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 |   This is a continuation of my blogging here at WdC |
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This will be a blog for my writing, maybe with (too much) personal thrown in. I am hoping it will be a little more interactive, with me answering questions, helping out and whatnot. If it falls this year (2024), then I may stop the whole blogging thing, but that's all a "wait and see" scenario. An index of topics can be found here: "Writing Blog No.2 Index"  Feel free to comment and interact. |
| Australian Publishers⌠sigh! Pt.2 Following on from the last post about the 20 Australian books of boredom, this is another post from an old blog⌠and one that still stands today. My ex-wife and I are both avid readers. We are also proud Australians. We try to read books by Australian authors. And there have been some fine books published. Anthologies by new authors, self-published books (yes, really), POD books, classic Australian books â there are some truly strong Australian books. However, the main publishing houses in this country seem to be stuck in the class divide of a hundred years ago. They obviously feel that amongst adults only the cultural elite bother to read anything that is not a magazine or newspaper, especially if the author is Australian. And so that is what is published â stories that seemed designed to appeal to the artistic elite, books to look good in a bookcase, books to brag about reading, not books to be enjoyed. One of the biggest issues is that the works that are published by the major houses for adults seem to be based on theme before story. The themes are more important than anything else. The story needs to have a deep, underlying (or overlying) social message. It seems the stories have to be about hardship and pain and often involve depressing tales with endings that may not be considered happy or even satisfying. And they have to be capital L Literature, written in a prose style that casual readers often find very difficult to get into, ignoring the genre fiction that surrounds us all. This translates often also into writing competitions, where who you are and what youâve experienced and how that informs your writing is more important than the story you tell. The âwho you areâ issue then raises its head when the only new authors who seem to be able to get a book published are those who have achieved a degree of fame in some other field â normally by embarrassing themselves on the national stage, be it in sport or on television â or who have led lives of great hardship and overcome them, often at great personal loss. Writing is an art. And, yes, some art is there to confront. But what art sells the most? That which is popular. Now, I am the first to agree popular does not always mean good (*cough*ELJames*cough*). I consider the Twilight books poorly written, yet they are immensely popular. Many people cannot stand Dan Brownâs works, but they are immensely popular. JK Rowling, Stephen King, Jackie Collins â no one is going to claim these authors are Nobel Laureates in waiting, but there is also no denying that they are read and these books sell. A lot. I feel that in Australia many involved in publishing, and associated fields (book-selling, agents, reviewers, etc) are more interested in making a statement through the Australian content they choose, in making an âimpactâ of sorts, than in actually giving the public things that people will want to read. But books and stories are written for people to read. And the majority of people do not want to be preached to â they want to read for entertainment. Example: What are the top ten English language fiction books of all time by sales (as of March 1, 2025)? A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis She: A History Of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets by J. K. Rowling The Catcher In The Rye by J. D. Salinger (source: Wikipedia, sorry). They all were written to entertain. Any preaching or teaching is incidental to the main aim â entertainment. (Even in Lewis' book; he said in letters he wanted children to be entertained by his work before anything else.) I have a feeling very few of these would have been looked at by a mainstream Australian publisher if they had been offered to them first. The same can be said for Australian films and plays. Only in television production is the entertainment first mantra adhered to. Australian television programmes do well in Australia and even make an impact overseas in their own way. How many Australian books have made best seller lists in non-Australasian markets? The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough⌠and that would be it. And that was an epic romance, a piece of genre fiction which entertained readers. Not Literary fiction that sits in book shelves so people can say they own it to look more impressive to their friends at the Club. Even our poetry! Bush poetry and bush ballads can still be enjoyed more than 100 years after they were written. What is published today? Depressing poetry that most people on the street donât even recognise as poetry. That elitism yet again. Maybe Australian books and Australian authors would sell more and be more widely read if the publishers took a risk on more populist genres, styles and authors. The authors of these stories may not be the greatest writers technically, but if they connect with a reader and people actually read something, isnât that a good thing? Or is reading an Australian author only to be encouraged as an elite past time, and so will the majority of Australians continue to get their reading entertainment from overseas authors? Do Australians have that much of a cultural cringe that the merest idea that one of our own could write genre fiction well (see Sean Williams, Garth Nix, et al, whose books do well in the USA but are ignored here) means they should go elsewhere to get published? And who knows? Somewhere out there just might be an Australian Stephen King, Dan Brown, JK Rowling or Clive Cussler, all ready to take the world by storm. But at the moment, weâll just never know. Addendum: Matthew Reilly sells well everywhere⌠but he made his first big sales and his initial impact in the USA. Australian publishers did not want to know him. That is not the story told nowadays, of course, but I was around at the time⌠|
| Australian Publishers⌠sigh! Pt.1 This is a cut and paste from an old blog of mine with some updates. A similar list was collated by an online magazine in 2020, with similar results. But it is still relevant today⌠Australian publishing sucks! â10 Aussie Books To Read Before You Dieâ Recently ABC-TV here in Australia had the 2012 finale of First Tuesday Book Club â a monthly look at books and writing hosted by Jennifer Byrne â doing their year-end special. This year it was â10 Aussie Books To Read Before You Dieâ. The way it worked was that the producers of the show put up a list of 50 books (maybe more) on their website and viewers of the show had a few months to go in and vote for their favourites. If, like me, none of your favourites were on the list, you had the option of adding them at the end. Fair call. Now, we all knew this was not going to be a wide cross-section of the Australian population. It was made up of, not surprisingly, viewers of the ABC and those who listen to ABC radio stations. To say that these people have their finger on the pulse of Australia is like saying politicians never tell lies. These people tend to be members of older demographics, or those of a higher academic pretence than most. (Of course, not all â I watch the ABC â but in general.) However, I think that people voted for books that they thought should have been the best Australian books, and not necessarily ones they actually enjoyed reading. They felt important or had something to say or were capital-L Literature. People didnât want to put down books they actually read for fear of appearing not pretentious enough. At least, thatâs how it appears to me reading the list. Because surely there are not that many people out there who think some of these are books every Australian should read⌠unless they hate Australians. Hereâs the top 20 (updates included): 20. The Tree Of Man â Patrick White (read it subsequently⌠boring! All message, not enough story, trying to give Australia a modern mythology.) 19. The Riders â Tim Winton (couldnât get into it, gave up after 50 pages or so. Itâs Tim Winton and itâs dull. In 100 years, the term âTim Wintonâ will come to mean âdull and overratedâ.) 18. Monkey Grip â Helen Garner (yeah, not a bad book, all told, if not a touch depressing.) 17. The Broken Shore â Peter Temple (havenât read it.) 16. Power Without Glory â Frank Hardy (I liked this one, a well-written book with characters that were interesting and involved the reader. Should have featured much, much higher.) 15. Eucalyptus â Murray Bail (subsequently read it⌠it was a Greek myth retold and it was so boring! My God! Aid to insomnia!) 14. True History Of The Kelly Gang â Peter Carey (not a bad book, but it felt overdone, and yet it had the opportunity to be so much more than it was.) 13. My Brilliant Career â Miles Franklin (dull, but I read it all the way through, and again with the depressing ending.) 12. My Brother Jack â George Johnston (I read this for high school, and hated it, but went back to it a few years after and found I enjoyed it. This should also have been much higher.) 11. Seven Little Australians â Ethel Turner (of its time, but not a bad book, truth be told.) 10. Picnic At Hanging Rock â Joan Lindsay (very Gothic, but not as good as most other Gothic novels. Just too many tedious sections of constant description. Still, certainly not a bad novel. However, let us not talk of the found âlast chapterââŚ) 09. The Secret River â Kate Grenville (tried to read it, couldnât get into it; another example of a book where the message overwhelms the writing and the story, to the detriment of all of it.) 08. The Slap â Christos Tsiolkas (took me three goes and I only finished it for a book club in 2021. This is a bad book and so depressing, where every single character had no redeeming features or personality. I wouldâve slapped the kid as well, FWIWâŚ) 07. The Magic Pudding â Norman Lindsay (yes, a hundred times yes â definitely one of the best Australian childrenâs books ever written; my children even enjoyed it, a hundred-plus years after it was written.) 06. Jasper Jones â Craig Silvey (I only read this because one of my kids was forced to read it at school and they wanted my opinion; they hated it â Iâm with them. Everyoneâs a bad guy, it is depressing and the ending is such a downer. It won awards. It is pretentious beyond measure.) 05. The Power Of One â Bryce Courtenay (not too bad, but it felt overdone in some of the descriptions of place and culture; Courtenay was a masterful story-teller, however, and this is a fine example of his work.) 04. The Harp In The South â Ruth Park (depressing and I didnât get into it, maybe because I couldnât relate to any part of it. I mean, at all. Noy an Australia relevant to me or my family.) 03. A Fortunate Life â A.B. Facey (read this at school, over-analysed it [as schools are wont to do] and found it a good story, but it was a tedious read.) 02. The Book Thief â Markus Zusak (havenât read it, but it seems yet another Australian book based on depression and a part of history that overwhelms everything about the story.) 01. Cloudstreet â Tim Winton (dull. Nothing happened! I think it was like 700 pages long and not a goddammed thing happened! Should not have been number 1, should not have been top 20, should not have been put forward. But I find Tim Winton dull in general.) So what did I vote for? The three books I put forward were: Pig by Kenneth Cook (my favourite Australian book and one of the best horror books Iâve read, up there in my top 10 easily.) Half Days And Patched Pants by Max Colwell (a story of Australia in the past that is funny while it tells its tale, made all the more poignant for me by being set where my fatherâs family grew up; one of the characters is based on my grandpa. I met Colwell â he is such a nice man.) The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco by John Birmingham (sequel to He Died With A Felafel In His Hand is funnier and more bizarre; itâs autobiographical, but itâs a superb story.) Okay, so what it means is that people have an inflated sense of the sorts of books people want to read, or they feel people need to read things because itâs somehow âgood for them.â What about reading books that are popular, that people enjoy for themselves, not reading out of a sense of obligation, to be hit over the head with a message or âcultural significanceâ (whatever that means)? Just adding to what I thinkâs wrong in Australian publishing, literature and books. |
| Book Review â How Not To Write A Novel Regular readers will know my favourite writing book is On Writing by Stephen King. But there are others⌠and some are excellent. How Not To Write A Novel by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark (2008) is that rarity among writing books â a âhow toâ ( or in this case, how not to) that is genuinely entertaining, genuinely informative, and just plain genuine. I found the book in one of those odd ways that seems to only happen in bad fiction. I found a couple of quotes from the book (my favourite is ââŚdeus ex machina which is French for, âAre you f***ing kidding me?ââ), and they intrigued me enough to buy the book. The basis of the book is that they are helping people who write long works of fiction to never get published, by helpfully pointing out a variety of things to do to turn off readers, editors, publishers and everyone else in the known universe. By doing it in this way, it makes the points they are trying to make that much clearer. And it is funny. The excerpts from the âbooksâ they have sprinkled throughout are amusing, but there were too many I found that were like books Iâd read. And too many that hit uncomfortably close to home. They start with the plot, then hit character, basic writing styles, more complex styles, world-building, and special bits and pieces. There are too many things in this book which ring all too true. And yet, what astounds me is that there are more and more books being published where these rules on writing bad novels have resulted in publication deals. What happened â did a bunch of editors and publishers read this book, take it as an exact guide to what readers want, and made sure all the rules of bad writing were present in what they published? (Not mentioning any names *cough*ELJames*cough*) Some of the rules I found here that applied to my writing when I first read the book in 2010 or so include: âThe Waiting Roomâ (taking too long to start a story), âThe Gum On The Mantlepieceâ (something trivial that remains trivial), âZenoâs Manuscriptâ (unnecessary details), âThe Second Argument In The Laundromatâ (scenes repeating)⌠and thatâs just from the section on plot. But the book arrived at an opportune time. I had just started editing a manuscript for a potential publisher, and was doing so as I read this book. I made so many changes it was incredible. And now I have all of this in mind, I like to think I avoid as many of these errors I remember, and when I re-read the book (only done so twice), I hopefully avoid a few of the pitfalls that it seems my writing falls into. So, for any aspiring writer â buy this book! Read it! Take note of it! Along with Stephen Kingâs On Writing, this is now one of the very few âhow toâ books that actually lets the reader know "how to."
https://www.amazon.com/Write-Novel-Them-Misstep-Misstep-ebook/dp/B00166YCBU/ |
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| The Music Of Writing Back in the heady days of 2013 I was accepted into an anthology called Song Stories Vol 1, a collection of stories based loosely on songs. I have since had 4 more published, with another accepted for an anthology due for release soon. Anyway, as part of the publicity for that book twelve years ago, the editor organised a music-based blog hop. What they wanted is a discussion or something about how music has influenced an authorâs writing. I looked at it, went, âYeah,â and thought little more of it. But it would not leave me and, really, the more I thought about it, the more I realised music is especially important when I write. While that blog post is lost to the mists of time, here is a new version based on the notes: Apart from my series of stories called âEvery Song Tells A Storyâ (as of 2025 more than 60 done, of which about 20 are any good and with quite a few published), music has been a subtle, background influence in my writing life. Side note â I used this when I was a teacher: the students had to find a song they liked, get its lyrics, and then use those lyrics as the basis of a story. Nice way to get the creative juices flowing. Anyway, I found that when I was in high school and started this thing we shall laughingly call my âwriting careerâ that certain types of music influenced certain styles of writing and their overall feel. Poetry was best written to classical music, particularly pieces without lyrics. It can even be seen by reading some of the poems I wrote back when I was a teenager and in my twenties that some could guess what music was playing at the time. (Bach was obviously high on my playlist back then, for example.) Fantasy was influenced by heavy metal and hard rock, and even classic rock. My first decent completed novel ("20250331 Novel #3" ) was written under the influence of Led Zeppelin IV, AC/DCâs Back In Black and some Jimi Hendrix⌠at least musically. Even my fantasy short stories tend to have similar soundtracks. For example, in the 1990s The Who featured prominently with my so-called Secludos ethos stories.Science fiction was written with 1980s pop (especially New Romantics and their ilk) and/or David Bowie blasting through the headphones. I think it was the synthesised sound that did it for me, getting me into the mode/mood. Horror, though â by far the genre most of my stories have adopted â is generally supported by 1960s and 1950s music. The longest novel I have ever written, Year Of Change, for example, was written almost completely with the strains of Del Shannon pounding me relentlessly. Having said that, my horror stories written in the mid-2010s had a lot of Mike Oldfield in the background, which is pretty far removed from that normally associated with horror in my mind. And my humour does not have a musical backing. It has a visual one â classic black and white horror movies. Go figure. (Side note: When studying for high school exams, different music helped with different subjects â opera for English, 1950s & 1960s for Latin, classic rock & hard rock for maths 1 & 2, pop music for chemistry, and late 1960s music for physics. It helped⌠eventually.) Anyway, I thought this wasnât the case anymore, but have found that as I completed my novel s for last yearâs NaNoWriMo, I was listening to a lot of The Beatles, the re-released Red and Blue sets. So music and my writing are pretty entwined. Itâs nice to think about it like that. |
| Clearing The Mind To Write Brief one today! I received an email about writing that wasnât (a) abusive or (b) trying to sell me something. In part: ââŚquick question which Iâd like to ask. I was curious to find out how you center yourself and clear your head prior to writing. Iâve had trouble clearing my mind in getting my thoughts out. I do take pleasure in writing however it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes are lost simply just trying to figure out how to begin. Any recommendations or tips?â Well, first, I thought, at least this personâs writing eventually. Whatâs 10 or 15 minutes? So, I thought to myself, thatâs an easy one. And I sat down to write a response. After 10 to 15 minutes of my own I realised it wasnât as easy as it sounds. So, what do I do to clear my head when the words donât come out? Weâre not talking about writerâs block here, just about when you have trouble getting started for the day. Writerâs malaise, shall we say ("20240517 Combatting Writer's Malaise" ), only on a smaller scale.When I was younger Iâd go for a run or a quick bit of parkour (though we didnât call it that back then â we just did gymnastics wherever we could). As I got older this was replaced by a walk. Outside, away from any distractions. Sometimes I find a quick cat-nap (or nanna-nap) helps. I read a book on a totally different topic or in a totally different genre to anything I have been writing as of late. I watch bad television (soap operas I find work really well, because even if it is over-exaggerated, what you see are emotions and situations that could break you out of your writing malaise). Or I watch old black and white and movies; the lack of colour just allows the mind to wander a little easier. Or, finally, I will draw a picture instead. Just doodle, scratch around on a piece of paper, and let the ideas come out in a different format. Or play guitar. Basically, a different art form. However, maybe your mind just needs that time to meditate before it can get around to writing. Why force it? Itâs not like youâre not writing at all! So, something I hope helps. All of those things at one time or another have helped me break through for that first spurt of creativity when Iâve needed the prod. There is one other thing to do which is have a day off, but I am a firm believer in writing something every day, so I donât feel that is an option for me. But for others, that is yet another alternative. |
| External Writerings March 2025 That time of the month where I list the writing I have done for Weekend Notes (and any other places that could be bothered publishing me online). Songs, and even films this month, and a few columns because there was a good incentive, which I got  . Remember, you do not have to listen to the songs (though I would be grateful if you did), but every look at the articles from a different IP address with no ad blockers helps me out in my increasingly desperate attempts to make money as a person who writes.Songs about memories (not remembering). My favourite songs from that surprisingly good year for music, 1975. My favourite films from 1985, a year where I spent too much time at the cinema. Songs about the sky, the early years. Songs aboyt the sky, more recent years. Songs about listening. My review of some music of a band I have only just discovered â Halflives. I really recommend them.And there we go, 7 articles for this month. Hope you find something you like. And if you have any ideas for music (or even film, though my film knowledge is not as extensive, or book, but ditto here as well) columns, leave a suggestion in the comments below and if I have not tackled it already, I would love to give readers what they want. |
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, this is so interesting! Perhaps I'll try different types of music the next time I'm writing, and see what genre I end up with...
