Sam Downing

Here’s a cheeseball-fabulous video I make a point of watching on the first day of summer each year, because I’m a huge lame-o. (But not as big a lame-o as you guys in the snowy, wintry, gloomy Northern hemisphere!):

December 1 marks the end of Nanorevismo for 2009. (Ditto Nanowrimo. Kudos to those who had a go – you have my respect, and my sympathy.) But just because the month has finished doesn’t mean my revisions have!

Last night, on the final evening in November, I pulled My Book’s word count back under 100,000 to a not-much-smaller-yet-somehow-more-manageable 99,919. Now I know how dieters feel when they manage to squeeze back into a pair of old jeans.

Let the wild rumpus countdown to 95k words start!

(Yeah, I saw Where the Wild Things Are last night.)

This is about a million times more likely than you becoming the next J.K. Rowling or Steph Meyer.

Occasionally I say to people things like, “I have written a book, and I hope it’s published someday.”

And occasionally they reply with things like, “Oh, I could write a book. I’ll do that someday.”

Good for you.  Wanting to write a book is a fine aspiration. But. Often when folks say “I want to write a book”, what they really mean is “I want to become fantastically rich and famous like J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer, and writing a book is an easy path to riches and fame.”

No, it isn’t. Writing a book is hard. (Seriously: it’s really, really hard. Mine took almost five years and it’s still not finished. It’s tough.) Writing a good book is harder. Landing an agent is even harder. Landing a publisher is harder still. Becoming a bestselling author is so hard that the previous steps seem no more difficult than plucking the petals from a flower by comparison. And becoming the next J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer is not only hard, it’s so phenomenally improbable that you are literally more likely to stand on the moon someday than achieve their level of success.

So if you want to write a book: do it. Do it because you want to a story you’re passionate about. Not because it’s a get-rich-quick scheme any idiot can exploit.

Today I was chatting about our various writing projects to my friend Rachel, and she suggested that I don’t seem to be very fond of the actual book thing that I’ve written.

Fair enough. I admit to being a tad negative about it at times. (I may have even declared that “I. HATE. IT” at one point. Erm. I guess I felt dramatic that day.)

Part of that negativity comes from the fact that I’m revising it at the moment (well, not so much this week, but only because I’m working on a short story I’ve been plugging away at since, like, the 17th century), so I’m hypersensitive to everything that needs to be fixed; I need to be critical to improve it.

And yes, sometimes I have “dramatic moods” where I’m convinced it’s the worst 95,000(ish) words of drivel ever committed to paper a hard drive, and I’m tempted to drag it into the trash and permanently delete it. (However, I read today that a grumpy writer is a better writer, so maybe dramatic moods are a good thing?)

But you know what? Ultimately, I’m proud of what I’ve written. I’m proud that it’s complete, in the sense that I can give it to someone to read from A to Z and there aren’t any gaps in the storyline. And at the risk of sounding masturbatory, I enjoy reading it. There are bits that make me chuckle, and I like the characters. It’s not that I’m not fond of the thing – my book is like a sibling who I’m either comfortably close to or furiously frustrated with, but I always like that it’s there.

Even if it never ever gets published (which, let’s be realistic, is an uncomfortable possibility), at least I can say I’ve written something that I like. I assume (I hope) this sort of love/hate attitude is common among writerly types?

No, not the song from Hairspray.

This week my mum finished reading My Book. Which is rad (though it does make me feel strangely exposed, like she’s seen me in my underpants). She said she enjoyed it, but added it’s “no A.K. Rowling”.

Thanks?

I supplied Mum with a PDF which she printed out to read. Which is terrible for the environment, but I’ve now inherited this physical copy of My Book, the first time I’ve seen it printed and bound. I can hold it in my hands!

Unfortunately having the words there on an actual page makes every awkward sentence, every bloated stretch of text, stand out like it’s been highlighted in fluroescent blood. The thing still needs an arseload of polishing before it’s ready to send out. I already knew this (I didn’t spent the last several weeks revising it just for fun) (even though it has been kinda fun), but having a physical copy of Book holds it to a galactically higher standard than if I were just reading it on my Macbook’s screen.

One the bright side there are a lot of bits in there I’m really happy with – proud of, even! The less-than-spectacular bits will one day, fingers crossed, be equally rad. Head down; revise, polish, edit. I’ll get there. (more…)

Image: failblog.org

Good news, everyone:

The federal government announced on Wednesday morning that it will not change how books are bought and sold in Australia, despite a recommendation by the productivity commission to scrap parallel importation restrictions on books.

Adds Sydney agent blogger Call My Agent:

Parallel importation regulations will notbe changed. That’s correct: NOT be changed. Which means Australian copyright still exists and Australian authors have the same fair shot at getting published that they had a couple of years ago (the industry has been understandably nervous the last year and a bit).

I have never participated in NaNoWriMo, because it took me more than five years to complete one novel and even the thought of spitting out a whole one in a month is morbid and terrifying.

And when I say “complete one novel” I mean “write something that has a beginning, middle and an end”. It is yet to be edited, so I am well chuffed to have stumbled upon NaNoRevismo (something I had conveniently planned on anyway), a whole month devoted to “[plunging] yourself into the filthy, glorious work that is revision”.

Yay!

Slashing unwanted adverbs and pointless filler and nonsensical garbage (I honestly have no idea what I meant when I wrote “the gold sunset [was] dispelled by the hues radiating upwards from clusters of imperious high-rises”. Huh?) is fun! On the other hand, I’m beginning to understand the meaning of “Kill your darlings”. Chopping out some of those sparkling-and-clever-but-ultimately-useless turns of phrase is hard.

The very first story I ever wrote (or that I can remember writing) was a thing called Benny and the Little People. Contrary to what the title might make you believe, it was not about midgets or dwarves or whatever; it was about this kid called Benny (surprisingly) who shrank down to a tiny size (somehow) and met some little people (another surprise).

I was seven. I drew the illustrations myself. I never actually finished it (a habit that has lasted till now).

Probably this story – which was ripped off inspired by who-knows-what – explains why I was so obsessed with The Borrowers series in later years.

I still (still!) don’t have the internet connected at my new house.

Clearly, this is a dreadful predicament for someone who is addicted to the internet. Gmail is going unchecked. Tweets are vanishing into the ether. My Google Reader subscriptions are piling up. And I can’t even play around with Google Wave!

(I guess I could read Gmail/check Twitter/browse Reader/play with Wave when I’m at work, but unfortunately I have actual work to do there which gets in the way of fun stuff.)

On the bright side, the lack of internet at home means I’m getting some reading done. Pictured above is the section of my bookshelf specially dedicated to all the books I have to read (or in some cases, re-read). I have this thing where I constantly forbid myself from buying new books till I finish the unread books I already have, but then of course I always go and buy new books anyway to add to the pile.

Weirdly, my writing is less productive than ever at the moment, even though I don’t have the siren song of the internet calling to me. Theory: I’m not using the internet, so I’m not using my Macbook, so I’m not writing. Huh.

So my book is completed, and has been for almost a couple of months, but… I’ve now reached the stage where I completely and utterly loathe it.

I. HATE. IT.

I regard the entire thing with the sort of lip-curling contempt usually reserved for a dear friend you’ve travelled the world with and now despise. We simply know each other too well.  Every time I open it up on my Macbook, every line seems to stand out as awkward, pointless, simultaneously unbearably pretentious and boorishly mundane. The characters are irritatingly, the settings banal.

In my mind this book of mine has no redeeming features whatsoever. No one could ever enjoy it, let alone want to publish it. Which is not a good feeling to have about something you’ve dedicated approximately 7 billion years of your life to.

Rationally, I know this is a dumb attitude – I’m battling a nasty case of what Nathan Bransford terms the Am-I-Crazies. Putting a name to it is strangely reassuring, to know that other writers (particularly other published writers) have experienced this exact tumultous mix of emotions about the stuff that’s poured out of their head.

Bright side: today a friend of mine who’s read my whole book from start to finish offered some really great feedback about it. Yay! Hopefully that’ll give me the motivation to end my pity party and just get on with revising the thing.

Image: Wired magazine

This week I was lucky enough to attend a Q&A with J.J. Abrams. J.J. Abrams! Geek royalty! He’s had a hand in some of my favourite TV shows and movies! (He also co-produced What About Brian, but let’s pretend it never existed.) The man is an A-grade genius.

During the Q&A J.J. touched on a storytelling concept near and dear to his heart, the idea of “the Mystery Box”. The Mystery Box is an actual box J.J. was given as a kid, which has some sort of cheapo magic trick inside. He doesn’t know what sort of magic trick, since he’s never opened the box – because the idea of what’s inside is much more compelling to him than whatever is actually in there.

(The Box itself made the cover of the issue of Wired that J.J. guest-edited in May ’09. It’s possibly the world’s most famous box.)

This concept is fascinating: at its most primal level it speaks, I think, to the possibilities of possibility. And imagination. And creativity. And all that cool stuff that writers should keep in mind when they’re trying to concoct ways to hook readers on their stories.

J.J elaborated on the Mystery Box at a TED lecture in 2007 (video embedded after the jump). He is sooooo cool, you guys. (more…)