Check out this writing competition for a novella for Australian and NZ folk. A great opportunity for this lovely writing form which, as they say in the article, may be able to revive with digital storytelling.
I’ve been trying to get all modern with my Youtube account and load some videos on there that people might find useful. I’ve actually got heaps of videos about various writing issues but they’re not all collected under my ‘channel’ yet. Will get to that very soon.
In the meantime I was trying to be clever and link to my video on procrastination, and see I linked to the wrong one. Try this one instead! And please bear with, bear with … (that will only mean something to Miranda fans, of which I am one. In fact, I think we may be related).
… about doing something new on procrastination. See if this works!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FYWqTrg_U0
There are some things that Kiwis do very nicely (the human kind, not the feathery ones), and one of those is ‘merging like a zip.’
I don’t know who first came up with the campaign, but the words ‘Merge like a zip’ are often displayed on billboards at the on-ramps to our motorways. (Or are they? Maybe I just think they are as it’s branded onto my mind’s eye. Still, that’s good branding for you.)
What the sign does is two things. Firstly, it makes me speak the words aloud in a low, super-hero bass. MERGE, like a ZUP (that’s the Kiwi element). Don’t know why, but I’ve always done it. The second result, and probably the more expected one, is to cause me to slot in neatly and without difficulty to the traffic on the inside lane of the motorway. One car goes by, a new car joins. Another car goes by, and another joins. It’s easy, straight-forward, and effective.
It even happens where there isn’t a sign. Off a busy main road that I sometimes travel if I’ve deigned to drop my daughter off at school, there’s an equally busy side street. Even though there’s no legal or road safety requirement to do so, and the main road is frantically gnarled up as people navigate traffic lights and the route to the motorway, the same thing occurs every time: each driver on the main road leaves a gap and waves through the next person from the side road. Merging. Like zips. Even when they don’t have to.
Without fail, it makes me smile. I beam magnanimously at the person I’m waving through. They’re my friend. My traffic buddy. We’ve merged effortlessly and politely, and this little act of kindness has helped smooth what might otherwise by a difficult situation. What must have happened is that merging like zips has become second nature. See a line of traffic? Merge with it. Blend. Don’t stop to think about it – just do it.
Writing can be like that. When we’re caught up in the fulness of it, that’s where we are. Just doing it. Effortlessly, with generous nods to the incoming traffic. And then it merges, zipper-like.
No wonder it makes me smile.
In this age of blogging, it’s fantastic to see what individual readers take upon themselves to discuss books and writing to as wide a community as possible. Here’s Pear Jam author, Phillip W. Simpson, talking about his love of demons on a wonderful blog. http://talltalesandshortstories.blogspot.com/
The size of New Zealand often frustrates me, particularly in terms of the market for book publishing (ie v small).
Now and again, though, I’m reminded of the many reasons I love this little country. Take last night for instance;
7. 05pm Find myself sitting in a cool cinema populated by polite people, with a glass of wine and a packet of chips (crisps, to non-Kiwis) ready to watch NZ-made film Sione’s 2. It’s very good fun, and so locally-made that the stars are variously: speeding round corners I speed around regularly (no, no, not really, Officer); in the bar I had brunch in last weekend, and driving past the shops at the top of my street.
6.50pm Sit at my desk after a walk in the park, and decide to go to the movies. Check what’s on, book it, jump in car and am collecting our tickets (and glass of wine, packets of crisps) at 7.01. It’s so easy to get around this place. And major events take place within spitting distance – not that I went, but just before Christmas the Foo Fighters and Tenacious D played the stadium I pass when I’m walking the dog. Cool.
6.40pm Talking of walking the dog, I was doing just that around our local park between 5.15 and 6.40pm. There was a rough-and-tumble rugby game going on, a few other dog walkers, and a bunch of friends and family having a barbecue. And who should be in that family? None other than one of the stars of Sione’s 2, chilling with his mates in a typically Kiwi fashion – no fuss, no drama, no starriness. ‘Oh, there’s Robbie Magasiva,’ I thought. ‘I must go and see that film …’
No doubt I’ll bump into the other three in the supermarket. Small world. Small country. Lovely place.
Recently, I realised I’d been living for too long with a large, loud space in the dining area of my kitchen – loud because it kept shouting ‘Do some cooking! Eat properly at a table! Ever heard of food that doesn’t get delivered to your front door and devoured on the sofa?’
So I bought a table, which is still to be delivered because when I went to collect it the guy in the warehouse looked at my tiny car and didn’t even bother hiding his incredulity at my naivety, thinking I could get a 1.1 metre glass table top into a 0.9 metre wide car. Well, I’m not that daft. I knew it wouldn’t go in flat, but I’d hoped that on an angle it might work. Apparently not – that would create tension and the glass could snap. This is obviously one of those things that guys get and women don’t, like how to reverse a trailer. Admitting defeat and a sad lack of spatial awareness, I had to schlepp back into the shop and part with inordinate amounts of cash to have it stowed in a 1.2 metre space for the 15 minute journey to my house.
What I did manage to get in the car, however, were the two seats I’d purchased to go along with the table. For some reason that I haven’t quite grappled with (probably watching far too many design shows) I decided to dispense with normal chairs and to use a couple of chinese-printed seats instead. I call them seats because they aren’t chairs. In my day we would probably have called them pouffs, but now each of them was called an ottoman.
Well, then the problems really began. ‘I want to buy two … pouffs,’ I said. Blank looks from the shop assistant, who was probably wondering if I should be in a different type of shop altogether. ‘Those seats,’ I said, waving in the direction of the pouffs. Of course – it’s a furniture shop. The place was full of seats. By now, both the shop assistant and my daughter were staring at me with raised eyebrows, although my daughter’s had a slightly more panicked look about them as she had an inkling of what was coming.
The shop assistant’s face cleared. ‘Oh, you mean the ottomans?’
‘Hmm. Ottomans. Ottomans.’ Kill me now, says daughter’s face. ‘Doesn’t sound quite right, does it? Shouldn’t it be … ottomen?’
The woman laughed. ‘Oh yes, probably.’ She obviously didn’t care. Whether it was two ottomans or a pair of ottomen (which would then make it singular again; oh darn it …) she was making a sale. Two sales.
Meanwhile, my daughter’s face crumpled into that ‘oh lord, she’s off’ expression that she frequently adopts around me these days, since she turned fifteen and I officially became The Embarrassment.
Because then … I couldn’t let it go. It worried me, really. Ottomans or ottomen? Toothbrushes or teethbrush? Geniuses or genii? I delivered a monologue on the thorny issue all the way home, concluding that the only thing for it would be to call the furniture store head office and make them change the name of that line of seats. But it wasn’t a chair, so what could they call it? A pouff!
I didn’t call the store, of course. I’m not really that obsessive. But when you work with words much of the time, these things play on your mind. It played on my mind to the extent that I sat up in bed and considered a public apology, for instance, when I realised I’d written the blog entry below on reading in bed so quickly that I’d said ‘school-marmy’. It isn’t even a proper word, but even so I’d got it wrong and it should, OBVIOUSLY, have been ‘school-ma’amy’. So sorry. Humble, heartfelt apologies to anyone else who read that and thought, ‘Jeez, look at that. And this woman calls herself a writer?’
Well, there we have it. I have now issued a public apology at the same time as airing my concern about the plural of the word ottoman. Maybe it’s a name a la Ottoman Empire and therefore can be ottomans. Or maybe I am just going mad, as many suspect (particularly 15 year olds to whom I am closely related). That’s it. I’m insane. I have ottomania.
So I’m officially sick, and off for a long lie down on a long, heavily cushioned object designed for comfort – the sofa. l’ll have to choose which one as I have two sofas. Oh no, that doesn’t sound right. Shouldn’t the plural of sofa be … sofa? Like sheep? Oh God. Bye.
Can someone let me in on the art of reading in bed while wearing glasses?
I haven’t needed glasses for very long. My whole life, 20/20 vision. Then suddenly I hit 45 and my right eyeball imploded and the left one turned squinty in an effort to compensate.
The optometrist told me you could set your watch (if you can still see it) for the time good eyesight turns bad: it’s 45, apparently. At 45, it will suddenly deteriorate. Past 45, it will steadily worsen until your early 50s, when the decrepitation slows or stops. At 45, the body tells you it’s time to accept middle age. Most people need glasses by the time they’re 45 and a half. How old are you, madam? Oh, yes, 45. Sorry, madam, why are swinging my eye-testing machinery into my face? Ah. Didn’t mean to mention 45 again. Ouch. Sorry.
Anyway, that’s what happened, and now I need glasses for reading, although I can still manage if I read only with my left eye and with the book at arm’s length and cunningly balanced on my finger-tips . I am writing this blog, for instance, without my glasses on and it all seems okay. I don’t mind my specs – in fact, I rather like them – but I do keep forgetting that I am now a glasses-wearer and fail to have them with me whenever I really do need them. Occasionally I’ve had to ask clients to hold their manuscripts up to my left and back away across the room while I eyeball them like some mad scientist …
The one thing that still thwarts me, however, is reading in bed. I have always loved reading in bed, since my under-the-covers-with-a-torch reading as a kid, to the ‘leave-me-alone-it’s-Sunday-and-yes-I’m-going-through-the-whole-thing’ reading of adulthood. I curl up on one side with my book for a chapter or two, then spin over to my other side for another few chapters.
With glasses on, I cannot do this. It infuriates the heck out of me. If I lie on my side, the glasses skew like Eric Morecambe’s, and then I’m trying to focus my dodgy right eye through my less dodgy left lens and it all goes horribly, horribly awry. I have to read in a fake movie way with pillows propped up behind me and a school-marmy upright position which does not lend itself to letting the book slide out of my hand onto the floor when I feel like nodding off.
Seriously, I wonder someone hasn’t invented something to help people like me – maybe a pillow I could put my whole head through, or something. Or … or … maybe a really light computerised book with a light behind it and adjustable text sizes for the be-spectacled among us. Hmm. Wonder where I could get one of those …
Any other suggestions gratefully accepted below. Please supply text in 24 point font. Jukk xxx
Today, Sunday 8th Jan 2012, I’m offering each of my three training programmes on http://www.grabone.co.nz/northland/write-good-stuff-49 for $49 NZD ($38 USD, or 25 quid if you’re in the UK). For that you get eight modules on either picture book writing, children’s books for 5 - 15 year olds, or novel writing across all genres and ages. They just pop up on your Write Good Stuff account and are emailed to you as well, and you have a complete training course to take you from those first thoughts of ‘I’d really love to write a book’ to ‘hey, look at that. I’ve written a book!’
And for some of those people who took a course with me some time ago, or had their manuscript assessed, and really did get round to writing that fabulous book which I’ve now published, we’ve got a sale on all Pear Jam Books ebooks on Amazon and the other e-tailers and our own online bookshop http://www.pearjambooks.com/shop.html, with a price of just $2.99 USD (3.99 NZD, couple of quid UK) for all 14 books from beautiful apps and picture books through wonderful children’s novels to fantastic YA and adult fiction.
I am sitting in my office on a Sunday morning in Auckland, NZ, thinking how amazing this all is. Really, truly amazing. The internet means that anyone in the world can do one of my training courses without getting off their sofa, or me having to get off mine. You can check out a book in Venezuela, Vancouver or anywhere else beginning with V (or any other letter, come to that), buy it with a click or two, and BAM! there it is on your laptop or e-reader. Readers can follow a few links and actually find the authors of their newly beloved titles, connect with them, beg them for more, tell them what they thought. Writers can jump on here – RIGHT HERE at my desk at the bottom of the planet – and connect with me too.
The world suddenly becomes a different place – not smaller, necessarily, but more accessible and somehow friendlier. It’s certainly cheaper: because I don’t have to travel to course locations and book hotels to impart my ‘wisdom’, I can keep the training course prices really low. More people benefit, more people fulfil their dream of writing a book. The same for readers - without the need to print and distribute hard copies means we can keep the prices of the ebooks down, and more readers can enjoy them.
This is such a very, very important time for us as writers and readers, and I absolutely love it. Love it, love it, love it. When new storymakers can be created and then can reach storytakers in time-frames that would have been beyond even H.G. Wells … well, that’s rather special. Let’s make the most of it.
… which can only mean one thing: I’m not writing enough.
Not that I wear my fingers down to stumps when I’m typing or anything, although I do aim for 5000 words or two chapters a day when I’m in the swing of it, and that does create a bit of friction.
No; neat, writer-worthy short fingernails are the result of a direct attack with the kitchen scissors. I like to feel the keyboard under my fingertips, to smack the poor computer with such emphasis that several letters disappear completely, and when my nails get too long they force me to flatten out my fingers so I can’t use the tips.
So off I go to the kitchen (because it’s closer and definitely contains scissors, while the bathroom/bedroom may or may not contain scissors and will be more likely to distract me with the strange allure of a forgotten lip-gloss, or a manicure set stuffed with utensils that I have no idea what to do with. A tiny fork; what is that about? Am I meant to prong my finger and hold it down while I rip off my cuticles? I really don’t know).
I am never distracted by kitchen utensils as I cannot cook, in much the same way that I never look at a garden tool and think – ooo, must do some raking. Although I did once buy a potato ricer because Nigella suggested it. It’s great, actually, but I’m not that keen on potatoes, particularly mashed ones, so why that seemed like a must-have purchase I’m not quite sure.
Anyway, I grab the kitchen scissors and then I chop. Three snips per fingers – across, side, side. Then I’m ready for work again. I might file the edges off at some later date if they annoy me too much, but mostly I just grind them into submission on the laptop. Between the keys lies the graveyard of my hang-nails. Occasionally I see a little ghost fingernail, wispy, soft and pliable as a new-born’s baby nails, rising up past the screen and shouting ‘Curse you, Jill Marshall – why aren’t you a normal woman who MANICURES’ in a scratchy voice like Marley’s ghost …
I’m sure we all have these signs that we’re procrastinating and strange little rituals to show that we’re now getting on with it. I’m going to invent some new ones to carry out at my office door so that I leave the rest of the world behind and enter Writing Land. Maybe hang fur coats in the doorway and push through them to a snowy landscape. We don’t get a lot of snow in Auckland, to be honest, but I’m sure cotton wool would do.
Anyway, the long and short of the fingernails is really just my way of recognising that I have been busy on so many other things – organising Write Good Stuff courses both online and off, starting up Pear Jam Books and publishing 14 titles in a little over half a year – that I haven’t done any writing myself. Just this tiny foray into blog-writing is as much as I’ve written in about a year.
But Matilda Peppercorn is calling to me (like this: ‘Hellooooo, Jill. It’s me, Matilda Peppercorn. Are you going to get on with my second book? Only I would like to be able to try some other feline states and work out just what the gadzooks is going on with those weirdy women and my BFF, Mattan Lundquist). And then there are those other characters who have been niggling away at me for quite a few months. The urge is getting stronger. Write. Must write …
Now where did I put those garden shears?