Showing all posts about writing
Burnt Out by Victoria Brookman
21 January 2022
Writing that difficult second novel, it might be what many authors consider to be a good problem. Their debut novel has been published, an epic achievement, and now they have the opportunity to write another book. What aspiring novelist wouldn’t want to be in such a situation?
Cali, an author residing in the NSW Blue Mountains may be such a person, in Burnt Out (published by HarperCollins Publishers, January 2022) the debut novel of Australian author Victoria Brookman. Cali’s struggling to write her second novel, in fact she was meant to have turned in the manuscript long ago. In reality she hasn’t even started work on it. But for the moment that’s the least of her worries.
Her home has been destroyed by a bush fire, likewise her possessions, and to top it off her husband has left her. But Cali sees an opportunity amid the turmoil. Speaking to a television news crew, she tells them her manuscript was also incinerated, and goes onto chide politicians and well-off Australians for their inaction in response to the devastating bush fires. Her words immediately strike a chord nationwide.
After seeing her on-air rant, a billionaire offers her a place to stay in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, so she can “re-write” the novel. But will Cali overcome her second book syndrome, or will she find herself overwhelmed by the lies she keep telling everyone, including herself?
RELATED CONTENT
fiction, TBR list, Victoria Brookman, writing
To write your next novel, you must forget your last one
21 January 2022
Sara Freeman, writing for Granta Magazine, with some sage advice for authors embarking on the writing of their next novel, to write your next novel, you must forget your last one:
There’s a kind of necessary amnesia that sets in after you finish writing a novel. Like childbirth, you must forget; the future requires it of you. If you remembered, really remembered, then surely you wouldn’t do it again. Or perhaps it’s that the experience itself of writing a novel is a kind of sustained forgetting, a controlled fugue.
RELATED CONTENT
Tips for getting published and finding a literary agent
19 January 2022
Sydney based literary agent Jacinta Di Mase talks with Dani Vee and Adrian Beck on the Publishing Insider podcast, and shares tips and advice to prospective authors for finding a literary agent, and getting work published.
RELATED CONTENT
Sydney Muslim Writers’ Festival 2022
14 January 2022
The inaugural Sydney Muslim Writers’ Festival takes place over three days, with an opening night on Thursday 3 February 2022, a festival day on Saturday 12 February, and writing workshops on Sunday 13 February. Follow the Festival’s Instagram page for more information.
RELATED CONTENT
Case Study, by Graeme Macrae Burnet
14 January 2022
If Case Study (published by Text Publishing, 19 October 2021), the fourth novel of Glasgow based Scottish author Graeme Macrae Burnet, were a movie — and who knows, it might yet be — based upon video or film clips, it would be called a found footage story. The found footage technique is commonly seen in horror films, but it be could argued there’s elements of horror in Burnet’s latest work.
The literary equivalent of found footage is epistolary, where a story is told through a series of letters, or other written works, of which Case Study is an example. Martin Grey, who lives in present day Clacton-on-Sea, contacts the author after finding five diaries written by his cousin some fifty years earlier, under the pen name Rebecca Smyth. The journals detail her dealings with Collins Braithwaite, a therapist, who is remembered for his unconventional practise methods.
Rebecca’s sister Veronica, who had been a patient of Braithwaite’s for two years, killed herself, and Rebecca has no doubt the therapist was responsible. After creating a fictitious identity, and new persona for herself, Rebecca likewise becomes a patient of Braithwaite, in order to find out more about him. As the author reads the journals though, he comes to realise the intrinsically straight-laced journal writer was becoming ever more delusional, as she increasingly wrapped herself up in her free-spirited alter-ego.
RELATED CONTENT
fiction, Graeme Macrae Burnet, TBR list, writing
Writing tips for emerging authors from George Saunders
12 January 2022
Words of advice for aspiring writers by American author George Saunders, and winner of the 2017 Booker Prize. This one resonates with me:
Know when you over-revise: those new to writing should overwrite just “to get a familiarity with their particular world. We have to learn our individual symptoms” of over-revision. “For me,” Saunders says, “the symptom is the humour goes out of it.”
In writings of mine there’s always the temptation to go into great detail about settings and environments. It seems to me if I over-revise, or cut out superfluous information, I know I’ve gone too far in doing so if the story loses its soul, or becomes too dry. But Saunders is right, overwriting is a great way to become familiar with the backdrop to the story you’re writing.
RELATED CONTENT
Elizabeth Guy discusses Take Ink & Weep on SBS Russian
10 January 2022
Sydney based Australian writer and literature teacher Elizabeth Guy talks to Irina Burmistrova on the SBS Russian podcast about her novel Take Ink & Weep, a story set in 1915 about four Russian poets who believe their work will make the world a better place.
RELATED CONTENT
Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel
7 January 2022
Where are we in time? Where is the motion of the cosmos taking us? Forwards or backwards? Possibly though, you feel you’re stuck in neutral, moving nowhere, yet keenly aware of each passing minute. The strange times we live in have left many of us displaced and confused.
Sea of Tranquility (published by Pan Macmillan Australia, May 2022), the sixth novel of Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel, may well be a microcosm of our pandemic dominated epoch. Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective living in the twenty-fifth century, is asked to investigate a suspected anomaly in time.
But his search for answers is far from straightforward. The detective finds a young man, Edwin St. Andrew, who claims to be the son of a noble British family, who lived in the early twentieth century. And then there is Olive Llewelyn, an author unable to travel home because of a pandemic, who apparently lives in the twenty-third century.
What brings Edwin and Olive to the present day, and how? But is everything as it really seems to be in this usual world? Are Edwin and Olive who they claim to be, or is something else at play? Might the detective have stumbled upon some sort of switch junction in time, explaining the presence of Edwin and Olive?
RELATED CONTENT
Emily St. John Mandel, fiction, TBR list, writing
Positive representations of disabled people in Australian fiction
7 January 2022
Social Queue by Kay Kerr, and Stars In Their Eyes, a graphic novel by Jessica Walton and Aśka, are among works of fiction by Australian authors featuring central characters with disabilities. In Social Queue, Kerr’s autistic protagonist Zoe navigates the world of dating, while in Stars In Their Eyes, queer disabled teen, Maisie, finds love at a fan convention. These works are welcome: in the past people with disabilities who have been part of a story have often assumed the antagonist’s role.
RELATED CONTENT
Australian literature, writing
Don’t let New Year’s resolutions interfere with your novel
6 January 2022
British cartoonist Tom Gauld’s take on writers and New Year’s resolutions. I might caption the first frame “write a good book”, and then have an editor tell me in the second frame to write a “better” book. Whatever you do, don’t bring the neighbours, or any friends, into the process.
RELATED CONTENT