Tag Archives: Creative writing

October 22, 2015 · 12:05 am

Reading your book aloud in public

Earlier this year I was invited by Krissy Kneen, events coordinator at my favourite bookstore, Avid Reader, to read from my work-in-progress Lovers of Philosophy at a salon event. Krissy, who is a fantastic author in her own right, invited me and other emerging writers Meg Vann and Rebekah Turner to read from our works to help launch Stephanie Bishop’s ‘The Other Side of the World’ (Hachette Australia Books).

Fortunately, I had actually received some training in how best to ensure such a reading goes as well as it can. That training , in my case, was provided by the wonderful Aimée Lindorf at the Queensland Writers Centre (QWC). This training was part of the QWC/Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Program which I was fortunate enough to be selected for last year.

Here are some of Aimée’s helpful tips for reading your work out aloud:

  1. Select an appropriate passage
    • It needs to be self-contained enough to work as a stand-alone read
    • It should have a small cast – no more than 4 characters including the narrator
    • End on a cliffhanger if you can (You want to leave your audience wanting more)
  2. Read the passage out aloud before the big event
    • There’s nothing like reading your writing out aloud to sharpen your editing eye. Get rid of clunk and make sure your prose is clear and rhythmically pleasing
  3. Warm up your voice and your body
    • As all singers know, your voice is a physical instrument and resonates and projects much better if you do some deep breathing, vocalising and other exercises before you go on stage. Especially considering how much nervousness can pinch off your vocal cords and make you sound like Elmer Fudd.
  4. On the big day, read SLOWLY
    • Remember. No-one has heard your amazing words before. Read SLOWLY so the audience can hear them and follow your story. Consider using slightly different tones or inflections of your voice for different characters (but don’t overdo this). Pause for effect where appropriate.
  5. Have fun!
    • I made this one up. But having done a couple of readings now, I can vouch that there is nothing more enjoyable than reading your words as if you want others to hear them, and hearing their gasps, expectant silences and laughs. As writers we all want to share our imagined worlds with others so that they can be transported to another place, another time, another world. that IS the magic of writing. A public reading allows you as a writer to have a rare and precious experience – hearing readers’ reactions to your work in a public setting – after all reading is usually a private activity.

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January 9, 2014 · 11:40 pm

How I got shortlisted for the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship

Hi fellow writers

Hope your writing is going well.

It’s hard to believe it has been six months since I last posted. In my last post ‘Pitching to the Market’ I mentioned a few tips for helping you to get your book published. Today I wanted to report on how I got a little closer to that goal myself by, of all things, following my own advice (not something I often do!).

In  ‘Pitching to the Market’ I mentioned an excellent workshop I attended given by Meg Vann, CEO of  the Queensland Writers Centre. Meg talked about how important it is to develop an author’s platform, including building an online presence. Reluctantly I followed her advice and opened a Twitter account (to me it all seemed like superficial time-wasting. I just wanted to get on and write.). Anyhow I started following on Twitter people who interested me – other writers, authors, publishers, anyone tweeting about my passions of writing (and reading).

Then one day, a tweet popped up from one of my new twitter-aquaintances – a literary agent in Victoria, Australia, called Virginia Lloyd. In this tweet she mentioned the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship. As it turned out, the late Ms Rowley’s work had been a key resource for my writing project. My book is about the love lives of philosophers, and she had written an amazingly well-researched and gripping book called Tête-à-Tête about the love lives of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. The Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship had been set up to further the legacy of this great author by providing up to AUD$10,000 for emerging or established writers writing biography. I thought I might as well have a go.

So I submitted my manuscript to this Fellowship, and just found out two days ago Lovers of Philosophy had been shortlisted, as recently announced on the Writers Victoria website.

I hope my story inspires you to reach out and share or submit your work to one or more of the large number of fellowships and competitions out there. I’ve submitted my work to other comps and fellowships and had mixed success. The key is getting your work as good as you can get it (including by running it by beta-readers for feedback-more on that in a future post), and persevering.  Joining your local writers’ organisation is a great way to hear about the many opportunities that are available.

I’d love to hear your experiences of whether tweeting, blogging and what I still consider as other necessary evils that distract me from my writing (if I’m honest I’d always rather be writing!) has helped you to further your writing aspirations in any way.

Please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

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April 2, 2013 · 7:37 am

Listening to the language

Heidegger

Martin Heidegger came up with a radical notion that has enabled a whole new way of seeing ourselves and the world. This notion has since gained wider acceptance, and is especially prevalent in European contemporary philosophy. The notion is this: that language speaks us rather than we speak language. Or that we are constructed by the language. As Heidegger put it, if we listen we hear the language before and as we speak it–the words come naturally to us and shape what is important in the world.

Language can also help us to uncover, to unveil, to reveal the truth. Thus words, through speaking or writing, can help us to see the truth. Words can show us what is there.

The above ideas might not seem so strange to those of us who have tried creative writing. Just as the sculptor chips away at the marble to reveal the figure that was waiting to be revealed, writers have often commented how their stories unfold despite the writer. The writer’s worst-kept secret is that they didn’t write stories; the stories write themselves.

A Stephen King described in his book On Writing, the writer is like the palaeontologist who brushes the dust off to reveal the fossil (writing–the story–the creation–the work of art), perfectly formed  underneath (that was always there).

 

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