My latest publishing venture
Now for something a little different.
I’ve had another poem published, this time in a small collection of poems called a chap book. There’s quite a story to this poem being published.
Every month I attend a poetry writers’ group at the university where I have almost completed my Master of Arts in Creative Writing. Poetry writing has been a love of mine for decades, but it is only now that I’m having some small publication successes. Poetry was a big part of the course and my skills have definitely improved in the last 2 years.
Every month we set a poetry writing challenge for the next meeting. One of the challenges last year was to write a poem on the theme of poverty (the Global Financial Crisis even crept into our little group). Some of the poems were brilliant and deserved a much wider audience than the group. We decided that this was to be the the first compilation published by the group.
I was nominated to be one of the three editors and I also set up the design of the booklet. We called it Shifting Sands. We had a very successful launch at our monthly meeting last Thursday. Normally we might only have about 5-7 members attend. This time we had 14 people present (including 3 new members) despite at least 3 or our regular attendees being away.
This month our theme was New Year’s Resolutions and the standard was extremely high. As a result we are now planning our next publication.
Good writing.
Getting back into writing again
No Comments »9th February, 2010; Category: Master of Arts course, Novels, The Writer's Life, Writing a novel
It is time to get back into my writing again.
Over the last two months my writing has taken something of a back seat in my life. I worked really hard over many long hours over an extended period of time in an attempt to get my novel finished before the end of November.
It didn’t happen.
As it turns out, my six weeks of illness in the middle of the year put me behind on my schedule and I never really recovered. The hard push to get it finished took its toll, and by the end of November I was well and truly cooked. So I decided to have a break from my novel writing.
I had actually finished the first draft well before the end of October. I then spent quite a few weeks editing and rewriting. The novel is now in its 6th draft, with at least two more drafts to go, perhaps more.
It has taken me fully two months to get back to the stage where I want to get back into the novel. I hope that the long, enforced break has distanced me enough from the earlier writing to give me fresh eyes for the novel as it now exists.
Many writers will agree with what I have done. Putting aside a story or poem or novel for a few weeks or even months can have a beneficial effect. Of course, sometimes writers do not have the luxury of giving their stories this kind of space, particularly if they are on a submission deadline.
Over the next week I will see how I go.
In the meantime – good writing.
Happy birthday to me
IT’S MY BIRTHDAY TODAY.
(Blushes as he hears all the wild cheering.)
I haven’t posted here for quite a few days. I’ve been busy putting the finishing touches to my MA novel and the accompanying essay. My novel is now in its 6th draft and will soon see its 7th and 8th drafts. More on that another day. My 10,000 word exegesis essay is lingering around the 2,000 word mark and desperately needs my attention. Tomorrow.
For my birthday I treated myself by buying 2 new novels: “The Turning” by Tim Winton and “The Slap” by Christos Tsiolkas. I’ll review them here when I’ve finished reading them in a few weeks’ time.
Good writing.
Why I’m not participating in NaNoWriMo
I think that the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a great idea, but I won’t be participating this time around.
It’s just that I simply do not have the time to do it this year. Nor did I have time to do it last year. I’m in the last stages of completing my Master of Arts in Creative Writing and only have this month to get everything finished and submitted. I finished the course work earlier in the year. Now I’m working on my thesis paper, a 40,000 word novel for children. My novel writing month was spread over about six weeks in August and September. That’s when the pressure was on for me.
Now I’m busy with rewriting, editing, revising and proofreading. It’s a tedious job but one that must be attended to with meticulous care if I want to stand a chance of being awarded my degree. After that I will be submitting the manuscript to publishers so it will be time well spent.
The NaNoWriMo concept is a good one. It’s main strength as I see it is to motivate people to get the novel they’ve been wanting to write for so many years and actually do something other than talk about it. Then there’s the incentive of having hundreds of other people doing the same thing around the globe at the same time which results in a certain momentum being built up. It’s like being caught in the surge of a crowd of people, or catching a great surfing wave. It just carries you along and builds an energy from within.
If you are participating – good writing.
May you eventually recover from the inevitable lack of sleep.
For more information about NaNoWriMo click here.