Showing all posts tagged: writing
Tom Hanks debut novel fanfare the envy of new unknown authors
1 October 2022
American actor Tom Hanks has recently finished writing his debut novel The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece. Unsurprisingly the story is film related. And why not, writing about topics you’re familiar with is a great way to launch your literary career, is it not?
The story centers around the opening of a movie that is a “colossal, star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film” and involves a timeline from the 1940s to the present day. According to the publisher, “Part One of this story takes place in 1947. A troubled soldier, returning from the war, meets his talented five-year-old nephew, leaves an indelible impression, and then disappears for twenty-three years.”
Seems to me like the novel blends a bit of Saving Private Ryan (for the soldier) with some Cloud Atlas (for the time travel), both being movies Hanks starred in.
Undoubtedly his debut novel will do well. Even if it turns out not to be all that good. After all, with the profile Hanks enjoys, what could possibly go wrong, at least in terms of sales? And think about all those A-List reviews the title will garner, giving sales another nudge. This is fanfare other, likely unknown, aspiring authors, would give their right arms to bask in.
But when it comes to profile, either you have it, or you don’t. A stack of debutant authors have had nothing like the prominence Hanks has, but have gone on to be successful writers. But unknown authors looking for some profile, be it by hook or crook, could ironically take a leaf from Hank’s role as Dermot Hoggins, in the aforementioned Cloud Atlas.
Here Hanks portrays the resentful writer of a book called Knuckle Sandwich, which was the subject of a poor review, written by a critic named Felix Finch. So bitter is Hoggins (beware spoilers follow) he throws Finch over the side of a tall building, at a literary event. Finch is killed instantly when he hits the ground.
Sales of Knuckle Sandwich subsequently surge, but by this stage Hoggins is behind bars. In another cruel twist of fate, Hoggins had signed over all royalties from the novel to his publisher, so in the end doesn’t see a penny. Perhaps he hoped to profit from the sales of a follow up title he wrote while incarcerated.
For the rest of us though, I suggest slow and steady, with no one getting hurt, wins the race when it comes to making it as an unknown author.
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books, novels, Tom Hanks, writing
Only in 2114 can books in the Future library be read
30 September 2022
Since 2014, The Future Library, located in the Deichman Library in Oslo, Norway, has been going about assembling a collection of one hundred manuscripts, at the rate of one work per year. When the library reaches capacity, in 2114, the collection will be made available to one thousand people who have purchased certificates allowing them, or a descendent, access to the writings.
The ‘Silent Room’ where the manuscripts are to be kept is built using wood from the original trees felled to make way for the trees planted for the project. Katie Paterson has been working with the architectural team to design this part of the new public library. The collected works will be on display but the manuscripts will not be available for reading.
The library, which is the brainchild of Scottish visual artist Katie Paterson, has so far invited prominent authors, including Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, and Ocean Vuong, to submit manuscripts. I like the idea, but I’m not sure about having to wait almost one hundred years to read what’s in the collection, even if I knew I’d still be around by then.
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The 2022 National Young Writers Festival
23 September 2022
The 2022 National Young Writers’ Festival (NYWF) runs from Thursday 29 September, through to Sunday 2 October, both in Newcastle, Australia (about one hundred and sixty kilometres north of Sydney), and online.
NYWF is so-called Australia’s largest gathering of young writers, with artists bringing their craft from all around (cities, regional, rural and our beloved regular cohort from Aotearoa). We showcase work in both new and traditional forms including zines, comics, blogging, screenwriting, poetry, spoken word, hip hop, music, journalism, autobiography, comedy and prose.
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Australia, events, literature, writing
Publishing contract morality clauses may be unfair to authors
26 August 2022
Finding a traditional publisher for a novel is becoming ever more difficult. For one thing, aspiring — being unpublished — authors, are up against who knows how many other hopeful novelists. They also have to contend with a shrinking pool of publishing houses, as the industry appears to be going through a consolidation, which is seeing many smaller and independent publishers absorbed by larger players.
Even authors with several published works to their name, are reporting waits of up to a year to hear back about a pitch. But adding to the woes of many authors, emerging and established, are so-called morality clauses some publishers are including in their agreements.
In short, if a writer fails to meet a certain standard of behaviour, they may lose any advances or royalties they’ve received. The problem author advocates — such as the Authors Guild — have with morality clauses are the sometimes vague definitions of inappropriate or wrong conduct.
These contract provisions allow publishers to terminate a book contract, and in many cases even require the author to repay portions of the advance already received, if the author is accused of immoral, illegal, or publicly condemned behavior. Publishers insist they need the clauses to protect themselves in the event an author’s reputation becomes so tarnished after the book contract is signed that it will hurt sales. But most of these clauses are too broad and allow a publisher to terminate based on individual accusations or the vague notion of “public condemnation” — which can occur all too easily in these days of viral social media.
People should be held accountable for wrong-doing, but everyone is entitled to proper due-process. The concern is morality clauses, particularly where the definition of inappropriate or wrong behaviour is poorly defined, could be used unfairly against some authors.
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Publishing your book online, Ted Gioia lists the reasons why
25 August 2022
American author Ted Gioia intends to publish his next book on Substack, an online publishing platform. This really is worth a read for anyone considering self-publishing a novel.
The Internet may be a curse in many regards, but it has given me direct contact with my readers. I cherish that. Things that once took a year now happen instantaneously. Instead of getting feedback from one editor, I learn from thousands of people, many of them very smart with useful things to say. The whole process is energized, streamlined, and turbocharged.
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novels, publishing, Ted Gioia, writing
Rejected authors finding publishers, film deals, on TikTok
19 August 2022
TikTok is proving to be a fertile ground for new music acts looking for a lucky break, with the video hosting app kick-starting the careers of numerous musicians so far.
And authors are also cashing in. Many writers who struggled to find publishers previously, are sometimes finding themselves at the centre of bidding wars between rival publishing houses, after taking a novel idea to TikTok to gauge interest in the premise.
American writer Alex Aster is an example, and in 2021 signed a lucrative publishing deal, and later film rights, for her YA novel Lightlark.
Aster didn’t expect much, especially when she checked in a few hours later to see that her post had only clocked up about 1,000 views. Maybe the books world was right, she thought. Maybe there wasn’t a market for Lightlark, a young adult story she had been writing and rewriting for years, to no interest from publishers. The next day, however, she woke up to see her video had been viewed more than a million times. A week later, Lightlark had gone to auction and she had a six-figure deal with Amulet Books. Last month, Universal preemptively bought the film rights for, in her words, “more zeros than I’ve seen in my life”.
Aster conceded an element of luck was involved though, describing the TikTok algorithm that eventually propelled her to success as “finicky”. Here’s hoping the algorithm will favour other writers.
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books, publishing, social media, writing
Book plotlines tropes and clichés a publisher may reject
13 August 2022
The world is full of writers and the stories they’d like to write. American author Joseph Epstein, writing for the New York Times, quotes research suggesting eighty-one percent of Americans think they “have a book in them”. That’s a lot. Unfortunately, aspiring writers vastly outnumber book publishers, meaning many manuscripts stand to go unnoticed and unpublished.
It might not seem like much help, but Strange Horizons — a magazine publishing speculative fiction — once put together a list of the types of sci-fi stories that they’ve seen submitted too often, and subsequently did not feature. I suspect they’re not the only publishers seeing such ideas either. Knowing what might be rejected then, might help you write something that won’t be.
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books, novels, science fiction, writing
Ann Mossop new Sydney Writers Festival artistic director
1 August 2022
Ann Mossop has been appointed as the new artistic director of the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Mossop, who has been behind a string of events in Sydney, has a long association with the writers’ festival:
Festival Chair Mark Scott said, “Ann Mossop comes to Sydney Writers’ Festival with a career programing cutting-edge public conversations at the Sydney Opera House for the Ideas at the House series, Festival of Dangerous Ideas, All About Women and recently as the Director of the Centre for Ideas at UNSW Sydney. Ann also has a long association with the Festival, sitting on the board from 1995–2000 and was part of the committee that established Sydney Writers’ Festival as an independent entity in 1998.”
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2022 Melbourne Writers Festival program
29 July 2022
The 2022 Melbourne Writers Festival program was unveiled last Tuesday by MWF artistic director Michaela McGuire. Between Thursday 8 September 2022, and Sunday 11 September, over two-hundred-and-fifty storytellers from across the world will gather in Melbourne, Australia, and after several years of COVID imposed lockdowns, this year’s event is aptly themed ambition:
Reading is the ultimate act of ambition; the boundless ambition of the curious mind. Ambition to learn, to inhabit another person’s life and experience the world from their point of view. To grasp the limitless possibilities that literature affords us, the solace it has given, the joy it still has to offer.
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events, literature, Melbourne, writing
Beat writer’s block and meet deadlines with AI writing apps
28 July 2022
Far from usurping writers of fiction, AI writing programs, such as Sudowrite, could aid authors, particularly those bogged down with writer’s block, and facing looming deadlines, says Josh Dzieza, writing for The Verge:
Lepp, who writes under the pen name Leanne Leeds in the “paranormal cozy mystery” subgenre, allots herself precisely 49 days to write and self-edit a book. This pace, she said, is just on the cusp of being unsustainably slow. She once surveyed her mailing list to ask how long readers would wait between books before abandoning her for another writer. The average was four months. Writer’s block is a luxury she can’t afford, which is why as soon as she heard about an artificial intelligence tool designed to break through it, she started beseeching its developers on Twitter for access to the beta test.
In other words, AI writing programs could act as ghostwriters, of a sort, who are paid — in kind at least — but never acknowledged for their contribution.
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