Festival chat on 3RRR
In preparation for the Emerging Writers Festival, Melbourne radio 3RRR will host a discussion among festival people (including me) on their retro-titled show Max Headroom.
For people a long way from the Paris End of Collins Street, you’ll be able to stream the show directly from the 3RRR web site.
The show will broadcast on Thursday 8th May at 7:00PM.
Read MoreHelp with the synopsis
Who better to provide help with writing a synopsis than a bloke who, despite his widely accepted genius, has still been dead for 53 years?
Twenty to ten
The title of this post is not just a time, it’s also a job. Twenty entries make up the long list in the Emerging Writers Festival Reading Room Competition. I have copies of each and my job is to take those twenty and reduce them to ten. In the best reality TV style, it’s time to cut the fat.
The job of a competition judge is a peculiar one, especially when you’re assessing completely different styles and forms as in this comp.
I’ve judged competitions before, most notably one of those 100 words competitions where I was one judge of about six or seven. The job there was to bring a shortlist to the judging meeting and start arguing. I wasn’t quite prepared for the depth of conviction everyone had for their selections and how hard each would go in to bat for their picks. I had to attempt to convince the others to agree with my choice. I don’t remember who won, but I think my pick scored runner up.
The Reading Room is a little different. I still don’t have the final say, but, being half way up the East Coast of the country from the action, I won’t be entering lock down with the other judges. In fact, I’m not even sure who else is judging. That’s electronic communication for you.
I’m already beginning to lean towards a couple of pieces, but I’m taking my time with this. I mean, how exactly do you equitably compare short stories with poems with visual art? Maybe I should go with Oscar® type categories: Best use of white space, Best exclamation in a single word sentence, etc.
Read MoreOn titles and originality
When I first started blogging the creation of this novel, I plucked a name out of thin air to describe it: The End Credits. I have no idea where it came from or why I thought it would apply to the story.
It didn’t last long and I immediately began casting around for a more appropriate title for the piece.
I’m hopeless at titles. This novel is my third book length manuscript. The title for each of my previous pieces I can attribute to either friends or family. My first novel, Here Today had a working title Happiness. I don’t know what you think, but Here Today does the business in a way Happiness never could.
And so the tradition continues. When the protagonist of the current novel began composing a song, I thought I might as well make it a real piece of music. I chose a song I wrote with a mate of mine back in my band days called Crooked Lines. The song itself is delicate and acoustic with some cool vocal flourishes that sadly the text in the novel will never quite live up to. Anyway, it seemed like the kind of song my character would write and the lyrics fit the story reasonably well. Well enough, in fact that I thought Crooked Lines seemed like a perfectly good title for the whole novel.
And here’s the rub. The part of the song I wrote was actually the music, my friend wrote the lyrics (although I have the vague recollection that the suggestion of “crooked lines” as the title was mine). And we didn’t know at the time that the Go-Betweens wrote a song by the same title. Now that I do know, I don’t really care. The title stays, at least for the song.
That’s the other thing. At some point a few weeks ago, I decided that identical titles for both novel and song might cause confusion all round. I thought the novel should take a bigger chunk of the song’s lyrics for its title to distinguish it, even if just a little, from the song.
Plus I’ve never really done long titles before, so there’s a novelty factor.
Anyway the title now is None Of The Other Flies Follow My Crooked Lines. And, of course, by taking a larger chunk of the song lyrics, I have absolutely held with the tradition that my titles come from other people.
At least the title of this blog is my own. That must count for something.
Read MoreThe Gladiatorial Synopsis
Writing a novel is not easy, anyone will tell you that for free. But what those same people might not know is that, compared to the synopsis, a novel is a breeze.
This is my second crack at a synopsis and this one is even harder than the first. Not only do I know the story better, but for reasons I’m not at liberty to indulge, this new one is also shorter, around a hundred words.
In case you didn’t already know, after you’ve written a story that takes 70,000 words to tell, cramming the whole thing into something that fits onto a postcard is not an easy task.
So, in order to get everything ordered and sensible, one is inevitably forced into an awkward adjective dance with long and breathless sentences, desperate to squeeze every last drop out of the letters before flopping back on the couch, exhausted.
Well, that’s my experience of it anyway.
And it’s still not finished.
Read MoreThe Books
