to work form them and/or to keep them running through the book.
8. You also don't have to make themes to obvious, and you can have more than one, you can have several main themes and others in the background, remember, the more well thought-out and in-depth layers you have to you work, the more interesting it is.
9. Read your book out loud to yourself to check your writing, and read parts backwards, sentence by sentence to check them, (reading backwards helps prevent you from reading what you think is there and helps you read each word objectively).
10. Lastly, write fearlessly. Remember that writing is power, you can always come back and change your work, but the more you write the better at it you will become naturally. Also, cultivate your mind, look at how other writers write, find new material and be unafraid to try new things out in your writing.

Character development

A concept every writer should be familiar with is the character idea of Mary-sue and Barry-sue. Most of you will probably already know about this character trap, of making your characters too perfect. They become almost like ultra ego's for yourself and you make them perfect and fantastic versions of yourself that everyone likes, or regrets not liking. There are different types and variations of Mary and Barry sue characters, and thankfully ways of testing how believable or unbelievable your characters are. A friend of mine showed me this great website, you can use it to check the believability of your characters. The important thing is to get people your readers can relate to, real people, with flaws and shortcomings and quirks. 

Mary-Sue test

On Publishing and Formatting

Okay, so I am a self published author, that means I have to take charge of my editing, which is fine. But here's a world or warning, to all authors going through a paid self-publishing company, watch their formatting!!!!

My book is finished and on the market, but as I look through mistakes like places where a sentence starts on a new line, but not a new paragraph have turned into several small paragraphs in the finished book. In my version, they are all one paragraph, and should have remained so. So check their formatting vigorously! In a few specific sections of the book, which I thankfully picked up on, there were parts were random letters, Ts and Js, showed up in the words. We went through this several times trying to fix it and thankfully I think we got all them out, but now I'm finding more things that I missed.

I was in school at the time, doing year 11, all I wanted was my book done so I could be a happy author and focus on my secondary studies, but I can tell you, right now I wish I had taken the time to sit down properly and re-read the entire thing, slowly and word for word. 

For you all aspiring authors out there, believe me, it's worth it to sit down and read through your book properly several time. After you've finished, after your editor's been through it, after your second and third editors have been through it, and after it's been sent to the publishing agency and formatted for printing. Believe me, it's a horrible feeling to open your book and see formatting errors as you read your finished piece.