~ IWSG: FANTASY BETA READER ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. Every month, the organisers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!!

September 2 question – If you could choose one author, living or dead, to be your beta partner?

I know immediately. It would have to be Tove Jansson, and anyone who has read this blog more than a few times will already know I’m a fan. I’m such a big fan of Tove that I would consider it the coup of a lifetime to have her as my beta partner, and I would probably take a week to recover from the news. Tove Jansson was a Swedish writer, artist, illustrator and comic book author (9 August 1914–27 June 2001). I like that she was multi-talented. An acclaimed artist, she wrote novels and short stories for adults, and achieved fame with her Moomin series of children’s books, which are my favourite books of all. She started writing for children in 1945 with The Moomins and the Great Flood, then Comet in Moominland followed by the rest of the books in the series. The books were such a success they awarded her the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966.

As a child, I started reading the Moomin series by stealing the treasured volumes off my sisters’ bookshelf and sliding them back when they weren’t looking. When I ran out of Moomin books to read at home, I looked for them at the school library and avidly consumed the entire series. I loved them. They were the one series of books I re-read many times. As a child, Tove Jansson enthralled me with these creatures that were so adorable and real I wanted to befriend them and take them home. Tove has been one of the greatest influences on me as a writer. I seek in my stories to emulate the experience of joy she brought me as a child reader. I aim to deliver the escape, the utter “other-ness” which has the power to transport the child reader to other realms where anything is possible and makes them believe in the possibilities of life. I seek to write fiction that never fails to amaze, like that of Tove Jansson.

I’m on an eternal quest after the holy grail of Moomin level transformative fiction.

Will I ever get there? That’s part of the excitement in my life is to strive after that perfection.

With this series as a north star, I have always written fantasy fiction for children. The stories I write may have changed since I was seventeen, but I still write anthropomorphic characters in fantasy lands. It is pure escapism. I have yet to emulate Tove’s delightful lightness of touch, though. As a child reader, I loved the humour, the quirky light-heartedness that ran through all her stories like a thread of gold. I haven’t achieved that level of humour in my fiction yet, but I still seek to walk in her footsteps.

I like to think if Tove was my beta partner, that she would give feedback based on things other than a healthy dose of reality. She would not focus on logic or common sense. Tove would focus on what’s important. Does the world engage and draw the reader in and entertain with mystery, imagination and derring-do? Are the characters alive, complex and compelling? Is the story fun, interesting, and dynamic?

Tove would have an instinct for if it worked. She’d speak about things that are real to me as a writer.

I think Tove and I would be friends. She lived an idyllic life as an artist and author. In 1956, Tove met her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, and they had a house on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. They spent their summers on the island and Tove wrote her stories in the wild, uninhabited countryside. That idea struck me from the first time I heard it and I thought, how wonderful! What I wouldn’t give to have my own tiny island and be able to write in blissful wilderness and solitude. Maybe if Tove Jansson was my beta reader, she’d invited me to their island and we would all paint and write to our hearts’ content. Bliss!

What about you? Who would you be your beta reader?

Keep Writing!

Yvette Carol

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This was frustrating, but one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. ~ Anne Lamott

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~ THE LAST BOOK ~

Last year, I finished one round of editing my book, The Last Tree, with the help of my critique group, the Gang of Four. This year, I am working with the same group on the final edit of the material.

As the Gang of Four has kindly agreed to critique four chapters a week, I will hopefully be able to achieve my goal of completing the polishing process by the middle of the year.

The goal at this stage is to self publish The Last Tree, third book in The Chronicles of Aden Weaver in spring.

However, due to finances going in other directions, this year (namely, painting the house and things for the kids), I won’t be able to throw money at my product, this time. So, instead of lavishing $5000 upon my creation, I will be tapping the same resources my nephew uses to publish his books at University, and I will put The Last Tree out “on the cheap.” Most people buy e-books anyway, so as long as the formatting and layout is professional, it’ll be fine.

I feel ready to finish writing this series, now. I began this epic adventure, writing rough draft in 2005, and I’ve loved every minute. Writing has given me a much needed escape from the humdrum of my life and duties as single parent to two young boys. Now, fourteen years later, the kids are teenagers, and The Chronicles of Aden Weaver are nearing completion. I want to wrap the series up. It’s time to move onto fresh pastures and see what wants to be written.

People often ask me, “What are you going to write next?” “What’s the next project?” Truthfully, I don’t know. I’m neither a plotter nor a planner. I feel I’m not the one in charge of the creative inspirational thought. I’m one of those pantser types, who sits on the edge of their chair hoping the muse will strike. I pace the house quite a lot in between bouts of “corpse pose” (yoga pose that requires lying flat and peaceful) on the floor. I do relaxation methods to unhinge myself enough from the rush of daily life, so that I can be receptive to the inspired thoughts. I never know ‘what’s next’ until I get there.

For now, I’m driven to round off this trilogy to the best of my ability and put a suitably satisfying conclusion to my debut as a published author.

I’m glad I bit the bullet and decided to go Indie. However, it is challenging. I’ve found it takes a lot of courage it takes to self publish. The self doubt I have experienced since publishing my books has been enormous to the point of being overwhelming at times.

People already can buy and read my stories. I’m exposed. I’m out there on the page. And, I have to learn to be okay with that.

I guess this is all part of the process of being a published author – learning to present your work and then, more importantly, to stand by it.

The next task is to put pen to paper (fingers to keys) and start a new story.

At present, I’m approaching the halfway mark editing The Last Tree. The inner writing voices that had been nagging me about structure and plot have gone silent. I feel the story is cohesive now, and all the story threads have been tied off, the questions have been answered. If we keep going at this rate, we’ll conclude the editing stage in late April.

After that, the hard graft of the self publishing mill – the slog that stands between the polished manuscript and the novel – shall begin in earnest.

The jobs for an Indie seem deceptively simple: proofreading, copyediting, layout, book design, cover, blurbs, promos and accompanying launch material. ‘It’ll only take a few weeks,’ I used to naively think.

But no, it takes months of sustained effort. I’ve been there twice before, and at this stage, I’m under no illusions about the labour that lies ahead.

Similarly, I also know that it can be done. The Herculean tasks can be fulfilled and in the end we get to do a victory dance.

The triumph one feels on the day of the book launch is euphoric.

So that’s the carrot I dangle at the end of the pole before me as I start the march into the final stretch: I tell myself, you can do it, just keep going. Wish me luck!

 

Talk to you later,

Keep Creating!

Yvette Carol

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Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. ~ Confucius

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~ Novel Editing Joys to Rush Toward ~

I’ve been working on book three, The Last Tree, in my series, The Chronicles of Aden Weaver, for ten months. In the last two weeks, I have made some huge strides forward, which have entailed two joyous editing experiences, one weekend after another. It put me in mind of the fact that a lot of times, we writers hear about mistakes and pitfalls to avoid. I thought I’d like to share two of the delights of editing a novel.

I like to keep record of how many times I’ve done something—it’s the dad in me, what can I say?—so that’s how I know, I was on the twenty-ninth edit of The Last Tree, when I experienced that holy of holies, the ‘change of mind.’

This mythical creature, the change of mind, or change of heart, is what happens when you disengage from your normal way of looking at your writing, and you get what is akin to a third-person perspective. It’s the moment when, if you’re lucky, as the writer you get to see and experience your work as if you were the reader. I had been editing for ten months and had done twenty-nine rounds of the material before I had my lightning strike and was able to read the copy in a whole new way.

Jimmy Braun, photo

That was two weeks ago. I really did feel lucky. I was changing swathes of the story from the second half to the end. I had been steadily bringing the word count down all year, from the overblown 90,845 I started with, to a neater 67,000 words. But that weekend, I was scything out pages of text, losing two whole chapters between Friday and Sunday. Then, at the same time, I couldn’t help myself adding new words, as I saw gaps that needed closing, so the copy ballooned again to over 68,000. And overarching it all was this brilliant feeling of being able to see clearly to the heart of the story, and really see what needed to be changed. The whole weekend was infused with creative imagination.

Then a week ago, when I went back to editing The Last Tree, the experience was completely different.

Last weekend, I’d hoped to taste that particular joy again, that elusive ethereal moment of magic. Every writer or artist knows this; it’s been called being touched by ‘the muse.’ There is an element to it of ‘otherness,’ when you’re immersed in your craft, of these magic moments, of being suspended from earth, of being delivered the ideas and words, of being able to weave worlds.

But, last weekend it wasn’t to be. I could feel the difference as soon as I started working. This wasn’t about inspiration it was about the building blocks. The second half of The Last Tree had bothered me all year, yet, I just couldn’t seem to get my head around it. I knew something needed fixing. I had tried a few solutions: chopping the prose up a few times, rearranging the order, I took out scenes and added new ones, however a niggling feeling – “the little writer’s voice” – kept nagging me it still wasn’t right.

Last weekend, it was about getting the structure of these final scenes figured out, nailing down the nuts and bolts of the climactic scenes and the resolution of all the story threads. On the Friday night, I sat with a list of the marks I needed to hit, with regards structure, on one side of my computer, and a list of the general editing changes I needed to make, on the other side of my computer.

By Sunday night, I had re-engineered the final acts of the story. I had welded and hammered them into a new shape. I had rebuilt it better than before. It was a thing of beauty. And, I knew that it was right this time, because of how I felt in my gut and the fact that the little writer’s voice had been silenced.

Only in the nick of time too, as my critique group, The Gang of Four, were nipping at my heels. The girls and I have been swapping chapters since February. Little did they know, I’d been sweating it all year because I knew the end scenes weren’t finalised. So I’m doubly glad to have had a couple of weekends like these, where the flow picked me up and carried me to the finish.

Yeeha! The old adage of B.I.C (Butt In Chair) really works.

Have you had any joyous writing experiences you want to share?

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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Haruki Murakami says, ‘The good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake.’

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~ IWSG: HOW DO YOU KEEP WRITING? ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. I encourage everyone to visit at least a dozen new blogs and leave a comment. Your words might be the encouragement someone needs.

Every month, the organisers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!!

OPTIONAL IWSG Day Question: When your writing life is a bit cloudy or filled with rain, what do you do to dig down and keep on writing?

As a matter of fact my life has been cloudy lately and there have been a few deluges as my beloved father died in February, following my mother, who had died two years before. I would say that the process of writing itself really helped me come to terms with things.

I’ve always found it cathartic to write.

I learned to read and write at the age of seven. I enjoyed to write stories. As a teenager, I was still writing stories, and I started to keep a personal journal as a way of releasing my fears and worries and doubts. Writing has been an essential lifeline throughout my life. It helps me make sense of things to see the thoughts take form into words.

Writing blog posts about the passing of both my parents was therapeutic and helped ease the pain. I was able to share with people through my blog and my newsletter about what had happened.

Going back to my work-in-progress was a bit trickier. At times of great emotion, I tend to put down my book and walk away for a while, sometimes for long periods.

Top Tip: Set a time limit.

I’ve learned that it works when I say to myself, you can grieve, be with family, however you have to be back at work by ‘such-and-such’ date.

Top Tip: Stick to your deadline.

It’s a bit of structure imposed upon the chaos. Once, there’s a set deadline to return to my writing desk, I try to stick to it.

Top Tip: to get writing again, sit down at my computer, open the document and start.

Every time, before I know it, the magic starts to take over.

Right away, there is engagement with the work.

It’s like feeling you’re exactly where you should be and there’s nothing you’d rather be doing.

Once back in the zone, writing, editing, working on my WIP, I feel my balance return and sense of equilibrium become restored.

As the poet, Sage Cohen, said so eloquently, ‘for me, writing has always been alchemy: from resistance to acceptance, from pain to beauty.’ Yes.

The world in creation begins to shine. The right words come. But what it takes is showing up.

The really successful authors are those who treat it like a job. They stick their butts in their office chairs and write from nine to five.

In reality, they’ll put in far more hours than a forty hour week. It’s a time intensive profession. The reward always comes in the fiction itself. We do the work. We show up.

Then, we open ourselves to ‘being alone with the gods’ as Charles Bukowski put it and that’s where the transcendent joy takes over. When we’re lucky, sometimes we catch the lightning and write it down perfectly. Or as Cohen said, ‘transcend the events of our lives, finding a resonance of grace simply by writing something just right.’

Before you know it, skies are blue and the sun is shining again, and you’re scampering around capturing words like butterflies.

For the magic to happen though, the only way is to keep on writing, to put B.I.C butt in chair.

What’s that old saying, the harder I work, the luckier I get? That sure is true for me.

How about you. What keeps you writing?

Keep Writing!

Yvette K. Carol

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There is no other feeling like that, you will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire. ~ Charles Bukowski

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~ IWSG: NERDS RULE! ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. I encourage everyone to visit at least a dozen new blogs and leave a comment. Your words might be the encouragement someone needs.

Every month, the organisers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!!

OPTIONAL IWSG Day Question: What do you love about the genre you write in most often?

Writing fantasy for children is a not exactly a hot genre. It’s difficult to do well, and as Terry Pratchett once said, there’s always been this ‘cloud of disapproval around the fantasy genre,’ as if it’s somehow the second cousin of more serious or entertaining popular fiction.

‘But some of the reasons are easy to see. The sheer torrent of the stuff for one thing. The telling and retelling. All those new worlds and eternal heroes.’ Yeah, I get it, too. Even for me, fantasy can get annoying, and yet, I can’t deny the draw. It’s what I loved to read as a child, and it’s what I love to write now.

Who cares about being cool or trendy?

For most of my thirty-five years writing for children, I’ve been writing “fantasy animal tales’ and they’re even less of a hot topic than pure fantasy. Yet, the roots of fantastic tales about animals, especially talking animals, go back to our very first oral traditions of storytelling, as far back as 600 B.C. and the time of Aesop.

Why does this particular niche appeal to me? Kate de Goldi said once ‘writers always have their story, their palette, driven by something they find interesting that they can’t explain.’

I feel the answers lie in childhood.

I look back at my past, and I think I was a total nerd. Oh, the joy I used to get from reading a new book. To visit the library and get new books for free seemed such a delicious and exciting power to have. What to read? The choices were endless.

As a young child, I recall the impact of unexpected bliss I felt on the day I opened Finn Family Moomintroll, by Tove Jansson, and read ‘Chapter 1. In which Moomintroll, Snufkin and Snif find the Hobgoblin’s hat; how five small clouds unexpectedly appear, and how the Hemulen finds himself a new hobby.’ It was a profound moment.

I was immediately transported somewhere else. I flew away to a far more fascinating place than my powerless world, as a small child growing up in the urban landscape and a working class family.

Pure fantasy seems to deal in the fulfilment of desire, the yearning of the human heart for a kinder world, a better self, a wholer experience, a sense of truly belonging, wrote David Pringle.

Through these fantasies I read: the Moomintroll series, and the Chronicles of Narnia, the ghost stories, myths and legends, I escaped through their portal, to lands far away, where exciting magical things happened that matched the limitlessness of my imagination.

These books made my childhood more wonderful and alive.

When I first approached writing fiction for children, it was natural to reach for the subject matter which intrigued me as a young person, the genre of animal fantasy. That’s where the heart lay. It was as simple as that.

I think it was Thoreau who coined the famous advice for writers ‘know your own bone.’

It was writer/teacher, Kate de Goldi, who said, ‘Your idiosyncratic fascination is why you were made and set here.’

In other words, in order to be true to who we are as writers, we have to find the courage to follow what truly moves us, to write what our hearts sing to read and what lights us up inside. That takes undeniable courage, to dig down to the core and come up with one’s raw innermost truths, and then own them.

I used to be ashamed of my genre. I did a lot of writing but not a lot of submitting. When I did submit, I got responses like, “no one’s buying fantasy,” or “no one’s interested in reading about talking animals.” So, I submitted less often until I stopped altogether.

That’s where self publishing is king for authors like me, who write in less than popular genres. We don’t need a nod from the gatekeepers anymore to see our books in print. We nerds can say, “I’ll publish fantasy animal tales if I want to.” And, “Nerds rule!”

What do you love about the genre you write in?

Talk to you later…

Keep Writing!

Yvette K. Carol

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When she is most lucky, the poet sees things as if for the first time, in their original radiance or darkness: a child does this too, for he has no choice. Edwin Muir

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~ Remembering the Reader ~

Any book that helps a child to form the habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him. ~ Maya Angelou

When I was small, our father used to read us a bedtime story every night. My brother and I would lie in our beds after all the bedtime rituals had been done. We’d yell, “Ready!” and dad would come down to sit in our room and read us the next precious pages in whatever book we were reading. He read us the classics, Wind in the Willows, The Water Babies, The Jungle Book, Treasure Island, and Robinson Crusoe. We grew up with a love for stories.

It is as writer, Sage Cohen said, that we ‘come into this world hard-wired for the repetition of sound, rhythm and pattern in language. Before we can even speak, we delight in recognizing our own experience and learning about those unlike ours through the stories we are told.’ There is a primordial response of satisfaction to hear a good story, and for the writer it is the same joy to write one.

When you start out as a book lover who turns into a children’s writer you are deeply connected to the meaning and purpose of fiction. Michael Morpurgo said, ‘It’s not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.’ We write because that love still lives and resonates inside us. 

We can still remember the special hushed feeling, like we had entered a cathedral, which we had as a young person every time we opened a book and stepped inside another world. We can still remember some of the tales and how we felt.

As author, Kate de Goldi once said, ‘We still remember readings that acted like transformations’.

I took a couple of writing for children courses with Kate de Goldi. I was struck when she said that she ‘never writes about or for children. I write for the once and always child in myself.’

I related to that idea and I let rip, writing what the wild little girl inside wanted to say.

The danger for me, as an introvert, is that I can go far into my own world and lose contact with people. It’s easy to become distanced from the reading audience.

Yesterday, I was pried out of my bunker by well-meaning friends and forced to go to a Christmas party. I trooped along with an eye on the clock. Yet, the most extraordinary thing happened. I had the experience of meeting my first “fan.” Blake is the 8-year-old grandson of a friend. He happens to be a voracious reader, bless his soul, who ‘devours books’ as his grandmother put it.

Blake had read my first book, The Or’in of Tane Mahuta, and had been waiting for the sequel. When I gave him The Sasori Empire, he carried it with both hands, staring all the while at the cover. He walked straight to a chair, sat down and started reading. When I left the party two hours later, Blake was still reading.

I could have wept. This experience was revelatory for me. I saw with my own eyes, a child who loves to read, diving headfirst into my world. A child who was engrossed in my story.

This simple situation took me out of my “shoes” as the author and put me into the shoes of the “reader.” I felt the responsibility to do justice to the world I’ve created, and to honour the needs of the reader, to deliver the best story I can.

It had the singular effect of realigning me with my writer’s oath. I was reminded that once one has taken the reader on a journey, the responsible author ushers them safely home to a satisfactory conclusion. I recalled the pinkie swear to resolve all the questions and storylines raised.

Seeing that precious beautiful young reader deep into his book, (my book!), reminded me that my pen is a direct conduit to young readers’ hearts and minds. I have a duty to him and to all young readers to do the best I can. These years of reading literature will be some of the best and most exhilarating of their lives. I have to raise my game to be worthy of the challenge.

What a gift. And, just in time for Christmas.

That’s the New Year’s resolution sorted! Have you ever had a situation which made you remember your reader?

Talk to you later.

Happy Holidays!

Yvette K. Carol

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‘The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.’ ~ E.B.White

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The Hideous Experience of Talking About Your Book

“I’m late. Again. Yesterday, it was time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. I encourage everyone to visit at least a dozen new blogs and leave a comment. Your words might be the encouragement someone needs.

Can there be any more hideous experience than talking about your own book in conversation?

I should know by now, not to get drawn in by that most delicious and tempting of all questions.

Yet, my brother, Al, asked me, ‘how’s your book going?’ and I succumbed.

I told my brother, ‘The Sasori Empire’ was based on mythology, with alternate versions of Maori legends and Japanese mythology.

To me, the world I’ve created through the Chronicles of Aden Weaver series is perfectly logical.

Yet, it’s only when I try to describe the plot to other people that I seem to come unstuck.

I heard myself telling my brother, Al, in avid detail, as you do when you’re a writer, all about ‘The Sasori Empire.’ I said, it’s set on the planet Chiron (an actual recently discovered planet in our solar system). The setting though is an alter-earth. As other authors have done, I swapped out the first letters of countries to make them recognizable and yet also, ‘somewhere else.’

Al was blinking at me owlishly.

Yet, we writers, when asked about our babies, cannot stop talking even when our listener’s eyes have glazed over.

I told Al that book two mostly moves between the Lost Island, set off-shore from the west coast of an alternate New Zealand, and the Land of Fire and Ice which is set in an alternate imagining of Japan.

Al may have started snoring at this point.

About mythology, the famous writer, Joseph Campbell said, ‘The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation—initiation—return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth.’

I explained to my brother, that in these books I explore the traditional heroic arc, through the medium of fantasy and insect shape-shifters. Only in neither book two, nor its companion, book two: part two, do the hero or his heroic band get to “return.”

That was it. My brother wasn’t even looking in my direction anymore. I knew we’d officially reached his limit. At that point, I petered out.

I read somewhere recently, if we feel the urge to share what our book’s about with others, we should lock the urge up and throw away the key.

Sharing only seems to water the impact down. Yes, I know we have to be able to précis the book to compose the synopsis, blurb, and elevator pitch, all the way down to the logline. But that’s different, that’s the business side. Even writing a speech about your book is acceptable. But talking about the story with people in regular old conversation, I find, goes nowhere fast. It never works.

Why is that?

The fact is, no one, not even one’s own sibling, wants to hear an author “selling their own book.” Especially at length!

How do I stop myself from “sharing” again? Have you ever had a hideous experience of talking about your own book?

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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Lord, make my words sweet and reasonable; some day I may have to eat them.~ Paddy Ashdown

‘The word ‘Legend’ comes from Latin legenda, ‘things to be read’. Originally, legends were the hand-written biographies of saints and martyrs, which were read daily, at MATINS, and after dinner at monastic refectories. In these accounts, such a love for exaggeration, the fantastic and wonderful predominated that the word, legend, came to signify a traditional story, a fable, or myth.’ ~ Brewers Dictionary of Phrase & Fable

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Waiting Gracefully?

I’m a day late for posting with my fellow IWSG’ers, so please accept my apologies!

Wednesday (*cough, Thursday) is time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. I encourage everyone to visit at least a dozen new blogs and leave a comment. Your words might be the encouragement someone needs.

 

I haven’t been as uncomfortable as this in a long time. A friend who also happens to be one of the modern authors I most admire, will soon be reading my debut novel. I posted him a copy three days ago.

Now, the wait….

I’m suddenly very aware that it’s one thing to write a novel in the solitude of your room. It’s another to share it with your first critique partner or beta reader or editor. And then it’s a giant bound into a glaring stratosphere, to show your work to one of your writing heroes. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m so uncomfortable it’s a nightmare.

*mental note: this must be what ants-in-the-pants feel like.

The writer I’m talking about is PJ Reece, filmmaker, traveller and author of the excellent Story Structure to Die For, and Story Structure Expedition among many others.

I first met PJ online, about three or four years ago, when he commented on a post published over on the excellent blog, The Write Practice.

Later on, PJ wrote a guest post for The Write Practice, on his writing theory of ‘2-Stories separated by a Story Heart.’

He explores the nature of writing fiction in a way that truly reflects the essence of why we’re here on this planet, and why we love fiction, on his blog, The Meaning of Life. PJ lights the way for other writers by his sheer willingness to dive deep into the real essence of himself. Then, he articulates how to bring reality into our fiction, and the transformations needed of our characters, relating the experience like a poet.

I think to do what he does, one has to have a very important trait and it’s a trait I seek to cultivate in myself. Pluck!

You see, last year, I self-published my debut novel. After weeks of procrastinating, I mustered up enough courage to ask PJ Reece to read it. However, I wasn’t sure if he would read ‘tween reading level.

PJ replied, ‘A good story is a good story no matter what the reading level.’

I was encouraged. However, truth be told, I chickened out and never sent it to him. Then he remembered a couple of weeks ago, and well, long story short, a copy of my debut novel, ‘The Or’in of Tane Mahuta,’ is en route to Canada as we speak.

I see a lot of pluck in all of PJ Reece’s work which is why I admire it so much. Now, I’m waiting for him to read my (first ever) novel, and I think ‘all my pluck has got up and went,’ as my father would say.

With 35 years of writing fiction under my belt so far, I’m no stranger to the process of submitting stories. I’ve sent my work out more times than I can remember. Yet, none of those times have felt like this feeling of squirming-on-the-hook.

Will PJ read the whole book, I wonder, or horror of horrors, will he put the book down and walk away?

Some submissions really feel like putting your heart on the line, don’t they? How do you stay on an even keel? Any suggestions for how to handle stress are welcome.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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At present, IWSG are taking part in the ‘A to Z Challenge.’ Due to my time constraints, unfortunately,  I could not participate.

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Kate de Goldi – ‘I don’t care about the classifications of what constitutes children’s literature. I want to write articulate, textural, demanding,’ she said. ‘I think current stories are lacking in complex structure and nuance. Kids need more than a limited diction, and a palette of Smarties.’

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It’s a long, long road to a book…

‘This is the best time in history to be a writer. Today, you can bypass the gatekeepers.’ So said the author, Andy Weir.

 

 

It is also said, there will be more books published in the next five years than have been published since the invention of the printing press.

 

“Going Indie” means everyone can publish their own work, which is wonderful news. This effectively means that the author takes on the lion’s share of the burden.

 

Personally? Long story short: In September, I self-pubbed my first book*, then I found mistakes, recalled the book, and have been editing for the last 3 months.

 

 

My eldest son asked me the other night, Why are there so many mistakes?

 

A perfectly presented and edited book is not a freak of nature, my son. They do not just happen by themselves, you know.

 

Once upon a time, the large traditional publishing houses were the so-called “gatekeepers.” These big publishers (and loads of smaller ones) employed all the experts in the industry to curate and produce their perfectly-turned out books. Many different professionals had input on guiding every author’s work into an error-free work of art.

 

 

As opposed to the past, these days, self-publishing is becoming more accepted and is becoming a phenomenon. Some Indies have done very well at it and made loads of money. Some have ended up being signed to traditional publishing companies. For every Indie author who wins, however, a gazillion fall by the wayside with their hard-won novels fading into obscurity.

 

I’ve blogged before about how I held on stubbornly to my dream of being picked up by a traditional publisher. However, even the rock of Gibraltar is wearing away with the years, I’m sure, and the attrition of the fact that everyone’s doing it had a pumice-type of effect, because last year, for the first time, I began to consider publishing my own book.

 

 

I was busy editing the first book in my Fantasy Tween Fiction series, The Chronicles of Aden Weaver, called ‘The Or’in of Tane Mahuta,’ for the umpteenth time, through the critique group process.

 

When I felt it was ready, instead of submitting the manuscript to publishers, I hired an American professional to edit it for me. In my innocence, I imagined that once I put in the editor’s changes, I would be ready to upload and to go to print.

 

Yet, once I did get to that stage, author friends told me, no, no, no, you need to get as many people to read it as possible.

 

 

Therefore, I asked friends who are well-published authors to proof-read it for me. I made more changes to the copy following the editing suggestions. I then had a very kind friend, who has published more than thirty books with a NZ publisher, give the book one last edit, just to catch the last two or three mistakes. Then, I read it myself one last time.

 

Finally, after six months effort, I handed over the manuscript to a local typesetter and printing house, BookPrint.

 

 

The same day I launched the book, it came to my attention that there were still some errors in the book. Despite the carefully editing and checking, a few things had been missed. As my author friend said, ‘Your name is going to be on that book forever, how do you feel about that?’

 

I recalled the book.

 

I proof-read another three times, picking up a surprising number of mistakes.

 

The time had come, I realized, when I needed to hire a second professional proof-reader. This girl did a stellar job, finding “70 inconsistencies,” and she delivered the edits within the time she’d predicted.

 

I read it through and edited it another two times after that.

 

 

To be absolutely certain, I asked the proofreader to read it through again for me. She did so and found yet more errors. Sigh.

 

*Indies who are reading this, wait, don’t be discouraged. Be informed. Go into this battle arena clear-eyed, focused and aware of your tactics.

 

 

Here’s how you can benefit from my experience. When you’re ready to self publish your book:

 

• Hire professionals, one after the other, to catch what the other has missed.
• Hire people who come well recommended to you.
• Double- check and check your work again!
• Be prepared for everything to take longer than you expect. I think it’s more realistic when planning a self-published novel to do it this way: set a launch date for your book, take that length of time and double it. That’s your realistic projected date of publication.

 

 

‘This is the best time in history to be a writer.’ Yes, agreed. We are lucky we can ‘bypass the gatekeepers.’

 

Is it hard? Yes.

 

Yet, you gain the reward, the satisfaction at the end. When you publish your own as-near-perfect-as-you-can-get-it novel, as I did yesterday, the sheer sense of absolute triumph is immense. I felt as mighty as a victorious Viking.

And just in time for Christmas. Squeee!!!

What are you doing as an Indie? Do you have any tips to suggest?

 

Keep Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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Raise your sail one foot and you get ten feet of wind. – Chinese Proverb

*my recently self-published debut novel, ‘The Or’in of Tane Mahuta.’

A Dream Come True…

The launch of my first book at the weekend was a tremendous success. The good vibes and happy feelings continue to ripple outward. This post is for all those who were unable to attend the event in person. Even my close-knit family and best friends were unaware of the ‘whole story’ of my journey so far as a writer. This address was my chance to step out of the shadows of my writer’s cave, and share what it’s taken for me to get this book ready for the world….

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“A dream”

A long time ago, I had a dream of being a writer and publishing a book.

When you are living the creative life, you carry this little torch inside, of hope that your work will reach the public one day and make a difference. You’ll get to stand up and be counted.

I set a glass ceiling for myself, when I wrote my first novel at the age of 17 that I would get a book deal.

At the age of twenty, I took a writing course. I remember the tutor, Maria, said to me, “Put down your pen, and stop writing. You’re too young. Go out and live your life, then you can write about it.”

I did my best. I raised my son. I studied fashion design and photography, I managed a bar in town and a drycleaners, among other things. Yet, in my spare time, I was always writing. Sorry, Maria, but I never gave up.

From the time I moved home in my late twenties to live with my parents and work on my fiction, to the time I spent writing on the side-line while raising my children, to writing as an escape from the gruelling anxiety over my boys’ health troubles – steadily working on the craft has ever formed the backdrop of my life. Writing and submitting stories and being rejected a hundred times. Year-after-year, I persevered.

Initially, I wrote chapter books for early readers. Then I moved on to writing and illustrating my own picture books. I have a number of beautifully-painted manuscripts stacked in boxes underneath my desk from those days.

That book deal, you see, was proving elusive.

In 2005, I attended a children’s writing workshop with Kate de Goldi. Kate challenged me to decide what I was, an illustrator or a writer. She wanted me to choose a path.

I chose writing. I stopped illustrating then, not out of slavish abeyance but because I really felt in my bones she was right. And looking back, I realise I needed to do just that. It’s a powerful thing to pinpoint ones focus.

In that workshop of 2005, Kate asked us to write non-stop for a regular period each day. To my surprise, I found I was writing a novel for 9-13 year olds. I didn’t have to worry about continuity. Every time I picked up my pen, the story would carry on from where it left off. The story flowed, and the characters that came out in this fully-formed world were the same insects who had peopled my picture books, but they were slightly older.

I wrote every night after the kids were in bed, from then on, and for the next few years. I ended up with a vast epic, The Chronicles of Aden Weaver, which I chopped into three. ‘The Or’in of Tane Mahuta’ is the first book in that trilogy.

Then, I ventured into the world of social media. I started my online group, “Writing for Children,” and my American friends encouraged to set up a website, to start my own blog and to join with writing partners and online critique groups.

Because the development of this book was done through critique and endless rounds of edits with my American friends, the terms, the spelling, everything gradually evolved, and what started out as a fantasy adventure firmly rooted in an alternate NZ became a story more and more suited for the American market, making this story a rare hybrid.

When I finished work the first time on this book, I sent it to acclaimed kiwi author, Fleur Beale, for her assessment. She said, ‘Excellent story, but lose the insects!’

I couldn’t lose the insects because it was the fact that The Chronicles of Aden Weaver was set in this microscopic world that made it so unique and interesting. However I came up with a new concept – of making the characters shape-shifters – able to move between human and insect form.

Eighteen months later, after a major overhaul of the script, I met Frances Plumpton, NZ representative of The Society of Children’s Writers and Book Illustrators. I gave the Tane Mahuta novel to her to assess. I’ll never forget what she said. “Every writer has that book in their bottom drawer that should never see the light of day. This is that book.”

My next writing partner was an author and musician. He said, my story “went clunk” and “sounded like the equivalent of riding over cobblestones on a horse.” His advice was scrap the whole thing and start again. And so it went on. The knocks in this business are legendary.

In fact, there’s a wonderful site, called literary rejections dot com where I discovered I was not alone. To name a few, Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, was told “Stick to teaching.” Richard Bach, author of Jonathon Livingston Seagull was told, “Nobody will want to read a book about a seagull.” L. Frank Baum was told, The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, was “Too radical of a departure from traditional juvenile literature.”

Thankfully those authors didn’t listen to the naysayers! And neither did I….

Though a couple of years ago, I went through yet another crushing defeat that did stop me in my tracks for a minute. I had submitted this book to an international contest for the prize of publication. I didn’t hear back from them. Then, on their website, the organizers said, those who don’t hear back are the finalists. Whoopee! This was cause for great jubilation! Until upon further enquiry, I discovered that not only had I not made it to the finals, but the organisers had not received the manuscript at all, due to my fatal error in calculating the time difference between countries.

In my mind, I had thought I was this close to breaking through that glass ceiling. Instead I was back at square one. AGAIN. Devastated, I fell into a black hole that lasted for seven days.

At the end of that week, I got a phone-call. I heard my mother’s voice. She said, “The darkest hour always comes before the dawn. You may think all is lost right now, but it isn’t. This is just the start of great things opening up for you. You’ll see!”

Ma, I always hoped you’d be here for this, and yet I know you’re here in spirit.

Even though my mother was failing in her later years, she always knew when to ride in on the silver horse!

I have to thank my parents for so much. I know that my journey to publication has been a long and winding road. And yet mum and dad still believed.

When, as a writer you feel everything is taking too long, and the frustration mounts, there’s this expectation of you and yet you’re not delivering, you could literally wallpaper your house with the rejection letters – you actually do need more than financial assistance to keep going sometimes, you need love. My parents gave me both.

Thank you to my father for driving up from Rotorua just to be here today. Thank you to those who have postponed personal milestones to help me celebrate mine. To you I say I am humbly grateful. Thank you to my friends for your patience, for putting up with me when I miss all the get-togethers, or on the rare occasion I do show up, that I’m always the first to leave. Thank you, Simon, for bringing Aden Weaver to life. I really appreciate you all being here to help me mark this moment, this crossing of the threshold. I am sure a great many of you – don’t worry I don’t need a show of hands – had begun to wonder if I’d ever publish anything. You might have been forgiven for wondering if this day would ever come.

The only reason this day is here now is because I stopped waiting to be picked up by a traditional publisher. Along the way, I had realized my glass ceiling was holding me down. So I let it go. I let the dream of a book deal go, but I didn’t let go of the book, nor the insects, nor the vision of how I wanted it to be. The dream is still alive in a new form, and it’s even better, I have total creative control.

One of my writing tutors, Bob Mayer, once said, “Failure is the start point for future success.”

Hugh Howey had ten novels in print before he published “Wool” which became a big hit. The estate of Jack London, the House Of Happy Walls displays some of the 600 rejections he received before selling a single story.

In other words, the only thing that separates the published from the unpublished author is deep determination and a touch of insanity. Lucky for me, I’m endowed with both.

It was Sir Winston Churchill who once said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

By those standards, I’ve been WINNING for the last 33 years!
A long time ago, I had a dream…of being a writer and publishing a book. Today that dream has become a reality! Thank you for being here with me to witness this moment.

Keep Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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Awaken to the brilliance in ordinary moments. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. Be bold , be fierce, be grateful. Be gloriously free. Be You. Go now,and live” Jeanette LeBlanc.